Nobody cares. Business as usual then.
The New Zealand Union of Student’s Associations (NZUSA) recently held its July conference at Victoria University of Wellington, with the presidents of student’s associations from around the country meeting to attend talks and workshops, and to vote on initiatives.
One of the main focuses of the conference was NZUSA’s planned campaign ‘Demand for a Better Future’ which is intended as a major push by the body before the upcoming general election.
The executive of NZUSA also unanimously passed a document called ‘Redefining our National Voice’ which effects structural changes to the association. The main implications of this document are that the association will have a single president (as opposed to the current system of co-presidents) and that an executive director will be appointed.
Speaking to Salient Magazine NZUSA Co-President Max Hardy said that the new executive director role would lend the association “consistency and professionalism so we actually have things that we can roll out, and develop the capacity for local associations to do those things.”
Hardy also acknowledged that the threat of VSM had impacted on the report and the association’s priorities, and had also lead to NZUSA taking a hard look at budget lines.
“We’re obviously responding to the threat of VSM so there was a need to take a hard look at what we do and refocus our activities a bit better. We’re also responding to some concerns of our members of our direction… a key part was to get a document which wasn’t just of change documents of past, but a concrete thing for implementing it.”
“All our budgets there have been reduced, because of the threat basically. and the need to show that we are actively delivering value for money.”
OUSA President Logan Edgar attended the meeting as the representative of University of Otago on the Federation Executive (Fedex), despite the fractious recent history between OUSA and NZUSA, which included threats last year that OUSA would secede from the union and cut funding to NZUSA.
OUSA is one of the largest sources of funding for NZUSA, due to the high number of levy paying student members OUSA represents.
Student politicians have conference.
