The Presidential Roll-Around

Auckland students may be about to roll their President. At least, a group of them are well on the way to getting this done. Mervyn Prince has come in for a lot of flak this year from members of his own executive and others who consider he does not have the political and administrative acumen to do the job properly. Certainly it is true that Mervyn does not have the keenness of vision or tactical ability to develop Auckland into a skilled lobby in NZUSA. In fact he has played a prime role on more than one occasion in holding back progress in NZUSA meetings with proposals the folly of which only he could not see.

However, whether this means he is incompetent is another matter. The people who have been instrumental in setting up an SGM (on July 27) to consider his future may well have other reasons for wishing him gone. More news on this as it comes to hand.

Massey has a new President after the shock resignation of Mike Pratt. He is Hamish MacEwan, formerly involved in a lesser position on the exec. Massey, as many will know, has a vote of withdrawl from NZUSA hanging over its head. They had an SGM up there recently to vote on the issue, but lost the quorum after quarter of an hour. So no vote, they'll try again.

Lincoln College also has a new President (the former incumbent was only elected for a six month term), their first ever woman in the job. Despite appalled pleas from the student paper Caclin (sample: "Lincoln the last stronghold of male dominated and centred tertiary education represented by a woman - YUK"), Jan Atkinson was elected at the beginning of the month.

At Canterbury the decision taken at an SGM to stay in NZUSA has been overthrown by a surprise motion at the ½ AGM. Only one person spoke before it was moved and carried that the motion be put. So now Canterbury has given notice of intention to withdraw at the end of 1979, which lands them right back where they were at this time last year; or, as the student paper Canta put it, right back in the middle of nowhere.

But with the latest development at Otago it is difficult to say which campus has become more adept at fiddling the democratic process. Otago President Andrew Guest resigned suddenly last Monday to take up a job with Marac Finance. So the exec appointed Phil Chronican, an economics honours student active in the student radio station and a student rep on the Senate, to the job. Chronican didn't even know it was coming up. He will stay in the job until the end of the year, became, it appears, the exec considers that to hold a by-election would confuse the main 1979 elections which would be held about the same time. Further, the exec is said to think that there wouldn't be much interest anyway. Victoria students can rest assured that our constitution bars such an event.

Simon Wilson