Adelaide Student Politics

Eighteen students, divided into three distinct factions. Give them the opportunity to vote from among their number a leader, an underling, and various other positions, and it's no surprise that the outcome can easily be guessed long before the vote.

But every now and then, someone breaks the rules. They don't vote as expected. Actually, they not only fail to vote as expected, they vote in direct contradiction of their pre-election promises to their teammates (allegedly). Their faction gets upset at them. Who'd have guessed. Knives are sharpened, friendships are broken, insults are traded ('kingmaker for the liberal party' being one of my favourites. I mean, on a University campus, ouch!).

What could prompt a member of the left-wing of student politics to vote for a Liberal party member, who ran for a position needing financial acumen by referring to their experience in the Army Reserves? Ran against a finance student with demonstrated experience in the stock market (still off the mark when it comes to dealing with planning the Unions finances, but getting warmer nonetheless).

International students on Union board something of an unknown entity. And the fact that Fei Tang was one cannot be ignored in assessing his fate. The Internationals rarely show much enthusiasm for the whole process (see 'Attendence Issues' (July 08) for their attendence record), or much of a political interest. It probably doesn't help that they tend to have made their mark in the Chinese students association, a body which rarely mixes with non-Chinese university students, or even other clubs. To put it simply, they're not candidates one likes to see on Board, as they seem to have no constituent apart from other Chinese students. It's sometimes hard to see them as anything other than resume-boosters at their most blatant.

But quietly. Such doubts cannot be easily voiced, especially by other members of the Board. Activate and Indy-Go (i.e. the 'Left') have shown themselves willing to strike deals with the International faction (they got there first I suppose). Such a deal may safely be assumed to have been made in exchange for Lavinia's presidency. President in exchange for Vice-President.

The candidate put up by the Left and Passion wasn't fluent in English, did not convincingly answer their questions, and appeared to have plans to leave halfway through his term. John Bowers looked like Christ in comparison. With such a new Board (only three returning members), it is entirely conceivable that someone would have felt the pangs of conscience, and decided not to vote for the weak candidate they had been instructed to vote for. Loyalty to students put above loyalty to party and ideology perhaps? The Left should have seen it coming really.

The best laid plans often go to waste. Lavinia was by far the most experienced candidate for President. Despite an impressive, policy-focused speech by Mark Joyce (and an equally impressive response to some questions posed to him), he remains too much of a new face for this observer to have much opinion on him. His performance in the first Board meeting was unexpectedly competant, but it would have been a risky choice for the AUU had he been elected President.

As to the VP choice, well, factions in disarray over the decision led to what I believe to be the best outcome. Bowers may not fill me with feelings of security, at least he doesn't fill me with feelings of fear. And who better to counterbalance 'the Left' that is the current AUU Board than a Liberal Vice President.

Attending the election of a new President of the Union was a real reminder for me of why I love – and hate – student politics at this university.

The thing that got me most was the clear passion and dedication that almost everyone at the meeting felt. In a way it was very exciting to be in the room with so many people who had invested such an enormous amount of their lives into making this Union function. However, the feeling was marred by the knowledge that so many of the great ideas of the Board members will be consigned to the ideological junk heap as a result of factional disagreements based more on point scoring against opposing factions than on the individual merits of the idea.

Rather than making you wait any longer, I’ll reveal here that Lavinia Emmett-Grey won the position of President with a respectable majority, forcing Mark Joyce to wait until 2010 to try again (technically the vote will be in 2009, but the President changes at the turn of the year).

Mark spoke to the Board first, with a carefully scripted speech (so scripted that he was able to give me a copy of the speech afterwards, with the bits that he didn’t use scribbled out). He focussed on the need to replace the constitution with a reformed and greatly improved document, as well as raising new ideas such as three day elections, online voting for the general elections and the re-naming of the AUU to the Adelaide University Student Association. In addition, Mark proposed that the President’s honorarium be reduced to $15 thousand annually.

