Slogan: I’m with Isla
Colour: Gold
Quiz score: 83%
Faction: Switch
Isla Mowbray is Switch’s prime hope for the USU Board. Billed as a “creative” candidate, she wants a USU that “genuinely cares about creating a safe and exciting community.” Her big ticket items are improving the much-maligned USU room booking system, hosting Manning band nights, Courtyard music sessions, and organising industry panels with performing arts societies.
Consent, drugs and alcohol training for all execs is another key promise, with the current training — which is simply a document execs are expected to read — described as “not adequate.” Like her Switch running mate, Mowbray’s policies may be ambitious, but such a flaw has not stopped left-wing candidates in the past.
An SRC executive member in 2019, Isla is currently the Vice President of SUDS.
She criticised the current Board for a “lack of care” towards the activities of C&S, while describing as “despicable” the Board’s tardiness in publicising minutes and their failure to invite student media to meetings. Isla was critical of the USU’s new C&S funding model, saying it prevented small clubs from growing and needed “review.”
Positioning herself as “anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist,” Isla advocates for increased activist involvement from the USU, promising collaboration with the SRC collectives and publicity for protests through the USU’s social media channels. She said she would find it “difficult” to work with “Liberal-aligned” Directors, and professed support for Pru for President. Interestingly, Isla said that operating at a surplus is “important…but should not be the priority.”
Isla scored an impressive 83% in the Honi quiz, which again signifies either strong institutional knowledge or an intensive period of training from her faction.
With strong factional backing, social clout, and a dearth of non-Switch left-wing candidates, Isla is a very strong prospect for election.
