New Officers for Semester 2

So two not particularly well-kept secrets are out. Jess is the new Chair of Arc, necessitating a new Women's Officer - from what I've heard, it'll be Kimberley Lowe. She's been around quite a bit this semester, and is Jess's preferred successor.

The other one is a bit more personal. Nick Atkins, one of the Queer Officers, is having to quite due to Honours and work pressures. He's asked me to step in for next semester. Now, I hadn't thought I'd ever return to SRC, but after thinking about it (and catching myself planning things), I decided I should give it another shot. It's only for one semester, and a fair bit of it will be talking to people about finding good qu'officers for next year.

So Squish continues to look like being the first Arc Queer Officer to serve a standard term the whole way through - my first started early, Vicki and Jocelyn only got officially made officers late, while all the others either quite early or took over part way through. An interesting record we have in this department.

SRC explodes!

Well, not literally. But the furore over Tharunka's article (about the Islamic Society's push for prayer rooms) is bringing it close. The Council is currently meeting, and I imagine there's a lot of angry remarks being thrown around (and quite possibly being minuted too, which makes things a lot more fun).

Beck Hynek, the Cofa Campus representative, has put forward a motion to condemn the Tharunka editorial team for publishing the original article, and to force Tharunka to retract it. She has directly alleged racism and discrimination by the university.

There's two different parts of this.

1) Alleging racism by the university. This, legally speaking, is a quite serious matter. With plenty of potential for lawsuit. I don't think you should tiptoe around issues, far from it, but you need to be aware of the consequences of getting it wrong.

2) The relationship between the SRC and Tharunka. This has been unclear throughout Arc's existence, as to quite where Tharunka exists. Is it part of the SRC? Is it part of Marketing? Is it anywhere?
Can the SRC force Tharunka to do anything? Strictly speaking, well, it's not clear.
There has been one instance I know of where the Tharunka editorial team was specifically directed to perform a particular action by the SRC. That was at the final SRC meeting before I became Tharunka editor, when the SRC called upon us to publish, in our first issue for 2008, an apology for accidental remarks published in a 2007 issue. Kind of weird that we were the ones to have to do anything, but that's the way the cookie crumbled. We put in a very short apology, without mentioning the specifics of the matter.
That, to my mind, is very different to what Beck is pushing for. She wants an entire article retracted. This strikes me as a deliberate attempt to censor content, in a magazine that is only indirectly responsible to the SRC. Needless to say, I disapprove.

What makes a Councillor?

As I indicated earlier, the position of 'Councillor' is somewhat ambiguous. Who do they represent, how do they make decisions, what do they do?

Let's start with what the various documents binding the Council say.
1. Councillors are not mentioned, even once, in the Constitution. Neither are Office Bearers, to be fair. The Constitution, being incredibly difficult to change, doesn't have most of the nitty gritty of how Arc works.
2. The Regulations give where councillors are elected from (A, B, Cofa, UG, PG), their terms of service (same as OBs, 1 December-30 November), the method of election and filling vacancies... and that's it. Nothing about responsibilities, nothing to link Councillors with their electorates.
3. The SRC Charter (passed by Council, but still not passed by Board for some strange reason) goes into a lot more detail. Included in this list are:

• Representing the electorates, by 'raising and discussing issues'
• Recommending proposals, on issues concerning students
• Ensuring OBs are held responsible for their actions
• Promoting activites of the Council to their electorates
• Actively participating in SRC campaigns and/or events
• Then the usual stuff about acting honestly, not acting improperly etc.

Now, this Charter was only (finally!) passed by SRC at the final meeting for 2009, held on November 30 last year. Apparently it hasn't gone to Board yet (I'm really not sure why). So it certainly wasn't binding upon Councillors from last year or the previous year, and it's a bit unclear as to whether this year's Councillors are (yet) bound by it.

These roles and responsibilities are important. I'm going to go through them, and give some explanation of the motivation, and how people may or may not have upheld this part of the Charter. Also, looking at just what the role/responsibility means (if anything).