In contrast, Lavinia’s speech was apparently unscripted and directly from the heart, though some more cynical observers believed that her words had been carefully selected before hand. Lavinia began by pointing out that the speeches didn’t really matter, and that everyone would already have decided how to vote. She then did her very best to change the minds of those who’d decided in Mark’s favour. Hers was an emotive appeal to those Board members who could be inspired by the image of a President who’d seen it already, and who harked back to a union that had three times the members, four times the events and ten times the will to fight for student rights. She drew on the emotive imagery of a strong student union that produced the best times, friends and fights, and the idea that student representatives and representation might mean something, rather than being a farce. To finish, Lavinia urged all of the Board members to vote as if they were the only one, and there were no factional twit standing behind them. To vote as if they were representing the students.

I can’t say whether either speech swung any votes, but the juxtaposition of the rational policy statement and the emotional appeal definitely threw the candidates into stark contrast.

Of the two big votes, the Vice Presidential one – unexpectedly – ended up being the more interesting of the two. It was clear that factional deals had been made by both sides: one group’s Presidential candidate received votes in exchange for voting for the other group’s candidate as deputy. John Bowers and his followers, then, looked quite concerned about his chances of achieving the Vice Presidency, while Fei Tang seemed the presumed candidate. Nonetheless, the speeches touting financial management and leadership went ahead. In this case they were much more similar. The biggest difference was that John came across as a more confident candidate (though some of Board appeared concerned that he drew direct parallels between leading 30 people on a battlefield and leading the Finance and Development Standing Committee [F&DSC]), whereas some Board members appeared confused and concerned by Fei’s less certain use of English and rumoured uncertainties about his future.

The votes, the counters and the scrutineers went out, and came back…looking confused and in some cases either very pleased or very worried, depending on their faction. Despite Fei Tang’s ‘side’, as it were, electing the President they had agreed on, at least three votes had changed hands in the interim, delivering John Bowers as the AUU Vice President for 2009.

This sent the Activate and IndyGo factions into a small panic as they re-counted their votes for the subsequent elections in light of their new found uncertainty. It also restored a sense of cynicism after Lavinia’s inspiring speech. Apparently Board should only vote as if they were representing the students when they’re voting for her.

The subsequent elections – for AUU Executive and the Finance and Development Standing Committee – were conducted without speeches or discussion time. Daniel Bills, Fletcher O’Leary, Aaron Fromm and Yasmin Freschi were declared as the 2009 Executive, with Jianbin Jiang (also known as Strong) as the only other person running.

Ye Yang, Fei Tang, Andrew Anson and Mark Joyce were elected to F&DSC, with Aaron Fromm missing out.

Rhiannon Newman caused some entertainment when she claimed the place as Fletcher’s scrutineer despite the fact that he was absent at the time, and unable to appoint her. She quipped that ‘It’s only because I know how you all vote’, then felt the need to point out that she was being facetious. I guess it was a touchy subject considering just how wrong the VP vote had proved her.

It was interesting to note that David Collucio – the General Manager of the AUU – spoke at length to the assembled Board both before and after the vote. In the first spiel, he mentioned that the services of the AUU employee who had been taken minutes at most of the 2008 meetings had been withdrawn for the final two meetings of that Board due to an impression of unacceptable behaviour. One former Board member in attendance – Justin Kentish – was particularly unimpressed by this, as he said that the old Board was never told that this was the reason for her absence.

After our mass exodus to Unibar, I was sought out by a Board member only willing to be quoted as ‘a left board director’, who passed on (and, at my request, later sms’d me) the sound bite that “left board directors where suprised and appalled that Jake Wishart – a vocal member of the young greens – voted in a dry liberal to vice president of the auu”. The grammar that seems to have eluded this university educated student politician aside, this ‘defection’, as it were is being taken very seriously by the left. Another of the lefties even compared it on Facebook to the totalitarian horrors of Orwell’s 1984 (though he wouldn’t explain what the parallels were).

To put it into context, the Board member who changed their vote without the knowledge of their faction (I’ll post here once I’ve asked Jake personally – until then I’m not willing to say outright that it was him, though that appears to be the common assumption) would have been asked during the negotiations whether he was comfortable with his factional leader representing his vote for that outcome. The choice was his one way or the other, but it was expected to be made and put out there for counting well in advance. Had his faction found that they did not have the numbers to offer something in return, or had he changed his mind belatedly, I expect there would have been some pressure to vote in line.

