By Stuart Munckton
PERTH — Fewer than 10% of enrolled students at Edith Cowan University ECU) voted in the recent elections for student guild and National Union of Students delegates. Given the undemocratic nature of the elections, nobody can blame them.
Students were lucky to have the opportunity to vote at all. The guild leadership for the last six years has been the National Organisation of Labor Students (Labor left). NOLS has perfected to the art of edging out competition and being elected unopposed. There were no elections last year.
ECU is made up of four campuses, each of which holds its own guild elections. This year only one of the four campuses actually held guild elections.
On the other campuses, NOLS found technical problems with the nominations forms of other candidates to get them disqualified. Then they did deals for positions with those who remained, or convinced them not to run.
The elections were not monitored by the electoral commission, and the "independent" chairperson for the guild elections was a leading Labor Party member.
At Churchlands, home of ECU's business department, NOLS almost paid the price for the way it has kept campuses depoliticised. (A classic example is that the guild told nobody about the administration's plans to introduce up-front fees until election time, and even then it was a very small part of the campaign.)
The Young Liberals ran a large apolitical ticket under the name of STAR. Their main campaigning point was cheaper beer in the tavern. They won two of the four guild councillor positions. NOLS saved its skin by winning president.
Elections for ECU's six NUS positions took place across all campuses. Due to the lacklustre efforts of the state NUS branch here in organising students to fight the current attacks on higher education this year, coupled with the fact that there were no NUS elections last year, most students had not even heard of NUS.
This resulted in a low voter turnout, but also created conditions where students were very open to a genuine left ticket. Socialist youth organisation Resistance ran four activists on a ticket criticising NUS's bureaucratic structures and its lack of action against education cuts and more fees.
This ticket campaigned around reforming NUS into a democratic, open, fighting union. Despite campaigning mostly on one campus, Resistance won a delegate position.
However, it now seems likely that the results of the elections will not be recognised, and that last year's delegates will be appointed as this year's delegates.
Some candidates have complained about the undemocratic nature of the elections. While this is valid, at least elections were held. It is absurd to suggest that it would be more democratic to appoint last year's delegates, who were not elected.
Another factor behind moves to reject the elections is that no NOLS delegates were elected who line up with current NUS national president John Carey within NOLS.
The losers in this farce are the students.