University of New South Wales Student Guild

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The University of New South Wales Student Guild of Undergraduates and Postgraduates (commonly referred to as the UNSW Student Guild) is the principal student union at the University of New South Wales. The Guild represents students at all faculties of the university save for the College of Fine Arts and the Australian Defence Force Academy.

The Guild replaced the University of New South Wales Students' Union and the Postgraduate Representative Association on January 1, 1993. In early 2007, it will be dissolved and replaced with an as-yet-unnamed New Student Organisation. Its first President was Penny Sharpe, its last was Xavier O'Halloran.

Membership of the Student Guild was compulsory for most UNSW students until 1 July 2006.

Contents 1 Structure 2 Functions 3 Guild politics 3.1 Access 3.2 The Non-Aligned Left 3.3 Everybody 3.4 Student Power 3.5 Students First 3.6 Power 3.7 Office-bearers 4 Alumni 5 Footnotes 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Structure

The Guild is governed by a Council, made up of 15 representatives elected from student bodies on a faculty group basis. The Executive, being the office bearers, are also members of the Council, as are the Executive-elect for the period after the results of elections have been determined by the Returning Officer until the end of the year, when they assume their offices.

The Guild is headed by the President. Other members of the Executive include the Secretary/Treasurer, who may or may not also be the Activities Officer, the Vice-President (Education/Welfare), Women's Officer, Media Directors, International Students Officer, Queer Officers, Indigenous Students Officer, Ethnic Affairs Officer and Environment Officer. The Guild also has a Postgraduate Board which has more autonomy than the other departments.

Members of the Executive are elected by campus-wide elections in September every year and take office on 1 January the following year.

Supplementary internal elections are held by Guild Council at the end of the year to fill a further array of non-executive positions and committees, including for the CASOC (Clubs And Societies On Campus) Standing Committee.

[edit] Functions

The Guild's primary function is representative: liaising with government, senior management and the faculties and schools to ensure that the views of students are properly represented in decision-making processes. This role is contested by the activist left who conceive of student unions as a form of participatory democracy rather than representative democracy.

The Guild also offers advocacy, legal advice and welfare support to the students of the University. To this end, the Guild employs a Welfare Officer and a Solicitor. The Guild also has various welfare officers including the Vice-President, Women's Officer, Indigenous Students Officer, International Students Officer and Queer Officers who also provide welfare services as well as cultural and community activities. When the Guild is held by a left-wing ticket the role of Officers is often to convene a collective and empower students to campaign on issues on their own behalf. The Guild also has an Environment Officer.

Finally, the Guild is the cultural centre of the student body. The student newspaper, Tharunka, is one of the most prominent in Australia and has a long and controversial history. The Guild also oversees the administration and funding of over 200 clubs and societies at UNSW. The Guild also organises an array of social events, including Orientation Week, Foundation Day, and Cultural Week.

[edit] Guild politics

As a representative organisation with a sizeable budget, Student Guild elections are always hotly contested.

By convention, observers (writing in Tharunka) have often classified candidates and tickets as left or right wing. In truth, the student political spectrum is centred well to the left of, say, the federal political spectrum. This is because the sectional interests of students are amenable to such "left-wing" policies as lower or abolished tuition fees and more generous income support systems for students. This places Labor voters in Student Unity and non-aligned students on the "right" of student politics with the Australian Liberal Students Federation, leaving the "left" to groups such as National Labor Students and far-left groups. Of course

Further, student factions and tickets have longevity, unity and discipline that falls well short of mass political parties like the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia. Any classification of a ticket or candidate as "left" or "right" is rough—and specific to their participation in student politics.

[edit] Access

By the time of the Guild's establishment, student politicians from the left-wing National Organisation of Labor Students (NOLS) had established a firm ascendancy. In 1994, however, right-wing students running as "Us" polled unexpectedly well, beating the ticket of the president-elect, Warwick Adams, 4-to-1. In the end, a complex network of preference deals between left-wing groups locked "Us" out.

