Theatre Group AGM tonight. There was an antagonistic moment where the president had to be forced to allow the membership to vote on a proposal that he didn't agree with (the proposal wasn't passed anyway), and it did go on for three and a half hours, but that wasn't the worst bit.

Worst bit of the night:
Lorna stood for election as Publicity Officer. She was up against Davey T, one of the current exec, and all-round popular guy. She put in a hell of a good showing, Lorna probably was the better candidate, and apparently the vote was close, but Theatre Group's as cliquey as hell. She lost, in other words.

She was really upset and walked off into the darkness. She'd already asked me to give her some space if she did that, so I let her go.

Later, in the Any Other Business section of the meeting, Chris Parkinson (techie and part-time luvvie) proposed that Theatre Group set up a non-exec position of webmaster, since Davey T's only just started learning HTML, and Lorna's far better than he is in about six different programming languages.

Me and Kimball (sp.?) found her after the meeting to give her back her rucksack and jumper, that she left at the AGM. When we mentioned Chris's proposal, she said Theatre Group could go fuck themselves and announced she was dropping out of uni.

The main reason she was staying on next year was so that she could do techie stuff with Theatre Group, in particular the Publicity job.

Now, combined with the fact that her department's screwing her over bad style (see below for my interpretation of events), she doesn't see any reason to stay on until the end of her course, let alone next year.

Dammit, one of my closest friends, someone I care more about than anyone else at uni, and she ends up dropping out of her degree three months before it ends.


Why her department's screing her over:
Lorna handed in some work (from her end of year report) to her supervisor, for him to mark. Usually, he gets work back to students the day after, but it's now been over a week. The final deadline's this Friday. She talked to her tutor, he wasn't interested. She went to the head of department, he wasn't interested. She went to the course secretary, who booked her an appointment with... get this, the Student Councilling Service?!?!

Knowing what they'd say, she kept the appointment and yes, they said it: 'Nothing to do with us. Talk to your department, or maybe LUSU.'

Lorna doesn't see how LUSU can help, since the deadline's rushing closer, and neither did I at the time.

I've just sent her an email advising her to go to the Ed & Welfare Officer anyway. With the Union on her side, she could either persuade the department to cut her some slack, or put in an official complaint about her treatment.

They can't push back the deadline for her, but they could always get the markers to cut her some slack. Dammit, she deserves it.