23 February, 2010

Shenanigans, limitations and conflicts

The SRC has limited resources. Members of the council are expected to show some degree of restraint, and to be able to justify their actions when using said resources. I would like to go through a few things that seem to me to be an abuse of said resources, as well as an abuse of trust of other members of the Council.

1. To use the SRC printer requires a login and password. This is to prevent people abusing it and printing off reams of paper for assignments and other personal use. Each member of the council has a quota of sheets (both colour and black&white) for every month. While asking for the quota to be raised for a particular month isn't difficult, you're expected to be able to justify said raise - for example, you need to print off flyers for O-Week, or your equity room, or something similar.
If you don't want to send an email up to IT to get your quota extended, you'll need to borrow someone else's login and password.
Do not do this without permission, since they may well have an event coming up for which they need to print material. Also, use common sense. If you're printing mass quantities, then email IT. Don't steal someone else's quota.

2. The SRC is not a Clubs Resource Room. If you want to get resources for your Club or Society, then head on over to the Roundhouse, where there is a Clubs Resource Room. Clubs material shouldn't be printed through the SRC, because of the limitations on the printer there. Clubs are meant to pay for their material themselves - its part of the point of showing they can sustain themselves.

3. During large events where the SRC has stalls (i.e. O-Week and Foundation Day), those stalls are for the SRC. They are there to promote the SRC. They are not there to sign people up to your club. There is no requirement to be part of any club to be involved with the SRC. If you want to promote your club, go over to that club's stall.
If your club missed the deadline for applying for a stall, then tough. That's the club's fault. You can't just use the SRC's space for that. At the very least, to put a club's material within SRC space leaves you open to a massive conflict of interest. It also creates the impression that to be involved, you need to be part of that club.
If you've managed to get your club's stall nearby the SRC, then good for you. But there's a difference between having a club nearby the SRC, and having it within the SRC.
This goes double, or even triple, for political clubs.

I always thought all the above were fairly obvious, commonsense guidelines. I'm worried that I need to be stating this.

So I'm sure you can understand how perplexed and irate I am to discover that Thimmaiah Kaliyanda, an SRC Councillor (Undergrad A), used another SRC member's quota to print off material for the Whitlam Club (NLS, LAbor Left) from the SRC Printer (Tim has recently been elected Whitlam Club President as well).
And furthermore, that the Education and Welfare stall was apparently being used yesterday to recruit for Whitlam Club members instead of promoting Education and/or Welfare campaigns (or at least to get a collective going).

[edit]
It seems I was somewhat misled (quite possibly me misinterpreting what someone else said) on the last point. At least today, there was no evidence of Whitlam Club material in the Education stall. There wasn't much evidence of anything in that stall, in fact. But more on that later.

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