TW: FLASHING VIDEO
IF YOU WANT CHANGE, VOTE FOR IT!
ANUSA is your student union and we should expect better.
Every student should feel that ANUSA represents them, their interests, and fights for things that will make a difference to them. Our candidates have experience and a plan to improve Mental Health support at ANU, prioritise the services students need, and protect rights on campus.
Change your ANUSA is squarely focused on achieving real results for students. If you want your union to do more for you, vote Change.
ANUSA’s provision of services has been under prioritised year-on-year. Broadly two things are needed, ANUSA:
needs to provide more of the services that students need; and
must ensure students are aware that these services exist, find it straightforward to access them, feel comfortable to reach out, and have positive experiences using them.
Change seeks to re-energise ANUSA’s services to ensure that these goals are met.
Some of the services that Change’s consultation with postgraduate, undergraduate, HDR students, and autonomous departments has led us to support implementing the following policies. Led by President Will Burfoot, Change will improve the accessibility of mental health services. We will deliver a mental health grant so students who need support can get it. We will also expand our wellbeing services and programs during exams so students can get the support they need.
We also support a number of key services that will benefit students. These include working towards being able to provide a free lunch, monday to friday, to all those that need it; by expanding the BKSS lunch express, student bites, and providing other food on days this isn’t available. We will also work to run affordable, and easily accessible vending machines around campus so students have more options no matter where they are. We must support all students having food security. We will also create a subsidy for those taking (or wishing to start taking) PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) to allow those wanting to access this important medication but feeling unable to pay for it and incentivise more Queer* people on campus to access it. We will also implement pill testing kits in the BKSS, empowering students with another way to test their drugs and to make informed and safer decisions around drug use.
To make sure that all students feel able and comfortable to access these - and all of the many existing - services, we will help reform the culture of ANUSA in meetings and in public-facing places. This helps to ensure that students do not view their identities and politics as a barrier to accessing the services that ANUSA provides. To complement these cultural changes, we will also implement a ‘What’s on Offer’ document that allows all students to see ANUSA services in one go-to place, meaning students can quickly see the services that are on offer and how to access them. These Changes will allow more students to access more services - and that’s what ANUSA is all about.
PROVIDING SERVICES WE NEED
ADVOCATING FOR YOUR WELFARE
Exams are often scheduled and structured to the disadvantage of students. Saturday exams take away from valuable downtime that they are otherwise entitled to. Late-at-night weekday exams likewise can make students travel home late and in the dark, take up valuable personal time, and are scheduled when students are not at their best performance. Change will campaign to ensure that exams are scheduled only within class-time hours, pushing for mid-semester exams to take place in-class and end-of-semester exams to be only scheduled during equivalents of class hours. While, of course, students who are working still have to take time off, scheduling exams during normal class hours reduces disruption and ensures students are performing at their peak. Further, we will push to reduce hurdle requirements that set high burdens on students to perform above and beyond the usual 50% pass mark. Students who put in the work, and perform with a pass mark on a course should not be failed due to an arbitrary mark on the final exam, regardless of their output, effort, or success in the rest of the semester.
Consent education and SASH Policy.
Change will continue to work with the Women’s Department to ensure that all Consent education is designed to work for students, in specific environments and with diverse backgrounds for those at Reshalls. We will continue to work with the Respectful Relationships Unit to ensure that consent education and policy is driven by student leaders in communities, and that cultural changes are accompanied by tangible improvements to services that can support those who have experienced harm. We will ensure that accidental counselor training is provided to those who are likely to receive disclosures, to support them to navigate situations while supporting themselves and the person making the disclosure in the best possible way.
Cost of living Report and advocacy
We commit to creating a report and investigation into how the Cost of Living crisis is affecting students at ANU, noting the unique experiences of many students living on campus. A specific ANUSA report into how the cost of living has changed the habits of ANU students means that we can better provide tailored and specific services, to ensure that students are able to take care of themselves, their wellbeing, and continue to succeed even while facing increased costs of rent, groceries, and food.