'Representing the electorates' - Um. Hmm. Does this mean, well, anything? Does a Councillor's mere presence on SRC mean that the electorate is represented? Should a Councillor only limit themselves to issues relating to that electorate? Should a Councillor organise meetings with members of that electorate to try and gauge popular opinions?

This is incredibly vague. It pretty much leaves it up to the individual Councillor as to how they go about their job. The question is, is this a bad thing? Shouldn't we give leeway to individuals as to how they perform in their role?

Well yes. But the problem is, you give someone no guide, they may well end up not doing anything. Often, Councillors just end up turning up to meetings (or not even that), don't say anything, and vote when required.

Also, there's no way of enforcing that all faculties are represented. FBE and Medicine in particular are rare to have Councillors representing them, due to the heavy workload those faculties require.

'Recommending proposals on issues affecting students' - is pretty much up to the individual as well. Depending on how well you argue, anything can be an issue affecting students. Or nothing can be. Again, vague and ultimately just says 'if you want to put a proposal, you can'.

'Holding OBs to account'. Hoo boy, this is a much bigger one. This is where, in my opinion, the guts of the Councillor role is. It is a significant mark of difference between what a Councillor does, and what an OB does.

Contrary to what a lot of people have thought, including myself, there is a method to remove a member of SRC. It's incredibly difficult (and rightly so) - it requires Special Resolutions of both SRC and the Arc Board to pull off. (A Special Resolution means that, instead of just 50%+1 of the voting members, you instead need 75%+1, a much more daunting task).

OBs have their own particular areas, that they are supposed to focus on. If they're not, then that might well be a reason to at least raise the threat of removing them from office. If they continue to fart around doing nothing, or doing things clearly outside their portfolio instead of working in their area, then why should they stay there, getting paid? Arc isn't really rich enough to justify paying someone to not do their job.

'Promote/participate in SRC events/campaigns' seems a bit like filler to the untrained eye. There's a hidden catch though. If Council resolves a particular way, then the Councillor shouldn't go around telling people otherwise. SRC Members aren't meant to go around protesting each other's events. SRC Members shouldn't pass around petitions protesting a decision by Council.

This Charter wasn't in power around this time last year, when several Councillors from a particular faction postered around campus calling for the sacking of the President and most OBs, for failing to accept a proposal. If it was, then those Councillors could easily be said to have broken the Charter.

Decisions are made at Council. That's when you have the debates, the arguments, the name-slinging etc. If you want to change a decision, you bring it up at the next meeting. But in between meetings, there is a certain level of decorum expected regarding passed resolutions.

~

So what next? What should a Councillor do? What should the Charter say?

I don't really have answers for this, but one thing in particular I think ought to change. The name.

'Councillor'. It's confusing. Isn't everyone who sits on a Council a Councillor? Why reserve this name only for a subset? Maybe if they were the only ones to vote, but that's hardly the case.

Instead, I can't see any real reason not to adopt a name like 'General Representative'. It's clearer as to why they're there. They represent the student body in a fairly general way, not focussing on particular issues to the exclusion of all others.

Old Shirts

So I've just moved house, which involves packing everything up at one end, then (eventually) unpacking it at the other. Interestingly, during the wardrobe stages a found a few old campaign shirts.
If you're ever involved with elections, you'll end up with at least a few shirts. I usually keep them around to sleep in, since they're usually basic comfortable cotton t-shirts.

What do I find?
Last year's 'Voice' shirt
'Say Yes to Jess' Arc Board election (I never got hold of a 'All Aboard with Matt Ward' sadly)
two 'Demand a Better Future' shirts, one with the arms taken off and a home-made deeper neckline
and finally, one I'm somewhat less pleased with nowadays, an 'Action Andrew' shirt from the 08 Arc Board elections.

I used to have Voice shirts for both Phuong and Chari (elections in 07 and 08), but sadly they have migrated off to the Smith Family.

Why do I keep them? Partly I'm a hoarder. Also, as mentioned above, they're comfortable shirts for sleeping in (wouldn't be seen dead wearing one around outside).
Also, they remind me of what it was like to do that campaign. What the people promised, what I promised in the cases of my own elections. What people promised and failed to deliver.

