Critic will reserve a full judgement until the forums this week, but here is what you need to know about the returners and insiders of OUSA who are running.
All the Presidential candidates are men (gross): Will Moffett, Jack Manning, and Sam Purchas. All we could find out about Will online, from his LinkedIn, is that he’s a Director at Horse of the Year Hawkes Bay Ltd. Fucking ‘nay. Jack Manning (or, the poor man’s James Heath) is the only presidential candidate with OUSA experience. The ultimate outsider-insider, Sam Purchas, may have more to him than a funky wardrobe, but that includes standing for ACT in the Dunedin North electorate last election. Take from that what you will.
Georgia Mischefski-Gray is running, uncontested, for Administrative Vice President, a role she took over in the by-election earlier this year after resigning from Campaigns Officer. Unless a bunch of people happen to hate her, she’ll likely be elected to this position.
Josh Smythe is shooting for another hit on the Exec in the new ‘Clubs and Societies Officer’ role. At this point, he’ll be chilling in his cushy exec job well into his 80s.
Smythe is running against Paul Gourlie, Robert Griffith and Tulsi Raman. For those who don’t know, Paul Gourlie was OUSA Pres back in 1979 and 1980. He told Critic that he’s running for the Exec so he can change OUSA’s constitution to allow someone to serve more than two terms on the Exec. So prepare yourselves (maybe) for Paul Gourlie as President (again) in 2021.
Jessie Drake ran for Colleges last year, and is running again in the rebranded role as Residential Officer. He’s running against Amodini Jayawardena, Jack Saunders and Charlotte Brewer.
Not saying any of the other candidates aren’t interesting, but we need more time to get to know them xx.
This Wednesday at 12pm will be the forum for the Finance, Welfare, Education and AVP positions. Thursday 12pm will have the rest of them (with the Presidential forum happening straight after). There will also be a U-Bar Presidential debate on Thursday night.