Talk:Cambridge Union/Archived discussion on issues surrounding 'Of the President'
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Section on The President
Look, we've gone back and forth over this a hell of a lot - the wording of the section on the president as it stands per my last revert is the correct version. Those of us involved with the Society recognise it as correct and independent wikipedians, on reading the constitution, have hit upon this wording. So man-up and stop editing as anon, stop this pointless self-agrandisement, and get on and organise your term of events. MikeMorley 22:39, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Following on from "MikeMorley"'s comments...
I am currently an officer of the Society (Secretary and Vice President) and after now visiting our page on Wikipedia and reading through the 'edit war' that has been going on below I must say I'm very disappointed in the "self-aggrandization" that has been going on here. Remember, nothing on the Internet is actually 'anonymous' and hence I can confidently say this is certainly an act of "self-aggrandization" which is quite pathetic really give that at the end of the day nobody really gives a toss, but false info has no place on here.
As has already been stated and verified by independent Wikipedians, the President is not the highest authority in the Society. Obviously if A can over-rule B then B is not the 'highest authority.'
The President (and other officers like myself) is a servant to the members... the members (and other officers) are not subjects of the President.
Thanks to "Mpntod", "MikeMorley" and "Westmoreville" that seemed to have been keeping the sanity, and truth, here ;-)
P.S. To avoid any controversy, I've changed 'managed' to 'general control' which are the exact words used in the Constitution and hence there is no room for future dispute there...
nhartman 19 December 2006
- Speaking as a former President, in my day, the highest authority was definitely the Chief Clerk, whatever the constitution might say! :-) Constitutionally, I don't remember being able to decide very much, outside of the programme of debates and speakers, without having the agreement of Standing Committee or a Members' Business Meeting. I never got to make a Presidential ruling. With respect to the 'Committee of the Whole House' which someone pointed out had the power to override a Presidential ruling, has there ever been one? Or is it a purely theoretical part of the constitution?
- On the subject of the Union's history, does anyone know when the big constitutional rewrite happened - with the creation of the role of President-elect, Senior Officer etc.? Until the 1990s, the President, Vice-President and Secretary were elected termly - and people tended to work their way up from Secretary to VP to P (although they could get knocked out along the way). I don't remember us having a Senior Officer, Entertainments Officer, Director of Debating, External Committee or House Committee. There was a Director of Recruitment, a Film Committee, Library Committee and a President's Committee (which consisted of one or two reps per college). The Junior Treasurer was a separate role elected annually by the Standing Committee, and, by convention, normally filled in if we were short of speakers.
- "The Junior Treasurer was a separate role elected annually by the Standing Committee, and, by convention, normally filled in if we were short of speakers."
- The Junior Treasurer was made a termly position not too long ago (about 3-4 years I think). Interesting to hear that they used to fill in for debates... was there any particular reason behind that convention? These days it seems that either one of the competitive debaters will fill in or one of several established Union personalities floating around Cambridge that usually go down on the order paper as 'Union Wit' ;-)
- nhartman 2 January 2007
- I suspect it was normally because they could be relied on to be at the dinner before the debate and so were available. I remember also filling in as Vice-President. Perhaps it was also because they were sitting conveniently nearby? :-) As I recall, as you looked towards the President, the Vice-President sat on the left and the Junior Treasurer on the right, with the Secretary sitting at the table in front. The Standing Committee (current and ex-officio) sat along the benches on the back wall.
Of the President
From the above discussion, we can see an on-going dispute over this section of the article. A number of editors, both within the Union and without have looked at it and concluded a wording acknowledging not only the power of the President to interpret the constitution but noting that a Committee of the Whole House has the ability to over turn this.
However various anon IPs - likely the same person, but without concrete facts I won't name which current or recent Union Officer I suspect of this action - have repeatedly removed this wording to agrandise the role of the president. It is a fact that there is a continued real-life dispute over Presidential Interpretations, notably in Michaelmas 2006.
The constitution is quite clear on interpreting the constitution - and, in fact, gives the power to the chair of any meeting of the society, the President, Committees of the Whole House, and to Select Committees. The general applicability of these and the methods to overturn these vary, but ultimately a Committee of the Whole House may do so.