'Action Andrew' Looi seems to have vanished without a trace. What has he accomplished, in his year as an Undergrad Councillor, his year as Education Officer, and his nearly completed two years on Arc Board?

I hope that his position will be filled by a strong, capable Director when elections roll around. If last year's campaigns are any guide, it'll be strongly contested.
I ran for Board Director last year, and lost out by less than one vote. I have no complaints about the person who beat me at the final count - Jess Mobbs has been fantastic, and I'm sure will continue to be as such. Matt Ward I'm good friends with, but he has a definite tendency to take on more than he can chew. Simon Bruck, the only Director from last year who pulled a quota in his own right, I'm least impressed with. The reasons for that will be looked at in a future post.

If you're an Arc member, definitely think about what you want Arc to be doing. Don't go for Directorship merely to add credentials to your CV. Don't go for it to prove a point. The role takes work - you would need to sacrifice your time, for no pay.

I'm not categorically ruling out another tilt at Directorship myself at this stage, but I will say it's unlikely. I'm nearing the end of my time at uni, plus I'm quite liking the rate of pay I receive as an Arc Retail Employee. So it's not likely to happen.

O-Week Roundup

So O-week has been and gone. A huge lot of impressionable first years. The best chance all year to build up an e-list, a club, a collective.

For the most part, I think the SRC did well. Being next to the Arc Membership tent was helpful in channeling students towards the SRC (especially given the quite astounding rate of membership this year). Probably would have been better if the SRC stalls hadn't been so far back from the main walkway, but you can't have everything.

A few things stood out.

Thanks to the Indigenous Officers, I discovered the incredible tastiness of emu and crocodile.
Wheelchair basketball is incredibly fun.
The Ethno-cultural and International Students departments look to have made an excellent start on rebuilding their collectives - there were lots of people going up to them throughout the week, signing petitions and having fun. It may well happen that Ashraf Alfian Alias, currently an Undergrad Councillor (A), will become co-International Students Officer.
Queer made a great start to the year, which then culminated in the splendour that is Mardi Gras.

A few other things, on a less positive note.

The Education Officer, Helen Samardzic, seemed to have only been around for part of the day on Monday. Not much for the rest of the week. Later on, several undergrad councillors were trying to collect names for the Education e-list for her. But while all the other collectives got lots of sign-ups and enquiries, there simply wasn't anything from the Education Department.

The Cofa Representative, Beck Hynek, was on Kensington campus all day on Tuesday. This might not seem like a bad thing. She was meeting students. But... Tuesday was the COFA O-Day. From the looks of it (and from hearing from a few COFA SRCers), she seems to have no interest in the campus she represents, and no interest in working with the SRC she chairs.

