Graduates RON welfare candidate for first time
There was embarrassment at the Graduate Student Association elections last week, as the only candidate standing for the position of Welfare Officer was RON’d.
Ishaq A. Mian, an Environment graduate, was the only candidate to stand for the Welfare Officer but lost to ‘RON,’ an acronym for ‘Re-Open Nominations’, 47 votes to 40.
Jennifer Winter, the current GSA President, said the situation was “awful, to say the least”, and “unprecedented in GSA history… there’s not even a clause in the constitution to advise us on how to deal with it.”
A member of the GSA executive, who wished not to be named, said the result was understandable as Mian had “no policies” and “his answer to every single question was mumbling something about negotiation. He was running for the post of Welfare Officer, whose main job it is to defend students’ welfare, but it was apparent he didn’t have any of the skills to do the job well or even at all.”
Mian had apparently showed no prior interest in the GSA and “looked as if he was only running because he wanted the money that the part-time sabbatical officer gets paid”.
Voter turnout was around 12% of graduates, a number described by Winter as “disappointingly low”. Nominations for the position are being reopened next week.
