h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Look the title of your page can be broken into two silly names. . .
But that's not why I'm replying to this. I have only been following the Ak Uni VSM debacle very distantly although I am absolutely against VSM which is basically nothing more than tricking the apathetic into surrendering their power.
I was at Waikato just before VSM seeped in there and I am depressed beyond words at what it has become. How embarrassing for a University to have all of it's pubs without liquor licenses.
I went to see Tanya Donnelly play at Orientation there this year and was amazed to see about 10percent of the excitement of orientation in my first year. The gig was almost empty, there were about half as many bands playing and Tanya Donnelly was so unimpressed she didn't even bother to do an encore (that was the first gig I've ever been to that hasn't had an encore).
I blame VSM.

There is nothing wrong with student politix as long as the students don't have any power of the rest of the student body. If you are into democracy accept the fact that nobody voted for you (at University of Leeds, UK, only 500 out of 25,000 students voted last year) thus you have no mandate for change and must I REPEAT MUST preserve the status quo. If you are into freedom then you should immediatley pass a motion disbanding the student government/council/executive and pass control to an unelected salaried judiciary.

The vast majority of students are reasonably happy with the academic rules and procedures which were won for them in the 1960s by their parents and so are content to get a degree and really could do without the petty ego massaging of wannabe politicians.

There is nothing wrong with student politix as long as the students don't have any power of the rest of the student body. If you are into democracy accept the fact that nobody voted for you (at University of Leeds, UK, only 500 out of 25,000 students voted last year) thus you have no mandate for change and must I REPEAT MUST preserve the status quo. If you are into freedom then you should immediatley pass a motion disbanding the student government/council/executive and pass control to an unelected salaried judiciary.

The vast majority of students are reasonably happy with the academic rules and procedures which were won for them in the 1960s by their parents and so are content to get a degree and really could do without the petty ego massaging of wannabe politicians.

What are you talking about?

Student councils provide an excellent service when they are allowed to do so. It is only when the government gives the selfish wankers amongst the student body a choice as to whether they want to belong. If the majority decide that they can't afford the extra ninety dollars a year - for discounted alcohol in the student pubs, endless clubs and sports events, councilling services, a free weekly magazine, discounted medical care, child care, an office for disability support, women's support, a memorable orientation gig, discounted course books, a student radio station and the list goes on - then all of a sudden they find themselves without these services they were taking for granted. And they can't change their stupid selfish little minds, as the students at my old Uni are finding.
What is your unelected Judiciary going to do? Who are they? Who appoints them? Who pays their salaries? How are they going to meet these needs on the same budget?

Now I understand what you mean!!
Yes you're right. They just brought in VSM on the basis of a pathetic turnout of voters (and even then with a ridiculously close outcome).

Sorry to go ranting irrelevantly. It happens to me so often. . .

Why do you need an executive to provide services? Commercial and trading activities (bars, book shop, newsagent, general store, cafe, refectory etc.) in my former and current institutions provide an operating surplus which the executive loses (partly to fraud - leeds uni student union have admited to losing c£900,000 in the last three years, I would not be surprised if the true figure were double this) but mostly in operating pointless campaigns and organising irrelevant protests.

Where does the subsidy for your cheap drinks, sports and entertainments come from? A general student Levy!

How can you justify a poll tax to subsidise drinking?

A poll tax (or general student levy) is the most unfair method of taxation ever devised (not sure if news of the UK poll tax riots about eight years ago reached you, they were the biggest civil unrest the UK has seen for about 300 years and brought down the Thatcher government) And then the poll tax was going to be used for truly useful services (refuse collection, road maintenance etc).

The main reason the drinks are cheap is that the Uni pubs are not a purely profit driven undertaking. They aren't subsidised, they just don't have a 200% markup like most pubs around the place.
The reason the executive provides these things is that the University are too tight fisted and private businesses can't make money off students cause they're all too poor. But they are necessary services, and the student levy is not a huge price to pay: less than $10 a month. I don't know of many students who wouldn't have got $90 worth of good out of the council. They really used to provide a whole lot and now they don't.

The other major difference seems to be that our executive doesn't get into a whole lot of pointless protesting. The only issues they act on are ones of genuine concern to students, like student loan policies, fee rises, the cutting of government subsidies (all of which have become a lot easier for the government to get away with since VSM and will certainly end up costing all students a whole lot more than $90).

Somehow I managed to completely overlook this debate even though it was happening right under my nose.


Anyway, I see students' associations as a sort of local government -aiming to represent our students on a variety of issues in the broader community, especially nationally. We could get into a debate about services, but really that just comes down to whether they should make a profit (invariably off students) or not, and who should control them.


I think the real issue is about democracy and representation. Students can hardly get the university to represent us - then we'd have to sit around and study all the time, and Uni's supposed to be about more than just that. The vibrant exchange of ideas that I came to Uni for happens in lectures and tutorials, but it happens even more in the cafes, in the student mag (well ok, not craccum) on the student radio station, at student organised forums. A university isn't just a library and some staff; it's students too, running around tilting at windmills in the hope that idealistic youth can come up with some fresh ways forward.


