A Statement from Rhul FemSoc Committee regarding the 4/12/12 GM and the impending EGM this Friday.

The following statement concerns the events of and in-between the SURHUL General Meeting on Tuesday 4th December and the following Motion of No confidence of a student at Royal Holloway. We felt that there were many misleading ideas revolving around these two events which have launched false accusations and gossip, especially around our involvement, therefore we'd like to clarify things for the benefit of students at Royal Holloway.

At the SURHUL General Meeting on Tuesday 4th December, our society proposed a motion against anti-choice harassment outside abortion clinics and on campuses. This motion can be read here.The motion had been approved by religious groups on campus and passed with the result of 56 for, 2 against, 8 abstentions.

There was one opposition speech from a student who was both the Entertainments officer (at the time) and NUS Delegate. The majority of their speech failed to actually oppose what the motion outlined, which was that SURHUL would take a stand to protect students rights to sexual health services and was against Anti-Choice Harassment outside Abortion Clinics and on Campuses. Instead, the opposition spent their two minutes presenting their own stance on abortion, saying that they were against abortion in any situation and condemning women who have abortions. You can read the opposing speech here [Trigger Warning].

The speaker accused those who spoke out against him of bullying. One student wrote a note on facebook in response entitled 'Why people shouldn't be criticised for being angry and upset during last night's Anti-Harassment Motion.' The speaker decided to state that this was also abuse and later stood down from their role as Entertainments Officer on exec. It was decision they chose to take and they were in no way forced to so by the union.

Only about a third of the speech is actually relevant to the motion, so lets look at that:

"I want to begin by saying that I initially proposed 11 amendments to this motion, all of which were refused, which I believe adds evidence to the following argument of close-mindedness on the subject of abortion."

Yes, we did refuse them because we thought that they were all unnecessary and so we refused them and prepared arguments against to use at the General Meeting. Just before the General Meeting the speaker withdrew the amendments; had they not retracted them, these amendments would have been discussed.

"It states that the SU supports individuals who protest at Bloomsbury Square, but by doing so condones actions up to and including violence if it was to be perpetrated."

Counter protests against the anti choice group held by the Bloomsbury Square group has always been peaceful, within the law, and held outside clinic hours so to not distress people that need clinic services.

"It fails to mandate any officer to educate and learn about the overwhelming scientific evidence of what an abortion actually results in."

The motion mandates the VP Education and Welfare Sabbatical and Equality and Liberation Officer work together to improve accessibility of information and of the choices available for pregnant students, easier to find and locate on campus, within SHAG Week and throughout the year. Our Education and Welfare Sabbatical Officer receives training to help students and we also have welfare and medical staff who are hired by the college to take students' best interest into account.

"It states anti-abortion groups are attacking unions and harassing women but fails to mention any source of evidence for it."

Well the motion, as all motions are put up in advance, but if you, like the opposition, did not look, here are some sources [trigger warning for distressing images] :

- Here is Abort67 at Bristol University

- Here is Abort67 at Nottingham University

- Here is Abort67 at Sussex University

- Here is Abort67 at King's College, Cambridge

Following on from this, on Friday the 7th of December, a student submitted a motion of no Confidence in the speaker as SURHUL NUS Delegate. You can read the motion here. This motion was not proposed the Feminism Society and none of the 30 signatures which was required to submit this Motion of no Confidence were of the Feminism society's committee. As a society, when we propose a motion we send out a copy of the motion to paid members and put it to a two thirds majority vote first; neither of these things took place. The proposer and seconders constructed this motion of no confidence independently; the argument that this motion of confidence is an attack from either 'the left', 'the right' or FemSoc has no grounds. This motion of confidence was created by students that do not believe that the speaker is fit to represent the Students of Royal Holloway at NUS Conference. This is a fair point considering:

- The SURHUL Constitution says that NUS delegates must represent the Students’ Union at conferences by using their votes and rights of speech for the needs of SURHUL members.

- The speaker said in their elections that they would put aside their political beliefs to represent the voices of the students union.

- During their speech on Tuesday 4th December that "if this motion passes it becomes SU policy which means that NUS Delegates such as me are mandated to vote at NUS conference in accordance with such a policy. As a Student Union you have no jurisdiction over my morals, my morals are mine, and mine alone."

- Therefore, the speaker has clearly stated as NUS Delegate that they are prepared to go against SURHUL decisions, which an act that they know is is against their mandate in the SURHUL Constitution and contradictory to what they said during elections.

