All students’ unions are required to have a Constitution, in our instance a document called the Articles of Association. Regulations mean we have to review this document at least every five years – and it’s time to review ours. We are trying to adopt Articles that are very similar to the ‘model articles’ drafted by NUS and used by all but two students’ unions in the country that we can find. More importantly, some of the changes we are proposing were requested by students through our research and through previous petitions to the Union. Some of the key student-facing changes are: • Making an elected student the Chair of the Trustee Board ( the Board is currently chaired by one of our external, non-student trustees) • Increasing the number of students on the Board compared to the number of external trustees. Currently we have 5 external trustees and 3 Sabbatical Officer Trustees. The changes will add 4 appointed student trustees to the Board membership giving a total of 7 student members in the future. • We have simplified the calling of a referenda and allowed for more flexible rules that adapt to the student body and allow more students to engage. We’ve lowered the number of students needed to call for a referenda on all issues from up to 500 to 300 • Introducing ‘preferendums’ for the first time – so individual students can vote on which option from a number of different options they prefer the union to pursue on any issue, rather than just vote yes or no on an issue

Firstly students were consulted via the Union’s big research programme which asked them how they would like to interact with the democracy of the Union – over a thousand students responded! The research found students wanted to be more personally involved in decision making and were less keen on elected sabbatical officers acting on their behalf. We then ran a campaign called Let’s Be Clear which aimed to get to the bottom of how students want their SU governance to operate. Let’s Be Clear included information about the proposed new Articles and a chance for students to feedback on the changes. We also trialled a number of different models for gathering student feedback and the most popular of these was the forums model which allows students to input on specific areas of the Union in an informal setting. We have since launched Forums which are led by sabbatical officers as a way for students to feedback to us on the 3 areas the officers are responsible for – Education, Wellbeing and Activities and hold officers directly to account as outlined in the Articles and as requested by students through research.

The main differences between the old articles and the proposed new articles are shown in the table below:

No. The new articles bring the SU up to the standard of other SUs around the country. They give more power to students by increasing the number of student seats on the Board of Trustees and making a student the Chair of the Board. They also make it much easier for students to hold sabbatical officers to account and to hold cross campus referenda on issues identified by students meaning more students will have the opportunity to have their voice heard in an easy to access and simple way. There is really not a downside to this proposed change as it is about creating more opportunities for students to lead and shape their Union which we think is a positive thing.

All students of the University of Sunderland can vote in the AGM, as can Trustees of the Union. These Trustees are the 3 elected sabbatical officers (sabbs) and 5 external trustees from the community.

The Articles need to be approved by the University, and then be registered with the Charity Commission and Companies House. The Charity Commission have already approved the proposed changes and are happy that they are legally sound. When all approvals are in place then students would be appointed to the Trustee Board and an elected Sabbatical Officer would be appointed chair of the Trustee Board.

The Trustee Board will meet to discuss next steps and how we might respond to feedback. The Articles still need to be reviewed.

Yes. If you are unable to attend you may cast your vote via proxy. By doing this, you give Colin Ranshaw, the current Chair of the Board of Trustees, permission to submit your vote by proxy. You may not cast a proxy vote in any other way.