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Weekly Pacific Politics with Otis Whinney THE COCONUT CARTEL AND OUR DRUG PROBLEM If you told me that, just a few months ago, a senior member of a Pasifika-led organised crime group dubbed the ‘Coconut Cartel’ was assassinated in Vietnam by a pair of Sāmoans hired by his criminal rivals, I daresay I would have laughed in your face. But this did in fact happen, in what has become one of the strangest developments in our ongoing drug crisis in the moana we all inhabit. This event connects Sydney, Apia, Ho Chi Minh City, and the Pacific region as a whole through a tangled web of organised (and incredibly disorganised) criminal networks, so let’s answer the question: what even is the Coconut Cartel, and what does all this mean? The Coconut Cartel is a Sydney-based organisation that split from the much older Alameddine family, a criminal group that operates out of the Western Sydney suburb of Merrylands, of which they are also sometimes referred to. The Alameddine family has been involved in illicit drugs and ongoing gang wars for years, but in early 2026, a member by the name of Lorenzo Lemalu broke away and began building a rival organisation made up mostly of Pasifika members. The name ‘Coconut Cartel’ was chosen as a spin on the use of that word as a slur against Pasifika people, and since January, the group has been at war with its former Merrylands allies. Figures such as Henry Kupa and Anthony Pele, along with Lemalu, grew their profile in the underworld at a rapid pace as the increased competition between the Coconut Cartel and the Alameddine family coincided with a growing international cartel presence in the Pacific region, with nations such as Fiji and Sāmoa seeing record numbers of attempted drug-smuggling operations. The Coconut Cartel’s notoriety has come less from their success and more from the visibility of their violence and actions. It doesn’t seem to be the most discreet organisation; the most senior figure that remains in the public eye, Anthony Pele, seems to spend a large amount of his time flexing his freedom on Instagram, while other leaders like Henry Kupa have found themselves arrested after the alleged seizure of around 400kg of methamphetamine. A series of shootings and firebombings targeting homes and businesses allegedly connected to alleged former Alameddine associate Iziah Utai were filmed, complete with commentary allegedly from the teenage perpetrators. Matt Utai, a former NRL player and Iziah’s father, was gunned down and killed as a result of this series of attacks. The assassination of Lemalu remains the most highest-profile moment in the history of the Coconut Cartel, with the news breaking beyond Australia into Asia, where the event took place. Lemalu was in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, alongside his associate, Sauni Sam. On May 21st, the two were shot outside of a restaurant, killing Lemalu and injuring Sam. The two perpetrators, Joseph Vaa and Steve Tofa, were found by Vietnamese authorities within 72 hours and broadcast on Vietnamese television admitting their guilt. The police and government agencies in Vietnam, Sāmoa, Australia, and Fiji have all responded, and investigations into how this happened are ongoing. The pair allegedly travelled to Vietnam through Fiji using fake passports, and the men involved all seem to have various links to Sāmoa and New Zealand, but it seems likely the pair will be facing Vietnamese justice. Combined with the arrest of Henry Kupa and others with alleged connections to transnational crime, it seems like the Coconut Cartel has been put on the back foot for the time being. Despite Scott Cook, Assistant Commissioner of the NSW Police, being quoted as saying that the intelligence collected during these operations puts them “slightly ahead of the game,” this saga is just one piece of a larger puzzle. This kind of crime is not only rising in Sydney, and this debacle shows how it connects to the entire Pacific region. Faualo Harry Schuster, Sāmoa’s former Police Minister, spoke to RNZ’s Pacific Waves, where he argued the pair were “manipulated into doing something that they're not familiar with and naive enough to think that they could pull it off.” In the first five months of 2026, Sāmoa has seen 20 drug raids carried out and 55 people charged, with methamphetamine, firearms, and more found in the process. Australian organised crime has also become increasingly tied to Fiji over the years. Sydney’s Sam Amine is still wanted for investigation by Fiji police due to his alleged ties with drugs seized by the Fijian police intended for distribution to Australia and New Zealand, allegedly supplied by the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. This crisis is hitting Fiji particularly hard, and their joint military-police response has now led to a second death under suspicious circumstances (and certainly not the last), following the alleged murder of suspected drug-lord Jose Vakarisi on April 18. Fiji police acknowledge that in the early hours of April 23, 12 officers conducted a raid on the home of Sakiasi Ose Radravu. Radravu’s family members allege that he was beaten severely by police, and that the injuries he sustained during the raid ultimately led to his death. He died around a week after the raid, with his family claiming Radravu was unable even to sit or lie down without intense pain. According to RNZ Pacific, his official death certificate lists the cause as sepsis and complications from pneumonia, but Radravu’s aunt, Elizabeth Kabuyawa, claims police are attempting to obscure the effects of the injuries he sustained during the raid. Fiji Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu has stated that the investigation will be complicated because the allegations were brought to the public eye only after his death, but Fiji police are taking internal action concerning the matter. Cocaine use is at an all-time high in Aotearoa, despite us Kiwis paying far higher prices than most of the rest of the world, and alongside Australia, we remain the primary targets for this growing cartel presence in the Pacific region. We also remain incredibly influential in the region, and essential to the networks of aid, trade, and immigration that exist, all of which will be affected by this escalating crisis. As we head into an election year, and as Australia continues to fight their domestic criminal networks, the responses from these two states will likely dictate how the rest of the Pacific will have to respond. If we see this current coalition back in power come November (or some variation of a right-wing government), and especially if we see Winston Peters back in the seat of Foreign Minister that he loves so dearly, it would not be a long shot to say that the US will continue to play a key role. And even if we see a left-wing coalition of some kind, the US and its Pacific ties cannot be so easily severed. Whenever Winston is overseas posing with Marco Rubio or the Trumpster himself, Pacific security is never far from the conversation. The USA has a vested interest in stability in the Pacific thanks to their many territories that pepper the region, but that interest is also coloured by the competition with China for regional influence. That FBI office in Wellington was opened in part to allow the US to better coordinate with their Pacific allies against this crisis, or at least that's what Winston Peters said. FBI Director Kash Patel let the mask slip a little when he outright stated that the office was opened in part to counter Chinese influence in the region, forcing Winston to hastily assure the press that Kash was simply in a silly mood that day and couldn’t possibly be serious. It is important to note that Trump's political following has been partially built on fearmongering around drugs, and his return to the White House shows how successful this can be. If the US wishes to extend this approach to the Pacific, using security concerns to halt countries such as Solomon Islands from making further deals with China, and if we have a government like the one we do now, there may be little stopping them from treating the moana the way they have treated Latin America since their own drug empires were founded. This is not to discount the agency of the nations within the Pacific. We and our ancestors have had more than our fair share of political crises and external actors throwing raisins in our collective potato salad for centuries. But this drug problem opens all the wrong doors for all the wrong people, both inside and outside the Pacific, and it is already taking its toll on countries still reeling from fuel crises and countless domestic pressures. The Coconut Cartel may be quiet for now, but I get the sense that this is still just the beginning.

