Speeches made in the debate:
Result of voting and arrangements for postal vote
That this House instruct Council to restore the entitlement of members of faculties, together with Emeritus Professors, to membership of Congregation until the age of 75.
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The two considerations are one constitutional and one substantial. The constitutional reason is that a change in the voting rights of members of Congregation is a constitutional change of some seriousness. In places where constitutions are highly regarded—for example in the United States or the colleges of this University—constitutional changes usually need special majorities, require special notice, require unusual attempts to make sure that everyone affected knows what is going on and can take their chance to vote. Retired members of faculties seem on this occasion to have lost their vote with something less than full, frank, free discussion. The matter was not discussed in faculties, was not given much prominence in the Gazette, and was, if I may so put it, shuffled (not smuggled, which implies duplicity, but shuffled) through in an empty House. I am certain this was not from any wish not to have a debate nor from any fear that discussion would stir up trouble. This is not a university in which the `grey panthers' pose a threat. It was, I think, just the effect of tidy-mindedness unconstrained by an adequate sense of what is due to those whose rights are taken away. None the less, it seems to me a bad way to make constitutional changes. And it is another example of the incapacity of the central administration of the University to communicate properly with the ordinary members of Congregation, less striking than was evident last term in the debate on the site of the Business School. I may say in passing that I regard the fact that Council resists the reversal as itself a bad thing, because obviously once you have disfranchised those who are most likely to vote against their own disfranchisement it becomes harder to overturn the disfranchisement. I think, regardless of the merits of the case, we ought to go back to the status quo ante and start again.
So much for propriety. The substance is more debatable, but here, too, I think Council was mistaken. The grounds adduced for depriving retired members of faculties of their voting rights boil down to one, rather unpersuasive, assertion, namely that they are inevitably less in touch with university affairs than their younger colleagues. It is clear that Council did not believe this because Council has taken pains to make sure that retired people can sit on committees where they are useful. If it is inevitable that one's grip on affairs just goes on the 30 September immediately following one's 65th birthday, save where some vested interest has preserved one's faculties to the 30 September following one's 67th birthday, then surely clean sweeps should be made. If clean sweeps are not made then the word `inevitable' scarcely ought to be used. Of course it is the case that many people by the age of retirement will have had quite enough of university business. Indeed many persons will have had quite enough of it some years before that time. But persons in that position are hardly likely to turn up and pose a problem. Those who take an interest are more likely to do good than harm by offering the fruits of their experience to their juniors. Oxford is unusual among great universities in conducting so much of its business democratically. It is what makes some of us happier to work here than in many other places where we could otherwise find employment. It is characteristic of democracies that many votes go against the wishes of the government, and it is characteristic of most governments that they suppose the reason they lose votes is their opponents are out of touch. I doubt in fact that it will make any difference at all to Congregation to restore the voting rights of members of faculties up to the age of 75. It certainly will not make enough difference one way or another to warrant insulting them in the first place by depriving them of those rights.
I beg to move.
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The more important question is whether people who are entitled to attend Congregation were excluded by the watchdogs or have since been dropped from the list of members. In the emended statutes, clause 1 of Title XIV, Section III, on the Composition of Committees, defines the word `committee', rather oddly, to include Congregation but not the faculties. Clause 2 provides that no person serving as a member of a committee while not holding a university or college post shall continue to serve on that committee, thus depriving of membership of this present `committee', Congregation, former holders of such posts upon retirement. But Title II, Section II, on the Composition of Congregation, still lists, as category (5) of members of Congregation, `the members of the faculties'. This appears flatly to contradict the provision of Title XIV, Section III, since members of faculties are still to remain members of those faculties after retirement: the new statutes are therefore ambiguous. Furthermore, Section II lists, as category (11) of members of Congregation, `every person who was a member of Congregation under the statutes as they stood on the day before this statute was approved by Her Majesty in Council for as long as he or she possesses the qualification which entitled him or her to membership on that date'. This surely provides unequivocally that members of faculties (even if not Emeritus Professors) who had retired before the new statute came into effect but were under 75 remained members of Congregation. Yet many people in this category were barred from entering the Sheldonian, and all have now been struck off the list of members of Congregation.
