Editorial

July 30, 1968

Opinions expressed in Salient are not necessarily those of VUWSA.

Executive elections are a time for widespread student cynicism about student politics. Most of this is well founded. The promises made in this issue of Salient by the [unclear: thirty-] candidates are almost all [unclear: -]. Few of them will be possible even if the candidates have any intentions of carrying them out.

But this is not important. If student politics are irrelevant to student life, student politicians are certainly far from irrelevant. They do a large number of quite necessary administrative and public relations jobs which have to be done by someone, and which would remain undone if it were not for our politicians. It hardly matters that every one of them does the job for purely selfish reasons (whether they admit it, even to themselves, or not).

There has to be some way of fighting out the amount of money from the available grant each club is to get, whether the main demand put forward by students is to be for higher staff salaries or for higher student bursaries. And, most important, there has to be some way of letting the administration know what the body of students is thinking.

However inadequate it is, this is the system we have, and until a better one is conceived, we will have to make the best of it, improving it only by degrees. One way of improving it is to make it necessary for the President of the Students' Association to spend the major portion of his time on it— to discourage him from working, as a law clerk or anything else. The only way this can be done is to bribe him not to work.

There will be many arguments put up, both for and against this proposal, at the Special General Meeting later in the week. The facts that he doesn't work as hard as the editor of Salient, that it would hardly be worthwhile giving him less than the editor, and that there is never a shortage of candidates and seldom a shortage of good candidates. The important thing though is that the President, if he is paid will have to spend his time making things work, acting on student demands. He will have to go not only to forum, but to almost every sub-committee meeting the Association. He will know exactly what is going on in every part of the University. He will ensure the coordination of the parts—or there will be a coup.