NZUSA; Leaders and the led

After a disappointing forum on NZUSA, David Murray went on a quest to find the truth about that esteemed organisation. It seemed to him that an interview with the President of NZUSA wouldn't go astray. In the interview, Lisa Sacksen reacts to the criticism that has recently been directed at NZUSA.

Salient: What is the need for a national student organisation in the present New Zealand situation?

Sacksen: In the present situation New Zealanders in general are facing remarkable threats to the way in which they have been accustomed to living, and students are facing these threats too, particularly in terms of bursaries and the conditions that we have taken for granted for many years. The Universities Amendment Act presently before Parliament gives the Universities the right to restrict entry to classes on the grounds that they do not have sufficient staff nor space to put the people in. This will mean that the criteria they set could be an academic criteria. It could be that people with A or B bursaries get given places before people that just have UE. That is a direct threat to free entry to university. That's just one of the examples of what is happening in the current economic recession to students.

Without a national body, there's no way individual associations can fight this kind of threat. That is the real reason why now, at this particular time, it's more important than ever to have a national association.

Salient: When you say organisation, do you imply some sort of trade union for students? Do you think NZUSA should be performing those sorts of functions rather than organising on, say, issues only?

Sacksen: We don't have the same sort of membership as trade unions—our membership is transient. At the best you'll get people coming and going, part time and so on. A lot of our members are part-time, and there's no way you can build up the infrastructure that trade unions have with delegates and sub-delegates to strike and to struggle for peoples rights. Also students particularly have traditionally have had a feeling for international events and for national events.

What we are faced with is the two things at once; trying to provide the trade union type activities on certain welfare issues and on the bursaries issue which is the bread and butter for most people of why NZUSA should exist, and also providing for the active members of the association who are concerned about such things, a vehicle through which they can voice their concern for the society and the world. We do a lot of work with individual students on the straight welfare things at the beginning of the year—with bursaries, overseas students—not enough I don't think. We should publicise this aspect more and do more of it. But here again we are faced the difficulty of the nature of our membership and the type of organisation that we are.

Salient: Do you think that the local student associations should play the role of the infrastructure of NZUSA?

Sacksen: They are NZUSA. That's the major problem—people keep seeing the National Office as the sum total of NZUSA. That's a load of rubbish. We are not NZUSA. There used to be great debates in NZUSA whether NZUSA was the sum total of it's constituents, or whether it was something more—as though that kind of differentiation had any great importance. The way in which the constituents organise themselves; the way in which they see themselves individually as student associations, has to reflect in the whole student body. They have to understand that when someone stands as the President of a constituent association, they also are standing as a member of the National Executive of NZUSA. The responsibility is a two way thing—they should have a responsibility also for how NZUSA is operating.

Salient: So what do you think of the criticism that some people have levelled that the biggest problem in NZUSA is the gap between the National Office and the rank and file?

Sacksen: That is a difficulty. I'm not sure whether it is the greatest one. It's the one that is the easiest to see.

Salient: But in view of your last comment, how necessary is it to have the National Office right with the rank and file when there are the local associations that are supposed to do that?

Sacksen: I think it's absolutely essential. It's not just the matter that you are trying to supercede the work that the individual student associations are doing, but unless there is some means by which the National Officers can get down to students—this place becomes completely divorced from what they want to do. You have no ability to find out what they're really thinking and what they are concerned about. I suppose we could operate simply as a pressure group, just talking to Government and never talking to our members; but one of the things about the NZUSA structure is that while all constituent associations are in themselves members, all of their members are also our members. We do have a constitutional right to go direct to them and that is a really important part of our job.

Salient: Why, in light of your first comments about the state of the country, is NZUSA on the surface anyway, at such a low ebb at a time when we would expect to see students rallying behind the union?

Sacksen: I'm not sure that it is at a low ebb. One of the things that I read recently is the Otago University Student Orientation Handbook in which they've got a little thing called the "good old times". The good old times were always two years before you came to University and I think that is what you were just talking about. You have a nostalgia for something that you did not even experience and have no personal knowledge about and look on those as the good old days. Whereas the struggles we are taking up now-I don't think we are at a low ebb - there is still a great deal of activity on our campuses.

Salient: Why do people level criticism at NZUSA because they see it at a very low ebb of activity?

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Sacksen: I think that you have too look at the motives of peoples criticisms. I think that there is always a place for criticism and that it is necessary for our members to do that; even if the criticism isn't valid.

But I think some people are criticising NZUSA because they don't like the politics, not because it's not doing anything. And I think that others are criticising NZUSA because they can't understand it. In the first case there is nothing that you can do about it. Any political position we take will be attacked by people who don't believe in it. The other we can do something about—that we haven't explained what we are. That is as much my fault as it is the constituant associations; that we have allowed that distance to become greater instead of fighting against it.

Salient: Do you think that this is because the associations who support NZUSA have been slack?

Sacksen: Historically, there was a great upsurge in student activity which occurred between '68 and '72, and a lot of people like myself went through that time and learnt a lot about organisation and how you fight. We hung on for another three or four years after that. People coming through now do not have that experience. I don't think that it is because they don't want to fight or struggle for what they believe in - but that they really don't know how to. Nobody is really helping them to find out how to do that; and when you feel that you should be doing something but you don't know how to do it, you get a hellava lot of frustration inside yourself and that stops even any modicum of action being taken.

Salient: But would you accept the criticism that the National Office perhaps hasn't helped to develop that sort of experience?

Sacksen: Yes, I would accept? that; but I would also point out that you have to have free time to do that. Someone has got to say - "you've got to spend your time doing that".

