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Last Monday, Critic was witness to a slightly bizarre spectacle, as the OUSA Governance and Representation Review Working Party held its second meeting. Although several members of the working party were absent, this was of little consequence; most of those present took on the role of slightly bemused spectator to a series of abstract and esoteric meditations on political theory.

The offending parties were NZUSA President Pete Hodkinson and OUSA President Francisco Hernandez. Clearly desperate to impress the room with their detailed knowledge of students’ associations and methods of time-wasting, the two proposed a series of increasingly elaborate ways to skin a cat.

In case you’re sane and have a life, the OUSA Governance and Representation Review Working Party (the Fun Party for short) is a body set up by OUSA to look into changes to the way OUSA is structured. The Fun Party was meant to report back to the OUSA Executive with any recommendations for change, and these recommendations be put to referendum, in advance of the elections for the 2014 Executive. This would have allowed any proposed changes to come into effect next year. Instead, after holding one meeting in its first month, the Fun Party has decided that things are moving too fast, and that more time is needed.

In many ways, the Fun Party neatly demonstrates what happens when you give a bunch of slightly deranged politics graduates a real political body to play with. Fran was obsessed with structure and process, and had set homework for the other members – “come up with your ideal model for student representation and governance.” Pete was obsessed with consultation, keeping everything as vague as possible, and making everybody feel warm and fuzzy – to the point of claiming that everybody connected to the University in some way was a “stakeholder” in OUSA’s review process, and therefore needed to be met with and serenaded on guitar.

For now the Fun Party, rather than actually get anything done, is to draw up a set of “discussion questions,” which will be put to a series of “Stakeholder Constitutional Congresses.” The congresses will be open forums, each representing different student demographics – for instance, Maori students, Health Science students, and students with disabilities. Students will be bribed into attending with the offer of food, because wanting a free meal means you have good ideas, right?

From here, each congress – of which there will be at least 13, at an estimated catering cost of $1,500 – will elect two delegates to the OUSA Constitutional Convention, which we’ll get to in a moment. Meanwhile, the Fun Party creates a Governance Survey to put to the student body, based on the recommendations from the congresses, and will begin drafting changes to the OUSA Constitution. It will then put these draft changes to the Constitutional Convention (keep up), the Convention will recommend changes based on the results of the Governance Survey, and the final draft will be presented to the OUSA Executive and put to a referendum.

Who needs a drink?

The strange part is that we were here only three years ago: in 2010 Student General Meetings (SGMs) were canned in favour of online referenda and the OUSA Executive was restructured. 17 Executive members became 10: the Colleges and Campaigns positions were added, while the Women’s, Queer, Maori, Pacific Islands and General Representatives were removed, as were the representatives of the four academic divisions.

Despite a long and drawn-out review process, the sweeping changes were pushed through swiftly with the Exec itself bitterly divided. In the aftermath of the referendum, eight formal complaints were lodged, and several members of the Exec staged a walkout to try and prevent the changes coming into effect in 2011 (to no avail).

Oh, and the voter turnout in the referendum itself? Around seven per cent. Yeah, nobody really cared.

Fast-forward to the present, and it’s easy to spot the baggage from 2010. Hernandez, who opposed the 2010 reforms, has previously characterised the Fun Party in several different, contradictory ways. He came into office promising a comprehensive review of OUSA’s governance structure, but this fell by the wayside in first semester, only to be resurrected in May. When Vice-President Zac Gawn spoke up against the review at an Executive meeting on 21 May, citing the very brief period since the last shake-up, Hernandez assured him that the review would be more limited, and was simply a check-up on how the 2010 changes were faring. That week, however, he also spoke of the review as a process that would “settle” the OUSA Constitution for the foreseeable future.

At the next Executive meeting it became clear that Hernandez had something bigger in mind, his proposed timeframe for consultation being significantly longer than what the Executive were willing to countenance. This resulted in one of the more memorable meltdowns of the year, with Hernandez threatening to resign unless the Executive approved his timeframes. They didn’t, and he backed down; but now the Fun Party – of which Hernandez is chair – has “realised it needs more time,” no doubt a result of the convoluted consultation process that Hernandez himself has proposed.

Mission creep has resulted in the Fun Party becoming not a check-up but a complete re-hash of the 2010 review. The problem, as former Executive member Dan Stride has pointed out, is that it may simply be too late in the year to carry out such a comprehensive process. Stride cited Exec foot-dragging in support of his May referendum to restore wholesale OUSA’s previous governance structure. The proposals attracted a slim majority of votes, but failed to reach quorum.

Significantly, the Fun Party is already a month behind schedule. Nonetheless, Hernandez appears determined to finish the review by mid-September, in order to put any changes to referendum by the end of the year.

In this way, Hernandez wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to undertake a comprehensive, meaningful and lasting governance review; but he also wants to finish it by the end of his term in order to leave a legacy, tick another item off his “Franifesto,” and burnish his City Council credentials.

He also wants a second bite at some of the proposals that the Executive had shot down at the start of the year, such as a bicameral governance structure with a second political body beneath the Exec. (This system might work for the UN, but New Zealand – let alone OUSA – is considered too small for such a bloated structure.)

Of course, it’s not going to come off in time, particularly if Hernandez takes Hodkinson’s advice and consults every sentient being under the sun. The 2010 process began a full year before it was put to referendum, and still managed to look like a rushed job.

Currently it is difficult to gauge how the other Execcies feel about these developments, because they have been effectively gagged from speaking to the press. The OUSA President is the Exec’s only official spokesperson, and other members receive a slap on the wrist from OUSA’s communications department if they go on record to Critic without clearance. This means that Executive meetings are the only forum in which Execcies can freely speak their minds in front of Critic, and unless the Fun Party’s progress is discussed at these meetings – which so far has not been the case – then the Execcies’ voices cannot be heard.

Behind the scenes, though, there is believed to be considerable exasperation with the way the review has been handled – although with the Fun Party’s workings largely autonomous from those of the Executive, most are understandably past the point of caring.

The Constitutional Congresses are due to finish by 23 August. Students will be surveyed from 26 August to 2 September, and the Draft Constitution is to be presented to the Executive on 10 September.