Murdoch Meeting

Murdoch University Early Voting Meeting

This week at the WAEC I had the opportunity to attend a negotiations meeting at Murdoch University to discuss our plans to hold an early voting marquee during 2017 Orientation. I went to the meeting with my fellow interns and the Director of Election Operations, Justin.

Murdoch’s representatives included Senior Executive Director, Steve Dickson and other senior members of staff, i.e. Head of Communication and Planning Departments.

The meeting was a great chance to see how business dealings and negotiations happen, and provided me with an opportunity to be part of the discussion, where I put my thoughts forward on the communication channels that could be utilised, and how we can successfully form a collaboration between the WAEC and Murdoch Guild, in order to best communicate with students.

The meeting lasted for roughly 45 minutes and covered a broad range of topics, including;

• Date:
  • 1^st-3^rd March 2017
• Venue:
  • Bush Court
• Time:
  • 8am-6pm
• Security:
  • Ballot papers must be transported to and from the University campus each day, as Murdoch cannot guarantee a secure location for the ballot papers to be stored overnight
  • Murdoch has 24 hour a day on campus security

• Communication channels:
  • Guild (social media, student email, university portal)

• Parking:
  • From 4.30pm onwards, parking is free. This will attract members of the general public who want to vote early on campus

• Turnout:
  • 900 members of teaching staff, over 3000 parking bays and over 1000 students who use public transport means that there will be approximately 5000 students/staff on campus during the 3 day period

This was just the first meeting of a long negotiation process. Plans were made to have a second in-person meeting towards the end of November, where Murdoch will have more of an idea of what spaces will be available around campus for us to hold our marquee. At this point, my internship will have concluded, however Justin has said to us (fellow interns), that we could possibly be part of the project planning and implementation even after our internship has finished.

All this talking about planning and meetings, coupled with all the research that has had to have been done to make this meeting possible, makes me think of PR Planning & Evaluation. I can really see how I am using the skills I learnt from that unit, in the real world.

As for now, Murdoch will do their homework on the logistics behind the event, but if the first meeting was anything to go by, I am excited at what could possibly happen during Orientation week, and it will be great to be part of that.

Meeting review notes I prepared.

Murdoch University Senior Executive Director, Steve Dickson.