Students Can Now Check Whether the Exec are Doing Work

Exec members to exec members: wuu2?

The OUSA Executive have agreed to tell students what they have been up to on a fortnightly basis. Historically, the Exec only do this once every three months.

Students and Execies alike have been calling for an accountability policy for some time. In the past two years there have been calls for some Exec members to be removed, and some have had their pay docked, due to a perceived lack of work, effort, and effectiveness.

OUSA Vice President, Georgia Mischefski-Gray, flagged her desire for increased Exec accountability during her election campaign in the July 2019 by-election. A second election and 7 months later, her dream has been realised.

The fortnightly reporting is not technically a mandatory policy, so it is too soon to tell if it will stand the test of time and Exec-laziness. For now, anyway, the Exec have agreed to do it and consider it an extension to their quarterly report system. Georgia said that the breakdowns will “ensure we are meeting an average of [our hours] over the month.” Most Exec members sit on 10 or 20 hours a week, and all get paid minimum wage.

The first breakdowns have already been published on the OUSA website. If for some god forsaken reason you want to read them, go to the site, then click the Executive tab, then the Reports tab. “This link should always be up to date with what is happening,” Georgia said. 

Unlike the quarterly reports, which Georgia describes as “long and boring”, the breakdowns are supposed to be short and exciting. “They are meant to be easier to read than quarterly reports,” she said. “[The breakdowns] allow people who want to question us/know what we are doing to easily glance at what we did over the previous weeks.”

According to a highly scientific poll of 5 students on Union Lawn, 80% of students would never read the breakdowns. 20% of students (one guy sitting under a tree) would maybe look at the breakdowns if they suspected the Exec were “doing a really bad job”.

This article first appeared in Issue 4, 2020.
Posted 7:07pm Thursday 12th March 2020 by Erin Gourley.