Distance students not quite on board with new board
Some distance students are unhappy with the process that M@D has followed to select its four new executive members with no general vote over the mid-year break.
Distance student Christine says she believes the process was not fair or transparent for distance students who couldn’t choose their representatives and were mostly unaware of the selection process. “As a distance student, not only is it important that we are aware of who is representing us, but it is also important that we get a voice and a say, as it is easy to get lost amongst the internal students who get that personal face-to-face interaction with teachers and other students,” she said.
Another issue raised was the lack of any announcement made on the M@D website or Facebook pages in the two weeks since the new board members were officially inducted. M@D had told Massive that an official announcement of the new board members would be made July 1 at the same time as the launch of the distance Stream site. Christine says she hadn’t seen any notification for the new board members on the distance Stream site or anywhere else. “I also think that a social media announcement would have been effective, due to its reach and the many people who use it on a day-to-day basis,” she said. Despite this, she wishes the new members well. “At the end of the day, I wish them the best of luck - I’m sure they will be great.”
Ange was a distance student last semester and remains up to date and active with social media for distance students and their association, but she also had no idea there were new executives or that some roles on the board had changed: “I remember seeing that the old ones all resigned. Seems weird we didn’t get to vote for [the new members] if they are meant to be representing us. Should we have been told about that?”
M@D Co-President Jax Watt says nearly all the board members made their personal introductions and welcomes on the distance Stream site. Jax says two sections on Stream are dedicated to information on the board, titled ‘Who are Massey@Distance’ and ‘How M@D support you’.
“Judging from the levels of engagement we already have on Stream, we anticipate that our website will become redundant in the near future and [Facebook] will be only used as a secondary platform for community engagement between students,” Jax said.
They say the reason there had been no announcements on Facebook is because they believe social media is not the place to provide information on the association, because it only reaches a small portion of the students.
“We are providing this information on the platform that all distance students use… Stream is ideal as information can be provided near-instantly, there are avenues for both public and private chats with board members, we can make announcements that go straight to students emails, and we can engage with students in an environment fostered around community engagement, safe spaces, peer support, and much more,” they said.
Distance student Angus says he had some difficulty finding the information about the new board members and their roles on the distance Stream site at first, however he soon found it with no problems.
“Both the new sections are on the front page, really easy to find. The students introducing themselves are in the first forum in a pinned message in the general distance student forum, so if you did a little looking it’d probably be the first thing you find,” he said.
A distance student who wishes to remain anonymous was totally indifferent to M@D’s new board or student politics in general and said they prefer to focus on their university work instead.
“I had no idea about it, and quite frankly, I don’t even know what they do. Why do we have them?”