[edit] The Non-Aligned Left

A major phenomenon in National student politics at the time, the Non-Aligned Left represented centre-left coalition that avoided the extremism of radical activist groups like Love and Rage or Resistance. At UNSW they were in many ways populist predecessors to the Everybody pheonomenon and, later, Students First in that they exploited links within the campus club and society community to gain power. Reminiscent of Democrats and (at the NUS level) Independent factions, they gathered a very significant volume of support at UNSW and on other campuses around the country. The Guild President in 1993, Alex Hanlon, was prototypical of the group which later involved Amanda Graupner (later the last NUS delegate from the NAL and a member of the Australian Democrats) and Greg Moore (also the president of the UNSW Union but not related to the UNSW Students' Union President of similar name.

[edit] Everybody

As if to mirror the defeat of the Federal Australian Labor Party in 1996, after 13 years in office, right-wing students under the "Everybody" banner stormed to power under David Coleman. But the key to Everybody's success was not right-wing ideology: it was instead a strategic alliance with the National Liaison Committee faction, representing International Students, coupled with a formidable network amongst colleges and clubs.

Non-left groups were to hold the Guild for seven of the next eight years thanks to this formula as a coalition of nonaligned, centrist and conservative students build a formidable get-out-the-vote machine though links to the residential colleges and communities of foreign students at UNSW. During this time, Australian Liberal Students Federation and National Liaison Committee-aligned student politicians, along with a large number of genuinely non-aligned students from the faculties of law, medicine and engineering, running under the Everybody, U'n'I and SpeakOut! banners, prospered.

Each year, Tharunka, the Guild's newspaper, produces a Women's Edition, which contains articles on feminism, women's health and other subjects. Plans by the editors of Tharunka to produce a Men's Edition in 2000, to deal with (primarily health-related) issues of interest to men, were met with concerted opposition by the Guild's women's department. Accusing Tharunka of planning a "White Heterosexual Male Edition" of the newspaper, then Women's Officer Anna Bilston convinced the Guild Council to ban any men's edition and to give her the right to scruitinise further editions of Tharunka before publication.^[1]

[edit] Student Power

In the 2000 elections, however, a left-wing alliance of "Student Power" candidates comprised of members of the National Organisation of Labor Students (NOLS), National Broad Left (NBL), and other unaligned anarchist and environmental activists, capitalised on a widespread desire for change within the electorate. At the same time, the social networks that underpinned SpeakOut! fell apart. The resignation from student politics of then-president Nina Pham and tensions between the administration and Tharunka had further weakened SpeakOut.

Student Power increased the Guild's profile by pursuing a more radical and activist political agenda. The new administration dramatically increased funding to the Guild's activist departments and related collectives - running up a deficit of $160,000, more than a tenth of the organisation's annual income.^[2]

In one case, the Guild paid for representatives to travel to Brisbane to protest against a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in an attempt to show their opposition to both the war in Afghanistan and Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's homophobia. The administration's opponents took issue both with the fact that the trip went ahead despite the CHOGM meeting being cancelled, and that the issues involved were not directly relevant to University of New South Wales students.^[3]

The 2001 administration failed to produce an annual report. In 2004, Tharunka reported on allegations that Student Power misappropriated funds and falsified meeting minutes, although no detail was given.^[4]

A fissure of the NBL and NOLS alliance, coupled with the Guild's failure to cultivate affiliated clubs, helped propel the Student Unity-linked Students First ticket to victory at the 2001 election - with over 70 per cent of the vote.

[edit] Students First

Students First, founded by Sam O'Leary and David Hughes, was based around the UNSW Labor Club (of which O'Leary was the President) and linked to the Student Unity faction (of which O'Leary and Hughes were, at the time, the State and National convenors respectively). To this member base was added college students and members of clubs and societies on campus. Students First campaigned on a platform of reducing Guild activism on global non-student political "activist" issues in favour of a strong focus on the needs of students, the politics of higher education and lobbying on campus-specific issues.