Gosh that's all very romanticised, but I think you get the drift - students need self-determination to ensure these things happen, and that means Compuslory membership - Waikato Student Union is the perfect example of how dissent (to the New Right) can be quashed and students, who are in many ways a watchdog of our society, can be silenced. Thanks for your support for CSM Ac-1d. Even though we lost, it's great to see the candle still burning bright.


I do agree that there is some corruption - we have certainly seen it here. (I could comment a whole lot more in terms of people just elected to next year's exec, but I don't want to seem too bitter). That's one of the problems with democracy I guess, but it's a truth that consoles me as well: you get what you vote for. Vote for bullshit artists and they'll give you exactly what they're best at.

Phew, that was long. Hmm I'll try bite-sized chunks next time (maybe).

I was at Waikato Uni last week and it is a soulless, soulless place compared to when I was studying (or not studying). I think the bottom line is that no matter what ways CSM failed, it still did a whole lot more for students than VSM is doing in terms not only of helping students who need assistance, but also in terms of showing students that there is more to life than being a number in an institution - something that they are increasingly likely to become upon completing their marketing degrees!

In defence of what remains of the student unions: They are doing a lot of good work with even more limited resources than before and I am amazed at just how hard some of the people I know there work.

OK, if only 500 of 25,000 voted - there is something seriously wrong with the SU there. Why wasn't there any people standing outside the polling booths on teh main corridors of the college and going up to every single person and saying - "Have you voted yet? It'll only take a second. You really should - the more people who vote the more we can say are behind us when we're bargaining with the authorities." etc.
That's what we do, and we normally get a 25-30% turnout, even for referendums and plebiscite votes (only one candidate, yes/no).

at Auckland we do do that - candidates basically saturate the place and there's no escaping people asking you to vote (leafleting the main throughfares, speaking to lectures every hour, going around the common rooms), but still we get crap turnouts - i believe this is because some candidates have a tactic that involves turning people off voting by making them disillusioned with the whole process and with the SU in general - this advantages them because when there is a lower turnout the interest groups have much more sway in who gets elected, and they run the largest group on campus (who they are able to target and do mass ring arounds of and basically control the way they vote) - one of the people involved in particular has a sixteen year history of basically making students think that the only issues are personality politics and student politicians are all hideously corrupt (except for his picks of course, who are standing "against the establishment" despite the fact that their politics actually support the government and the neoliberal policies that have screwed students over for the last decade). when there are real issues to be debated and real candidates there is a much better turnout, because it doesn't just turn into the left versus this guy and his mates, when the left try to discuss the issues and he tries to lower the tone (and usually succeeds).

not that i'm bitter

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Trust me they (I don't count myself as a student politician, after all I am faculty now) tried all of those things, voting was even extended by two days one year to give more students the 'chance' to vote.

The executive even set the fire alarm off once and forced everyone who was evacuated to loisten to ten mins of speaches before they could get back in. Recently it has got so bad that the student newspaper were distributing stickers which said 'sod off I am not going to vote for you' to try to protect inocent students from harrasment by the candidates.

It could be a cultural thing in that in the UK the under thirties have been so thoroughly turned off by national politics that they can't be arsed to get involved at any level. It is probably also due to the fact that there are no issues in student elections, all the candidates stand on an anti racism pro free education ticket.

I am currently a student in Manchester Uni and we had our elections fairly recently. Of course the Iraq War is a "hot topic" for many of the candidates, but something really bothers me about this attitude. We were voting people who could manage and run the student union, not people who were representative of an opinion that had nothing to do with day-to-day politics of running a uni. It annoyed me that people were not capable of making this distinction.

Of course, knowing what the candidate's politic leanings are is important to judge what kind of person they are; but in no way should it be a selling point for student elections. I want to know if they're going to try and get that toilet fixed in the gents, or how they're going to spend the budget they are given to run the union. The fact that, for example, 'women in Iraq do no have the vote' is appalling, but irrelevent. Or if they think that the student body electing them based on their political leanings is going to act as a symbolic gesture to the New Labour government, they are mistaken. The only theory left I can think of, is that they want to act out some weird little election fantasy. Or maybe it purely is for their CV.

So, that is the reason I did not vote in my last University elections. It was not apathy (O dreaded apathy, willst thou not smite another? Surely thou hast inflict'd enough ills on the wearied student body, mind, soul?), which everyone seems terrified of. Perhaps people are not voting because there really is no one that represents their voice?

(incidentally, I voted for Labour in the general elections purely because Lib Dems are not yet ready to run a country, the conservatives are too snipey and have no real policies, just counter-policies and Labour are probably the only ones I trust to have the experience to sort out the mess they made in Iraq. But even then, Labour is not an ideal choice.)

Sorry, bit of a repetitive rant and probably a bit late for this forum (which seems to have ended in 2000?), but had to get it off my chest!