We are asking you to vote for the present resolution, which would restore the status quo ante. We are not doing so merely in order to clear up the mess created by a piece of ill-drafted legislation. We are doing so because we believe that the intention of the legislation was thoroughly misconceived in the first place. Council's reasoning, as published, was that `once members of staff have retired, they are inevitably less in touch with the central activities of the University than when they were in post'. (You will recognise the style.) It is not inevitable at all. A colleague who retired at the same time as I, and now finds his name deleted from the roll of members of Congregation, told me that, at the request of his faculty board, he last year gave a term's course of lectures and also marked a hundred Finals scripts; others supervise graduate students and examine D.Phil. candidates. Those who have retired do not do such things for the derisory remuneration they receive. In any case, the question is not whether they are to some degree less in touch with those `central activities', but whether they become so far out of touch with them as to lose the right to have opinions about matters before Congregation and hence disqualified from voting on them. How do members of Council suppose they themselves will think and act when they reach retiring age? Do they expect to think, of the University, `I need not concern myself about that institution any more'? If so, they will be highly exceptional: the overwhelming majority of those who retire continue to care deeply about what happens to the institution to which they have given decades of their lives, and especially at a time when so much is happening to it. They are not annoyed, but glad, that, when it comes to research assessment, they are regarded as still contributing by their publications to the University's central activities. Those of them who live in Oxford remain in touch with younger colleagues in their colleges and departments or sub-faculties. They keep themselves informed about what is happening by talking to members of their colleges, in which they continue to lunch or dine. Many of them still attend, as I do, lectures, seminars, discussion groups, or even sub-faculty meetings, and learn what is going on from conversation with colleagues whom they meet there. They still read the Oxford Magazine and even glance at the Gazette as long as it goes on being delivered to them. They do not drop in to Congregation as a cheaper refuge from the cold than the cinema, and frivolously cast their votes at random on matters of which they know nothing: remaining as conscientious as they were when they were `in post', they would not vote on anything about which they felt themselves to be uninformed.
Throughout human history, there has been a belief, no doubt erroneous, that age confers wisdom. We do not hear of a tribe governed by a council of youngsters, or even a council of the middle-aged, but by a council of elders. Our Council is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the times, and rejects such traditional superstition; but it is wrong if it believes that the opinions of people above the age of 65 are of less value than those of people below it. Possibly the former may have lost some of the boldness and flexibility of thought of those younger than themselves, though I see little evidence of that; but there is no absurdity in thinking that longer experience has taught them some lessons that others may not yet have learned. Barring them from participating in the decisions of Congregation will not improve the quality of those decisions in the least degree.
There is also a consideration that some will dismiss as sentimental and therefore irrelevant; but I do not think that the effect on people's feelings is of no account. In Italian and American universities, retirement is tapered: duties are gradually reduced. In Oxford, it has always been abrupt. The psychological effect of retirement varies greatly from individual to individual. Though I am not one of them myself, I have known many to whom retirement has been a deep shock. They cannot dispel the thought, `They have no use for me any more'; however irrational they may recognise this as being, they cannot shake it off. Hitherto, there have been a few things to mitigate this feeling: they have become Emeritus Fellows of their colleges, where they still have the right to attend the common table; they remain members of their faculties; and, up to now, they have remained members of the University's parliament. I remember Herbert Hart complaining to me, with great distress, that, on his approaching 75th birthday, he would no longer be allowed to attend Congregation. We are not proposing to extend membership beyond that age. But we are asking you to reverse what can only have seemed to many a brutal declaration that the University has no use for them any more.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, I beg to second the resolution.
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I first became interested in the question of the status of university committee members some ten years ago, when the issue of the desirability of a university nursery was on the agenda of one or two committees. The nursery site was withheld and the project held up for a number of years by the opposition of two older gentlemen, long since retired, who held firmly to the belief that women who had babies should stay at home. After listening to them for a while, I began to wonder what posts they held within the University and how old they were. I waited patiently for a number of years until they had to leave their committee posts and only then did the issue move forward. An extreme and personal example if you like, but one that actually cost the University a great deal of money. Therein lies the origin of my wish to oppose the resolution.
