Agenda set for EUSA AGM

Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA) is holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM) Wednesday. It comes following recent Student Representative Committee debates in regards to potential constitutional amendments, and will confront various issues raised by current university students.

More motions have been proposed this year than at any previous AGM. These include issues related to identity cards and alcohol consumption, and the university’s medicine patenting policies.

Students want to ensure that medicines and health-related innovations developed at Edinburgh University are available at low cost to all low and middle income countries. Currently patents are often sold to the highest single bidder who then has a monopoly on the market because of the lack of a competitive market.

EUSA President Adam Ramsay commented: “The motion about access to essential medicines may or may not be controversial. Edinburgh does serious medical research, and the motion, proposed by medics, looks at ways the drugs resulting from this can be accessible to everyone who needs them. If the proposers of the motion are right—and that is what the debate will be about—this could save huge numbers of lives around the world.”

The Vice President of Academic Affairs, Guy Bromley, is bringing a motion to the AGM that EUSA needs to change its stance on the legal drinking age to one which would permit 16-year-olds to consume low alcohol drinks in bars and pubs.

Mr Bromley told The Journal: “Our motion will bring young people into an environment where their drinking is supervised and safer. There is currently no distinction in the law made between a 70 per cent bottle of absinthe and a four per cent beer. This must surely be wrong, and contribute to the difficulties associated with alcohol and young people."

He said that many other Northern European countires take this line, for example in Denmark the drinking age is 15 and in Germany and Belgium 16. He said: “I'm not suggesting that we'll ever develop such attitudes to alcohol whereby we can follow Cyprus's example of allowing 12 year olds to legally purchase, but I think that making this AGM policy would arm EUSA with the tools needed to fight for more responsible alcohol policy in the future.”

The government’s contentious National Identity Card scheme, which is due to come into action from 25 November, has provoked a response from two separate groups of Edinburgh students. However, both have proposed different ways of reacting to the development of the information database; while student Oliver Munder is asking for EUSA to campaign legislatively against the ID cards, his colleague Stephanie Irene Spoto calls for a voluntary international student boycott of them altogether. Mr Ramsay believes this is “on the one hand, supporting people in breaking the law, yet, on the other, arguably the only actual way to stop the ID card proposals.”

Other motions proposed this year include giving student societies the right to bring their own food and non alcoholic drinks into the union buildings and promoting a EUSA supported campaign for free education.

The vice-principals will also be attending the meeting to answer questions about feedback issues.

The AGM is behind all major decisions taken by EUSA, and in the past motions have been carried through to make Edinburgh University the first Fair Trade university in Scotland, and to organise a full-scale boycott of all Nestlé products in EUSA outlets.

For any motion to pass at the AGM, it needs 300 votes in its favour, and all voters must bear a valid matriculation card.