USU Board winners revealed

Misbah Ansari, Katarina Butler, Bipasha Chakraborty and Veronica Lenard.

After almost two weeks of campaigning, the University of Sydney Union (USU) has announced its new student Board Directors. Bryson Constable (Liberal), Julia Lim (Independent), Grace Wallman (Switch), Ben Hines (Libdependent), Grace Porter (Unity) and Sargun Saluja (NLS) have been provisionally elected.

Constable, Lim and Wallman were all elected in the first count, with 571, 549, and 491 votes respectively. Hines followed in the third count, with 488.75 votes. Porter was elected in count 9 and Saluja was elected in count 10, with 491.05 and 438.578 respectively.

The remaining candidates who were not elected received less than 330 votes each. The quota was 476 votes.

The vote count slide shared during the evening by the USU

Both the Left and Right blocs ended up with three of their candidates on Board. Whilst Julia Lim is Independant, and seemed to bring progressive policies to her campaign, Lim appeared to be aligned with the Right bloc in preference deals. It is yet to be seen how this will affect her vote once on Board.

Four of the elected directors are non-cis men, which is above the affirmative action requirements for the Board. Saluja is the only international student among the newly elected Board Directors.

The six newly elected directors will join Nicholas Dower (Liberal), Onor Nottle (Switch), Alexander Poirier (Unity), Naz Sharifi (Independent), and Madhullikaa Singh (Switch) on Board.

UTS to back-pay staff over $5.7 million

Luke Mesterovic

The University has undertaken an obligation to back-pay 2,777 current and former casual staff for work done between September 2014 and May 2021. This amounts to more than $4.4 million in minimum engagement entitlements, in addition to over $1.3 million to reflect what would have been accrued superannuation and interest.