Adelaide Student Politics

Last year, I wrote a very rash email. I was frustrated by the complete lack of coverage of the student elections in an otherwise enjoyable On Dit, and in a fit of aggravation about the complete unaccountability of our student politicians, I said that if no one else wrote a column on student politics this year, I’d damn well do it!

Silly of me, really. Especially considering the amazing amount of change happening in the Board at the moment. As Ellen Ketteridge put it, it’s been ‘a bit crazy!’. The most obvious and important change is the impending funding agreement between the University and the Union Board. The basic agreement is that the University will give the Union $1.2 million in funding per year for the next ten years (2008 included) in exchange for the Union’s commercial operations at the North Terrace campus (the others having been sold earlier). This comes on the tail of unexpectedly poor takings by the commercial operations last year, leaving the Union with very light pockets.

The most upsetting part of this for the Board members was the concept of releasing Unibar into the hands of the University and, further on, the National Wine Centre, who are taking over all the com ops. Technically, the Unibar is actually the ‘Union Bar’, as well as an ‘important icon’ for campus culture. The idea of the Unibar turning into some sort of respectable ivy league style wine bar was too much for some board members, particularly Rhiannon Newman and Lavinia Emmett-Gray.

Futhermore, a bar run by a successful commercial business rather than the student board posed all sorts of problems in terms of student control of the venues. For instance, the provision of foods that fit various dietary requirements (vegetarian, halal, etc) could be at risk, and the prices might be driven up by the greedy monopolistic company that took over (this argument ignores the huge amount of competition and range that the proximity of North Terrace and Rundle Mall food outlets introduces to the matter. To me it seems that some of the problem was also the possibility that a place so full of Board members' good memories (and alcoholically-faded memories) could be changed in any way.

Sam Kirchner and Emilio Roberts were nominated to join the Union President, David Wilkins, in negotiating the agreement. After discussions, the University agreed reluctantly to leave the Unibar in the Board’s hands. However, once University representatives had explained to the Board the risks of keeping the Unibar (painful litigation in the case of a drunken incident or workplace accident) and the costs of making it a safe workplace (many thousands of the dollars that the Board doesn't have), the Board voted to hand the Unibar over after all. So all the food outlets on campus, as well as the function catering company, have been sold on. But the Board’s kept the income from the vending machines. There’s not really any risk in that one.

Confused yet? Can’t blame you for that. The end result is that the Board has $1.2 million to spend each year, plus what they get out of the vending machines, the sponsors and people buying membership. Out of that they have to fund the Affiliates with amounts specified in the agreement as well as take care of their own spending. For the Board, this is a wonderful achievement. Secure funding for the next ten years means that the Directors can get on with other, more useful things than looking for money The University representatives that watch over the Board can now relax in the knowledge that the Board and the Affiliates aren’t about to go broke while they’re not paying attention, or go under to pay off a bar maid who fell through the floor that the Board couldn’t afford to fix.

A second major event that came up early in the new year was somewhat more political. On the 7^th of December, David Wilkins received a letter written by Lavinia Emmett-Gray and signed by 14 of the 18 Board Directors (David’s faction, Pulse, were not approached). The letter politely informed David that the Board wanted him to retire from the bloody presidency now, please. There were a number of reasons that the Directors who signed the letter gave. Firstly, the Union’s budget for this year was read and approved by the University Council a week before the Union’s budget meeting. In itself, this is simply proper following of policy. However, the rest of the Board only received the budget at the budget meeting. They were also ignorant that it was the budget meeting until they got there.
“We were presented with the budget quite late in the piece…hours before we were expected to pass it”, Paris Dean said.
According to the minutes, the Board was presented with the budget during the meeting and were then given half an hour to read it.
“A lot of people were upset about that”, Paris told me.

Rhiannon Newman was somewhat more expressive on the topic. “I’m still not convinced it was a real budget”, she said, “It was presented on a Word document…and it didn’t have last year’s figures and how much we’d spent and things like that.”
“I’ve been on that board before, and we got it a week before and we had a chance to look through it and make changes where we thought were appropriate”

When I asked David about this, he explained “[the budget] is a living document, it’s a guide only”.
“While I’m very very apologetic to the board that it wasn’t presented, it certainly wasn’t me trying to shove a budget through the Board to try and get support for it”.

However, the budget was not the only issue that Board members had with David's presidency since the election. Other issues such as not meeting the expectations of the board in terms of openness and communication; an attempt to introduce email voting to the Board, with all votes privately going to David; and an unwillingness to work with the appointed negotiators on the funding agreement were all raised in the letter.

David has apologised to the Board, but believes that many of these problems were caused by the unique position he has been put in with VSU, the funding agreement and number of AUU staff that have quit in recent months.
“I’ve put my heart and soul into this organisation. It’s absolutely my livelihood, I absolutely enjoy every minute that I’m doing it” David said.
“I think rather than that being seen as an attempt to sack me I’ve looked at that as kind of a bit of a wake up call”.

Recent events, on the other hand, suggest that the Board members meant it to be much stronger than that. In a meeting on January 31^st, the Board voted to ratify all the votes from the inquorate meeting in December, which included the vote to have David suspended. This suggests that most of the rest of the Board is not entirely placated by David’s apologies.

Despite these disagreements, the Board Directors all sound really optimistic about the future of the Board this year. And I can see why. After years of factional stupidity, the Board is finally getting its act together! First and foremost, the election last year delivered a nicely balanced Board, with no more than five people to any factional group. This means that for at least a year it will be impossible for any faction to control the Board outright unless they resort to underhand tactics (which is not unknown for this board, even at this early stage).

The team that’s involved in actually getting stuff done looks like being a good one, too. Obviously I have no idea how O’Week will turn out yet, but everyone involved sounds very up beat and excited about it, and I can’t see Simone McDonnell doing anything but her best to make sure people have a good time – it’s what she thrives on. She’s even looking to revive Prosh this year, which I’m sure will excite everyone who’s wanted to be involved in the event as it was in the good old days before we made it to uni.

It also looks likely that the Board will have some money that they’re free to do what they want with this year. The ‘Loaded’ discount card that was produced last year was a joke, purchased only by Board Directors and the hacks who wanted to become directors this year. Whereas this year’s membership deal looks like it’s a winner. The $20 card that got me $40 off my gym membership bought my interest outright, but the $5 locker discount and the Ambassador Card could be useful, and the 10% discount at unibooks will definitely be handy (even though there would have been a unibooks discount in some way or another, even without the card).

Finally, there’s the less exciting but far more enduring work being done on strategic planning and constitutional change within the Board. The Board executive has already had one meeting to look at where the Board’s going in the future, figuring out what the business is going to focus on and how to set up a foundation to make that happen. The Board’s constitution is also up for an overhaul this year, with Matthew Taylor heading a sub-committee formed to overhaul the current Board constitution, which is currently a bit of an ‘everything to everyone’ document. According to Matthew, a streamlined constitution with rules and regulations forming the body of Board law would be far more effective. An attempt at streamlining the constitution was made in 2006/7 and passed by the Board, but I’ve been told it got lost when it was sent to University Council for them to sign off on it.

Like the Board members, I’m quite optimistic about this year’s Board. They seem to be a very passionate group, and most of them have shown that they can work together and really get somewhere with their projects. There are no CV sluts on this board, just very, very passionate individuals who want to do the best thing for the students at Adelaide. Good luck to them!