Meetings & documents

The guild meeting is where the guild's most important decisions are made. Here's what the meetings are about, how to write a motion, and where to find records and governing documents.

Guild meetings

The guild meeting is the guild's highest decision-making body — 4 meetings per year, plus extra meetings as needed. Attend a meeting to vote on the guild's future, see what's happening right now, get free food and drinks, and have fun! Tradition to wear ouvve and cap (but not a must).

HTM-1

Autumn's first meeting. The Board presents how the year went (activities and economics), then some motions are handled, and finally some elections — e.g. new Øverphøs.

HTM-Val

Elections, elections, elections. We elect 33 people to various positions — the Board, vice chairs, and some others. A very long meeting, not uncommon to span 2 days (approx. 17–01 both days), depending on how many candidates stand.

HTM-2

The last meeting of the year. Handles the budget for the coming year, by-elections if any positions are vacant, and motions. An excellent opportunity to submit your own motion — you have been involved for several months now and surely have opinions.

VTM

Often many motions, elections of e.g. DELTA coordinator, and budget revisions. Might sound boring, but motions usually have the most interesting discussions — and can have the greatest impact on the guild.

Motions

A motion is a written proposal for a change to be made in the guild. Concretely, it is an amendment to our governing documents — statutes, regulations, or policy. Practically, it changes how the guild works.

What do you want to change? Maybe add a new position or committee? Give volunteers free café sandwiches? Have another introduction in the spring? Or just increase the number of treasury officials to 4? All this, and much more, can be done with motions!

Before meetings, all members may submit motions about anything to ordforande@dsek.se. The board reads through them, gives an official answer and publishes them to the whole guild in advance. At the meeting, members vote the motion through or not, sometimes with amendments. See the tips for writing motions further down.

Tips for writing motions

By Emma Haggren, President 2024.

A nudge

Recommendation: try to write the motion in time and submit it as soon as you feel ready. Then the Board can better plan the work, reducing load. But it's more important that you submit a motion you are happy with than that it comes in early — focus on doing something good!

Visualise the changes

Sometimes it's hard for members to understand what is changing when only the resolving clauses change. Look at how the union does it: take a copy of the governing document, red-mark what is deleted, yellow-mark what is changed or added. Send this along to make it easier to compare at the meeting.

Helper tool (Gerda)

Unsure how to do it? There is a helper tool for writing your motion. Go to gerda.dsek.se and choose "motion". Fill in your text in the right fields and your motion gets formatted nicely! Unsure what is usually included? Look through old motions under meeting documents.

General tips

The more well-prepared and clear your motion is, the easier it will be for the meeting to discuss it.
Be prepared to answer questions. During the meeting, you present the motion and then people can ask questions.
Ask someone who knows! Talk to the Board, auditors, the future committee, or other seniors who have written motions before. Just make sure they help with the phrasing, not try to change the intent of your motion!

Last but not least: your motion doesn't have to be perfect. Do the best you can and ask for help. What matters is that you get to raise what you want to change — the guild is here for your sake.

Governing documents & records

Everything that governs the guild is written down, and everything decided at meetings is published. Here's where to find it.

Meeting documents

Notices, motions, propositions and minutes from the guild meetings. Worth reading both before a meeting and as examples when writing your own motion.

Open

Statutes

The guild's constitution. Can only be changed by a decision at two consecutive guild meetings.

Open

Regulations

The details of how the guild is run — positions, committees, elections and finances. Changed at a single guild meeting.

Open

Policies & guidelines

Decisions on how we do things in practice, for example the alcohol policy and equal treatment.

Open

Gerda

The tool that helps you write and format a motion so it's easy to read at the meeting.

Open

Tips for the meeting

Bring snacks. Cooked dinner and meeting drinks (soda) are always provided, but meetings tend to be long — many go to ICA beforehand.

Meetings can be long — not uncommon to run past midnight, sometimes over 2 days. It is okay to leave early.

Wear comfortable clothes (and ouvve + cap if you want).

Have fun! Meetings are long but mixed with fun talk, games with friends, or memes in the shitpost channel.

Attend HTM-1. Some love guild meetings, some don't think it's their thing. Attend HTM-1 and decide for yourself. Dare to try new things!