In a shock move, the Chairs of three committees have announced that they have discovered the secret of telepathy. The research, jointly arranged by Joint Committee, Campaigns Committee and the Committee of Senior Men and Women, will, according to the committees, speed up gathering of student opinion by up to 20 times. One said:
In the past, it was obviously quite difficult to find out what our students thought, so quite often we had to guess what they wanted, and that led to complaints. Now we have telepathy, however, we can find out very easily what our students think on various important issues.
Several methods have been used in the past for gathering student opinion, such as referenda and general meetings, however, the committees point out that these methods are inefficient and flawed. Telepathy will allow them to know what student opinion is without needing to actually ask anyone directly.
Others, however, do not view the news with such happiness. Some point out that there is little check on this system - nobody can say otherwise if the telepaths say that student opinion is this, without a costly and complex referendum, which of course would require the support of the telepaths, who view such actions as a waste of their time, since they already know what the result will be.
To reassure these people, one member of the committee has pointed out that the system has been used on a trial basis for the last two years already, and in that time DSU and the JCRs were usually able to put up a united front on student opinion. While, the member, admitted, not everyone would agree with this front, this was a weakness of any method of opinion gathering.
The committees now plan to abolish Union meetings and referenda in DSU, as well as meetings in their JCRs, as they are now redundant. They claim that there is support in both the JCRs and in DSU for these measures, although accept that, this once, there will need to be the formality of a meeting to confirm their telepathic powers as a proper substitute in future.
A large number of students are reportedly still sceptical of
the telepathic powers the committees claim, but the committee
members are reported to be confident in the success of their
plans. They claim that over 95% of students do support the use of
telepathy is the sole opinion gathering mechanism, and claim to be
ready to fight vote-packing
of meetings by the other
5%.
However, all is not yet decided. A coalition of sceptics has been set up and is calling for a series of emergency meetings to remove all of the committee members from office before they can propose their motions. In a statement they state.
We believe that the use of telepathy to gather student opinions is an invasion of privacy if real, and a way of ignoring student opinion for the sake of political expediency or egotism. We believe that thinking you know what the student body thinks is not and never can be a substitute for asking the students, and that we should not be afraid of doing so. We believe that if our officers will not accept these facts then they should be removed from office and replaced with those who remember that they are representatives, not dictators.
With this group claiming support well above the 5% the committees state, the future of opinion gathering in DSU and the JCRs remains uncertain.