Can we please have a rational debate about why one wording should persist - afterall, the Union is a debating society!
MikeMorley 14:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
To answer mpntod's questions: - There have been Committees of the Whole House before and they have overturned things, but they are quite rare. Historically, any serious talk of going down that route has caused overzelous presidents to back off and retract what they have done as if one were overturned they would likely have to resign. Essentially the house is voting on if the president has abused the laws and used them inappropriately... if the house votes yes then, in most cases, that puts the president in an essentially untenable position.
- In regards to the different officers: The officerships were rearranged to both expand the officers involved in running events (i.e. adding ents) and also better define who's responsible for what. Essentially the current system has two 'branches' namely the termly officers that work on running each term and cordinating the events for that term (pres: debates, s.o.: speakers, ents: ents, treas: sponsorship) and then the executive department, headed up by the Secretary which is more focused on the general running of the Society as a whole (the executive functions... Standing Committee as a whole, on which the Secretary as an officer gets a vote and exec. depart members attend, still makes overall general decisions during term time). Essentially it's broken up running the events and running the Society... which are two quite different full time roles. As part of this process, Secretary was made an officer for an entire year to better allow for the general oversight and more to be accomplished in the 'general control of business and premises' bit of the job as it takes at least a whole term just to get up to speed with things. The Secretary, in this new role and perhaps before, used to do the 'hiring and firing' as it were of employees, but this role (or at least the legal aspects of it) were shifted over to the Steward after some legal snafoos a while back ago. That's probably for the best as I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable dealing with the legal aspects of employment, but the Secretary is still very much involved with the employment stuff, just not the legal bits.
In regards to this mess with agrandizing comments for the Pres., it's all total nonsense. The President's job is to organise and run the debates. In extreme situations, they do have this authority of 'interpretation' and also can in theory issue a 'fine' against a member (but again both are subject to being overturned by higher authorities) BUT the Society is about puting on a good term of debates and events for members NOT the pres running around annoying everyone with their 'authority.' The Presidential fines are, so far as I've seen in recent records, essentially never used or at least only very very rarely, except for many attempted fines by the previous Michaelmas pres! for which the Society got hit with bad press. There were some fines issued in an election, but that is a totally different process and is subject to the approval of at least 5 different independent people spread over two independent bodies.
There is also the issue of 'interpretation' but that can also quite easly be altered or overturned by the membership. Also as 'MikeMorely' correctly pointed out this 'authority of interpretation' is NOT unique to the president as there are other individuals or groups that have this authority in various situations. I find it really really sad that some moron out there seems to waste their time messing with the article as such. If the article continues to be subjected to 'anon' inaccurate aggrandizing posting then perhaps either it needs to be locked down or we should just get rid of the whole 'who does what' bit. It is useful info, but unfortunetly it also seems to attract immature inaccurate vanity posting...
There has been some more activity in this section. I couldn't quite remember all the details of this from my days at the Union so I found a copy of the laws on the website and refreshed my memory (more or less reads like I remember it). From that I was able to essentially confirm what was previously written in that this power of interpretation is not strictly unique to the President. The edits keep incorrectly saying that this is the case. I'd agree that it seems this is probably just someone trying to look important. However, I don't think any of this discussion about interpretation, even a lengthy paragraph with an accurate description, is really relevent to the article anyway. There are lots of other interesting historical bits that could be added in its place.
Westmoreville 17:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Doing some browsing over breakfast and noted the latest revert activity in this section. Seems the troll is now back onto the 'all high and almight authority' bit again. Troll also seems to invent a new UserID every few days. I removed the 'dubious' tag because the editors, at least those that engague in actual discusion about edits, all seem to agree that the current text for this section is accurate.
Westmoreville 7:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh dear, I've just checked back and see y'all still have your hands full here! I suppose this perfectly illustrates the saying that "people take student politics too seriously because the stakes are so low." The editors on here seem to be deailing with things, and I would confirm that the changes are, for the most part, rubbish. The fact that the article history shows the changer refuses to engage in any actual debate or discussion, god forbid, on an article about a debating society is rather ironic but I suppose it makes sense given that they wouldn't pass an actual proper editorial review.