Looking to one of the side issues of that vote, though, a far more Orwellian question arises: How did the left manage to divine in meagre hours whose vote was different to expectations? I was given Jake’s name less than four hours after the meeting ended; no mean feat considering it was a secret ballot. I just hope it was some sort of asking around by the ‘factional twits’ that enabled the left to find out, though ballot tampering is not unheard of.

I guess the students will decide whether they think the Board member in question was a promise breaking lowlife or a brave independent when they vote for their representatives next year. For now, let’s see how this new group does at their attempt to bring love, life and some tangible improvements to the student union.

As student politics is really boring stuff, despite what the people involved seem to think when they’re doing the headless-chicken-dance around campus, I’m going to make the most of this edition as a chance to ‘sex up’ what’s been going on a little, in the tradition of respectable newspapers like the New York Times.

After a disgustingly dirty battle of letter writing, acting presidents and the removal of the Kevin 07 block mount in the hallowed (and revoltingly green) Presidential office, the Union has a (hopefully) permanent President for the rest of this year. In a tense meeting of the Board on Thursday night in an undisclosed location on campus, David Wilkins and Lavinia Emmett-Grey went head-to-head for the only position left in the union that offers the money and power that all student politicians secretly crave.

As the vote counters and scrutineers sequestered themselves away in the next room to determine the fate of the Board for the rest of this year, talk of back room deals and intervention by the Australian National Union of Students abounded among those left to stew. At long last, we were rescued by the declaration that Lavinia Emmett-Grey is to hold the office of President until the end of next year, or at least until the next power coup. The vote was counted at ten votes to four, making it a secure power base for the time being.

The reports of all the office holders paled in comparison to the riveting drama of a presidential election, but even then there were some interesting snippets of information. In an exclusive report, On Dit can reveal that the University and the AUU are ‘very close’ to signing off on the funding agreement. The details of this agreement are suspiciously hush-hush, but there are enough rumours going around that this crack journalist could piece together some idea of what it contains. It involves the University giving the AUU money in exchange for letting the National Wine Centre run the food outlets around campus. (*gasp!* If you want to know a little more, look back a couple of issues to when I didn’t know what I wasn’t meant to say). This is clearly a deal to be watched closely.

All the affiliates claim to be moving along nicely with their agendas. This is clearly a good thing, but your AUU correspondent wonders just what will happen when these agendas collide with that of the Board, as will no doubt happen in the near future.

Since my last post, much has happened in student politicking. For a start, there's a new president.

The day after the meeting in which David's suspension was ratified, the AUU General Manager sent out an email explaining that the ratification was invalid because it needed a two-thirds majority vote. Irate board members soon explained that it got a two thirds majority and the suspension proceeded as normal. Not that I'd ever suggest that things like this were normal for the Board.

At the meeting on Thursday night, the final vote was required to decide if the Board would keep David as president or change to someone else. The basic arguments for and against read as follows:

Arguments made in favour of keeping David as president:

• The Board is not prepared for a new President
• There is no-one who can take over the role effectively
• It will damage relations with the Uni - they will not want to fund a Board that's not credible or sustainable.
• It will look bad on the Board's record
• So many of the AUU staff are new that there will be no-one left with an understanding of what to do
• The new staff need some stability from the Board
• It makes the board look incompetent and unhealthy [author's note: this is important currently, as we're leading up to the major membership drive for the year]
• The point isn't whether there were problems or not, everyone acknowledges that there were. The point is the Board's survival.
• The rest of the Board doesn't realise the work involved. David is doing a lot of work that they don't know about, and they aren't aware of the good work he does.
• He has already proved that he can do the job effectively.
• There is no-one on the current board who'd do the job better.

Arguments made in favour of having a different President:

• The board needs a leader who will communicate with them
• David does not care enough about the board (the example given was that he was not at the meeting that night)
• The decisions of the Board as a whole were not being reflected, only those of the president.
• The president was not following the directions of the Board
• The reputation of the board is not an issue, their actions are.
• The fact that there is no-one prepared to take over is an indication that there needs to be a new president - a president should communicate with their VP in a manner that makes it possible for them to take over if necessary.
• The majority of the affiliates actually support a new president.
• University funding is attached to key performance outcomes, not the identity of the president.

Eventually, Sam Kirchner made the point that further conversation (read: argument) was unlikely to change anyone's mind, and that they should just vote already. The motion put forward was carried, which meant that David Wilkins was no longer the President. The board decided that the directors who were not there that night had a right to be involved in the election of a new president, so the actual choice was postponed until after O'Week.

