The President Said Today

By Peter Wilson

NZUSA is looking anew for a President for 1974 following a National Executive meeting held at Palmerston North over the weekend. With the tide of propaganda in the student press and elsewhere running against him ever since his election at August Council, President-elect for 1974. Neil Newman, was finally swamped. Actually swamped is probably an exageration — a "no-confidence" motion in Newman moved by Otago and Waikato received 19 votes for, nine against and 14 abstentions. Constituents who voted for the motion, like the majority of NZUSA officers at the meeting, felt Newman lacked the ability or the background to fill the position he won in an abortive election at Otago in August.

It is, of course, bad practice for any organisation to vote a representative out of office before he or she has even taken up office. On the whole this is the fault of those conservative elements in NZUSA who responded too hastily to provocations from the other candidate for the presidency at August, Graeme Clarke, and who voted Newman into office without giving adequate thought to the abilities he possessed in his own right. The vote at Otago was thus not so much for Newman as it was against Clarke. Anyway, should anyone reading this be interested in the presidency of NZUSA for 1974, applications will be opened shortly.

The National Executive also reviewed the successful results to date of the campaign against NZI and changes secured in the forthcoming Rent Appeals Bill by NZUSA representative John Blincoe. Who together with International Vice-President Alick Shaw, received a round of applause.

Sound moves were also made in the field of NZUSA administration, where the position of Administrative Officer was abolished and agreement reached on the need to get in a part-time accountant to keep track of the organisation's financial aspects. How the other administrative requirements of NZUSA are to be met will be decided on the basis of a report Stephen Chan is to prepare concerning the delegation of the total work load among all NZUSA officers.

The creation of a position of General Research Officer accompanied the abolition of the post of Education Research Officer. The new research post will provide essential information for all areas of NZUSA's social and political work, though the emphasis on educational research will remain. This again is a step forward, one which could hopefully pave the way for a much more integrated basis to NZUSA's work and an avoidance of any narrow over specialisation.

As one of the more fruitful execs, the meeting had a balance of destruction and construction plus a soccer match thrown into the middle in which Wai-kato's Carl B. Gordon as goalie, finally cracked thus allowing a 1—0 victory to the progressive forces from the South led by Arts Council Director Bruce "Bomber" Kirkland.