Societies Assembly

Wednesday 22nd April

Please Sign in at the Desk to receive your voting card

Agenda

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Accepting the Agenda

3 Notification of A.o.B

4 Approving Minutes of Previous Meeting

5 Updates Handover End of Year Society Party By-Elections Training Day Freshers’ Week Society Events

6 Ratification of Society Affiliations Creative Writing Society Mental Health Society

7 VP Activity Report & Questions

8 Any Other Business

9 Date and Time of Next Meeting

Apologies

We have received apologies from the following societies:

• Bhangra

• City Christian Union

• Gamer

• Psychology

Accepting the Agenda

Notification ofAny Other Business

Approving Minutes of Previous Meeting

Updates

Handover

Newly elected committee members will be emailed a handover pack. This includes data protection forms and a committee details form.

We will also pass these forms on to you. Please forward them on where appropriate!

The deadline for receiving these forms is Friday 8th May.

Lizzy will be available all day on Friday 1st May and Tuesday 5th May for all committee members to come and discuss handover packs/handover tips in general.

Handover Continued…

What We Need From You….

• Pass on your wisdom! Tell your successors what is expected of them and how to organise meetings/book rooms. Talk about your experience and what you would change.

• Share budgets and documents! If you’ve worked on big events this year, share any budgets or relevant documents with them as early as possible.

• Invite them to committee meetings! If you have an upcoming committee meeting, invite them along so they can become familiar with the process.

• Invite them here! We are looking to add an additional assembly into the mix, please invite all new committee along to this assembly

• Anything else that you’d find useful

End of Year Society Party

As mentioned in the previous Assembly, we will be holding an End of Year Society Party at the end of term (2nd June).

Please let us know if your society would be interested in taking part. An online timetable (doodle) was emailed out last week; please fill this in ASAP! Once we know how many of you are interested, the societies coordinator will begin working on risk assessments to ensure that they can go ahead!

This could be something you work on with next year’s committee members.

By-Elections

We will be holding a By-Election in the next couple of weeks so please let your members know!

Nominations will open on Monday 11th May.

The Societies Coordinator will email every society with a list of available committee positions and their role descriptions by Wednesday 29th April. If you believe that this information is incorrect, you will need to let us know by Wednesday 6th May.

Please note that every society needs a President, Treasurer and Secretary. Should a society not fill these key positions, the society may be put up for suspension and may not get a space at Freshers’ Fair.

Society Training Day

Society Training will take place on Monday 8th June.

This will be an entire day of training for next year’s committee’s, including sessions on Health & Safety, Finance, Governance and Team Building.

All committee members are invited but the President and Treasurer MUST attend the sessions.

Newly elected students will be informed over email but please pass the message on!

Freshers’ Week

NTU Welcome Talks

Societies have been invited to take part in the NTU Welcome Talk for First Year Students.

Would your society like to be involved? There will be an opportunity to do a short performance/demo of your chosen activity, which will be a great way of promoting your society before the Freshers’ Fair.

This will also be communicated to your new committee

Please let the Societies Coordinator know if you would be interested!

Welcome Week Guide

Each society is encouraged to put on events during Freshers’ Week as part of the Welcome Week programme for students.

These events are included in the Freshers' guide given to all students as well as online.

We encourage you to talk to next year’s committee members to plan society events for Welcome Week. These events must be registered through the online Trip/Event Form by the end of May to ensure that they are included in the Welcome Week guide.

Society Events

Do you have anything to shout about?

Ratification

Assembly is asked to ratify the decision made by the Societies House Executive to allow the affiliation of Creative Writing Society and the Mental Health Society

By ratifying the decision, the societies will be able to begin thier activity.

If you do not wish to ratify the decision, you must be able to prove that the proposed society does not meet one of the 6 principles (Explained on the next slide)

If not ratified, the application will be referred to the Students’ Union Executive, who will meet to make a final decision on the application.

