In which a gazillion people try to fit around the boardroom and Analiese relishes the fact that she gets to interrogate potential NZUSA Co-Presidential candidates at the worlds longest exec meeting

This weeks meeting saw around twenty people squeeze around the boardroom table, as the ASA election hopefuls for 2010 came to see the way that the current ASA exec rolled. Notably absent was El Presidente, Rawa Karetai, who was off gallivanting, student politician styles, in Palmerston North. This left a somewhat nervous looking Administration Vice President, Steve-o Freeland, to chair the meeting, who, after letting Education Vice President, Annie Zhang get away with her suggestion of making everyone in the room introduce themselves in order to invoke warm fuzzies, made it very clear that the visiting candidates had to be quiet by telling them all emphatically “you have no rights”.

With that, the meeting got into the normal swing of things. The minutes were passed, but only after Steve-o regaled the table with the fact that International Cultural Representative Sumire Tachibana had outlined the difference between whether David Do had “bought” or “brought” his hand-outs to the meeting last week. Steve-o then read out a report that Rawa had handily supplied that went over, in fair detail, what he’d been up to for the week. Things included investigating whether there should be an ATM on the Oteha Rohe campus (a little part of me, presumably the part that has to hike to one of the other campuses every time I need bus money, rejoiced) and the fact that Massey is considering implementing limited entry to its courses, as outlined by a report in the New Zealand Herald. There were numerous other things, some that even accounted for why he was in Palmy North, but I tuned out after about three minutes so I’m afraid you’ll have to keep wondering what they were.

Steveo-o and Annie then presented their reports. Whilst Steve-o’s was much of a muchness (almost exactly the same from the previous week), Annie discussed the ASA Scholarships which are to be put in place for 2010. All the executive members seemed to be up to play on what was happening apart from Asian Cultural Representative, Andy Domangas, whose email filter apparently refuses to let any executive email him. “Did you, like, put a block on Annie or something” Sumire jokingly enquired. Laughter ensued.

The hilarity stopped shortly after Andy launched into his report with the announcement that the first of the second group of NZUSA presidential hopefuls had arrived. Pene (Ben) Delaney of the Waikato Students’ Union, who, as it turns out, was told the wrong Wednesday date by Karetai last week (thus explaining his no-show), had made the effort to come up to Auckland in an attempt to show the executive just how committed he was to the cause. Delaney presented the executive with his life story; where he had come from how he had got involved in student politics and what he envisaged for NZUSA. All of this was done rather charismatically, and the executive had very few questions for him at the end. Women’s Welfare Representative, Helen van Asch, enquired about what Pene saw happening to the NWRO position on NZUSA and he responded by saying that there needed to be a discussion held. Most other questions asked by the executive were answered with a solution containing the word “discussion”, but at least he was consistent in his responses.

Then it appeared that there were some technical issues, so Andy finished his report and Postgraduate Students Representative, Grace Su, started hers, which primarily spoke of how Post Grad students hate to party and that she’d been on a tour of the new five story library (insert excited squeals from literature deprived students everywhere). Once again though, Grace’s report was cut short as it appeared that the technical glitches had been resolved.

The next candidate was Fili Lemisio of WELTEC, or the Wellington Institute of Technology. He outlined his rationale form running for co-president by breaking down the monetary contribution of the ITP sector into NZUSA, completely missing the point that unions are based on the principles of solidarity not financial contribution. His campaign strategy, it appeared, focussed solely on how the ITP sector needs to be more prevalent within NZUSA, yet he agreed to any suggestions laid out on the metaphorical table by the ASA executive. I didn’t really take any notes whilst this candidate spoke, purely because it was evident that he was unaware of the issues within the tertiary sector.

Finally, after three attempts to get him on the phone, the exec managed to talk to the last candidate up for nomination, Kent Lambert, also of WELTEC. Whilst it appeared that Lambert had more of a grasp on the issues within the current sector, the fact that the man has limited patience really showed when, after Steve-o asked a simple question regarding the candidates ability to govern the Federation Executive given that he had never been on the board he would be cheering, he replied with an exasperated “It’s not rocket science, is it? It’s not like curing cancer!!” Well, no, but it would be nice to see that you take your potential roles and responsibilities seriously, methinks.  

So, with a few more items on the agenda pushed through, including ratifying a document that had been waiting to be approved since March 2008 and discussing whether or not to host more International movie nights, the executive closed the Part 1 of the meeting a good hour and a half after it had started. That’s dedication for ya!