Resurrected: policy from the dead, continue your movement

All guild policy lapses after three years, which means unless is it renewed by guild council it lapses and is forgotten, As guild council motions are not easily accessible and as there is no updates about motions lapsing, We actually lose many many motions to be forgotten.

This is shame for a movement for our long-term progression and development as movement requires a collective sense of identify and history, which is something that we lose by not seeing what our predecessors did.

Last guild council I dragged up two policy documents from the past one several years lapsed and the second only two weeks.

The first was “Balloon releases and the environment”, which for four years between 1999- 2003 was recurrent issue which the guilds conservation volunteers championed, On 23rd January 1998 the Guild launched 1000 black balloons into the atmosphere as part of the anti tuition fee campaign, the move was heavily criticized as balloons take can take 6 months to degrade in the environment longer in cold water and are very damaging to marine life, this resulted in four years later ,in 2003, Edward Polehampton of Recycling Society and Ro Jackson of Conservation Volunteers passing motion banning balloon releases.

This policy lapsed and one of the societies behind it disappeared, GC has now renewed it, but the movements narrative and continuity can be said to be broken, unfortunately we don’t record our history particularly well as an movement, the best records we have are anecdotal ones kept by the occasional PHD student who has been around forever. Recording what we do stops us cyclically repeating ourselves and acts as a resource for future students.

If conservation volunteers had recorded their past activities would their current members have championed the legacy rather than let it slide?

The best immediate thing you can do as society is start your own blog, record what you are doing, so future students can look back when thinking about what to do next.

For example take a look at the radish old and new it is record of discussions and ideas and activities.