Tonight at ULU council, Charlotte Dawkins, President of ULU, and former Vice President Finance, Sports and Societies at Queen Mary Students Union, faces a motion of no confidence against her.

The motion, which has been labelled Paper R for tonight's meeting, has been brought by Tuuli Kousa, General Secretary of LSESU, and seconded by David Utting, President of KCLSU. It claims that as President of ULU she has breached fourteen separate regulations. Included are sections covering her job description, the running of elections, attendance at meetings, and her representation of UL constituent college unions, one of which is Imperial.

The motion lists numerous points of the constitution and alleged breaches of the regulations, two of which are of particular interest to students of Imperial. The first (point A.2 v, ULU regs.) states that "all sabbatical officers shall strive at all times to represent the students of the University of London, especially their diversity, and to involve all students wherever possible in the decision making process." By highlighting "that Imperial College [students] were not consulted with adequate time for ULU to pass policy on the possible merger between Imperial College and University College London." The authors of the paper feel that the ULU president did not carry out her job properly.

When talk of a merger between UCL and Imperial was raised, iCU moved to hold a referendum of its student body, the result of which was never clear, although at the time many students favoured a merger if it would result in better teaching or research conditions. However, both UCL and ULU were quick to rubbish the merger idea. This strained relations between iCU and ULU, as policy had been made without proper consultations with either iCU executive officers or the student body as a whole at Imperial.

The second point of interest for Imperial students is the apparent quote from the ULU President that: "It is also pertinent to note that the Chair of Council's own record of attendance at meetings is far from exemplary." The current Chair of ULU Council is David Francis, former Deputy President ( Education & Welfare) here at Imperial. This statement has been taken as a show of disrespect for other ULU officers and is being used to reinforce tonight's motion.

Under normal circumstances Mr Francis would be chairing tonight meeting, which could be one of the most interesting and intense in the history of ULU Council.

iCU will be sending its voting delegates to tonight's ULU Council meeting on the back of a meeting of ICU's Executive committee. Given today's developments and the content of the motion it would seem appropriate that the matter be discussed there before moving to Malet Street for resolution.

In general it has been a long year for student sabbatical officers as the hard issues of mergers and university funding have again been thrown into the spotlight. However, what has become apparent is that students of all descriptions will no longer tolerate incompetence or misrepresentation from those that they elect and pay for.