On 28th June, Student Council unanimously passed the Democracy Review 2016, which will now be implemented over the summer ready for the start of the next academic year. You can read the full Democracy Review 2016 HERE.

In summary, this means that Student Council has taken bold steps within the SU to:

- Empower SU Liberation & Diversity Officers by enabling them to create working groups for important campaigns and events which connect them to relevant Clubs and Societies.

- Create Liberation and Diversity Communities within the SU website as a platform, resource and signpost for everything relevant to those communities, in turn connecting them to their relevant Officers and Societies.

- Strengthen Academic Representation structures which bridge the gap between SSLCs and SU Faculty Reps through the creation of SU Faculty Committees.

- Create 2 new Social Sciences Faculty Reps (1 UG & 1 PG), primarily to represent WBS Students and therefore tackle the structural under-representation in the Social Sciences Faculty and ensure there is a means to hold an increasingly independent Department is properly held to account.

- Mandate all Part-Time Officers (Liberation, Diversity, Faculty Reps and your Environment & Ethics Officer) to email their students with updates directly at least once a term.

- Create an SU 'Development Exec', meaning you'll have a say in SU outlets, events, finances, marketing and our website!

- Effective renaming of All Student Meetings to 'SU Referendum'

- Finally tying together the two pillars of Democracy: the Policy process and Elected Representatives, by creating SU Zones which the SU Execs will be responsible for. This means more action on the motions and Policies you propose and pass, instead of them sitting on long, lifeless Policy Lists.

- Introducing a 5% quorum for Policy motions to SU Referendum (with the exception of motions within the Liberation and Diversity Zone, which will be a 2% quorum) to ensure SU Policy is more legitimate.

- Abolishing Student Assembly and empowering our independently-minded SU Execs to hold the Policy process and SU Officers to account in a whole new way.

This is a bold and dynamic strategy to empower communities and ensure quality and fairness are at the heart of our SU Democracy. We have had some absolutely brilliant successes in SU Democracy this year with record-breaking turnouts throughout the year, but that is no reason to be complacent - our Democracy structures can, and now will, improve!

It has been weeks in the making, from surveying all elected representatives to holding well-attended consultation sessions that overran by hours, and talking to so many different members of our communities.

We want to thank everyone who has contributed to this along the way - well over 100 students - and hope this process and outcome will give every student at Warwick renewed faith that theirs is a dynamic SU working in their interests like never before!

Olly Rice
SU Democracy & Development Officer