In case you missed it, last Tuesday to Thursday marked the yearly UTS Students Association SRC elections, where hacks, careerists, and activists came out in full force to convince you, the student, to vote them into your student union. As a publication funded by the Student Service Amenity Fee (SSAF), aspiring editors and designers for the 2026 Vertigo editorial team were also out, eager to convince students to secure them a place in one of New South Wales most treasured pieces of student media.
This year, Buildings 1, 2, 6, 10 and 11 became battle grounds for six tickets for the UTSSA and National Union of Student delegates positions—and four tickets vied for the chance to run this gorgeous magazine next year.
STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL (SRC)
Key policy focuses shared by almost all the tickets running this year included calling on UTS to end its partnerships with weapon manufacturers that are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, concession Opal cards for both part time and international students, and to fight and reverse the devastating course cuts and job losses caused by the University’s so-called Operational Sustainability Initiative.
So, who ran this year?
FIRE UP!
Off the success of President Mia Campbell's two-term presidency, FIRE UP! have once again entered the ring of student politics. Factionally, the ticket is a coalition between Student Unity (SU), the youth wing of Labor Right and National Labor Students (NLS), the youth wing of Labor Left. FIRE UP! have nominated current UTSSA office bearers for new positions for next year, with Welfare Officer Neeve Ann Nagle for President, Ethnocultural Officer Salma Elmubasher for General Secretary, and Environment and Technology Officer Sina Afsharmher for Welfare Officer. Newcomers to the scene have also been nominated for several (paid) office bearer positions for next year including, Cam Perez for Assistant General Secretary, Francessca Harrison for Women’s Officer, George Tulloch for Postgraduate Officer, and Rose Saksena for International Students Officer.
Presidential candidate Neeve Ann Nagle and Assistant General Secretary candidate Cam Perez spoke to Vertigo about why they ran for their respective positions, Nagle highlighting wins she achieved for students this year as Welfare Officer— including finding permanent space for the UTSSA’s free food service as well as winning tenancy rights in UTS Housing.
“There’s so much that Mia [Campbell] has done that I want to take over, so I put my hand up because I genuinely believe that I’d be the best person to take over from Mia and her work on gender based violence and her Palestinian activism," she said.
“We’re coming into a period in the university that our academics have been gutted and I feel like we need someone really competent, really strong, and that is willing to put their hand up for stuff like this and I genuinely do believe I’m that person.”
Alongside FIRE UP!, the coalition of SU and NLS ran two other tickets (one being a feeder ticket, which is often a ticket run as a joke to funnel votes into a main ticket), with a handful of FIRE UP! campaigners switching out shirts and flyers for tickets ‘Cut Genocide not Courses’ and ‘LEFT ACTION’, the latter which is traditionally used by the politcal group Socialist Alternative across other campuses.
In terms of student provisions, FIRE UP! are promising students an expansion on existing free food programs like NightOwl, cheaper text books, feedback on final exam results, and an expansion on the three day simple extension scheme to five.
As rumours swirl around that the NUS National Conference (think of this as a national SRC meeting) is set to be held at Federation University in Ballarat for the third time, Vertigo asked Nagle how the UTS SU delegates who are elected will vote when it comes to activism surrounding Palestine.
For some context to this question, during NatCon 2023, SU voted down a motion to censure former NUS General Secretary Sheldon Gait and former NUS First Nations Officer Patrick Taylor for a state-sponsored trip to Israel they took in July of that year, as well as amending a gift ban motion to gift register.
“Every single faction binds, if that's how it goes, that’s how it goes,” Nagle said.
“I think that's the nature of the NUS, and that’s the conversation that could be had, and I’m hoping this year that there could be a lot of more genuine conversation between factions because I genuinely believe we all have the same ideology, we just have differences in how we want to push it,”
“No one likes the fact there’s a genocide happening in Palestine, no one likes that course cuts are happening, we just all have differences in how we believe we should solve that issue and thats what I think NatCon should be about.”
