Honi gets the final say
Following a heated online argument about cultural appropriation which exploded on the inter-faculty pub crawl Facebook event (in which the faculty participants were encouraged to dress up as ‘Mexican’ and ‘Luau’) the Engineering Society President, Nicolas Dai, has railed against political correctness in an email sent to all society members.
“What really bothers me about all of this was that these self-satisfying acts of social justice were actually reducing the identity of an entire group of people to nothing but their victim-hood,” he rages.
“The next time you are harassed by those who behaved in this manner, instead of engaging them and feeding their self-righteous gratification from forcing their views onto other [sic]. Perhaps it is better to ignore them completely as a waste of everyone’s energy. The engineer’s path is one that creates real positive change for humanity.”
The email was sent through Mailchimp, so that any members who disagree with the political stance had little capacity to challenge it.
A-Frame vandalism
Members of Socialist Alternative have taken time off petitioning to vandalise the A-Frames of Union Board candidates that they don’t like. An eyewitness identified Omar Hassan, a senior member of SAlt (a faction who hasn’t actually contested the election) carrying and dumping one of Grace Franki’s A-Frames.
He has also been spotted kicking down and hiding Esther Shim’s A-Frames with an accomplice. The two cardboard sections have been separated, and connecting cable ties have been cut.
Hassan did not respond to Honi’s requests for comment. Franki did: “Such a shame though, because they’re such hawt A-frames.” Honi understands that there is a new obligation to keep all A-Frames in the line of sight of a campaigner at all times, to protect against this situation and for general safety reasons. Each candidate is also limited to 10 A-Frames.
Preference deals
First cabs off the ranks are Franki, Koko Kong and Cameron Hawkins in a threeway deal. They’ve signed a deal whereby half of the how-to-votes of each candidate will preference one of the other candidates second, with the other half swapping the order.
Franki cited the prospect of having “the first international student on board in a number of years” for driving the deal with Kong, and Hawkins’ extensive experience in C&S.
Courtney Thompson, Sam Kwon and James Gibson are in talks, presumably to formulate a deal which somewhat resembles the one above. Thompson told Honi the candidates were “in talks in the hopes of building a left block”. If this deal finalises, it will leave Esther, Dom and Vanessa to negotiate some arrangement between themselves.
