LIVE: SRC Meeting 08/07/20

Ellie Stephenson reports.

I’m calling into July’s SRC meeting to see what our student representatives are up to. The SRC has had a busy few weeks, with Office Bearers’ energies particularly focussed on fighting the government’s proposed changes to fees. No doubt this will be a busy and interesting meeting!

Later in the meeting, there’ll be proposal to amend the SRC Regulations as they apply to Elections. USyd Socialist Alternative made a long Facebook post earlier today criticising the move to allow online elections and technology assisted voting. According to SAlt, these changes “pose a serious threat to the long term viability of the SRC”, and the organisation has called on Grassroots and Labor Left (NLS) to oppose them. This seems like an omen of incoming drama…

We have 23 councillors present, which means we have quorum. President Liam Donohoe opens the meeting at 6:23pm.

He then acknowledges that “wherever we are on this continent”, people are calling into the meeting from stolen First Nations land, reflecting on the recent protests against Bla(c)k Deaths in Custody.

Mengyuan (Derek) Zhu is resigning from Council. The spot automatically goes to the next person on his ticket, Panda for IT, however that person has not been contacted yet. That means there are currently 34 people on council; Liam Donohoe asks if that could lead to tied motions, but Secretary to Council Julia Robins reassures us that it won’t change the numbers for tonight.

There’s some confusing consternation about who is President in the Zoom chat. Swapnik Sanagavarapu (Grassroots), who is one of the General Executives, was apparently appointed Acting President for a couple of days this week. James Ardouin (ModLib) asks if Swapnik should be chairing. Jack Mansell (SAlt) asks when he was appointed to Acting President. There’s no real resolution to these questions, although Swapnik says “dw folks I’m just pressing for the week. The glorious reign of Chairman Doon will resume soon enough”. That’s reassuring.

6:31pm - Liam Donohoe speaks about the President’s report. In terms of administrative news, Geoffrey Fields has been selected by the Executive to be the 2020 Electoral Officer. The SRC has also hired a new paralegal, meaning there are now three people in the SRC’s Legal Service.

Donohoe adds that the people may be overestimating how much class next semester will be in person. “Generally speaking we will not be returning to weekly in-person anything, really”, he explains, adding that the University intends to continue to use ProctorU.

In a question, Jack Mansell brings up the changes to the Regulations I flagged above. He describes them as “extremely worrying” and suggests they might take away from the political nature of SRC elections. Although he acknowledges COVID-19 has prompted the desire for online elections, he argues the threat to the Left makes it problematic and risks depoliticising the elections altogether. He says, “we need in-person contestation where it’s actually possible for people to be won on a political basis”.

Mansell further argues that the decision could be cynically used as a precedent in future years. He concludes “I think that this is one of the key battles that are going to have to be fought: do we think that online elections are good for student democracy?”

Donohoe acknowledges SAlt’s position but mocks Mansell for referring to COVID-19 as “just a thing”, reminding them that it’s a “global pandemic”. “You have totally ignored the health realities that we have at the moment”, he argues, saying “the vast majority of students are not going to be back on campus”. Donohoe notes online voting will benefit students who live far away or are immunocompromised. He adds that there are criteria within the Regulations to attempt to prevent corruption. While he would prefer the SRC to avoid “total online elections”, he emphasises that COVID-19 is a reality which the organisation must contend with.

Donohoe also argues that the changes include a sunset clause and limitations which will prevent misuse in the future, and points to examples around the country where the Left has thrived with online voting (including the USU elections earlier this year, where Switchroots’ Prudence Wilkins-Wheat won in a landslide).

“I just find it so annoying to have to deal with these kinds of totally non-responsive, non-relevant, basically just random word salad”, Donohoe concludes. Is he pleased with SAlt? I suspect not.

Lily Campbell (SAlt) calls that statement “pretty outrageously outlandish”, “red-baiting” and “underhanded” (Red-baiting is a strange one to throw at Donohoe, who is - uh - pretty red himself). She then points to examples of corruption within a UQ election, arguing that the changes threaten the “viability of democracy”.

A discussion rages in the chat about whether Darlington is Inner City or Inner South. The important political question of our day: are socialist sharehouses inner city or not?

6:56pm- The Vice Presidents’ Report passes uneventfully.

General Secretary Liam Thomas (Unity) quickly speaks about the changes to the Regulations, saying people should have attended the Standing Legal Committee meetings about the changes before this general SRC meeting. The General Secretaries’ report passes.

The minutes of the Standing Legal Committee are displayed. They pass too.

7:07pm - Now for the Education Officers’ Report. Jazz Breen (Grassroots) talks about the No Uni Cuts Campaign and the campaign to stop changes to uni fees. Jack Mansell says the Education Officers have been “in a flurry of activity” fighting the crisis facing tertiary education as a result of COVID-19 and a lack of government support for universities. He emphasises the need to "keep up pressure” on the government to protect higher education.

