NO NO to Li Li

While partaking in our manifesto drinking game anyone who drew the straw of reading out the manifesto of Equality and DIversity officer candidate Amanda Li, would have probably ended up on the floor through alcohol poisoning (or just hysterics) The manifesto (as seen here) is a huge 60 words long (yep I counted) and fails to meet many basic grammatical rules. One person I spoke to about it said it reminded them of the spam dating emails that you get bombarded with.

Why did no-one involved say anything?

I understand that the poor English may be down to the fact that she is an international student, and as such commend the fact that the large international community we have at our university are finally getting involved with our student union. The major issue is that she seems oblivious of what the job is! (the job description in full is here)  The position is quite a difficult position, working alongside the VP Welfare to make sure that SUSU does enough to promote equal opportunities, something not mentioned ONCE in Amanda’s manifesto.

Lots of people assume we at The Tab don’t like Chloe Green. This isn’t true. We actually think that she’s done a good job as Equality and Diversity officer although we don’t see quite eye to eye on a few of her campaigns and opinions. As such this means the position has possibly gained a greater prestige for any successor than it previously held and Amanda doesn’t quite live up to this expectation so far.

Many people would assume that prior to standing for a position you would at least read the job description or speak to the present incumbent and see what you would be expected to do, something that seemingly hasn’t taken place. This makes you question what feedback SUSU give to people when they nominate themselves. I would expect that the election committee read through all manifestos to check they aren’t promising something extreme that is illegal or impossible.  We contacted Deputy Returning Officer Joe McLo to ask for the official answer but as yet he hasn’t replied.

The worst thing about all this is that the position is uncontested. With the standard SUSU election steps of vote for whoever I know/looks the best/annoyed me least on concourse for most of the positions, people often vote for the only candidate in the less contested positions and as such Amanda is likely to be elected without a word being said. Is this really the best thing? Someone who obviously has little or no idea about what she’ll be doing being responsible for university equality? I’m surprised the normally vocal FemSoc haven’t raised the issue or generated their own candidate.

Therefore, and with a heavy heart as its never nice wishing someone to fail, we at The Tab would recommend that you vote RON (Burgundy)  for Equality and Diversity officer, so someone can check with Amanda she knows what she’s letting herself in for. If she decides to run again and improves her manifesto, then I wish her the best of luck.