…In which Analiese laughs at an inanimate object whilst the exec are well behaved…
This weeks Executive meeting started relatively on time, with ASA President, Rawa Karetai, announcing the meeting being opened at “6.03 pm”. Karetai got the ball rolling by talking, ever so briefly, about his Presidents report, which he took “as read” by the ASA executive. This piece of jargon caught on faster than then Swines virus and the rest of the executive were quick to point out that they hoped that they could take their reports “as read” as well, which seemed rather like a scapegoat for not having to elaborate further on any comments made on paper.
Administration Vice President Steve-o Freeland told the executive that his report “spoke for itself” and so he didn’t need to elaborate on what was written, which was a shame seeming that most of the things that the exec seem to include in their reports do tend to require a wee bit of an explaination to the average student. Education Vice President, Annie Zhang seemed to be the only “power player” on the exec willing to talk through her report, discussing her work on creating the ASA scholarships terms of reference and consulting with “the lady” on a proposal for changes to the design school (although this was later clarified, after some probing by Freeland, as some lecturer whose name I didn’t write down).
Then it was on to some of the general exec members to talk about what they’d been up to. Recreation and Leisure Representative, Salam Arif, talked about how Massey Albany achieved 3rd place at the recently held Tertiary Challenge and how the biggest achievement on the day was that, after a year’s ban from the tournament for reckless behaviour, the Ultimate Frisbee team made its triumphant return. Best of all, said Arif, the team “wasn’t drunk, so that was a good thing”. Pacific Island Students’ Representative Neil Tahal and International Representative Sumire Tachibana made brief reports, of which nothing was particularly worth reporting.
So, with the formalities out of the way, it was onto the exciting part of the evening: the NZUSA Co-Presidential Candidates speeches. First up was ex AUSA (Auckland Uni) President, David Do. Do spoke for 14 of the 15 minute scheduled, which left time for only one question at the end of his rather detailed and highly articulate presentation, asked by Freeland, as to whether he thought not being directly involved in student politics this year had put him at a disadvantage. Whilst his speech was perhaps a little too long, it was one that covered a multitude of bases and left me thinking that there are still some truly competent people involved with and around the periphery of student politics.
Actually, Freeland seemed to be the only one who had prepared well thought out questions and this was more apparent after the presentation of the second speaker, current MAWSA (Massey Wellies) President, Alex Sorensen. She spoke for far less time than Do, and told the executive that she just wanted to further expand on “her vibe”, which I took to mean her vision for NZUSA. Whilst both candidates did spend a number of minutes highlighting the importance of having a co-president that was consistent in their message and focussed on opening channels of communications with executives around the country, the differences between the first two candidates became apparent through their presentation style.
After having listened to Sorensen speak for 9 or 10 minutes (but hey, who’s counting?), Freeland then took the opportunity to ask an array of questions, many of which got, at times, quite muddled answers. Having failed the ‘neutral face’ component in high school drama, I couldn’t help but laugh when Sorensen, having been asked by Zhang what her stance on lobbying for loans was, talked at some length about how people who earn more should be expected to have higher threshold with which to repay their student debt, thus alleviating some financial pressure on the government. Whilst the idea isn’t funny at all (in fact, it’s rather smart, I reckon), after Zhang paraphrased back exactly what Sorensen had talked about, perhaps more articulately than Sorensen’s waffly rant, Sorensen then told Zhang that no, that wasn’t what she had talked about at all. As much as I tried to suppress it, I had to laugh. Rude? Probably. Does it make me a hypocrite after last weeks rant about showing respect to guest speakers? Maybe, but I like to think that given it was a phone receiver and I laughed relatively quietly, it was okay. Double standards = win.
Which led the executive to their final candidate, Pene Delaney, current WSU candidate. After several minutes of “technical difficulties” (i.e Karetai actually trying to track down where Delaney was), it was announced that Delaney was not answering his phone and that he would not be interviewed until the following week, alongside two more NZUSA Co-Presidential hopefuls. “Pretty irresponsible on his behalf” muttered Arif on Delaney’s noticeable absence. I couldn’t have said it better, really.