VUWSA Exec unapologetic
July 31st, 2007 at 7:03 pm by David FarrarWhat I find incredible is not that several members of the VUWSA Executive have done stupid things, but that they are so unapologetic for it. Of course when your members can’t resign in disgust, it is easy to be petulant rather than accountable.
Salient reports the Lincoln Vice-President as saying:
“The officers who did this don’t seem to quite understand that they are in a role of leadership and have to lead by example. Every association is remembered for [its worst action] and sadly this year the Vic exec will not be remembered for anything positive – from a national view at least,”
The Exec members (excluding the President) don’t apologise for this, but attack the Lincoln VP and justify their actions by saying at least they didn’t sexually harrass anyone, like some other delegate did.
Their behaviour has been so bad even the student friendly Vic VC, Pat Walsh, has expressed his concern about their behaviour. So how do the Exec react?
They blame Salient for reporting their behaviour in a sensationalist fashion? Yes, seriously. It is all Salient’s fault. Those exec members have a fine career ahead as Labour Party Cabinet Minister’s blaming the media.
They are upset that Salient reported on their stealing things and licking up each other’s urine, rather than their positives such as conducting a workshop. Reporting on this is “Tabloid ethics” it seems.
Anyway the Exec are now concentrating on issues of concern to Vic students. They are supporting the industrial action against Spotless Services. And what the fuck does that have to do with the 20,000 Vic students? Oh it is because such workers and students both get raw deals sometimes. By this logic VUWSA will also be campaigning to help French farmers.
Tags: New Zealand
July 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Sacred blue! les frenchies farmers need asssissttaanssee aussie!? Quelle horreur!
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Is the same motley lot that as I recall vandalised university property (by graffitiing a stairwell) and racked up thousands of dollars calling psychic hotlines? After a so-called meeting on university business.
Are these our future leaders? Their childish antics do them no credit. They are pathetic juvenile imbeciles.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:33 pm
All good from my viewpoint. I’d definitely vote for them. More losers like this running student associations will just help the case for voluntary student unionism.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:36 pm
How about making VUWSA voluntary? Then they will have to earn their money, not take it for granted.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:36 pm
An outrage. Not that such idiots hold office – actually I bet they are nice people who drink too much sometimes – but that anyone should feel so arrogant as to demand the lack of accountability that goes with compulsory unionism, particularly when a) almost nobody else in society gets such privileges, and b) everyone, including I imagine most of the student executive, can see such a system would be disastrous if rolled out across the economy. Its the blatant double standard, and the violation of the Bill of Rights and the inconsistency in granting these idiots an exemption to it that pisses me off.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Just the usual conscienceless commie scum. These people force other people to provide them with money so they can behave like this. They believe they have the right to do that, and they’ll think that way all their lives.
Just as the current crop of disgustingly immoral Labour party politicians have absolutley no qualms about forcing NZers to pay for their shyterish behaviour, and in the future, even pay for their election advertising. Fruit cakes and scumbags the lot of them.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I remember marvelling as they spent my $100 or so compulsory fee on protest placards such as “THINK DON’T CALCULATE!!!” (which I found particularly funny while studying for MOFI, QUAN and ECON at Vic). I wonder what they are doing now? Labour market economists?
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Actually that reminds me, there was a guy with a “FUCK!!!!” placard too. He must have been a commerce student.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Thank god I go to Auckland. There was an article in Craccum a couple of weeks ago insulting the AUSA executive for being too responsible compared to their VUWSA colleagues.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Why the pre-ponderance of VUWSA stories? Who fucking cares? I mean, this is tantamount to reporting the shenanigans at the Tinakori Bridge Club – only this involves stupid kids thinking they’re at the centre of the most important game in town. Why feed their teenage angst and silly solipsism by paying them attention?
And before I get cries of hurt from the spotties who inhabit the VUWSA buildings. I should declare that, like a few of your other regular readers, I too had a brief brush with student politics. But, with nearly twenty years’ perspective you realise, you know, …it’s just fucking nonsense. It’s not like it means anything. It’s just stupid kid games.
You should take all of the heat and passion exhibited in student politics as seriously as you would take the diary entry of a 14 year old girl declaring her undying love for the captain of the First XV.
[DPF: I report it because Parliament has seen fit to legislate compulsory membership of them]
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 11:42 pm
If the Tinakori Bridge Club had the budget of VUWSA they could buy the bridges instead of just taking photos.
