Candidate Statements!

Candidate policy statements for the upcoming UMSU elections (Sept. 8-12) are out. There's the wacky, the jovial and the more moderately sane. It's hard to stand out in such a pile of 'vibrant and inclusive' or 'radical and progressive' or 'FREE MARKETS!' But here are some of the greater gems coming out of this round of student political-hopefuls.

"NATALIE TAVASSOLI (STOP 2AM LOCKOUT, STOP ALCOPOPS TAX)
Hey I’m Nat, and this year I’ve decided to run for president to stop the 2am lockout which is ruining Melbourne’s nightlife. In my role as president of the student union, I will lobby the government non-stop until this disgraceful law is repealed, and students are free to go out without being locked out of their favourite venue."

Can you say feeder ticket?

"CHRIS LEWIS (YES!)
Each year the student union receives over $10 million from the uni itself."

This is not true. If it were, the union would barely have noticed VSU since pre-VSU budgets were not much bigger than $10mil.

"ADAM MCKEE & ANDREW KEMP (LIBERAL)...
1. Reduce carbon emissions by riding a whale to work instead. On the way, harpoon an environmentalist."

With an attitude like that, they're sure to win the Environment office.

"ROSALIE DELANEY, MARK A. PEART, MAX KAISER & LORENA SOLIN (ACTIVATE)...
We’re a welcoming and inclusive bunch as seen in the vibrant Arts Department we’ve run this year. Farrago has been a radical magazine in the past, and we want to reinstate its role as an engaged and enlightening publication...
...no one wants to see Farrago turn into a cover-to-cover partisan propaganda arm. But we do want a magazine that engages with the student community holistically rather than patronising it with inaccessible in-jokes and arrogant, divisive tirades that besides offending people are irrelevant, and even detrimental, to student culture and unionism."

None of these candidates were Arts Officers. To say that they want to make Farrago both a radical magazine but not to turn it into cover-to-cover partisan propaganda that is never allowed to be detrimental to student unionism is a contradiction. Rosalie Delaney, however, has been doing well recently and won an appeal to overturn the conviction for her role in the G20 protests.

"GILLIAN KILBY, BHAKTHI PUVANENTHIRAN, ZOE-ZORA SANDERS & YOSHUA WAKEHAM (INDEPENDENT MEDIA) ...
Of the parties vying to run Farrago, only Independent Media has an unwavering commitment to genuine political and ideological independence."

That is to say, independence from ideologies other than that of media independence. It only forms paradoxes if you're a postmodernist.