Opinion: VUWSA, What Are Your Priorities?

 VUWSA has decided to request $7000 from the VUWSA Trust to fund Re-O Week: a three-day, glorified party scheduled for the second week of Trimester Two.

The request alone is concerning. Why would VUWSA consider a party to be a reasonable use of Trust money?

Just weeks ago, students were left homeless after flooding damaged their flat.

Across the University, demand for the community pantry has increased by 400% since 2024, as reported by Salient.

It remains unclear whether VUWSA will have the funding to continue Stress-Free Study Week, at least in its current form.

And, of course, VUWSA has spent its entire organizational life telling students, and just about anyone who will listen, that it is underfunded.

Against this backdrop, requesting $7000 from the Trust for a party is irresponsible, confusing, and insulting.

When criticised that the money could be better spent elsewhere, VUWSA President Aidan Donoghue told the Executive that “these aren’t mutually exclusive.” If VUWSA needed to dip into the Trust to fund the community pantry or Stress-Free Study Week, he said, he would consider it.

But that argument falls apart under the slightest pressure.

In theory, funding Re-O Week and funding student support are not mutually exclusive. In practice, they are. VUWSA is not dipping into the Trust to meet demand for student support—demand it already appears unable to meet. It is dipping into the Trust for Re-O Week.

Then, in response to concerns about the allocation of funds, one Executive member, who I could not identify by voice, said what may be the most confusing line of the whole meeting: “We’re never going to be able to pay to fix poverty in Wellington, but this is something we can pay for.”

What?

No one is asking VUWSA to end poverty in Wellington. That is not the standard. But VUWSA could invest in the community pantry. It could support students affected by the floods. It could protect Stress-Free Study Week. It could use Trust money for something materially useful.

Instead, the Executive appears to have looked at student hardship, shrugged, and decided a party was more achievable.

This also raises a question: why is VUWSA pursuing Re-O Week at all, when there is no evidence students actually want it?

So far, there has been no meaningful consultation about whether students support Re-O Week, or whether they think it is a good use of $7000. Donoghue indicated that consultation may happen later, after the Trust has approved the money. But that is not consultation—that is retrospectively asking students to bless a decision already made.

The obvious defence is that students elected Donoghue, and Donoghue campaigned on Re-O Week. Therefore, the argument goes, the student body endorsed it.

That logic has a number of flaws.

First, it assumes VUWSA elections are meaningfully representative of the wider student population. At a university with more than 20,000 students, Donoghue received around 1,000 votes — and that figure includes the benefit of the STV roll-down. A small turnout should not give the Executive a blank cheque to spend Trust money without proper consultation.

Second, it assumes students voted after carefully weighing each candidate’s policy platform. That is also doubtful. One of the criticisms of Donoghue’s campaign, raised on VuW: Meaningful Confessions, was that he gave cake to students in exchange for a vote. That does not exactly suggest a deeply informed democratic mandate for his presidency, let alone for taking thousands from the Trust to fund Re-O Week.

This is what makes Re-O Week look like a vanity project. It appears less like a response to student need, and more like an attempt to fulfil Donoghue’s campaign promise for the sake of his own reputation.

Because if students were not consulted, and no demand has been shown, who exactly is this for?

All of the justification for Re-O Week seems retrospective. It appears the Executive started with the conclusion that Re-O Week should happen, then worked backwards to find reasons to support it.

One example came from Education Officer Aría Lal, who argued that Re-O Week would be good for international students, many of whom arrive in Trimester Two and need opportunities to meet people. On its face, that sounds reasonable. But it does not hold up.

From my experience working in the International Office, international students often do not attend O-Week events. So why assume they would attend Re-O Week?

More importantly, Lal’s point overlooks the fact that international students already have dedicated Trimester Two events designed for exactly this purpose. The International Office runs International Welcome Night, alongside a full week of orientation events for incoming international students.

I have never seen the VUWSA Executive at any of those events.

If VUWSA genuinely wants to support international students, there are better ways to do it. It could partner with the International Office. It could show up to International Welcome Night. That would likely be more targeted, more useful, and far cheaper than $7000.

That is what makes the justification feel so thin. International student connection is being invoked as a convenient argument for Re-O Week, rather than treated as a real issue requiring a thoughtful response.

In that sense, a comparison to Trump’s ballroom is not as absurd as it may first sound. The scale is different, but the logic is the same: public or collective money is being used to fund a symbolic project for the benefit of the Executive, while the people it is supposed to serve are facing material hardship.

The most shocking part is that the Re-O Week proposal passed at a VUWSA Executive meeting with only two members objecting: Welfare Vice President Aspen Jackman and Treasurer-Secretary Sanjukta Dey.

That leaves nine Executive members, excluding Donoghue, who somehow decided this was a responsible use of Trust money. Perhaps Donoghue delivered the speech of his life—although, after reviewing an audio-recording of the meeting, I doubt that is the case. It seems more likely that nine people in the room accepted the proposal without giving it the scrutiny student money deserves.

Either way, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Executive’s collective judgement.

This decision also comes at a time when VUWSA is already under fire surrounding their transparency and democratic processes.

Last month, Save Our Clubs exposed VUWSA’s plan to take over club administration. As previously reported by Salient, one of the major criticisms of VUWSA’s approach was its lack of proper consultation before advancing the proposal.

Re-O Week follows the same dodgy pattern: a decision made at the top, justified without any student consultation, with students left to piece together what the hell just happened. And any consultation that does occur happens after the decision was already made.

The lack of transparency is not helped by the fact that, while preparing this article, I tried to find relevant VUWSA meeting minutes. None of the meeting minutes for any of the 2026 Executive Meetings (of which they have had four to date) have been made available, despite students having the right to know this information.  

Taken together, the Re-O Week proposal reflects a troubling pattern: dress up a vanity project as student service, scramble for justification after the fact, and look past the hardship of the people you claim to represent.

VUWSA should not be asking students to accept that Trust money is available for a party, but only hypothetically available for welfare. If the Executive wants to prove it understands the reality students are facing, it should start by putting student need before student spectacle.