Not happy Jan.

~~~
On a completely other note, classes have started up again at UNSW. Plus I'm four weeks into my Tafe course. So I won't be posting here all that often, usually with either general info stuff (the 7 or 8 topics I raised a few weeks back) or with breaking news. But stay tuned nevertheless, since there still will be occassional posts here.

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.

SRC Structure

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all (ie, the 7 or so topics I put up last week), I realised it might be useful to explain a bit about the way the SRC itself is structured. Not many people are familiar with the system used, or why some people have votes and some don't, and the whole mess.

Broadly speaking, there are three groups of people who sit on the UNSW SRC. There are the 'Office Bearers' (OBs), who work in particular areas. The second group is the 'Councillors', who theoretically represent the broad student body. The third group are the 'ex officio' positions, those who sit on the SRC as a result of holding a position in another body.

OBs: There's quite a few. My earlier post went into detail about my views of the people holding those positions. Each Officer position gets one vote on the SRC. So when a position is shared (as it is this year with Enviro, Indigenous and Ethno-Cultural), only one of the co-officers gets to vote. This is usually worked out when they nominate for election, based off who is more likely to be able to get to meetings.
A (sometimes seen as loopholey) exception is Queer. Because the Queer Department is the only one to have specified as having two Officers (female-identifying and non-female identifying), the Queer Department gets 2 votes on SRC.
Including President, there are 13 votes held by OBs

Councillors: (I'll likely write further about this section later on)
On the full SRC, there are up to 14 'councillors'. These are divided between Undergrad and Postgrad, between Kensington and COFA, and (at Kenso) between the two university 'electorates'. The University electorates are Electorate A (Arts, Law and Commerce) and Electorate B (Science, Engineering, Medicine and Built Environment).

12 Councillors represent Kensington. 3 are 'Undergrad A' councillors (ie undergrads from electorate A), 3 'Undergrad B', 3 Postgrad A and 3 Postgrad B.

2 Councillors represent COFA - one undergrad, one Postgrad. I don't believe the COFA councillor positions have ever been filled, since to get that position you first need to be elected to the COFA SRC then get their endorsement to also sit on the full SRC, then get the full SRCs permission to sit there, then get Arc Board's agreement too. An incredibly overblown bureaucratic process, which the COFA SRC so far has shown little patience for (and really, can you blame them?).

Each Councillor receives one vote. For a running tally, there are 27 votes so far accounted for.

Ex-Officio: These people already sit on another committee/board/council/body, and as a result of that position get to also sit on the SRC. Not many ex-officio positions get voting rights - usually the person is there to find out what's going on in SRC world, to offer advice, and (potentially) to take SRC ideas back to their own groups.

The Chair of the Arc Board sits on SRC, with full voting rights. The Chair is elected by the Arc Board, and must be a student representative.
The Convenor of the Student Development Committee (SDC) sits on SRC with full voting rights. The SDC oversee Arc's Volunteer Programs and Club Affiliations.
(The SRC President and Arc Chair also sit on SDC as voters, and the SRC President and SDC Convenor are ex officio voting members of the Arc Board)

29 votes for full Council.

The ARC CEO also holds an ex officio position on SRC, but does not vote.
The Student Representatives on UNSW's University Council (one undergrad, one postgrad) sit on SRC, but do not vote.
The Student Representatives on UNSW Academic Board (four in total, two undergrad, two postgrad) sit in SRC, but do not vote.

The Tharunka Editors are kinda left alone. There's a bit of debate going on as to whether they hold ex officio status on SRC (non-voting) or whether they don't. Legally, they currently do not have automatic entry to SRC meetings. I strongly suspect this is just a case of no-one getting around to putting them back into the Regulations after the merger of the Guild into Arc. The Tharunka editors are invited to submit reports to COuncil, so it seems odd they may not have speaking rights. Also, SRC is the body responsible for maintaining the Tharunka Charter.

So there's (theoretically) 29 voting members of the SRC. For a meeting to take place, at least half of the voting members need to be present - that's of the current voting members, so if a position is vacant then quorum may well be lower.

It is possible to give someone a proxy vote - but that person already needs to have the automatic right to attend meetings. So proxies can only be held by non-voting co-Officers, University Councillors, Academic Board reps or (maybe) Tharunka Editors. Also, crucially, proxies do not count towards quorum.

If anyone's got any questions, feel free to ask. I may well have bungled an explanation, or need to make things more clear.

ideas

I've got a few different ideas for what to write about in the next little while. So I thought I might as well see what people want to see (and, by-the-by, work out who's actually reading this).

