Adelaide University’s (AU) student union, YouX, appointed Kavya Ganapathy, Akshitha Ramadoss, and Pradeep Sundaramurti Ilango in May as the new editors of On Dit, AU’s student magazine.
The delay occurred because the 2024 union board election results were overturned in October 2024 by the YouX Election Tribunal. This resulted in the editorial elections of AU’s student magazine On Dit being declared void.
The decision to void the election was made following five separate allegations of electoral misconduct by members of the Progress faction, which is oriented towards and primarily composed of international students. Allegations included that some students were pressured to hand their phones to candidates, who cast votes for the Progress faction without their consent.
An anonymous source told Honi “I was personally shocked to read of the misconduct by some Progress candidates and campaigners, the blatant disregard to the rules and a slight “do whatever it takes” attitude in getting students to vote for them.”
The Reporting Officer (RO) heard a complaint from a student that at an event held by AU’s Chinese Students’ Association, “all participants were informed that in order to join the activities, we were required to vote for YouX committee members.
“To make matters worse, our phones were taken, and the votes were cast on our behalf, leaving us unable to vote for the candidates of our choice.” The student who reported the complaint said that he felt “both disrespected and deprived of my fundamental right to vote freely”.
For the student media election, complaints were received that campaigners did not wear lanyards, campaigned without being registered, and on several counts “crowded” voters, where the Code of Conduct states that campaigners can only speak to students one-on-one.
One team of On Dit editorial candidates, including Charlotte Whincup, Amber Lomax, Arantza Ferrand, and Shreya Pande, made a complaint to the Returning Officer about another team of candidates: Jennifer Tran, Harish Thilagan, Adrian Niculescu, and Raktim Argha.
Their complaint concerned Mock Dit, a mock version of the On Dit magazine which editorial candidates traditionally make for their campaign.
The complaint alleged that the candidates had failed to submit their Mock Dit by the campaign deadline. After the RO ruled that a late Mock Dit could not be approved, the candidates had used it in their campaigns without authorisation.
The complaining team argued that the RO had wrongly dealt with these complaints and that their severity meant that the electoral decision should be overturned.
The Election Tribunal recommended that another election be held, but YouX decided to launch a competitive application process instead, leading to the current team beginning their term in mid-March. An anonymous source described the electoral process as “chaotic”.
Two members of the current team, Ramadoss and Sundaramurti Ilango, campaigned in the 2024 election as Progress candidates.
Whincup spoke to InDaily about the application process, saying that her independent team withdrew their application in late February due to frustrations with the process.
After submitting their application in December 2024, they received “radio silence” from YouX until February 2025.
Whincup’s team then received a notice from YouX that further materials were required for their application, including a cover letter, a cover page, a two-page editorial article titled “The Recent Times – War, Ideologies, and the Global Divide”, a summary of “your views on press freedom and your approach to politically sensitive topics as an editor”, and an “editorial vision statement”.
The other independent team received the same notice and complied with it.
Alec Tedesco, a member of the latter team, told InDaily that before receiving an application outcome, he had been approached by a YouX board member with an offer to join the ticket affiliated with Progress as an individual editor.
Tedesco refused to join the team as an individual editor, and in mid-March, his team was informed that their application had been unsuccessful.
Honi’s anonymous source commented on the “questionable” nature of the election. “When the Student Media Committee Chair takes sole ownership of the selection process and seeks to redo the process, despite non-political staff already having a shortlisted team, you have to question if the Chair wasn’t happy with the merit-based outcome. When the Chair asks teams to provide information and five brand-new articles — after the staff had already read their article submissions — you have to question why.
“When the selected team is from the same StuPol faction as the Chair — who made the decision to select them — then it’s clear a level of bias was introduced and it wasn’t an independent merit-based process.” They added, “When [this happens], you have to question the entirety of the process and its eventual outcome.”
The On Dit editors receive $7,500 per year for producing six print editions of their magazine.
The 2025 team announced pitch call-outs for their first edition on 8th April, which has not yet been printed.
