Salient

Eye on Exec

By Jenna Powell | 12 May, 2008

Exec meetings are strange things. You find your eyelids drooping downward demanding (check out that alliteration) sleep yet a Monty Python-like ringing in your ears keeps you alert. This week’s exec meeting was so boring it was almost soul destroying, but important things were discussed nonetheless.

PGSA (Postgraduate Students’ Association) wants to be disestablished as a rep group and established as an independent organisation similar to Ngai Tauira. Welfare Vice-President Melissa Barnard suggested PSGA really want to be established as “fucking money grabbers.”

PGSA wants a financially binding agreement passed which goes against the VUWSA constitution. Administration Vice-President Alexander Neilson called this an “unprecedented agreement.” PGSA is currently the biggest rep group, numbering around 4,000 in members, and already receives the lion’s share of the rep group funding.

Given VUWSA’s current financial situation binding themselves to the proposed agreement would be a grave decision. It was eventually moved that the document not be signed and that a panel be set up to negotiate and discuss “the future of the relationship” between PSGA and VUWSA.

During this discussion Melissa pointed out that Young Labour seemed to be congregating in the activities room for a “mutual masturbation session” over Helen Clark. Another equally important observation made during the meeting was the “hand in the air” indication of when President Joel Cosgrove has been talking to long.

To spam or not to spam? The Exec contemplated whether spam from the university “annoys the hell out of students.”

“It’s not like we are sending penis enlargement advertisements,” Women’s Right’s Officer Georgina Biar pointed out. Surveys and information about the University’s “new strategic plan” will soon be available to any student who actually cares.

Georgina and President Joel Cosgrove reminded the Exec that if it involved changes to the current courses available students would want to know and have a say in the process. Campaigns Officer Sonny Thomas suggested the information be available in multiple languages.

The Exec gave $1,540 to the Thai Club which will assist in paying for their dinner, fashion and cultural event that was held. The Christian association was also given $440 to assist in paying for their forest lake getaway. The timeline for the re-budget of the exec’s dire finances it set to be put in place, after a series of what will no doubt be thrilling meetings, on 29 May.