Of all the silly things i do Jazz and Rock has to rate pretty hghly this is my fourth year on the Exec as either chair or treasurer, and it always causes an enormous amount of stress all year round.

did I mention the stress - this summer somone has been breaking stuff so to combat this here are some new streamlined rules, The following of which i owuld like to see enhrined in teh code of conduct.

Rules for the booking system

• Always leave your jazz and rock card and booking slip with the security guard
• always sign out the key
• you are responsible for the behaviour of anyone you let intot the room and the equipment in it

Rules for in the room

Rules for onstage

• any equipment belonging to the society or otehrwise damaged by deliberate vandalism or poor stagecraft is the liability of the person concerned
• and non society equipment is used at owners risk

Another thing i would like added to the constitution is that the unsupervised access to the equipment is not a statutory right of members, it is a preiveledge granted at the descresion of the committee/exec. That it is given o new members but that if the room is left in a poor state that it can be removed without havig to go gto the trouble of expelling somone from the society.

A letter im proposing to wirte to the union.

Office 530 HEP Group Physics Department

17-11-04

Dear Union management,

I am writing this letter having just received your Stakeholder Questionnaire on developing the union strategy. Although I dislike the number of buzzwords you managed to cram into the title of it, generally I think it's an excellent idea to ask people what they think about these things. This then is in addition to my answers on the questionnaire a plea for you not to change the things I really like and that make the union so great, and how it could be made better.

I'm afraid you will be able to detect some bias towards some activities, so I'd better start by telling you where within your structure I'm coming from. I am now a final year postgrad in physics. This is my 7th year at IC and I have been a club officer from my second year as an undergrad. I have mainly been involved in Jazz and Rock and ICSF, (having been Chair of both at one point or another, and I am currently treasurer for Jazz and Rock) although I have managed to spend a noticeable fraction of my life in and around the bars. My point of view this year could be said to be less selfish than usual because this is my final year here, and so what follows is what I think would be good not what I want for myself or a society I'm involved with. Having said that I would obviously like to see the clubs I've been involved with continue to grow and do well.

Firstly things in your questionnaire that worried me were as follows.

The suggestion that there were too many of one type or another of a particular club or society seems to be the start of a dangerous and slippery slope, leading to small 'unpopular' clubs being denied existence and the rich diversity of societies (which was one of the things that made me choose to come to IC in the first place) would be badly affected. Even in the cases where there are several clubs doing similar things on paper they are usually very different on the inside, and in the end the clubs are their not to show massive university prowess or anything other than to provide enjoyment for their members. The clue here is in the name, societies are generally the product of the people they are made up of and even two that seem the sae can be very different year to year, and although that changes as new people arrive it seems very harsh to take away a society that someone has devoted (sometimes up to as long as eight years to) and tell them that they have to be part of something else.

The idea of the clubs taking a 10% cut in funding to support a 'an additional staff member' appears twice. This is a dreadful idea. I really can't find polite words to express how much this cuts to the core of what I feel the union should be about. Apart from anything else the clubs and socs work at the moment and so don't need fixing, and their budgets are already very strained. More then half my time as a club officer has been spent placating the union in the way of forms and beurocracy, and although I know you would argue that a member of staff would help that, I'm afraid I believe that they would only increase the burden on us. YOU ALTREADY HAVE ONE. DPCS does a good job and is paid the equivalent of my phd bursary to do this. The idea of clubs and societies paying for a new permanent member of staff and suffering the loss of space for an office for them reeks of the management team building up their own empire at the expense of the rest of the union I'm afraid. Although I do accept that this isn't your motivation this is how it will be perceived by an already suspicious student body whose funding has been cut year on year to support more and more permanent staff members and their coffee rooms.

Changing the Union Bar. What can I say? Please don't. It's great as it is, free of a big screen and full of history. My father drank there as secretary of RSM. It makes you feel as if you are part of something bigger. By all means put trophies up there that would be fantastic, but please don't sports theme it. The current UNION theme could be enhanced by more UNION bar nights etc where yards and pots are taken down and beer drank in them, photos of teams and societies and past triumphs would be nice as well. To remove this would take away what little sense of history the place has left after rebranding and the abolishment of the RCSU. It also serves excellent real ale and has a better selection than any other student bar I've come across.

I don't want to seem hopelessly reactionary but good things are so often taken for granted and then lost in sweeping changes I thought it was worth making a point about them.

Now new ideas and things that could do with changing. I might as well add my thoughts on this as I've had my say on what I don't want to be changed it seems only fair that I actually put forwards something constructive.

A better live music venue (remember that bais) whilst dB's is a reasonably good club venue the shape and position of its stage is quite frankly poor. You end up playing to a 3 person deep audience that extends a long way to each side and actually behind you. Simply by putting the stage at the doors end of dB's where there is already a raised platform would make a great deal of difference to its quality as a venue.

Café/better food - what a good idea really needs to be done. Union food at the moment is a running joke. Its expensive and not very nice, and the dark bar like atmosphere of DaVinics isn't great. Rearranging the furniture and putting in patio doors would be a good start, as would more tables and catering etc outside in the summer. Certainly giving DaVincis and dB's a more coherent catering approach and making more use of the terrace would be cool, as would doing something in the UDH which is currently seems to be a large unused space. Possibly a roaming coffee shop outside in when sunny inside in the UDH when cold and raining. However it would be duplicating what the JCR already does.

As far as the unions structure goes, the big problem is that it acts as if it sees itself as a top down system. With the president/management in control then the CCS's and then the Clubs and then the students. Whereas it needs to be seen as the students are the customers and the clubs, bar and ents being the front line providing services to them, with the management behind them being kept as small as possible, and being there to support them not to control what they can and cant do. The management buzz-phrase for this is apparently "inverted pyramid". If the union management could be slimed down and more money and space made available for the services and activities that students actually notice it would make a big impression (especially to the clubs and societies, most of whom feel that they succeed in spite of the union management). I know this isn't a concrete proposal but its certainly what people feel. Most people want little to do with how the union is run and only really care about what its doing for them, whereas the people running the union give the impression of losing sight of this sometimes.

A final word on your questionnaire, in general it's positive that you took the time to knock up a word document to consult the people. However if I can just analyse the first paragraph ….

"Thank you for participating in this" (presumptuous! I've only just started reading it I expect most people would put it in the bin here) "the largest survey of opinion about the Union ever undertaken" (what about the elections you have every year arn't they a survey of opinion? and 'EVER'?). "Your responses will have a direct" (direct really??? The other ones got bells on) "impact on the way in which your Union is run in the next five years in terms of its resource allocation, capital investment, governance and management"(resource allocation and capitol investment sound a bit like management speak but ok .. but what on earth is governance and is it really that different in everyone else's eyes to management??)

….. ok so having got past the first paragraph and not chocked to death on the pure and unadulterated synergy that my poor scientists eyes could barely comprehend, I filled out the NINE pages of questions. The tone and content of which disturbed me in places and left me hopeful in others and prompted me to write to you.

Lastly can you please assure me that the questionnaire and this letter will make a small difference to your mighty opinions, possibly subtly alter the way you see the union and eventually have a tiny persuasive effect upon your decisions. Please do not let the people who advised me not to waste my time on this be correct. please assure me that this is not an exercise in the sort of "consultation" that seems so typical these days, where everyone is consulted and then is told (when they don't like their houses being pulled down) "well you were consulted", please listen to these opinions since you have asked to hear them.

This is after all our Union, and it belongs to all of us.

Yours in fellowship,

Richard Plackett (ICU member for 7 years, 5 times club and society Exec member)