Page last updated 21/10/2023.
From my live Thread @nhan.an.victorian 7/7/2023.
The Labor Left are trying to get up to the Radio Monash committee. Despite all positions having been declared vacant, the Labor Right controlled MSA has blocked elections for almost all committee positions, with only President and Vice President to be elected tonight. For both positions, prominent Labor Left figures are running against established Radio Monash members.
More to come.
Meeting in disarray with disputes over the legality of the notice, governance obligations, failure to pass a constitutional amendment. Serious potential that no elections will go ahead.
Earlier, a special resolution failed (with a majority but not the required supermajority in favour) that would have amended the constitution to allow voting rights to members for 21 days rather than 10 business days. The official notice (and I understand also the members list being referred to for votes in the meeting) used 21 days.
A second special resolution passed unanimously, but only after the removal of a controversial clause inserted by a lawyer that would have bound the President to act in the interests of the MSA rather than Radio Monash while acting as a Monash Student Council member.
Establishment candidate for President spruiks their Radio Monash experience in a typical sort of speech for an apolitical position.
First Labor Left candidate for President attacks Radio Monash establishment for failing to modernise and not worth saving, and becoming a “clique” and “in-group”. Also calls for more journalism and academic affairs advocacy.
Second Labor Left candidate for President offers an optimistic vision for expansion. Much less hostile.
Has the meeting been stacked? Quorum was reached comfortably, which could reflect member activity/enthusiasm, Labor Left stacking, or both.
I believe that over 20 votes (including a large number of proxies) are controlled by the Labor Left. This number is almost the quorum threshold (25). There are 73 votes in total.
The Labor Left candidates are unfamiliar to most Radio Monash members. They are being interrogated by regular members.
First Labor Left candidate for President claims to have been asked by regular Radio Monash members to run.
They criticise the “2010 CSS” on the website radiomonash.online. What is wrong with that?
Voting is underway for President. Remember, the result could be invalidated if the MSA or lawyers feels like the meeting is illegal.
Establishment candidate wins the Presidency, defeating the two Labor Left candidates in a first past the post vote.
The two Labor Left candidates for the Vice Presidency (the same two as nominated for President) withdraw, leaving the establishment candidate to win unopposed.
Meeting closes over 2.5 hours after opening, the Labor Left stack defeated (for now). Elections for most committee positions still to come at a later date.
Why were the Labor Left interested in Radio Monash? Possible reasons: 1) Despite their institutional ignorance, they genuinely believed in modernising Radio Monash, pivoting to journalism, expanding its reach and campaigning on education affairs. 2) The President has a vote on the Monash Student Council, which Labor Right-led ticket Together control practically unopposed. 3) To co-opt Radio Monash as a vehicle to support a ticket in the 2023 MSA elections.
Filed 10/7/2023.
As attendees gathered for the Special General Meeting of Radio Monash, the regular members had no reason to suspect that it would be aything but business as intended. It was supposed to be an orderly affair, with a smooth transition to a new, pre-determined administration. After all, modern Monash is not particularly notorious for political machinations in the clubs space.
Radio Monash is in some ways structurally similar to a regular club affiliated with MSA Clubs and Societies. It is led by a committee, elected at general meetings open to anybody who has been a member for 10 business days. Members may be anybody (with no fee for MSA+ subscribers and a $5 membership fee otherwise), unlike other MSA divisions where office bearers are elected by a class of students (MUISS, MAPS), C&S club presidents (C&S Council), or all students (MSA as a whole). But as an MSA division (a product of its long history as an independent non-MSA organisation), it has something that other clubs do not: a vote on the Monash Student Council (MSC), the MSA’s governing body.
The past few years were turbulent for Radio Monash. The pandemic, renovations of its recording studios and technical problems it through 2020-2022. The July 2023 Special General Meeting was supposed to represent a renewal, with all committee positions to face elections and a series of constitutional amendments to be approved.
Early in the meeting, a question was asked to the outgoing Radio Monash President: “Why is this committee so awesome?”
The reply: “Our sense of togetherness and community! And the fact that we do not have any ulterior and selfish motives.”
This committee was coming to an end with the SGM.
The first special resolution offered eleven amendments to bring the constitution up to date, including:
Debate centred on the increase in the time a member needs to wait to gain voting rights, from 10 business days to 21 days. Only members with voting rights are eligible to become a committee member. One conventional reason for this sort of rule is to prevent non-genuine members from influencing outcomes of votes. The disagreement lay in the principle that even those who were new to the organisation might still be capable and valuable in contributing to a committee role; defending the amendment, members of the establishment argued that Radio Monash required a unique skillset that could only be gained to an acceptable level by consistent and committed experience in the organisation over an extended period of time.
Radio Monash members voted 47 for and 26 against special resolution 1. Despite the majority for, a special resolution requires no less than 75% of votes in favour to pass and hence this special resolution failed. So the waiting period remained at 10 business days. This means that by any measure, the notice which gave 21 days did so incorrectly, which may impact the validity of the meeting and elections.
The second special resolution proposed another ten amendments, including:
Controversy lay in a subclause requiring that “when the President is acting as a member of the Monash Student Council their overriding legal duty is to act in the best interests of MSA, rather than [Radio Monash].” The outgoing President indicated that this subclause was inserted by legal against their wishes, and that this legal duty was current even without being explicitly specified in the Constitution. Additionally, the Constitution still contained the option to exercise its autonomy by leaving the MSA to become independent again if the MSC made decisions damaging to Radio Monash.
