Comment by Peter Robson
Student unionism is vital to the protection of students' rights and education standards. For a union to be truly effective, it must be active and capable of voicing student opinions, and it has to be democratic. It's through these things that student unions can build and organise campaigns and direct student involvement.
Based on these ideas, the RAGE ticket at the University of Queensland was initiated by Resistance to run in the student union elections (September 15-19).
The RAGE ticket will be campaigning on a broad platform of student rights and will aim to involve all those who wish to be active. A key focus will be campaigning against the attacks on the education sector.
Education at UQ continues to suffer under the attacks of the federal government. Departments have been shut down or forced to merge with other departments. The science departments have been forced to look for outside support in the form of corporate sponsorship. Student welfare services have been cut by a full third.
RAGE was formed on the recognition that the resources of the union should be open and controlled directly by students. The current structure of the UQ student union is such that the resources of the different campaign areas (women's, education, welfare) are controlled by union committees, which have minimal if any direct student participation. These are elected by union council and stand above the activist collectives.
RAGE is pledging to abolish these narrow committees because they stand in the way of building broad and democratic campaigns. It argues that the resources and direction of any campaign should be decided by the campaign collectives, which actively involve a broad range of students.
These organising collectives (such as the Education Action Group) should attempt to draw in the broadest number of students possible and should be the forums for deciding the direction of the campaign. In these collectives, elected union reps should have no more say over the direction of the campaign than any other activist.
RAGE is committed to building active, inclusive campaign collectives that will ensure the broadest possible campaign. These collectives should have ultimate control over the direction of the campaign and its resources as the only way to ensure an open and democratic union.
Democracy is not just limited to one turn at the ballot box each year but should be an ongoing process.
[Peter Robson is the RAGE candidate for general vice-president in the
upcoming student union elections at the University of Queensland]