Otago Uni will not move the 37 exams they have penned down for 17 October, the day of the New Zealand General Election. Out of the 1530 students affected, 18 have exams in both the morning and afternoon of election day.
The exam timetable was released on 26 August, nine days after the Government announced that the date of the New Zealand General Election would move from 19 September to 17 October.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Pat Cragg, said that change in the election date was taken into consideration before the exam timetable was released. However, because of early voting options, the Uni believed the risk of students being prevented from voting was “eliminated”.
Cragg had advised OUSA that they should “promote advanced voting to students who have
exams on both the morning and afternoon of Election Day”, and said that the Uni will remind students of their voting options.
Francesca Dykes, the OUSA Political Representative, told Critic that OUSA is “concerned that having exams on Election Day may hinder students' ability to vote”. OUSA has raised these concerns with Cragg, but said they were told it was unreasonable to change the exams.
“There were options presented such as extending the exam period by one day but these were described [by the Uni] as unreasonable,” Francesca said.
As a compromise, OUSA has asked the Uni to contact all students affected by exams on election day. Cragg confirmed that this would be happening, and said that OUSA has been advised to “promote advanced voting to students who have exams on both the morning and afternoon of election day”.
The Politics Students Association at Otago (POLSA) said that this compromise is “insufficient”. They are calling on the University to push the exam period back “by one day to allow for a dedicated election day”.
“Students require encouragement to vote at the best of times, and a university is an important polling site. This visibility swings more people to vote, while leaving it to early voting is leaving it to chance. The impact this has will affect a sizable chunk of the student body and our electorate.”
Both Francesca and POLSA are concerned about low-student voter turnout. POLSA pointed out that 60% of students vote, “leaving a significant proportion who do not”. Additionally, 60% of voters in the last general election voted on the election day, not in advance.
POLSA believe that the Uni should be promoting the election. “Instead, we see that the University has decided to not encourage this, instead carrying on as normal. As a government organization, and one that by virtue of government funding in a post-COVID era, has a stake in the outcome of the election, should be encouraging it's students to engage in the political process, not hindering it.”
To change the exams set for 17 October would “involve re-casting the entire University’s exam timetables and/or extending the exam period by a further day,” said Cragg.
“Whilst we understand that exam schedule planning is a complex exercise, we strongly encourage the University to consider moving exams or, failing this, to continue to contact all students affected by this clash and to inform and encourage students to vote early, especially given that many students do vote on election day and we are concerned about low-student voter turnout,” said Francesca.
A student who has an exam on election day, Isabella, is “quite annoyed” by this. She wouldn’t be surprised if students prioritised studying for their exams rather than vote. That being said, she pointed out that Saturday exams aren’t new, and that “[o]ther people have to work or perform child care etc and exams are in the same vein in terms of making voting harder”.