BREAKING GOSS: This Is Definitely Not Ruolin Ma

By Pulp Goss

The USU have fucked up big time, mistaking Mike Mao, who unsuccessfully ran for Board in 2018, with current candidate Ruolin Ma.

A link to individual candidate profiles was posted on the USU’s facebook page on Friday at 3pm, leading to a page on the USU website with a number of errors, the most obvious of which involving a photo of Mike Mao where there should be one of Ruolin.  

The USU misspelt Ma’s first name in an image in the same Facebook post, and have incorrectly listed her campaign slogan as “Rock n Roll with Ruolin” when it is in fact “Rollin’ with Ruolin”. In addition, a separate election webpage incorrectly states that there are 5 positions open on the board (there are 6) and that the candidates will be elected in 2018. Pulp is not aware of any major errors on the profiles for the other 8 candidates in this election at present.

A little digging through the USU website reveals that many of the pages used for this year’s candidates were published in 2018, meaning that they are possibly the pages used for last year’s candidates, updated with new profiles. This would explain why the image of Mike is used in Ruolin’s profile, as well as the incorrect date, but does not explain why this considerable oversight was not picked up before the page was published, or why Ruolin’s name was misspelled. This all seems a little 👀 to us.

UPDATE: Di Wang’s profile is currently missing from the website: clicking the link on her name just reloads the page.

Pulp reached out to Ruolin Ma and the USU for comment, though neither had responded at the time of publication. We’ll be updating this article as we recieve further information.

Pulp Editor Madeline Ward is a current member of Grassroots and former SRC Women’s Officer.