It wouldn't be very Wiki (or ethical) of me to play much of an active role in editing an article, or especially a section, that relates to me so I'll continue to leave things in the capable hands on the editors on here. However, I can help with editorial support on the discussion board if needed...
Perhaps it would also help if I suggested a wording here on the discussion board for the editors to discuss and come to a consensus on. May I suggested the following text for this subsection to try and get it back to NPOV: I should point out as a conflict of interest notice that I am the current Secretary so to keep it as NPOV as possible I'm essentially just quoting the Socity's laws in regards to job descriptions (per below).
"
President - The President is responsible for organising the weekly debates during their term in office and serves as the Chairman of Debates and Chairman of the Standing Committee. Term in office is one academic term plus one vacation (~14-23 weeks).
Secretary and Vice President - The Secretary and Vice President (SVP) is charged with the general control of the business of the society, its premises, maintains official records and is the Chairman of the Executive Department. Term in office is one calendar year (March-March).
"
Cited References:
Pres suggested text: "The President is responsible for organising the weekly debates during their term in office and serves as the Chairman of Debates and Chairman of the Standing Committee."
Pres job description in Society laws: "The President shall be responsible for running the debating programme for the term having prepared that programme as President–Elect in the previous term." and "He shall be the Chairman of the Standing Committee."
SVP suggested text: The Secretary and Vice President (SVP) is charged with the general control of the business of the society, its premises, maintains official records and is the Chairman of the Executive Department. Term in office is one calendar year (March-March).
SVP job description in the Society laws: "The members of the Executive Department shall be: The Secretary, as Chairman" and "The Secretary shall be responsible to the Standing Committee for the Executive Department and shall have the general control of the business and premises of the Society."
This issue of pres interprt keeps coming up and has already been discussed. As was pointed out this power is neither unique nor absolute. As is not uncommon in the Society's laws, the wording is slightly convoluted in that the text in the pres section dosen't cross-reference later text that provides for assignment of this to others. The text of the laws should probably be ammended to include 'except as provided elsewhere in the laws' to make that reference more obvious. Furthermore, the section in question is about job descriptions so if something about 'interpretations' in general is going to be featured in the article then a full NPOV text should be featured as a separate section. Such a section would need to address the basic principle, the various individuals and bodies that can do it, if and how those decisions can be overrulled and, especially in light of more recent events, some neutral discussion on areas where this law may have been inappropriately abused. However, I don't think such a section would really fit in with the overall purpose of the article.
I'd appreciate thoughts and comments from the other editors... ;-)
IMPORTANT
DEAR WIKIPEDIA
As a member of the Cambridge Union who cares very much about the society as a whole and following a series of repeated changes to your articles section on the role of the ‘President’ , in particular from the changes made from the society’s Secretary (user: nhartman) , I thought I should put the facts in place.
SECTION 22 – CHAPTER 23 OF THE UNION CONSTITUTION- SHOWS THE LIST OF INDIVIDUALS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNION SOCIETY IN ORDER OF PRECEDENCE!!
THE PRESIDENT IS RIGHT AT THE TOP OF THE LIST!! I.E. THE HIGHEST INDIVIDUAL AUTHORITY IN THE CAMBRIDGE UNION!!
The President has a lot of authority and is very entrusted with the whole society hence why;
‘The President shall be the Officer in whose name the Society shall sue or be sued under the provisions of the Literary and Scientific Institutions Act, 1854.’ – Chapter X! Sec 5.
And why the President is the ONLY person who has the power to impose fines (subject to an appeal to the committee of the whole house)
‘Sec. 2 The President shall have the power of imposing a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds on any member he shall deem guilty of any offence against the Society’
Also in addition to this there was a dispute over whether the President has the power of interpreting the constitution. The union constitution is very clear as it gives ONLY the President this clause:
‘in any dispute as to the meaning of the Laws of the Society, the ruling of the President shall be final, subject to an appeal to a Committee of the Whole’ – Sec 3 Chapter XI.
Also it is very misleading to NOT quote the fact that the secretary and vice-president is in fact an UNELECTED position that is appointed by standing committee. Please do not delete this important fact.
It is completely MISLEADING to keep the simple definition made by user ‘nhartman’ as to say that the Presidents role is:
‘The President is responsible for organising the programme of debates for their term in office, and serving as Chairman for those debates and meetings of the Standing Committee. Term in office is one academic term.’
