I have some pretty good news that some of you may already have heard. But for the record...
Personally, I have spent 4-5 weeks straight on 3-4 hours sleep working on campaign material and campaigning techniques/ documents, at the same time juggling other commitments such as my beautiful supportive Fei, my responsibilities at the Student Guild, keeping up with uni work and fulfilling my duties at Animania (a full weekend of fun indeed, met lots of great people there who have the full potential to change the world, or at the very least, put massive dents in it.)
It was an extremely exhausting week, it started off terribly with me completely breaking down and pretty much getting one of the biggest panic attacks since Fei and I had a lot of issues in the initial stages of our unstable yet fulfilling relationship. Everything picked up from there.
In a bird's eye view, we were up against a person with an obvious Human Resources advantage as well as outside political support from Stephen Wong. Althought against the constitution to have supporters from outside UNSW Faculty of Commerce, I eventually accepted what was happening (taking advantage of loopholes in the constitution) and instead embraced it. Bring it on. We also started with lots of negative air: over the weekend, a mass email was sent out to a lot of Commerce students where our team, DRIVE, was accused without solid evidence, of vandalising the John Goodsell Building (the building where the polling was to occur.)
Despite all this, we managed to pull through in the end, winning the election by around 90 votes. As much as I loathe the integrity of the other team, both teams have fought extremely well, with the total number of votes outnumbering that of the number of votes put forward for the Guild Elections. A constituent society election had more participation than the GUILD election. UNSW is a serious joke lol.
6 Comments:
Andy, I'm bold enough to say 95% of people who voted did not know the difference between the two policies of the teams. And of those 95%, I'd say a further 95% actually don't give a friggin damn about policies. So in a way, the commerce students are also to blame.
Yes, COMSOC elections are a sham. Yes, times like this I also loathe about being part of the Faculty of Commerce @ UNSW. But personally, there's no point sitting on the sidelines bitching about the pettiness of these elections. For now, I will put my faith in the current team for COMSOC to rise from its ashes again (this year's COMSOC was downright horrible) to make COMSOC and its goals run more efficiently, and at the same time, make some innovations to its political structure.
comsoc should just be broken up into and the funding split between the major constituent societies. comsoc as a society worked in the past when practically everyone who was a commerce student was an accountant in the making. But now, since Commerce students are doing all sorts of things in their BCom and on top of their, I can hardly see comsoc as representing the interests of all commerce students, just those cv-chasing commerce/law students.
also, even if ppl did read the flyers and try to judge each party based on its merits, i doubt they would have found much difference in their philosophy or policies. all campaigns begin with a lot of promises built on nothing - frankly, drive's education policies are ridiculous given the current financial situation of the faculty. and building your whole budget around the possibility of corporate sponsorship is as bad as the Enron execs - recognising future gains as revenues in the present.
All this needless vicious slandering and cheap shots is self-destructive in the end as many commerce students will be repulsed and more apathy will flourish. It's also a bad reflection on the character of the graduates and possible future business leaders from this uni.
comsoc is a dinosaur - it's time it was put down once and for all.
in some ways, i wish vsu was here now: these overly politicised elections bring out the worst in people.
- carl
Carl: There's a lot of administration problems when you split up COMSOC into different constituent sectors. It's a good idea because it reflects on the direct interests of students, but at the same time, it creates more divisiveness. Consequently, you're gonna have 10 more elections (ok, not really necessarily, but as an idea) happening for each major ~_~" However, I've thought about maybe different DEPARTMENTS working under COMSOC, COMSOC being purely the administrative sector. Even if that were to occur, it would take a LOT of effort. From the boredofstudies forums, I just realised that COMSOC actually has real communication issues. If were to rely on COMSOC dividing itself into different constituent societies, we're gonna lose 1st year students who are not willing to participate purely because they don't know what majors they want to do. And it is usually the 1st years we attract when it comes to social events.
In terms of education, there are no promises of holding weekly pass classes because Charlie already foresaw a big budget issue concerning it. Terry's plans, honestly, was a bit too idealistic, but I appreciated the fact that he had taken the iniatitive.
We're basically relying on sponsorship contacts that we will attempt to make over the holidays and we'll review our budget when uni starts. I'll like you to come and have ur input if they ever do hold such a meeting.
Carl, maybe we can work on a blueprint of it over the holidays.
Andy: Admittedly, besides the execs, most, if not, all campaigners on both sides of the team did not know the major policies of each team. And of the execs between both teams, around half probably knew constructively how each of their policies worked.
Due to time constraints, we did not even have time to teach our campaigners how to campaign, let alone know our major policies which distinguish ourselves from Community.
Community: Collectivism - relies heavily on volunteer support and the introduction of more positions in each department. This ensures efficiency and more participation.
Flaw 1: This has always been a major policy of COMSOC, not just Community.
Flaw 2: In order for it to work effectively, you need reward initiatives and more resources. People need to feel appreciated, and at the same time, you need more computers, paper, stationary, administration costs in order to cater for more people. ALL these problems are solved by money, i.e. Drive's sponsorship policy. With more money, and a projected 10-15 more sponsors (not necessarily commerce-related corporations), we are looking at the possibilities of adding more computers, giving away tickets to events and lots of little goodies without fearing that it would cost too much.
Drive: Sponsorship - relies heavily on sponsorship support, with the introduction of sponsorship executives. Personally, I think it's more practical and realistic. The world revolves around money, that's a fact we have to face. We aren't just seeking financial firms, but also busines firms such as Tooheys.
Also, the people in Drive are better in terms of experience. Community relies heavily on their ticket organiser, who admittedly, is more experienced than anyone involved in the elections. However, that would mean more burdon on him.
Collectively, Drive works better.
Anytime
I appreciate any criticsm too, cause that's where I learn from.
hmm interesting....
-carl
I think the most disappointing part of campaigning is when you spend 10 minutes outlining policies, and in the end, they just say they don't care. If Community or Drive publicly annouced they were a facist regime, the vote counts would still be exactly the same now.
So in a way, you can't blame teams to resort to bitching, when that's what sells better.
And I hate it when people bitch about CV-hunting. It's like bitching about people sleeping. Everyone's CV - hunting, it just depends where your priority is at.
I can honestly say that if you're seriously CV-hunting, you wouldn't go through the strenuous process of the COMSOC elections. There are so many other easier ways to get CV lines.
Post a Comment
<< Home