Congregation has been the legislative body of the University since the very beginning. Certainly by 1508 it had become the supreme legislative authority and even early in this century it was an outstanding example of how a university could indeed be governed academically by those who taught and administered within that university. To all intents and purposes it now constitutes the parliament of this University. Even the much criticised Coopers & Lybrand Report honours this concept. I quote: `The only part of the present structure which we take as given is Congregation and in particular its electoral rôle. It seems to us that Congregation is the epitome of the self-governing community of scholars and that this concept is close to sacrosanct within some quarters in Oxford.' Any suggestion of a diminution of the standing and the powers of Congregation has been rigorously resisted. It is all the more so when we face threats to our autonomy from outside, that is, the imposition of lay members on our government and the undermining of our independence and autonomy. What is the root of the respect in which Congregation is held and the desire to be a part of it? It is the same spirit that moves us in sustaining Parliament, namely, that those who make our laws should be affected by them; that those who are subject to those laws in their teaching, research, and administration should have a say in the making of them, they and nobody else.
How is the democratic principle affected by the inclusion in Congregation and in committees of those who have retired from the University? The argument put by Council is that retired members may be out of touch with the activities of the University today. Perfectly true; and, moreover, they may have old scores and unfinished business of five or ten years ago. If a retired member can stay in Congregation up to the age of 75, cumulatively there may be many who quit the University five to ten years ago. Think back, if you can, to 1987, ten years ago. The issues then were the death of the Chancellor and the election of Mr Roy Jenkins; the review of the UGC; freedom of speech laws; the newly established Development Office; and the allocation of entitled non-fellows to colleges. Moreover, we are not simply talking of those who may have retired ten years ago. Early retirement is a feature of our times. It is by no means unusual for someone to retire from the University at 55, take a part-time post at, for example, Oxford Brookes University, and if the movers of the resolution have their way, he or she could remain a member of Congregation for another twenty years. Hence my argument is not based on age discrimination but on the fact of retirement at any age. I say he or she, but in fact the retired group will contain many more men than women, because they are likely to have been appointed when colleges were single-sex. There are some 2,800 members of Congregation. There are about fifty retirements every year. If the retired remain with Congregation cumulatively for the next ten years, there could be some 500 retired persons plus Emeritus Professors exercising their rights. This is not entirely fanciful. Tuesday afternoon is a difficult afternoon for those actively engaged in teaching within the University (witness this afternoon) and failure to attend, except on an extraordinary occasion, has often been attributed to this. This consideration will not apply so readily to the retired. If my calculations are correct they could amount to 20 per cent of the potential voting body, whether by post or in person, and certainly more than enough to swing a vote needing 75 votes. This was the situation in the debate on the Business School which has precipitated today's vote.
It has been a source of criticism at each stage of the reform of university governance that decisions might be made by persons not engaged in the work of the University. I instance, in this case, the early twentieth-century discussions prior to the Asquith Commission. Our systems of governance are more under scrutiny today and the presence of those not engaged by the University (albeit that they may be teaching part-time for their faculty) is a point of vulnerability, especially when contrasted with the exclusion from Congregation of non-academic members of staff and members of the local community. If the one category, some might say, then why not the other? The analogy with Parliament cannot, of course, be pushed too far. It is worth noting that the national response to the proper use of the wisdom of the retired is to be found in the House of Lords. We have no such equivalent, except possibly Convocation, but one begins to see the usefulness of the House of Lords, even if it is not an argument for the retention of the hereditary vote as distinct from the life peers.
Power without responsibility is not desirable in itself, I would argue, and procedures and technicalities fade as objections before the vitality of the democratic principle involved. Yet it behoves us to look and see in what way the removal of the privilege of retired members was effected. The history is as follows. In Trinity Term 1992 the Chairman of the General Board reported to Council that the Board's Appointments Committee had taken the view that no person should serve on a university committee after having reached retirement age. The changes were approved by Congregation and announced in the Gazette on 26 October 1995 and for technical reasons referred to again in the Gazette on 7 December 1995. The retired category did not exercise the constitutional right they then possessed to oppose that change in Congregation. The legislation provided that retired persons should not be appointed to committees. It remains open to appoint them to membership of faculties and sub-faculties, year by year at the discretion of the faculty board concerned, up to the age of 75, but this membership does not carry with it membership of Congregation. The restrictions do not apply to the Chancellor, the High Steward, the Deputy Steward, the Counsel to the University, or the Clerks of the Market. Now is not the time and place to argue about that but their exclusion should not be taken as a gesture of approval. The faculty situation is distinct. Faculties remain in control of their membership and may determine this year by year. The rationale is that membership is needed for teaching and there may well be a substantial call on the retired to teach on a part-time basis, with consequent temporary membership. The link with membership of Congregation was broken in 1995 for the reasons I have already stated. Teaching on a part-time basis or being an Emeritus Professor is not a sufficient involvement with the business of the University to satisfy the democratic principles, whether we like it or not. University business now consists of far more than the giving of tutorials or the partaking of lunch.
