Students Set to Elect VUWSA Postgraduate Officer for the First Time

For the first time, the VUWSA Postgraduate Officer position will be elected, and announced, at VUWSA’s upcoming AGM on Thursday 19 March. The role was created alongside the Postgraduate Voice Coordinator which commenced at the start of 2026. 

This extension, of both an elected member on the VUWSA exec and the Postgraduate Voice Coordinator who is a contracted staff member at VUWSA, come at a time when the consensus (at least at VUWSA) is that postgraduate voice is more important than ever. 

Speaking to Aría Lal, VUWSA’s current Education Officer, they explained to me that “Te Herenga Waka marketing itself as a research institute lends itself to needing more support for postgraduate students.” 

According to Te Herenga Waka’s website, Victoria University is New Zealand’s top-ranked university for intensity of high-quality research. Te Herenga Waka also holds a Five Stars Plus rating in the QS Stars University Ratings system, being only one of 23 in the world to hold this ranking. 

Salient sat down with Dr. Elizabeth McKibben, who is VUWSA’s Postgraduate Voice Coordinator, to learn more about the impacts of the role. 

The first point McKibben wanted to make clear is that the election of the Postgraduate Officer will be “the first time in at least seven years there’s been a legitimate election for any postgraduate officer.” McKibben was the Postgraduate Students Representation Association President from 2021 to 2022 and ran uncontested for the role. The Presidents she can recall in recent history before her, and those after,also  ran uncontested. 

This election brings six confirmed candidates all vying for the role; Kiara Batten, Rue Parker, George Baker, Vladislav Ilin, Fangliang Ji, and Mafos Steve. Elections open Monday 16 March, and close at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday 19 March. All students will receive an email with the link to vote. 

Ethan Rogacion, VUWSA’s Academic Vice President, is confident that the Postgraduate Officer role will “positively affect students.” In an interview with Salient, he discussed the gap in postgraduate representation at Te Herenga Waka in the past five years. 

“VUWSA provides training, guidelines, and support to postgraduate representation. So [the postgraduate Officer] is able to deliver high quality student voice at all levels of university representation regarding issues like resource allocation for postgraduate students, new programmes, and new policies which impact student success."

He closed by echoing Lal’s sentiment, that “it is more important than ever to ensure there is a strong postgraduate voice.” 

For Joseph Habgood, VUWSA’s Student Representation Coordinator, this change marks a positive development in both postgraduate representation and his own workload. For more than seven years, Habgood has been solely responsible for supporting all class representatives across the University. 

With the development of the Postgraduate Voice Coordinator, he is able to break up his workload. “There is so much VUWSA could achieve if VUWSA had the resources, having two people in the student voice space opens up opportunities we never had the time to do,” he tells Salient on Dr. Elizabeth McKibben’s appointment. 

He’s confident that the election of the Postgraduate Officer position will continue to strengthen the work that he and McKibben already do. 

Downstairs at VUWSA, Student Advocate Gilbert Ostini describes to me that the creation of these two roles “moves the ambulance away from the bottom of the cliff” for postgraduate students. He explains to Salient that these roles help to create proactive relationships with both postgraduate students and faculty members, so everyone can be better equipped, and create further support systems, before they need to access services like VUWSA advocacy.

The six students contesting the role of Postgraduate Officer come off the back of VUWSA’s 2025 election season. The season saw the most nominations in recent history for the role of President, which had run uncontested since 2021.