USU Board candidates 2020: Jiale Wang

Slogan: ‘Wayne is the way’.

Colour: Mint green

Faction: Panda.

Quiz score: 37%.

Housewives tagline: “I believe in an excess of turkey.”

Jiale Wang is undoubtedly our most enthusiastic candidate —“do you mind if I talk more? I just want to talk more”— which may go some way to making up for his lack of general knowledge about how the USU operates, a quiz score of 37% being unimpressive. His campaign is being managed by Maria Ge, and he has the backing of Panda, of which he has been a member since his first semester at USyd. Wang has participated in many election campaigns, including Benny Shen’s campaign for USU board director last year. Wang was a Global Solidarity Officer for the SRC in 2019, and was involved in organising a protest in support of international students with former SRC President Jacky He.

Jiale Wang’s policy statement is brief, sent in a single Facebook message under 90 words. When asked if he had a longer statement, Wang told Honi that he was confident he would be able to properly explain the policies in his interview. His favourite policy was equality for smaller clubs and societies, and more specifically, his own niche Chinese Martial Arts Club, for which he wants greater privileges to hire out USU spaces. Wang’s most coherent — although not unique — policy is the need for better transparency within the USU, particularly in terms of having USU board meeting updates on social media and on the website, and having them available in multiple languages, so that they are accessible to a greater number of students.

When asked about his favourite fellow candidate, Wang responded happily that he liked Amir, because he was also an international student and because he didn’t really have political preferences. It’s clear Wang considers a lack of political preference a good thing, which aligns with a lot of this year’s other board candidates.

When asked where he would cut $1million from, Wang didn’t seem to understand that the USU puts money into programs and organisations other than clubs and societies, telling Honi that he would cut the money from the Debating Society, since they can’t really debate over Zoom at the moment anyway. If the USU gave $1 million to the Debating Society every year, they’d be cheering.

Jiale refused to answer whether or not he would support a University take-over of the USU, saying that he hadn’t done enough research to answer the question, which is a curious response, considering his enthusiastic responses to other USU related questions. Perhaps research on what a union actually is was part of the 63% of quiz material he didn’t study.

The full transcript of the candidate’s interview can be found here.