The recent proposal passed by the Executive Committee on Tuesday 28th January has been rushed through the system and put into place without any student body consultation; this petition calls on the Executive Committee to overturn that decision and put it to the student referendum it should have had from the start.

As many students have pointed out, the FTOs are elected to be our representatives in the Student's Union, but this petition argues that changes made to their own structure - to the way in which the FTOs themselves operate and thus the options available to students for their representation - should not be decided without the full breadth of democracy available to us. These changes are going to affect what FTO positions are available and who they are responsible for representing within the student body; such changes demand that students themselves are involved in that decision. Regardless of how desperate they might be to fix the admittedly dysfunctional system we currently have, a rushed proposal of changes that have not taken into account or even asked for the opinions of those groups it affects is not the solution.

The students of this University should not suffer or be denied a voice just because members of the Executive Committee didn't leave themselves enough time to take this decision properly.

We want the processes of democracy to be carried out, we want to be able to voice our opinions in an open forum and we want to have the debates and discourse this proposal deserves before any changes are implemented. If that means the changes cannot be made for this coming FTO elections, then so be it. The students of this university are not responsible for shouldering that blame.

To the Executive Committee: give this change the time it needs and don't let those desperate to pass changes quickly get in the way of doing what the students originally elected you there to do - what's best for everyone.