Adelaide Student Politics

We believe that On Dit is an important Adelaide Uni institution, and that one of its essential functions is to bring (almost) up to date news on student issues to the student body. Admittedly it's always a few weeks out of date, but we try. This belief has led us (by which I mostly mean me) to hold off with articles until they have been published in On Dit, rather than undermining the magazine by publishing the same work somewhere else first. To make up for this, we try to give you, our dear reader, a more in depth insight into what's going on with the Board and, in the case of all the directors who read this, where we think you need to pull your socks up.

Now that's all clear, I'll bring you the events immediately preceding the deadline of mid-February, with impending expansion and commentary by M Robin, who could actually get to the meeting.

The issue at hand in AUU politics at the moment is the selection of a new Vice President before the beginning of the new academic year. While it doesn’t beat the re-election of the President at this time last year, it’s still impressively quick! Former Vice President John Bowers was voted out of his position by a strong majority, after he missed all but 1.5 meetings and submitted only one report (though that one could never be construed as in contempt of board, John argued, unlike the chicken chowder recipe that was submitted last year). While this was largely a result of other -very commendable- commitments, Board decided that a more committed VP would be preferable. The major Vice Presidential role, chair of the Finance and Development Standing Committee, must be elected at the meeting after it is vacated, so an acting Vice President was selected, giving a strong indication of who is to be elected as the long term VP in March.

The two candidates were Jianbin Jiang, better known as Strong, and Aaron Fromm. Strong cited his finance studies and his belief in spending every dollar wisely in his favour, and Aaron countered with reference to his economics and finance courses, experience as treasurer of the film society and plans to have the F&DSC meet monthly. Both pledged to put in the necessary work to make the Budget happen by mid-year. After the ballots were counted, Strong was announced as the acting VP, until a full election within the Board can be conducted in March.

The Union has started this year’s round of governance overhaul with a Board-style meeting in-camera (read: secret), convened to address the General Manager’s report on the Board’s failing governance style. While everyone went in there with extremely good intentions, so far the outcome appears to have been primarily hot air. One participant who was around when the same process took place in 2005 mentioned that they were seeing a lot of parallels between the outcomes of this session and the decisions that weren’t enacted last time. Director Andrew Anson broke in-camera rules when he left to inform those waiting outside that they’d decided Andres Munoz-Lamilla (Sports Association President) was ‘mad’.

Regarding On Dit’s impending move (who said we weren’t self-obsessed), Board member Fletcher O’Leary put forward a motion that ‘Board move On Dit, by force if necessary, to its traditional home in the basement of George Murray’. He caved to pressure and removed ‘by force if necessary’, and the motion was passed with one dissent (if only the media had a vote). In the Unibar afterwards, Fletcher told On Dit reporter Myriam Robin that he wanted to have ‘union thugs’ do the job.

Embarrassment of the Week: Andreas’s drunken buffoonery.

For skulling multiple jugs of beer in the corridor, bothering the Board with comments ranging from pertinent to highly pointless and driving one staff member chastise him loudly in the corridor.