Greetings shuttlers! You should check your diaries and make sure you are free this coming Tuesday (the 1st of April), because it is time for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of 2014. This is an important date, or at least it ought to be, for every member of the EUBC. Whether you are a member with us for the competition, playing socially or indeed just here for the social aspect of it then this should still be of interest and importance, as this will define how the club will run for the coming year because we will all be voting for who will fill the various positions on the Club Committee until the next meeting.
The event will be held at Old College lecture theatre 175 and will start at approximately 7:30 pm, right after the Tuesday evening club session (so it will likely not really start until a bit past 7:30, in order to give people time to get there from St. Leonards). There will be some food provided (apparently) at the meeting and after it’s conclusion people will be going to Revs (and possibly out) for a celebration of another successful year of democracy in action.
I cannot stress enough that this is actually a rather important night for the club and as such we really hope that as many of you can make the time to come along as possible. Even if you can’t make it along to club or out to Revs afterwards. Even if, like me, you are still going to be bogged down in finishing your coursework, you should definitely make some attempt to come along.
I recall being a little unsure how the whole proceedings went in my first year at EUBC and so I am going to provide a brief overview of how you can expect the meeting to progress and I am going to explain about the various Committee positions. Hopefully it will encourage a decent turn out and participation. (N.B. some of the stuff I go through is probably pretty obvious, but I feel I should just in case)
Overview of Proceedings
There are sometimes a few other speeches and points of discussion in the AGM each year, but the reason we will all be there is for the voting for the committee. There are three, really straight-forward, steps which are carried out for each position in turn, after our current Glorious Leader has announced it.
First is the nominations. Now, traditionally, if you want to run for a position then you got someone else to nominate you for the position. This means that if there is anyone you think might be good at filling a certain role, but perhaps they are too shy to stand themselves up, then you can nominate them for it (of course they still have to be willing… duh). However, if you are certain that you want to run for a position then you should probably feel free to nominate yourself (I mean, sometimes tradition can just get in the way).
Once the nominations are over each candidate is required to make a speech, briefly explaining why they would be good at that particular role. This might cause some hesitation amongst some of you (I know it did with me last year) but remember, this is just the committee for EUBC and you won’t end up running the world. By all means take it seriously and put some thought into what you want to say, but remember at the end of the day you will be speaking to friends, so you don’t need to worry too much about it. Just stand up and say your piece and that’s it. GG.
The final stage should be the most obvious one: the voting. All the candidates will be asked to leave the room, to provide some anonymity to the voters, and voting takes place by a show of hands for each candidate in turn. Some positions won’t have much competition, but one expects at least two people to run for each position. The winner will be announced once the candidates return to the room, and that’s that.
Committee Council Positions
There are around a dozen positions which will need to be filled before we can finish the meeting. The responsibilities I list below is by no means comprehensive and some positions (with the President and Secretary being the most demanding) can actually expect to have a fair few things to do.
- President – essentially the actual face of the club. You will be expected to represent EUBC to the University (and EUSA and other clubs), organising various committee meetings, organising the committee itself. Basically the President is in charge and should “aim the leave the club in a better position than when he/she was elected”.
- Secretary – in charge of recording minutes for meetings, organising lists of paid (and non-paid) members, keeping tabs on the Facebook group and keeping it up-to-date, ordering shuttlecocks and keeping the Sports Union up-to-date.
- Treasurer – essentially in charge of all the money of the club. This includes, but is not limited to, membership fees, spondership, shuttle costs and team costs. Basically you’ll need a spreadsheet.
- Mens/Womens First Team Captains – in charge of organising matches and transportation for the first team as well as organising coaching and trainings. Due to the importance of the first team we vote their captains into their positions, whereas captains for the other teams will be sorted by other means.
- Social Secretaries – arguably the most important position on the committee. We always have two social secs and both of them are, obviously, in charge of all social gatherings and organising as much shteam-shteam-submarine as possible for the club. You will also be in charge of getting decent deals (i.e. the current Vodka Revs deal) and bookings for the club socials.
- Publicity/Alumni Officer – essentially you will just be responsible for keeping this website updated and looking good. Make as many relevant posts as possible (about matches, socials and the like) and you will be golden. You are also technically in charge of organising the Alumni newsletter and sports day (but these responsibilities tend to take a bit of a back-seat). Oh, plus, you get “control” of the Twitter account. Which is nice.
- Safety Officer – technically has to complete a risk assessment for the club for EUSA. In actuality, the position is more ceremonial than anything else and doesn’t carry any real responsibilities. As such you should make an effort to help out the other members as much as possible.
- Kit/Merchandise Officer – a fairly straight-forward role involving designing and sorting out orders of the new round of badminton kit. However, if Fiona’s efforts this year are anything to go by, it seems that Kukri will do their damndest to make this job a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
- General Member – again a position that doesn’t really have any “official” responsibilities. However, you could make yourself invaluable come the start of next semester by simply getting involved with as many of the new prospective members as possible. Getting to know them a little and providing another cheery, easily-recognisable face goes a long way to encouraging prospective members to actually stay with the club and get involved.
- Club Captain (T.B.C.) – You might be aware that last year EUBC had as few as one team in BUCS and outwith of that only had four mens teams and two ladies teams. Through the tireless efforts of our Glorious Leader and his peons (zug zug) we now have three full BUCS teams as well as an overall 6 mens and 4 ladies teams. While this has definitely been a massive win for the club, it has raised new issues, particularly with organisation. One possible answer which has been suggested is the creation of a Club Captain, in charge of all the teams as a whole (and not specifically just the first teams like the other captains). It should be noted that this position has NOT yet been created, and might actually not be at all, as there are still some issues to sort out. So it would be better to expect us to not ask for a vote for this position, but there is a chance we might ask… We just haven’t decided yet.
So that’s all the positions, some with a greater weight of responsibility and involving a greater time commitment than others.
Once again we really hope that as many people turn up to this as possible (honestly we’d love it if we saw a majority of the club here) and we really hope that we see some of our new faces nominated in for as many of the positions as possible.
Also, just as a passing reminder, those who don’t turn up are sacrificed to Imhotep…
