A week ago today the Otago University Students’ Association received the results of it’s annual general elections. Even though I’m an Otago ex-student, my main interest in these elections are because of my involvement in taking the student elections online through EVSL.
Every year OUSA have ran elections online they have received above average turnouts compared with the days of their paper-based system. Something all associations have been concentrating on in light of both student apathy and uncertain futures.
This year was quite remarkable in that it was the highest turnout the Association had ever received with over 40,000 individual votes cast by almost 4500 students. Even then, the margin between the top 2 candidates running for President was a total of 21 votes. That’s after 4500 students had cast their vote. And less than 100 votes seperated the top 3. Renee Heal was the eventual winner and the first women in several years to be elected to the post.
One of the reasons that might have driven students to the polls to create this record turnout was the incident that happened the weekend before. Headlines from overeacting media such as: “Dunedin police face drunken, rioting students” or “Police battle drunken students on Dunedin streets usually do well to catalyse students (as well as dividing communities).
So what in effect was a PR disaster for a students’ association trying to battle a proposed University code of conduct (which would give more power to the University to punish and expell students) actually ended up giving them more of a mandate to attack and lobby against it. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
