Grace Wallman, Board Director, asked the board to “avoid the two bad apples approach […] as the USU can’t pretend it doesn’t exist in our community, we really just need to frame out minds [that] this is part of a larger systemic issue”.
Browsing: USU
The proposal has sparked an internal debate inside the USU and would be the largest governance change in the Union’s history.
What is the point of going to these meetings if the only thing we are allowed to report on is how they praise each other and their boring reports? This was the main question on our lips. But alas, in between all the procedural matters we didn’t have time to contemplate.
In relation to the CAP Constable stated that “there are 44,000 student [USU] members who encompass a broad range of views.” He went on to say that the CAP “deals with difficult matters”, but that the Board’s role should be in “making students feel safe and maintaining free speech.”
In response to questions, Singh confirmed the position would be vacant soon, telling Honi that a democratic process would take place as normal to elect a new Treasurer.
Bryson Constable (Liberal), Ben Hines (Libdependent), Julia Lim (Independent), and Grace Wallman (Switchroots) were elected as the new executive.
Hugo Hay (Senior Editor), Ashray Kumar, China Meldrum, Kelly Caviedi, Joan Brizuela, Bipasha Chakraborty, and Estelle Vigouroux will edit the magazine for the next year.
Georgia Zhang (Switchroots), Shirley (Zixuan) Zhang (Independent), James Dwyer (Unity), Ethan Floyd (Switchroots) and Phan Vu (Independent) were all provisionally elected.
Egregiously, there were no Indigenous students present at the forum, meaning that Macourt had to undertake significant labour in explaining Indigenous Australian issues, particularly to international students who did not grow up with basic education on these discourses.
Honi enters the (soap)boxing ring and emerges relatively unscathed
