My apologies for the delay in posting this...
Presences: Gwyneth Llewelyn, Patroklus Murakami
Since under the last approved procedures there is a quorum with the presence of the Dean and one Chair, the meeting was started with the following agenda:
Approving the request for a new forum group for the New Guild;
Reviewing Pelanor Eldritch's application for membership in the SC;
Election of the new Dean.
Gwyneth also introduced for discussion a new proposal for selecting SC members.
On the first topic, the SC had, on previous meetings, decided not to grant new group forums for citizen's associations, on the grounds that the public CDS forums are of an institutional and public nature, and they should not be used for private use.
However, more and more private associations are being chartered by the Representative Assembly as, effectively, Non-Governmental Organisations, providing services for the public, even if these organisations are either private or, in some cases, private/public partnerships.
Creating NGOs for the public good is deemed to be, by legislation, a service worthy for the CDS as a whole. In that regard, although these organisations are neither "Government" nor "political" in nature, they have, nevertheless, a public interest, as recognised by a charter approved by the RA.
The SC thus reviewed its previous deliberation on the matter and decided to revert its position: so long as an organisation in the CDS is duly granted a charter as NGO by the RA, it should be considered as being worthy of having its own group forum, if they so desire. Institutions like the Neufreistadt School, the Museum of Contemporary Arts, and the New Guild are, thus, entitled to request their own group forums and this request should henceforth be granted to them.
So far, the New Guild has requested publicly and formally the creation of a new group forum which the SC will endeavour to activate as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, Patroklus also noticed that the current group structure is growing and has a lot of almost empty forum groups, and a public consultation should be launched to suggest its reformulation: the ultimate goal will be not to have an ever-increasing number of group forums, but instead focus on the ones that are actively used by the citizens.
On point two, Pelanor's application was considered, and Gwyneth suggested that it should follow the guidelines established on point four.
On point three, it was noticed that there is currently only one member of the SC who is elegible for the office of Dean — since sadly, for the past months, Fernando Book has not been available, and Patroklus, due to his election to the RA, has no voting power in the SC and is not elegible. Gwyneth thus accepted the office of Dean of the SC once more.
The last point, opened to discussion in the public forums, as well as during the SC meeting, did not meet with much public opinion, neither for or against it.
Thus, it was approved to allow any five citizens of the CDS, who have been a member for at least a RA term (six months), would be able to formally propose a candidate for appreciation by the SC as a new member (who, in turn, would also need to be a citizen of the CDS for at least a RA term or six months). In the same manner, any five citizens of the CDS would also be allowed to present a petition to the SC to remove any of its members from office.
It was generally believed that, as far as the ultimate decision for accepting a candidate remains at the SC, the new mechanism for selecting potential candidates would not interfere with the SC's current rights and duties. In the case of a new candidate, the SC will still deliberate by majority to accept a new member or not; similarly, in the case of a petition for removing a current member of the SC, the Chairs, by a supermajority vote of 2/3 of its members, would decide to suspend that member from the SC or not.