Salient: You mean in National Office?

Sacksen: Yes, someone has got to say that it is important now that the National Officers go out to the campuses and teach people how to get out leaflets, how to use a gestetner—how to do these basic things. People have been unwilling to make that decision because we always seem to in a time of crisis.

Salient: So you see National Office getting burdoned down with negotiation and bureacracy and unable to devote time to action?

Sacksen: Yes, that does happen.

Salient: But negotiation is still important, say, on Bursaries for example?

Sacksen: Well that's essential. People tend to see it in terms of: if you're negotiating, then you're not involving the students, therefore you're doing it wrong. That's not the point it's the attitude that you take towards your work in general. You've got to do negotiating. You can't have your members on the street every week because for a start they won't keep coming and for a second thing it loses its impact.

When negotiating you've got to take the attitude that members attitude that its the members that make the decisions - take it back to them. Perhaps we haven't suggested to constituant Presidents that they take it back and explain it to their members. They are all aware of the basis of what we are negotiating on - and that's the way you do negotiations - not stuck up here on on your own.

Salient: What changes are needed in National to make it more effective?

Sacksen: There are small administrative things that we are doing to change things a bit. At May May Council priorities were set and by August everybody realised that few of them had been done and they wanted to know why and they got upset about the whole thing. Now priorities will be the first item on the agenda for every National Executive meeting and that Presidents should give reports on how well priorities are going on their campuses. This is to try and encourage the National Exec to try and act as a watchdog over us.

The other changes that have to be made are changes in attitude which can only be carried through if the members take it on themselves to ensure that they are. It's easy on National Exec to see criticisms coming form constituant Presidents as being personally based criticisms. The only time when it cannot be personally based, when you haven't got that refuge to go into, is when the criticisms come from the members themselves. You know people that you don't know from a [unclear: get up and] and say "I think [unclear: that] you did there was disgusting" Now that's the only time that people will accept that crititicism. Now I think that attitudes have got to be changed - but it's only if the members keep a vigilant eye on us that they are going to stay changed, because its a hellava easy to slip back into thinking that you know everything and that you don't have to tell the members a thing.

Salient: Concerning the NZUSA Forum we had at Vic. You said that it wasn't all that much use. Why did you say that and what better ways are there for the members to channel their thoughts?

Sacksen: I said it then because everything that people said are things that I believe - about the distance between you and the members, you're not getting through etc. We know that, we can tell that when we are organising a campaign. You can feel when you are getting in and you can feel when you are not. The reason that it was no use was because we weren't getting anywhere, that there was no solution being reached on how to change the patterns of the relationships that've been established. I don't think that that the forum itself was no use. It shook everybody up there......

Salient: It did.....

Sacksen: Yeah, and that's a good thing. It made made people aware that they've got to answer memebers questions. The forum could have been better organised. One of the criticisms I have was that it was too wide ranging and that there wasn't enough for people to hang their hats on. If it had been more structured the criticisms would have been centred better on what people were actually on about. So instead of going to the National Officers which may have been a more amusing way of doing it, it would have been better to go through the actual areas.

The membership is intelligent and sensible and when you ask them for your their advise, they normally give it to you. If we had got into it in that kind of spirit, saying, "right, now here's education - this is the situation and here's what we've done; what are your ideas on that Then they could say; "well if I had been there would have done this, or perhaps an idea for the future is this". I think that there would have been less frustration, both for us to on the one hand accept criticism and on the other justify our existance which is a bit of a difficult thing to do. It would have also been better for the people there. I talked to a lot of the people afterwards and some of the things they said were really good - its just a pity that they couldn't say them at the forum where perhaps their ideas could have been enlarged on by other people to the benefit of NZUSA.

Salient: As everybody knows, Canterbury have given notice to leave NZUSA. What are your attitudes to their move and when is someone going to break the stoney silence that has accompanied these moves?

Sacksen: I think you've got to take a principled and proper attitude towards what Canterbury is doing; and that is that they have the right to withdraw from NZUSA. And although I havn't heard any reasons for it - that's the stoney silence that you refer to - they have that right and their membership democratically decided to do it. I don't think it's a valuable thing to go around castigating them for that particular position; because for a start, those people who are determined to withdraw, it would only make them more determined and make them feel like pariahs and outcasts.

It is improper to question the decision of a constituant. We don't want to get into the kind of thing that happens overseas where the National Body castigates its members for doing things which they are perfectly entitled to do.

Salient: Looking ahead, what is going to be required of NZUSA next year as far as the country and students go?

Sacksen: A helluva lot. This year there has been a change in leadership, I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, but I think that we've been a bit more militant than what we we were last year. But next year is going to be the crunch year for a lot of things. The whole question of restricted enrolments is going to start coming up. There will be the overseas students cutbacks - these are things that will directly affect students: the bursaries situation, because next year we're going to see bursaries once again dangled in front of students noses as an election promise.

The elections themselves; seeing how the social contract didn't work, there are going to be increased attacks on trade unions, and on women. Those are things that the association is particularly concerned about. And in fact we are the only group that are doing anything about these things. Unless we start off gaining the confidence of our members that we're on the right track at the very beginning of the year, then it's going to be a real trying time. It's going to be a situation where the association as a whole is tested, because you often find that when things are at their worst, not only are you being attacked from the outside, but also from the inside. The conservative elements of our membership will respond to the economic situation by attacking what is undoubtably the left wing policies of the association. In many ways that's good - at least that will mean that our policy will be debated. Some of our policy has never seen the light of day on some of our campuses. How can you exist when your membership don't understand why you're doing something?.