Adelaide Student Politics

The meeting on April 10 was certainly a lot livelier than most meetings, largely due to Dilan Moragolle, Board Member and President of the Overseas Students’ Association (OSA). Dilan appears to be concerned that the SRC’s International Officer will take over all advocacy for international students (seeing as that’s their job), making the OSA redundant as an advocacy body.

To give some background, the Student Representative Council (SRC) has been formed to replace the old Students’ Association. The SRC will have 9 representative officers:

• The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Officer
• The Educational Officer
• The Environmental Officer
• The International Officer
• The Postgraduate Officer
• The Queer Officer
• The Satellite Campus Officer
• The Welfare Officer
• The Women’s Officer

The Environmental Officer, the Education Officer and the Welfare Officer can be any student who is willing to join the Union; the other officers must be members of the group that they represent (That is, the Women’s Officer must identify as a woman, the Postgraduate Officer must be studying at a postgrad level, etc).

Taking this into account, Dilan’s concerns about the OSA’s continued validity seem fair enough. What confuses me is that Dilan appears to see this as an attempt to ruthlessly destroy the OSA, rather than a way of ensuring dedicated advocacy for overseas students (something that the OSA appears not to be committed to providing this year, as is covered below). To prevent this from happening, he put forward a motion that the International Students Officer would have to be chosen from the OSA’s executive committee, rather than by general election as all SRC reps will be from 2009 onwards.

As I see it, the OSA has functions besides advocacy, including a socialisation aspect in introducing international students to Australia, making the OSA necessary as an affiliate. In fact, Simone McDonnell told the Board that Dilan had said that the OSA would not be budgeting for advocacy at all this year, preferring to run events for international students instead. So in essence the OSA will continue on doing exactly what it is doing, while the SRC would take over advocacy (…next year, probably. This year appears to be primarily devoted to house keeping). The fact that this concern about advocacy has only surfaced now that it threatens Dilan’s authority has also led to suggestions that Dilan is actually worried about his power far more than the actual provision of advocacy.

At times, Dilan appears to simply be erratic, the best example being that he voted against his own motion in the end, leaving Ellen Ketteridge’s sympathy vote the only one in favour of the motion (Paris Dean, Justin Kentish and Matthew Taylor abstained from the vote). Dilan also seemed to have difficulty communicating with the rest of the board, and frequently resorted to yelling at anyone who disagreed with them, or accusing them of lying.

Possibly as a result of Dilan’s vocal approach to the evening, Lavinia was very strict with the standing orders…most of the time. Dilan was forced to observe the limits on the number of times a director could speak and the duration of speeches, as were most of the other Board members. Rhiannon Newman, on the other hand, appeared to be a law unto herself, and interrupted whenever she felt like it, for as long as she wanted to without the Chair doing anything about it. If Lavinia is going to enforce these rules properly (which I hope she does – it was nice to get through business at a decent pace), she ought to apply them to everyone, including friends.

The other major piece of business that was passed at the meeting was the so-called ‘Barratt Clause’, which made it so that the President can claim their honoraria in fortnightly instalments after they have served that fortnight, or in a lump sum at the end of their term. This makes it much harder for any president to take their honoraria without earning it from now on.

Finally, the funding agreement was brought up once again at the meeting, and we were told once again that it is just about to be signed off. The thought occurs (and judging by comments by Board members, has occurred to others) that now the Uni has a functioning student union, they have no reason to hand over the money and lose all the interest that they’re getting on it. I can only hope that I can report some progress on this next time.