- This is completely under-representing the importance of the role of President and does not portray an accurate picture of what all the hardworking Presidents, since the year 1815, have done for the society and who have spent countless hours working to better the Union for its members including former Presidents; Dr John Maynard Keynes, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, Douglas Hurd, Ken Clarke, Michael Howard and many other very respectable figures in society including QC Barristers and live saving Doctors.
Please do not allow any further changes to your article as this the definition we have now is an accurate one.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Beckhamaddress (talk • contribs).
- Well, I've been bold with the changes I made to the section on the Society's Leadership this evening. It saddens me that an edit war has developed over one paragraph but it seems that one user and his apparent sock-puppets (evidence would suggest this is the case) can't let it go.
- Frankly, I don't think it added much to the article to detail every Junior Officer; far better - and more useful to the reader - you might agree to just give an overview of the organisational structure.
- Hopefully, we'll now be able to settle on a wording that doesn't annoy people or, as some suggest, present an unfair portrayal of certain individuals. We're all adults here (and current or former Cambridge students!) We don't need to descend into a bitter dispute - let's just get on with running the Union and making Wikipedia a great source of knowledge!
- Thank you, and good-night MikeMorley 23:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I think user 'MikeMorley' 's re-write of this section that's recieving so much attention was well constructed and I would support it.
In regards to 'Beckhamaddress' 's, or whatever username they decide to invent today, un-called for tyrade above: I'm not too impressed that someone who won't publicliy identify themselves would bombard this forum and the article in such a display of unilateral dictatorial behavior that is wholy uncharacteristic of the qualities and principles of free speech and open debate that the Society seeks to foster and promote. I would second 'MikeMorley' 's comments that this behaviour in the article and illustrated above is really sad especially considering that it's such a minor part of the overall article itself and, to be honest, 99% of readers don't give a toss about that bit and are more interested in reading about history ect.
Surprise surprise shortly after 'MikeMorley' 's noble effort to address the issue, the article was quickly modfied again to talk about the President and their high and all mighty authority. The fact that someone out there goes through so much trouble to ensure that this is made loud and clear, yet refuses to engague in any civilized discussion or debate on the matter to proove that it's the truth, is so silly and ironic that I'm almost at a loss for words. However, as someone representing the Society with an interest in promoting open discussion and ensuring that the Society is accurately represented I will briefly address some of the raging, but unsupported, comments above.
Claim 1 Section 22- Chapter 23 of the Union Constitution - Shows the list of individuals of the Cambridge Union Society in order of precedence!! The President is right at the top of the list!! i.e. The highest individual authority in the Cambridge Union!! (I've removed the screaming all caps since that's just being annoying)
This is a very misleading statement and takes the quoted text out of context. Chapter 23 is discusses elections and has absolutely nothing to do with 'authority' or anything of the sort and 'Beckhamaddress' conviently only mentioned subsection (i) of that section. Subsections (ii) and (iii) also continue to discuss how other officerships and positions are filled if the space become vacant... there is no discussion of any sort about 'authority' The section that is quoted describes the order of precedence for filling the office of President if that office becomes vacant. That is completely different than a definition of authority over each other. Does the Secretary of the Treasury get to have authority over the Secretary of Defense (in the US) becuase they are higher up on the order of precedence for filling a vacancy in the presidency? No, of course not, that's just silly.
"If the Office of President becomes vacant, whether by resignation or otherwise, then the next available member in the Order of Precedence who so desires will take up the Office of President and be deemed to have resigned his lower Office or his seat on any elected Committee immediately prior to the announcement of the vacancy. The Order of Precedence is as follows: " (Ch. 23 Sec. 22 (i) )
Claim 2 And why the President is the ONLY person who has the power to impose fines (subject to an appeal to the committee of the whole house)
Again this is simply false and here is why. For one, the returning officers in an election (generally the President and Secretary) can jointly issue a fine.
Also Select Committees can also issue fines:
"The Select Committee may, if it is unanimously of the opinion that any member has wilfully given false evidence, or has wilfully withheld evidence knowing it to be relevant to the Committee’s investigation or has wilfully refused to submit evidence having previously been required by it so to do or brought a vexatious requisition, fine him a sum not exceeding £20.00." (Ch. 27 Sec. 8)
point made...
