What a difference a year makes. This time 12 months ago, USI faced membership referendums in UCC and UCD and the air was thick with talk of presidential impeachment.

Today, the union seems to be entering the new millennium on a high note as a comprehensive rethink nears its culmination. USI-affiliated colleges are being asked to make submissions on the national union's constitution. as the final part of a review process launched after the near-meltdown which occurred last year.

Other areas, such as training and regionalisation, have already been looked at - but the constitution, which brings together the union's aspirations and structures, was always going to have to be the final aspect of USI to be re-examined. USI president Philip Madden chairs the constitutional draft review group. He says that the original plan was to bring an entirely new constitution to the union's annual national congress in April. This idea has now been dropped, because, he says, from all the submissions and soundings they have received so far, "nobody has said `get rid of the constitution'." Instead, what is needed, he says, is an operation to close off loopholes in the constitution and generally tidy it up.

As a result of this, submissions are being sought from all unions so that series of recommendations can be presented to the next meeting of the union's national council next month.

"We want to get the feeling of everybody across the organisation on these areas and the national council will then hammer them out and bring it on to congress," he says. Only the congress can actually change the constitution, but Madden hopes that by having well explained and considered proposals ready, the process can go smoothly. One area which is still outstanding - and which was a source of conflict last year - is the voting entitlements of Northern colleges, which are both members of USI and the British National Union of Students (NUS). Under present arrangements, Northern unions pay subscriptions to fund the NUS and USI joint Northern office. Because the rates for NUS membership are so high (around £5.50 per student, as opposed to about £2.25 for USI), the number of students the universities actually paid for was significantly fewer than the number they actually had.

Madden says a proposed "dual point of registration" system was accepted by the national council last December. Under the new scheme, Northern colleges would receive full credit for the number of students they actually have when it came to votes in USI. This would remove the anomaly in their constitutional position, whereby Queen's and UU had fewer votes than they were entitled to, but Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education had the largest block vote in the union.

The council also agreed with a proposal to renegotiate the fees paid by Northern colleges to a level on a par with other USI fees.

Another area of contention and confusion in the past was the grievance mechanism. This was used last year, but there was confusion and, Madden says, "it is difficult to adjudicate on your peers". Submissions still are coming in on reforming this area, Madden says. The question about the grievance procedure, he says, is "how to make it independent and put it into constitutional speak". Athlone IT students were due to have a referendum early this year disaffiliating from USI, but have pulled back from this.

The move is of special importance as it comes in a year when students in institutes of technology have formed their own body, with students in Cork and Waterford expressing aspirations to take on many of the roles which USI currently fills.