i was a student politics hack for one month; this is what i learned
if you follow me and actually read my rambling, directionless text posts, you may remember my somewhat melodramatic post called ‘resilience’. Well because I may as well, here’s the full story behind that post, the all-consuming thing I tried to achieve over the span of about four weeks, and the incredible transformative failure it became.
For the past month, I’ve been for lack of a better term, a StuPol hack. For context, I go to an Australian uni with a student union, run by elected representatives from the student body. Student unions are active to various degrees across Australia, but my university’s is by far one of the largest. Despite this, less than 10% of students on campus vote in the annual student elections and student politics is generally looked down upon as pointless or as a method of resume padding.
The main reason for this is the campaigning that comes with the elections. Each year, when election week rolls around, campaigners flood the campus centre, approaching any and all students to try and ‘win’ their vote. This is because voting is non-compulsory, and so campaigners have to literally fight for every vote. The student body collectively fucking hates this. They hate being approached, they hate having their political beliefs questioned over lunch, they hate dealing with the awkwardly cheery cunts in party colour t-shirts begging them for a vote. They hate campaigners. I hated campaigners. But I became one of them.
Why? Because I wanted to edit the university magazine (let’s call it UniMag).
Hang on, what? I asked the same question, believe me. After applying for the position of Editor of UniMag, I quickly discovered that to get the job, I would have to win it. One would think that student media would need an inherent separation from party politics, even student politics. And while in past years the magazine has been ‘non-partisan’, in that an independent group has been elected unopposed into the Editorship, this is no longer the case. UniMag is now either edited by a group from the major left-wing party, the major radical left party, or the labour right party (since being a university, leftwing politics still dominates). This creates problems that I won’t bother elaborating on, but I will say that those problems aren’t political. Students are usually left-wing, so a politically driven magazine doesn’t create an issue of bias so much as a narrowing of content and scope.
Putting my social awkwardness and distaste for ~the system~ aside, I decided to throw myself into my situation. I would be an Editor, no matter what it fucking took. And I went through the motions; I joined a party, I went to meetings and donated money. My fellow Editors-to-be and I memorised policy and learned to campaign. I messaged no less than 60 friends asking them to vote for me, and spent one full week outside in the September cold during campaigning.
Campaigning itself was brutal. Many people either ignored me or told me to fuck off. Often times when I thought I’d ‘won’ a vote, a rival campaigner would steal it back. The worst incident, however, was one in which I had quite a candid conversation with a prospective voter about the lack of mental health services for students, as well as my personal struggles with depression...only to discover the ‘voter’ was actually the head of the rival party. I had been ‘stooged’ – a tactic in which campaigners pose as normal students to waste rival campaigners’ time. What hurt most wasn’t that I’d been fooled. What hurt was that I thought I had connected with that student; for five minutes, I thought they saw me as a human fucking being. And it was all a ruse, a cruel one at that, in the hopes that I would lose maybe one or two votes.
But the week ended, and I sat by my phone waiting for the news. A fellow Editor-to-be rang me, and all she said was, “It’s a no-go, Rach”. I found out later that we lost by over 1000 votes. The rival party had adopted a winning tactic of gaining the support of some major societies on campus; powerhouses of influence over the student body like the Engineering, Law, Biomed and Science clubs. It had never been a contest; we were always going to lose. At first, I was surprisingly tranquil. The elections had always been out of my hands, so I felt no remorse. That didn’t stop me from bawling my fucking eyes out over the next few days, but at least I had no regrets. I thanked friends for their support, had a laugh at just how badly we lost, and wished the new Editors good luck. Those assholes are going to need it – I certainly won’t be there to help them along.
That’s right – I will not be writing for UniMag in any way next year. Perhaps it’s spiteful to not even write for the magazine I so desperately wanted to edit, but I won’t be there simply because I can’t be there. The day after we lost, I had an idea. I asked my now failed Editors-to-be; What if we just start our own magazine with blackjack and hookers? There was nothing stopping us; we could acquire the resources we’d need by forming a Society, which would receive funding from the university. What followed was a week of frenzied planning and soon our idea became a proposal. Adversity Magazine was born, and our application to become a society is underway. And since I personally know the President of the Societies Branch (yeah nepotism!), we have a good shot at getting approved.
That’s not the best part; with the help of one of the 2017 Editors of UniMag, a pilot edition of Adversity Magazine is going to print in about two weeks. 1000 copies are going to be printed and distributed as part of official Student Union activities. So while myself and the other failed Editors-to-be won’t be working for UniMag – 2200 people voted against us on that front – we will still be here. Adversity Magazine is envisioned to be supported by a Publisher’s Society, giving students the opportunity to contribute to the university’s first truly independent magazine on campus.
The name of our magazine was inspired by an iconic pre-amble given by Cannonball Adderly before a performance with his jazz quartet in 1966. Sometimes we’re not prepared for adversity, Adderly says. Sometimes we have to ask for mercy. But Adversity Magazine was our team of failed Editors doing the opposite. Its creation was the act of staring adversity in the face, and turning it into resilience.
I don’t believe we could have done this without the baptism by fire that was getting involved in Student Politics. The drive and certain amount of factional hate that we needed to reject ~the system~ was drilled into us by that brutal week of campaigning. I was never in this to pad my resume, or to launch my political career (ew lol); I just wanted to edit a magazine. And thanks to student politics, I will.
