[SUCS] Re: IMPORTANT: SUCS payment

[SUCS Admin]

You should all have received an email from the Student Union Treasurer
to your university email accounts.

The Student Union has chosen to withhold our private funds, your membership
fees, and not let us now pay for the new Computers that we bought
and installed over the summer. They have done this without any prior
warning, and cannot produce any written authority on these 'rules'.

If this payment is denied, then the new equipment will revert to its
purchaser, and will be removed and sold off, greatly reducing the level
of service supplied to you all by the SUCS room.

To answer their allegations:

1) That the SUCS Treasurer submitted the cheque request for himself.
That's what the treasurer is supposed to do - deal with the money.
The request was backed with all appropriate receipts and proofs,
and was done with the full knowledge and support of the SUCS Committee.

2) That not enough money was in the account.
This was a simple error with the timing of paying in membership fees.
More than enough money now exists in the account: this is in no way fraud
of any shape.

3) That we put the society in debt
The equipment was purchased personally by the treasurer at his own risk,
at no time were the society or Student Union committed to anything.
The equipment was bought during the holidays so as to minimise disruption
and to have the services online ready for the start of term, with every
confidence that the money would then exist to pay for it, which it does.

4) The Union were not consulted prior to the purchase
Two points:
* the money was spent completely in line with our written constitution,
  for the benefit of all our members, and is therefore no business of
  the unions how it is spent
* the plans for acquiring new workstations either by private fund raising
  or grant money had been discussed with numerous union officers over the
  past year, and no objections had been raised.

To recap, we have more than enough money to pay for the equipment,
we have long planned for buying this equipment. The union refuses
to release the money now due to some slight accounting errors.

All of this has previously been clarified with the Student Union
but they choose to ignore these facts and to attempt to portray us as
having committed some form of crime (eg. allegations of fraud etc.)

What the Union failed to mention was what at least 51% of all our members
MUST respond positively to the email, and that any failures to respond
will be taken as a rejection of the society's action, and effectively
a vote that you wish to see SUCS restrained from operating normally.

It is therefore vital that you all respond to the Student Union treasurer
and express your support for the society, and your condemnation of this
treatment.

We apologise for the confusion and irritation this has caused to
all of our members, we hope that normal service will be resumed shortly.