There was a survey?

More seriously, Felix, a past Guardian student media award publication getting their grubby hands on the data and not Live!, a current awardee - this RWB lot sound like c**ts.

i was at the rwb meeting, what i heard and what was voted upon (i think there was a vote) was that Live! would be allowed access to all the raw results but would not be allowed to publish the written comments.

it seems fair to not publish the written comments.

i don't know what happened between the RWB meeting and this article being published but certainly in the RWB meeting there was no decision to withhold the raw results of the survey as stated in the article

"Live! would be allowed access to all the raw results but would not be allowed to publish the written comments."

Last time I checked, RWB had no editorial control over Live! and is in no position to dictate what can or cannot be published. There is a case of double standards here, with Live! being deliberately singled out by an ICU committee.

Felix has received the results in full, and they have been withheld from Live! (we asked for them last week).

"it seems fair to not publish the written comments."

Perhaps - I'd be unlikely to publish them in any case, and would have happily complied with a request that I not publish them to preserve anonymity.

The issues here are:

1. a committee unfairly singling out one part of the student media, for no good reason.
2. a committee believing it can control what is and is not published by the student media.

The first is unacceptable and shows the committee to be a little spiteful, the second shows the committee to be deluded.

Take it to ICU Court! Isn't that why we set it up last year?

I agree, RWB doesn't have the right to dictate what can or cannot be published.

"Perhaps - I'd be unlikely to publish them in any case, and would have happily complied with a request that I not publish them to preserve anonymity."

i'm confused because all that was said in the RWB meeting was that you were going to be asked not to publish the comments to preserve anonymity.

if somebody is withholding the results from Live!, then they have done so in contradiction to what was decided in the RWB meeting.

And the same request was not made to Felix because...?

The same request was made to Felix, however it was an informal request because it was given the information before the RWB meeting.

I agree theres a negative perception of Live! that needs to be tackled, however it is completely untrue that "The Representation and Welfare Board voted to ban Live! from seeing results of the Higher Education Funding survey".

*Giggles*

I assume this is satire? I know the Live! philosophy is to 'print now, sort out facts later' so I won't blame you for writing this rather amusing article. However, you were obviously a bit drunk, desperate to get home to write the other article or losing your hearing in your old age to have jumped to this rather stretched version of reality.

RWBs decision was to send you the information with a disclaimer that the individual comments could be used to inform your article but were not for public dissemination (due to the personal situations discussed in some of the comments which could allow people to be identified). Felix was present at the meeting and had already assured the board that the individual comments would not be published so no such disclaimer needed to be sent.

I was not aware until yesterday that Council had been informed differently as I was not there in person and Stephen was not at RWB. RWBs interpretation of raw data may differ here from your own but this will require further discussion.

I assured you that you would still be able to access the information (and not just 'briefly') as an electronic copy which you are free to keep for as long as you like! I appreciate that your imaginative interpretation is more newsworthy but am surprised it features more highly than a 'snippet' when you were desperately trying to find time to run, write or in this case prefabricate so many other articles (Rupert Neate would be proud).

I assume you still want to receive the comments or will this now ruin your story? (I always assumed a Live! battering would be slightly less laughable...)

Love and hugs

Kirsty x

OK, the point of this article is as follows:

1. You gave information to Felix, agreed to give it to Live!, but then went to your committee who decided it was a bad idea without certain conditions
2. The information you decided to add conditions to was supposed to be freely available, as stated by the ICU President at Council. Although you may have been absent, members of RWB were in that meeting and it is minuted in the section about YOUR report (you did read the minutes to see if anyone had brought up anything important about your report, right?)
3. Yesterday evening, you only agreed to let me see the comments after I said I wouldn't publish them
4. This is the second occasion in a week where an ICU committee has decided that it didn't want information that should be freely available published on Live!

I believe that:

1. If you are going to send information to one part of the student media, it should be available to all
2. Sabbs, when absent from meetings, should at least read the part of the minutes relating to their reports
3. ICU committees should not seek to stop publication of information which should be freely available
4. You can't set conditions on what to do with information having already released it

Aren't you banned from posting on Live! ?

Kirsty,

You really are a terribly smug rodent. You spend half your time bitching and leaking discussions from within the Union to Live! and then have the audacity to have a pop at it in this way.

Thank God your term is nearly over as you really are a pathetic individual.

She has the right to defend herself and her committee against a "pathetic onslaught"...

That's part of what makes Live! addictive apparently :)

Ashley,

The article, and your comment, are factually incorrect. I will discuss this with you seperately but, in the interest of other peoples amusement, I am happy for this to remain to satisfy those who would prefer to slag me off.

Student,

My comment was meant to be light hearted (hence 'giggles' and 'love and hugs') as I took the article to be. I have a lot of respect for Live! and regard Ashley as one of my closest friends. You have misinterpreted this discussion but that is what Live! is all about so you are welcome to.

This seems a great idea...lets have a huge slanging match about whether or not we can publish personally identifiable information from surveys completed online.

It's not like we have a problem getting the views of the student body and getting them to fill in surveys already, without further discouraging them for fear of leaking their personal information, right?

I don't think the RWB was right if the facts are as they seem, but equally I don't think this is the forum for this problem.

Surely anonymous comments contain no personally identifiable information?

Apparently you could work out who had written them from the circumstances they had described in the survey.

You could work out that one person, a member of RWB, had written a comment based on what they said their views were at the meeting of RWB.

is this article going to be changed, given that it is factually incorrect in important places, like the headline?

"Although you may have been absent, members of RWB were in that meeting and it is minuted in the section about YOUR report (you did read the minutes to see if anyone had brought up anything important about your report, right?)"

Lies!

The President brought the suspension of HE Funding policy up under AOB, and this was where the comment was made.

Actually, that's also not true.

So sorry to Kirsty, it was brought up under the President's report, I got confused by the pagination in Adobe Reader.

However, she was at the meeting where it was discussed :)