Sophie Kington

Throughout my three years at ANU living and learning on this campus, I have become passionate about advocating for ANU students, especially in my role as Residential Mentor at Fenner this year. I am so excited to channel my passion into the General Secretary role working alongside the rest of the team at RAGE for ANUSA. I am committed to increasing transparency, consistency, accountability and accessibility within the ANUSA governance processes, actively ensuring ANUSA serves the students at our university. Therefore, as General Secretary I promise a collaborative and engaging system of governance, so students are confident in, and aware of, the decisions affecting them. RAGE is angry about the same things you are. As a team we will work transparently to bring about concrete change providing students with the education and experience they need, want and deserve. We will shift the focus back to students particularly fighting for quality and equity in educational access by resisting the Renew ANU model, particularly the course cuts, as well as fighting for our res-coms and social life.

As your General Secretary, I seek to improve ANUSA culture by inviting increased collaboration, efficiency and efficacy in the process of governance. This will ensure the decisions made by authorities at our university manifest into transformative and practical changes that benefit students. I will bring the appropriate level of impartiality to my role as meeting chair in SRC, EDC, AGM and OGM meetings making sure to remain respectful and fair promoting the inclusion of diverse perspectives. This will ensure we facilitate robust discussion while upholding a productive focus that seeks solutions and outcomes that manifest practical change at our university. I am committed to advocating for student services ensuring that awareness and access of ANUSA services increases.

Simplifying the constitution making it accessible to the broader community:

I will make governance more accessible by publishing key information and ideas from the constitution in a summarised format inviting the wider community to become involved. I will work with my team and the student body, continuing to review the Constitution and policy documents making sure they are fit for their intended purpose. This includes ensuring governing documents are written in comprehensible language accessible to a more diverse range of students. This will ensure all students understand their rights, responsibilities, and the organisation’s governance structure. I will develop simplified summaries and answer FAQ’s regarding the ANUSA Constitution and Policies. I will introduce more streamlined processes for amendments and interpretations by simplifying the process for proposing constitutional amendments, making it more accessible to the broader community.

Feedback informed student centred governance:

As General Secretary, I am committed to implementing a governance process that is informed by student feedback as genuine collaboration with students, will ensure ANUSA becomes more responsive to those it serves. This will work to invite students into the process of governance, engaging them further through regular drop-in discussions, surveys and forums that collect feedback from the ANU community surrounding important issues and necessary changes. I plan to set up once a term drop in discussion time when students can discuss the process of ANUSA governance and provide feedback to the association. I will use my expansive connections to bring governance into the spotlight and encourage a diverse community to engage. These regular feedback mechanisms will facilitate continuous improvement based on student needs and preferences. Students need to know what decisions are being made on their behalf and how those decisions affect their university experience. I will address ANUSA’s current gaps in outreach by reviewing, improving and increasing forums for engagement, by removing barriers to participation. Every student should be able to engage meaningfully, having their voice heard, accessing ANUSA’s meetings, services, and spaces regardless of their background or circumstances. Through this transparent approach I will make sure the union remains accountable to the students it seeks to serve, modelling elements of an approach that could be useful for the broader university structure.

Encouraging collaboration to increase pressure on the university to act according to student interest:

As there is power in numbers, I will encourage collaboration across ANU departments, bodies, clubs and societies, while of course acknowledging their autonomy, inviting them to support each other in the decision making process. Cross departmental coordination is necessary facilitating connections between officers, executives, and students within departments to ensure they retain full control over their operations. My role is to facilitate collaboration that strengthens both ANUSA and departmental autonomy simultaneously, protecting the democratic structures but bringing student representation to the forefront in an authentic and effective way. I will write and continually update information on websites and facebook that describes and demonstrates to students the range of support available. This will include access to autonomous departments including what departments do, how they operate, and how students can get involved. As well as continuing to develop and promote ways to engage Post Graduate and HDR students, expanding and improving work that has begun since they have become included in ANUSA. Thereby increasing transparency and subsequent engagement ensuring inclusion of a diversity of groups in the process of ANUSA governance, ensuring our union and ultimately our university serves students interests. Along with inviting representatives, I will extend engagement to broader audiences speaking with clubs, inviting presidents of societies, colleges and res-com leaders to EDC. Continue to pursue a better disputes model tweaking and continuing to make sure the disputes model works. Will continue to consult departments to ensure this model works for them. Providing advice to departments to improve their disputes processes, allowing time to be invested productively in seeking solutions. This is important now more than ever when the quality and delivery of our education is threatened, allowing a broader audience to engage and bring up issues affecting their specific groups, will increase pressure on the university to act according to student interest. We have seen through the Bell decision that our voices are heard and powerful when we campaign against the cuts and other decisions at our university.