The Opportunities Party (TOP) is suddenly close enough to Parliament to be taken seriously. After recently polling at 4.6%, just shy of the 5% threshold, TOP has been rebranded by some as the sensible, fresh, almost-left alternative for voters tired of the old parties. The Coalition parties have been criticising TOP as a left-wing party, citing their Citizens Income Policy as evidence. On the surface, it is easy to see why—TOP proposes paying up to $370 a week to almost every adult, funded through a land value tax. Universal payments sound progressive. A tax on land sounds redistributive. But the policy is actually deeply conservative. For starters, the Citizens Income Tax is a Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy, which is classically neoliberal. The ideology was that by providing a universal income instead of welfare resources, there would be less expenses related to bureaucracy, therefore creating a smaller state. This was obviously attractive to conservative parties, who desire to reduce the size of government. TOP proposes to replace existing welfare schemes with a Citizens’ Income—promising, in its own words, “simplified welfare with savings of at least $1.5 billion in administration costs.” The purpose of the policy is therefore clear: to reduce the cost of administering welfare. That places TOP’s proposal squarely within the neoliberal conception of a UBI. By replacing existing welfare programmes with a single simplified payment, the government saves money, bureaucracy is reduced, and the state becomes smaller. There have also been UBI proposals that are not rooted in neoliberalism, such as the Green Party’s Income Guarantee, which functions as a supplement to existing welfare programmes rather than a replacement. This is liberal; the aim is increasing the size of the welfare state and government, not reducing it. Maybe this still looks left to you, I mean everyone gets money, so what is the problem? TOP’s policy necessitates public sector job cuts. By automating the payment of benefits, people who currently work in the administration of public services will be replaced with a computer, leaving them jobless. We have seen National and ACT similarly call for the slashing of bureaucracy, and this is TOP’s much quieter way of making the same call. So, do you think welfare should be expanded? Then, you are probably a Greens voter. Do you think that welfare is an administrative burden that needs to be reduced? Congratulations; TOP is the party for you. The second trap is the funding model. TOP’s Citizens’ Income is funded through a land value tax. To be clear, there are good arguments for taxing land. New Zealand’s housing market has rewarded wealth-hoarding for decades, and landowners have benefited from untaxed gains while renters and workers have been locked out of the housing market. A land value tax is not, by itself, a bad idea. But TOP’s version ignores wealth redistribution. A flat-rate land value tax is not the same as a wealth tax aimed at the richest people in the country. Land matters, of course, but it is not the only way wealth is accrued. Wealth also sits in shares, trusts, companies, inheritances, financial assets, and corporate profits. A land tax may reach one part of the problem, but it does not confront concentrated wealth as a whole. In effect, the top 1% remain the top 1%. The Greens’ approach is different because it is explicitly redistributive. It asks those with the most accumulated wealth to contribute more, and uses that money to strengthen incomes at the bottom. In other words, the real question is who should pay for inequality. TOP’s answer is: everyone who owns land, through a flat land tax. The Greens’ answer is: those who have benefited most from the system. If your politics are redistributive, that distinction matters. The danger for left-wing voters is that TOP’s policy is being misconceived as left when it fundamentally is not. The policy revolves around one goal: shrinking the size of the state. And shrinking the size of the state, need I remind you, is the core of conservative politics. Some of you have mistaken teal for green—and that is exactly what TOP is counting on.

MDMA (molly, MD, or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine when it’s in trouble) is an empathogen that increases the feel-good chemicals in your body, mainly serotonin. KnowYourYes MDMA increases empathy and enhances sensations like touch and taste, so it is important to remember that consent is key! Your boundaries might get a little fuzzier than normal, so before taking any substance, keep these things in mind: “What does my yes look like?” What will you say yes to? Is yes even on the table? Or is it all a no? Figuring this out before you take your MDMA will help avoid any Type 4 fun situations Do you have a safe person around to help if things go too far in one way or the other? Set and setting How do you feel? Are you tired, hangry, or PMS-y? Where are you, and what’s happening around you? Safety looks different at a house party, in the middle of the bush while camping, or at a music festival. Make sure you can get back to home base safely, and have someone you trust hold your phone and keys. MDMAybe? MDMA comes in powder, crystals, or pressed pills in a range of colours. This means you can’t tell whether what you’ve got is MDMA just by looking at it. At-home test kits Reagent kits are better than nothing. They’ll show you the substance in your sample that is present in the highest concentration, but they’ll only show you one ingredient. The best way to have confidence in what’s in your bag is to bring it to a licensed checker and have them run it through an FTIR spectrometer. This will shoot infrared light through your sample, tell you about the substances in it, and whether there’s anything harmful hiding. We’ve got clinics in Newtown on the first Saturday of every month, and our BFFs at DISC run daily clinics from Tuesday to Saturday at DHDP on Willis Street, so there’s always somewhere in Wellington to get your gear checked. Find a clinic: https://thelevel.org.nz/drug-checking-clinics Speaking of doses… Once you’ve had your stuff tested, it's time to weigh your dose on actual milligram scales. Most of the MDMA-related harm we’re seeing now is from people getting their dose wrong and overamping because they’ve accidentally taken too much. This feels like: Racing heartbeat Shallow, rapid breathing Shortness of breath Overheating Paranoia Muscle cramps Seizures Not all MDMA batches are the same, so start with a low dose and wait at least 45 minutes for effects before considering a re-dose. You can always take more, but you can't remove what's already in your system. You can get milligram scales at Cosmic for between $25 and $40 Routes of administration The thing about MDMA is that it’s a pretty caustic substance, and its crystals are chunky, which is why snorting MDMA HURTS. If you NoseYourStuff, it is important to crush your gear as finely as possible, so there’s less risk of those crystals cutting the soft tissue in the nasal passages and creating ways for viruses to get into your body. We’re not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but swallowing your MDMA will hurt less, give you a longer, stronger roll, and you won’t lose half your dose in your nose hairs. They’re there to keep things from getting into your sinuses, after all. One drink per hour/DJ set Hydration is more of a balancing act with MDMA than you’d think. MDMA affects your hypothalamus, causing you to retain more water than usual. If you’re out dancing, you’re going to get hot and thirsty and lose some fluid through your sweat, but you might still be at risk of overhydrating. This fluid buildup is known as hyponatremia and can be fatal in extreme cases, so keep your fluid intake to one cup of water or electrolytes per hour, or per DJ set. Coming down After taking MDMA, it can take a few days to recover as your brain rebuilds serotonin. Be kind to yourself if you feel more fragile or tired. Rest, rehydrate, snack, and watch comforting media while you recalibrate. If you're feeling overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to talk to a professional. It's important to prioritize your mental health. Mauri Ora (Victoria University’s Student Health & Wellbeing) - 04 463 5308 Depression Helpline – 0800 111 757 or free text 4202Anxiety NZ – 0800 269 4389 (0800 ANXIETY) MDMA and alcohol are not friends Polydrug use (when you take two or more drugs at once, and yes, alcohol is a drug) increases your risks, because you’re adding the risks of each substance together when you take them. This means there’s more things you need to keep in mind. Alcohol is a depressant and MDMA is a stimulant, which can mask the other’s effects. MDMA can prevent you from feeling clumsy as the alcohol takes effect, while alcohol can stop you from feeling jittery on MDMA. This mix may lead people to think they can take more since they don’t feel the usual effects, but it still puts stress on their heart, lungs, and central nervous system. When one drug wears off, the leftover effects can be intense. If MDMA fades first, you may suddenly feel nauseous or impulsively reach out to your ex. If alcohol wears off first, anxiety might hit hard. If you choose to drink before taking MDMA, do so early in the night and wait at least two hours before using MDMA to allow the alcohol to clear from your system. Serotonin syndrome Serotonin syndrome occurs when excessive serotonin builds up in the brain. MDMA works by increasing the amount of serotonin released, which affects your heart, lungs, and central nervous system (among other things). If you have too much MDMA you can release more serotonin than these systems can handle all at once. Call an ambulance if: You start vomiting or have diarrhoea You have muscle tremors or seizures You feel anxious, paranoid, or angry You overheat or develop body aches Your heartbeat races and you can’t catch your breath Watch our Tiktok about Serotonin syndrome - @knowyourstuffnz https://www.tiktok.com/@knowyourstuffnz/video/7594721990909480209 SSRIs and MAOIs slow down how quickly your brain absorbs serotonin. So when you take MDMA when you’re on SSRIs, the MDMA dumps out large amounts of serotonin, but your meds keep the serotonin from being absorbed in at an equal rate. So the serotonin sits between your brain’s synapses waiting to be taken up and recycled and you don’t feel any of the euphoric effects MDMA is known for. This can make you want to take more if you’re chasing that feeling, but all it does is increase serotonin in your system, which increases the load on your heart, lungs, nerves, and, well… everything. Serotonin syndrome can be fatal, so if you are on SSRIs or MAOIs, you might want to skip the MDMA.