It cannot be argued that no publicity was given to the change. Faculty board secretaries were informed; and the usual publicity was given in the Gazette, no more and no less than is given to all the other affairs of the University. It may well be that the layout of the Gazette is not conducive to clear understanding by casual readers. Nevertheless, it is the organ of information to which we are accustomed and it is clearer in its format today than it was in the heyday of many of the current retired. It is no excuse at law or in general that people do not read or understand the Gazette any more than it is to say that one does not know the law. We would give short shrift to a student who claimed not to know changes in the syllabus because he or she had not understood the examination decrees. Not only were the changes printed in the Gazette but in the issue of 7 December there was an invitation to contact the Senior Assistant Registrar if anyone had questions about Congregation.
There is no substance to the argument that the publicity given to the change was obscure. The explanatory note said that Council and the General Board were of the view that members of the academic staff should normally cease, with effect from the date of their retirement, to be eligible to serve on committees and other university bodies, expressly including Congregation. It cannot be argued that everyone affected by the Statutes should be individually notified of the effects of changes or that no changes can be made during the course of a working lifetime.
The other argument made is that retired fellows have been deprived of a `vested interest'. The answer to this is that there is, in this case, no vested interest and no solid argument of law in relation to it. Membership of Congregation is a right pertaining to involvement in employment. Indeed, it is arguable, strictly speaking, that it is not a right, even for those fully employed by the University, but rather a privilege correlative to involvement in the University. Put more simply, there are no rights but merely possibilities or eligibility for committees, and the University is free to change criteria for membership. Once one has passed beyond the situation of a contract of employment with the University, there can be no right to retain any particular privilege. There has been legal advice that the 1995 legislation is effective, both from an outside firm of lawyers and also from a most respected legal authority within the University. Even ongoing faculty membership does not create a vested interest in the formerly allied privilege of membership of Congregation, faculty membership being both a temporary and a separate matter.
The dilemma is this. We have to balance the achievement of a highly desirable objective with the wish not to hurt, and frustrate the expectations of, a distinguished group who have rendered valuable service and thought they could continue to do so.
Am I being too legalistic and am I risking the loss to Congregation of the wisdom of our older members? I can well understand that those recently returned from the States will have come across the concept of ageism such that there is no longer a retirement age at all in universities. Not a concept that would, I think, attract much following here, given the desirability of employment for younger academics and the difficulty of persuading the very old ones to relinquish the perhaps rather easier and less demanding posts held in American universities. The stories abound there of the bribery that has to be used to persuade older professors to relinquish their posts.
I have argued that there is no benefit to the University at large in the retention of the voting rights of older members and I do not see it as a strong argument that their supporters have been provoked into this resolution as a by-product of the bitter dispute over the Business School in a situation where every single vote counted. Congregation is renowned for upholding tradition. That may be the wisdom of the assembled dons and very often rightly so; but let it not be said that the desire to stop changes arises from the presence in large numbers of retired voters. As tutors and servants of the University, the retired have devoted their careers to the proresolution of the younger generation and the inculcation in them of the proper values. Their final gift to the University should be trust in the success of those efforts and the willing grant of space to their successors.
Finally let me apologise for raising unpleasant eresolutions. We all fear facing our ageing and the decline of power. We have respect for our older members and no doubt you will be thinking to yourself, she will regret this one day. Nevertheless these matters have to be faced and Congregation as an entity must preserve the widespread respect and affection which it enjoys by virtue of its membership.
Mr Vice-Chancellor, I beg to oppose the resolution.
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The reasons for the changes to the rules have been sketched by the Principal. If the University had not inherited the old position as it was before last year, an attempt to introduce it now would, I think, be seen as reactionary and eccentric. The explanatory note to the legislation has been quoted before. I will quote it again. It stated that `once members of staff are retired, they are inevitably less in touch with the central activities of the University than when they were in post'. This view is obviously accepted mutatis mutandis by the colleges. The Warden's college and Professor Dummett's college and mine do not routinely offer governing body membership to their more active or distinguished retired fellows year by year to the age of 75. But this, of course, would be the effect on the University of the passage of the general resolution. Life Fellowships went long ago, and one reason for their abolition was the view I have just quoted, that with time such people get out of touch. I do not think that the business of the University and of the colleges is so very different. The responsibilities of self-government and the demands on the self-governing in the two communities are very similar. Similar rules should therefore apply to governing body membership. It has obviously been accepted by colleges for a long time, and by the new rules on membership of Congregation it is now accepted by the University, that the legislators should be those who will have to implement and live with the decisions they take. That provides the clear link between membership of Congregation and the holding of an office in the University or of some offices in the colleges.
