Conference Restructure
President’s Report
The President’s speech at the start of conference will instead be presented in the form of a report to conference, including activities in the past year, plans for the rest of their year, and a brief financial report. Conference delegates will then be able to ask questions to the President, CEO, Head of Programming and Head of Campaigns. This will last for twenty minutes in total and will be chaired by a member of National Council.
Affiliations
Based on policy UJ35 passed at Conference 2022-23, conference must now vote on affiliations. UJS is affiliated to NUS, EUJS, WUJS, BoD, and JLC. The President will speak for two minutes and outline UJS’ activities in these five organisations since the previous conference, advocating for continued affiliations to these organisations.
Procedural motions G (guillotine extended), and J (order of motions be changed) may not be raised during the affiliations vote.
At any point throughout this speech, a procedural motion (K) may be submitted, directing that the motion be taken to negative parts. If this procedural motion reaches the threshold to be debated, then the submitter will speak in favour of it, and a delegate will be invited to speak against it. If this procedural motion is passed, a speaker will speak in favour of the affiliation to the organisation in question being ended, and the President will speak against the affiliation being ended.
At the end of debate (just after the President’s speech, assuming there have been no procedural motions), the motion will be put that “UJS’ affiliation to the following organisations should continue”, requiring a simple majority to pass.
If this motion fails, then votes will be taken on each affiliation individually.
Basketing
The former system of 3 baskets will be removed and replaced by 6 baskets. These separate UJS’ work more logically and intuitively. The baskets will be as follows:
- The World of Work (alumni engagement, apprenticeships, and access to work)
- Campaigns (combatting antisemitism, Israel, and UJS advocacy)
- Your Union (UJS structure, JSoc provision & democratic processes)
- Community (interfaith & social action, and international affairs)
- Jewish Enrichment & Inclusion (including Holocaust education)
- Programming (membership engagement & leadership development, UJSix)
The priority ballot will be carried out on paper (or online for those signed up to Zoom conference). Delegates will rank their 3 top baskets, and each of the 6 baskets. The list of motions in each basket will be made readily accessible for those completing the priority ballot, which will be available from arrival at Convention on Friday until 9:30pm on Saturday.
Conference will be structured into 3 sessions, each with a guillotine of 50 minutes. Delegates can submit a procedural motion to extend the guillotine, but this will take away time from future sessions. 2 baskets will be discussed per session.
In the first session, 2 motions will be discussed from the top ranked basket, followed by 1 motion from the 4th ranked basket. This will loop for 50 minutes (i.e. 2x 1st ranked, 1x 4th ranked, 2x 1st ranked, 1x 4th ranked etc…)
In the second session, 2 motions will be discussed from the 2nd ranked basket, followed by 1 motion from the 5th ranked basket. This will also loop for 50 minutes.
In the third session, 2 motions will be discussed from the 3rd ranked basket, followed by 1 motion from the bottom ranked basket. This will also loop for 50 minutes.
Once the policy debate has begun (i.e. after the affiliation and constitutional debates are completed), procedural motion J will only be able to change the order of motions within each basket – not the order of baskets within each session, or the order of sessions.
Procedural motions
The threshold for a procedural motion to be discussed will be 30 delegates willing to discuss, to best reflect the size of UJS Conference, and to ensure that only procedural motions which have a realistic chance of passing are debated.
Motions not discussed at UJS Conference will be referred to NEC by default. Procedural motion L, which used to refer motions not discussed in each basket to NEC, will instead be changed to read:
“L. That the question, as specified, not be remitted to another body or person. Raise this if you would not like motions in this basket to be sent to National Executive Council, to be debated there.”
Policy lapse
Before conference and after motions have been submitted, Scrutiny Board will examine policies which are due to lapse and release a list of policies which may be resubmitted, since they have not been resubmitted either at this year’s conference or at intermediate conferences since they were first proposed. A delegate wishing to challenge a policy which is in order may do so by approaching the Steering Committee or messaging the Zoom Chair at any point throughout conference.
Zoom Conference
If students are unable to attend UJS Convention, then they will have the option of attending Zoom Conference. UJS will make best efforts to ensure that delegates at Zoom Conference will have the same voting, speaking, and participation rights as those attending in person. Zoom delegates will be encouraged to submit a “pre-vote”. This will be available from the Thursday before conference until 9:30pm on the Saturday during Convention. Zoom delegates will indicate whether they wish to vote for, against, or abstain on each motion and amendments submitted, including the vote on affiliations (but not including votes on lapsing policy or procedural motions). The results of this pre-vote will only be used in the circumstances of an internet outage. If the internet works, then Zoom delegates will instead be required to vote over Zoom, superseding how they voted in the pre-vote.
Bye-Laws
Before a motion is voted upon, the Chair(s) will indicate whether Scrutiny Board has ruled that a vote in favour of a motion would mean that under UJS Bye-Law 2 4.1.5, a future motion will not be debated, since it would constitute the question having already been taken at UJS Conference.