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The passage of Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) in 2011 was a very odd time. VSM, to those of you who are unfamiliar, changed the mechanism by which students would join students’ associations. Previously, universities could require students to join the association, and if students wanted to opt out, they had to ask the association’s permission. VSM stopped universities from doing so, creating an opt-in system.

This seemingly minor tweak caused all hell to break loose. Broadly speaking, the rightwing minority of students (who disliked students’ associations) supported VSM while the leftwing and centrist majority (who liked students’ associations) opposed it. The irony of the situation, which nobody pointed out at the time, was that the pre-VSM environment was (more or less) a product of the free market, while VSM itself was a piece of government regulation.

This resulted in some truly cringeworthy debates, and many hilarious mental gymnastics. Socialists slammed government intervention and issued grave warnings about the tragedy of the commons. Libertarians whinged about “force” and “coercion” as though OUSA had a secret paramilitary wing, and begged the state to step in. A staunch(ish) leftie, I made an oral submission on the bill in which I trumpeted freedom of contract. Sir Roger “dinosaur cunt” Douglas laughed, told me I had misinterpreted the meaning of “freedom,” and offered an alternative definition that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Labour pamphlet from the 1920s. I privately agreed with him, but kept my mouth shut.

The bill passed, of course, and we switched to Service Level Agreements (SLAs), whereby the university would charge the same fee that students’ associations had previously, and then use this fee to hire the association to provide roughly the same services. Students’ associations would charge “zero fees,” meaning you’re an idiot if you opt out, but you’d still pay the fee indirectly, via the university. This created an environment very similar to the pre-VSM situation, but slightly worse for most parties.

Worse for associations, because they became dependent upon the universities and had far less discretion in terms of spending. Worse for universities, because negotiating an SLA is a lot of extra work, which most really couldn’t be fucked with. And worse for libertarians, because not only would they still get charged their association fee and have no way of getting it back, but opting out would mean the association would keep the fee rather than (as had previously been the case) donating it to charity.

So why the history lesson? Well, OUSA and the University are about to negotiate their third SLA. This time, they’re jumping in bed together for three years, a union longer than most marriages. This works for the Uni, because they don’t have to bother negotiating another one until 2016; and it generally works for OUSA, because their medium-term future will be secure. It imposes a certain rigidity on the organisation, and having to set budgets three years in advance isn’t ideal (especially when you’ve only been in the job three weeks), but on the whole it’s the most logical way forward.

To be fair, not a whole lot has changed under VSM, mostly because at the time nobody had really thought much about the potential of SLAs. And ironically, those who could be best off in the long term are that majority of students who had opposed VSM. For most students’ associations – the exception being OUSA, which has always been well-run and fairly accountable – the new structure has imposed a bit of market discipline that had previously been absent, meaning that students will eventually get more bang for their buck. In a couple of cases, though, this has bounced associations into a high-stakes game in which they could rapidly face extinction.

Salient is a great magazine (yeah, I said it) but the organisation around it is a shambles; it’s probably no coincidence that the city in which VSM was cooked up was the one with the least competent students’ association. Year on year, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) haemorrhages money while providing the bare minimum of services; having been raised to believe that money grows on trees, they’re still struggling to adapt to a system in which survival actually requires doing things. Take the piss out of OUSA’s “world record” paint party all you like; VUWSA has just broken the record for the smallest ever Re O-Week (i.e. they didn’t have one) – thereby smashing the record they set last year, when the only event was a pyjama party that fewer than 20 people attended (incidentally, this still holds the record for “world’s shittest Re O-Week”).

Much of VUWSA’s money goes towards propping up Salient and the VBC, purely because they can’t be arsed selling any advertising. Critic doesn’t totally pay its own way, but the magazine still only costs you around $2.50 each a year (about 10 cents an issue). Salient costs almost triple that figure, but with a fraction of Critic’s budget. They’re being royally boned by the boneheads upstairs, and if VUWSA goes down in flames, Salient could go with it. And who would we take the piss out of then?

Of course, there are many ways that OUSA itself can become more cost-effective. For one, the association is still manacled to the rank, flaccid corpse of NZUSA, effectively flushing $45,000 down the toilet every year instead of giving it to Critic, where it belongs. And it still owns that fucking Aquatic Centre, which is due to cost the association upwards of $65,000 in maintenance this year alone. But on the whole, they’re doing okay.

So what was the point I was trying to make here? I don’t know really, just thought you’d like to know.