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President Resigns

I hereby resign my position as President of VUWSA Inc., effective immediately.

My main reasons for resigning are largely personal as no doubt Executive members are aware. However, I would like to briefly outline some supplementary points which when viewed together with my personal reasons, made a substantial contribution to my decision which may not have been made clear at the Executive Meeting on the evening of 31 July 1979.

Firstly, one has to take into account the somewhat turbulent circumstances in which I have held the office of President. There is no way that I could continue to adequately do my job as President without the confidence of the Executive which clearly I did not have; the judgement of the Executive being erroneous or otherwise. I would like to make it clear that this observation should in no way whatsoever be seen as a personal attack on the judgement of individual Executive members or indeed of the Executive as a whole.

I do not deny that I have made mistakes, and the Executive has quite correctly expressed disapproval of some of my actions as President on at least one occasion.

The second strictly supplementary reason why I decided to resign was because of a substantial and ever widening difference of opinion between my own views and the policy of the Association itself and the manner in which it is decided, which everybody will be aware, has been quite marked during the course of the year.

My third reason is that for some weeks I have actually been considering the possibility of resignation because of a certain disillusionment with the position of President due in part I suspect to an unrealistic and idealistic conception of the job which I had when I originally stood for the post last year. I trust that some Executive members do not view this reason with too much cynicism in view of the circumstances, but I think it only fair to point out this factor in my resignation decision and indeed I would never have considered resigning at all if it had not been for the fact that this feeling was at the back of my mind in the first place.

I bear no single Executive member, or indeed the Executive as a whole any personal animosity and I would like it to be known that I fully respect thier views as being truly representative of an overall desire to act in the interests of the Students' Association.

I would like to make it clear that this decision I have made, was made by me alone. At no stage while I was President was I actually manipulated by any group or groups of people and I always acted of my own self will. Indeed as President I had the unpleasant duty like many of my predecessors of saying 'no' to people on a variety of occasions.

This year of all years, as luck would have it, has been an unlucky and troubled one for students. Academic and financial circumstances have deteriorated to a great extent, and in particular many students are seriously concerned at the latest developments which affect them directly, such as the abolishment of the Standard Tertiary Bursary and its replacement with the Tertiary Study Grant and its uncertain means testing conditions coupled with the tightened criteria for retention of financial assistance from year to year. This of course, falls into the general context of the cuts in education spending which have occurred recently.

In connection with this, I would urge that students realize that there are going to be in all probability further cutbacks in the education area. More importantly, they should realize that they must actively express their concern in whatever way possible about the cuts in education spending.

At the same time, students and students' associations must be realistic; their position must not become so extreme as to render the position of their representative bodies as being seen to be naive by the government of the day. Cuts in Government spending are necessary and inevitable and a large part of the role of a students' association must inevitably be seen as consulting with Government as to where the cuts will fall so as to cause the least harm to everybody concerned. In a way it is a "catch 22" situation but nevertheless, students must continue to express concern at the prospect of the education sector bearing a disproportionate part of any future cuts in Government expenditure.

I would like to conclude by thinking those who have supported me in the past. I would like to thank past and present Executive members for their valuable work and the time they have put in and also the staff in the Office, Penny, Gaye, Lee and Anne, for their patience and help in many different types of situation which have occurred during the year.

I also wish students the best of luck with their academic work and hope that in the end they achieve what they think they came here for in the first place.