1. 'What is a councillor?'

2. Explanation of the factions - where they come from, where they're going. Probably a series of posts.

3. 'what is a small-i'

4. looking at how the SRC fits into the overall Arc structure

5. looking back over the fiasco that was last year's NUS conference, then the various deals and collapses involved in the SGM. This one I'd like to leave a bit, see what else comes to light. Plus I would be very surprised if one of the Tharunka editors doesn't write about it themself.

6. explanation of the SRC election methodology - forming tickets, the process of voting, 'what is a valid vote' etc. Almost definitely a series of posts, way too big to fit into one.

7. The proposed Post-grad council - who's in favour, who's against, how the whole shebang is meant to work, and why it's all taken so long.

8. Anything else you'd like me to take a look at?

Let me know.

Attack?

Before things go any further, I'd like to clarify something. I'm not trying to just mindlessly attack people. There is a method to my madness (or perhaps there's madness in my method, we'll see).

I want to see our student reps do well. A big, massive part of that is checking up on them. Not just at elections each year - it's incredibly rare for anyone to actually stand for re-election, so the ballot isn't a good way of holding anyone to account. Rather, we need to look in on them throughout their term.

I want to know what the people I voted for are doing. I also want to know what the people I didn't vote for are doing (and there's a few of them, the wonders of below-the-line voting). If someone's being competent, then that person deserves congratulations. If someone's being incompetent, on the other hand, that person should be getting in trouble.

There are a whole lot of things wrong at uni. The point of the SRC is to try to better the student experience. If someone on the SRC isn't pulling their weight, this needs to be realised. If the whole SRC isn't pulling their weight (which I sincerely hope will never happen) then that definitely needs to be publicised.

That doesn't mean our reps should be held with their noses to the grindstone. They are, after all, students, and every now and then things like parties, work, general life and (last, and sometimes least) actual study intrude. This helps keep you sane in such a position.
But an SRC member can't just fall back on excuses all the time. They need to do something, or at least keep trying to, or else move away.

And I don't want to hear that tired old refrain that 'UNSW students are never activists, the activists all go to USyd'. To be frank, that's bullshit. It's offensive to the very character of our student body. It's also readily disprovable - the Queer Collective, twice, got quite large turnouts to the Marriage rallies (one well outside of semester). Turnouts that were well above what the USyd collective managed to muster.

To fall back on the old stereotype that UNSW students don't participate in activism is sheer laziness. It's proof that you either haven't tried, or you don't have a clue as to how to mobilise people.

SRC 2010

[the following has been submitted to the first issue of Tharunka for 2010. I thought it may as well get out a tad earlier]

"'University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small'" - Henry Kissinger

For better or for worse, student politics is often likened to a festering snakepit. It is brutal, harsh, full of various ever-changing alliances and cults-of-personality.

So it’s no surprise that many of you reading this will have no interest whatsoever in being involved in politics at UNSW. You may well wonder what relevance these petty squabbles and power-plays have to your own life. But is that the only attitude? To ignore it and leave it to the student politicians? There are many things at uni which could be improved – are you going to leave it to those few people who ran a week-long campaign to try and fix those problems?

At the very least, it’s good to know who these people are, so if you’ve got a problem you can know who to harangue to try and fix it. Elsewhere in this publication, you may have found Office-Bearer reports from your Student Representative Council. These will, of course, have been written to show the SRC in a very positive light, inspiring confidence in those SRC members. But they won’t tell you very much about them as people. Or even much about them as politicians.

So here I am, one snake amongst many, giving you the gossip on student politics, UNSW-style.

To start with, there’s the Factions. These are mostly (but not always) linked with Australian political parties. They aren’t quite the same as ‘tickets’, which are what run for election (which will be covered in a future column). At UNSW, on the current SRC, we’ve got: National Labor Students (NLS), composed of leftwards-leaning members of the Labor Party. There’s also Socialist Alternative (who you may well have encountered shouting various things around campus by now).

Outside of the current council, we’ve got Student Unity (a misnomer of course, they comprise right-wing Labor members), the Australian Liberal Students Federation (the Young Liberals, more-or-less), as well as a few people calling themselves WHIGS (right-wing ‘independents’).

