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Former Finance Officer Nick Tenci handed over his report for the second quarter at last week’s OUSA Executive meeting. He made the report “mostly as a handover document” because, he justified, “it took a while to find my feet in the role and I’d hate Paul to go through the same thing.” The recently elected Finance Officer Paul Hunt had not yet read the report so a small portion of the meeting was finance chat between the two finance buffs. As OUSA President Ruby Sycamore-Smith tried to end the awkward one-on-one chat, she exclaimed, “You two must be really excited to talk finance.”

Campaigns Officer Hamish Barker also presented his goals, which were a part of his second quarter report. He aims to focus on the upcoming elections, with a focus on increasing the amount of election information available to students. He also plans to implement TedX talks in Dunedin and to ensure the Mental Health Awareness campaign goes ahead again this year.

Former International Officer Kamil Saifuddin considered the idea of hiring a cleaner after there were complaints made about the state of OUSA Recreation Centre’s kitchen following the International Food Festival. He said, “I made it clear that we were very disappointed with their actions.” The Executive also discussed the possibility of having the event at the stadium in future.

Administrative Vice President Ryan Edgar discussed OUSA’s policy regarding charity donations. He suggested OUSA only make commitments of time and advertising to charitable organisations, but that a $1,000 donations side pot be put aside that may be used for exceptional circumstances.

In regard to OUSA’s annual $100 membership fee to the Volunteer Services Abroad program, Ryan said, “I don’t want to be paying for students to go on a bit of a holiday” and was “certainly not” in favour of renewing the membership. The Executive unanimously agreed with him.

Further discussion from the policy committee was brought to the Executive as Ruby and Ryan had opposing views on whether Executive members could nominate and support candidates for future Executive roles. Ryan believed an Executive member should be able to “take off their hat” and nominate someone during elections. Education Officer Laura Harris agreed with Ryan, as she felt as an Executive member, “we are in the best position to say who is best for the Exec.” Ruby’s belief was that Executive members signed up for a governance and representational role and should not be nominating or endorsing anyone. She said Executive members are recognised around campus as a representative of OUSA so you cannot step out of that role to nominate someone. Paul pointed out “the bigger issue here [is] whether you can get [the executive member] to campaign for you.” There was resounding agreement that Francisco Hernandez had openly supported Ruby’s placement last year but Ruby pointed out “this is about this year, not last year. We’re in the position to put a policy in place now.”

Two years ago the Returning Officer ruled that an Executive nomination was an endorsement by OUSA and one vote was deducted from the candidate’s total vote. It was agreed that the decision over this debate would be put to referendum.

Speaking of referendums, the topic of allocating an “abstain from voting” box was brought up again. Postgrad Officer Kurt Purdon noted that the constitution already required it, saying there must be an abstain option but this had been missed in the last election.

The Executive discussed what to do about the lack of an International Officer. Ryan pointed out that there had been a previous case where an officer worked on a contractual basis as required for the rest of the year but said, “that’s a bit naughty naughty according to policy.” It was decided the general election for 2015 positions and the by-election for an International Officer would be run in parallel, “to avoid voter burnout,” as Ryan put it. Recreation Officer Henri Faulkner agreed to “turn up to international cultural committee meetings but not much else” to cover some of the work required by the vacant position.

The election nominations will open on 8 September 2014 and close at 4pm on 11 September 2014. The voting will run from 22 September to 4pm on 25 September 2014.

The Executive have also organised a meet and greet with the Vice Chancellor, Harlene Hayne. The Executive will also be having a “catch up” session with the students at Studholme. There was discussion over whether to have dinner with them but it was decided that they would meet in the common room instead because “we appear more intimidating if we eat,” said Colleges Officer Jess McLean.

Welfare Officer Payal Ramritu discussed her upcoming work on Women’s Week, Hump Day Help and No Strings Niceness. Critic chose not to ask any questions, as it’s much more fun to speculate what these entail.