The Graduate Students’ Union’s (GSU) year of turbulence and disagreement has culminated in moves to remove the union’s president Gisèle Scanlon from her position, as well as her vice president Abhisweta Bhattacharjee.
This Editorial Board has repeatedly found itself addressing the state of the GSU over the past year. As early as October, the union’s inability to properly run its class representative elections caused controversy and, indeed, spelled the disorder to come.
Well over a month later, the GSU finally ran its first AGM of the year, weeks after it was constitutionally mandated to do so. The AGM quickly descended into chaos. The GSU promised to hold another general meeting – clearly there were a lot of issues that postgraduates had to flesh out – and last week, it held the meeting, after much delay.
Over 500 members piled into the meeting – a staggeringly high attendance. It was riddled with too many controversies to list here, but perhaps most worrying was the insecure voting system used to pass the important amendments and motions, essentially invalidating everything that happened during the meeting.
Now, members are calling for Scanlon and Bhattacharjee’s removal. Considering the above menu of administrative, democratic and constitutional disasters, the call has not come from left field.
The fallout of a potential impeachment, however, will do little to curb this sense of chaos, if there is no one there to replace Scanlon and Bhattacharjee. GSU members must therefore ask: what is the plan?
In addition, the Capitation Committee may now need to step in and start putting out fires. However, it is unclear how much it can do with the current administration in place and so little time left before the end of the year.
Ultimately, the GSU serves an important role as the representative body of an often overlooked section of students that, more than anything else, wants just that – to be represented.
But it is now in freefall. It has failed to demonstrate its ability to follow its own constitution, run general meetings or hold secure votes. A new GSU is desperately needed, but trying to unravel the whole union now may be too late.
Stabilising the union, running a fair and secure sabbatical election and reversing the constitutional damage done by invalid voting in the last EGM must now be the main priorities for members of the union and for the Capitation Committee.