Vertigo also understands a preference deal was made between FIRE UP! and Social Justice, with FIRE UP! how-to-vote cards holding Social Justice’s candidate Ella Haid for Education Officer, while the Social Justice NUS ticket has the names of two SU members.
ENGAGE
Similarly to FIRE UP!, ENGAGE is a coalition of members of splinter faction New South Wales Labor Students (NSWLS) as well as several left wing independents as well as two members of The Greens.
Two former FIRE UP! members from last year's election have put their hand up for UTSSA positions. Queer Officer Daewah Thein, who served two terms in the role, nominating for President, while Disabilities Officer Amelia Ireland, is contesting the position of Assistant General Secretary. ENGAGE also has nominated Caitlin McInnes for Welfare Officer.
Alongside the ENGAGE ticket, Rohen Snowball ran the Queer Action for NUS ticket, joined by ENGAGE members El Potts and Arden Rasras.
When asked why they were running for presidency, Daewah Thein emphasised the need of a student representative “who are not in it just to write it down on their resume”.
“We are facing so many threats to our university, what we need right now is to organise every student and every faculty,” they said.
“No one knows who Neeve Nagle is outside of the law faculty, I know people from every different faculty just from walking around and being at places.”
Amelia Ireland on the other hand, spoke on her experience as this year's Disabilities Officer, as well as her lived experience as an Aboriginal student from a rural area who commutes to university— a reality shared by many students, to which she says the UTSSA has not addressed over the last few years.
“I am really concerned with the way the student union has been over the last few years, I’m really concerned with obviously the cuts we are facing towards our education and I’m very concerned that we have a student union that only comes out during election season and does little during the year,” she told Vertigo.
Like many students at this institution, Caitlin McInnes admitted to not being involved in student politics until this year, as well being affected by the University’s controversial Operational Sustainability Initiative.
“I’ve been able to observe what actually matters to students and what students actually want done about it,” she said.
“I think a lot of students really care who gets it done, as long as it gets done and I think that’s a really big strength of our tickets is that we all understand [the issues faced by students]”
“We’re pragmatic, we just want to get something done. We’re outcome driven.”
ENGAGE has big plans for students if elected which include expansion of UTS Library resources and food services, mandated lecture recording and transcripts, re-opening the dormant UTSSA Second Hand Bookshop, streamlining the process of changing gender markers and names in the University system, opening spaces for all the autonomous collectives, and more events through the UTSSA.
Despite now being in a smaller faction since splitting from NLS in February of this year, Ireland says NSWLS still intends on getting NUS delegates elected for NatCon this year and negotiating with any groups in order to make significant change, citing that the NUS has not functioned as a national body for students for a while.
“We do believe that there needs to be a massive overhaul within the NUS, we've seen the NUS refuse to mobilise on so many issues until they’re absolutely forced by the executive,” she said.
“I haven’t seen the NUS course cuts campaign, where’s that? That sort of thing is something that the NUS should be really getting behind and that’s the sort of what we will be bringing up to the forefront of the national union.”
Social Justice
As mentioned earlier, with LEFT ACTION taken by the SU-NLS coalition, Socialist Alternative have once again returned with Social Justice, with their usual red shirts seen at other campuses replaced with a lime green.
Socialist Alternative has spearheaded many of the campaigns at UTS this year including the Stop The Cuts campaign as well as the National Student Referendum on Palestine.
While Social Justice did not secure any office bearer positions this year, General Councillor and face of the Stop The Cuts campaign, Ella Haid, has been nominated for Education Officer, with both FIRE UP! and ENGAGE putting her name down for the role in their respective how-to-vote flyers, despite the latter not signing any deals with the ticket.
This year, Social Justice has a litany of promises for students, fighting for free education and public transport, ending unpaid internships, more gender neutral bathrooms, and continuing work to be done in Students for Palestine and Stop The Cuts campaigns.
Social Justice has also called for an end to greenwashing at UTS as well as fighting to have the UTS Vault, a defence research facility, turned into a renewable research centre.
