In July, students living in residential halls across ANU received an email from the ANU Residential Experience Division (RED) seeking feedback for the Residents’ Committee (ResCom) model review.

Students were encouraged to complete a survey to help RED “better understand what’s working, what’s not, and how [they] can improve leadership, engagement, and representation across our communities”.

In the following weeks, RED conducted separate feedback groups with residential scholarship holders and current ResCom members from each hall. Students were told there was no current proposal and that RED was committed to collating feedback before creating one. 

Questions posed to students included what was working well with the current model and what could be improved. At one stage, students were asked how they would redesign their hall’s ResCom structure. Several students reportedly stated that standardisation across campus would not work. 

As a result of the review, the Save Our ResComs initiative was launched online. It has been reported that the Inter-Hall Council (IHC) – which comprises the presidents from each residence – was given notice of the initial proposal on Wednesday 27 August, right before the midsemester break. 

The proposal is set to take effect on 15 September. This has prompted criticism about RED’s lack of transparency in this process. This week, residents were emailed about the changes and information sessions began with residential scholarship holders. 

RED is proposing for two-thirds of ResCom positions to be unelected. This would leave just six elected positions in the executive, with staff to appoint the remainder of the roles. Eligible students will be able to nominate for the roles. Residents will be deemed suitable or not suitable for the community to elect.

RED is also seeking to standardise ResCom across all halls, despite feedback in the consultation process that this approach would not be conducive with the different characteristics of the residences. 

This would mean the elimination of hall specific positions such as the Laurus Wing Postgraduate Representative at Ursula Hall and the Cultural Officer at Yukeembruk. All halls will also lose budgetary autonomy, with finances to be managed by the Residents’ Expenditure Group in each hall. 

The current representative role will be renamed to Officer. Each hall will have up to 20 Officers, and these students will receive compensation of $480.  Phoebe Burke, Vice-President of Burton and Garran Hall, spoke to Woroni about her concerns of the impact of the new compensation structure on her hall, which has the highest proportion of lower socio-economic students on campus.

She said, “I want to point out that I think these changes are incredibly classist. Asking a resident to give up time to go to meetings like this or admin work for the roles can basically mean asking them to give up a 5 hour shift. Simply put, a very small percentage of us can afford to treat these roles as volunteer roles.”

Under the standardised model, representatives are set to receive a reimbursed ResCom fee as payment. This was an issue brought up during the feedback groups for halls that currently have unpaid representatives. Students noted that the inadequate compensation for ResCom positions meant that only those with the financial means to work unpaid hours were generally able to take on the role.

In response to these proposals, Save Our ResComs launched a petition which has 804 signatures to date. The group is making six demands for the ANU.

These include halting the ResCom reform until next year, providing greater transparency to the IHC and releasing a full proposal before any changes are made, committing to a democratically elected ResCom that is not standardised across campus and recognising that ResCom is funded by student money.