Election season gets dealt another blow
Election season for MUSA is well underway, with nominations closed and revealing only two candidates running in the whole election. Marla Beissel, the current Equity Officer, is running for President, whilst newcomer Junyan Liu is running for a general executive position. This leaves five other executive positions unaccounted for, creating concerns about workload and representation for MUSA.
“Hahah shit, that’s not good,” summarises one student. Another student says they “didn’t see anything advertised about the positions. It feels kinda crazy that they closed the nominations without better promoting the election.”
Current President Fatima Imran says, due to Covid-19, advertising of nominations was put online on Facebook and the MUSA websites instead of the usual on-campus promotion. She admits, “I believe advertisement of the nominations could [have] diversified by having FB/Insta lives or other interactive online platforms which I believe MUSA has learnt for future elections.” According to MUSA’s Facebook page, only one post, along with a cover photo change, was made promoting nominations to students.
Fatima says she’s “not necessarily disappointed but shocked” at the lack of candidates, noting “there was a lot of interaction with students this year and I was expecting more of a turnout in nominations.”
MUSA plans to have a by-election sometime within the early weeks of the first semester, much like what ASA are also doing for their remaining empty seats after the Albany association only received two candidates for their election.
The current MUSA Executive will serve for the rest of the semester, with Fatima’s role as President extending until December 1, which is when the new “team” will take over. “Initially I was worried but the new board has the option to co-opt until the by-election to allow work to get done,” she says. This means that existing or new board members may be brought in to help oversee work over the summer, without the process of a democratic election. Fatima notes that “there will be guidance and help from MUSAF which would be helpful for the new team”.
So far, despite “campaigning” for the two candidates being open since September 22, at the time of writing (September 29), there has been no mention of the candidates shared on either the MUSA Facebook page or website. Fatima says the opportunity has been given to candidates to advertise on the MUSA Facebook, but up to them if “they would like that as a platform to campaign”. The campaign season will last until October 12, where after students will get an opportunity to vote for the two candidates.