Notifying the wider community about meeting occurrences:

The meetings need to cater to and function to serve the students in attendance by being effective and efficient but still allowing contentious issues to be discussed as necessary. This aims to extend student engagement beyond SRC members. I will introduce a Facebook weekly newsletter and university-wide emailing system that will email ANU students the details of meetings including agenda items, time, date, in-person location and zoom details for an ANUSA meeting the day before the meeting. I will create interactive online platforms or dashboards where students can view upcoming meetings, agendas, minutes, and an interpretation of decisions affecting them in plain language, especially making social media a quick and accessible platform. I will establish standardised timelines and checklists for organising representative council meetings (SRC, EDC, AGM, OGM), ensuring they occur punctually and are well-structured, promoting efficiency and keeping students informed and engaged.

Meeting agendas that prioritise the most current and salient issues:

The role of the General Secretary as meeting chair sees space for improvements to be made. I will create a system of prioritisation of agenda items highlighting the most important issues and related motions are spoken about first. I will work with the rest of the executive to determine and prepare a run sheet prioritising the main issues affecting students. Allowing autonomous groups to communicate if an issue is of particular importance, for example, issues related to safety and inclusion will remain at the forefront. I will build clear motion templates that invite proposals which focus on specific goals and solutions, ensuring that motions submitted have productive focus. Thereby, saving my time in discerning motions and increasing effectiveness of meetings. This will cater to the broader purpose of the meetings which is to bring about changes for our student community making meetings more productive rather than competitive. Making meetings more efficient, structured and focused will involve upholding current speaking time of 3minutes for motion delivers/ movers and question response limits of 1minute, intending to boost attentiveness in the time provided, diligently keeping people on time and on track. I will note off-topic items directing the focus back to the issue and purpose of the motion ensuring that our governance processes have an embedded sense of perspective. Bringing the focus back to salient issues will counter oversaturation and lack of focus, ensuring more valuable use of time for those involved in progress. I will remind participants of the importance of collaboration and the need for solution focussed discussion with a short statement alongside each motion put forward. Meetings will be about working together to come to a solution that will be best for students and the association rather than focus on people’s personal agendas, competition or division. These procedural updates focus on making SRC meetings more efficient while still encouraging issues to be debated continuing the successful work from this year in reducing meeting times, aligning with the meeting styles students want.

Clear, effective and efficient system of counting votes:

Expand meeting accessibility by continuing to offer hybrid voting systems combining in person and virtual voting increasing meeting access options thereby promoting equal participation. Implementing a professional vote-counting system will enhance the formality and trustworthiness of ANUSA meeting processes. By combining technology with official, efficient counting procedures, this approach will improve overall meeting effectiveness while ensuring all participation is formally recognised and accurately counted.Expediting the voting process by voting on motions as swiftly and sensibly as possible, by keeping the number of speakers, speaking time and questions limited, preventing meetings from dragging on with repetitive arguments and instead creating a more dynamic and productive meeting environment. By using this approach, I intend to create a culture that encourages legitimate discussion and allows representatives to feel they can adequately address the complex issues at hand. This will ensure that meetings remain focused on the goal at hand reducing inefficient discussion and making sure that these spaces facilitate respectful discussion shutting down anything disrespectful.

