Composition
Following a student consultation process and plebiscite a new constitution was established in 2012. Democracy is supported through three open student councils, namely the Academic, Welfare, and External Affairs Councils. These are overseen by the Campaigns and Accountability Forum. Alongside these are a series of open, autonomous action groups including the liberation groups (Black Minority and Ethnic, Disability and Mental Health, LGBT, and Women’s) and the International, Mature and Postgraduate Action Groups. Decisions about the running of union buildings and services are made by the elected Trading Committee, with direct input from four student stakeholder groups (Bars, Catering, Entertainment and Retail). Elected representatives also sit on all major University bodies and subcommittees. Complimenting these structures are autonomous school councils and a class representation system providing local, democratic spaces for organising. This organisational structure was designed to help foster a system of participatory democracy throughout the University.
Ultimate responsibility for the organisation's finances, legal well-being, employment of the chief executive and strategic oversight is held by an elected student board of trustees. The organisation's senior management team directly reports to and are held accountable by this body.
EUSA is a democratic membership organisation, a charitable body and a company limited by guarantee. EUSA also has complete ownership and control over a subsidiary company, EUSACO, incorporating any activity which is outside of EUSA's charitable remit, such as Edinburgh Festival and external catering activities.
Read more about this topic: Edinburgh University Students' Association
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing ... I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)