MESSAGES FROM PAST CONFERENCES:
This year, I was fortunate enough to travel to the OU’s home campus in Milton Keynes, UK, to participate in the Annual General Meeting of the Open University Students’ Association, proudly called OUSA CONFERENCE 2004.
For those of you who don’t know, OUSA Conference is held annually in April and is where the results of the voting for positions on the Executive Committee are announced, where all delegates can vote for people standing for the posts of vice presidents on standing committees by ballot, and where policy motions brought forward are voted on in open debate. The outgoing President of OUSA also announces special awards to outstanding contributors to OUSA, in the form of lifetime membership. Finally, speakers from different OU offices and sometimes outside the OU are invited to speak candidly to students. The speakers for Conference 2004 included Professor Allan Cochrane, Pro Vice Chancellor (Students) and newly appointed Will Swann, Director of Students who both had some insightful information and provided a good breather from the seriousness of the open policy debate!
I travelled to the UK on Thursday with the Executive Committee Member for Southern Europe, Sara J.L. Hatcher, also OUSA Northern Italy’s Branch Chair. Sara and her counterpart in Northern Europe, Tina Ruttkowski, ECM Northern Europe, arranged for all European delegates and observers to participate in a pre-conference training session to acquaint us with the workings of OUSA, including things like how to introduce OUSA and how OUSA is structured in Milton Keynes. It was a very informative meeting and hopefully this will become a tradition. OUSA Conference also introduced something similar for all conference participants called ‘Rough Guide to Conference’ where students were invited to take a place at the podium and outgoing VP-Education Brian Gilmour explained the intricacies of conference: how motions are presented - how they are opposed, how the delegates in the audience vote - and explained details such as the “point of information” where delegates and observers can raise important facts pertaining to the motion at hand and “procedural motions” which are often raised after lengthy debate and generally are used to ask conference to agree to put the motion to a vote without further discussion. Jane Harvey, from the Southern Europe Regional Forum raised one such motion, and I raised one point of information and will forever be known at Conference 2004 as the woman who brought up the grammatical error – can you imagine University’s was written Universities in a policy!
All students were lodged in the Accenture conference centre across from OU campus and meals and entertainment were aplenty. Saturday night was especially fun as we were able to relax a bit after a hard day of voting on policy and this ‘relaxation’ was evident on Sunday when things proceeded a bit slower!
Conference 2004 was a great experience and if I am an OU student next year I would definitely put my name forward to participate again. It showed me who the other students were, gave me ideas of policies which I thought should be adopted by OUSA, and in particular made me even more aware of how important it is for us in Continental Europe to send our voice to conference so that our needs are heard, rather than only those of students in the UK. I urge you to take the opportunity next year to be Northern Italy’s delegate! Besides it’s paid by OUSA!
Good luck with the rest of your studies.
Best regards,
Michelle W.
Eriksson
Webmaster &
Delegate for Northern Italy
After agreeing to go to Conference on behalf of our Northern Italy Branch, I must admit that I did have second thoughts. What had I let myself in for? Would the accommodation be as bad as everyone had said? The stories that other people had told about the places they had stayed at were more than enough to make you want to stay at home and not even think of going! But I was very pleasantly surprised when I got to Eastbourne.
The journey went very smoothly and I arrived at the hotel to find the Greek lady, who I had been in contact with, waiting for me. So, off we went together to check in to the Conference. Both of us were new and had no idea what we were going to find, but OUSA had everything well organised. Jane Harvey from Barcelona introduced us to the European Brits involved with OUSA Conference and made sure we immediately felt at home.
It took a while to understand the system of reading out the motions and voting, but after 2 or 3 motions it seemed like a piece of cake. The time flew by, not only during the day, but also in the evenings!! The European Brits are like one big family, so we had a super time. It is very important for OU students outside the UK to stick together, as our needs are completely different to those of students living in the U.K. OUSA Conference is one way which allows us to make sure that our needs are heard and taken into account.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Conference and met a lot of very nice people, most of who I am still in regular contact with. I hope that whoever is elected to represent our branch next year also finds it such a pleasant experience.
