Club Troppo

It is to my indescribable shame that I own up to having once been an active student politician, first at the University of Sydney and thereafter at Charles Darwin University. I have been a paid up Liberal Student since 2000 and I still am through the UWA Liberal Club, though these days I see myself as a “hack emeritus” and stay out of the scene.

People get involved with student politics because it is engrossing, heady and fast-paced; but it is also nasty, brutish and mercifully short. Some few of us even get involved out of a love for the principles of this or that — the intellectuals of the respective movements. Few such people ever go anywhere in politics, least of all student politics. Australian Liberal Students’ Federation president Tim Andrews is a notable exception.

For whatever reason, I have deduced that the water supply at the University of Queensland has been laced with whatthefucknium, a potent compound which induces rabies-like symptoms (aggression, foaming at the mouth etc) in victims, and constant head-scratching in observers.

I have drawn this conclusion after the establishment today of a “Truth about Tim Andrews” website. It’s fairly neatly laid out with such shocking revelations as:

• Tim Andrews uses sarcasm!
• Tim Andrews fancies women!
• Tim Andrews gets frustrated by wankers!

The inference drawn from these discoveries has been that Tim Andrews must be tipped out of the ALSF chair in favour of … well, I’m not sure really. Somebody from Queensland, I presume.

I’m particularly annoyed that the banana benders chose the middle of goddamn exam season to start up this bunfight. Here I am trying to refresh my memory of functional, analytical and dynamic object models with particular reference to UML diagrams. Sticking up for one of the most thoughtful and effective ALSF presidents I’ve ever seen in action is not something I’d expected to find myself doing with exams starting Monday week.

Andrew Landeryou has already picked up the story — unsurprising since the site’s creators made sure to fire off some press releases — and I expect it’ll be somewhere in the papers tomorrow. If nothing else it’s just proved Henry Kissinger’s observation that university politics is vicious because the stakes — and the people involved — are so small.