Columns

With the OUSA Executive’s first quarterly reports being presented last Tuesday, it’s about time we checked in for an overall look at their performance. And for the first half of the meeting I was (somewhat surprisingly) pleased with their effort. It seems that almost everyone is finally contributing varied and valuable viewpoints and, simply put, they’ve picked up their game since earlier meetings. They are starting to look like they may well deserve recognition as being quite a strong group, and Ruby is proving to be a very competent leader despite the criticisms that follow. This is a credit not to be awarded lightly, and as such there are some big exceptions that need to be addressed …

Two-faced politics is the most obvious. Ruby, who doesn’t seem to like conflict, was in my opinion quite admirable last week in letting Nali and Nick moan on and on (and on, with strange dramatic statements such as “I’m about to cry”) about Jordan in his absence. This was a complete turn around from the faked amicability towards his efforts in earlier meetings, and it highlights the importance of the Executive actually airing their grievances face to face rather than hiding and waiting to pounce on each other’s backs. You could tell that Ruby somewhat wanted to cut it short, but getting that sort of Executive discussion on record rather than hiding behind Committee of the Whole is a commendable change from what I had feared we may come to expect.

It’s not only Ruby who seems to dislike conflict, however, with the Executive more or less failing to address their weakest link. Ryan’s report said numerous times that he was “all over that.” The problem, quite simply, is that he’s not. I felt like Brydie (who’s been showing very strong leadership) moved to lead the charge on calling him out when she objected to him saying they have a good working relationship (not that they have a bad one per se, but rather that there’s been no occasion on which they’ve worked together). But the rest of the Executive just didn’t listen to what I thought was an incredibly loud start gun.

This was quite surprising, and I think it’s likely that Ruby knows of the general disappointment in Ryan’s performance. Unfortunately her avoidance of conflict came through in this particular instance when it would have been good to encourage the others through some more debate. Heck, passing these reports decides whether the Executive members get paid their full honorarium or not.

The final big critique is that because of how long the meeting was (approximately three hours – next time the agenda should be shorter when quarterly reports are being presented), it felt like the Executive were more keen to rush issues through than deal with them properly. Being in a representative role is a tiring, long-working, and often thankless task, but that’s what you sign up for. If the Executive needed to sit there until midnight to sort things out, then quite frankly they should have just taken a coffee break and damn well done exactly that.

Further coverage of the Executive meeting can be found on page seven. And remember to vote in the by-election for Education Officer. This is one of the bigger portfolios on the Executive; the winner will hold a lot of sway in the direction of OUSA. Candidates can be found on page eight.

Zane Pocock
Critic Editor