Butscher’s Knife

Stirling Students Union has scrapped policies committing itself to women’s rights as part of a move that Union President Johannes Butscher described as “a historic moment in the history of our union”.

Yesterday’s ‘Stir It Up’ general meeting saw Butscher finally cutting over 300 apparently outdated union policies, after failing to do so at his first meeting.

Johannes holds court at ‘Stir It Up’

But Jenny Lester, Vice President of the Gender Equality Movement, noted that it would remove three separate policies on women’s rights, passed in the 1970s and ’80s, and leave Stirling Students Union effectively with no constitutional vow to protect women’s rights.

“I find it unsettling to call policies that state the union is against the discrimination of women ‘archaic’,” said Lester.

“These policies were and still are being actively pursued by the union, therefore the scrapping of them is plain wrong.”

Although Butscher hailed the removal of the old policies as a “historic moment”, he assured worried students that any policies that shouldn’t have been scrapped could be reinstated at an Emergency General Meeting in two weeks’ time.

He also stressed that Stirling’s commitment to women’s rights was not under threat because it still retained a Women’s Officer – a role that Butscher’s plans for Executive Officer reform would diminish.

At one point a vote was made on whether each policy should be voted for individually – but Johannes urged people to vote against such a measure because that democratic action would “take too long”.

Some of the other union policies thrown out include:

• The union’s official stance on South African apartheid
• A campaign against nuclear weapons, including a legal action against Margaret Thatcher:

To be fair, we can’t take her to court now

• A detailed opinion of the Pathfoot Disco night

The campaign to bring it back starts now