Most of the current SRC is non-factional (indeed, this has been the case for a few years now), referred to in student-politics-speak as ‘small-i independents’ (to distinguish from the ‘big-Is’, a West Australian faction). Bear that in mind whenever you hear people talking about the ‘Labor-dominated SRC’.

So now, we can move to looking at the people themselves.

First up: Osman Faruqi, SRC President, ‘small-i’. The first non-Labor President since the early 90s (so you can imagine that people in both Labor factions are somewhat taken aback). He’s quite nice, as far as SRC snakes go. Since he’s non-factional, he’s also significantly less likely to pay attention to what the National Union are likely to be saying.

Jelena Samardzic (also known as Helen) is the Education Officer. She has made clear her intentions to become the next President (for NLS). What is less certain is just what she intends to do in her current role. Her immediate predecessor was more interested in filling out his CV than activism – will this tradition be continued?

James Still holds the Welfare role. He’s been very active over summer, printing off a new version of the Cheapskate’s Guide. We will all be watching to see whether his enthusiasm continues throughout the year, or whether he burns out (as did his immediate predecessor).

Ben Noone and Nicola Karcz are sharing the role of Environment Officer. The Enviro role is usually shared by two people. Sometimes they get on and do a lot of fantastic activism together. Sometimes, they do not.

There are a group of positions sometimes referred to as ‘Equity’ roles – they represent special interest groups, typically groups that historically have faced persecution. Jess Mobbs as Women’s Officer, Shuang (Samantha) Guo as International Students Officer, Marita Morgan as Students with Disabilities Officer, Felicity Lee and Anna Khan in Ethno-Cultural, April Long and Peta MacGillivray sharing the Indigenous Students role, and Nick Atkins and Squish Ramsay are the Queer Officers (the last of these I hold in a special place – a student politician snake who keeps snakes!). The Equity Officers are usually devoted to their special area, and do good work in it. If they don’t, they may well find themselves replaced by someone even more passionate.

And then we come to two particular roles. These roles aren’t necessarily problematic, more to do with the individuals holding them. You see, Anh Pham as Postgraduate Students Officer and Rebecca Hynek as COFA Campus Representative are members of Socialist Alternative. And the thing about SAlt is, they often fight for good things. But the methods they use are nasty. Attacking the individual, repeating mantras instead of engaging in debate, ‘with us or against us’ attitude in general.

Pham and Beck may well rise above this usual method of SAlt behaviour, which I hope occurs. But I cannot be confident of this.

If you’re over at COFA, then you get another group of Office-Bearers as well. In this snake’s experience, COFA OBs are inspired and full of fun. They have miniscule budgets, but great ability to make the money work.

So those are your Office-Bearers for 2010. Then we’ve got Councillors, both Undergrad and Postgrad variants thereupon. Councillors usually aren’t that noticeable. The role is notoriously undefined; it’s not quite clear who they represent. They generally fall into three groups.

First off, you’ve got the up-and-comings who didn’t manage to snag a position as office-bearer. Next, you’ve got the old hands, staying on for an extra year. Then you’ve got the randoms, people who got the position simply for being in the right place at the right time.

And why am I doing this? Well, I’m just another snake slithering around this snakepit. I was on Council for two years, first as a Tharunka editor, then an Office-Bearer. Maybe I'm waiting for another chance to get involved. or maybe this snake is sick and tired of the whole shebang, but can’t quite muster up the courage to let go. Time will tell.

The Thinking Snake's Guide

So here I am, starting something that might just crash and burn in a few days. Or it might continue for a while. We'll see. My first serious attempt at a blog.

So, after two years, I'm no longer a member of the UNSW SRC. I've been a Tharunka editor, then an Office-bearer, and last year I did one last roll of the dice trying to get preselection for President. Obviously, that didn't happen. But it doesn't mean I'm not still involved, in my own way. I'm around a lot, I talk to various people, I get emailed documents that may or may not have been meant to be confidential.

Pretty much, I'm trying to clear the air somewhat on how student politics works. It's too important to leave to the student politicians. I'd love to see more and more people getting involved. Without having to be a member of any party or faction.

Since it's where I am, I'm mainly going to be looking at UNSW (the SRC, the coming Post-grad Council, plus also uni-based elections). I'll also do some commentary on the ever-changing bizarreness that is NUS, plus also quite possibly some things about what's going down at other unis.

I'm doing a bit of writing for Tharunka this year. Anything I write there will end up here as well, but after publication. (If an article gets rejected from there, it'll still end up here regardless).
Also, it should go without saying that this is all personal opinion, and some of it will get very personal. That, after all, is the point of this being a blog.