Students first sought to undo what they perceived as the fiscal irresponsibility of the previous administration and redirect funding into clubs and societies. The Guild participated actively in the Federal Government's review of Higher Education in Australia, making a series of submissions to the Senate.^[5][6][7] This tied in with the group's ideological focus on education and student issues rather than engagement in broader political movements such as the anti-globalization movement, which it claimed was a misuse of student money, no matter how valid such movements might be on their own terms.

The 2003 Guild election saw the incumbent Students First group in decline as experienced people moved away. Students First faced a renewed challenge from National Organisation of Labor Students (Power) and Australian Liberal Students Federation (Your Own University) candidates. Power and Your Own University both outpolled Students First. But Power's candidates were controversially excluded by returning officer Andrew Phanartzis after the ticket was caught with campaigners from outside the university—grounds for disqualification under the regulations. Power's preferences flowed to Students First, nudging the incumbents ahead of Your Own University.^[8] Power presidential candidate Joy Kyriacou told Tharunka that the election was "a sad, sad state of affairs."^[9]

In response, NOLS, the dominant National Union of Students faction, ruled the NUS component of the ballot invalid, excluding the UNSW delegation from the organisation's national conference. The decision was reversed in a deal between NOLS and Student Unity, NUS being unwilling to forfeit the Student Guild's $135,000 affiliation fee.^[10]

In 2004, the Guild joined calls for then UNSW Vice Chancellor Rory Hume to be dumped for his role in the Bruce Hall scandal. When the embattled Vice Chancellor resigned in April, then Guild President Courtney Roche told ABC Radio that "Hume has simply meant more fees for students."^[11] Roche later told Tharunka that Hume's handling of the Hall whistleblowers had been "shocking".^[12]

In November 2004, the Guild was attacked by Daily Telegraph columnist Michael Duffy for attempting to prevent the expression of support for voluntary student unionism at UNSW. "Student politics is still notoriously corrupt and secretive," Duffy wrote, reporting that "the editors of the student union magazine Tharunka, have been told by the Guild Council ... not to publish articles in support of voluntary unionism."^[13]

Students First won the 2001, 2002 and 2003 elections—though the results of the last election were rejected by the heavily favoured NOLS opposition. In 2004, Students First pushed through changes to the Guild's constitution in order to make better use of the organisation's resources. This proved a high water mark for the group, which spent most of the latter part of the 2004 term fighting internal battles.

In 2004, the University of New South Wales Postgraduate Board, hitherto an autonomous department of the Guild, indicated its intention to split from the Guild, a process it completed the following year.

[edit] Power

The 2004 election was won by the National Broad Left (NBL) and NOLS-linked Power ticket, with Students First only a token presence on the ballot paper. Again, allegations of misconduct by the winning ticket were raised.

In 2005, the Guild attracted negative publicity in the mainstream and student press after it offered monetary incentives to campus clubs in return for getting students to attend a protest against voluntary student unionism. Then president Manoj Dias-Abey defended the $500 prize pool as educative. Education Minister Brendan Nelson dismissed the Guild's protest, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that "The average, normal students whose compulsorily collected fees are paying for this sort of rent-a-crowd have probably had enough. This is a perfect example of how they continue to be forced to pay for activities that they may not need or want."^[14]

Power held onto office in the 2005 election under the label "Voice". This election was the subject of a student-made documentary, Politics 101: Big Fish, Little Pond, timed to observe student politics as the implementation of voluntary student unionism drew closer.

Voice won the 2006 election, (students electing Jesse Young as a lame-duck President) however a planned merger of UNSW student organisations into ACN 121 239 674 Limited means that these representatives will not serve in the roles to which they were elected.

The Guild's position on a restructure presented the maintenance of almost all of their expenses as a minimum position during a 2005 review of student organisation services.^[15]

[edit] Office-bearers

The table below shows the office-bearers of the UNSW Student Guild since 1997. The political affiliation of individual officers is a contentious issue: although a slate of candidates (known as a "ticket") may be considered generally aligned to a national faction, such as Student Unity, this is an imperfect guide to the sympathies of individuals elected under that banner. The "Council" column shows the ticket that won the most seats—in almost all cases, officers will be drawn from this group—and the "NUS delegates" column shows the national faction with which the ticket was aligned.

