VUWSA President Jasmine Freemantle has officially been expelled from the Workers’ Party, who sent out this press release yesterday:
Workers Party Statement on the expulsion of Jasmine Freemantle
Current VUWSA President Jasmine Freemantle has been expelled from the Workers Party. Freemantle contested the VUWSA election last year on a Workers Party platform. Since then, however, she has acted entirely as an individual rather than abiding by Workers Party policies and decisions.
A number of Workers Party principles have been breached, most particularly around the VUWSA Staff Collective Agreement which she drew up and which represented an attack on VUWSA employees’ rights, and around her role on Anzac Day where she failed to support action by WP members. In the case of Anzac Day, while she failed to consult in any way with the Party, she consulted with the RSA, seeking their endorsement of motions for a Student Representative Council.
Her actions indicate outright rejection in practice of basic WP – and basic left-wing – principles.
The WP first suspended her from membership due to the VUWSA contract and her failure to act as a WP member. After the Anzac Day events, she was expelled by a unanimous vote in the Wellington branch.
Since she was elected as president of VUWSA running on the WP platform, we believe she should resign from her position of President of VUWSA and seek re-election on her own record and platform.
Jasmine wrote an 8271-word blog post in reply here.
The post provides an interesting insight into Jasmine’s personal and political life. It also delivers a shocking account of VUWSA and the Workers’ Party.
For those who care about student politics—especially recent developments at VUWSA—it is a must read.
Salient has used Microsoft Word’s AutoSummerise function (set to 4%) to glean the important facts from the piece:
According to WP National Organiser Philip Ferguson:
VUWSA Presidency
The WP has had members on the student Executive at Victoria University since 2002. Joel ran out of the meeting. Marika was of course one of the 3 other WP members elected to the 2009 VUWSA Executive. Nowadays Joel busies himself interviewing VUWSA staff members in a pathetic attempt to compile dirt to pass on to WP members and Unite.
Actually I am the employer of the VUWSA staff, as were the previous WP members who served a term as VUWSA President.
Anyway, Joel and various WP members turned up to VUWSA’s SRC on 6 May, where Joel proceeded to read out a brief statement on behalf of the WP on the subject of Anzac Day. Not long after, Joel and other WP members set fire to the New Zealand flag.
I will not be resigning as the VUWSA President.
In an interesting twist, Joel Cosgrove (the same one who was the president last year, wore the penis t-shirt, smells funny, burnt the flag etc etc) sent this email out to the Workers’ Party mailing list:
To: ACAXXXXXX@XXXXX.com
From: joel.XXXXX@XXXX.com
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:26:16 +1200
Subject: Re: [ACA-activists] Draft Press Release: Expulsion of Jasmine
My suggestion is that we put it on Indymedia and leave it there. Salient
will find it, but I don’t want them being able to make any sort of
ownership of the ‘scoop’. Salient is not the paper of students and we
shouldn’t see it that way. Right now there are thousands of Salients
outside VUWSA, as no one is reading it this year, even though it’s free.
We owe them nothing.
Wow. Just wow, Joel. If anyone who reads this thinks Salient isn’t representing students then come talk to me. WP members included.
This is a serious case of bad communications management. In case you guys hadn’t noticed, Salient is pretty much the only media outlet that pays these muppets any attention. Why? I’m actually beginning to wonder that myself.
Also, Joel’s claims that there are thousands of Salients outside VUWSA is an outright fib. There are definitely fewer than 1000 copies there. Mainly a collection of our first nine issues—there because I am too lazy to bring them up to the office… Oh, and so students can grab copies.
Sadly for Joel, our readership and pick-up rate of both the print magazine and website is way up on the last two years. One pales at the predicament Salient would be in were he editor.
No doubt we’ll hear more about this communist cluster fuck. Jasmine seems to have turned commenting off on her blog, so feel free to comment here.