Adelaide Student Politics

What follows is an extremely critical account of the AUU Board. Given that fact, consider it an editorial, and treat it with a grain of salt.

The Board Committee Meeting of the 13th of November took place right in the middle of the exam period. Nonetheless, thirteen of the eighteen elected board members were present. Missing were all of Passion (international students faction), and the Liberals, being Sonja Jankovic and recently-elected Board VP John Bowers (studying? An apology would have been nice).

Opening business concerned the financial member numbers. Membership is to stay at $20 next year, with a target of 3000 members. Mark Joyce raised his concerns as to whether students would join in Semester 1, knowing that by Semester 2 they would be forced to pay for student services anyway (See Money Money Money). Not a bad question, but naturally, one scoffed at by Board President Lavinia Emmett-Grey and AUU General Manager David Coluccio. Truly, when will Mark learn that he’s not welcome on Board? He should just stop coming, after all, the Internationals and Liberals certainly got the message. Democratically elected, like that matters for anything.

But enough fooling around. The purpose of the meeting was to approve the new SRC constitution. Complaints about the language and content had been forwarded to Paris Dean (current SRC President, Activate), who worked systematically through the objections. Most of them were thoroughly boring, and I won’t abuse your patience by going into detail here, see the Board minutes if you care (when they’re eventually released, they’ll be here)

There were only three objections I can struggle to make of interest for the general reader. One concerned the rural officer. Many of the officer positions on SRC (Queer officer, Women’s Officer etc) are filled by one who ‘identifies’ as a member of that minority, as evidenced by a statutory declaration. A guy running for women’s officer would have to sign a piece of paper saying he identifies as a women. This tends to discourage those who would run for shits and giggles. However, a spirited discussion arose when discussing how to limit who can run for ‘rural’ officer. Oh yes, Board can’t decide on who is a women, or who is disabled, that would be discriminatory. But arbitrarily limit the rural position to those who have lived in the country for however months in the past three years, that Board can certainly do. I don’t care about the rural officer position, and I doubt you do either. However, the hypocrisy of Board amused me.

The next issue of contention was that of whether the SRC should be able to pay honoraria. All agreed that the financial situation of the SRC right now ruled this out, but many of those in the factions wanted to leave the option open for future years. Yasmin Freschi (Independent) was strongly opposed to this, feeling that the SRC should be run on a strictly volunteer basis. I haven’t spoken to her about this, but no doubt she feared a return to the days when people ran for the SAUA merely because it was a cushy job.

The final, and biggest, disagreement in Board concerned whether the SRC Constitution should explicitly recognize the native Aboriginal tribe who existed on the land before the University. Aaron Fromm (Independent) led the charge on this, arguing that this was a polarizing issue, and as such, native title should be recognized as a policy of the SRC, as opposed to being prominently displayed in the Constitution. He claimed that the SRC should be representative of student views, and not the political leanings of those who held the majority on Board. Lavinia responded by saying that recognizing the Aboriginal ‘owners’ was standard procedure, and would single the AUU out if it failed to include it in its constitutions. Furthermore, she said this was an issue that the Vice Chancellor was very passionate about, and that this was further reason why it must be included. She disputed Aaron's statement that it was a polarizing issue, saying that most Australians had no problem with it. Also, she said it would be ‘racist’ not to include it. Not that she was calling Aaron a racist, but, well, moving on. A caricatured discussion on the issue followed. Mark Joyce asked how singling out one group was an advancement of ‘equality’. Rhiannon Newman (Activate/Labor Left) responded to this by explaining positive discrimination. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Left consider Mark stupid. He hasn’t shown signs of it getting to him, yet. But back to the Aboriginals. This issue was so poker hot that they left it to the end. When they got back to it, Paris Dean (Activate) suggested that agreement would not be forthcoming, so they went straight to a vote. The motion to give Aboriginal recognition was passed, with Yasmin, Mark and and Aaron asking to have their dissent noted.

In the closing issues, Lavinia dropped a bomb on the Board. She claimed that NUS wanted a list of the chosen delegates to represent Adelaide Uni by tomorrow, and that as such, it had to be decided now. This was the responsibility of Board, as elections had been cancelled due to legal irregularities earlier in the year (see No Elections?!). Lavinia produced a list of six names (Robert Fletcher, Fletcher O’Leary, Lavinia Emmett-Grey, Simone McDonnell, Andrew Anson and Daniel Bills). Paris at this point reminded those gathered that this was not a vote on whether or not the Union would seek NUS affiliation, that being dependent on costs which NUS had yet to release. Gobsmacked, the independents on Board watched as Pulse and Activate voted for the list. And is it any surprise that the two ‘rival’ factions were in perfect agreement, having received three delegates apiece? Of those ‘voted’ (I’ll call it democratic when those who had a personal interest abstain from the vote) on a free holiday, Fletcher O’Leary and Daniel Bills had not even expressed an interest in being NUS delegates prior to the election being cancelled. Calling the whole thing dodgy is an understatement. In a stroke, Lavinia and her Activate friends, as well as the Pulse faction, have shown that despite being largely fresh-faced, they are still capable of following in their factional-hack predecessors footsteps. Ironic, this time last year David Wilkins was in a lot of trouble for such behavior. Not being accountable with Board was what got him sacked. If a just standard were applied, Lavinia would be in hot water now. No doubt she let those in her faction know what had happened, and it is highly possible that the NUS deadline sprung on her just like she said it did. The fault lies in the list presented. It represented those who, by banding together, held the balance of power, not those who were elected. But as long as noone's watching, why not?

Oh, and this is as much the absentee's fault as it is the factionalists by the way. If everyone elected even bothered just to show up, such stunts would never suceed.