7:13pm - Women’s Officer Vivienne Guo speaks about the Women’s Officers’ Report. WoCo has been involved in the ongoing BLM protests and held a snap rally to stop changes to the NSW Victims Support Scheme. They hosted a workshop to train people to hold police accountable and are trying to build relationships with women’s collectives at other universities. They condemn Dyson Heydon, a former High Court Justice who was recently found to have sexually harassed associates.

7:17pm - Welfare Officer Maddie Powell (SAlt) discusses the Welfare Officers’ Report. She condemns the recent changes to fees proposed by the government, noting how it would significantly increase student debt. She also criticises moves from the police to ban BLM protests.

7:20pm - Global Solidarity Officer Holly Hayne (SAlt) begins her speech on the Global Solidarity report by opposing the Regulations changes. She also discusses the fee changes, noting that she’s been reaching out to high schoolers to build opposition to the policy. She adds, “Making it politically unsavoury for politicians to support this policy is really the strategy”.

7:23pm - Now we get to the good bit! We’ve reached the proposal to change the SRC Regulations.

James Ardouin describes the changes as “systematic, wholesale moves to tamper with elections” and “a botched, rushed job”. He points to a list of incorrect references and formatting decisions throughout and complains that the changes concentrate power within the Executive, calling them “authoritarian”. He also claims that the changes would breach NUS affiliation requirements.

Ardouin’s long-term dissatisfaction with the Chair of Standing Legal jumps out; he sees the changes as empowering an “unqualified factional hack”. It seems, like SAlt, the Libs are also not huge fans of the changes.

Grace Bowskill (SAlt) reconciles agreeing with the Libs for once by saying that James Ardouin has long had a “pet project” of changing the regulations. She insinuates that there’s a “disturbing alliance” between Ardouin and Donohoe (huh?). In the chat, Donohoe calls this “some insane horseshoe theory”. “It’s actually just the case that Liam Donohoe wouldn’t be the President if the Left hadn’t been able to argue and fight”, Bowskill adds.

Maddie Powell (SAlt) says it’s a “concrete fact” that online campaigning undermines student democracy. She states that empowering Liberals in student unions leads to moves to “demobilise, defund, and possibly just abolish them”.

General Secretary Abbey Shi notes that international students who are not in Australia will benefit from online voting, to minimal reply from SAlt except for the availability of postal voting.

Mikaela Pappou (NLS) expresses concern about breaching NUS by-laws but says “at the end of the day, what it comes to is that we need to make sure this election is accessible”. She points out that we are in “very special circumstances” and that international students must be included. “As long as we set in the Regulations… that it’s only applicable for the year of 2020”, she says.

Liam Donohoe responds to the discussion. He says postal voting will still be an option but is incomparable to online voting, pointing to very low postal voting turnouts over the last few years. “I reckon half the people in this Zoom call don’t even know how to post a letter… it’s a bit Edwardian”, he says. SAlt points to the high turnout in the 2017 gay marriage plebiscite, which doesn’t seem entirely comparable to a student election.

Donohoe says that the procedural and internal referencing issues were created by the first set of changes drafted by Ardouin and Dane Luo last year, and that they will be dealt with over the next week. Unsurprisingly, the similarity to last year’s Regulations changes is not well-received by SAlt, who see this as a quasi-endorsement from the Libs.

Lily Campbell points out that the next Standing Legal Committee meeting is set during the NUS EdCon. She then says that NSW has low COVID-19 transmission which means that online elections are unnecessary. She criticises the previous meeting of the Standing Legal Committee where discussion appeared to focus on what benefits Grassroots.

Swapnik Sanagavarapu says that no-one really wants an online election and agrees that an in-person election would be good, framing the online part as “a necessary and important contingency”. He adds that SAlt have overestimated how many students will actually be on campus and points to the exclusion of international students from the vote once again. He says that an in-person election involves a significant risk of transmission due to the amount of interaction between students required.

Liam Donohoe defends the new rules to allow people to campaign for both Honi Soit and SRC, saying that it’s anti-democratic to stop people from being involved in multiple elections.

Jack Mansell argues that there’s been “a misframing of what is going on here”, complaining that people haven’t adequately contended with how bad online elections are. He says that there should be more stipulations to defend against future online voting. “At best, this is just an extremely short-sighted set of Regulations”, Mansell says, adding some slightly confusing speculation about whether this is an attempt by Donohoe to cement his legacy as SRC President.

Courtney Daley (NLS) says that, as someone who is immune-deficient, she wants the changes to be air-tight and cease in further elections but argues that she would benefit from online voting.

Deaglan Godwin (SAlt) argues that these changes are too similar to the Regulations written by the Liberal-dominated Executive last year. He says that they will only make it easier for Liberals to win elections. The Zoom chat rages in the background.

Swapnik complains: “the point has been made about 15 levels in different words with decreasing levels of cogency”. Thankfully we’re moving on now.

