Dilly ding dilly dong, it’s our personal information

PDBY asked DASO how they obtained the contact information of students, not registered with DASO. Moses asked if these students had verified that they were not registered members. After this was answered in the affirmative, she responded, “interesting […]”.

Kirsten Minnaar and Banathi Nkehli

The August demonstrations featured various student leaders which included SRC members, faculty house chairpersons, executive committee members, and independent candidates contesting the increase on the 2023 first payment amount. However, DASO (the DA Student Organisation) was the only political organisation who did not participate in any of the demonstrations.

DASO’s absence at the demonstrations

When asked about their absence, Shaina Moses, the chairperson of DASO, said that “DASO does not believe in disrupting class”. She continued, “we do believe that each student has the right to an education […]. If the protesters are fighting for students to be educated, then we have the opportunity right now. DASO does understand the grievances of all the students […]. Our opposition, their approach is to protest. However, DASO does not believe that a protest will rectify the situation at hand, but that does not mean that because DASO isn’t partaking in the protest that we do not prioritise the situation. We just handle it in a very different manner.”

The petition

DASO’s approach to the increase was made clear on 25 August, when several students received an SMS from DASO that read: “Stop the shutdown! DASO has a solution for you. Follow the link to sign DASO’s registration fee petition.”

The link provided in the text messages led to a Google document which read: “The Democratic Alliance Student Organisation calls upon the University of Pretoria [management] to engage DASO UP on the proposed 2023 Registration Fee Increase.” This petition stated that DASO had two proposals, namely that “University of Pretoria management [re-enters] into talks with student structures to discuss the proposed registration fee increase” and, in light of the “major financial impacts Covid-19 had on many families”, that “University of Pretoria management creates a process to allow academically deserving students to apply for exemptions to the registration fee increase”.

However, it was unclear how DASO got a hold of the contact information of these students, to be able to send out this petition.

The text

When asked how DASO received the contact information of the students who received this message, Moses responded that it was from “many of [their] members who are registered, of course”. However, a number of students who received this