UNSW Guild of Undergraduates and Postgraduates Office-Bearers 1993-2006[16]
Term	President	Vice-President (Education/Welfare)	Secretary/Treasurer (Activities)	Media Director	Women's Officer	Council	NUS Delegates	Turnout
1993	Penny Sharpe	Alan Kirkland	Andrew Cook	Stuart Guinness Alf Conlon Yaron Finklestein		Explicit	NOLS	1700
1994	Alex Hanlon			Amanda Pullinger Andy Cook
1995	Warwick Adams (Take Action)	Lyndall Carter (Access)	Chad Davis (Wizz)	Pauly Wall David Caspari (Fish)	Penny Pitcairn (Take Action)	Access Take Action	NAL/NOLS	3700
1996[17]	Rosemary Gibbs (Access)	Mark Walker (Access)	Douglas Cook Chad Davis (MAD)	Dale Harrison Katie Kemm	Anna Czoch (Access)	Access MAD	NAL/NOLS	1900
1997	David Coleman	Que Tanh Luu	John Lee	Raj Khuman Andrew Martin	Cilla Pasupathy Tasha Chua	Everybody	NLC	3500
1998	David Madden[18]	Jenny Leong	Ben Beaukes Vinh Tran	Philip Choi Edward Carroll	Saheer Ahmad Sen Tan	Everybody	NLC	3000
1999	Sen Tan	Jin Ting Liew		Christian Harimanow		U'n'I	NLC
2000	Nina Pham[19]	Cameron Ball	Carl D'Souza Divya Panickar	Michael Korogiannis Marta Jary	Anna Bilston Rhonda Chan	SpeakOut!	NLC
2001	David Boyd	Jean Humphries	Claudine Lyons	Michelle Carmody Nick Salzberg	Somali Ghosh Alice Salomon	Student Power	NOLS/NBL
2002	Sam O'Leary[20]	Anna Barboutis	Jeff Forrest Andrew Johnston	Anthony Levin Alex Tyrell	Robyn Hakelis Lydia Turner	Students First	Student Unity
2003	Tony Butler	Courtney Roche	Jebediah Cole Gulfam Ahmed	Calen Thurston	Stephanie Williams	Students First	Student Unity
2004	Courtney Roche	Martin Donaldson	Calen Thurston Steve Legg	Joe Stella Kathryn Small	Trish Marinozzi	Students First	Student Unity
2005	Manoj Dias-Abey	Michael Pratt	Gulfam Ahmed Vega Tamotia	Christine Tran[21]	Kate Schouten	Power	NBL/NOLS
2006	Xavier O'Halloran	Petra Gulicher	John Lin Jesse Young	Mansha Tandon Patrick Coyte	Sarah Pisani	Voice	NLS

[edit] Alumni

The Guild's most notable alumni are Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle and Australian Labor Party MLC Penny Sharpe. The following individuals held offices in the National Union of Students after involvement with the Student Guild:

• Ken Fowlie (NOLS) served as NUS president in 1993
• Penny Sharpe (NOLS) served as NUS president in 1994
• Dave Hughes (Student Unity) served as NUS general secretary in 2002
• Alan Kirkland (NOLS) served as NUS New South Wales president in 1994
• Anna York (NOLS) served as NUS New South Wales president in 2003
• Somali Ghosh (NOLS) served as NUS New South Wales general secretary in 2001
• Ben Golder (NOLS) served as NUS New South Wales general secretary in 2002
• Tegan Alchin (Student Unity) served as NUS New South Wales general secretary in 2005

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Tharunka, a student newspaper published by the Guild
• the University of New South Wales Postgraduate Board
• Source (UNSW)
• the College of Fine Arts Students' Association
• the University of New South Wales Sports Association

[edit] External links

• UNSW Student Guild

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