“You should take all of the heat and passion exhibited in student politics as seriously as you would take the diary entry of a 14 year old girl declaring her undying love for the captain of the First XV.”
Yeah, nobody really takes PhillipJohn too seriously.
Vote:July 31st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
These dropkicks are the most astounding case study in what can go wrong in an organisation with no accountability and whose compulsory membership has long ceased to give a shit about them.
Vote:I was an exec member at VUWSA 15+ years ago – we had some dumbfucks in my time but the ones I had to deal with are nothing compared to this lot – truly astounding. At least the majority of those involved in my year were genuinely working to help their members and the average IQ was in double figures. It makes me embarassed to think I’m in some way associated with the fools running the place now. There’s a lot of good the students association could do for their members and for the university if only it wasn’t left in the hands of this unique tribe of idiots.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Jezuz. I’d say Ducks in line for a Labour Party medal for being the most devoted commie propagandist on Kiwiblog. No politicized public service. University Politics doesn’t matter. FFS give it a rest you loser. University politics matters.
Universities these days serve as a vast training and recruitment system for leftist political activists. They systematically expose all young people to leftist ideology, and show them a community and a culture they can join. They select the most promising ones, (promising = easily manipulated, unable to think for themselves) and plug them into a network that can give them a political career. …and they show them how the system works, thereby perpetuating it.
Universities finance the development of leftist ideology in NZ. Its where people who can’t get a job in the real world earn money promoting leftist causes, and stock libraries with left wing literature, and profess political expertise, and spout there ideology to a captive audience of impressionable youth. Without the universities as a base, the left would lose a means of exerting considerable political influence on society while getting paid for it.
Universities introduce leftist propaganda to the average student. Even where they do not convince students of the truth of commie ideas, they redefine where the center is by making extreme ideas seem normal. They make leftism appear less shocking to people by sugarcoating it with the naiveté and warm memories of their university years.
Universities help form a social matrix in which pseudo liberal views are part of the required characteristics for social acceptance and prestige. They establish the “understood” position that “educated” is a word that is interchangeable with “left” in upper level social and political circles.
Universities are the place where the left kick off there unfair political advantage. Its time to change this. Universities need to revert to their primary purpose- education, not indoctrination. Its time to clean out the politically corrupt administration at NZ’s universities.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am
DPF: You say that parliament has legislated compulsary membership, yet at Auckland this is not the case. How exactly does this work? And Redbaiter I totally agree. I’m a commerce student, although I am currently doing a stage one politics paper. The supplied resource for political history basically describes everything labour has done right and what national has done wrong…
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 2:13 am
redbaiter: the lefts unfair advantage? unfair? every one shed a tear for rebaiter, hes just realised the worlds not always fair.
And SK, are you sure that your lecturer didnt just summarise the most important points in NZ’s political history?
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 4:28 am
Did you go to university, Red? Because it kind of reads like you have no concept of the academic process (now there’s a surprise).
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 5:48 am
Funny thing is that the advocates of compulsory unionism are stridently against anything else that is compulsory,
If the student union types believe that their unions are so popular and effective then students would no duoubt flock to them in droves voluntarily.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 8:01 am
The VUWSA exec’s actions are not acceptable and I think that Salient had every right to print what actions some members partook in whilst in Christchurch. Whilst the exec argue it was outside conference time, who the hell do they think pays for them to be there?
I also do not agree with VUWSA taking a stance on political matters, unless it is something such as student loans or allowance which obviuosly directly affect students. Lock outs or foreign Governments are not their concern – leave that to the REAL politicians
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 8:16 am
Umm Dead Duck
I did and in fact my father was a prominent academic and so everything Red says sadly is true. I am fully aware of the academic process. Not all academics are labour leaning socialists and it does vary from different faculties and departments but left thinking is rampant and is the majority viewpoint. If you cant see it then your are so far left that even universities seem right of centre, your head is in the sand or you are a Labour shill in the mode of Selma and Sonic. Growing up in this environment meant for years I accepted the orthodoxy and was a loyal Labour supporter until I saw the real world outside the ivory tower.
Here in the US the preponderance of registered Democrats over Republicans in academia is on average 15 – 20:1. Right leaning academics are routinely denied tenure or passed over for promotion because they dont tow the party line.