As their name suggests, Social Justice also takes their advocacy outside the campus, promising to use the UTSSA as a vehicle to fight against the far-right, the persecution of refugees and fighting for Indigenous rights.
Vertigo briefly spoke to Social Justice’s Yasmine Johnson outside the Building 2 polling booth, Johnson telling Vertigo that students are still concerned with the genocide in Palestine and the OSI.
Unity, Truth, Support for the Oppressed (UTSO)
A rare sighting in student politics, politically independent ticket, ‘Unity, Truth, Support for the Oppressed’ (UTSO) were also in the ring to get elected on the UTSSA, the ticket vying for council seats with no office bearer or NUS delegate positions.
The last time UTS saw a politically independent ticket on council was in 2023 when the Grassroots Independents ran under REVIVE, securing six councils seats and six office bearer positions. The year prior, the faction secured the presidency when Anna Thieban was elected President.
For those who were on campus during campaigning, alongside Sailor Moon (Eclipse/d for Vertigo), a giant pumpkin (FIRE UP!), and a bride-to-be (ENGAGE), a guy in a gorilla suit as well as Batman were seen campaigning for UTSO, Batman later revealing himself as ticket head Ibrahim Hadi.
Speaking to Vertigo, Ibrahim Hadi said his time campaigning was an interesting endeavour, emphasising the importance of having independents on council—as most SRCs across the country are often filled with members of Young Labor and members of Socialist Alternative.
“I see myself [in a] David vs Goliath situation.” he said.
Before his interview with Vertigo, Hadi, while still in a Batman costume, attempted to hand his flyer to a group of campaigners from Social Justice, with one campaigner asking Hadi if he was embarrassed or not.
When asked if he was running a serious campaign, Hadi says a lot of the “stunts” he has pulled while campaigning was a way to engage politically disengaged students.
“They don’t understand the importance of politics and democracy as a whole, if you want to see change in your society, it’s not just voting at the booth, it’s voting with your feet,” he said.
“I hope through these stunts, I can show people that we can affect change in a way, this is me trying to get my foot in the door, you need to engage with people and that’s how I see it.”
Like the other tickets in this year's election, UTSO’s main policies for the UTSSA are to fight for a free Palestine, stopping the job losses and course cuts from OSI, more free speech for students and staff, as well as banning HSC students from the library.
When asked if he had signed any preference deals with any of the tickets, Hadi declined to comment on the matter. Vertigo notes that on the UTSO how-to-vote cards lists FIRE UP! as a second preference for council as well as all FIRE UP! candidates for contested office bearer positions, while UTSO is featured 4th in preferences on the FIRE UP! how-to-vote cards.
Phew, with that all out of the way let’s move on to the Vertigo elections.
VERTIGO
This year, a record number of four tickets have battled it out for a chance to edit and design this magazine for a cheeky stipend equivalent to around $80 a week—a highly contested election which several SRC campaigners said was tense.
MORE MORE MORE
Mayela Dayeh, Kimia Nojoumian, and Mannix Williams Thomson want MORE MORE MORE of Vertigo, the three editors on this year's editorial team running for Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor and Creative Editor respectively. Alongside these three, Asha Johnston and Meg Craigen ran for Student News Editor, Gwen Ngyuen and Dylan Chesher for General Editor, Laurie Lim for Designer, Mariam Yassine for Features Editor, and Akon Angara for Social Media Director are apart of this ticket in the race to edit and design for Vertigo..
Current Social Media Manager Kimia Nojoumian, said herself along with Dayeh and Thomson bring experience with an “extreme level of understanding of Vertigo”.
“Vertigo doesn’t just happen overnight, it’s something which needs to be cared for,” Nojoumian said.
Nojoumian referred to the internal workings of Vertigo as a learning curve, noting her first hand experience in navigating it would be an asset for next year’s team.
“While we also bring an immense level of experience in our management and administrative team, we also bring new faces who have written for Vertigo and are frequent contributors.”
“[MORE MORE MORE] is the only ticket that actually features an international student, they are the only ticket with Indigenous representation, the only ticket with trans members,” they said.
