Editorial: GUU Hustings apparently happened last night

Wikimedia Commons/Jim Smillie

Hamish Morrison
Editor

Not that you would know, but apparently the GUU hustings took place last night. They had originally been scheduled for Wednesday 28 February but were postponed due to the Beast from the East. The GUU posted an update yesterday announcing that their annual meeting was to take place at 7pm, with the announcement for hustings conveniently buried after this message (with a mere eight hours warning for anyone with any interest in attending) – no mention was made of this on the official Facebook event for the election. In fact, if you were going purely by the GUU’s own promotional material on Facebook, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the election had been and gone by now.

Not that the GUU is especially given to transparency or democracy, but this is poor even by their standards. The Glasgow Guardian has heard unconfirmed reports that the social media officer for the GUU had spilled so much VK on their keyboard that it was impossible to adequately alert the electorate.

Ailsa Jones, the GUU’s President-in-waiting, has been approached multiple times over the past two weeks for an interview by this paper. She has apparently been fully booked for two weeks. If this is the state of her schedule before taking her seat, God knows how she’ll get on next year.

The GUU has shown an enormous amount of contempt for democracy in this election and this is part of the wider problem. Perhaps given the financial strength of the union through its two hotspots of debauchery, the Hive and the Beer Bar, it sees itself as above the court of public opinion. If this is the case then it presumably sees itself as no more than a cheap watering hole for students who don’t really care. We can only assume next election season it will abandon all pretence of democracy and crown the winner of the Iron Stomach President instead.