This meant that an interim president had to be elected to fill the role until O'Week, as Emilio was, after a month and a half, finding it taxing. Simone and Lavinia both nominated for the position. Simone ran on the platform that she knew what was going on with O'Week, but that her presence was not necessary due to the exceptional work of the O'Week directors. She argued that this meant she'd be the best person to run the Board during such an important week. Lavinia, who wrote the original letter asking David to stand down, argued that while Simone would be overstreched between O'Week and the Board, she could take care of the Board while Simone looked after O'Week. The board voted in favour of Lavinia, who is now the interim-president.

The only other business at this meeting was the fact that the Labor Party had bought a corporate stall at O'Week. On the basis that this may make the Board look like it was in the Labor Party's pocket, the Board voted to call the stall managers and revoke their stall, returning their money to them in the process. This was dually agreed on.

The most exciting thing for Board for a while is to see how O'Week goes and who'll actually help with selling memberships and the 'dunk a student politician' game.

Last year, I wrote a very rash email. I was frustrated by the complete lack of coverage of the student elections in an otherwise enjoyable On Dit, and in a fit of aggravation about the complete unaccountability of our student politicians, I said that if no one else wrote a column on student politics this year, I’d damn well do it!

Silly of me, really. Especially considering the amazing amount of change happening in the Board at the moment. As Ellen Ketteridge put it, it’s been ‘a bit crazy!’. The most obvious and important change is the impending funding agreement between the University and the Union Board. The basic agreement is that the University will give the Union $1.2 million in funding per year for the next ten years (2008 included) in exchange for the Union’s commercial operations at the North Terrace campus (the others having been sold earlier). This comes on the tail of unexpectedly poor takings by the commercial operations last year, leaving the Union with very light pockets.

The most upsetting part of this for the Board members was the concept of releasing Unibar into the hands of the University and, further on, the National Wine Centre, who are taking over all the com ops. Technically, the Unibar is actually the ‘Union Bar’, as well as an ‘important icon’ for campus culture. The idea of the Unibar turning into some sort of respectable ivy league style wine bar was too much for some board members, particularly Rhiannon Newman and Lavinia Emmett-Gray.

Futhermore, a bar run by a successful commercial business rather than the student board posed all sorts of problems in terms of student control of the venues. For instance, the provision of foods that fit various dietary requirements (vegetarian, halal, etc) could be at risk, and the prices might be driven up by the greedy monopolistic company that took over (this argument ignores the huge amount of competition and range that the proximity of North Terrace and Rundle Mall food outlets introduces to the matter. To me it seems that some of the problem was also the possibility that a place so full of Board members' good memories (and alcoholically-faded memories) could be changed in any way.

Sam Kirchner and Emilio Roberts were nominated to join the Union President, David Wilkins, in negotiating the agreement. After discussions, the University agreed reluctantly to leave the Unibar in the Board’s hands. However, once University representatives had explained to the Board the risks of keeping the Unibar (painful litigation in the case of a drunken incident or workplace accident) and the costs of making it a safe workplace (many thousands of the dollars that the Board doesn't have), the Board voted to hand the Unibar over after all. So all the food outlets on campus, as well as the function catering company, have been sold on. But the Board’s kept the income from the vending machines. There’s not really any risk in that one.

Confused yet? Can’t blame you for that. The end result is that the Board has $1.2 million to spend each year, plus what they get out of the vending machines, the sponsors and people buying membership. Out of that they have to fund the Affiliates with amounts specified in the agreement as well as take care of their own spending. For the Board, this is a wonderful achievement. Secure funding for the next ten years means that the Directors can get on with other, more useful things than looking for money The University representatives that watch over the Board can now relax in the knowledge that the Board and the Affiliates aren’t about to go broke while they’re not paying attention, or go under to pay off a bar maid who fell through the floor that the Board couldn’t afford to fix.

