SRC Councilor does his job

A wave of shock and awe has swept across Rhodes University Campus this morning following a post on the Rhodes Student Representative Council page by Environmental Councilor Luke Cadden.

The post followed a planned release of purple helium balloons to celebrate environmental initiatives. According to the post, which was informative, to-the-point and contained no spelling mistakes, Cadden successfully put a stop to this responsible, carefully-thought-out, and environmentally friendly littering of purple balloons in the wild.

"We at first thought that sending purple baby-animal-choking bags of helium into the air to be scattered across the game reserves and untouched areas of South Africa would be the best way of spreading our environmentally-responsible message," said event organiser Litta Hevriwhere. "But Luke showed us the error of our ways. Things like a naked run or selling brownies make a lot more ecological activism sense."

According to the post, the Cadden and the SRC took into account the student's complaints, queries and suggestions - a governance method that was abandoned in 1912.

"This is a bold new way of doing student governance," said student political analyst Mu Zanabuuz. "Back then, it made sense, because government as a whole didn't really give a shit about people. We'll just have to see how the strategy pays off in the near future."

This, however, is not the first incidence of involvement of the student voice and opinion, and indeed, is not the first sighting of an SRC Councillor. In fact, since the current SRC was voted in, they have been spotted all over campus, and are actually visible. This abandonment of their previous ideals and invisibility has caused much international controversy.

"We've seen a couple of examples this year where the SRC has actually asked us for our input beyond who I want to drunkenly scream in front of on the Great Field at Trivar," said student Jonathan Mayar. "It was such a strange feeling."

Just one example is the multiple Student Forum meetings and Student Body deliberations that have been organised.

"We've moved back to this old system," said SRC President Askin N.E Bhadi. "It'll probably take the students a while to get used to having to care about their own University."

Previously, the SRC would throw a party at the beginning of the year, and then spend the rest of the year holding boring, behind-the-scenes things like meetings and forums and Council hearings that no one gives a crap about.

"These get the job done, but no one can see how effective they are. We keep getting blamed for doing nothing. Student Forums, even if they are less effective, are at least in the public eye. Now, if everything goes to hell on a handwagon, we can blame the students as well as the SRC," said SRC historian Orik Efei.

According to Bhadi, they're already well on their way to accomplishing this.

"We've had a low turnout at most of these hearings where students can tell us what they want so that we just won't bugger around for the rest of the year," he said.

However, he doubts that future meetings will have improved attendance.

"Many students have complained of having very important commitments, such as Game of Thrones Season 3, predrinks, watching cat videos on youtube, sleep, tests and assignments, that clash with the meetings. I completely understand. With another meeting tonight, we expect to be able to say it's the students' fault by early September."