NZUSA faces rebellion

Salient reports:

NZUSA’s involvement in the ‘Keep Our Assets’ referendum campaign is still ruffling feathers on the dead pigeon that is student politics, with Otago University Students’ Association President Logan Edgar moving a motion that they withdraw support.

The motion was discussed, and the University Sector Council—constituted of students’ association presidents—made some recommendations to the NZUSA Board, which are currently confidential. All comment on the issue has been frozen until the Board makes a decision on how to proceed.

Edgar told Critic that it was inappropriate for NZUSA to get involved with the campaign because it’s “not an education issue” and that “NZUSA has better things to be doing at the moment.” …

As previously reported in Salient NZUSA claimed to have no stance on the outcome and were just supporting it because it gave students an opportunity to get involved in the political process—a justification that differed from internal correspondences and promotional materials quoting NZUSA Vice-President Arena Williams as advocating the retention of assets. Williams also claimed all students’ association presidents had been consulted prior to supporting the campaign, which all presidents to speak on the issue have disputed.

So NZUSA has been lying on this issue. No wonder some of its members are upset.  NZUSA should be a strong and professional voice on issues such as student loans, allowances, quality of tertiary education, governance issues, student welfare etc. But their decision to support the assets referendum campaign achieves nothing for students, except to marginalise any influence NZUSA has with Government.