AGM 2019

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The 2019 AGM was, to quote the then Station Director, "a one-night evening of hell". Following the standard officer reports and financial report, this AGM was the first time the Constitution and the Policy had been updated since 2015. While amendments had been passed in the intervening years, none of them had actually found their way into the official versions of the documents on the Docs Wiki. This left a rather significant gulf between how YSTV was supposed to be run and how it was actually run.

This sorry state of affairs had not gone unnoticed by YSTV's membership. However, nothing had been done about it until The Dynamic Duo resolved to fix it. They came forth with a laundry list of proposals that would ensure these essential documents were up to date, for this year at least (and, indeed, at most).

In addition to the above, a number of other changes were proposed. These included minor changes to the officership, a meaningless change of syntax, and fundamentally overestimating YSTV's control over the House of Lords.

Constitutional amendments

Ordering and numbering of amendments has been slightly modified to make better sense.

# Proposer Proposed effect Voting Notes
👍 👎 🤷 Passed?
1. Sam Hance Added an officer position that is responsible for directing YSTV's internal historical preservation efforts. N/A While it was agreed upon that this should happen (vote of 27 to 0), it was also agreed upon that the correct place for this was the Policy. Sam was to decide on the official wording for the Policy and bring it forward at the next admin meeting. This led to the creation of Head of Archives.
2. Joseph Wharfe Made the (as of yet) appointed positions of Head of Sound and Deputy Head of Sound into consitutionally recognised officer positions. 9 12 3 No Everyone besides Joe agreed that this was absurd.
3. Joseph Wharfe Granted Andrew Battersby a life peerage with the role of Head of Sound. N/A Not considered since the roles were not made official. And no, Joe, YSTV does not have the power to grant peerages.
4. Joseph Wharfe Granted Joseph Wharfe a life peerage with the role of Deputy Head of Sound. N/A
5. The Dynamic Duo Updated the Constitution to recognise that YSTV is now a media group instead of a society. 28 0 0 Yes
6. The Dynamic Duo Replaced all gendered terms and pronouns with gender-neutral ones 28 0 0 Yes
7. The Dynamic Duo Specified the actual requirements for membership of the media group. 20 0 4 Yes It was agreed that the amendment should match what the YUSU media charter's requirements for membership
8. The Dynamic Duo Removed mentions of specific events from the aims and objectives of the media group. 22 0 2 Yes One of the mentioned events, Woodstock, was no longer a thing.
9. The Dynamic Duo Added GDPR adherence to the media group's code of practice. 22 0 2 Yes
10. The Dynamic Duo Fixed the wording of section 4.12 (prohibiting peer pressure) to apply to media group members rather than YUSU members as a whole. 23 0 1 Yes Fun fact: YSTV can't reasonably be held responsible for the actions of YUSU's wider membership.
11. The Dynamic Duo Added the Deputy Station Director to the list of signatories. 20 3 0 Yes The previous AGM had added both the DSD and Production Director to the list of signatories. However, it was decided that the latter did not need this responsibility.
12. The Dynamic Duo Corrected "one of which" to "one of whom" in section 8.3 (requiring two signatories for an expense claim) 24 0 0 Yes Extremely important
13. The Dynamic Duo Required all on committee to be current students at the University of York and meet the earlier established membership requirements N/A Not considered because it conflicted with YUSU's rules on the matterUnverified or incomplete information.
14. The Dynamic Duo Actually gave the Policy the authority to establish additional officers. 24 0 0 Yes Yeah, we too were surprised to find out that non-committee officers had been unconstitutional all this time.
15. The Dynamic Duo Specified Single Transferable Vote as the voting system in elections. 23 1 0 Yes
16. The Dynamic Duo Allowed annual committee elections to be held as separate event to the AGM. 24 0 0 Yes Like many of these amendments, this had been happening for years. It happens this way because otherwise the AGM would literally take all day.
17. The Dynamic Duo Allowed by-elections to happen in weekly admin meetings 24 0 0 Yes Previously, the constitution required than an EGM be held for by-elections
18. The Dynamic Duo Required the committee to officially and automatically step down at the beginning of the annual elections meeting 24 0 0 Yes
19. The Dynamic Duo Clarified that members may hold an officer position as a pair. 23 0 1 Yes Previously joint holding was done but was undefined and unregulated. This amendment originally listed specific roles that could be jointly held. After much debate, it was voted to allow this to apply to all officer positions in a vote of 23 to 1.
20. The Dynamic Duo Required that both joint office holders step down in the event of one of them stepping down. 20 2 2 Yes
21. The Dynamic Duo Specified that, for the purposes of (rare) committee-only votes, joint office holders would have a single vote between them. 23 0 1 Yes This does not affect normal votes, wherein all members get a single vote.
22. The Dynamic Duo Regulated the resolution of irreconcilable disagreements between joint office holders. 21 0 3 Yes The answer is a committee-only vote.
23. The Dynamic Duo Clarified responsibilities of joint officer holders towards deputies. 8 4 9 Yes
