Five new Board Directors have been provisionally elected to the 2022 University of Sydney Union (USU) Board. Onor Nottle (Switch), Madhullikaa Singh (Switch), Naz Sharifi (Independent), Nicholas Dower (ModLib) and Alexander Poirier (Independent) were elected to the Board.
Nottle, Singh, Sharifi and Dower were elected on the first count, with 657, 643, 642 and 603 votes respectively. Although Poirier received the lowest primary vote of 253, preferences flowing from Onor Nottle allowed him to edge out K Philips’ 316 primary votes.
They will be joining current Board Directors Isla Mowbray (Switch), Telita Goile (Switch), Du Du (Independent), David Zhu (Libdependent) and Nicholas Comino (Libdependent).
K Philips campaigned with newly-formed faction INTERPOL, which perhaps lacked the factional support and institutional knowledge of their competitors.
The result also means that only three international students will be sitting on the Board, with Singh joining Du Du and David Zhu, in a sign of waning participation from international student-oriented factions such as Penta and Phoenix in student politics.
This result sees the Left consolidate their bloc on Board, with another two Directors hailing from Switch. Nicholas Dower will contribute another Liberal to the Board, while Naz Sharifi and Alexander Poirier are unaligned. Their votes will likely be highly sought after in the upcoming Executive election, which will decide the President, Vice President, Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Secretary of the Union.
Sharifi self-described as progressive, but has received support from current SULC-aligned Directors Ben Hines and David Zhu. Despite Poirier’s stint in Unity, he seems poised to work with the Left having received preferences from Switch’s Onor Nottle and described himself as ‘anti-capitalist’ in his Honi interview.
Updates and analysis to come.