It’s trimester two and your summer funds have dwindled to meagre pennies. You are feeling settled with your course load and unsettled by the increasing cost of living. It’s time to enter the workforce and join the 50% of Aotearoa students that partake in paid employment while they study. This might prove more difficult than first thought. Whether you’re re-entering the arena or it’s your first time on the hunt, you’ll notice that the market is tight. Student Job Search, a free online recruitment service for Aotearoa students, told Salient that advertised vacancies have decreased by 36% from last year between January and June. In return, the service has seen a 61.30% increase in applications per vacancy from the same period in 2025, meaning that positions are now far more competitive to land. So how can you find a job when the world is against you? As someone who has been employed 19 times, from florist, to dog walker, to line cook, let me tell you what I’ve learnt. Revise that Resume If you’re still using the same CV you made in high school, chances are that you’re being automatically fast-tracked to the “no” pile. For a part time non-corporate job your resume should be no longer than a page. Avoid repetition of the same skills, mentioning hobbies unless they are related to the job, and lengthy descriptions. Managers want to skim through in 30 seconds and decide whether to hire you on the spot. In hospitality, I hate to break it to you, no one’s calling your references. In retail, be more careful and let your references (whether they are real or fake) know to expect a call before you list them. Keep your cover letters short and non-generic, and at the very least remember to change the name of the business in the heading. Tailor the letter to the job listing by using the same keywords and remember to include your availability and when you’re ready to start. Finally, check your spelling and grammar, or get a friend to do it for you (Thanks Salient Sub-Editor) for a stellar first impression. Apply Aggressively You’ll want to apply to a job as early as possible, and if that means refreshing online listings multiple times a day, so be it. Talk to the staff at your local bar, supermarket, gym, and café to get early leads before vacancies are made public. If you see a sign up in a window, don’t put it off, and get in contact immediately. If you’re looking in hospitality or retail, I hate to say it but your parents were right when they told you to just barge in with your CV. Managers love something tangible, and seeing someone who is ready and willing to work will fill their run-down hearts with delight. There is great success to be had by eyeing listings on Student Job Search and then contacting the business directly or physically dropping your resume rather than going through the site's recruitment process. Go in confident, friendly, and neat during off peak hours. The worst they can do is hold on to your details for further opportunities (put it in the bin when you walk out). Treat it like rejection therapy! Widen your World That being said, it’s all too easy to box yourself in by applying for only physical storefronts. Widen your realm beyond Cuba Street and consider options like online tutoring, babysitting, freelance editing, gig work, pet sitting, gardening, the list goes on. Often casual and one-off employers pay better hourly wages, are less selective about who they employ, and can lead to ongoing opportunities down the line. Alongside Student Job Search and physical bulletins, join Facebook groups like Wellington Hospitality and Wellington Hospo Group to nab last minute events and shift covers. Don’t forget to use nepotism to your advantage and tell everyone you know that you’re looking for work. Often a flatmate's sister’s boyfriend will need a vacancy filled, or a team mate’s uncle’s goldfish will need sitting. A personal recommendation and good word put in can go a long way to making your application stand out. Most importantly, don’t lose hope. It’s hard when you have to hustle to land the hustle, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or in this case, an appealing minimum wage opportunity. Good luck out there and remember what The Smiths said: “I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”By Martha Schenk It’s trimester two and your summer funds have dwindled to meagre pennies. You are feeling settled with your course load and unsettled by the increasing cost of living. It’s time to enter the workforce and join the 50% of Aotearoa students that partake in paid employment while they study. This might prove more difficult than first thought. Whether you’re re-entering the arena or it’s your first time on the hunt, you’ll notice that the market is tight. Student Job Search, a free online recruitment service for Aotearoa students, told Salient that advertised vacancies have decreased by 36% from last year between January and June. In return, the service has seen a 61.30% increase in applications per vacancy from the same period in 2025, meaning that positions are now far more competitive to land. So how can you find a job when the world is against you? As someone who has been employed 19 times, from florist, to dog walker, to line cook, let me tell you what I’ve learnt. Revise that Resume If you’re still using the same CV you made in high school, chances are that you’re being automatically fast-tracked to the “no” pile. For a part time non-corporate job your resume should be no longer than a page. Avoid repetition of the same skills, mentioning hobbies unless they are related to the job, and lengthy descriptions. Managers want to skim through in 30 seconds and decide whether to hire you on the spot. In hospitality, I hate to break it to you, no one’s calling your references. In retail, be more careful and let your references (whether they are real or fake) know to expect a call before you list them. Keep your cover letters short and non-generic, and at the very least remember to change the name of the business in the heading. Tailor the letter to the job listing by using the same keywords and remember to include your availability and when you’re ready to start. Finally, check your spelling and grammar, or get a friend to do it for you (Thanks Salient Sub-Editor) for a stellar first impression. Apply Aggressively You’ll want to apply to a job as early as possible, and if that means refreshing online listings multiple times a day, so be it. Talk to the staff at your local bar, supermarket, gym, and café to get early leads before vacancies are made public. If you see a sign up in a window, don’t put it off, and get in contact immediately. If you’re looking in hospitality or retail, I hate to say it but your parents were right when they told you to just barge in with your CV. Managers love something tangible, and seeing someone who is ready and willing to work will fill their run-down hearts with delight. There is great success to be had by eyeing listings on Student Job Search and then contacting the business directly or physically dropping your resume rather than going through the site's recruitment process. Go in confident, friendly, and neat during off peak hours. The worst they can do is hold on to your details for further opportunities (put it in the bin when you walk out). Treat it like rejection therapy! Widen your World That being said, it’s all too easy to box yourself in by applying for only physical storefronts. Widen your realm beyond Cuba Street and consider options like online tutoring, babysitting, freelance editing, gig work, pet sitting, gardening, the list goes on. Often casual and one-off employers pay better hourly wages, are less selective about who they employ, and can lead to ongoing opportunities down the line. Alongside Student Job Search and physical bulletins, join Facebook groups like Wellington Hospitality and Wellington Hospo Group to nab last minute events and shift covers. Don’t forget to use nepotism to your advantage and tell everyone you know that you’re looking for work. Often a flatmate's sister’s boyfriend will need a vacancy filled, or a team mate’s uncle’s goldfish will need sitting. A personal recommendation and good word put in can go a long way to making your application stand out. Most importantly, don’t lose hope. It’s hard when you have to hustle to land the hustle, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or in this case, an appealing minimum wage opportunity. Good luck out there and remember what The Smiths said: “I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