8:02pm - Motion to support ‘SYD Student Protest: NO Fee Hikes, NO Education Cuts’.

Maddie Clark speaks in favour of this motion which supports the July 18 rally against the government’s proposed education reforms, describing the fight so far as “really positive”.

Alex Panzarino (SAlt) says the reforms constitute “neoliberalisation” of higher education and should receive a response analogous to the 2014 protests against fee deregulation.

Deaglan Godwin says that conservatives actually like Arts degrees because they teach them to debate and think critically (the Libs in the Zoom chat get excited here) but instead they are changing fee structures to change who pays for higher education, “making every student pay more for their degrees and shifting it away from public spending”.

Liam Donohoe challenges the Liberals on SRC to “read between the lines”, noting that “there’s a considerable amount of research that shows… students are actually not especially price-sensitive”, meaning few students will be deterred from studying Arts degrees or encouraged to study STEM. “It’s just that you’re essentially punishing people who study Arts”. He notes that the changes will also be bad for STEM students - see our infographic for the data.

Vice President Felix Faber adds in the chat: “most of the libs defending the fee hikes are arts students too, imagine sipping so bad for weird, boring Dan Tehan that you’re wiling to pay twice as much for your degree”.

8:15pm - Reverse the Changes to the NSW Victims Support Scheme

Women’s Officer Ellie Wilson proposes this motion, which condemns recent changes to the NSW Victims Support Scheme which will force victims-survivors to collect their own evidence when filing a claim for support.

Liam Donohoe commends the Women’s Officers for organising the snap rally last week on this issue and discusses the “neglect” towards survivors of violence that this policy represents.

Swapnik Sanagavarapu asks how Liberals can justify this policy, saying “this is honestly one of the most unjust things that’s happened recently, and that’s saying a lot.”

8:21pm - Condemning Justice Dyson Heydon.

Ellie Wilson has proposed this motion too. She describes the recent revelations about Heydon as “really horrifying” and calls on USyd to strip him of his Emeritus Professor position.

Maddie Powell commends the motion, saying that “the position of privilege and power” occupied by Heydon stems from his progression through prestigious schools and colleges and proximity to the Liberal Party. She says “ruling class circles… breed misogyny”, including parliament, the justice system and elite institutions. “For every person who commits this crime, there are dozens who cover them up”, she adds.

Women’s Officer Vivienne Guo points out that, while being an Emeritus Professor is not remunerated, the University demonstrates a “blatant disregard for survivors” by continuing to confer the title on him. “We need to send a powerful message to those in power and tell them that they aren’t gonna get away with things like this”, she concludes.

8:32pm - End the Public Housing Lockdown - Healthcare not Racist Policing.

There are two similar motions on the issue of the Victorian public housing lockdown: one from Sofie Nicolson (Solidarity) and one from Vivienne Guo. They will be moved simultaneously because they’re so similar.

Nicolson begins by calling the lockdown “racist, authoritarian” and argues that Daniel Andrews’ lockdown is unjust. She praises the unity of the residents of the towers and reiterates their demands. “Instead of imposing a lockdown in crowded public housing”, she says the Government should have provided safer accomodation and better supplies to residents.

Vivienne Guo describes the policy as “the harshest lockdown we have seen” and “racist policing of poverty”. She talks about the inappropriate food provided to residents, including out-of-date food and pork being given to Muslim people. She criticises the framing of the lockdown as furthering “public health and safety”, pointing to the inconsistent application of the policy, which does not apply to other, private blocks of apartments.

Liam Donohoe adds that “public housing has been neglected by governments in this country” for many decades and has declined over time. He calls this fact “absolutely fucking abhorrent” and says it produces an “underclass”. He situates this lockdown within a broader context of insecure housing and growing homelessness.

Mikaela Pappou calls the measure “disgusting” and “punitive”. While she says lockdown is important, she argues that the inequality within the implementation of the measures is “shameful”.

Jack Mansell says “what is happening in Victoria at the moment is a disgrace and a large indictment on the Andrews government”. While he supports closing down schools, he thinks “what is happening the in public housing flats is in fact not a public health measure at all”. He also expresses concern about the lack of access to medications and other necessities for people within the towers.

Mansell is also critical of the focus on charity to solve the problems of the lockdown, as opposed to the mounting of a large-scale campaign for better housing.

8:47pm - International Students are Welcome, Racists are Not.

Ethnocultural Officer Kedar Maddali (Grassroots), who is proposing the motion, says it is important that we acknowledge the struggles of international students at the moment. They say the SRC must show support for international students and stand against increasing racism.

Vivienne Guo points to the violent assault of a Chinese international student last year, describing a “broader history of Sinophobia and racism” at the University and worldwide, recognising that anti-racist work should be ongoing.

8:51pm - Liam Donohoe closes the meeting, which has finished in record speed despite the Regulations controversy. Phew! See you at the next meeting.