“I think especially in the media, it’s very important to platform these voices.”
On top of the institutional knowledge and the diversity which MORE MORE MORE has, the ticket aims to continue to build community at the University through parties and launch events.
Eclipse/d
Current Vertigo News Editor, Emanie Samira Darwiche, headed the Eclipse/d ticket, running for Editor-in-Chief of the publication, and on theme with the ticket, was seen campaigning as Sailor Moon to students.
Alongside Darwiche, Eclipse/d is a running a diverse number of editors and designers with Layal Alameddine for Creative Editor, Mariam Sabih for News Editor, Nuha Dole for Social Media Director, Ava Strathatos for Designer, and Riddhima Pandit Bhasin and James Phan for General Editor—a reflection of the ticket that aims to centralise diversity in their editorial team.
“When I started my term this year, I wanted to see some more diverse perspectives from different faculties, as well as diverse perspectives and everything, whether that be religiously, socially, economically, politically," Darwiche said.
“What I’ve learned this year with Vertigo, is we don’t really focus on that, so I essentially just decided that if I can't do it as a news editor within my term, I may as well just take the head on and make the change myself.”
The ticket’s vision for the magazine states that it rejects the idea of diversity, inclusion and inclusion being token gestures that are confined into autonomous editions of the magazine such as BIPOC Vertigo or Queer Vertigo. An editorial team under Ecplise/d aims to centralise the diverse voices of UTS students into regular editions of the magazine.
Under Eclipse/d, Darwiche also said that if elected, the editorial team would also expand on events such as creative competitions as well as launches that would be accessible to students who do not drink.
Vertex
Fresh faces and several regular contributors are vying for this magazine through Vertex, the ticket nominating Rueben Agius for Editor-in-Chief and News Editor, Simran Shoker for Managing Editor, Katie Kelly for News Editor, Alyssa Damara and Jordan Cappello for General Editor, Teagan Ngyuen for Features Editor, Jared Kimpton for Creative Director, Muheba Mohamed Shukri for Social Media Director, and Shania Pires for Designer.
Forming on the UTSSA x Vertigo information night, Jared Kimpton told Vertigo that Vertex aims to reach out further to the student body, as the magazine has been historically dominated by communication and visual design students.
“A lot of people do not know about Vertigo at our uni and I think that’s sort of a symptom of being comms dominated,” he said.
“Comms people want to put their writing out in the world, but we think that because it's a magazine paid for by the students, we should be doing outreach to bring more of the student body into Vertigo.”
Building on outreach, Vertex also aims to collaborate with clubs and societies, reach out to underrepresented faculties for contributions, creating an anonymous news tip system for student news, and making Vertigo’s bylaws accessible on the website.
ALL EYES ON US
The smallest out of the four tickets, ALL EYES ON US is running only four students for the 2026 Vertigo Editorial team, with Surya Negi and Chloe Morris running for Social Media Director, General Editor and Designer, Daphne Jessie running for General Editor, and Kayla Aurelia Lie running for Social Media Director and General Editor.
In a statement to Vertigo, a spokesperson for the ticket said the ticket is a small snippet of what these four students’ capabilities are as designers and editors.
“We said in our campaign that we are committed to storytelling and empowering our community, and that is something we will continue to do, regardless of results. If any of our works or beliefs resonated with you, I encourage you to check out each of us and our future projects. We don’t plan to ever stop creating.”
As their name suggests, ALL EYES ON US wants ALL EYES on coverage on sociopolitical issues that affect students from different backgrounds, showcasing of creative work from students from different faculties, platforming underrepresented student work, and more collaborations across clubs and societies, if they are elected.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with us!
With Vertigo a four-way race, a rarity seen for student media elections, Presidential candidate Neeve Ann Nagle has said the election for the magazine has been “crazier than SRC”.