I Got My Driver’s License Five Years Ago Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love First impressions matter. Olivia Rodrigo introduced herself to the world with the late-pandemic smash “drivers license", a beautifully accomplished ballad replete with an eat-your-heart-out bridge where the bottled up emotions of the verse and chorus are spilled out in a gory half-time. If the song up until that point seems a little one-note, that’s largely Rodrigo’s point: she even sets most of it against a repeated pedal in the piano part, musically evoking the reverse signal of a car—only Rodrigo can’t go back. The ensuing details sound heartbreakingly young: “I got my driver’s license last week / Just like we always talked about” she sings to an ex, who she in the next verse has to admit is “probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt.” Ouch. You seem pretty jaded for a girl so seventeen. The first two records followed quickly, in 2021 and 2023, respectively, and followed too in “drivers license”’s casting of its lyrical vulnerability as nervy, just-held-together musical composure. Rodrigo’s sensibility is equal parts pop-punk and musical theatre, as much expressing (presumably) authentic feelings about her (presumably) real-life heartbreaks as knowingly performing, exaggerating, winking off the stage. Already this is a difficult pitch to strike, aesthetically speaking—and, for me, Rodrigo has always sounded a little overblown and overwrought in this respect. Add to this tendency the more derivative aspects of her songcraft and sound, and you might find yourself raising an eyebrow. There’s the highly-publicised rights dispute everyone’s heard about, where Paramore won songwriting credits on Rodrigo’s “good 4 u” for its similarities to their 2007 song “Misery Business”. Following almost directly in tempo, instrumentation, and melodic voice leading, the similarities are striking whether or not you have a degree in musicology. But there are more subtle cases, too, such as that of Rodrigo’s “1 step forward 2 steps back”, whose piano part is a mimic of Taylor Swift’s gorgeously understated “New Year’s Day”. In Swift’s song, syncopated verse rhythms describe the trembling morning after an epic New Year’s Eve party, and give way to the straight rhythms of the chorus as Swift raises the particulars of the scene to the heights of metaphor and makes a promise, sure and true, to the man she wants to be with: “I want your midnights / But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day”. It’s one of the finest moments of Swift’s entire career, and her first real love song, whose contrapuntal outro overlays two vocal lines, “Hold on to the memories; they will hold on to you” and “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognise anywhere”: Swift looks to the future’s uncertainty in the strength of her memories. Rodrigo’s lyric? Well, again, it’s a little bit much, a bit messy, a bit rambly, and it never coalesces into real concrete imagery: “You’ve got me fucked up in my head, boy”; “And maybe in some masochistic way I kinda find it all exciting”; “And I’d leave you but the rollercoater’s all I’ve ever had.” These are real feelings: I get it, and I’ve felt them too. But this is song writing, not diary writing—and Rodrigo is at her weakest when she’s courting comparisons to artists who outpace her. So here comes her latest, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, heralded by glowing reviews from even the nonplussed indie snobs like Pitchfork and Anthony Fantano. And like the rest of her discography, it’s pulled off with enough gutsy feeling and musical ambition that you’ll find yourself with an earworm before you’ve decided whether or not the work is actually, you know, good. This is something I find more than a touch frightening about Rodrigo—and more than a touch impressive, especially on this record, which is by far her best. The opening half, which the vinyl gives as a girl so in love, is buoyed up (or weighed down?) by complex love songs that are almost always undercut by a streak of deep anxiety. “stupid song”, for instance, should arrive at a moment of triumph in its chorus—“I love you more than any stupid song could ever say”!!—but the metaphors that precede this announcement shade it differently. “I’m a car speeding down the boulevard without a brake”, Rodrigo sings, and the crash is sure to follow, even if it's something that this song’s crushing infatuation doesn’t yet know. The album’s second half, you seem so sad, largely is a slow-motion render of the crash that the album’s first few songs anticipated. Opening with “the cure”, a big and blown out five-minute monster of a single, Rodrigo has to admit “It don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It’ll never be the cure.” A refrain comes later in the phrase “I’m unravelled”—and the genius here is that this phrase literally unravels the structure of the song when it swings back around as a kind of secondary chorus at the three-minute mark. Just when you think the song’s over, the instrumentation picks back up, Rodrigo’s producer-bestie Dan Nigro gives his (adorkable) best go at string writing, and we go for another belch of angst. The song’s binary structure is reminiscent of Swift’s double-chorused “Enchanted”—though the feeling couldn’t be further away. (And if anyone remembers the snooty opinion pieces from a few years ago fearmongering that “Old Town Road” had forever doomed my generation to two-minute soundbite singles which needed to be streamed twice in order to sound formally complete, I present to you this wonderful and wonderfully successful counterexample.) “the cure” is the album’s stunner, but the later track, “what’s wrong with me” (which actually features The Cure frontman Robert Smith), teeters on the edge of good taste like the Rodrigo of old. Its pop-psychology semantics are just a little too 2026: “symptoms”, "spiraling", “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep”... When you’re speaking in the language of a moody Instagram Reel, I’m just not sure I really believe the feeling that follows. The falseness here is only amplified by the two fine Broadway-via-Chappell-Roan-style cuts that surround this one, “begged” and “less”, which need no commentary from the likes of me, and which prove that Rodrigo’s songwriting standards are actually far, far higher than she always holds herself to. “expectations” is perhaps another little falter—although perhaps that’s actually part of its clever effect. In a radio interview, Rodrigo says that she and Nigro challenged themselves to write a “mantra song”: “I’m not kissing any boy that is passive” is what they came up with. And while you and me will try our best to scream-sing this one when it comes on at a gay guy’s pre-drinks, the bridge is what really gives the project away: a glitched-out spoken-word nod to Madonna’s infinitely better “Material Girl”, the song’s painfully obvious sonic model. Still, I love how “expectations” sits in the track listing as a kind of “false ending”, as though its uptempo confidence, worn like a costume but not quite embodied, resolved all the record’s prior woes. It didn’t, of course. Even though it seems to have learned something from all that suffering, Rodrigo’s final wish comes bleaker on the extraordinary closer “cigarette smoke”, whose instrumentation, tempo, and length echo “the cure”—and whose lyrics restate its devastation. “Tell me something honest / So the memories turn dark” is this album’s last statement, because heartbreak, really, isn’t a lesson—and there’s only closure in letting go. In her Zane Lowe interview, Rodrigo laughs and calls this line “so emo”—and damn right it is! Because, by its finale, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love has announced the arrival, three albums into her career, of a very brilliant stylist whose technique at last matches her huge ambition.