Claim 3 Also in addition to this there was a dispute over whether the President has the power of interpreting the constitution. The union constitution is very clear as it gives ONLY the President this clause:
Actually the constitution is very clear that the President is not the only person with this authority. A Select Committee has this authority and a Select Committee can investigate the President, if they do something in appropriate, and if there is a dispute over the laws between the President and the Selecte Committee, the select committee's interpretation overrules the President:
"For deciding whether any breach of any section of these Laws has occurred, the Select Committee acting by a four–fifths majority, shall be the sole interpreter of the Laws. The decision of the Select Committee on any question of fact is final. Any interpretation thus made shall be stated in full in the report of the Select Committee and shall be subject to an appeal to a Committee of the Whole House." (Ch. 27 Sec. 6)
Also the Chairman of a meeting, which may or may not be the President depending on what 'meeting' it is and who else the consitution specifies is the chairman (i.e. Chariman of Board of Trustess for Trustees, Secretary for Executive Department, Steward for Wine and Spirits, ect. ect.). The Chairman of that meeting controls order and is the 'sole interpreter of the Laws and Standing Orders.' Again, if the President was attending the meeting but not the specified Chariman, such as in some of the examples above, then in theory if the President and Chairman had a disagreement over the laws, the Chairman's interpretation would stand.
"The Chairman shall have unlimited authority on every question of order, subject to the Standing Orders of the Society, and for the purposes of that meeting shall be the sole interpreter of the Laws and Standing Orders. Any interpretation made under this section shall be subject to an appeal to a Committee of the Whole House." (Ch. 18 Sec. 1)
Statement
Also it is very misleading to NOT quote the fact that the secretary and vice-president is in fact an UNELECTED position that is appointed by standing committee. Please do not delete this important fact.
The very first part of the text (as it was at that time) very very forward about this and described how some positions are elected and some positions are appointed by the Standing Committee. This was clearly stated just a few sentences earlier and in the interests of quality succinct writing there is no point in repeating the same thing over again just 3-4 sentences later. This is clearly a 'touchy' issue with someone about people serving in office without being elected (in that case we may as well just get rid of the US supreme court, cabinet, ect ect). If one looks into this issue they would of course find that, especially in recent years, several Presidents of the Society were not elected (most recently the President for Easter Term). Only member came forward to volunteer for serving in that office and hence they were returned unopposed without members to vote for or against them. Does that make Presidents who were not chosen and elected by the membership any less important or worthy of doing the job? No of course not.
I could keep going with other bits from the above text, but by now I think I've made the point that the statements are not supported by the clear and documented facts.
Finally, lets look at the consitution of the Society and see what, if anything, it says about who has authority. The word 'authority' is only used once in the consitution and is used to describe the chairman of a meeting and is not specifically assigned to the President (as already quoted above). The consitution is very specific about using the word Chairman and not President to to signify the fact that the text that follows does not just apply to the President. The President, of course, is often the chairman of meetings (especially debates and standing committees) but other Chairmen are specified in various other parts of the constitution for other various types of meetings. It's also important to point out that the word 'authority' is used specifically in relation to 'questions of order' but says absolutly nothing about authority in the sense (as 'Beckhammadness' was writing in all caps) of who's in charge of who. That's of course because the Society' maintains a very parallel leadership structure to promote effective teamwork and avoid the toxic senerio where some power hungry student comes along and tries to take over and run the place like a dictatorship ;-).
Phew that was a lot of typing, but the Cambrige Union was founded on the basis that things work best when people come together and engage in civilized discussion based on the facts and checking hostile activities at the door. As a current officer of the Society, I hope people can see that as opposed to just writing (in all caps just to be annoying) "this is all rubish, rubish I tell you it's not true" I took the statements and referened them to the official text descriptions to show that they are without any doubt false.
If someone can directly quote a line in the consitution that says "The President is the highest individual authority in the Cambridge Union" then obviously I wouldn't object to the statement. If one can't back that up as such (because believe me it's not in there) then it is a matter of opinion and not a documented fact. Opinons are for blogs, not Wikipedia. And has been said before, who gives a toss anyway! Lets focus on making the article better by expanding the historical information, there is certainly lots more to write about!