Professor Dummett circulated a note last week asking for support for his views in today's division. No copy was sent to me, but my wife received one under the mistaken impression that she was a Fellow of Queen's and therefore presumably very much open to persuasion. It is obviously not only the University Registry that has trouble with the accuracy of its lists. In his note he says, and he has essentially repeated this argument today, that those with forty years' service or more do not at once, on retirement, become out of touch. Not all Emeritus Professors have Professor Dummett's length of service or experience. I know of several who if they survive to 75 will have spent more time as Emeritus than they will have spent in Oxford before retirement. With the new retiring age anyone elected from outside to a professorship after the age of 55 and surviving to 75 will be in that position. The Principal of St Anne's has pointed out in her speech even stranger, indefensible anomalies in the old rules if they are applied to those who retire earlier. But this is largely to miss the point. Some may remain `in touch' beyond the retiring age of 65, and some up to the old limit of 75 to Congregation membership, though I doubt it. But after a point there will be justifiable resentment from those still bearing the heat and burden of the day at the influence of their elders on university policies which affect them directly and their elders little, if at all. Council (and Congregation) decided last year that linking retirement from office with retirement from Congregation avoids this problem, is consistent with the practice of colleges, with that of the professions and business, and with almost every activity outside this University. The continuation of faculty membership, as in the past, is a more suitable way for the influence of the retired to be felt. Professor Dummett also argued in his note, very much more controversially, that the retired would `hesitate to vote on matters on which they felt themselves uninformed'. I am sure that would be true in his case but how are we to hold all the others to it? Indeed, how much better off we would be if we could hold those not yet retired to it.
I think that the argument against the change that has been made today, that it is throwing away the experience of age, is wrong because it shows an ignorance of the real structure of influence in the University. Only the naive will think that that removal of a vote in Congregation from the retired will deprive them of all influence on the University's business. I recall, when I was Chairman of the General Board, a retired head of department who with the willing acquiescence of his colleagues wielded as much informal authority with the University as other members of his department. So much is done by casual conversation in colleges and departments in proposing and debating possibilities for reform; eccentric ideas are abandoned and sounder ideas pursued as a result of discussions, to which the retired contribute along with everybody else. And the most important part of the University's life still happily takes part at faculty and departmental level. Faculty membership continues after the changes which have been introduced, year by year to the age of 75 for those who are active in teaching or research, and their rights in discussion and decision on these matters are entirely unchanged. The faculty membership link with the wider responsibility for the central affairs of the University is another matter. It was in fact an acknowledgement of the unique importance in Oxford of membership of Congregation as the ultimate authority in our affairs, that led Council to restrict its membership to those active in every way in the business of the University. Can I say something now, not about the principle of the change, but about the way it was introduced? As the Principal of St Anne's has said, the legislative procedures were straightforward, in no way abnormal; there was nothing sinister, hole-in-the-corner, or defensive about them. There was a regrettable error in the drafting of the original proposal which was later corrected, again in the normal, straightforward, public way. When I first took an interest in university affairs I was surprised at this reaction of suspicion to so many initiatives of the central bodies; I now realise that it is nothing new, and I am sure healthy when kept clearly on this side of the paranoid. If there is any argument against the presentation of the legislation we are debating, it should be directed not just against this item but against nearly all proposals for new legislation and their presentation to Congregation through the Gazette. As we know, few working academics regularly read the Gazette beyond the pages with photographs, and many find the later pages require more expertise with statutory matters than is reasonable to expect in the normal academic. Hence the repeated cry of `Why were we not told?' Steps are being taken to make these later pages more `user-friendly' but they are never going to be easy reading. But frankly, rereading the explanatory note to the controversial statute, I must confess, and I am no lawyer, that I find the central intention expressed there very clearly put indeed.
