Campaigning for a Referendum
To ensure Birkbeck Students' Union are free and fair, the below rules have been made to ensure this.
What is campaigning for a referendum?
Students who feel passionately about a certain outcome of the referendums should campaign. This means students can create materials or activity encourage students to vote in the favour they would like to see. Students who are campaigning must not get involved with the voting process for example the vote must be conducted in private, not with campaigners around.
Campaigning can be in person or online. In-person could include physical advertising materials (such as posters/badges etc.), stalls and events. Online campaigning can be using social media or chat groups, emails and websites (GDPR must be adhered to).
All campaigners must submit a campaign plan to su-elections@bbk.ac.uk before undertaking any campaigning (online or in person).
What's a campaign plan?
A campaign plan should include:
- Names/Student ID numbers of who is campaigning (if a team of students, all those involved need to be included).
- If a society or sports club committee please put details
- What referendum you are campaigning for
- What result in the referendum are you campaigning for
- Plan for campaigning in person (do you plan to run stalls?, Do you plan to speak in class? Do you plan to create posters?etc)
- Plan for campaigning online (What online channels do you plan to use? any social media accounts that are made for this purpose must be included, any chat groups you are using, and any artwork you are using must be included as well).
- Any physical Materials (posters/ badges/ t-shirts etc) or online materials (Artwork) must be included in the campaign plan.
- Dates/times when you will be physically campaigning on campus.
Rules around campaigning:
- All Campaigners must submit a campaign plan with the SU before taking on campaigning duties.
- Cannot use SU or University Logo on any Campaign Materials or online materials.
- Gifts, such as vouchers or any other incentive for voting must not be used.
- Campaigners must follow all Union and University policies and procedures.
- Campaigners can use mailing lists where lawful to do so. In most cases, this will require the consent of the people on the list.
- Campaigners may use WhatsApp or other messaging apps for campaigning to contact students within their personal network but must not ‘harvest’ students' personal telephone numbers from larger groups for bulk messaging purposes.
- No Campaigning can take place outside Voting hours.
- SU will not be reimbursing campaigners for campaign materials or any other items.
- No society funds/SU funds can be used to campaign.
- All general election rules must be followed.
- Campaigners must allow voters to cast their vote freely and must not communicate with voters in any way once they have begun to complete their ballot (allow the ballot to be made in secret).
- No external organisations or individuals can be brought to campus to help with campaigning without approval from the Students' Union (subject to guest speaker/prevent policies).
- Campaigners may use social networking sites for campaigning.
- No campaigners are allowed to campaign in a ballot station.
- No campaigners can leave any campaign materials in a ballot station.
- No campaigners should harass/bully or intimidate any students.
- No paid elected officers can campaign for the officer structure referendum (paid elected officers are subject to "paid elected officer rules" for the officer structure referendum).