Sara Hatcher
Chair and ECM for Southern Europe
OUSA NI Founding Member's 2002 message
Dear All
Here's hoping you are all well and looking forward to the Christmas holidays and the prospect of having more time. For those of you in undergraduate courses, you should be about to start your studies all over again shortly, and I hope you won't be too overworked to enjoy them. For the others with studies over Christmas, good luck!
Last year, I attended the 136th executive committee meeting on behalf of OUSA NI and I am reporting on it as decided during our S. Europe meeting at Conference.
Various reports were received and appointments of student Representatives were approved. An interesting report from our point of view was that of Vice President of Student Support Niki Whitburn as she mentions that we "have initiated a pilot scheme to enable us to use reps from CWE." There was some disappointment last year about the difficulties for us to do Residential school repping. I am very pleased to tell you that we have Alan Blundell from the new Gibraltar branch as our rep. on the Awards board committee, congratulations Alan.
As of last year, the report on the state of branches shows that there were branches with their complete quota of officers in Barcelona, Greece, Northern Italy, Southern Spain and Gibraltar, and Swiss Germany. France was only partially manned or "womanned" as was the case, and I was busy trying to get something done in Madrid and Switzerland. Italy too should come up with another branch and I haven't lost hope for Portugal. When you consider how far apart we all live and the almost insuperable travel difficulties we have, I think all OU's branches deserve a pat on the back. It's not easy, especially when student response is poor, but it's still worth trying. I should like to invite you to take a look at some OUSA websites as well as contribute to the S. Europe conference on First Class. If you haven't got it on your desktop ask the OUSA Controller (in MK) to put it on.
We also received the decisions made at Conference incorporating the minutes and an indication of how the passed motions are to be progressed. This is very interesting because in years gone by one had the impression that the motions just disappeared into a black hole, so it is great to see them being divided between the various Vice Presidents according to competence and to their various standing and sub committees to which all E.C. members belong.
Future venues for conference were discussed. For people in CWE who have to travel long distances anyway the arguments about it being central and stable, or itinerant didn't mean much. My thought was that if the management are going to do something with the feedback they get, it seems sensible to keep the same venue for more than one year!
The OUSA president Ann Gall reported on the work of the election board for the new Vice Chancellor, as you might know she represents OUSA on this board.
Before I move on to more general items I'd like to tell you about some of the work which came up in standing committees
and which might be of interest. One really interesting piece of news given
by V.P. Representation is that every student will have to be on-line by
2003-4. In Education Standing committee we learned that the OU bid to offer
Medicine (the preliminary 3 years) failed. There was debate about the
changes effected to course requirements; although the OU must abide by
external advisor suggestions to make their degrees academically valid, we
all feel that they must do everything possible to make the eventual changes
as hassle-free to the students as possible. For OUSA Committee member, may I ask you to help the office
keep its data base up to date by letting Alison Ryan know of any changes in
your officer status. Please also get your accounts in on time. All branches
will have a branch conference and websites by the end of the year. This
should help iron out a lot of communication problems for far flung people,
so please use them when you get them! Can I also ask that you divulge either
at your meetings or by Newsletter or website the contents of this letter. It
should he of interest to all your members. By all means shorten it of
course!
Ann Castoldi
Past
Executive Committee Member of Southern Europe
Message from David Ward on OUSA Conference (2001)
From Complaints to Motions, complaining and moaning about the OU is probably one of the easiest activities you will have during your academic life. Everyone has had at least one opportunity to do so and some have made it a regular habit, if not a crusade. But over the years, believe me, I have seen an incredible amount of dedication and professionalism and in my opinion the OU continues to offer a very high teaching standard and we should certainly be proud to be part of this unique university. What all students need to do is aim at improving it and making sure that the highest possible standard is reached and maintained.
OUSA, has exactly this goal and represents you, the student, at University level. But to do it properly, effectively and efficiently implies providing motions at Conference. Last year over 130 motions were debated at conference and these motions were all provided by students.
I therefore ask you to come forward not just with a complaint but to provide a motion, that we can fight to become an action/solution, help us and the OU implement it and, ultimately ensure it works. But the first step is to transform your concerns into motions. So don't just stand there and complain, get in touch with your local OUSA branch now.
David Ward
Past-Chair for OUSA Northern Italy