Good news stories (and more) for the planet Kia ora, Salient reader! Welcome to our fortnightly column on the environment, sustainable living, and the small, stubborn act of hope amongst a world on fire! Check in every second week for waste-free recipes, genuinely good news, and practical ways to lend a hand—nudging a happier, healthier earth a little closer into view. Waste-free recipe of the week: The easiest homemade muesli recipe you can find!1 big jar of oats (screw measurements)2x tbsp cinnamon or/and 2x tbsp mixed spice 1 tsp salt Handfuls of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds ½ cup brown sugar 1 cup oil 1 cup milk (of your choice) 1 cup coconut (don't bake) Heat oven to 180, oil a large tray. Stir all the dry ingredients in the tray EXCEPT for the coconut, then add the oil and the milk + mix well. Cook for roughly 50mins, (stir sometimes) until crispy brown. Add the coconut once out of the oven. Put it into a jar when it's cold! Eat for breakfast, for snacks, even have breakfast for dinner in those busy times of year. Te Aro Zero Waste Recently we had the privilege to go down to Te Aro Zero Waste and ask them some questions! This place is a treasure trove for students! So what is Te Aro Zero Waste, you may ask? Well, it's an amazing community and environmental enterprise off Tory Street, run by Sustainability Trust at 2 Forresters Lane. They have so many incredible incentives, there may not be enough room to express how tremendous they all are. First up, go and visit the second-hand shop that is open from 10am to 4pm, Wednesday to Saturday. They have amazing deals on kitchen and other home appliances, so many tech things (seriously, a cord for everything), PCs, laptops, speakers, and even a small library on environmental subjects! They are selling on TradeMe too. These guys are so much more than an op-shop: they provide repair and e-waste recycling services, you can donate your old electronic items, they host lots of interesting events, and are a key recycling drop-off centre in the CBD for all your hard-to-recycle items, like food-grade silicone and tetrapaks. Look out for their creative craft events, such as their regular Just Sew sessions or upcycling workshops. If you are a techy person (calling all Electronic, Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Mechatronic students) there is an opportunity to volunteer and help out with the testing and building usable objects out of e-waste. This is not only an amazing experience (and may look good on a CV) but you could be actively preventing things from entering the landfill. On site is also the Wellington Curtain Bank, which provides people in Wellington with made-to-measure curtains! All you need to be eligible is have someone in your house with a community services card, and it’s completely free. Their goal is to help keep our houses nice and cosy, and prevent housing-related illness. Toast Electric is also on-site, and is the only not-for-profit electricity supplier in Aotearoa. Their website states they “re-invest their profits to provide support for low-income households that are making the tough choice between heating and eating.” What a hub of cool things. So why is an organisation like Sustainability Trust, with its resource recovery centre Te Aro Zero Waste, actually needed? If you have read this far, I’m sure you will already be conscious of this. Sustainability is more than being environmentally friendly, you also need to sustain a healthy community. Supporting people who are living with low income in a way that helps the planet is really important. Connecting people through these projects is growing a community that is able to be sustainable while balancing the hard bits life throws at us. A visit to Te Aro Zero Waste is highly recommended. Go down to chat, shop, or even help out by volunteering. They love students!

Ciph’s Cabinet Bi-Weekly Game Reviews Christopher Curtis I’ve been waiting for the day I get to talk about this game. One of my biggest gripes with modern gaming culture is the tolerance towards unfinished products and reliance on patches to alter games post-release, allegedly creating a “better experience”, whatever that means. Rivals of Aether II is the sole exception. Forced to release early and to focus on competitive appeal meant I couldn’t freely recommend it, but it has long since grown past that hurdle. Now, following its biggest update yet, I have no problems saying that you NEED to check this game out. Like most (good) fighting games, a colourful cast of characters await you and your friends to duke it out with. Instead of your karate guy who shoots fireballs or a high-speed teleporting ninja, however, there’s a lightsaber-wielding panther from the future and a lucha libre ant with magnetism powers, along with many other elemental animals. I know, that sounds really strange, but it results in such a diverse roster where no two fighters play remotely the same, from how each of them move to their character-defining unique mechanic. With a small roster of 10 at launch, it was quite hard to find anyone who really clicks with you—hell, I really struggled finding my main in this game until its official 1.0 release with Forsburn, a smoke-spawning hyena—but with that number growing to 16 and more fighters to come, there’s probably at least someone you can enjoy here, likely more as you warm up to the flow of the game. I’m not usually a fan of big-body or grappler style characters in fighting games, but the aforementioned ant, La Reina, is both of those things and managed to become a favourite of mine, a testament to how solid the cast’s design is. If you’ve never played a platform fighter, like Super Smash Bros., the premise is simple: instead of a health bar to deplete, you hit your opponent to increase their damage percentage. Once it’s high enough, launch them off the stage and into the blast zones for a K.O. There’s definitely a learning curve, especially if you’re more familiar with traditional fighters; here there’s a much bigger emphasis on movement and stage control, so knowing how to use both your character’s moveset and the stage’s layout to your advantage is key. Luckily, the game’s tutorials are accessible and bite-sized, teaching you the basics fast. To be honest, trial by fire is kind of the best way to learn in a game like this, anyway. You don’t have to be a tryhard to enjoy Rivals II anymore, though. Recently, many new dedicated ‘casual’ stages with wacky layouts and devastating hazards have been added. Furthermore, the items in this game are just a joy to use; cheese that can extend your combos, the power drill for elaborate death traps, or the embodiment of chaos itself, the ‘gooplicator’. There’s immeasurable fun to be had when you just want to have a good time without the competitive pressure. Whether you’re out to prove yourself in tournament (shoutouts to the local Wellington Fighting Game Community), or simply looking for a good time with friends and flatmates, Rivals of Aether II easily ‘rivals’ its triple A competitors in both areas. With many more characters and features to come—incluing a story mode to keep building on the fascinating lore—I’m so glad I can finally recommend this game to everyone. Rivals of Aether II is available on PC. Gameplay: 10/10 Writing: 8/10 Aesthetics: 7/10

A feed for fuck-all Welcome back folks! It’s been a little while since we were last here, since I’ve had to sit down to a meal not for enjoyment or pleasure, but for work. Woe is me. For those like me who have no clue what happened last trimester, or for those new students who’ve stepped in mid-year, here’s a ranking of the places I covered in my last twelve eleven columns. This tier-list is reasonably subjective, but know that value reigns supreme. After the cost-per-bite factor, places are also ranked on flavour, comfort, and a rough idea of nutrition. At the very least, the meals that make you feel good. Everybody Eats - A safe and socially-conscious place to turn, early in the week. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ KC Cafe - One of Wellington’s best, even for those on a budget. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Little Penang - My one true love, my ride or die. The place to go for a hug on a plate. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Kera-la-carte - Can a curry be profound? Take a friend and find out. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Earl’s - They forgot to convert their prices when this New York deli moved to Pōneke. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ *Ramsey House - A homemade lunch in the living room, just down from your lecture hall. