No by-election after MUSA Executive portfolio reshuffle

A reshuffle of the MUSA Executive portfolios means there will be no by-election to fill vacant exec positions. This news comes despite the departure of Education Officer Alex Johnston, who received a vote of no confidence in June. Normally after departures, students can vote to fill the new position via a by-election process. 

According to MUSA President Fatima Imran, MUSA’s constitution states that the board must comprise of at least a president and four board members. The current board is made up of herself and five other board members, which is more than enough to meet the constitutional requirements. She says, “Rather than doing a by-election to fill the positions instead we have re-shuffled the current members to fill the vacant portfolios.” 

Student Tane says “this just... ain’t it. Alex was kicked out because people perceived that he wasn’t doing his job well, right? Like he was clearly stressed and didn’t have much time to fulfil his responsibilities.” Reshuffling positions to give existing executives more work, instead of simply re-electing a new candidate, seems “misguided” according to students, especially given the departure of many operational staff at MUSA. 

According to Fatima, the existing portfolios of the current executives will also experience some changes after a motion in the most recent MUSA AGM. MUSA Admin Officer Ella Mischefski-Gray says a point was raised that the executive job descriptions were out of date and not representative of the current roles and requirements, which lead to a motion to modify the existing executive job descriptions to be passed. This process is currently being discussed between Fatima and Manawatahi Kaiwhina (Vice-President) Paris Tait. “The meeting was to get these modified so that MUSA can run an SGM before the election, so the incoming executive have modern job descriptions,” Ella said.