Another View of NZUSA

Mr Steele's article on NZUSA reveals a basic misunderstanding of the make-up of that much maligned body. His criticisims are sound, but they arc not criticisms of NZUSA but of the Students' Association who at present exercise a majority vote. If Auckland and Canterbury students can find no better representatives than the career bureaucrats they elect to manoeuvre behind the scenes for further advancement and self-gratification, then NZUSA Officers can do no more than follow the directives these people vote through at Council and National Executive meetings. Since "Salient" is an organ of VUWSA Mr Steele would do more service for students if he told them how much effort Victoria student representatives put into trying to direct their funds in directions other than bureaucrats salaries.

His assertion that NZUSA is a mutual protection society for student bureaucrats is pure crap. At the last National Executive some of the delegates were more interested in manoeuvring for their own political futures than in running a national students' association. The way they spread despicable lies behind one another's back hardly sounds like mutual protection.

The blame for all these charades lies not with NZUSA as a body but with the silent majority of apathetic ignoramuses who don't bother to vote, or don't know how to vote when students' association officers are elected. How about an analysis of the political ignorance of Auckland and Canterbury students who elect these people. How about an analysis of the distorted articles on NZUSA which appeared in "Canta" and "Craccum".