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ *Subway - The packhorse of campus sandwiches, a sub is undeniable value. ⭐⭐⭐ Lemongrass Kitchen - Nothing mindblowing, but wins by the size and value of their menu. ⭐⭐⭐ Beyond Bites - Tuck yourself away in here for an easy and comforting plate. ⭐⭐⭐ FJ Noodles and Dumplings - It’s definitely got heft, but hard to enjoy. ⭐⭐ Little Astoria - A decent portion of sub-par food, if you happen to be around on a Monday. ⭐ *Where’s Charlie? (Kelburn campus) - A golden -brown shell hiding limp lies and dissatisfaction. ⭐ * = Lunch-only City bowl What: Noodle and salad bowls Price: $10.00 - $13.00 When: 9:00am - 5:00pm, Monday - Friday Fast, fresh and no-frills, just flavour. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Of course, I’m not just going to give you a nostalgia tour of the last half-year. I’m starting this trimester off with a place I’m very glad to have discovered: City Bowl. Walking in, it feels like an outlet store of a restaurant. There’s a stack of cardboard boxes next to the counter and a handful of tables and chairs by the entrance; this isn’t a place where many people sit and enjoy the atmosphere. However, the place isn’t dreary at all: the staff, in bright green uniforms, greet everyone with enthusiasm while putting together salad bowls faster than any Subway counter. My meal was ready in the time it took me to pick two sauces and pay the $11.00 for a Classic Noodle Bowl. The Classic consists of finely sliced and grated vegetables mixed together with sauce, thick udon noodles and slices of your meat-of-choice. In my case, the beef, cooked medium and generously cut. All three of the meat options—chicken, beef, and char siu barbeque pork—looked dusty and dry under the cabinet strip-lights, but revived like appetising tardigrades under the steaming noodles and ladles of sauce. It’s hard to go wrong with these—there’s a range of sweet, herby mixes and citrus chilli numbers on soy-sauce bases that uplift the whole bowl. The Ginger Spring Onion is a personal favourite, bright-green and sharp from the blended scallions. For a quickly-hustled mix in a paper bowl, this salad was pretty good: bright and fresh and satisfying. The meat and noodles had plenty of textural bite to them, cut through by the crunch of the crisp cabbage and grated carrot. You’re getting your five-a-day here, with lettuce, bean sprouts, and edamame, too, and it’s very easy to wolf down a whole serving. Or two. Admittedly, they’re not the most dense meal and I was hankering for a bao or some spring rolls after. However, there aren’t many places left whose entire menus are under $15. That the portions are light is a small trade-off for a place that is this transparent, efficient, affordable, and tasty. From the noodles pulled fresh from the pot to the salad vegetables in big Sistema containers, City Bowl doesn’t mess around with pomp or flash. Just good food dished out rapid-fire for the white-collar offices up and down The Terrace. Go join the queue. Am I talking shit? Do you wildly disagree, or want to feed my ego by telling me I’m so right? Or have I overlooked a place so far that readers really need to know about? Send me something to chew on at: guy@salient.org.nz.

Josh Robinson Critics of the Fees Free scheme are right about one thing: the policy failed to significantly increase enrolments. But they ignore a crucial fact: the scheme was never intended to end after one year. In May, the Government announced plans to scrap the Fees Free scheme, which has allowed eligible tertiary students to complete one year of study without paying tuition fees since 2018. The announcement was met with strong opposition from student associations. In a joint statement, they argued the decision “is likely to entrench existing disparities, with disproportionate impacts for Māori and Pacific learners, disabled learners, students from low-income backgrounds, and first-in-family students.” Since then, debate has centred on whether the scheme increased enrolments and whether it represented good value for money. Salient contributor Saad Aamir described the scheme as having “failed to increase access to tertiary study for poorer New Zealanders.” Aamir argued that making the first year free did not improve university participation and was inequitable. These claims are supported by a study from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) which found the Fees Free scheme had no effect on increasing enrolment numbers. This sentiment was echoed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis, who said the scheme “never achieved its goal.” However, these claims ignore the fact that the policy was designed as the first phase of a universal system, not as a standalone intervention. The Sixth Labour Government, under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, originally planned to extend the scheme from one year of fee-free study in 2018 to two years by 2021, and three years by 2024. That meant many students completing a standard three-year undergraduate degree would have been able to do so without paying tuition fees. The stated objectives of the policy were to increase university participation (especially among under-represented groups), reduce financial barriers to entry, reduce student debt, and support workforce development by enabling more people to gain qualifications. Why was the initial rollout spread out over seven years instead of all at once? The Fees Free scheme was a radical policy for its time. National tertiary education enrolment numbers were in steep decline, and tertiary education was more expensive than ever. At full implementation, the scheme would have cost an estimated $1.2 billion per year. Finding the money to fund it all at once, rather than gradually, would have been a challenging and controversial move for then Finance Minister Grant Robertson. Then came Covid-19. Due to the fiscal challenges created by the pandemic, the Fees Free extension was paused and never revisited. Participation in tertiary education, especially among those in low-socioeconomic backgrounds, has remained an issue ever since. Yet low participation among low-income students continues to be treated as an acceptable outcome. The scheme's $350 million-a-year price tag has also been central to the debate— and that is before considering the cost of full implementation. So, was it really worth the money? The social and economic benefits of tertiary education are difficult to quantify. Research consistently shows tertiary education produces strong economic and social returns. Bachelor’s graduates earn significantly more over their lifetimes than those who enter the workforce directly after school, while higher qualification levels are associated with better health outcomes, civic engagement, and overall well-being. Tertiary education is not simply a private investment; it is a social good that benefits the wider country. These benefits can also save the government money by reducing pressure on other areas, including the health and justice systems. The evidence is clear: New Zealand will not become richer by making tertiary education accessible only to those who can already afford it. New Zealand First previously proposed a counteroffer: for every year a student stayed in New Zealand and worked after finishing their studies, one year would be deducted from their student debt. However, this policy still subscribes to the ideology of privatising a social good. In this model, the Government would use debt to pressure young people to stay in the country, rather than giving them an attractive reason to do so. It is also worth noting that NZ First leader Winston Peters attended university during the academic bursary era—from 1962 to 1992—when many students were effectively paid to study. This highlights another issue. In New Zealand, we criticise companies such as Afterpay and other “buy now, pay later” models for their often predatory approach to private debt. Yet when it comes to national student debt, which has reached $11.6 billion, we treat it as normal. Similarly, while fully subsidised primary and secondary school education is accepted as standard, tertiary education is treated as a luxury add-on to our education system. If the government decided to take away subsidies for a year of primary or secondary school, there would be civil unrest. To find a solution, we need only look overseas, where free tertiary education models are already working. Many countries of a similar economic scale to New Zealand, such as Finland, maintain heavily subsidised tertiary systems while sustaining high participation rates and skilled workforces. Fees Free was not rejected by voters, nor was it proven unworkable in practice. It was interrupted before it could achieve what it was designed to do. That distinction matters. It means the debate we are having today is not about whether free tertiary education failed, but whether New Zealand ever allowed it to succeed. Policies that are interrupted mid-design are not neutral casualties of circumstance. They are political choices about what kinds of futures are worth abandoning. The real question is whether students will accept that abandonment, or fight to finish the job.

