In the wake of a crumbling New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA), student association presidents have united to create a national president’s council. The decision was made at a national conference between the student leaders on the weekend of July 26th, held at Lincoln Uni. The council will give them the power to advocate on a national level – something the pretty much defunct NZUSA had meant to do.
The context for this movement was the introduction of the Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) Bill by the ACT Party way back in 2011. It basically meant that, rather than students directly funding their student associations, we switched to Service Level Agreements (SLAs) where universities charge the same fee that students’ associations had previously, and then use that fee to hire the associations to provide roughly the same services.
Since then, universities have controlled the funding for their student associations and can cut it at their discretion. Currently, OUSA is in the process of going through their budget and preparing to ask the Uni for next year’s lot of money – cap in hand, asking for a hand-out. In many cases since VSM, it’s meant major cuts to essential services such as counselling and advocacy.
At the time of VSM’s introduction, NZUSA – the national platform for students to lobby against the government – was strong in the fight against this change. The 2012 OUSA President Logan Edgar famously locked himself in a cage on Union Lawn to protest VSM. Critic Te Ārohi reported in 2018 that OUSA Vice Prez Cam Meads had begun “background” work for a national campaign to repeal VSM in conjunction with NZUSA.
But as the student associations faltered, so did NZUSA. Members over time have dropped out due to funding worries of their own, stripping the body of its ability to represent students across the motu in the process. This year, Victoria University Students Association (VUWSA) dropped out on August 1st – what could well be the nail in the coffin for the now-defunct institution.
OUSA President Keegan Wells told Critic Te Ārohi, “NZUSA is around – [but] it’s not very alive or very well. I would say it's not formally disbanded, but as soon as the background issues get sorted out it will become dormant – existing only in name.”
Now, NZUSA’s replacement in the form of a council between student presidents of associations across the motu has arrived. They hope to restore some of the national power to student executives to represent their respective student bodies’ interests. At the conference where the presidents voted to establish the council, Keegan said, “We all came together and talked about the future of student advocacy across the motu.”
Meetings for the new council will begin next year, set to be held monthly, and the chair of the council will rotate every year. Yet despite the hope that the change brings, Keegan admitted, “I think it’ll be a pretty slow start […] Hopefully there’s going to be a lot of sharing of information.” She mused that election processes and ways of engaging the student body would likely be the first items on agenda.
“I think it's going to be very good. The problem with NZUSA was you didn’t have it representing all students since associations dropped out […] There’s universal buy-in for the president's committee which makes it so cool,” said Keegan. And so, out of the ashes of NZUSA, a new champion of the student body promises to arise – hopefully with a funky acronym to match.