Students attending the Annual General Meeting last Wednesday described it as the usual shambles. The meeting, they said, seemed to descend into procedural chaos as the chairmen, Tom Robins and Tim Bertram, tied themselves into constitutional knots.

Despite the mismanagement of the meeting, matters of importance to students did manage to get discussed.

Councillors

The AGM has directed the new executive to arrange for an independent slate of student candidates for the Wellington City Council elections.

Mr. Haas in moving the motion pointed out that it would be to students' benefit to have direct representation on the City Council on matters such as transport concessions and the Wellington town plan. He said that this would be the most effective way of bringing the problems of students to the Wellington public.

Cappicade

The AGM spent over an hour wrangling about the absence of Cappicade this year. Amongst other things, the new president, Chris Robertson, then publications officer, was accused of gross mismanagement and incompetence.

Mr. Robertson was accused of not contacting the editor of Cappicade, Mr. Markham, in time for him to change the parts of Cappicade that the printer was not satisfied with.

Mr. Robertson explained that he had attempted to contact Mr. Markham five limes in three days Miss Sutch pointed out that at an executive meeting he had said that he did not have the time to contact Mr. Markham.

After drawing the meeting's attention to this contradiction, Miss Sutch asked Mr. Robertson why he had not delegated the contacting of Mr. Marknam if he was not available to do it himself.

Mr. Robertson, repeating what he had said, stated that the unavailability of Mr Markham before Easter resulted in [unclear: a] delay of 10 days while the association obtained a legal opinion on the Cappicade material. This was too long a delay for the printer to have Cappicade printed in time.

Disaffiliation

The disaffiliation of Victoria from the New Zealand Universities Students' Association was also considered by the meeting.

Affiliation to a proposed National Union of Students was also debated but both matters were allowed to lie upon the table.

The president of the Wellington teachers college students' association, Mr. Steve O'Regan, who proposed the motion, said that NZU SA was going into a well-merited and foredoomed collapse.

A national union of students on a much broader base and with more political power would be a much more worthwhile organisation for Victoria to Join.

Such an organisation would include all students engaged in tertiary education. It would have a national membership of 50,000, making it a more effective pressure group than NZUSA.

Former executive treasurer, Tony Ashenden, said NZUSA was not acting in the best interests of its member student associations, and was financially irresponsible. He cited the large amount of unbudgeted expenditure incurred by NZUSA last year.

Defending his organisation, Alister Taylor, president of NZUSA, accused Mr. Ashenden of ignorance, He said Mr. Ashenden had no knowledge of past or present NZUSA activity or of who initiated the idea of a national union of students. Mr. Ashenden's statements were irrelevant and emotive. Mr. Taylor said.

Other items discussed at the meeting included the sending of NZUSA to Vietnam on a factfinding mission at their own expense, the installation of bidets in the men's common room, a compulsory monthly meeting of executive members with students, and the action of the South Vietnamese Government in recalling its students from abroad.