History
What is MONSU Peninsula?
The Monash University Student Union (MONSU) Peninsula is a service based student organisation which provides a myriad of event and activities to enrich your Monash Experience.
MONSU Peninsula is the student representative body that represents the interests of all students on the Peninsula campus of Monash University within Monash University, to all levels of Government and the broader community. We represent postgraduate and undergraduate students, local and international students, evening and day students, part-time and full-time students, school leaver and mature age students.
As the teaching organisations changed over time, the student organisation has evolved to meet the needs of its students. MONSU Peninsula is the successor of its predecessor organisations, which were:
- Caulfield Institute of Technology Students' Representative Council;
- Caulfield Institute of Technology Student Union;
- Chisholm Institute of Technology Student Union (CITSU);
- Monash University Student Union (MUSU then MONSU); and now Monash University Student Union Caulfield (MONSU Peninsula)
The Monash University Student Union (MONSU)
The Monash University Student Union had a dual structure, including a both a representative arm and a services arm.
The representative arm was known as the Student Association, which was responsible for student representation across both the Caulfield and Peninsula campuses of Monash University. The senior members of the Student Association were also members of the Board.
The services arm was led by the MONSU Board, Bookshop Board and Catering Board. This meant that MONSU was responsible for student representation and service delivery, often forcing that the politics of student representation to affect service delivery. MONSU operated across the Caulfield and Peninsula campuses of Monash University, and ran a number of other off-campus ventures that were extremely successful.
This enabled revenue from off-campus services to go towards reducing the amenities fee paid by students.
The Establishment of MONSU Peninsula
Due to the enormous change and to MONSU's structure through the formation of Monyx and its ceasing to act as the primary service provider on the two campuses the role of MONSU was primarily a student representative organisation. As a representative organisation it was felt that it was best that each campus was best represented by a representative organisation specific to that campus. MONSU took the opportunity to reform its student representative structure and constitution by establishing two separate student councils under the MONSU Board.
Each student council, the MONSU Peninsula Student Council and the MONSU Peninsula Student Council, would take primary responsibility for the representation of the students on their respective campuses and the MONSU Board would be responsible for ensuring that both Student Councils operated successfully and were open and transparent.
During this process new student representative structures were established with separate campus Presidents, the introduction of a Clubs Council and Clubs Council Coordinator (now Clubs Officer), 2 x Sexuality Officer (one female, one male) positions and including the Overseas Student Services as part of MONSU Peninsula to ensure international students had a direct say in the management of MONSU Peninsula.
Since the establishment of MONSU Peninsula is has gone through a number of changes including expanding and redirecting student representation, introducing and removing committees and creating systems to ease the transfer of responsibilities between each student representative team.
MONSU Peninsula is a key player in Monash University and has taken an active role in representing the views and issues of the students of the Peninsula campus of Monash University to Monash University, local, State and Federal Government and the wider community. MONSU Peninsula has a particularly proud history of working with Monash University and having established and respected relationships with University management to the envy of other student representative organisations.
The Establishment of Monyx
In 2000 Monash University approached MONSU and the Monash Student Association Clayton, (the student representative organisation on the Clayton campus of Monash University) and Unicomm (the University controlled commercial and students services provider on the campuses of Monash University other than Caulfield and Peninsula) to establish a new cross campus student and commercial services organisation, to be called Monash Service Organisation (MSO).
MSO was an organisation that had, at the core of its aims, to provide seamless student services to the students of Monash University on all campuses of Monash University, including the newly established Malaysian and South African campuses of Monash University, to guarantee funding for student representation, to ensure student representation continued with the possible future introduction of voluntary membership of student organisations and for student services to become self funding to reduce the amenities and services fee through profits made from profitable business ventures.
After more than a year and a half of consultation and discussion between the stakeholders of the new MSO, the Deed for the Provision of Student Services, the agreement establishing the MSO, was approved by MSA (Clayton) Student Council, MONSU Peninsula Student Council, MONSU Peninsula Student Council and the MONSU Board as well as all of the relevant stakeholders within Monash University and Unicomm.
In this time efforts had already begun in establishing the structure, names and branding of this new organisation which was eventually named Monyx.
Monyx was established as an organisation that is half owned by the students of Monash University through the student representative bodies of the participating campuses, MONSU Peninsula, MSA (Clayton) and MONSU Peninsula, represented through the holding company, Students of Monash (SOM), and Monash University through Monash Commercial (Moncomm). Monyx is governed by six directors, three nominees of SOM (one from each the Caulfield, Clayton and Peninsula campuses of Monash University) and three nominees of Moncomm.
Since the first meeting of the Monyx Board on Monday, 2nd February 2003 the role of Monyx has been to run the commercial and student services component of MONSU and Unicomm.
Past Presidents of MONSU Peninsula
- 2001 - Colin Wolfe
- 2002 - Rob Tobin
- 2003 - Cassandra Monahan
- 2004 - Anthony Hillen
- 2005 - Arthur Wasiak
- 2006 - Tim Brown
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