With that said, we conclude with this: freedom of speech doesn't mean the freedom from the consequences of your speech. When you are a student in an elected position, other students have every right to hold you accountable within your mandate. Students have the right to ask after an event such as this: Do we want and trust this student to represent SURHUL's views on a national platform. The speaker says on their event page opposing this motion of no confidence:" It not fair, and its not right." Is it fair that someone that is already difficult times and is trying to get to a clinic to be harassed and shamed? Is it right to call people that believe in reproductive choice, advocators of murder?

We hope that this information clears things up, and that in the future, people feel able talk to us directly to clarify information beforehand.

By The Royal Holloway Feminism Society Committee

A Wild Welcome Back at Royal Holloway :)

We kicked it off with the SURHUL Welcome Week Societies fayre, where 146 students signed up to our email list and copies of The Wilding were available for free. It was so nice to meet you all and tell you about the society. We are also looking for new articles and donations for Issue 2 of The Wilding.

Hopefully all of you who have signed up have started getting emails from us. If not, don't worry because Josie (pictured on the left) will add you to the email list if you email us at rhulfeminism@gmail.com.
Remember that you can become a fem soc member online by going to the SU website  >  Log in/Register - (Your username is the number on your college card starting with 100******) > Click on the activities link > Click on the societies link and you will find (Feminism) > Join by adding the £7 to basket > Scroll down to 'Review Basket' at the bottom of the page > If you haven't already, you will also have to add the Students Activities Membership (allows you to join clubs/societies) which costs a further £10 > Proceed to check out and BOOM!

Then there was the First SURHUL General Meeting of the year where some fem soc members ran for various positions in the student union. It's great to know that we still have such passionate feminist activist around and wonderful to hear them mention Fem Soc in their speeches. Congratulations to Jack Saffery-Rowe on being elected to the SHRHUL Campaigns committee and to Jessica Goldsmith on her position as Gender Equality representative on the Inclusion and Representation senate. The SURHUL Inclusion and Representation senate has a mission to ensure accessibility, inclusion, representation and awareness are prominent at SURHUL. The I&R senate is chaired by Sidonie Bertrand-Shelton, and other places on the senate that still need to be filled are the: Disability Rep, BME (Black and Minority Ethnicity) Rep, Student Parent and Carer Rep and Halls Reps. If you are interested in running contact Sid or come to the next General meeting.




We had our introduction meeting on Thursday and got to engage with lots of new members. Next week we are teaming up with  Rhul Philosophy society and presenting "Victorian Secrets", a discussion on Victorian gender ideology and the development of gender philosophy. If you have facebook please click attending on the event page so we have a better idea of numbers. On the night, along with many other things, we will be discussing:
- What effects did the Victorian era have on gender roles?
- Royal Holloway's women in the Victorian Era
 - What the heck is gender anyway?
- The birth of Gender Philosophy
- Gender in other cultures
- Gender myths
This is our first collaboration of the year and it will be on October 11th, in Arts Building Lecture theatre 2 at 6pm. Hope to see you there.

Also next week Sunday is the Feminist Students' Coordinating meeting at the Feminist Library in London. 

FemLove 

 

#LiberateSURHUL

On the 29^th of May 2012, the Students' Union Annual General Meeting at RHUL voted to introduce four liberation officers onto our executive committee: a Disabled Students Officer, Black & Ethnic Minority Students Officer, LGBT+ Officer and Women & Marginalised Genders Officer. To many at other universities, this won't seem like a big achievement – many Students' Unions already have these officer positions, and to those with any interest at all in liberation, the necessity of their existence is obvious. However, the successful passing of this motion was the result of a sustained campaign to convince students of the importance of putting liberation at the heart of what SURHUL does. SURHUL has traditionally been a very inward-facing union, with a focus on student activities and internal politics rather than on campaigning, and the introduction of these officers is a massive step forward.

The introduction of these officer positions, and particularly of the WMG officer, has been a major aim of RHUL Feminism Society this year. Our members have attended NUS Women's Conference, as well as many feminist events where they have spoken with other students, and have often been faced with dropped jaws when they told others that SURHUL was entirely without a Women's Officer – especially considering the rich feminist histories of Royal Holloway and Bedford College! Whilst the creation of the Feminism Society in the last academic year was fantastic, we were aware that it was not enough for us to run Women's Campaigns from inside our society, and that in order to truly “liberate SURHUL” we needed someone to represent the interests of women at the heart of the Union. The creation of the WMG Officer will allow NUS Women's Campaigns to be co-ordinated from within the Union, as well as ensuring that issues of gender equality are taken into account in every decision the executive committee makes. In a Union where, over the last few years, we have had bitter arguments over the introduction of women's officers, women-only votes for NUS Women's conference delegates and the introduction of gender-neutral toilets and the use of gender neutral pronouns in General Meetings, this truly represents a massive step forward.

