Slogan: A Boxall to Bet On, An End to Corruption, Rank [1] Rancan
Colour: Purple, brown, navy blue
Faction: Unknown, Unknown, Liberal
Degree: Masters of Philosophy, Science, Economics
Quiz Score: Who knows?
Favourite USU venue on Campus: N/A
Biggest Campus Pet Peeve: N/A
Most Toxic Trait: Not talking to student media
Favourite Bathroom to ‘go piss girl’ on Campus: N/A
And now we come to the candidates who, believing their time to be too valuable to waste on Honi’s coverage, have declined to appear either for our quiz, our interview, or the USU Soapbox. Emily Boxall, Thomas Fletcher, and Noah Rancan. Honi wonders whether they will be as present on the USU Board as they’ve been in their campaigns.
Emily Boxall is a current Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA) Councillor. Boxall has three policies, which puts her on par with Mansour. At least Mansour showed up to give us a bit of detail on his vision for the Board; Boxall did not. Her policies are vague and unambitious: one is “to deliver for the needs and interests of students and USU members” while another is to “keep the USUs [sic] focused on students”. Has a campaign manager proofread this? Does she even have a campaign manager? We’ll never know.
The only information publicly available on Boxall is the mandatory questions posed by the USU, which all candidates are required to answer. Here, Boxall’s responses were confusing, poorly worded, and frequently failed to answer the question.
In response to a question about committing time to the role, Boxall said that she was committed to meeting with clubs and societies and “speaking to students regularly”. When she cannot be bothered to show up to an interview and quiz, who’s to say that students will ever meet her? Honi hasn’t seen her or anyone campaigning for her around campus. Certainly not the most visible candidate! Those who do place their bets on Boxall will need a great deal of optimism.
Moving onto our next absentee, Fletcher. Fletcher had a good reason to avoid the scrutiny of student media, because we had a few hot-potato questions for him. We noticed that his profile had a few tells, and we weren’t the only ones: one of our audience members at the Soapbox wanted to ask Fletcher if he had used a large language model.
From American spelling, suspicious em dashes — people who don’t edit newspapers tend not to use these — and a conspicuous lack of originality, Fletcher should be thanking his lucky stars that this candidate statement didn’t go through TurnItIn. Got anything to say for yourself, Fletcher? It appears not.
Perhaps Fletcher was also feeling nervous about being a first year student. Don’t be shy! He had three policies, which seems to be the standard both for first years and for absentees. He claimed to be committed to increasing transparency in student leadership, increasing mental health awareness on campus, “supporting diverse and inclusive programming”, and most ambitiously “An End to Corruption”. Honi would like to ask him what any of these actually mean, since he has failed to go into any detail whatsoever.
Of all the absent candidates, Rancan seems to be the only one who is serious about his campaign, given he has a marginally longer policy count of four. As a member/supporter of the Liberal Party, he has a few reasons to be nervous around student media. During and after the USU Soapbox, Rancan was spotted campaigning on Eastern Avenue. Was he too chicken to show up to the Soapbox because he didn’t want to be grilled by Honi?
Most of Rancan’s policies are neither original nor interesting. He, along with everyone else and their mum, wants to make food on campus cheaper. He also wants to increase club funding and to host more cultural events on Eastern Avenue, which doesn’t quite reach the threshold of ‘imaginative’. However, Rancan has some random things thrown in, like “snooker, air hockey and pool tables”, “increased support for college events” and “more gazebos”. Do the colleges really need more support, when there are members of St Paul’s College currently under investigation for misogyny and sexual misconduct? In a cost of living crisis, are students really concerned about the number of gazebos they have access to? I mean, I can’t afford to pay my rent, but surely that wouldn’t matter if I had a nice big gazebo where I could lament my woes.
None of the absent candidates have made an Instagram campaign account, unlike every other candidate in the election. Rancan has made a halfhearted attempt at using his private, personal Instagram for his campaign, going to the extreme effort of changing his profile picture. Boxall and Fletcher, on the other hand, were so under the radar that even Honi couldn’t find them.
Where every other candidate has consistently showed up in this election, these three have made their own rules. With a combined ten policies and a total public sighting of one, they have made zero impression on us or on the student body. Even if we deigned to give these candidates a score, they wouldn’t be ranking high. Boxall, Fletcher and Rancan have done nothing to earn one, nor have they done anything to earn your vote.
