Is it all necessary?

The obvious question to ask is whether all this money is necessary, indeed whether a national student organisation is necessary. Hopefully the Education Fightback campaign, and the reports of planned action will convince people that NZUSA is not idle. And if you want a national student organisation, you have to be prepared to pay for it.

NZUSA is presently underfinanced, not only in terms of its long term financial problems (which will be examined in an article in next week's issue), but also in terms of what it can do with its budgetted income. In the last two years some vigorous efforts have been made to increase the allocation for campaigns material (the figure for 1980 represents a 25% increase on the allocation for 1979). A particularly significant decision was almost taken at Council (it was only deferred because of some confusion on related issues) which was to build an inflation factor into the allocation for campaigns expenditure, so that it is not continually eroded. The practice in the past has been to allow the Administration side of the budget to increase with inflation, and then trim expenditure on campaigns materials to fit the income level. Hopefully this unhappy practice has been slopped.

An important point was made however by Phil Cronican from Otago, who spoke against this "guaranteed" budgetary allocation, saying that "just because you spend more money on a campaign doesn't necessarily mean that you get a better campaign." While this is true, there is another side to the coin. We spend a large amount of money running and staffing an organisation that can, as one of its functions, co-ordinate nationwide activity on a given issue. It seems absurd to accept this administrative expenditure as essential, but not make allocations that will enable the officers to perform that work. Rather like a Government that spends millions of dollars on university buildings but then will not provide a sufficient level of bursary assistance to allow students to attend them.

Another problem that NZUSA faces is that our National Office is understaffed. There is an urgent need for a fourth full-time National Officer. One suggestion is that there should be a Media Officer who would be responsible for administering NZUSA's publications such as its Handbook, the Overseas Students Handbook, the Tenancy Handbook etc., as well as the publication of a regular national student newspaper. Such a paper would give students a far greater opportunity to see what their national association is doing and to become involved in those activities that interest them. It's a lovely idea. But it can't be done with the existing level of income.

There is a tendency, even from those long involved with NZUSA, to develop an "us and them" syndrome, which clouds the real role of NZUSA. For example NZUSA has two full-time, professionally qualified Research Officers, both working for not inconsiderable salaries. With the "us and them" syndrome, people tend to question that NZUSA needs two such Research Officers, or that it needs to pay them the amount it does. But look at it another way. None of the constituent associations have the resources (or the necessary amount of research) to warrant employing such people, so in effect they have all clubbed together to employ two research staff between seven of them. The Research Officers involve themselves both in work that affects all members of NZUSA equally, such as the bursaries negotiations, as well as looking at particular problems on the individual campuses, such as the Social Work students as Massey University.

If you look at NZUSA in this light, a pooling of resources where they can best be, pooled, the cost of running NZUSA really represents a saving of money rather than an extravagance. However at times the "us and them" syndrome distorts this, and NZUSA and its members pay the price through a forced curtailing of activities.

Peter Beach.