A paper brought to ICU Council by Jon Matthews and RSM President Danny Hill seeks to restore union status to the RSM CSC, by introducing a new "Constituent Union". The plan being proposed was first broadly considered in 2001, when options for preserving the RSMU under the new faculty-based structure were considered.
Historical Context
When Richard Sykes took over as Rector he re-arranged the College's departments into four faculties: Engineering, Medicine, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences. The former Royal College of Science was split between the two science faculties (which later re-merged, with the Royal School of Mines being split-up, parts going into Physical Sciences and the rest going to Engineering.
ICU looked to change its internal structure to meet that of the College, retaining the principle that key College staff and committees should have a direct counterpart within ICU, at least for education and welfare issues. At that time the RCSU decided to abolish itself, with two new faculty unions forming, while CGCU took responsibility for the representation of those students in RSM who moved to the Faculty of Engineering. The Royal School of Mines name was retained by setting up the RSM CSC, which was intended to continue looking after the RSM's clubs, like other clubs & societies committees.
Current Situation
In reality this solution has caused friction, with RSM and C&G not managing to get along. The former RSM departments of Materials and Earth Science & Engineering continue to look to the RSM CSC on welfare issues, despite all responsibility for that in theory lying within C&G. The RSM continues to look after the welfare of its students (by getting them horribly drunk and sent to hospital), arranging a number of social functions and talks throughout the year, far beyond the role of a CSC.
The relationship is, in fact, a complete mess at present. RSM originally kept two departmental societies, despite the representation role in theory moving to Guilds: De La Beche and MatSoc. In 2006 MatSoc moved to Guilds, however the decline of Guilds in subsequent years has seen them not become as integrated as they might have been. RSM has recently started a new "GeoPhysSoc", effectively a society catering for ESE students on the Geo Physics course rather than the geology course (which DLB covers). A similar situation used to exist in Guilds, with a "course soc" for students on the Information Systems Engineering course in EEE and DoC, however this was abolished when ISE became a fully EEE course - EEE now elect course reps.
Proposed Solution
The proposed solution sees RSM become a "constituent union", with the sane status to Wye and Silwood campus unions. Like the campus unions, they would report to a faculty union for faculty-level representation, but would have autonomy over the representation of the two former RSM departments.
The paper also introduces other changes, giving the RSMU and two campus unions a seat on the executive committee and the Representation and Welfare Board. The RSM previously had no seat on RWB (as it is not supposed to be representative) and could only sit on exec if elected by the CSC chairs at the Clubs and Societies Board. The campus unions, as subordinate unions to the RCSU, did also not have a seat on those committees.
Being a paper proposed by Mr Matthews, some other corrections to the language of the constitution are also included at the same time.

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