thorrnydevil said:
Diversity Party? I've heard about it...but what is it?
There are a number of major factions in student politics at the University of Sydney.
USYD NOLS (National Organisation of Labor Students) is the most powerful, controlling both the SRC and the Union. Publicly, they're known as "Action", and their political affiliation is the Labor Party Left (Young Labor), and they work under the motto "Unionism, Feminism, Socialism and Democracy". As well as controlling the SRC and Union, they also control the SRC's newspaper, Honi Soit, which is why this year it was full of publicity for the Action candidate for SRC President.
USYD NOLS also has a Labor Party Right faction. Known on campus by various names ("Students First", "Change", "Student Card" etc.), these guys aren't as strong politically on campus as Labor Left, but they get along well with those guys since they're all trying to get jobs within the Labor Party together.
"Socialist Alliance" is the socialist/communist faction. Known as "Keep Left", they're not as politically strong as the Labor factions, but they maintain the balance of power on the SRC and Union. They currently control the Union Recorder (Union's magazine) which is why this year it was full of publicity for the Keep Left candidate for SRC President.
The other major faction on campus is the Liberals, who have recently split into two groups. The "Dry Liberals" are the conservative Young Liberal type who support Voluntary Student Unionism and pretty much All Liberal Party initiatives. The "Wet Liberals", or the "Progressive Liberals" as they like to be called are somewhat more moderate, but they still support some Liberal Party policy.
This year, I ran for SRC President, and I was backed by a team of two candidates. We formed the Conservatorium Diversity faction, and on a budget of $50, I secured 10% of the vote for President. Since the election, Diversity has grown to include members from other faculties, and will next year be a major player in a better position to take votes from the other factions.
Diversity stands for embracing the ideals of Universal Student Unionism - since every student has to pay for membership, every student should get what they pay for. The University of Sydney has a number of off-site campuses, including mine (the Sydney Conservatorium of Music), and we don't get representation, so we believe that representation for these campuses needs to become a priority. We also believe that the SRC and Union should be accessible to students of all political persuasions. The SRC president should be able to talk to a Liberal, Anarchist, Communist, Socialist, Green, Pink, Labor, or Apathetic student and feel that he or she represents each of them equally. Unfortunately, we haven't had one of those ever.
Diversity also stands for equal rights for men. The SRC pays a Women's Officer (who was recently promoted to SRC President) to make life more difficult for men, and even though men have problems too, they don't have access to many of the resources of the SRC that women do. We don't support women-only spaces (without men-only spaces), and gay-only spaces (without straight-only spaces), because they're not only denying services to a majority of students, they're also being condescending towards the groups they're supposed to help. Hence why many of my supporters are women and/or gay.
In other words, we basically don't want the SRC and the Union to give our money to the political parties in exchange for our representatives getting Parliamentary jobs. We want the money and resources to flow back to who needs it most - students.