USU Candidate Profile: Belinda Thomas

Pulp interviewed all 10 candidates in the running to become USU Board Directors. Over the next week we’ll be posting a profile on each of them in the randomised order drawn by the Returning Officer. First up is Belinda. 

Name: Belinda Thomas

Studies: Arts/law (music) II

Faction: Student Unity

Colour, slogan, campaign manager: Red, Bring on Belinda, Liam Thomas

Although Belinda is only in her second year, she boasts a significant  amount of experience with the USU, being on the Executive of SASS. She also scored the highest in our quiz, with an impressive 87%. Her quiz answers displayed in depth knowledge of the USU: she was the only candidate who knew the percentage of women in Incubate’s 2019 cohort (0%) and she remembered the USU’s financial figures, the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF), and the Youth Allowance exactly. She could quote the USU’s 2017-2020 Strategic Plan and broadly had a good understanding of the workings of the organisation.

In many ways, then, she seems like the quintessential Unity (Labor Right) candidate: meticulously prepared, student services focused and generally supportive of the USU’s status quo. When asked why she was running for USU Board, she referred to the opportunities, friends and new passions she has made and the need to give back to the USU for the benefits it has given her. Her policy platform also illustrates that she’s generally a fan of the pre-COVID USU. 

One of her favourite policies was about clubs and societies. She praised clubs and societies for their “fabulous innovation and creativity” adapting to the crisis, arguing that this should be rewarded by support for clubs and societies. She proposed more training (for example mental health training) to help club Executives. This is not exactly a novel or transformative promise, but perhaps a larger commitment was increasing Happy Hours and revising the University’s alcohol policy. While this would be helpful for clubs if achieved, engaging with University policy is always a challenge, meaning it’s unclear how deliverable this idea is. 

She also referred to her recovery plan for the post-coronavirus USU, saying that things are starting to look up for the organisation but that it needs to continue to encourage “innovation and creativity”, for example by promoting the creative arts. She emphasised the need to “listen to what these individuals [clubs and societies executives] have to say” in making the recovery plan. While it’s positive that Belinda is thinking about recovery, and it’s difficult to answer without knowing details of the USU’s finances, this was a fairly vague answer which doesn’t promise any especially powerful responses to the crisis. 

Belinda does, however, use her enrolment as a Conservatorium student to set her apart. She told us she was the only Con candidate “in memory”, having attended since she was five. She criticised the “tokenistic” policies of candidates from previous years, which ignored the “existing campus culture there”. Instead, she said, the USU should extend existing programs to the Con, things like language learning programs and creating more performance opportunities for Con students. Again, none of these ideas are necessarily transformative. Nonetheless, with the large amount of Con support for last year’s Switch for the Con SRC ticket, Con representation might be a useful electoral pool.

When asked about how political she believed the USU should be, Belinda told us she thought it should be a “progressive organisation” but that it’s not “inherently political”. She said that, in dealing with the “crossroads” between politics and student services, the USU should put on events with political messages like Pride Fest and “listen to what the student body says is important”. For political statements regarding student wellbeing, for instance about student housing during COVID-19, Belinda argued the USU should have a stake in the campaigns but should support the SRC’s work rather than being the “leading voice”.  With regards to controversial clubs and societies, like LifeChoice, she argued that the USU should be “careful” about setting a precedent which would allow “shutting down left-wing progressive voices”. 

In answer to the question “how will you ensure that the USU caters to all USyd students?”, Belinda replied that, as a woman of colour, she understands “what it’s like to be spoken over”. This means she wants to “amplify” voices which are forgotten, including through representing Con students. When discussing what she hopes Michael Spence’s replacement as Vice-Chancellor will be like, she told us she would like it to be a woman, drawing parallels with the USU’s Alexis Roitman. She argues that the “success of empathetic leadership during this time” proves the value of female leadership. Given the treatment of staff under, for example, Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson, it’s unclear how meaningfully compassionate that leadership would be. All up, it seems clear Belinda, while supporting status quo expressions of politics from the USU, will not be an especially political candidate beyond representation politics.

Belinda’s biggest criticism of the USU during her time at university was that it was “lacklustre” and lacked “fireworks”. When asked to elaborate on what they could have done differently, she struggled to identify anything in particular, eventually naming the fact that people couldn’t get into the Welcome to Uni Party at Welcome Fest. Ironically then, while she is a well-prepared and knowledgeable candidate, perhaps what Belinda lacks is fireworks. 

View her full video interview here

Note: Pulp editor Ellie Stephenson is a former member of Grassroots.