Some have said in other fora than this that they were surprised by the content of the Proctors' notice on the front page of the Gazette about membership of Congregation just before the Business School debate. Some have said they were offended by its tone. I am sorry they should feel that. The content should not have come as a surprise, and I think (and I hope the Proctors will forgive me) that only those determined to be offended will not charitably excuse the tone of the notice as due to the over-zealousness of youth. Some have been further offended by errors in the list of members of Congregation used by the Proctors on that occasion. There have always been errors in these lists. But they should be taken as the mistakes of the University's conscientious but occasionally fallible staff, not as the evidence of blundering or bad faith on Council's part. But I hope that one very useful outcome of this debate will be to clear the air on those and other matters, and reaffirm the legitimacy of Congregation's decision of last year.
There is, of course, a tendency for the affairs of Congregation and particularly its rare meetings to attract the elderly rather than the young, and this meeting is no exception. The recent doubling in size of the professoriate would in time double the number of Emeritus Professors you might see here if you go back on the changes of last year, and we shall be greyer still. I think we should be content to hand over the responsibility of membership of Congregation on our retirement to those still involved in every part of the University's work, to those who will have to live with the results of their decisions, and to those who are bound to have a more immediate knowledge than we will have of the University's needs.
I second the opposition to the general resolution.
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In 1940, it was just as well that a retiring age had not been enforced to prevent Mr Churchill from being a parliamentarian. He was 66. On the other side was a brisk, reforming `Leader' glorying in his 51 years, with much of his country's youth behind him—soon to be joined by Mussolini, in his prime at 57 but not, perhaps, possessed of a monopoly of human wisdom. One reason why this nation's war effort succeeded was that our 66-year-old did not think women should all stay at home to mind the children, but encouraged them to make munitions and join the forces. His younger opponents held different views. It is not always the older people who advocate wrong and impossible opinions.
There are stirring examples in history of parliamentary assemblies benefiting from the advice of their most experienced members. Are you surprised? The aged Appius Claudius the Blind, carried on a litter into the Roman Senate in 280 BC, successfully urged the Romans to resist the invader Pyrrhus. In 1777--8, the Elder Pitt at 69, crippled with gout, struggled repeatedly to the House of Lords to denounce the government's policy of continuing the war with America. `You cannot conquer America. Your attempts will be forever vain and impotent.' He needed help to stand for his last speech, when he had only a few more days to live. He was not prevented from having his say by the prime minister of the day, whose policy has been much criticised ever since, but who was universally held to be a charming and agreeable man. (His name was North.)
We are a parliament of academics. The arguments for our members retaining a vote and a voice, for some years after retirement, are stronger than for any other vocation. When an employee of Coopers & Lybrand—that firm which has just been extolled for being so much in favour of this Congregation, so convinced of its value—retires from its staff and is no longer `in post', he stops giving welcome advice to businesses on management, and rather less welcome advice to universities on `governance'. For him, from now on, the greenhouse and the potting shed, the bridge tables and the golf links. But our work, in all its fascination and variety, continues. No longer bustling from lecture hall to committee room, those who have retired from professorships and tutorships continue with their academic pursuits, remain members of our academic community, and can still serve it in many ways.
Their advice will sometimes be especially valuable for two reasons. One is that they will not be worrying about proresolution exercises. Like all of us when Oxford was still a true Republic of Letters, they will be empowered to give an independent opinion without fear or favour. Another is that, granted respite from the heat of the day, some of them will have leisure even to read the small print of the Gazette. I am sorry I recently failed to do so myself; but I plead with my betters, if not my elders, that this was because I was already doing, to the limits of my puny strength, all the university work I could. That is why many of us miss things. It is a shame; but no one can be fully advised, fully informed, fully occupied with every aspect of the life of this University. Those, however, who at last have a little more leisure to think and write in their chosen subjects, will also have a better opportunity to study the implications of the proposals before Congregation and to alert us. The hard-pressed, busy young sexagenarians on Council and you, Mr Vice-Chancellor, will yourselves, in a few years' time, be in a better position for far-sighted reflection on what concerns us most. In supporting this resolution, I look forward to your retaining a vote and a voice, and to your exercising that voice, occasionally and with discretion, from the floor of this House.
Ballot papers for the postal vote are being sent to members of Congregation and must be returned to the Registrar not later than 4 p.m. on Thursday, 20 February, the date fixed by Mr Vice-Chancellor for holding the vote.
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