Left win at Griffith University
By Adam Baker
BRISBANE — The broad left ticket at Griffith University, LEFT, scored a sweeping victory at the recent student representative council elections. With much of the executive vote counted, LEFT has won every position by a decisive margin of around 300 votes.
LEFT was formed by a range of progressive activists, including members of Resistance, the International Socialist Organisation, feminists, environmental activists and Socialist Left of the ALP. It defeated the right-wing incumbents organised as the Impact team, mainly composed of Labor students.
The election was dogged by dirty tricks as the right struggled to retain control of the SRC. Unauthorised electoral material red-baited and insinuated that LEFT would rort funds and make the student newspaper too "queer".
LEFT ran on a clear anti-racist, anti-homophobic, pro-feminist and pro-environmental platform. The newly elected co-education officer, Kate Carr, explained: "LEFT won because we emphasised both a commitment to left-wing ideals and activism in campaigns, both on and off campus".
As it became clear that LEFT would win, Impact members began wearing red T-shirts which said, "I do not identify as right-wing". They also tried to run a smear campaign against LEFT, accusing it of being "racist".
Carr told Green Left Weekly that one of the issues which convinced students to vote out the current SRC was its "blatant misuse of student funds, the most prominent example of this being $12,000 spent on a mail-out to all students begging them to vote Labor in the federal election".
The letter claimed that education was made "affordable and equitable" under Whitlam, Hawke and Keating and that "only Labor will protect the rights of students". The letter was signed by Griffith University chair Michael O'Reilly.
"Students responded angrily to the letter because it was a waste of students money and because it was misleading", Zanny Begg, LEFT candidate for National Union of Students delegate, told Green Left Weekly. "Under Hawke and Keating, a massive shift towards user pays in education took place. The money would have been better spent on fighting education cuts rather than trying to buy votes for the ALP."
The Impact team was also damaged in students eyes by the current SRC's failure to build national days of action against education cuts and to fund the activist collectives on campus.