the all girl army forums: women's rep

Gah. I need help. At my university ( & I'm guessing all others have something like it too) we have a student executive, with representatives elected by the students for each school/subject area kinda thing, as well as Women's rep, Queer rep, etc.

This year our women's rep is a man. Called Phil.

This is a piece of his interview in our student magazine. I can't link it because it is not online :

Q:What do you have planned for the women of Massey?
A:A greater voice. I want to set up some events and start a buddy initiative. For example, if you're out in town and don't want to walk home, you ring your buddy. The goal is never to feel lonely.

(the interview was in April. So far he has done nothing visible that I am aware of, and I think I've been paying attention.)

Q: You discover an island where you make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?
A: Open a McDonalds and make sure we have Sky Sport- oh, and a women's gym, just to make it even.

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So, admittedly the interview questions are not brilliant or anything. But for me those answers are just adding to the size/volume of my unasked question : "Uhh..What happened here?"

I would be interested to know what anyone here thinks about this. To me, having a male women's representative..kinda defeats the purpose of having a WOMEN'S rep, since the reason we might need additional representation is because /normal/ representation is likely to be biased towards (middle-class white) men. At the other university in my town they have a women's rights officer & part of the criteria is that she has to be female.

I'm wondering if I'm missing something here, though, because he /did/ get voted in. Also because last year my uni had a heterosexual Queer exec, who stepped in because no-one else was running for it I think.

If you agree with me that this is crazy messed up, then I would love to hear any input on what I could do. Massey, where I am, is a small campus, only 5000 students, and everyone seems pretty apathetic on issues like this. (Me included, since I have left it this long to do anything, and didn't make it to the vote.) I'm just this side of pathologically shy right now, so not good at activisting or arguing or debating or generally stirring things up. And I just don't know if there would be any support for that, I sorta think people would look at me like I was speaking another language.

I am about to send an email to the student union president, asking for the voting stats (which were not made public, neither was information about the candidates), and asking how much members of the exec get paid, since this guy is getting paid for not apparently doing anything.

So yeah. What do people think, about either the situation or what I could do? Thanks.