Avoiding Responsibility

Well it has been an interesting couple of days. After reading a friends blog, I discovered that my alma mater, the University of New England, is a hotbed of student political and economic interest.

There are four primary student organisations at UNE, and two of them, the Students Association (UNESA), and the Union are in serious shit-fights.

Firstly the Union. When I attended UNE, the Union was is a very healthy financial position, so much so that it splashed out a couple of million to buy a city-centre hotel, Tattersalls. They added this to their already extensive collection of commerical activities including the cafeteria (which saved me helped me many a morning get through a particularly large hangover whilst trying to present breakfast radio), the Bistro - the on-campus bar which was usually responsible for the aforementioned hangover, and a number of restaurants. The staff were all happy and very friendly, and a good time was had by all. 4 years later, and the University as the underwriter for at least some of the Union's debt has called in an administrator, and the University is taking over the running of these businesses cause the Union Board (run primarily by students) ran it into the ground. Where all the money went too - well, I can't actually say cause they don't publish the full financial reports online. Needless to say, there is a vey large hole where there once used to be a large pile of cash.

The Students Association has also seen some dramatic moments of late. In my 5 years at UNE, the students assocaition was always dominated by the 'tree huggers'. Being of a slightly left-leaning persausion myself, that didn't bother me so much. They did ok; ran a few bbq's, provided me with an outlet for my frustrations - the Neucleus (sic) student newspaper and TUNE! FM (2UNE when I started there); and handed out lots of free condoms :)

So I was suprised to find that the UNESA council had been taken over by the UNE Liberal Students Club. Actually, I wasn't so suprised, because in my last year they had finally figured the whole 'deomcratic system' thing out - rather than just whinge about what the tree-huggers were doing, they could actually take the places of the tree-huggers and do whatever the hell they wanted. They just needed to make sure their friends were sober enough to vote on the election day. And so it has come to pass that they are now enjoying the power, and not in a particularly subtle way. Amused as I was by that, I decided to have a look at the minutes of the Council meetings and discovered these absolute gems: that student funds should be spent to purchase a portrait of Queen Elisabeth II, Queen of Australia, and an Australian flag, to be displayed in the UNESA office; that the President has absolute discretion in removing any promotional material in or on UNESA premises "that they deem to be offensive or inappropriate" (direct quote); and that all promotional materials from the 'other side of politics' (my emphasis) be securly locked away upon arrival at UNESA and to be shredded if the President does not "approve" the material (direct quote).

As amusing as those things are, this has to be my favourite of all, and to be honest, if I was still a student at UNE I would actually take the time to turn up to the UNESA council meetings just to see this happen:

From the Agenda to the Meeting of the UNESA Council scheduled for 9 July 2005 (available here):

13.6 Singing
THAT all Liberal Councillors must sing “God Save the Queen” in unison to show
their allegiance to our head of state at the start of each meeting. FURTHER THAT
If they do not sing in unison they must restart the song until they get it ring ( Liberal denotes the following people: Sam Aber, Kayne Rosolen, Murray Challacombe, Kathy Hooke, Tim Fisher, Ben Clifton, Charlie Hollingsworth, Amy Houston and Duncan Reily (my italics)

Absolutely priceless! Man, I wish I was still in the sandbox!