Entry into the Pure Advantage “Green Growth” campaign by Climate Justice Aotearoa.

This article is written by a Workers Party sympathiser at Auckland University

Once again the mainstream media establishment have neglected to tell
all sides of a story – in this case regarding the autonomous student
action that resulted in an occupation at the University of Auckland on
the 26th of September. I feel that my own experience goes in direct
opposition with a lot of what has been said – from not only having
been at the event, but also taking a small role in its organisation.
The occupation was about far more than the Voluntary Student
Membership (VSM) bill, it was about the increasing corporatisation of
tertiary education in this country, of which VSM is but one part of a
sustained attack on tertiary education as a whole.

Other demands were against the cutting of academic work conditions,
negatively affecting quality of research, and against the continual
rise in student fees. With this in mind, the choice to occupy the Owen
G. Glenn Building was an inspired one, as to many it is a symbol of
Auckland University’s not-so-gradual transition from an educational
institute to a business.

[Read more…]

This interview with Queer Avengers spokesman and Workers Party member Jason Froch was first printed on GayNZ.

“Queer our Schools” is the first campaign to be born from Wellington-based group The Queer Avengers, which emerged from the Queer the Night march in the capital. We find out more about the group and what changes it wants in the nation’s schools.

In June a vibrant collection of people hit the headlines with a march through the Wellington streets where they made it clear they were sick of violence and abuse being hurled against gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual … (or as they prefer to simply do, drop the lists of identities and simply say “queer”) … people in the central city.

After the rousing chants and speeches the marchers have not fallen silent or just wandered back to their day to day lives, in fact a solid group has been meeting every Thursday to discuss the issues the community faces and ways to fight for change. Under the moniker The Queer Avengers they now are planning a three-pronged campaign, the first part which will focus on youth.

On 6 October a march will be held from the Ministry of Education at 45-47 Pipitea St in Thorndon, through to Midland Park on Lambton Quay, where there will be speeches and entertainment. [Read more…]

This article was originally published in the SA Anti-Capitalist Uni Special.

By Joel Cosgrove, Workers Party member and former VUWSA President.

Students at Victoria University have started to fight the cuts and redundancies that have become commonplace over the last five-seven years.

The most recent attack that started the current fightback was a change proposal put forward by the University to radically change the focus and academic content of the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations. The past modus operandi of VUW management has been to make some sort of half-arsed pseudo-academic or financial justification of the changes management want to make. This is window-dressing at best. What it amounts to is the domination that management have over the university as a whole i.e. staff, students and the wider community. They feel that they can change the perspective and direction of the university at their whim. Previous management shut down the Russian Studies programme in the mid-90’s, using the end of the Cold War as a justification. More recent management built some big black stone steps costing over one million dollars, the Vice Chancellor responsible was fired soon afterwards, and that is the beginning and end of his grand vision of that time. So there is a long history at VUW of various dominant incarnations of senior management feeling the need to assert ‘their’ ‘vision’ and get rid of the previous ‘vision’. In effect this represents the usurpation of democratic decision-making and ownership of the university proper.

It’s this situation that has been building up over the last couple of years and exploded in anger last Wednesday. VUW management have adopted harsh tactics to repress any student organising on campus. Whether this has been trespassing key activists or threatening/intimidating students with potential punishment. It reached a crescendo with VUW security’s attempt to effectively stop the use of chalk to write political statements around the university, by washing them off with water as soon as the chalking appeared. They have done something similar to posters. Assuming that if they make it so labour intensive for students to organise and agitate, the barrier will be set too high for anything to happen. What this meant in practice, was that the level of anger and motivation just needed to rise higher before overcoming this barrier.

This threshold was reached when 56 students met in the Student Union Building in anger at the cuts going on. A protest was organised for the following fortnight. The University’s attempt at suppressed political expression was smashed by focused, constant and decentralised chalking throughout the university. By the day of the protest, VUW security had given up on trying to stop this.

There was a highly charged peaceful protest, with security hitting and attacking students. That in itself is a manifestation of the attitude by management to students. The desire has been laid down to do more than militantly witness VUW slashing and burning. Some of the key ideas coming through in Wellington, are the need to organise to fight a long-term struggle against the whims and flights of fancy of VUW Management. As well as building through practice and discussion a living, organic alternative to the authoritarian tendencies of VUW.

This article was originally printed in the Spark December 2010, at a stage when the Workers Party Wellington branch was reconsidering its involvement in Students Assocations. We reprint it now in the lead-up to the VSM bill’s passage on September the 28th and in light of increased student militancy, with significant actions in Auckland and Wellington.

Joel Cosgrove (Wellington Workers Party member and former president of Victoria University Students’ Association).

The Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill is making its way through parliament to make student union membership voluntary. Most people will be totally unaware of the bill and what it means, and may be thinking, “Anyway Freedom of Association is a good thing, isn’t it?”

Background
Currently any student studying at a polytech or university is automatically a member of their student association. A student association levy is generally charged to cover student union running costs, and these range between approximately $75 and $150 per year. Students can opt out of their membership but only upon reasons of hardship or conscientious objection. With a conscientious objection opt-out they are still liable to pay their membership levy.

On-and-off, since the 1970′s, this point of compulsion has waxed and waned as a political issue. Since the 1990s the issue has generally excited the membership of the youth and student wings’ of both the ACT and National parties. National MP Tony Steel brought forward a VSM bill in 1998 that brought about a nationwide referendum in every tertiary institute on the issue of whether student associations would stay “compulsory” or go “voluntary”. The only tertiary institute that went “voluntary” was Auckland University. Many institutes (including Victoria and Otago Universities) voted over 70% to stay “compulsory”. The difference with the current law is that it offers no choice to students on the issue. Funnily enough, students as a whole have voted to remain “compulsory”. “This Bill is an ideological solution in search of a problem. It is bad policy to impose such upheaval and chaos when there are many bigger issues facing the tertiary sector and New Zealand at present,” Said David Do, 2010 Co-President of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations. “Generations of students have enjoyed the services and opportunities provided by associations, and this shouldn’t be taken away from future students,” says Pene Delaney the other 2010 NZUSA co-President.

While the co-Presidents are correct, the ‘end of nigh’ predictions put forward are also unlikely to come about. The reality is that the bill is being put forward as an ideological back pat to the ACT Party (whose bill this is) and a sop to the youth wing of the National Party. Compromise was apparently agreed on to make it easier to opt out politically, but fraudulence at the Whitirea Students’ Association – of more than one million dollars – scuppered any compromise and the bill is now being pushed through unchanged. Any talk though of the extinction of Student Associations is premature. Auckland University Students’ Association has been voluntary since 1999 and has survived through grants from the University and from pre-existing business e.g. catering, rental properties etc. This is the model that most Student Associations will follow. It won’t be the end of associations as entities, as they can play a role that is useful to the university in terms of mediating student anger and organising against the ongoing attacks on student conditions. The experience of AUSA (of which David Do was a past-president) is that the university can hold the threat of cuts to student association funding if the student association protests or organises in a way that annoys or threatens the institution. [Read more…]