USU Candidate Profile: Prudence Wilkins-Wheat

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. Here’s Prudence. 

Name: Prudence Wilkins-Wheat

Studies: Arts/Law (English) IV

Faction: Grassroots and Switch.

Colour, slogan: Yellow, Pru for USU.

Having served as a USU Student Activities Officer and as an executive on a series of club and society boards, Prudence Wilkins-Wheat’s extensive resume makes her one of the most experienced candidates running for Board this year.

After withdrawing from last year’s USU race for personal reasons Wilkins-Wheat, says that she has reflected on why she wants to be on Board, citing her various roles on campus as assisting her in learning how to “integrate really progressive and activist policies into the USU system.”

Her focus in running for USU Board centres around the student experience, in terms of student culture and student support. She places high importance on communication with campus clubs and societies, updating sexual assault and harassment training, ensuring affordable food on campus and the USU reaffirming values “against racism, queerphobia, sexism, classism and ableism”.

Her three favourite policies centre around enhancing USU relationships with clubs, societies and revues, converting the USU Sustainability Week into an online festival and creating a mutual aid group in collaboration with the SRC to provide supplies to students affected by COVID-19. 

Listing communication as a key failing of the USU during her time at university, Wilkins-Wheat said that she wants Board Directors to take a more active role in reaching out to clubs and societies and the wider USyd community. If elected she aims to conduct Zoom calls and create Facebook groups with club and society executives to hear feedback and “listen to their problems”, referencing the need for better communication with clubs and societies during COVID-19. Managing a series of Facebook and Zoom meetings with USU stakeholders will be a labour intensive task, meaning it is unclear how feasible this initiative will be. Wilkins-Wheat said she would invite further support from other Board Directors to facilitate a higher quality program. 

“I would hopefully get other Board directors in and I really think there would be a lot of Board directors who would be passionate about this initiative.”

Wilkins-Wheat said that “the willingness of the USU specifically to engage in politics” is something that she wants to see improvement on if elected to the Board. She cited the USU’s recent reluctance to support SRC campaigns in relation to students affected by COVID-19 as a source of disappointment. 

“I think that denying that the board is political is either ignorant or just fake. I think that you can’t pretend the board doesn’t make political decisions...the way it orientates itself in a political manner, is what I'm concerned with.”

Wilkins-Wheat seeks a more explicitly left-wing wing political USU. She lists a series of reforms to bring this vision to fruition, including the integration of First Nations groups into USU culture and more consultation with environmental groups in the planning of Sustainability Week. This type of ideological overhaul would be challenging in an institution such as the USU, particularly on a Board alongside right-wing and centrist Directors.

When asked about her opinion on supporting controversial clubs and societies such as LifeChoice, Wilkins-Wheat referred to the USU criteria for club rejection. She emphasised the importance of ensuring that clubs and societies that conflict with the principles of the USU or alienate community members should not be approved. She said that she was disappointed LifeChoice had been made into a club but that shutting it down would not be a priority if elected. In her interview she struggled to articulate how she would apply political principals in the approval of clubs and societies, citing LifeChoice’s alienation of individual students as her primary concern with controversial clubs and societies, rather than the group simply being exclusionary.

Wilkins-Wheat received an impressive score of 85% on Pulp’s candidate quiz, coming second out of all the candidates. But there are some clear knowledge gaps, with Wilkins-Wheat incorrectly listing the year that Voluntary Student Unionism was introduced and her knowledge of this topic lacking depth in her interview. For a left-wing candidate who is pushing for unionism, this blind spot is surprising. Wilkins-Wheat could also work to articulate her policies more clearly, with both her policy statement and Pulp interview being considerably long. 

View her full video interview here. 

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