Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 10. May 15 1978

Duggan Drops Out — Publications Officer Resigns

Duggan Drops Out

Publications Officer Resigns

You might have gathered from the exec report that I resigned as Pubs. Board Officer just before the holidays. The only reason I resigned is that there aren't enough hours each week to carry out both the duties of the Pubs. Board Officer and Pubs Board Treasurer effectively as well as hold donw a full time job. (Tom has been bravely doing all this—Ed). During this year the financial activities of Pubs Board have interested me much more than the general administrative duties of the Pubs Board Officer so the choice was easy.

The Publications Board is continuing to follow the responsible attitude that it must break even financially every year—maybe a goal certain student "commercial" activities should be achieving. The Pubs Board levy has not been increased for over three years, but with continual increases in the cost of our publications, we have been forced to push up our advertising revenue. With a significant increase in the number of our debtors there has also been a disturbing rise in overdue debts to us. Writing, reminding and eventually threatening the reluctant payers is not very pleasant but essential and can be time consuming.

Much of the Student Executive's time this year has been taken up with the financial situation of two student commercial activities, namely the Victoria Book Centre and STB. I believe that for any student commercial activity there must be two underlying principles.

1)It must give new/extra/better service to students
2)It must be self-supporting.

Unless both these criteria are met there can be no justification for a commercial activity's existence.

Running a successful business takes a lot of time and experience with many risks involved. Unless there is likely to be a definite advantage to students from such services we should steer well clear of them. Our scarce financial resources can be better utilised in other areas that will give direct benefit to students.

It should also be remembered that once these activities are established they are very hard to disestablish. Often the people who push to get the activities underway have no wish to see them come to an end because of a bad financial situation. And there also seem to be sufficient people around who believe that an injection of more cash will see that activity "right".

The "user pays" principle must always be applied to a commercial activity. If this does not happen then effectively All students are susidising those students who travel overseas or who buy text-books. This is especially so where these services are offered to students by outside organisations at comparable prices with no extra charge to students generally.

In coming issues of Salient there will be several articles on the above mentioned commercial activities and whether they should continue to exist in the light of their financial performances.

I do not believe that All student activity should be self-supporting. Important political, social and cultural activities carried out by the association often can't be and indeed this is where much of the Studass fee goes. However, that must not be the case with commercial activities carried out by our Association.

Hopefully some of you who are reading this will stand for the position I am vacating. The election will be at an SGM in the second Wednesday of term. The position entails not only coordinating the activities of the Publications Board but also a significant involvement in the running of your Association.

Tom Duggan