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 Admittedly it's always a few weeks out of date, but we try.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.

In the interests of archiving and accurate reminiscence, below is the article published in On Dit, as written on January 26th. If the elementary and revision-style approach is frustrating, keep in mind that this was written to be the first column the freshers saw for the year.

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Everyone’s probably sick of hearing the basics about the AUU, so we’re going to skip the simple parts. If you want the ‘this is what the AUU is’ spiel over again (but more interesting than usual), check out adelaidestudentpolitics.blogspot.com for the details. Instead of the usual intro, here’s five of the big issues in front of the Board at the moment:

1. The National Union of Students and what this year’s proceedings say about the Board

Summer is always a busy time for student politics because it’s the time when six delegates from Adelaide University go to the annual forum of the National Union of Students – the national student advocacy body. This was very controversial at Adelaide this year because the elections for NUS delegate were cancelled and, instead of re-working the elections, or even having the Board appoint delegates from those who nominated for the position, Activate and Pulse – the two most active factions – chose six people to fill the role. Most of those who nominated originally weren’t aware of the meeting in which they could have been appointed until after it happened, and two of the appointees weren’t even on the original list of nominees. Coupled with the fact that the positions were split evenly between Pulse and Activate, this suggested the selection of delegates was about as far from fair and honest as you can get. The positions within NUS are powerful within the scope of student politics, and this forum determines the direction of many NUS policies for the year to come.

Furthermore, when two Board directors gave quotes to an ex-director for a press release on the issue (one director subsequently withdrew his comments before the press release went out), they were brought in front of the Board as having breached AUU policy, and a vote of censure against them was moved. The motion was defeated, but it was a telling response to an attempt to address the corruption within the AUU.

2. The Student Representative Council

In 2007, the Adelaide University’s student advocacy body, the SAUA, died of VSU and fiscal ignorance. The lack of an advocacy body has been keenly felt by the AUU, so there’s been a lot of work put into replacing it with a new, and obviously completely different, advocacy body. Last year’s office bearers were appointed mid-year to a body that legally didn’t exist, and then the elections for the positions were cancelled, causing some to lose faith in the prospect of an operating SRC in 2009. However, there has been a lot of progress with the SRC lately, with a constitution drafted and the successful selection of the SRC office bearers for 2009. It looks like the SRC may actually function this year, though no-one can say how well until we have the office bearers at work.

3. The Overseas Students Association

The OSA last year meandered, wandered and splonked its way through the year, earning endless ire from the Board directors at the time. The elections that were meant to be held in October were held with last-minute notice to a handful of people have been declared invalid (2008 was a good year for elections, clearly). While this is negative in itself, the AUU President, Lavinia Emmett-Grey, has been working with a group of dedicated individuals from the OSA to re-draft their constitution, so that it actually functions. If we get such a passionate and constructive group in after a supplementary election, the OSA might actually do something meaningful for overseas students this year and live up to its status as an affiliate.

4. The Vice President

In the last Board meeting, Vice President John Bowers was put on notice for his continual absences and failure to report to Board. While VPs in the AUU are congenitally underperforming, we’d at least received one written report and a recipe for chicken chowder from the previous VP at this point last year. By the time uni goes back, the Board may have decided to elect a new VP.

5. Reform?

While it’s not an immediate issue, the reform of the AUU governance structure and constitution will be a core issue this year. Constitutional reform is essential if the AUU is to ditch the history of botched operations and factional conflict that has plagued it. The cancellation of some of last years’ elections is simply the latest example of the problems this lack of reform has caused.