UCL Union votes to Disarm UCL!

Yesterday, at the UCL Union council meeting the union voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Disarm UCL motion on Ethical Investment.

This will really help our campaign, particularly when we go and speak to the provost in the next couple of weeks. Thanks to those of you that turned up and helped argue in support of the motion.

There's still much more work to do, and if you haven't signed the petition yet then please do add your voice to the campaign.

Next meeting

The next Disarm UCL meeting will be happening on Monday 19 February at 5pm in the Clubs and Societies Centre, 2nd floor of the Bloomsbury Building. We will be discussing what we have achieved so far, the recent UCL AGM and our upcoming meeting with the provost.

Please come along and get involved.

Union AGM woes

Thanks to everyone who came down to the UCL Union AGM, unfortunately we never got to hear our motion. Nick Barnard, the Union's Media & Communications officer explained why in an email to UCL students today.

First off, we’ll have a report on the paradoxically successful but ultimately disappointing UCLU AGM.

With around 100 people in Cruciform LT1, we are reliably informed it was the best-attended since 2004 and, with several motions sure to produce excellent debate on the agenda, things were looking good. However, during the discussion of the first motion, a request for a count to check quoracy was made.

For those of you unfamiliar, quoracy is a certain percentage of the potential membership that must attend a meeting before its decisions are outright binding. For our AGM, the quoracy is 1% of the total membership (which all of you), which works out to around 190 people. Unfortunately, the requisite numbers were not present, which meant that the meeting was forced to close.

Because the Annual Report and Audited Accounts had already been approved by the meeting, another General Meeting is not planned to be held. Instead, if the proposers wish, the motions submitted can be carried on to the next meeting of Union Council (Monday 26th February) and be voted on. All members of the Union are eligible (and indeed encouraged) to attend and be granted speaking rights.

You can still look over the motions submitted at
http://www.uclunion.org/student-union/noticeboard/index.php

This means we'll probably resubmit the motion and ask people to come down again and vote on the 26 February. We'll keep you up to date on what happens.

Use your vote: make the Union disarm UCL!

Please come to the UCL Union's Annual General Meeting between 4-6pm on Thursday 8 February at Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, Gower Street to vote for UCL Union to oppose UCL's investments in arms companies.

We have submitted a motion to the union regarding UCLs ethical investment policy regarding the arms trade and calling on the union to oopppose UCLs investment in arms shares and to actively campaign for them to disinvest.

The full text can be seen here:
AGM Motion on Ethical Investment

We need to get as many people as possible along to the AGM so we can vote for this motion to be passed. The importance of this cannot be understated: the union holds a lot of sway with UCL because it represents the interests of all UCL students and as such can influence a lot of people. If the union passses the motion it will seriously help our campaign. We are also due to meet with Provost Malcolm Grant soon to discuss the shares so again Union backing would be very helpful.

Please come along on Thursday (remember to bring your ID and session cards) and bring as many people as you can!!!