BY NICOLE HILDER
WOLLONGONG — Left-wing students at Wollongong university fended off a challenge from the right-wing and regained control over the Student Representative Council (SRC) in elections held on October 24-26.
The left won all office bearer positions and three National Union of Students (NUS) delegates. Unity, the right faction of the ALP, gained two NUS delegate positions.
More than 1100 students voted, tripling last year's voter turnout when the student left gained all office bearer positions unopposed. This year, ten tickets contested the elections.
Resistance and Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) members ran on the Global Justice ticket. This was the only ticket to call for student involvement in political campaigns both on and off campus. Unfortunately, the ticket statement which Global Justice submitted was not printed in the election guide. However, Global Justice still attracted votes from Palestine freedom supporters and those concerned with the issues of third world debt and corporate tyranny, anti-racism, feminism and the environment.
This year's SRC incumbents and their supporters ran two feeder tickets, Funk "the focus is on the fun", and a Green ticket. They gave half their NUS delegate preferences to the right-wing Student Unity ticket, and the other half to Global Justice, but refused to preference Global Justice candidate and Resistance member Bronwyn Powell for the position of general student representative.
Powell contrasted Global Justice's politically principled approach of only preferencing other left-wing tickets.