{"id":311,"date":"2018-01-22T14:01:46","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T14:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/?p=311"},"modified":"2018-02-20T17:43:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T17:43:42","slug":"university-court-newsflash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/01\/22\/university-court-newsflash\/","title":{"rendered":"UNIVERSITY COURT NEWSFLASH"},"content":{"rendered":"

GOODBYE TRANSPARENCY<\/span><\/p>\n

Regular readers of subtext will know that issues outside the regular fortnightly cycle are released very rarely, and only on issues that the collective deems to be urgent.<\/span><\/p>\n

As predicted by subtext, the University Court is to be abolished (subtexts 166, 169, 170, 171).<\/span><\/p>\n

Its final meeting, where members will discuss, but not vote on, the terms of abolition, will take place on Saturday 27 January.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Court’s external reviewer, David Allen, had asked for the Court to be consulted before any final decision were taken. In his report to the Council, Mr Allen felt that it would be ‘important, if change is contemplated, to devise a careful communication strategy so that Court in January is not simply confronted with a fait accompli,’ and emphasised that ‘it is for Council, not Court, to decide what should happen but it would be courteous to listen to Court\u2019s views, expressed at its next meeting in January 2018, prior to making any changes to University legislation.’<\/span><\/p>\n

It would seem that the Council carefully noted Mr Allen’s points, decided to be discourteous, approved the Court’s abolition at its November meeting, and agreed to present a fait accompli to the Court’s January meeting, ‘to ensure that members are aware of the rationale for the decision’. Gee, thanks. This decision was taken in secret – minutes are still not available and Mr Allen’s report, which has now been tabled for discussion by the Court, is still marked as ‘Confidential to the University’. The Court is to be replaced with an Annual Public Meeting, although it seems unlikely that this will have any formal status in Lancaster’s governance structures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another possible change could end up being even more significant. Mr Allen proposes that the Nominations Committee, which oversees the appointment of Council members and is regarded by many as the only safeguard we have against cronyism within that body, should be entirely gutted.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the moment the Nominations Committee contains 4 ex-officio members, 2 members appointed by the Council, 2 members appointed by the Court, and 2 members appointed by the Senate. Mr Allen recommends that this be replaced with 100% of the members appointed by the Council. A self-perpetuating oligarchy with members accountable to no-one, perhaps? At present, due to the secrecy of the Council’s deliberations, subtext doesn’t know if the Council endorsed Mr Allen’s recommendation. But we aren’t optimistic.<\/span><\/p>\n

In its current form, the Nominations Committee was established in 2006, when the Court lost its right to directly appoint members of the Council. Court members were explicitly assured that their influence would continue to be felt via the Nominations Committee. Clearly, if you’re going to abolish the Court, then you’ll need to change the Nominations Committee. We didn’t expect a coup d’\u00e9tat though!<\/span><\/p>\n

Can members and friends of the University do anything about this? Well, if we don’t at least try, then the answer will surely be ‘no’!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GOODBYE TRANSPARENCY Regular readers of subtext will know that issues outside the regular fortnightly cycle are released very rarely, and only on issues that the collective deems to be urgent. As predicted by subtext, the University Court is to be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,205,38],"tags":[158,41,208,207,206,62],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-newsflash","category-official-meetings","tag-council","tag-david-allen","tag-democracy","tag-nominations-committee","tag-transparency","tag-university-court"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99sHo-51","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":732,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/09\/13\/university-court\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":0},"title":"UNIVERSITY COURT","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"September 13 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"2018 saw the demise of the University Court, one of Lancaster's oldest and most diverse decision-making bodies. The University Court was an annual gathering bringing together a whole array of stakeholders. It made recommendations to the Senate and the Council of the university, was responsible for appointing the Pro-Chancellor, had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "history"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":91,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2017\/10\/12\/court-in-the-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":1},"title":"COURT IN THE ACT","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"October 12 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"David Allen, the Court Effectiveness Review Group's 'external reviewer', is visiting campus this week to meet with those who asked to be interviewed by him, as part of his review. Mr Allen is a former Registrar at the University of Exeter and we hope he'll enjoy his visit. He'll be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":376,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/02\/22\/prevarication-newsflash\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":2},"title":"PREVARICATION NEWSFLASH","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"February 22 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"On the eve of pensions strike, Lancaster UCU members were cheered by a report in that day's Times that VC Mark Smith had joined ten other university leaders in calling for a return to national negotiations. This represented a fundamental change in his position but, alas, it proved to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "newsflash"","block_context":{"text":"newsflash","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/newsflash\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/02\/15\/ten-minutes-to-discuss-your-own-enabling-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":3},"title":"TEN MINUTES TO DISCUSS YOUR OWN ENABLING ACT","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"February 15 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"While student wanna-be societies might be yearning for the return of an autocratic fascist state, the University\u2019s governance bodies seem to be doing a pretty good job of dismantling their own democratic structures. Next Wednesday's Senate papers suggest substantial changes to the University\u2019s statutes are on the agenda. These cover\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1116,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2019\/12\/13\/are-you-still-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":4},"title":"ARE YOU STILL HERE?","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"December 13 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Our last issue recounted the University's decision to remove the email accounts of hundreds of retired staff on a cost-benefit analysis that determined that they were no longer worth the expense. Since then, we've heard from a further six readers: all retired members of staff; all dedicated supporters of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "newsflash"","block_context":{"text":"newsflash","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/newsflash\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":246,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2017\/12\/07\/letters-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":5},"title":"LETTERS","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"December 7 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"An Open Letter to readers of subtext The announcement at the annual meeting in January 2017 of a review of the effectiveness of the Court \u2013 a body often likened to the annual shareholder meeting in a private company \u2013 seemed at the time relatively inconsequential. Six months elapsed before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}