By Will Tickner, Tam Maxwell, and Teg Ward Within the span of a week, I’ll be trying to accomplish a long-term task just to see if it’s possible, and to see what I can get out of it. Life lessons, skills, resilience training? The stimulation alone should be enough motivation. During an event last year, I had to move a big load of tables and chairs from Fairlie Terrace to the Memorial Theatre. What I thought was a ten-minute trip turned into a half-hour sweat-fest of cussing as I located ramps and working elevators. It took the removal of stair-use to realize how shit some accessibility on campus is. What exactly are the differences between able-bodied and disabled students getting around campus? I wanted to create this weekly challenge around that idea. As an able-bodied person, I couldn’t do this alone. Thankfully, I was graced with two people from the Classics department: Tam, a rollator user, and their friend Teg, a part-time cane user. To start the challenge off, I asked if Tam could come into the Salient office to discuss their thoughts on campus accessibility. An ironic event took place: Tam: Hey, Will? Will: yea Tam: I can’t use the stairs in the student union building. Will: huh Tam: Because I use a rollator. Will: what Tam: What’s the accessible way to get to the office? Will: um Turns out the accessible way we found is to take the elevator through the Student Union building to the third floor, go into the Hunter Lounge, go to the back of the bar, and use the back door. If there’s ever been any previous Salient employees who have had to deal with that nonsense, please let me know, because that cannot be the first time this has happened. After that ordeal, Tam and I came up with a simple obstacle course of locations that students can imagine themselves getting to: Cotton Plaza to Mauri Ora Student Health, then to the Von Zedlitz building, and back again… all at a regular pace. Round 1: Cotton Plaza to Mauri Ora The three of us met at Cotton Plaza and soon started our timers as we began our routes to Mauri Ora. Teg and I took similar paths, both descending the big flight of stairs down to the Student Union dungeon. However, Teg took the elevator upon reaching the Bubble. Teg has a lot more mobility than other disabled students, as for some cane users going down stairs is a lot easier than going up. But depending on how they're feeling, their mobility can change. Another ironic fact is that in their undergrad, Teg actually spent a day mapping the best routes between all their classes and timing how long it took. This information was needed so they were able to get from place to place in time, as sometimes the route they needed to take wasn’t necessarily the ‘normal’ route. It should be noted that while he does suffer from a bad knee, Teg has multiple other conditions that don’t interact with their cane, as disabilities aren’t always visible—asthma, endometriosis, and problems with body temperature regulation all limit their mobility in subtle ways, namely going uphill for any extended period of time. “I could walk up the stairs, often even without my cane… but I choose not to, because even though it may be physically possible, I’ll be miserable doing it, and I’ll be miserable for at least 15-20 minutes afterwards.” Therefore, Teg personally chose routes that had the least amount of stairs going up and physical strain. Tam, on the other hand, doesn't have the option of stairs. They had to take two elevators (the one in Mclaurin, and the Student Union) to reach their destination, coming in at just over six minutes. That’s almost twice as long as it took me. Round 2: Mauri Ora to Von Zedlitz Getting to the Von Zedlitz building already takes weird navigation, regardless of whether you’re not able-bodied. As we were starting the second leg, Tam informed me that I could get there quickly—all I had to do was go outside. I got there in a little over two minutes, as I simply walked into the parking lot and cut through to the Hunter Courtyard to cross the road. As the street entrance to Hugh MacKenzie has ZERO ramps and ONLY stairs, Tam & Teg both had to take much longer routes. Teg had to wait for two elevators, while Tam waited for three. Tam technically finished their trip before Teg, as they entered Von Zedlitz at the third floor from the Murphy Building. However, because we agreed to meet on the first floor, Tam had to take the notoriously rickety Von Zedlitz elevator to meet us at the bottom. Tam has longstanding beef with campus accessibility, and after hearing their qualms I wholeheartedly agree. They’ve badgered concerns about the inaccessible nature of campus many times to countless individuals, none of which have been taken seriously. In one instance advocating for disabled students, Tam attended a scholarship reception event where they approached the then-Vice Chancellor (good ol’ Nic Smith). They asked if he was aware of how inaccessible the university is. When he said he wasn’t, he only had the chance to listen to some of the examples Tam gave before staff pulled Nic away on other business. Even though that staff member took Tam’s contact details and was told further discussion on this issue would be organized with the VC, it never eventuated. As they are a member of staff as a tutor, Tam received email updates on the selection process for the new Vice Chancellor proceeding Nic. In some of the correspondence, they mentioned that select focus groups would be composed to provide feedback on the candidates and ensure that all the voices of the university, both staff and student, were heard during the selection process. Tam actually emailed and asked if they would consider adding some disabled voices to one of the focus groups, as a reason to ensure that the uni gets a VC who cares about disabled students and staff. The email response? Tam: “While they mentioned "exploring candidates thoughts and past experiences" on the topic in the interviews, they didn't mention anything about how this might actually go, or indicate that they have any active plans to include [disabled] voices in the consideration process, simply that it would be a great opportunity. Overall, disappointing in my view.” Round 3: Von Zedlitz to Cotton Plaza This was the most eventful leg of our challenge. I ended up not having a great idea of how to get to Cotton Plaza quickest, and took a few wrong turns in the stairwell of the Murphy building which added a chunk of time. Despite this, I was still fastest again by a full minute, as Teg came in second. Tam finished well after Teg and I, passing the finish line of Cotton Plaza to find the two of us waiting for them on our phones. Why did Tam take so long? Well, to get to their destination, Tam took one of the "accessible" lifts in the Hub. Apparently, they’re the small elevators on the bottom floor of the Hub that take excruciatingly long to raise about two metres off the ground. They’re loud, embarrassing, and you could probably walk up and down the set of seven steps next to it over twenty times. Tam may as well just have thrown themselves down the stairs and take the time to physically recover, and still make better time. It’s little instances like this where small sets of stairs set Tam back to get somewhere, as there is no clearly marked accessible route to follow. Conclusion: Being able-bodied is a much bigger privilege than you realize, as we proved that it takes a disabled student marginally longer (sometimes twice as long!) to reach a destination. However, there’s elements we could’ve changed. We didn’t conduct the test during the 10-minute gap between lectures, as if we did there would be more people to get in our way. I had also caught Tam & Teg on a fairly good day for mobility, and we could have made the trips larger to show stronger differences. While there’s a lot that could have been done differently for our challenge, the same can be said for campus accessibility. Tam & Teg both brought up points to make campus more accessible in easy ways, such as adding more automatic doors, more intuitive routes, or god-forbid a ramp at the street entrance to Hugh Mackenzie. But the big thing that was brought up was making recordings of lectures and online tutorials mandatory. Despite multiple Covid lockdowns forcing institutions to go online for accessible forms of teaching, they are no longer a requirement. As a primarily Zoom-focused tutor, Tam can vouch for them being a worthwhile tool students engage with when they can’t make it to class. Accessibility on campus isn’t a problem until it happens to you. If your bus route into the city gets cancelled, or you’re bed-ridden due to a flare-up, wouldn’t you need those lecture recordings? Better yet, what happens if you have an accident that leaves you affected? Teg says it best: “Anyone can become disabled at any time, and a lot of people just don’t realise that. My bad knee happened because I fell down some stairs in 2015, and now I’m here, and everything that can be done about it has been done, and it will never be the same again. Put the accessibility measures in place now, even if you personally do not need them, because one tiny accident that you paid no attention to at the time might have you needing them.”

