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Last week’s Budget meeting was a demoralising, almost four-hour-long process that sapped Critic’s will to live. Much of the meeting was taken up with tediously assessing submissions and considering the disputed Budget lines.

After all the blabbing a few meetings ago about a referendum to decide the future of OUSA’s membership with NZUSA, the Exec revisited the issue. James said that OUSA should stay true to their word and take it to the student body, but the others, in sneaky politician style, were unwilling. “There’s not enough time to educate students,” said Shonelle. “We should wait till after the NZUSA meeting,” said Dan. “Grumble grumble it was only a straw poll,” said Harriet (we’re paraphrasing).
   Weirdly enough, setting the ‘where-what-when’ of the SGM to pass the Budget took the longest, mostly because the Exec (well, Harriet and Dan, let’s be honest) had screwed up the constitution. James and Donna didn’t pick up on the silly mistakes during their “spell checking” process, of which James (stupidly) admitted, “none of it was done meticulously.” Accordingly, the constitution now requires a quorum of five percent of OUSA members to pass the Budget.
   As per usual, Dan took an extremist position, advocating a ‘vintage’ in-person SGM to decide the rules of the referendum, before holding the referendum itself. “We shouldn’t be voting before there are rules on voting,” he sagely opined. However, considering that another constitutional stuff-up changed quorum at an SGM to 50 percent of the total membership, the Execcies were somewhat unwilling to agree with Dan’s vintage option.
   At around 7.30, the Execcies began subtly craning their heads towards the clock. Luckily, at 8.30, somebody produced a pottle of hummus, a stale French stick, and some chip crumbs to sustain the hungry masses. At least they’re being frugal with your money.
   Dan then pushed his “bottle buy back” funding request for the next Market Day, having already sneakily put the posters up prior to the meeting. Welfare Rep Claire noted that Dan and his buds are the only people to turn up to the bottle buy back, and accused him of running them for his own gain. At that, Dan got rather defensive, and noted that, at 10 cents per bottle “It’s not exactly a lucrative way to defraud the association.” Nonetheless, Dan pledged not to take part in the mysterious scheme.
   Harriet reported back on her outing to Christchurch, which she undertook with sidekick Steph and next year’s Finance Rep, Brad. Allegedly, despite all the reverse undie h8rs, the rather shaken Cantabrians were “stoked.”