Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 20. August 27 1979
[Introduction]
In many ways, the annual election of NZUSA's officers was the high point of Council. For, however much each candidate was to stress that NZUSA is 40,000 students, these same students tend to see NZUSA in terms of its national officers. The continued viability of NZUSA, let alone the quality of its operations, depends very much on the quality of its Great Helms persons.
The interest of student politicians up and down the country was also stimulated by the fact that Simon Wilson was standing for the President's job. Simon has never tried to cover up his political beliefs, and it is no secret that there exist people and groups in student politics who oppose Simon's views.
For the early part of Council, I felt that strong tensions — related to this opposition — existed under the surface of much of the business. It is clear that in the period between Simon's 'declaration of intent' and the elections themselves, small power groups of student politicians had been frantically discussing the issue and working out their attitudes to it.
This pre-election process is not unusual in any NZUSA election, but this time it was characterised by the polarisation of opinion on Simon's candidature.