An incredible amount of work went into the campaign to introduce liberation officers. Meetings and working groups were held over several months with interested groups in order to produce the motion that was taken to the AGM. It is probably not a controversial statement to say that this was probably the most campaigned upon motion that a SURHUL GM has ever seen, and the fact that such effort was expended in trying to convince students of the value of liberation shows how important this motion was to the people involved.

When it came down to it, the main arguments raised against the motion were administrative and bureaucratic: that, for example, the introduction of new officers would make the executive committee too large. In the end, however, the 100+ students present at the meeting decided that liberation is much more important than issues of bureaucracy, and the victory was by a landslide majority. The fact that an amendment to make the officer positions non-voting was voted down shows that the students in the room had genuinely been convinced of the importance of liberation groups having a genuine say at the heart of Union affairs.

There is still much work to be done to truly “liberate SURHUL”. The new positions will not come into effect until the academic year 2013/4, and in the next year, the Equality and Liberation Officer who currently sits on the executive committee, as well as all liberation activists on campus, will need to work hard to build energy and awareness around the liberation campaigns in order to build towards a position where these roles can elected next year. Royal Holloway Feminism Society will continue to be involved in building awareness around women's issues, and also – importantly – of issues of intersectionality. We are proud to have been a part of passing an historic motion for SURHUL, but we know that the fight does not stop here.

RHUL Feminism Society would like to thank everybody who was involved in the creation and success of this motion. We'd also like to thank the fabulous Kelley Temple, NUS Women's Officer Elect, who came along to lend her invaluable support to the motion.

On why a candidate's stance on abortion is not an irrelevant issue

By Megan Down

Fem Soc caused a bit of a stir at the recent Sabbatical and Trustee Election Candidates Question Time. And when I say Fem Soc, I of course actually mean myself, however all of the tweeting going on about the supposedly inappropriate question – and the recent news article in the Orbital about the event – firmly associated the question with the Feminism Society. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by this – I am the secretary of the society, and some would say I am a prominent feminist activist at RHUL. Others would say that I just have a very big mouth, but that's a whole other story.

The question I asked to the candidates for Vice President for Education and Welfare was whether they are pro-choice. This question was initially disallowed by the Democracy Officer, on the grounds that it was “irrelevant”. We'll come to that later. Eventually, after a little heckling from the back of the room, the question was allowed, once I'd reformulated it into... basically, not the same question. I should state at this point that this article is not meant to be an assault on the integrity of the Democracy Officer – we disagreed, and he won, because he is an elected official of the Student Union and I am not, so he was entitled to make the decision he did. However, I would like to explain why I believe that his judgement was incorrect. The question of whether the VPEdWelfare candidates support a woman's right to choose could not have been more relevant, and the women of Royal Holloway deserved to hear the answer.

Let's take a look at Regulation C, which lists the duties of elected officials of the student union. The VPEW is, amongst of course a great many other things, responsible for “providing information and support on welfare … issues”, “organising necessary campaigns on welfare … issues” and liaising with College, charities and community services to ensure welfare provision for students. What this means is that the VPEW will be responsible for the policy of the Student Union on providing information to students about contraceptive and abortion services. They will choose the leaflets that are available in the welfare suite, they will choose whether or not to form partnerships with charities and organisations providing support for students who experience and unplanned pregnancy during their studies. They will decide whether campaigns on contraception and sexual health contain any information about abortion, and what that information is.

We should quickly address a major sticking point in any kind of debate like this: what does “pro-choice” mean. Pro-choice does not, and I cannot emphasise this enough, mean pro-abortion. You can be pro-choice and hate the idea of abortion, you can be pro-choice and have moral convictions that mean you will never yourself choose to abort a foetus. However, being pro-choice means that you support the a woman's right to choose to have an abortion if that is what she wants. The slogan “our bodies, our choice, our right to decide” is common amongst the pro-choice movement, and sums it up really: women should be able to have access to all the necessary information to make their own decision about what they want to happen to their own body. Access to safe, legal abortion is a cornerstone of the women's liberation movement.

It is the right of students to be able to access a full range of welfare information from their Student Union, and that includes comprehensive, unbiased information about abortion and referrals to abortion charities and helplines. I do not believe that a VPEW who held a fundamentally anti-abortion stance would be able to fulfil their duties to the students of Royal Holloway. A moral stance which prevented a VPEW from providing welfare information about abortion, from including abortion issues in campaigning work, from liaising with College and external providers on the issue would be fundamentally opposed to the role of a VPEW. Pro-choice is about just that, choice, and if a VPEW would be unwilling to promote choice for students who experience an unplanned pregnancy during their studies then the electorate had a right to know that. That is why I asked my question, and that is why it was in no way irrelevant.