Sat 24 Jul 2010 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
A referendum has passed heavily in favour in cutting back the size of the Otago University Students' Association executive, a vote queer students fear will see glbt issues swept under the carpet. Provisional results from the OUSA poll have 72 percent of respondents in favour of reducing the size of its executive and 22 percent against. In actual numbers, that is 1,010 votes to 316. UniQ Otago Secretary Richard Girvan says it means the minority representatives on the OUSA will be replaced with a single Welfare Officer who will chair a sub-committee. He says while OUSA promises the new structure will still include minority reps, he could see nothing in the proposed constitutional changes that actually support that. "It will be at the whim of the Welfare Officer to decide whether queer issues, or women's issues or whichever minority's issues are important," he says. "It goes back to what happened before we had a queer rep, which meant that queer issues were often left till last or swept aside all together. A single Welfare Officer cannot handle all of the disparate interests at the same time - this is why the minority reps were created in the first place." Careful to point out that it's his own personal opinion and he is not speaking for UniQ Otago, Girvan says he believes the queer community feels very disenfranchised, especially as the queer rep position was only just established following a fight to create it. "It's very hard for a gay man or a lesbian or a trans student to stand up in public and say "please hear my position" and the queer community at Otago Uni are incredibly lucky to have someone on the executive to do it for them," he says. Speaking to GayNZ.com before the results of the referendum, OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan said the concerns of queer students were legitimate, agreeing they fought hard to get representation on the executive. Geoghegan said the motives behind the changes are actually increasing OUSA's ability to represent and advocate for its members. "We can have as many representatives on the executive as could be imagined, but if our internal operations aren't functioning efficiently then we would be doing them a disservice," she said. Geoghegan said OUSA needs to be a strong, well functioning organisation in order to represent students appropriately, saying at the moment it's like a discussion group - that struggles to achieve the outcomes of those discussions. "As the OUSA President I believe I spend far too much time running around organising things, and if I could just hear the issues and focus on advocating for students, I could achieve a lot more for all students, not just queer students," she said. "We believe this structure is going to be the best way to represent everyone in a fair and appropriate way. In no way do we want to let queer issues be swept to the side, and queer students on campus certainly wouldn't do so." Geoghegan said the executive would do its best to 'codify' or enshrine its obligations to queer students, saying being inclusive to all students is one of its OUSA's core values. "We want to represent and support all students – it is what we are here to do. I doubt any future executive would ever want change that, but we are happy to have that written down and clearly spelt out." Girvan understands there are governance issues on the executive and does not think the changes are malicious, simply naïve and bad for all minorities at the university. He says the results are provisional, pending a significant number of complaints about the way that OUSA and certain members of the executive ran the campaign. "We're not giving up - we're going to fight. We're going to keep the pressure on them until they realise why representation matters," he says.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 24th July 2010 - 11:40am