That's all I have to say about that! ;-)
--Nhartman 03:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
- I think this is all getting a bit OTT.
- The President is not 'just another officer'. In terms of reputation, it's 'the big one' (as witness the Google analysis below). But he or she is also not 'God'. The point of being President is not that they have loads of authority (the £100 fine is very recent - it was some piddling amount before then - and I'd never heard of it being used) - but that they climbed to the top of the greasy pole - that they were elected by their peers to the top job - that they follow lots of eminent, and not so eminent, forebears - and that they organise and preside over the Union's debates - which are, primarily, what the Union is famous for.
- Bureaucratically, they also preside over the Standing Committee - which is the 'top' committee for running the Union - and they preside over Members' Business Meetings - where the members get to decide what goes on in the Union.
- It's completely reasonable to explain what 'the president of the Union' does, since it's a term that people will come across and that they might well want to look up. I got 23,800 Google hits for '"President of the Union" Cambridge'; 265 for '"Vice-President of the Union" Cambridge'; 740 for '"Secretary of the Union" Cambridge' and 150 for '"Treasurer of the Union" Cambridge'.
- As said, it's not about authority. After all, if a President has to rely on rules and regulations to get their way, rather than their powers of persuasion, what kind of President are they?
- I completely agree with user: Mpntod, I think this 'edit war' is getting ridiculous even for a debating society. User: Mpntod is completely right; The President is not 'just another junior officer' and ofcourse neither is he/she the be all and end all. So for the sake of argument and to END this edit war madness lets just come to agree on a defiition for the President and SVP.
- The new definition is:
- President - The President serves as the Chairman of Standing Committee meetings (The Union's governing body), Debates, and Members Business meetings. He/she is also responsible for organising a programme of debates and overseeing the planning of other events during their term in office. Term in office is one academic term plus one vacation (~14-23 weeks).
- Secretary and Vice President - The Secretary and Vice President (SVP) has the general control of the general business of the society, its premises and maintaining official records. The SVP is also Chairman of the Executive Department. Term in office is one calendar year (March-March).
- I hope that nhartman, the society's secretary and mike morley will both be mature enough to accept this new definition.
- I, of course, fully support Mpntod's remarks above, and suspect the text Gowerbre proposed is probably the closest we'll get to consensus (Subject to a couple of minor grammar fixes I've added/am adding.) I've re-included a section on the Trustees, as they're an important part of the legal make-up of the Union.
- For the record, I'd like to add that I do not feel my conduct in the matter has been anything other than mature, despite the remarks above (which spelt my name incorrectly) that could be construed as violating WP:NPA - as this talk page shows, I've always been willing to discuss changes to the page and have attempted to initiate discussion on a number of occasions with the progression of newly-registered editors who have, for the most part, refused to engage in discussion.
- We at the Union all have better things to do in organising the Lent Term 2007 programme of events, rather than a bitter edit war on Wikipedia. Assuming that the article now stabilises, I will - in mind that the talk page is now rather lengthy - archive the above discussions in the standard manner.
- MikeMorley 20:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
- Looks like some progress has been made ;-) I of course agree with the 'new' version since its essentially identital to the version I proposed a bit back before the most recent uprising of hostile activity. To further the above comments, given the amount of immature behaviour that we had to deal with, I think we handled the situation in a very mature manner. For the record, I would just again like to point out that I was very stratightforward with stating my current position, any conflict of interests, and made sure that when there were factual inaccuracies in the text I provided referenced documentation explaining why the text was a problem.
- Finally, I noticed in looking over everything that's been happening today that there was some addition/revert over adding the names of current officers. My own opinion, even though my name is on that list, is that it dosen't really add anything to the article as none of the specific names are, yet, notable enough to deserve a specific mention on Wikipedia (per the somewhat generally accepted 'standard' of do they warrant their own biography on Wikipedia). For such more minor details, that will change several times a year, a simple link to the Society's website is probably sufficient...
- --Nhartman 23:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the new version. I made one slight change but will not be making anymore if this version is unilaterally agreed on now. (Beckhamaddress 23:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC))