The University of Otago was subjected to the bitchiest, and most dramatic, student election campaigns in recent memory last week. Four (or possibly five) candidates are after the top job. Mitch Edwards, Harriet Geoghegan, Matt McKillop, and Dan Stride all actively campaigned while Nathanial Hatch-Stevens was more elusive.
Things kicked off with the now-infamous ‘orange smear campaign’, which dismissed current President Geoghegan as being all boobs and no brains. The fluoro poster brigade, consisting of Geoghegan and her Exec hopeful minions, promptly plastered over the offending posters. There is no love lost between Geoghegan and Stride, who is the current Clubs and Socs Rep and at first Stride was rumoured to be behind the ‘brains or boobs’ campaign, although he was quick to distance himself from it, calling the posters “offensive” and later publicly ripping them down.
Then, on Thursday last week, an email from Geoghegan to student presidents around the country in which Geoghegan appeared to support the 90-day employment bill was leaked to Critic. Shocked at the stunning leak, Geoghegan claimed that she was “playing Devil’s Advocate,” despite appearing to represent the view compellingly as her own with the use of personal pronouns. Exec members John Phillipson and Claire Jackson both attempted, fairly unsuccessfully, to construe the debacle as a fault with the national union of students’ associations, NZUSA. Watching the chaos unfold from Wellington, NZUSA Co-President David Do quickly released a statement to Critic and assured Geoghegan that NZUSA had not leaked the email in question.
Referendum scandal is still rife, with Presidential hopefuls Stride and McKillop raising questions about whether the constitution has been changed at all. They say that as the referendum question never specifically referenced the constitution, it may not have been changed. McKillop insists that another referendum is vital to secure OUSA from risk of judicial review. Geoghegan, by contrast, continues to maintain that the legal advice OUSA sought was sound, and that the constitution has been changed.
Another source of debate is the Postgraduate position. Kate Amore is the sole contender for the Postgraduate position and, interestingly, she is based on Otago’s Wellington campus. Despite this, she claims she can do the job from Wellington by utilising video conference facilities and Facebook. She notes that a third of postgraduate students study off the Dunedin campus, and much of the communication amongst Dunedin postgraduate students is email based. Amore urges her constituents to have confidence in her, as she is passionate about postgraduates.
During the week, a number of candidates withdrew from various races, including Genevieve Rutherford-Hawkins, Chipo Zimba, and current postgraduate rep Travis Monk. By far the most bizarre of the withdrawals was that of Hatch-Stevens. Despite telling Critic he was withdrawing from the Presidential race on Tuesday, Hatch-Stevens had still failed to formally withdraw when the magazine went to print Thursday. On Thursday, he said he was “technically still running” but did not appear in the Presidential Debate and would not be interviewed. He said the reasons behind this were “complex” but would not elaborate when asked. “This is turning into an interview already, you're good.”
The OUSA Presidential Debate
Despite the nastiness on the campaign trail, the Presidential Debate turned out to be a relatively civil affair, with the candidates keeping the personal attacks to a disappointing minimum. The four Presidential hopefuls addressed their five minute opening statements to the capacity crowd of around 80 in Quad 1, before answering general questions from the MC, Critic Editor Ben Thomson.
Most of the debate centred around the expected election topics of the Executive restructuring, online Student General Meetings (SGMs) and Voluntary Student Membership (VSM). However the most interesting point of the evening came when OUSA’s membership of the New Zealand University Students Association (NZUSA) was discussed.
All four candidates were in agreement that NZUSA in its current format is an ineffectual money-sink. However none were quite ready to say that OUSA should withdraw from the association given the spectre of VSM, Stride commenting, “Yes they are a bunch of fucktards, but they are the only fucktards we’ve got.” McKillop made a sly reference to the email controversy of earlier in the day, saying “I’ll give them a 90-day trial period.”
In his opening speech McKillop also made a dig at Geoghegan, commenting that “experience is no substitute for competence.” However the quote of the night belonged to Edwards. When asked how he would deal with the negative media feedback that accompanies the President’s job, Edwards answered “I’ve worked as a telemarketer.”
Otago Polytechnic Students Association President Meegan Cloughley gate-crashed the event, clomping down the aisle in the middle of the debate before launching into a tirade against NZUSA poorly disguised as a question.
The real fun, however, was happening in the audience. The crowd was divided along pro- and anti-Harriet lines, with several comments from the incumbent President being met with boos and jeers. Someone in the crowd circulated a piece of paper with a picture purporting to show Financial Service Officer candidate Brendan Asplin doing a Nazi salute, allegedly sourced from his Facebook page. Asplin is a member of Geoghegan’s ‘Team Fluoro’.
Also doing the rounds was a copy of the ‘Boobs or Brains’ poster that was posted around campus earlier in the week.
"Yes they are a bunch of fucktards, but they are the only fucktards we've got."