Canberra and ANU crash-course guide
We will publish an ANU Crash-course guide for all students at the beginning of the year. This will include what services are available from ANUSA, ANU, and in the broader community and how people can access them. It will explain students’ academic and tenancy rights, and rights and responsibilities as members of the Canberra and ANU community. It will also give a guide to ANU systems, covering how to apply for extensions, how to engage with systems like ISIS, and the key differences between university and high school. This Crash-course guide will help to provide students with the best introduction to ANUSA and its services, while empowering students with the best information to allow them to access ANU and Canberra, campus, and academia in the best way.
Smoking areas
Change will seek to institute designated smoking areas on campus. Current policies mean that students must walk off campus - often in the dark - in order to smoke. This puts students at the choice of going off campus alone in the dark or breaking the no-smoking rules. Students shouldn’t have to put themselves in dangerous situations in order to smoke and to minimise harm, Change supports designated smoking areas on campus.
DEFENDING YOUR RIGHTS AT UNI
Often things happen that can disadvantage students or mean they are unable to work on their assignments for a couple of days. These situations are hard to get extensions for, or require numbers of letters/ doctor’s certificates/ or other inaccessible documentation in order to get even a couple of days’ extension on an assessment. We will advocate for no-questions-asked, automatic 5 day extensions. These extensions allow any student to get access to a few extra days to do an assessment without taking a late penalty or having to spend even more of their busy time to get the documentation to get an extension. Other unis have done this - and so can ANU - to allow any students, with no questions asked, to access a simple extension and allow them to better succeed at Uni.
Change will also increase the assistance provided to students when they are looking to resolve concerns or issues with their academics. This involves how to make an application for Extenuating Circumstances or for a deferred exam. While these supports exist already, they can be advertised and promoted more effectively to ensure that students are able to know that this is an option and also expanded so that they are able to be useful to more students. The better advertising and capacity of these services mean students can get applications done with less stress, more quickly, and with a higher chance of success.
Residents on campus perpetually struggle with predatory and unfair contracts. These contracts are occupancy agreements which designate students as tenants and not as renters, limiting not only the rights they are afforded in their rooms, their access to recourse, and also their ability to break contracts in many circumstances. The power imbalance between the ANU and its residents is fundamentally wrong, and ANUSA is asleep at the wheel with fighting this imbalance. ANUSA needs to work with the ACT government to legislate to fix occupancy agreements and tenancy rights; because we already know the ANU won’t fix it themselves.
The replacement of SRs with CSOs has been a change that takes burdens away from students. However, the change has had a number of adverse impacts on residents and future student leaders alike. Our Gen Sec candidate, Sam Gorrie co-authored an open letter to the Residential Experience Division calling on the university to ensure there is one CSO on per night, per hall, that CSOs are integrated into specific communities, that lockout fees are abolished, and that there remains a sufficient amount of pay that allows them to properly commit to the role and does not disadvantage students without other supports. We seek to support future student leaders to continue improving this model, and continue to advocate for better student wellbeing in Res Halls.
Change will also publish and run awareness campaigns - in conjunction with specific unions and UnionsACT - to educate students about their rights at work. This will include things like: the quantity of superannuation that they are owed and the frequency that it must be paid to them, the expectations of different scales and awards, what to do if they suspect they aren’t being paid right, and what breaks/ time-off they are entitled to. Students are some of the most at-risk groups for experiencing breaches of their rights at work - ensuring students have awareness of their rights and how to stand up for them will assist to ensure they are being treated as they deserve. As part of this, we will also encourage and facilitate students to be aware on what union covers their area of work and how to join and get involved.
Alongside the ANUSA election, a referendum will be held for all students to vote in. The question is as follows: “Do you think ANU should withdraw all current investments in the weapons industry and make no further investments into the weapons industry?” This serves as another important opportunity for students to express their views to the university, Change will be campaigning for a YES vote. We must continue to work to ensure the ANU does not stop at partial divestment, does not re-define what divestment is, but instead moves to make sure students tuition fees are not going towards a category of investments which cause clear social harm.