With dissension over the legal duty passage threatening to sink the second special resolution and derail the imminent elections, the clause was removed from the amendments that were put to a vote in order to seek further legal advice. The second special resolution passed unanimously without the offending subclause. The first special resolution defeated and the second passed, next to come were the elections.
The entire committee had been spilled and all positions were supposed to face elections. The MSA, controlled by the Together ticket which is led by the Labor Right, and its legal team blocked this plan. Only the President and the Vice President could be elected. So the intention from the Radio Monash establishment was to anoint its pre-determined nominees who were active members of the Radio Monash committee - again, parallels with the typical procedure observed by many C&S clubs.
The plan would face an obstacle in members of the Monash ALP (Labor) Club (the campus club of the Labor Left faction of the Labor Party). For both positions of President and Vice President, two candidates (the same two) running against the establishment candidates were members of the Labor Club and seconded by the Labor Club President.
The Labor Club controlled at least 22 votes combined (update 29/9/2023 - I now believe that this number is 25 votes), most of them proxy votes. If Radio Monash were an ordinary club struggling to make the quorum of 25 attendees, Labor Left members would have had control of the meeting. However, quorum was easily achieved with 73 votes attending in total, placing the Labor Left in the minority.
Most attention was drawn to the first Labor Left candidate for President to speak, who attacked the Radio Monash establishment for failing to modernise and convincingly pivot to the internet and podcasting. They accused the committee of becoming a “clique” and “in-group”, unwelcoming to outsiders, alongside with calls for more journalism (there was no indication of this meaning music journalism) and activism against the University’s arts cuts. The candidate admitted to not being involved with Radio Monash since entering Monash University, but claimed that regular members had asked them to run for the Presidency. After speeches concluded, the extensive questioning of this candidate suggests that other attendees viewed their candidacy as illegitimate and lacking actual understanding of Radio Monash’s activities (for example, podcasts having been already adopted).
The vote was conducted as a single-vote first-past-the-post ballot, with the result that the establishment nominee defeated both outsider candidates to become President. Following this failure, both Labor Left candidates withdrew from the race for Vice President recognising they were unlikely to win, and the establishment nominee won the position unopposed.
With the Labor Left insurgency overcome, but not really a successful SGM overall, the newly elected committee comprised two members from the previous committee. Given a special resolution failed, legal questions remain unresolved and an almost empty new committee, there must be further developments to come before this episode concludes.
Filed 28/7/2023.
A senior member of the outgoing committee, who was appointed by the MSA, has been a senior member of the Victorian Young Labor Left.
6 candidates for the Change ticket at the 2023 MSA elections were in attendance at this meeting - most of them held several proxy votes, all of them were participants in the stack (perhaps at most one was unintentionally so). Of the proxies, many of them were proxied from Change candidates.
In the election for President, the establishment candidate received 45 votes, and the Labor Left candidates received 25 votes and 0 votes. 25 is the number of votes that the Labor Left controlled in my analysis.
Radio Monash held its Annual General Meeting in October 2023. All committee positions were be up for election. Special resolution 1 from the SGM, which failed due to a minority 26 dissenting votes, returned but this time split. The proposed amendments to increase the voting rights waiting period for members from 10 business days to 21 days (the most controversial part) and to reduce quorum from 25 to 20 members were now in a separate special resolution.
At least 40 voting members were present at this meeting, still a remarkable number despite having decreased from the “high stakes SGM”. The Labor Left members who showed up at the SGM were absent, their Change ticket having just won a controlling majority of the Monash Student Council in the MSA elections earlier that week.
The special resolutions passed without controversy, with the “controversial” bit passing unanimously. This was the proposal to increase the waiting time before voting rights were granted, which was sunk by 26 votes at the SGM.
All elections were uncontested, with “establishment” candidates passing in without opposition. Despite all committee positions being up for election and extensive reports being delivered from various members of the outgoing committee, the entire AGM lasted only 1 hour, compared to the 2.5 hours at the SGM to elect only 2 positions.
16:49 16/6/2023
Dear Radio Monash Member,
You are invited to the Radio Monash Special General Meeting. This meeting will take place on July 7th, 2023, beginning at 6pm. The location is at the campus centre
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The meeting will include amendments to the Radio Monash constitution, with the special resolutions being attached to this email. There will also be a subsequent by-election to fill vacant and new positions.
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In person attendance is preferred, but if you require remote access, there are zoom details
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To vote at the meeting, you must have signed up as a member by midnight tonight, June 16, and you must be a student at the Monash University Clayton Campus.
If you would like to vote at the meeting but are unable to attend, please fill out a proxy form. Please note that a single member may hold more than two additional proxy votes (total of three votes).
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All positions will be up for election and are as follows:
Executive Committee: President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer
Committee Heads: Head of Community, Head of Studio Technology
General Committee: One or two of the following positions - Communication Officer(s), Marketing Director(s), Journalism Director(s), Events Director(s), Live Music Director(s), Visual Art Director(s), Live Studio Director(s), Radio Studio Director(s), Head Presenter(s), I.T. Director(s), General Representative(s), First Year Representative(s)
The following link can be used to nominate yourself or others for a committee position. You may also nominate during the meeting. Nominees require a seconder who is also an Ordinary member of Radio Monash to be officially put forward for a role.
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