Salient

Education Officer B (for bogan)

By Paul Brown | 9 Jul, 2007

Firstly let me welcome you all back for yet another term of study at Victoria. For those of you who don’t know and that’s probably only 19,000 of you who didn’t vote in the recent VUWSA elections—I’m the newly elected Education Officer B. So let me introduce myself!

Currently I’m studying at Victoria for a BCA with majors in information systems and management. In 2005 I ran the queer student representative group UniQ, which I still maintain an active interest in. I was proud of my results with UniQ in developing systems for information sharing, interactivity and growth. It’s immensely satisfying for me to see a fully functioning executive committed to students and I feel that’s partly my doing—big ups to the current executive, and current President Larressa Donaldson who is doing a fantastic job. Often you’ll find me at the bar and while I’m a loud bastard, but I assure you I’m very approachable regarding any problems you may be facing at Victoria.

In my term as Education Officer I intend to do the usual grunt work that executive members seem to do as well as investigate some internal issues within VUWSA with the help of my fellow executive colleagues.

So that gives me the opportunity to talk about what we actually do on the welfare side of VUWSA. I’m going to include all the services you maybe entitled to. Firstly there is the food bank which is available to any struggling Victoria student, we handle issues of sexual harassment, put on stress free breakfasts during study periods and we have representatives on the hardship committee.

VUWSA also makes bus passes available to those travelling between campuses for study. For more details about these services and application forms visit http://www.vuwsa.org.nz/services/welfare/.

One project that has interested me of late is the campus hub project which will affect students long after our days at university. My interest is for the clubs, representative groups and disabled students. Concerns such as the placement of the Sutherland room are factors that need to be taken up with the university—the current placement above a noisy quad and up a flight of stairs hampers effective use for disabled students in my opinion. Disabled students have services spread out around two levels of the library and this unacceptable. Spaces for clubs and rep groups are a higher priority then retail space for us at VUWSA.

So if you want to chat about anything that’s bothering you I have two free ears and I don’t bite so come and say hello.

Moustache month of May hailed News reporter Donna Rea Moustache month of May was hailed a success by organiser Paul Danger Brown who is the newest member of the VUWSA executive.

Mo month of May is an annual fundraiser and this year the chosen charity was for CanTeen the youth cancer support group. “While we raised less than last year, events seemed to run well and much was learnt from future campus activities.”Brown says.

“I won’t be doing this again next year because it obviously occupies a lot of my time but I live in hope that someone will take the reins and raise some money for this or another worthy charity.”

Brown went on to thank his sponsors saying, “Without the continued support of organisations like Universal, Skycity cinemas Lower Hutt, NADs hair removal, VUWSA and Mount Street bar as three year sponsors we’d never have so many cool prizes.”