The Students’ Representative Council (SRC) presidency will be contested between three candidates and the Honi Soit editorial race between two tickets this year.
Nominations for the SRC elections — which will decide the SRC president, the Honi Soit editorial team, 33 SRC councillors and seven National Union of Students (NUS) delegates — closed at 4.30pm today.
The fight for total control
The presidential race will be contested between (in ballot order) current councillor Brendan Ma (independent), current SRC General Secretary Isabella Pytka (Sydney Labor Students — SLS), and current SRC Wom*n’s Officer Imogen Grant (Grassroots).
Ma, a Liberal Party member who is running as an independent, is being supported by the Vision for SRC team, a group of independents with Liberal backing running under the branding Vision for SRC.
Pytka is being supported by her faction, SLS, and the other Labor factions National Labor Students (NLS) and Student Unity under the branding Stand Up.
Grant was going to be supported by 17 councillor tickets running under Grassroots branding and 16 tickets running under the branding Switch, but the Grassroots tickets were all excluded from the ballot as their nomination forms were handed in late — under one minute after nominations closed.
The 16 Switch tickets — a combination of Grassroots members and broad-left independents — nominated successfully and will support Grant.
Grassroots Sydney has since stated that they believe the Returning Officer’s decision is “an undemocratic ruling” and in response will be referring the decision to the electoral arbiter.
The race to succeed us
As previously reported, the Honi Soit race is between tickets Heat and Mint (in ballot order).
Heat comprises Elijah Abraham, Bianca Davino, Janek Drevikovsky, Cameron Gooley, Nick Harriot, Lamya Rahman (NLS), Andrew Rickert, Zoe Stojanovic-Hill, Lena Wang and Alison Xiao. The ticket will be managed by current Honi editor Michael Sun and board director Adam Torres (NLS).
Of the two tickets, only Heat’s members have all previously reported for Honi, and eight are current reporters.
Harriott has also filmed and produced videos for Honi this year, and Rickert has produced podcasts.
The opposing ticket, Mint, consists of Deepa Alam, Georgette Bechara, SRC Vice-President Iman Farrar (NLS), Pat Hendy, Haydn Hickson, Abbey Lenton, Angie Lu, Michelle Picone (SLS), Liangyu Sun and Alan Zheng (Unity).
Only Alam, Hickson and Zheng are current Honi reporters, though Hickson has not contributed anything. Alam is also an Honi artist. None of the other members have contributed in the past.
Mint will be managed by Dominic McDonald, a current SRC councillor and a member of Student Unity.
The other race
The NUS ballot will be contested by tickets (in ballot order) Vision for NUS, Stand Up for NUS, Left Action for NUS, Liberals, and Stand Up USYD.
The other other race
62 tickets are vying for 33 spots on the council.
A draft council ballot can be seen below.
Correction: An earlier version of this article did not list Deepa Alam as an Honi reporter, though it did mention her art contributions.
