Funding applications from Autism New Zealand and the Rotary Club sparked discussion about whether the budget allocation for charitable causes should be dedicated to only student-centric charities. Colleges Officer James Heath said that we should “only be finding charities working in the student interest,” while President Hugh Baird agreed with Admin VP William Guy, who reminded the executive officers that OUSA does play a part in the local community, and their charitable contributions should reflect that. Education Officer Bryn Jenkins wondered what happened to the group’s decision at the beginning of the year to proactively find charities to donate to, which was met with a change of subject. Baird concluded the discussion by saying “we don’t have to spend the money in the charity budget though.”
The provisional amendments to the OUSA’s Grants Policy were sent out to affiliated clubs and submissions were requested from those clubs to gauge whether or not they were agreed upon outside of the executive. One of the proposed amendments includes limiting the range of purposes that clubs can grant money for, something which the Otago Dance Association (ODA) disagreed with in their submission—the only submission OUSA received. They included a TL;DR summary - or ‘too long; don’t read’ - which noted “pizza is the glue which holds most clubs together, pls [sic] fund it.” Baird said that it was a “bang on submission,” although that view was not shared by other members. Recreation Officer Caitlin Barlow-Groome said it’s “very hard to track” these uses of money, as clubs could “get pizza and then bugger off without proof” of doing so. Baird replied with, “that’s why we do it in good faith,” also stating that the executive can, and do, use their own funding to buy things like pizza, although Jenkins then said “but we have a constitution and a higher level of accountability.” Guy then asked whether “we should change the grants policy as a result of this submission?”, to which Jenkins replied “no, but actively engage with them (ODA) to explain why it’s not changing.”
Barlow-Groome attended Jack Bisset’s funeral on Wednesday 19th April, leaving a note offering support to the family, along with flowers and a card on OUSA’s behalf. Bisset, a 17 year old Otago University student who was living at City College, died on Saturday 15th April after an epileptic seizure.