SOCIETY REPORTS NOW ARRIVED

 TREASURER’S REPORT

Displayed below are the accounts since the Society acquired its CUBS Account. They deal with payments made for maintenance of the original Society website closed as it was unfit for purpose and because of irregularities in its management.

There is a 'paid in slip' also mentioned. That was a cash deposit that had been thought hitherto to be lost/ stolen in the post. So we have about £5 more than expected.

This means we can explore purchases such as membership cards.

Account Number: 2806 Current balance on the account: 66.00 CR

STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT

Date Ref Details Debit Credit

12/05/2009 JV119 Inaugural Grant Payment 50.00

31/10/2009 001051 Bank Deposit 5.00

15/04/2010 001052 Bank deposit 5.00

01/06/2010 JV094 3RD Quarter CUBS Interest 0.04

19/05/2010 910/188 rental of soc website 29.74

29/06/2010 910/221 Davidson exps 4.41

29/06/2010 910/222 Petty Cash initial payment 10.00

08/06/2010 001053 Bank Deposit 30.00

12/08/2010 001054 Bank Deposit 5.00

11/02/2011 001056 Membership new society member Anon 5.00

18/04/2011 001058 Member subs pd in P Canning 5.00

20/05/2011 JV099 3rd qtr CUBS interest 0.11

06/05/2011 BR Pd in slip 001057 5.00

01/07/2011 Balance Carried Forward 66.00

Regards, Peter Canning.

 Webmaster

 This post has never been even unofficially filled. However, the Platform Group has three moderators, I was the moderator for the discredited website www.oulss.co.uk and cleared up the redundant google group set up by the last official Secretary.

 Secretary

The Secretary is defined by the Constitutions of the Society and OUSA as being one of the core Society Officers. Secretarial work that has been done by me began with removing certain malcontents from the discontinued Google Group set up by the original Secretary. It continued with removing other such people from the now eliminated website www.oulss.co.uk.

Being a current student and having the majority of the membership being current students has made communication rather difficult with the other members. No events have been organised since the Inaugural Meeting. But an outing to Kew Gardens, South London, is proposed to happen on Saturday 22^nd or Saturday 29^th October.

It is also proposed that a competition be run. The first proposal was a genus wordearch. Entrants are invited to find the names of genera in a word grid and use whatever sources they can find to produce a three-sentence executive summary of the characteristics of the members of that genus. The second proposal is to invite members to construct their own animal kingdom phylogenetic tree. In this case they give their own rationales for where and when they have indicated various taxa branching off, originating or dying off. For this competition, they should cite references. But it is not as difficult as it sounds, as they are not starting from scratch. These have been hypothesised countless times in the literature.

Current secretarial activities include posting notices of the impending AGM and the platform group via postal mail. Also various reports relating to the AGM have been posted to the Platform Group.

Membership Secretary

There have been a number of problems with recruiting members. No membership details were received by the first two membership secretaries. One of the problems has been the fact that some of those who expressed an interest online balked at submitting contact details. Another problem was that it was set up as a fee-charging society without the means to collect the fees. This was confounded by various people who have now left, or been ejected from the Society, causing trouble. I refer, among other things, to the atrocious website www.oulss.co.uk that was shut down over three months ago.

That website had been set up by a former committee member’s husband (never an OU student) and it looked like he had hardly started it. Worse still, much time was spent by me and the other committee members trying to keep the website clear of ‘bots’. The former committee member under discussion denied responsibility. She also displayed considerable disingenuousness and dishonesty when challenged about it, covering up for her and her husband’s shortcomings. Worse still, her husband transferred ownership and responsibility for the website to me. This was without my knowledge, let alone my consent. It is recommended that to preserve the University’s reputation that some action is taken by the University.

Currently four out of six of the paid-up members of the Society are current students. There are four more provisional members. In the event of the society changing to funding through donations only, this could potentially bring the Society membership into double figures. Other problems are the lack of inexpensive media in which to advertise the society to the wider OU community. An advertisement in the alumni e-newsletter received one positive response. Attempts by the OUSA Office to attract new members received two positive responses but they have been difficult to contact. Neither the OU nor the Office have made it clear that what is needed are those who have and want to use their expertise in newsletter writing, secretarial work and web-mastery. Members should be prepared to travel considerable distances to attend functions, but those who can and who are also probably not current students should find them rewarding.

In addition to the above, the membership secretarial work has involved posting Society key rings to new members when they have sent in their subscription. When a design for the membership card is approved (AOB under the AGM agenda) those who have paid the subscription will automatically receive one. It will be decided there and then whether any of those joining after the AGM will receive one.one.

SOCIETY NEWS EDITOR

This is another Society post that has never been officially filled. However an AGM notice has gone out whose content was agreed upon by the two remaining committee members. This AGM notice also encouraged members to get involved with their local wildlife trust.

A competition and an outing have both been suggested. 

SSC (Societies Standing Committee) Representative’s Report 

Dear Society,

                             I have attended meetings of the SSC in person and online except the last one. That I attended online only as the FTF meeting clashed with my graduation ceremony. This role was previously filled adequately by former OU student Alison Davidson.

OUSA Office staff have helped with running the CUBS account. They have also tried to assist in recruiting new members to the Society. Little has come out of the latter initiatives. Other SSC representatives have been of more use, by pointing to www.ouls.co.uk domains, for example. However, instead of creating a new website, we have a Platform Group. This can be found at: http://www8.open.ac.uk/platform/groups/life-sciences. A number of postings are located there.

The SSC representative is also the Society’s representative to OUSA Conference. I spoke against both of the motions submitted by the Students for Ethical Science (SES) at the 2011 Conference. I also handed out a new members’ form. This was not returned. This Society has an interest in blocking the passage of these motions by OUSA Conference.