TIME goes postal
The colleges have long been described as an impossible “voting base”. But one candidate in September’s election may have just discovered how to mobilise Western Avenue: postal votes.
Honi has received screenshots which show a member of the TIME for Honi ticket has been soliciting votes from friends down the corridor by offering to pay a visit to their room to have them complete a postal vote application.
According to the application form, postal votes may only be submitted by students who will be unable to attend campus on voting days or pre-poll day and “vague or facetious reasons” for submitting a postal vote will not be accepted.
“TIME proudly wants everyone to be able to vote in this election,” John Patrick Asimakis, of TIME for Honi (although, not the member who we have evidence of using the postal vote method) told us. “We therefore made it clear to students who we know are at campuses with restricted voting hours or working on polling days that if they could not reach a booth, but wanted to vote, a postal vote application was an option. I’m glad we did this, since unlike the current insular and elitist Honi [sic] clique, our ticket actually supports giving people a say in how their newspaper is run.”
The screenshots we have seen do not appear to show the offer of a postal vote being made in response to any inability to attend main campus during the election.
Postal applications were due on August 19.
Helen Tarly
One of Honi’s biggest fans has ~shockingly~ been ousted as a fake troll account. Several Facebook users identified the profile “Helen Tarly” as a college account, though it bizarrely uses a profile picture taken from Bulgarian-American award-winning photojournalist Mimi Chakrova’s Medium article “Going undercover as a sex worker”.
Tarly seems particularly fascinated by Honi articles pertaining to feminism and sexual assault, particularly set in a college context. Some choice contributions include the particularly complimentary observation that “this is laughably bad even for Honi [sic] and reeks of the sort of insecurity that lies at the heart of so many of its writers”, as well as the poignant question “Why are universities being singled out as special in some way as organisations who have to deal with rape?” Tarly really caught us out by noting our lack of sporting qualification, “Your gender-theory idiots at Honi Soit [sic] who probably never play sport should stop trying to frame everything in terms of this ‘Culture war’ with ‘feminist frontiers’”.
Tarly has 14 similarly fake Facebook friends and works “at private tutor”. We lost interest in this investigation when a simple Google search of Helen Tarly produced only results of Samwell Tarly, the famed Game of Thrones favourite.
No institutional sexism here, Ms Broderick
A post on the Sancta Sophia College “Sancta Safari” Facebook event, produced without subedit or comment: “Sancta women are like the hunter valley coal mine an untapped resource.”
Premises promised
One SRC deal this season comes with an interesting condition: “Sydney Labor Students and Grassroots will support Socialist Alternative using the SRC to book rooms on campus at Usyd for the Socialism 2017 Conference”.
“Socialism” is a two-year-old annual conference “hosted by Socialist Alternative”. While the SRC’s contract with the University allows it to book rooms and lecture theatres for free, Honi isn’t aware of any past bookings being made on behalf of a factional event.
Grassroots presidential candidate Georgia Mantle clarified that the support “will not involve any SRC money”. “Any political ‘faction’ or group on campus that wishes to hold public events should be able to approach the SRC and ask for support with room bookings.
“Supporting political and activist groups on campus that are involved with the SRC is how we can create a more activist SRC.”
