Kasia Bylinska re-elected NSA President

Napier Students’ Association (NSA) President Kasia Bylinksa has issued a point by point rebuttal of the vote of no confidence which was passed against her at the emergency Senate meeting on 12 March.

After sending an email to students on Saturday morning Ms Bylinska was announced the winner of the student election after she beat Re-Open Nominations (RON) by 483 votes to 175.

Ms Bylinska has refuted allegations that she breached the constitution by failing to carry out her duties as president; she has also denied that she failed to properly deal with formal complaints against her.

The student president brought an end to the silence that has pervaded the student elections at Napier when she issued the email to the student body this morning.

Ms Bylinska wrote: “Some of you may be aware… that I did not have the easiest year.

“Most recently I have been put ‘on trial’ in my absence at an “Emergency Senate” initiated by Mr Nathan Sparling, where 26 people decided for the whole student population that they do not have confidence in me.”

Mr Sparling was standing against Ms Bylinska for the role of president but withdrew midway through the election week citing corruption.

The 26 students are student representatives who are the only students with voting powers at meetings of the Senate.

Ms Bylinska attached a document addressing each of the points in the motion of no confidence. In it she also challenges Mr Sparling’s attendance for association meetings throughout the year and lack of apologies for non attendance.

Ms Bylinksa said that her non attendance at a meeting of Senate in January was covered by a doctor’s note and she passed on an apology to an NSA staff member.

Another point of criticism in the motion was that Ms Bylinska had not convened the mandatory monthly meetings of the executive in December and January.

She gave reasons as to why these meetings were not held, citing increasingly busy work schedules for many members of the executive who had exams in December.

For January the reason given was that no updated timetables had been released yet for many of the non sabbatical roles still studying.

This is the first public response by Ms Bylinska since she failed to represent herself at the meeting; she said at the time that she had not had adequate time to prepare a defence.

Under the NSA constitution, an emergency meeting of Senate can be called if 150 students sign a petition to call for one. An emergency meeting can be called within 48 hours notice.

The students, including Ms Bylinska, were given less than one day’s notice for the meeting. Ms Bylinksa sought independent legal advice from Balfour and Manson solicitors.

One of the firm’s partners, John M Hodge, wrote in an email to Ms Bylinska: “You asked whether or not the meeting had to be held within 48 hours. I noticed that in terms of the constitution ‘emergency meetings of the senate may be convened by the Chair within 48 hours’. This does not seem to be obligatory.”

Mr Hodge goes onto explain to Ms Bylinska that given the allegations against her she should have been granted more time to construct a defence. “I feel confident that it is more important that fairness prevails,” he wrote.

Mr Hodge also suggested that the motion which passed could be “reviewed and suspended”.

Signatories of the motion argue that although the emergency meeting was called at short notice, Ms Bylinska had access to the motion over a week before and had enough time to defend herself.

The email preceded the postponed election results which, after a two week delay, took place at the student union at noon today (27 March).

Justyna Paslawska was elected for Treasurer and Student Activities officer after beating Reese Campbell and Chris Malseed.

The final sabbatical role of Campaigns and Representation officer was uncontested. Nominations for this role will be closed on 1 April.

The elections were hindered after a number of complaints were made, the most serious of which was that student votes were not private and could be accessed via the election page.

Mr Campbell said that the elections were not a “shining example of democracy” and that the current system was “not fit for purpose”.

He said: “As soon as they realised that the election wasn’t secret, they should have stopped it, rectified the problem and started the elections again the following week.

“The whole situation was very mismanaged and it could have been done so much better.”

The role of International Students' Officer was won by Si Ting Liu, while Postgraduate Students' Officer was won by Dawn Patrick-Brown.

Napier's student newspaper, Veritas will have a new leader next year as Coral Condeco won the role of editor.

Aaron Millar was re-elected for the role of Business School Faculty Officer.

The next meeting of Senate is Tuesday 30 March.