Posted 27th April
On the 6th of April, I was made aware that sports had finally decided on disaffiliation from the union. On the evening of the 8th, I spoke to Sports Association (SA) President Andres Munoz-Lamilla about the decision.
The first thing Andres was quick to point out was that this was the result of a long process. ‘We’ve got reports going back twelve years which say this will be better for sports performance, and is necessary to mitigate the political influence of the union’. The way Andres sees it, the Sports Association represents a wide range of people, not just students, and thus it being affiliated to the student union makes less sense than many of the other affiliates.
The first of January 2010 is the agreed upon date for the disaffiliation, the delay being necessary due to the SA employees being on union pay slips for this calendar year. Andres says that monetary arrangements have not yet been finalized, and so he cannot comment on the effect this will have on the SAs budget. This doesn’t seem to worry him: ‘We’re in a sound financial situation. We have a great history of running ourselves, as we don’t play the political game that the union plays’.
Indeed, political reasons seem to be the overwhelming factor in the decision to disaffiliate, on which Andres was happy to spend much time answering my questions. ‘Every August comes the elections. What happens then is that all the student politicians, who have no idea about sports, make promises that they can’t keep. They misled the student body for their own personal agendas. We’ve been waiting for the AUU to reform itself for four years, in order to let affiliates have more of a say in its running. Decreasing the board size from 18 to 16 members is the only difference they are willing to consider. This is not enough: they must let affiliates have a say’.
Apart from the politicization issue, the other concern seems to have been financial. In the 2008 budget, which was the first post-funding agreement budget, the SA got 14%. This figure was reached, according to Andres, without consultation with the SA. The next budget prepared by the union gave the SA an extra $100,000, increasing the pie given to sports by 57% in one year. Andres claims this is an indication of how underfunded sports was at Adelaide, saying that in all other G8 universities the percentage is much higher. Andres was eager to point out the role of current AUU General Manager David Coluccio, saying that ‘only he bought some sense into the whole thing’.
That said, given the SAs ‘sound financial situation’, one can understand the union being conflicted between giving it more money to bring it into line with the other G8 universities, and increasing funding to affiliates who are in worse situations, or to fund other student services. Andres acknowledges the financial difficulties faced by other affiliates, who are unable to pay for a full-time staff member to give the affiliate some institutional experience that stays past the election cycle. This has been a prime factor in the SA’s stability. ‘We’ve had six executive officers in a hundred years. We have stability, and are using other G8 universities as our benchmark’.
At the end of the day, the SAs decision seems to have been vastly supported by its council members, by its president, and by a host of reports which suggest that this course of action is best for the SAs future. As a comparison, few student unions in the country consider sport as part of their operations, and so this move, while revolutionary for Adelaide, appears to be following a national trend.
Posted April 8th
The Sports Association has, as of yesterday, disaffiliated itself from the union, after over a hundred years as an affiliate. This has been in the works for a long time, though I'm still suprised to see it finally happen. When I asked SA President Andres Munoz-Lamilla about it, he said that the unwillingness or inability of the union to change its current structure (to give affiliates more say its operations), as well as the better funding provided by the university, were key factors in the decision. More news on this shortly.
Affiliates, advocates and a pretty new website (oh, and perhaps a little referendum one day)
Despite only ten of the eighteen board members showing up to the final meeting (even after the September meeting was cancelled because of a lack of quorum), it was one of the most active meetings of the year, and still ran under time!
An impressive nine of the fifteen new board members showed up to take a look at what they were in for, and had a respectable amount of input into the proceedings.
Two affiliates – the Overseas Students’ Association (OSA) and the Postgrad Students Association (PGSA) were put on notice by the Board. Notice is reviewed at the next Board meeting and, if the Board sees no changes have been made to the state of affairs, it can result in the affiliate losing a share of its funding.
The OSA was brought up (again) for its dodgy reporting practices, on the basis that most of the reports to the Board this year are apparently identical. Not only does this mess the Board around, it also means that the University will have proof that the OSA has been negligent about their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs - the list of things they need to do that year to be assured of their funding) this year. As a result, there would be a strong argument to cut funding to the OSA next year, which would be extremely disappointing for the executive that is chosen at the AGM this month.
Having the PGSA put on notice was far more unexpected, and was a result of the affiliate completely overlooking at least one of their KPIs. There were also suggestions raised in the meeting that the PGSA hasn't been fulfilling its advocacy role towards students, which may have contributed to their being put on notice.
In a tour of the sports facilities recently, President Lavinia Emmett-Grey and Sports Association President Andreas Munoz-Lamilla discovered an enormous need for better upkeep of the university sporting facilities. One of the buildings in the parklands, for instance, was found to have what was thought to be asbestos in the ceiling, which was punctured. In addition, one the walls of the rugby rooms at Waite was so termite riddled that it provided a serious safety danger.
The Board also made some changes to the structure of some of the advocacy spaces – the Rainbow Room and the Women’s Room. These were brought under the banner of the SRC, and the Women’s Officer and Queer Officer respectively now have responsibility for keeping an eye on those spaces and advising the SRC when there’s any issues with that room. This means that there is now a specific individual that problems can be reported to, rather than the general confusion that existed this year.
The Board also voted to establish a new AUU website at a cost of $15 thousand dollars. Paris Dean raised concerns that the money might mean that the Affiliates would lose out on funding as a result, but ultimately the vote was passed. The plan is to have a new and more user friendly youth-focussed website established ready for term one next year. $15 thousand is reportedly seen as a conservative estimate for the website, and the tender that was decided upon has promised a high level of responsiveness to student needs. The site will be moved off the university server, but it is expected that advertising on the site will well and truly make up for the costs.
The other big motion that was passed during the meeting was to determine a more technological and less expensive way to run referenda, seeing as we need to have one (preferably soon) to instate the (currently unwritten) new constitution. Whoever said the Board doesn’t think ahead?
The two options that were discussed were to have voting over Access Adelaide or to have voting conducted on computers in specific ballot areas, in the manner of normal elections but without all the paper. The proponents of online voting argued that it would make voting far more accessible, making it easier for people to vote and allowing disenfranchised groups such as working students a better opportunity to have their say. Those in favour of electronic voting in person argued that it allowed groups to make their arguments for and against to voters in person and ensure that they were aware of the issues, as well as protecting against people sending out emails to their friends asking them to go straight to the site and vote without looking at the other side of the argument first. Despite the suggestion of a compromise – tents on the lawns from which voters could vote on Access Adelaide – the Board voted to have electronic ballots conducted in the same manner as our usual pen and paper elections.
The final motion for the current Board was one of thanks for the work done in the last twelve months and, really, it was a very depressing demonstration of the board’s capability. The Board bickered over exactly who should be mentioned by name in the motion and how it should be phrased. Eventually everything broke down into argument and it was presumed that some sort of motion had been passed, at which point everyone quickly made their escape.
And with that, I give my enormous congratulations to all the involved members of the 2008 Board who, in my personal opinion, have done relatively well. Good luck to all of you new Board members. I will be pleasantly impressed if you can surpass the caring and passion of those who were genuinely a part of the Board of 2008.