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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31 Number 2. March 12, 1968

Power

Power

The Labour Party Club is to be commended for bringing up the subject of "Student Power" in its Bulletin published on Wednesday.

The question arising from the article is : How are we going to get more power for students at this university?

An initial problem is to know where the power we seek lies. The University Council does not, in fact, wield the power it has in law. In many matters it delegates powers, and in others it gives almost automatic confirmation to the decisions of lower bodies. The fact remains, however, that the Council is the apex of the decision-making machinery. Thorough and continuous scrutiny of the Council would make the whole system more likely to be responsive to student wishes.

The article in the Bulletin takes a negative attitude when it laments that "For all it's ever been worth we might as well forget about our representative on the University Council. Students rarely, if ever, hear from him nor is it likely that the Council would want us to." This is true, but the situation is not irreparable.

By Act of Parliament the student representative on Council is appointed every two years by the Executive of the Students' Association, but the Executive is responsible to the association and subject to its constitution. By changing the constitution we can force it to appoint somebody elected by the students.

Besides the relatively peripheral though extremely important point that this will ensure more accurate representation of student views than the present indirect election, it will, once every two years, open the proceedings of the Council to the discussion and debate of an election campaign.

Student interests will be more clearly expressed and less easily evaded.

There is right now, in the hand of the lawyers of the Association, the first draft of an amendment to the constitution which will do this if it is passed at the Annual General Meeting.

It will not be possible to delude ourselves that we were justly represented in decision-making with this representation. We want more representatives on Council, and on the less prestigious and more hidden centres of power, centres which we will learn more about as we learn more about the politics of the administration.

But let us not be too hasty. Softly, softly . . .