On Tuesday Week 5, LUSU President Ste Smith was gunged outside of the LUSU building. The gunging followed a vote held in Fresher’s week, in which students could vote for which of the Full Time Officers would be sent to the gunge tank.
The voting, which reached six stages, eliminated both RON (Re-open Nominations) and VP Equality, Welfare & Diversity Rosalia O’Reilly in stage two. VP Events & Democracy Libby Martin was then eliminated in stage three of the voting, with VP Media & Communications Rachel Harvey being eliminated in stage four and VP Activities Liz Ashworth being eliminated in stage five of the voting. The final stage was close between VP President Ste Smith and VP Academic Richard Clark, with only 16.5 votes separating the two.
Cross Campus Officer (Elections), Laurie Moore, told SCAN: “We set it up to try to engage more people in the electoral process, and to highlight to them how easy it is to vote, and by extension how easily they can ‘be herd’ as the posters will soon say.”
“It was used as a sort of a practice and pretence for the elections this week 8, mainly just to stir up some awareness of how the elections work. It hopefully showed how you can vote quickly and easily as we just wandered round campus with an iPad and gave people codes to vote there and then on the spot” he continued.
When asked how it feels to be gunged, LUSU President Ste Smith told LA1:TV that it felt “liberating.”