“I think it’s good to that it’s really heavily contested this year,” she said,
“I love seeing people getting involved in student media. I’ve been on the Vertigo working group for the last two years and it's been great, I feel like the magazine’s at such a good point right now that people are starting to recognise it,”
“I’m really looking forward to what I think is going to look like a mixed bag Vertigo team that is going to be a bit of everyone, so there will be a bit of team building to do, but I think it’s going to be good.”
With electoral regulation changes that were passed through before last year's election, students now vote for individual editors and designers rather than a whole ticket, as was the case for last year’s election when Emanie Darwiche was elected as the sole editor, not part of the Freefall ticket.
Preemptively, some tickets running for Vertigo have chosen not to contest each other in the event of a “mixed bag” result, Vertigo witnessing campaigners for MORE MORE MORE and Vertex handing out each others flyers as well as campaigners hanging out with each other at the Agincourt Hotel.
Vertex’s Jared Kimpton told Vertigo, in the event of a MORE MORE MORE x Vertex editorial team, that “the magazine would be in safe-hands”, commending the 2025 team—including the three editors that are running for MORE MORE MORE—for their work.
Similar sentiments were shared by MORE MORE MORE’s Kimia Nojoumian who said the work they do is not about them, but about Vertigo.
“We can do so much with Vertigo right now, but it’s about giving it a fail safe, making sure that it exists after we’re done,” she said.
“I would be more than happy for it to be a cocktail between Vertex and MORE MORE MORE.”
While MORE MORE MORE and Vertex attempted to form a relationship in the anticipation of a shared editorial team, Vertigo observed more tension and contestation between MORE MORE MORE and Eclipse/d than among any of the four tickets.
During day 3 of the campaign, the MORE MORE MORE Instagram account shared a meme insinuating a Vertigo under Eclipse/d would be gloomy, while a Vertigo under MORE MORE MORE would be sunny.
With all four editors on both tickets still editing the magazine, Nojoumian has said they’re trying to keep election tension outside of the magazine.
“It hasn’t really changed much in the editors room as far as I’m concerned. There has been some tension, but that’s about the extent.”
Jock also shared similar sentiments to Nojoumian, saying that the tension has been palpable within the team.
“As Kimia said, when we’re in that room, we are members of the same team, I think we all really move forward and focus on Vertigo,” they said.
“That being said, I think the working relationship hasn’t changed as much.”
Darwiche echoed the similar sentiments from both Nojoumian and Jock,
“I’m really happy that some of my team wants to run again, and it’s perfectly healthy to have different viewpoints in a team, that’s always going to be the case,” she said.
“I just wish them all the best, I think it’s affected their relationship with me more than I feel towards them, I think tensions are quite high, very obviously as it is an election.”
“I have no ill will towards my fellow team members, I’m not sure if they feel the same, but I wish them all the best. If they win, then congratulations on a great campaign and if they don’t win then I hope they choose to submit next year.”
As is the nature of student politics, UTSSA tickets have been intense at times with factionally and political differences airing out on flyers and in the faces of students, Vertigo witnessing several instances of campaigners arguing while students flooded past to class.
In one instance, a Social Justice campaigner was seen arguing with a campaigner from FIRE UP!, the FIRE UP! campaigners dodging the question of whether it was shameful to be campaigning for a ticket that is factionally backed by both Labor factions.
On the flyers for ENGAGE, they called FIRE UP! closeted conservatives for voting down motions at various political conferences such as raising the age of criminal responsibility, ending offshore detentions and HECS debt relief—Nagle calling this move “rich” and asking ENGAGE to “rethink their own politics,” revealing the ticket allegedly attempted to make a deal with them to get council seats.
So, whether you voted MORE MORE MORE, Social Justice, or UTSO, you, along with thousands of students and the electoral system of elections will decide who runs your student union and who will be running Vertigo next year. As the election wraps up, candidates and students alike eagerly await to see who will claim political power within your student union and editorial power for your magazine.
Editor’s Note: Mayela Dayeh, Kimia Nojoumian, Mannix Williams Thomson, Jonnie Jock and Emanie Samira Darwiche were not involved in election coverage.
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