David Horowitz for many years a committed socialist having grown up in a communist family in New York has detailed the extent of leftist domination in two books “The Professors” and “Undoctrinate U”.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 8:44 am
To take your thread to its logical conclusion, isn’t it interesting that the vast majority of those who are highly educated are Labour supporters. Perhaps says something about the philosophy of the right (let alone those that support it).
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 9:11 am
The legislation allows for a referendum on campus, and AUckland voted for voluntary. But it is a sort of claytons voluntary as the uni funds AUSA from your compulsory fees to them.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 10:21 am
Simon- It says so much about your own intelligence and education that you failed to grasp such an obvious point. Leftists aren’t educated, or intelligent for that matter (although that isn’t really the point). They’re only half educated. That’s why what they write here is most often some convoluted twisted unreal version of events totally detached from actuality. Often they cannot even comprehend simple English. Almost always, they lack the ability to see things outside of their blinkered leftist perspective.
The experience leftists go through at universities cripples their ability to exist in the real world. So often, the only time people become successful is when they manage to shake off the influence of their university days.
Leftism is a pathological disease. Universities need to stop brainwashing students and return to educating our children. This means freeing them (universities) from the grip of leftist academics, totalitarians who want a one party state and pervert education to this objective, and who deny our youth the information or skills to choose a political direction for themselves.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 10:47 am
DPF Dont panic I can assure you that in the late 60s early 70s Auckland was no better and some of us look back at those times and shudder. Hell I even have to confess to voting for Norm Kirk in 72 in my first ever election. But we move on and those of us who have found the light and the Right just put it all down to youthful excess.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am
Simon – please don’t confuse the executive members in question as either highly educated, or Labour supporters.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 11:30 am
As a right winger who works in a New Zealand University I can say that Redbaiter or Kiwi in America have no clue about how the Universities in New Zealand work Nor do they seem to have any comprehension of what actually constitutes intelligence or education. Please stop making such broad and ludicrous generalisations about something you seemingly know nothing about.
The centre point of a university education is to promote the concept of critical evaluation, where you analyse information making judgements on the authors, their authority as experts, the reasons for their research and the backers of their research. With a small number of exceptions (and there are always exceptions) academics do not seek to brainwash their students to a particular of point of view.
When Redbaiter states this “Universities need to stop brainwashing students and return to educating our children” he seems to mean “have them brainwash our children to my point of view”.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 11:33 am
Clearly the labour party media spin play book has made its way to these future party list candidates.
If you’re a student and your happy with how they’re using your money then you have the government you deserve.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Biggles
I dont know how you define right wing or what Dept of what University you teach at and maybe your department is staffed with true academics who are true to their profession and play it straight – they do exist. Left wing bias in academia is similar to the same bias in the mainstream media – those who are guilty deny they are guilty of it. This is because in their world it is a political echo chamber where their world view appears to be quite mainstream and normal and the centre to them is right wing.
I’ve watched the gradual shift in academia up close. What is taught has gradually changed particularly in Arts Faculties – more traditional texts, literature and history books sometimes replaced with more ‘modern’ texts that highlight colonialist (read exploitive) themes of settlement, more marxist interpretations of literature, economics and history and more emphasis on and sensitivity to feminist and/or gay dogma. Take the law, the whole Treat of Waitangi political correctness theme that infests the bureaucracy have started to spill over into Law Schools. The same in sciences with global warming. I met a prominent long serving palaentologist who, based on his lifetime research, rejects the perceived orthodoxy on global warming and he is treated as a parriah.
I have conservative friends in academia who are marginalised in Kiwi universities, their religious orientation sneered and mocked and their political views routinely shouted down by departments overwhelmingly staffed by hard core feminists, environmental activists, and avowed socialists and one of them is in a management department. If we look at the leftward drift of English departments and Wimin’s or Gender Studies departments then I could go on all day about their hard left stance and their left wing ideology taught in lecture theatres and tutorials.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
So suddenly, along comes ‘Biggles’..!! ..and guess what folks.. he’s a quote “RIGHT WINGER” unquote…!!!!
..and he says-
“When Redbaiter states this “Universities need to stop brainwashing students and return to educating our children” he seems to mean “have them brainwash our children to my point of view”.”
