If you have a concern about the society's "policies" feel free to voice them to the committee and we can do something about them. Posting anonamously on our forum like that doesn't help.

I also don't want to start an argument over the merits of this, but as it was me who broke the society's constitution as John has mentioned I'd like to justify my actions.I handed over a copy of our member list to the societies officer John Schless because the exec need this information for health and safety reasons and without it the society would have been shut down for failling to comply.

-- Edited by Adam at 02:00, 2005-11-12

Just for clarification, the union exec is bound by the data protection act, and membership lists for ALL of the LUU societies are locked away safely. No-one apart from a member of the executive with a health & safety inspector can access those lists. This is either to:

a) make a note of how many members are in each society (not who's joined what, its simply just a number, such as LGBT 172, Kabal 50, J-soc 300 - all these numbers are made up) for insurance purposes.
or
b) in the incidence of an accident at a society event occuring and an insurance claim been made, the list of the society been accessed and name checked up as proof of membership to that society and therefore been covered by the unions insurance policy.

These health and safety measures are in place to protect members, all of the information is remaining confidential, unless there is an incident where a name needs to be checked up for insurance purposes. Also as part of this health and safety legislation we are writing out risk assesments for events we are putting on.

Due to the union building been a public building, it has to follow health and safety legislation set out for it, or it faces closure, or a fine. This will have a knock on effect if the union is closed or fined, because we will not have a space for coffee hours/free use of union spaces for events or funding for the society, please remember in all of this we are funded partly by membership fees but mostly by the union.

These measures for the union have to be followed to ensure safety of all within the union building and insurance for all active members of LUU. Also compliance with health and safety measures have to be followed and funding applications, recipts of purchase etc and detailed financial records of the unions income and expenditure (including societies) have to be in and up to date to fall in line with the policies of the government charity commission, by January 2006. This is because the funding of ALL university unions, will be taken over by the governments charity commission in January. If their policies aren't followed by any of the unions, the unions in question will either be closed or have their funding cut. This again will lead to negative knock on effects for the society and its members.

At the end of the day the only time that confidentiality and data protection can be broken is in the instance of health and safety, to persons that are at risk of harm, either from themselves or others. Due to the nature of events that we run in predominantley heterosexual places (eg. Pubs on Otley run, bowling, cinema's... list is endless) there is a risk of this happening. I for one know that if anything happened to a member, I would want them to be covered by the union insurance so that they can make a claim, if the need arose for whatever reason, rather than, them not being able to and/or us being held liable for breaking health and safety law.

As events officer and currently holding a position in the union, which holds me accountable for LGBT students, I have a duty to protect their interests both on university premises and on these organised trips.

There are boundaries of how far confidentiality can stretch, especially when it concerns health and safety legislation. Also just to point out, when people joined, they joined up to a Leeds University Union society, this means that LUU has ownership of its societies and members, for which it is bound by law to protect. This protection comes in the form of health and safety, and data protection, which can only be broken by health and safety. Because the unions purpose is to ensure the welfare of all students, I can't understand why someone would object to providing a societies membership list to the exec ensuring adequate and appropriate insurance policies can be put in place, especially when the information will be kept within the boundary of confidentiality for a number of reasons, these being that the list is locked in a secure environment, only certain nominated individuals have access to this and the union as a body is bound by data protection laws and therefore can't pass on such information to anybody else, unless required in making a claim, for which the individuals permission would be sought beforehand.

I don't think it's fair to say most of the committee have thought about stepping down. I certainly haven't!

Whatever the reasons for you leaving John, and I know there has been many a ruction in the past year or more within the committee, I thank you for being the person that you have been, and for taking the role that you have within the society. It has to be said, no matter what may have happened this year with the committee, when I joined the LGBT, (or LGB as it was), it was nowhere near as political as it has come to be, and I think that - certainly in my first and second years - that was largely down to you, as I know how much you personally believe in standing up for LGBT issues and rights.

Well done love, and happy birthday for yesterday. Wish you all the luck in the world with your PGCE, and may you have many Fortune Coooooookies to come!

sasha
xxx