Legitimacy of the AGM

The point raised was that the AGM had been poorly publicised and that expected attendance was low. Several possible solutions were proposed.

• The first was to delay the AGM by two weeks. This was decided against due to the imminent departure of Arts Faculty students from Edinburgh during the next two weeks, which would mean that not all the members of GEAS would be able to attend a later AGM.
• The second solution was to use this AGM as a quick meeting for a few vital topic, and to hold the proper AGM during first term of next year.
• It was suggested several times that this AGM should become an SGM or EGM (depending on whom was making the suggestion), but was pointed out that this itself would contradict EUSA regulations due to the fact that for any given academic year a society must have one AGM, so this must be it for this year.

The AGM begun at 6pm, after a count of heads suggested that enough members were present for the meeting to be legitimate.

Committee Note: Constitution needs modifying, we need an up-to-date version.

Advise of the committee

The general advise given by the committee concerning this AGM was as follows;

• To agree that the AGM shall be confined to urgent business only
• To decide to go through this AGM with greatest speed and least formality
• To remove recriminations as to the events of the past year

Topics raised & voted on

A number of topics were raised during the last committee meeting of which the committee decided to raise during the AGM. During the AGM all the following topics were voted in, with the vast majority of the present members voting in favour;

• To agree that another AGM shall be held some time during Week 5 of Term 1 next year, and that an EGM should be held during Term 3 of next year in order to elect the next Convention Organiser.
• All members voted in favour of this motion.
• To agree that as much of the current committee shall remain standing as they are until then, and they shall be responsible for Freshers' Week events.
• All committee members (except the Convention Organiser) were re-elected by the members' vote.
• To elect a new Convention Organiser for this coming year;
• John Wilson was elected as Convention Organiser, with a majority vote and no standing opposition.
• To combine the Librarian & Room Booker positions into one, effective immediately.
• All members voted in favour of this motion.

During the committee meeting it was also raised that the web-page was severely in need of maintenance, and had not been properly maintained for the past two years. During the committee meeting it was decided that the committee would advise the position of Chronicler should be re-instated as an elected committee position. It was decided during the AGM that the topic of the Chronicler would be left until the next AGM, when all relevant parties would be able to attend.

Open discussion (& voting)

Once the topics had been discussed it was opened up to the members as to what to discuss during the remainder of the AGM.

• It was raised that the position of Social Secretary was defunct since the Social Secretary this year did not do anything.
• Opposition raised the point that the solution was not to remove the position but to get the person to do the job.
• A vote was held to keep the position of Social Secretary as a committee position. All members voted in favour of this decision.
• The concept of an actively used notice-board was raised, particularly in respect to keeping a board at Black Lion Games (Note that the society is not officially affiliated with this shop).
• A vote was held to decide if this is a good idea or not. It was implied, and assumed, that the responsibility for the notice-board would primarily be the Social Secretary's. A majority of present members voted in favour of this decision.
• It was also pointed out that the web notice-board was not being used, and that a e-mail list would really be quite handy.
• It was suggested that both these topics were directly relevant to Chronicler, and yet despite this an attempt was made to keep the web notice-board active but was a failure due to the extreme lack of attention given to the material displayed.
• It was suggested that role-playing members had claimed that card-games were banned.
• The committee endorses no ban on card-games, it simply recognises that there is a card-gaming society and that this society is primarily a role-playing society. As such any card-game that causes sufficient nuisance to present role-playing games should be held somewhere else.
• No committee member would admit that any member of the society had ever made any complaint to them about such abuse. No complaint was made to the Secretary, and as such no member can claim that they pursued any complaint (if they approached another committee member and that committee member did not give them help then they should have approached the Secretary since it is the Secretary's job to do such things).
• Finally it was pointed out that alcohol had been massively consumed by the members at the Freshers' Stand.
• Any member of the committee who had consumed alcohol during the Freshers' Fair apologises for this action, by the advise of his fellow committee members.

Freshers' Week

The second topic of conversation during the committee meeting was the Freshers' Week events.

It was decided that most of the Freshers' Week organisation could be done during the holidays. It was however pointed out that there is a dead-line for information submitted for the guide for Freshers' Week, and that dead-line is soon.

Therefore it was agreed that an open committee meeting shall be held at 10pm on Wednesday 17th May at Pleasance. This committee meeting was publicised to members present at the AGM and a good attendance of members were present.

Various points were raised as to publicity for the events, primarily that it should be big, concise, and clear as to the point of the society. Adam House / the Registry should be targeted for advance posters in order to attract the attention of students matriculating.