28/02/21 — Durham University

minutes (28/02/21)

LGBT+ Association Meeting

Date: 28/02/21

Time: 11am

Location: Online

ATTENDEES

Members

Apologies

ORDERS OF BUSINESS

REPORTS

Finances

need someone to take over the finances after Allen has left, for now Jonah still has access to it, but someone needs to get finance training

Jonah

Jonah has been taking to katie to organize an event but jonah’s facebook is down, she wants to do a talk but she is not sure she can do the first week of march
the talk will be about her life: she is an older activist, lived through the AIDs epidemic, and the don’t ask don’t tell rule (american)

Fliss

fliss has done the adoption station and has given people their kids
everyone had 4 kids each, this was done to ensure that they can hang out properly together
the wed coffee social was good, we had 10 people, fliss and freddy took two groups off each

Allen

regarding the earth sciences survey on pronouns, we have had 66 reponses on monday
jenny sent allen the results and people’s responses were overwhelming positive
allen is waiting to hear back from her
currently the plan is to maybe to send the answers to other departments so they can consider including pronouns in their own email signatures
finances are looking good

regarding tom, jonah has asked tom about the amount of money he is owed, but he has not replied

the current balance in the association’s account is roughly £560
the SU has not sent over the £500 pounds that associations are granted at the start of term, amanda to email and ask SU about it

Megan

fundraiser ends today, megan has put in all the money from the murder mystery which was around £60
we have roughly £600 raised now
regarding the exec instagram takeovers, megan has moved hers up, and everyone who wants to do the takeovers please fill in the dates you are free

Freddy

we had chit chat and make crap session, the attendance was low, but it was nice
we had murder mystery, which was really well attended and it worked really well, people enjoyed it

there is a games night on the 4th, which is the typical discord games
there is a plan to have a cocktail class on friday as freddy is a bartender and can teach people how to make drinks, they will put up a ingredients list; mainly a dark spirit and light spirit and a mixer
tentatively planning to try a fitness thing next week, but freddy might not be able to lead it
freddy thinking of using a fitness marshall from youtube as he is LGBT so it might be nice as well
the day of it is unconfirmed yet but tentatively it’s to be held on a saturday morning at 11
arts drawing class, trying to find a model that pose nude will be very difficult, especially the privacy of people not taking photos of the person
amy suggested hilde bede’s insta had someone called queerstrangvibes on insta come in in feb to do an art body workshop, and we might be able to try and ask to get someone to come down and model for us
jonah to ask sexpression as well
amy will ask hilde bede

YOU ARE NOT ALONE CAMPAIGN

progress has been slow, jonah and team looking to push it back because it will not be able to launch this term, looking to do next term instead because everyone is very busy, jonah will need to talk to the rest of the campaigns team

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

international women’s day is on the 8th of feb
peter mentioned that the women’s rep have an insta page and are looking to make a facebook page
megan suggested we could share the women rep’s group and share other groups in durham like women’s association

REPRESENTATIVES

reps have another meeting on wed with peter, peter wants to make a social media post, but there is one or two that do not have much yet and peter doesn’t want any group to be underrepresented
peter has offered if anyone needs any help, but with a big group it can be difficult to coordinate things
some do already have pages, and peter has already uploaded those who have stuff on the website
allen suggested people ask the reps to intro themselves at the tgm
erica suggested that if it's only one or two people that haven’t uploaded their info, just ask them to provide something for people to contact them with and continue to upload the rest instead so at least there is still content
peter will contact the reps, but it has been slow going and difficult
jonah also to talk to prishanti to know what they are doing in advance

JOINTLY HELD POSITIONS

there was previous discussion on the issue of jointly held positions as it is not currently allowed in the constitution, if we want to include it, we would have to have a separate provision for it
the social sec position would benefit from having someone else work as well, either to allow it to be jointly held or have an assistant because the workload is quite high
the issue discussed is if jointly held positions should be available for all exec positions or only for some
a problem is that jointly held positions have to be run together
megan suggested publicity does not need a jointly held position or an assistant
VPs also do not need more people as well
president could benefit from being co held though
it was decided in the end that

the president and finance officer position could have people holding the position jointly as they are not roles that would be practical to write in an assistant position for, but could use some help with from time to time
the social secretary position, however, could have an assistant position for it as it would make more sense in the long run due to high workload, freddy mentioned as well that had the events been in person this year they would have had a hard time coping
freddy to write a motion to add this position, which will be presented during the TGM

MOTIONS

allen to write pg / mature students rep position motion to change it from simply mature students to post-grad and mature students representative
amanda to do the jointly held positions motion
megan to do the book club motion
freddy to do the assistant social sec motion

OTHER BUSINESS

jonah received a message to his personal facebook from what seems like a durham student and they are writing to jonah as a poc lgbt person and they’ve documented over 150 tmes that race has been a factor of discrimination in durham
they have sent screenshot of people saying racist sluts on grindr and all lives matter, jonah currently unsure what to reply as it is his personal account, not the association’s, also what resources are available to help

amy suggested to say something along the lines of i’m really sorry about what happened and what can we do to help
ariyike is the poc rep as well as there is a group chat if that is the sort of thing they want