Please note: Each society gets 2 votes. These ratification cards must be collected AFTER the vote.

6 Core Principles

• Be best supported through the societies department rather than the sports department

• Have clear aims and objectives that do not directly duplicate another Society or Union department.

 • Must be a feasible and sustainable venture

• Does not encourage behaviour likely to be deemed as misconduct as defined in the NTSU Members’ Code of Conduct.

 • Will operate under the Union’s Equal Opportunity policy.

 • Does not contravene any ‘No Platform Policy’

Ratification of Society Affiliations

The Societies House Executive reviewed an application for the Creative Writing Society

The Society Aims Were:

To publish the prose, drama and poetry of students at Nottingham Trent University

To network with and raise awareness of spoken word nights around Nottingham

To provide focus groups where students can provide each other with appropriate feedback

To encourage new writers

The Objectives Included:

To host a monthly open mic night.

To publish a monthly magazine showcasing the work of students.

To publish one anthology of poetry one of prose and one of drama each year.

To meet at least once a week to discuss our work with our peers.

The Societies House Executive believed that the Aims and Objectives of the society were unique and did not violate the 6 principles in the Code Of Practice.

The Societies House Executive reviewed an application for the Creative Writing Society

The Societies House Executive reviewed an application for the Mental Health Society

The Aims Included:

• To be a “safe space” for students to talk about their feelings, problems and concerns to other students with similar emotions and experiences and feel supported.

• To be an inclusive society where anybody is welcome.

• To have fortnightly informal, none obligatory meet-ups and more formal committee meetings.

The Societies House Executive reviewed an application for the Mental Health Society

The Objectives Included:

• Have an inclusive forum for anything health related, for students to discuss concerns and feelings.

• Hold regular informal, non-obligatory meet-ups to encourage people to come out, meet new people and feel included and supported, taking into account drinking bans due to medication – no ocean Wednesdays.

• Raise money for local health & mental health charities. Raise awareness to students about mental health and wellbeing.

• Work in partnership with NTU to make students aware of the services in place to support mental health and well-being.

Ratification

Assembly is asked to ratify the decision made by the Societies House Executive to allow the affiliation of Creative Writing Society.

By ratifying the decision, the society will be able to begin its activity.

If you do not wish to ratify the decision, you must be able to prove that the proposed society does not meet one of the 6 principles (Explained on the next slide)

If not ratified, the application will be referred to the Students’ Union Executive, who will meet to make a final decision on the application.

Please note: Each society gets 2 votes. These ratification cards must be collected AFTER the vote.

Please pass your ratification cards down to the end of the row so they can be collected!

VP Activities Report Questions

Societies:

Worked with Societies Coordinator to arrange the handover packs available online and to be emailed out to all society committee members.Holding 2 days of ‘Handover Question Time’ in which Society committee members will be able to come and discuss their handover with me, ask any questions and receive additional help with the process.

Have been working with Societies Coordinator, Student Activities Manager and Head of Membership to produce the new Policy Papers that will govern societies, these are as per the new Code of Practice and will be brought to Societies Assembly to vote on in the last assembly of term.

Continuing to work with societies on events, Drama, LEX, Pub Sports and Funky Fresh have all either had successful events/have events coming up so both a well done and a good luck to all of you.

RAG:

The committee have lots of smaller but just as fun events coming up this term – Rebel Bingo is still on the cards, as is a sweet shop, cake sale and a potential Eurovision Party

Chosen charity of the year – We will be looking for the next charity of the year at the end of May once the committee is in place. If there are any charities that you have in mind, please email them and let them know about the application process, the application will be online/be able to be sent out to charities to fill out.

Any committees who have raised money for charities, please let us know, we would love to be able to shout about all the amazing work you all do

VP Activities Report Questions

Any Other Business

Date & Time of Next Meeting

The date and time of the next meeting is t.b.c.

We will let you know as soon as we have a date and venue sorted.