Tuesday 27 April 2010

Discussion Yesterday: Council should apologise

The full report of the Discussion yesterday afternoon will, of course, appear in the Reporter next week. As was entirely predicable ordure was poured over the majority of Council for their conduct of this matter in many powerful speeches. In particular Council's decision to produce the Report under discussion was savaged. The Council failed to send a member to defend the Report although several of the dissenting members of Council spoke powerfully with some apologising to the Regent House for the failure to seek a Grace and the many other procedural deficiencies. The unrelenting criticism of Council was broken only by the student representatives who, failing to appreciate that this dispute is not about access for the disabled, asked for the lift to be allowed to stand so that the disabled would have access. (There will in any event be access for the disabled; see earlier posts.)

What will happen now? Council will have to consider what to do. It must either put the 50 member Grace or it must put a Grace seeking an approve its wretched Report. On yesterday's showing when not a single member of the Regent House defended its Report, it would be a brave or foolhardy Council that sought approval of its wretched Report. So it may be that Council will do what it should have done months ago: put the 50 member Grace but this will involve Council recognising that it has been wrong all along and eating a lot of humble pie. It is now in a corner with no easy way out. But its troubles are of its own making and it deserves little sympathy.

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