24. The Dynamic Duo Clarified accountability of joint officer holders and their responsibilities towards each other. 20 0 4 Yes
25. The Dynamic Duo Set out how intervention should occur in the case of dysfunction between joint office holders. 24 0 0 Yes
26. The Dynamic Duo Made the President (Station Director) responsible for keeping the station alive. 24 0 0 Yes This was in response to the York Vision "Send Nudes" scandal of 2018 that almost destroyed the newspaper.Unverified or incomplete information
27. The Dynamic Duo Set out rules about who should attend media committee. N/A Not considered because it conflicted with YUSU's rules on the matter.
28. The Dynamic Duo Moved responsibility for venue and room booking from the Secretary to the President. 4 8 11 No
29. The Dynamic Duo Made the Secretary responsible for managing official requests on social media. 18 1 4 Yes
30. The Dynamic Duo Made the Secretary responsible for organising the AGM in tandem with the President. 21 1 2 Yes
31. The Dynamic Duo Removed responsibility of organising sponsorship for the media group from the Treasurer. 21 0 3 Yes
32. The Dynamic Duo Made the Treasurer responsible for simply overseeing the budgets for events and productions rather than actually creating them. 23 0 1 Yes
33. The Dynamic Duo Moved responsibility for health & safety from the President to the Deputy Station Director. 23 0 1 Yes
34. The Dynamic Duo Added external clients to the list of whom the President is responsible for dealing with (in association with the Commercial Director) 21 0 3 Yes
35. The Dynamic Duo Made the Deputy Station Director responsible for overseeing the general welfare and wellbeing of the media group's membership. 24 0 0 Yes
36. The Dynamic Duo Renamed Deputy Station Director to Station Manager. 21 2 1 Yes Originally the suggested renaming was to Studio Manager. Many people were in favour of this simply to confuse the hell out of all the other members of NaSTA (for whom Station Manager = Station Director).
37. The Dynamic Duo Made Station Manager a bit more responsible for coordinating usage of YSTV's resources. 24 0 0 Yes
38. The Dynamic Duo Moved responsibility for signing out cameras from Station Manager to Technical Director. 22 0 2 Yes
39. The Dynamic Duo Updated wording of Station Manager's responsibility to oversee studio access rights to reflect how things actually work. 24 0 0 Yes
40. The Dynamic Duo Made Production Meetings an official thing and made Production Director responsible for chairing them. 23 0 1 Yes
41. The Dynamic Duo Gave Production Director responsibilty to appoint producers for commercial productions. 23 0 1 Yes
42. The Dynamic Duo Made Production Director responsible for making sure people know what productions might happen in the future. 22 0 2 Yes
43. The Dynamic Duo Changed the Commercial Director's responsibility with regards to the media group's social media accounts from running them to simply overseeing their running. 23 0 1 Yes
44. The Dynamic Duo Made the Commercial Director the first point of contact for external clients. 23 0 1 Yes
45. The Dynamic Duo Made the Commercial Director responsible for organising sponsorship for the media group. 25 0 0 Yes
46. The Dynamic Duo Made the Technical Director responsible for managing the equipment booking system. 25 0 0 Yes
47. The Dynamic Duo Created a requirement that the Technical Director gets sleep at least twice every week. 25 0 0 Yes Knowing him, Tom Lee was probably in violation of this for both weeks between this AGM and the following elections.
48. The Dynamic Duo Created an actual process for votes of no confidence. 25 0 0 Yes Before this the constituion was just kind like, "you can VoNC if you wanna" with no actual process for it.
49. The Dynamic Duo Removed the ability of any media group member to unilaterally call an EGM. 23 0 2 Yes Yeah, they could constitutionally do that up to this point. Crazy, I know.
50. The Dynamic Duo Added annual officer reports to the official AGM process. 25 0 0 Yes
51. The Dynamic Duo Amended how the Constitution could be amended. N/A No Rejected because no one could understand what the amendment actually meant.Unverified or incomplete information
52. The Dynamic Duo Required the Secretary to actually update the Constitution after amendments. 23 0 2 Yes Y'know, to stop this needing to happen again any time soon.
53. Adam Birtles Deindented the entirety of section 11.4. 25 0 0 Yes Look. I know it was pedantic and everyone was tired but that section was rediculous before.
54. Adam Birtles Renamed Computing Officer to Computing Director. 24 0 1 Yes Rationale: all the other heads of teams were "<team> Director"

Policy Amendments

Because people weren't really aware that there was a difference, some changes to the policy were also passed during the hell that was constitutional amendments.

Edwin Barnes prompted a review of the roles of Head of Scripted and Head of Factual. It was agreed that they'd be kept and jointly replace the Assistant Production Director (vote of 26 to 0, 2 abstaining). Edwin also proposed abolishing the role OB and Events Coordinator (passed, 25 to 0, 3 abstaining) and removing the requirement to follow OFCOM rules (passed, 20 to 8, no abstentions).

Adam Birtles suggested abolising the role of Webmaster (passed, 24 to 0, 1 abstaining). He also brought up that neither the Constitution nor the Policy say anything about officers who take a sandwich year or leave of absence but by this point everyone was exhausted, no one had a clear idea what should happen, and no one (not even Adam) really cared enough for it to matter at that moment.

A bunch more policy amendments (like changing it to be gender-neutral) happened at the following week's Admin Meeting.