Promoting transparency and accountability by publishing meeting attendance:

Students deserve representatives committed to showing up and advocating for them. This will involve publishing any changes to SRC membership including resignations and replacements. I will hold representatives accountable by posting meeting attendance and keeping membership records up to date so students know at all times who is representing them. By posting on the website, facebook and instagram updates surrounding membership accountability and transparency will be maintained. This will allow students to remain up to date with who is representing them as expressed via email notifications of any changes, ANUSA website and facebook and instagram posts detailing current representatives. I will bring in a meeting attendance system that ensures elected representatives are committed, consistent and held accountable in their responsibility to represent student voices. The lack of meeting attendance currently means groups of students are not being adequately represented therefore highlighting the necessity of tracking attendance of elected representatives. By recording attendance representatives (and posting in post meeting wrap ups) will be held accountable and the ANU community will see which representatives are making their voices count as diversity in attendance is essential to bring about decisions suitable to the diverse ANU community. This process will incentivise attendance and allow the executive to support representatives struggling with attendance, continuing to allow for reasonable leniency surrounding valid excuses, but fundamentally making sure student voices always count. This policy will significantly strengthen democratic participation in student governance by making representation more visible and accountable to the student body ensuring all elected representatives fulfill their obligations and make student voices heard.

I pledge to remain accountable and transparent by publishing key takeaways from ANUSA meetings so that all ANU students are able to understand and access information about decisions affecting them at their university. I pledge to publicly post meeting minutes as promptly as possible so the broader ANUSA (ANU) community understands what decisions and happenings are affecting them at our university. Students deserve the opportunity to be educated about and engaged in the decisions that shape their university experience. Students need accessible information about what happens in SRC and OGM meetings so they can stay informed about issues that impact them. These wrap up will be presented TL;DR style summarising for the community the main key happenings posted to ANUSA facebook and instagram and creating social media pages just for meeting summaries. Social media wrap-ups to make it accessible to a broader audience, listing the motions that passed and those that did not, an overall wrap-up of what happened at the SRC. Publicly posting simplified minutes outlining what has occurred in meetings therefore providing opportunity for the broader ANU audience to engage with the meeting and decision making process. Students will know what happens at SRC and become involved through engaging social media wrap ups. This is important to make sure that those who weren’t able to attend a given ANUSA meeting can still keep up with the latest ANUSA news and happenings increasing transparency and accessibility inspiring ANU students to keep up and become more engaged with their student union.

Boosting engagement with ANUSA Services through transparent systems of governance:

I will operationalise transparency by posting termly updates about student engagement with ANUSA services and facilities such as BKSS and legal services. Publishing reports on the frequency of access to these services. Therefore, collecting data highlighting which services are most utilised and publishing this information for students to inform our advocacy platform. We will advocate to ensure utilised services continue to be funded or prompt more investment. ANUSA as our student union exists to serve and support the students of ANU therefore we will encourage more students to become involved by communicating which services are available.

As your general secretary alongside the Rage team, are an executive team that will bring students along in the process of governance particularly in these uncertain times. Therefore, allowing students to engage in effective advocacy and activism with the support of their representatives, especially in bringing about successful changes at the university via campaign or protest. There is a tension that I will manage as General Secretary between managing risk and allowing ANUSA to be activist in a certain way that aligns ANUSA policies and regulation balancing duties to the association and its students.

Importance of individual students’ experience I will promote ANUSA services as non-partisan and judgment-free resources available to every student, particularly those most in need. Students need to feel confident that they can access advocacy, legal support, and financial assistance without concern about being judged or treated differently based on their perspectives. As General Secretary, I’m committed to publicising these services to increase student engagement and ensure all students know ANUSA is here to support them unconditionally.

I will transform how ANUSA communicates with students by creating clear, plain-language resources that eliminate barriers to access. This includes developing a comprehensive handbook distributed during O-Week and Bush Week, alongside a regularly updated online resource bank with step-by-step guides for common student processes like deferrals, appeals, and financial support applications. This approach directly supports the General Secretary’s governance responsibilities by ensuring our organisational systems actually serve students effectively.

When students can easily understand and navigate ANUSA’s offerings, they become more engaged participants in our democratic processes and better informed advocates for their own needs. Accessible information strengthens both individual student outcomes and our collective capacity for meaningful representation and advocacy. It is of paramount importance that all students are aware of and access ANUSA services. We will ensure this manifests by streamlining communication and removing administrative barriers. I’m not just improving service delivery but strengthening the foundation of student engagement that makes effective governance possible. Ultimately, the success of the ANU student union depends on the participation and interest of ANU students, and our student union must grow with the needs, wants and desires of ANU students.