Distance Exec fills up vacant board seats without student vote

The Massey @ Distance Executive Board is complete again for the first time in six months. After mass resignations left several vacant seats, M@D officially announced on June 1 it had promoted one current member and elected four new board members.  

Former Upper North Island Representative Sean Cardiff will now be M@D’s new VP. Victoria Caccioppoli was elected as the new Education Officer. Tina Morrell was elected as the new Wellness Officer. Josh Wharton was elected as the new Equity and Welfare officer. Steph Allan was elected as the new Treasurer.  

The new executives were shortlisted and voted upon by the Board alone (so essentially, the two co-presidents and Sean Cardiff), outside of election time. Distance students will not get a chance to have their own say on the roles until the next elections at the end of the year. Comparatively, other student execs have held by-elections to fill in vacant positions in their executives; allowing students to vote for their candidates instead of leaving it to the discretion of the board. You know, like a democracy.  

M@D Co-Presidents Jacalyn Clare and Jax Watt say they followed the process laid out in the M@D Constitution for filling board positions outside of election times. They also say the Constitution states the Board can decide to act against the Constitution if it is in the “best interests” of the Society (M@D). 

Based on this clause, they decided to completely restructure the Board by adding new board positions and not filling old positions which represented regional areas of New Zealand. 

“These [regional positions] will be changed in S2 when we update the constitution to be more in line with contemporary student associations in NZ. This will help us to represent students more effectively,” Jacalyn and Jax said. 

The removed positions were Upper North Island Representative, Lower North Island Representative and the South Island Representative. 

Despite efforts, they were unable to find Māori representation for the Board. “We are beginning to talk with someone who can give us support in this area until we are able to have it filled either through elections or opt-in process,” they said. 

While they haven’t yet provided a plan for an updated by-election process for the future, the co-presidents say improving the Constitution and the election process both remain two of their top priorities.