The Woroni Wipeout

As a member of faculty said to me recently, “the reason student politics is so petty is that there is so little at stake”.

Aurelius said :

All “politicians” are fools if they think anyone outside their own head gives a toss about their childish carrying on.

Fixed for you

Sorry, typo, 1980.

🙂

I stopped reading it in 1973 (phew):)

Ooooh – university student politics! Keep out of the way while the titans clash!

Students. F**k ’em.

I know about a few of the people involved in the ANU Union and ANUSA. People like Tully Fletcher and Ben Dugan and several others who are either candidates of existing members. The overarching aim they hold is not to serve the community of the University. Their only aims are to puff their resumes and wield power with little regard for the broader community.

“University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small,” as Henry Kissinger put it.

I stopped reading it when they kept going on about Robert Mugabe saving Rhodesia

Ah yes, never underestimate the stupidity of undergraduates from all sides of politics with higher political aspirations.

btw, Rhodesia officially ceased to be a country in 1970 🙂

Technically/legally speaking it never existed to begin with as it never ceased to be a british colony. 😛

Oh the memories come flooding back. The petty infighting, the bitchiness, the little games that assumed such magnitude. Keep up the good work guys – your country needs people like you lot to get as much experience as you can in this sort of syuff before you’re preselected for s State of Federal seat.

Yup – I graduated from ANU circa 1994. It sounds like nothing’s changed in the world of student news and politics.

That’s what RA needs – to be the new outlet for a factional battle of the loopy fringes of ANU student politics!
All “student politicians” are fools if they think anyone outside their own head gives a toss about their childish carrying on.

maybe now overall published poetry standards will increase…

I stopped reading it when they kept going on about Robert Mugabe saving Rhodesia.

as a lowly (ex) woroni writer, i don’t want to make broad statements insinuating that i have a better understanding of what’s been going on then i actually do, because i’m somewhat out of the loop. I was just happy writing, and generally ignoring the politics.

But what i do know is that Tully Fletcher and Cubis/Brereton actually supported each others election platforms last year. They all sought to make Woroni independent from ANUSA. I’m not actually sure at which point this consensus broke down, but later in the year, Brereton and Cubis managed to get Tully Fletcher censured by the student council (or ANUSA… or whatever student body it is that allows all ANU students to vote…) for failing to effectively communicate the re-structuring of ANU departments to students (which, regardless of whether the censure was motivated by personality clashes, was a fair criticism).

I also know that one of the more recent stories censured by Tully was a light-hearted article about a sign that had apparently been taken off Tully’s door. Tully censured it on the grounds that the sign had actually been found and returned. Scandals like this kinda make all that Wiki-leaks stuff look inconsequential and juvenile, right?

In conclusion, i leave you all with this hilarious letter sent to all Woroni writers by Tully Fletcher after the Woroni editors invited the team for Friday drinks in the office:

Hi Woroni Contributor List,

In regards to the email you all received yesterday from the Woroni team inviting you to meet in the Woroni office this evening, the ANUSA executive would like to make sure you are aware of a few things.

On Monday night (02/08/2010) the SRC moved a motion that restricts the Woroni team’s after hours access to the office. This is for a number of reasons, all of which are outlined in the letter sent to the Woroni editors and reproduced below.

We are emailing today to make sure you have access to all the relevant information in deciding whether to attend tonight’s meeting. Please have a read over the attached passed motion and be aware that security will be called if this motion is violated.

Perhaps suggest to the editors that a more appropriate place to hold this meeting would be in ANU bar?

Yours Sincerely,

The ANUSA Executive
_____
The following motion was passed at the fifth meeting of the Student Representative Council held last night.
MOTION: The Student Representative Council (SRC) notes its concern with several issues relating to the management of the Woroni office. These concerns include
1. That non-ANUSA related functions have been held in the Woroni offices after hours and that these functions have coincided with incidents of petty theft. They have furthermore resulted in the office being left in a messy state, to the discomfort of the staff of the Association and to the detriment of the professional image the Association seeks to convey.

2. Lights, computers, music a photocopier and a refrigerator are frequently switched on in the Woroni office when no one is in attendance, including after hours, wasting electricity.
3. That the Woroni office fails to comply with basic fire safety requirements. 4. That the Editors deliberately interfered with the locks on the Woroni office door and have not advised the Office Administrator of any new access details, preventing safety access, maintenance and cleaning of the office. 5. On Thursday 29 July, the University locksmith had to be called to access the Woroni office to switch off unacceptably loud music during business hours.

In light of the above concerns, the SRC revokes the Editors’ after-hours access to the Association’s premises until they can satisfy the SRC and the Office Administrator that they can manage such access in a responsible and professional manner. The SRC further instructs the Woroni Editors to clean their office to a reasonable standard by Monday 9 August and provide current access details to the Office Administrator.

If you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Elizabeth Sheaffe
General-Secretary
_____________________
for the record, security never turned up.

I was co-editor of the student newspaper at the old CCAE (now University of Canberra) in 1986 and it is depressing to see tin pot student politicians still carrying on this type of nonsense. I was sacked after I objected to the editor-in-chief disfiguring the paper with hand-written carats saying things like “or she” whenever the generic term “he” was mentioned. I also tried to stop an article going into the paper trying to defend incest and pedophilia in Aboriginal communities – I was branded a “racist” for doing that. When I tried to get an article into the paper commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan I’d clearly overstepped the mark and had to go. I ran in the Student Representative Council election shortly after my sacking and was elected. So there!

Wow. Woroni was always a bit of a battle ground for wannabe future political hacks. Current believe that the current pack of wankers has actually managed to bring it down.

Not the ones attacking their political rivals.

But frustrated contributors should totally send in their work.

“Co-editors Adam Brereton and Alex Cubis left the paper on August 9”

Surely Riot would be a suitable location for their articles