A second major event that came up early in the new year was somewhat more political. On the 7^th of December, David Wilkins received a letter written by Lavinia Emmett-Gray and signed by 14 of the 18 Board Directors (David’s faction, Pulse, were not approached). The letter politely informed David that the Board wanted him to retire from the bloody presidency now, please. There were a number of reasons that the Directors who signed the letter gave. Firstly, the Union’s budget for this year was read and approved by the University Council a week before the Union’s budget meeting. In itself, this is simply proper following of policy. However, the rest of the Board only received the budget at the budget meeting. They were also ignorant that it was the budget meeting until they got there.
“We were presented with the budget quite late in the piece…hours before we were expected to pass it”, Paris Dean said.
According to the minutes, the Board was presented with the budget during the meeting and were then given half an hour to read it.
“A lot of people were upset about that”, Paris told me.

Rhiannon Newman was somewhat more expressive on the topic. “I’m still not convinced it was a real budget”, she said, “It was presented on a Word document…and it didn’t have last year’s figures and how much we’d spent and things like that.”
“I’ve been on that board before, and we got it a week before and we had a chance to look through it and make changes where we thought were appropriate”

When I asked David about this, he explained “[the budget] is a living document, it’s a guide only”.
“While I’m very very apologetic to the board that it wasn’t presented, it certainly wasn’t me trying to shove a budget through the Board to try and get support for it”.

However, the budget was not the only issue that Board members had with David's presidency since the election. Other issues such as not meeting the expectations of the board in terms of openness and communication; an attempt to introduce email voting to the Board, with all votes privately going to David; and an unwillingness to work with the appointed negotiators on the funding agreement were all raised in the letter.

David has apologised to the Board, but believes that many of these problems were caused by the unique position he has been put in with VSU, the funding agreement and number of AUU staff that have quit in recent months.
“I’ve put my heart and soul into this organisation. It’s absolutely my livelihood, I absolutely enjoy every minute that I’m doing it” David said.
“I think rather than that being seen as an attempt to sack me I’ve looked at that as kind of a bit of a wake up call”.

Recent events, on the other hand, suggest that the Board members meant it to be much stronger than that. In a meeting on January 31^st, the Board voted to ratify all the votes from the inquorate meeting in December, which included the vote to have David suspended. This suggests that most of the rest of the Board is not entirely placated by David’s apologies.

Despite these disagreements, the Board Directors all sound really optimistic about the future of the Board this year. And I can see why. After years of factional stupidity, the Board is finally getting its act together! First and foremost, the election last year delivered a nicely balanced Board, with no more than five people to any factional group. This means that for at least a year it will be impossible for any faction to control the Board outright unless they resort to underhand tactics (which is not unknown for this board, even at this early stage).

The team that’s involved in actually getting stuff done looks like being a good one, too. Obviously I have no idea how O’Week will turn out yet, but everyone involved sounds very up beat and excited about it, and I can’t see Simone McDonnell doing anything but her best to make sure people have a good time – it’s what she thrives on. She’s even looking to revive Prosh this year, which I’m sure will excite everyone who’s wanted to be involved in the event as it was in the good old days before we made it to uni.

It also looks likely that the Board will have some money that they’re free to do what they want with this year. The ‘Loaded’ discount card that was produced last year was a joke, purchased only by Board Directors and the hacks who wanted to become directors this year. Whereas this year’s membership deal looks like it’s a winner. The $20 card that got me $40 off my gym membership bought my interest outright, but the $5 locker discount and the Ambassador Card could be useful, and the 10% discount at unibooks will definitely be handy (even though there would have been a unibooks discount in some way or another, even without the card).

Finally, there’s the less exciting but far more enduring work being done on strategic planning and constitutional change within the Board. The Board executive has already had one meeting to look at where the Board’s going in the future, figuring out what the business is going to focus on and how to set up a foundation to make that happen. The Board’s constitution is also up for an overhaul this year, with Matthew Taylor heading a sub-committee formed to overhaul the current Board constitution, which is currently a bit of an ‘everything to everyone’ document. According to Matthew, a streamlined constitution with rules and regulations forming the body of Board law would be far more effective. An attempt at streamlining the constitution was made in 2006/7 and passed by the Board, but I’ve been told it got lost when it was sent to University Council for them to sign off on it.

Like the Board members, I’m quite optimistic about this year’s Board. They seem to be a very passionate group, and most of them have shown that they can work together and really get somewhere with their projects. There are no CV sluts on this board, just very, very passionate individuals who want to do the best thing for the students at Adelaide. Good luck to them!