Biggles is “right wing??” I don’t think so. Its my experience that only a left winger would be stupid enough to make such an inane, irrational and unsubstantiated claim.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
“Biggles is “right wing??” I don’t think so. Its my experience that only a left winger would be stupid enough to make such an inane, irrational and unsubstantiated claim.”
Then you must be left wing as most of your comments are inane, irrational and unsubstaniated…
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 1:07 pm
“Then you must be left wing as most of your comments are inane, irrational and unsubstantiated…”
They’re not actually, I substantiate them quite often. Whereas you with your inability to discern the meaning of words phrases and sentences, (for instance you suggest I merely want to brainwash students from another political perspective when I specifically stated in my final sentence that students should be given the means to decide their own political direction) your elitist command to “stop” expressing opinions, (typical soviet style repression of free speech) your arrogant tone that implies your superior intelligence and ability, (typical leftist pathology) and the whole style of your prose makes you sound just like a common and garden type of leftist/ communist.
My view is therefore well substantiated, whilst you have done nothing but utter completely baseless accusations that are really just expressions of bigotry.
I repeat my claim. No real right winger would write the stuff you write. Your correspondence here reeks of leftist ignorance intolerance and elitism. If it walks like a duck…
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“I repeat my claim. No real right winger would write the stuff you write. Your correspondence here reeks of leftist ignorance intolerance and elitism. If it walks like a duck”
It seems to me that how I write makes me left wing. So as to disabuse you of your notions and show you how a right winger can write what I right, I shall define myself, and how I am right wing. I would further describe myself as secular right wing. I believe in small government, I believe that the individual should be left alone from being told by government on how to run their lives, conduct their business, educate their children. I believe in personal responsibility. I believe democracy and the free market are the best tools to deliver the freedom that I passionately believe in. Tell me how my beliefs are in any way or form related to socialism or communism.
As to your claim that I give an “elitist command to “stop” expressing opinions”. You may have noticed the word “please” which generally is a polite request not a command. I asked you politely to stop making generalisations, especially ones that are unfounded.
And they are unfounded. The universities in New Zealand are not a hot bed of Marxists interested in creating a one party state. Most of my colleagues are hard working and passionate people, who are focused on their area of study and in educating their students. And that education does not entail brain washing. I would ask you again to desist from impugning their integrity and intelligence.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
“I would ask you again to desist from impugning their integrity and intelligence.”
You need to ask more than me mate. A quick read of the correspondence on this thread shows my views are shared by many others. Furthermore, if you’re compelled to try and define what is written on blogs, ( another sign of leftism) I suggest its a medium of self expression you need to stay well away from.
As for your beliefs, there’s no proof of your claims. (or your intelligence) I repeat, (and I refer you again to the points I made in my previous post)- to me, the style of your writing indicates a leftist mindset.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Biggles Redbairter etc you have too much time on your hands. Do a degree.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I’ve done a degree, am I permitted to comment?
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I notice Redbaiter is silent on the whole “university experience” thing. So, there he sits in his provincial flat casting broad generalisations about institutions he’s not really had much to do with based on crappy third hand accounts. Then some guy/gal comes along and challenges those views directly and he just denounces him/her. Classic. Way to demonstrate you understand critical thinking. I’ve attended several universities in my day and in my undergraduate year studied under various National Party candidates, ACT foundation members and people involved in some pretty hard-on holocaust denial stuff. All left-wing arseholes I am sure.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
“I notice Redbaiter is”
Who the hell cares about your partisan and bigoted analysies?? The very fact you think such unobjective crap is worth posting here shows how dumb you are. Get a life for fuck’s sake. Seen any long screeds on Duck written by Redbaiter? I argue the point. Take a lesson dickwad.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Yeah, Red, you’re famous for playing the issue. Snigger.
Vote:August 1st, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Cry me a river Redbaiter, why are you such an angry person? Did you try university but make no friends because of your seemingly vile interpersonal skills and get lonely? Did you never go or were unable to go to university but wish you did? Or is it that you’re so uncomfortable with your own political orientation that you must attack anyone who dares not to agree with you?
Vote:August 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
“To take your thread to its logical conclusion, isn’t it interesting that the vast majority of those who are highly educated are Labour supporters.”
Thats because the system we laughably call “education” in NZ is nothing more than a mixture of third rate vocational training and brainless left-liberal propaganda.
Only classical education makes for truly educated people. NZ high schools and universities mostly churn out indoctrinated morons.
Vote: