Slogan: Annika is the Answer
Colour: Heather Purple
Faction: Independent
Degree: Math / Law III
Quiz Score: 55%
Favourite USU venue on Campus: Courtyard
Biggest Campus Pet Peeve: Couldn’t come up with one, just a happy person
Most Toxic Trait: Blocking and unblocking people in the same hour
Favourite Bathroom to ‘go piss girl’ on Campus: Definitely not law annex level 1 bathroom
Annika Wang is a third-year student studying a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Mathematics. Wang scored 55 per cent on Honi’s quiz which, while technically a pass, was nonetheless an unimpressive result.
Her campaign slogan is “Annika is the Answer”, though some of her answers to Honi’s quiz and interview were very interesting!
Wang said that she was not a member of any political party due to not being an Australian citizen. She considered herself “relatively more progressive” in terms of social politics, and “more student-centric”;regarding political issues, she is “willing to hear different political perspectives.”
When asked about the role that politics has to play in the USU, Wang said that she would “prioritise the things that everyone agrees on first and then move onto the factional stuff, and then move onto the stuff that is being disagreed on.” She said that “The USU doesn’t necessarily have to be very political, because we already have the SRC in place. That is the political part of the university.”
However, Wang’s stance on the SSAF funding that the USU and the SRC receive was questionable. She said that the USU “deserves more” funding, and asked, “What exactly does the SRC do to have so much funding?” She added, “I think sports and fitness and the SRC shouldn’t get that much funding compared to the USU.” Notably, Wang mentioned that the SRC President, Angus Fisher, was “overpaid”. Fisher receives a $44,000 salary based on the federal minimum wage.
Wang has plenty of experience in the USU Debating Society and the Sydney University Law Society (SULS). She is currently the International Students Officer in SULS and has taken on various executive roles in the Debate Society.
When asked about whether she would support paying members of the USU VTeam, Wang hedged her bets. She said that many students were still willing to participate in the program despite it being volunteer work, and that international students would benefit from it being unpaid because it would not eat into their government-mandated 24 hour working cap. Wang argued that the experience of volunteer work was adequate without payment, and said that if elected she would conduct a survey with VTeam members. Wang has never participated in the VTeam, although she has done volunteer work at Redfern Legal Centre.
Wang’s understanding of the funding structures around clubs and societies was comprehensive, although her knowledge of spaces on campus was less so, given that she guessed that the Khanh Tran Room, formerly known as the DisCo Room, was located in the International Students’ Lounge.
Her knowledge of voluntary student unionism was also solid, and she correctly identified the Howard government as the government that introduced SSAF in 2005. She was aware of the Australian Universities Accords recommending that 80 per cent of the Australian population earn a tertiary degree, although did not identify any specific recommendations that were legislated last year.
Honi asked Wang about what she thought the most important issues were to students currently, and Wang responded that jobs would be the most important, including employability and career opportunities. She identified the cost-of-living crisis as another issue, and when asked about political issues she named American tariffs and then “the progress of feminism, the progress of sexism, and a lot of war that is happening in the status quo right now.”
Regarding activism, Wang said that her experience in student activism was “quite limited” and the number of protests she had participated in was “very, very little.” However, she argued that she was “quite activist compared to most international students on campus” and said that her involvement in clubs and societies, as well as helping to organise events, contributed to this experience.
Wang’s policy ideas are solid, and her knowledge of the USU and the university was also passable. However, her positions on politics, the structure of the USU, and the VTeam make Honi wonder whose interests Wang really puts first.
Watch Annika’s video here:
