Despite launching a “Get Involved” campaign and measures to inform students about “what OUSU does for you” there is still very low student participation in the election process. Only four students turned up to a major hust at Exeter on Monday evening where both presidential candidates were speaking. Tuesday’s central hust, held at Magdalen, also failed even to fill the auditorium.
Sam Smith, Pembroke JCR committee member, commented, “The impression I get is that OUSU is quite inaccessible and has a reputation of being very ineffectual.”
A number of positions, including major sabbatical ones like VP for Welfare and Equal Opportunities and VP for Access and Academic Affairs, are uncontested. No candidate is running for the position of VP Graduates.
One graduate at Wadham, who was also at Oxford during his undergraduate days, said, “I’m not well-informed about it at all – OUSU really can’t be very effective if I don’t know about what it
does.”
Following the news last week of OUSU’s debt problems, St Catherine’s College MCR co-president, Ben Britton, commented,”It is no surprise that there are so few candidates willing to run a broken institution.”
OUSU election rules are notoriously strict and have resulted in the fining of two candidates over the past week.
Presidential candidate, Jake Leeper, was fined 5% of his publicity budget for an article he wrote for the OxStu before he nominated himself. Will McCullum, former Wadham SU President and candidate for VP Charities and Communities, was also fined for providing quotes in his capacity as media contact for Climate Camp.
Red tape surrounding OUSU elections has prompted some students to suggest that it may be off-putting to those who may otherwise want to nominate themselves, and could contribute to the image of OUSU as unapproachable.
But OUSU Returning Officer, Oliver Linch, has reiterated the importance of election rules, “Elections must be conducted according to Rules, and the OUSU Electoral Rules are designed to level the playing field and guarantee that everyone that wants to run has an equal opportunity.”
Elections are due to take place Tuesday – Thursday in 6th week, with all students being emailed personalised voting numbers to enable them to vote online. Last year, elections were beset by technical problems when personalised voting codes only arrived half way through the two-day window for voting.
The election itself was also set back an entire week after OUSU’s publishing arm failed to print the manifesto of presidential candidate John Maher in the Joint Manifesto Booklet.
Elections this year already got off to a flying start with a “technical glitch” meaning that candidates’ lists could not be published online until last Saturday, the day after they were released. However, Linch assures us, “We have spent hours ensuring that the list is accurate this time”.