CW: Violence, needles, body horror (1) You’re on Kelburn campus in the Hub. You try the doors. Locked. The glass is cold under your hand, and inside the tables are empty, chairs pushed in like everyone left in a hurry. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is dropping behind the buildings, turning the windows orange for a second before the light slips away. The wind moves through the courtyard behind you, carrying the faint sound of traffic from Salamanca Road and making the posts outside Adam Art Gallery shake. You’re alone. You look back toward the steps leading up to the second story of the library, then across toward the steps that climb toward Kirk building. The campus is empty, everyone else knew to leave before you did. If you; Head toward the library, go to (2). Call for help, go to (3). Go to your lecture theatre, go to (9). (2) There’s nothing here but the glow of the vending machines. The library is almost dark, except for the blue-white light buzzing against the walls and the dull reflection of it on the polished floor. You stand near the entrance, listening. No footsteps from the stairs. No voices from the study rooms. The second floor stretches out ahead of you in rows of empty tables and pushed-in chairs, laptops gone, books left open. Outside the windows, the last of the sun has slipped behind Kelburn, and the glass has turned black enough that you can see yourself standing there alone. Somewhere deeper in the library, something clicks. If you; Continue exploring, go to (7). Take a nap, go to (5). Buy something as a snack, go to (6). (3) Why are you yelling? There’s no one here. Go to (4). (4) You look down at your phone… It has no service. If you; Give up, go to (5). Try the Hub doors, go to (57). (5) You decide to take a power nap. Just for a few minutes. You curl up in one of the library chairs, your bag tucked under your feet, the vending machines still humming softly nearby. The darkness presses in around you, and at some point, without meaning to, you fall properly asleep. When you wake, something is nudging your shoe. For one terrible second, you think it’s a hand. Then you hear the whirr of a vacuum cleaner and open your eyes to see a cleaner standing over you, looking more annoyed than surprised. Pale morning light is coming through the windows. The library is normal again. You survived. The end. (6) You tap your card against the machine. Nothing happens. You tap it again, harder this time, and the vending machine gives a low mechanical clunk. For a second, it just hums there in the dark, the rows of white Monster Energy and blue Powerade glowing behind the glass. Then it wobbles. Once. Twice. Before you can step back, the whole machine tips forward with a horrible metal groan. The last thing you see is your own reflection in the glass, wide-eyed and lit up by the vending machine glow. Then it falls on you. You die. The end. (7) What’s better than an empty library? You have the whole Green Zone to yourself, so you start with the seat closest to the window, then the one beside it, then the one across from that. Some chairs are too hard. Some are too close to the desks. After two hours, the sky outside has gone completely dark, your bag is still sitting where you left it, and you have tried every single seat in the Green Zone. None of them feel right. Now what? If you; Try the science labs, go to (8). Go to the lecture theatres, go to (9). (8) You knew that science degree would pay off, didn’t you? You wander over to the Alan MacDiarmid buildings to find something curious. The lights are still on in a few of the labs, but the corridors are empty. There are posters about research projects you don’t understand properly, and locked doors with little windows that only show benches, stools, and shapes covered in blue plastic. You stop outside the elevator just as it gives a small ding. The doors slide open. No one is inside. The button for downstairs is already lit. It’s going down. If you; Jump in the elevator, go to (10). Ignore the elevator, go to (19). (9) You go to your favourite lecture theatre. It feels strange being there without anyone else, with all the seats empty and the projector off and the whiteboard still covered in half-rubbed-out notes from some class earlier in the day. You’re about to leave when you hear something from behind the podium. A small scuffling sound, then a pause, then another one, like something is trying very hard not to be noticed. If you; Run, go to (19). Investigate, go to (45). (10) The elevator is going down, go to (11). (11) And down… go to (12). (12) And down… go to (13). (13) Until, eventually… go to (14). (14) It stops. Go to (15). (15) This is a new part of the campus. White walled and no windows. Are you under Kelburn Parade? You walk down the white walled corridor… go to (16). (16) You’re at a fork in the road; there’s a light on in the distance, and an open door to your left. If you; Go to the light, go to (17). Go to the open door, go to (18). (17) You follow the corridor, and the light, until eventually you’re in a massive biology lab for postgraduate students. The room is bigger than you expected, with long black benches, high stools, sinks, glass cabinets, and labels taped onto almost every drawer. The light is coming from a single desk lamp left on near the back, shining over a pile of papers, a half-open notebook, and a tray of small capped tubes. Someone has left a lab coat hanging over the chair, one sleeve touching the floor. You step closer and see writing on the notebook, rushed and uneven, like whoever wrote it was running out of time. If you; Leave, go to (19). Continue to explore, go to (20). (18) You go through the door. You don’t know what you’re seeing. The floor is smeared with blood, not in one clean patch, but dragged in lines across the tiles like something was pulled through it. A stack of mice cages has been knocked over near the bench, bedding spilling out in clumps, little metal lids bent sideways. Empty syringes are scattered through it all, some cracked, some still rolling slightly when your shoe bumps the floor. You go closer and crouch down beside one of them. There’s a sticker wrapped around the barrel. It says “biohazard.” If you; Pick it up, go to (29). Keep looking, go to (36). (19) Nope. This is officially too creepy. You speed walk to your comfort spot: the tuatara enclosure. You tell yourself you’ll be fine when you get there. The tuatara are always there, sitting under the heat lamp, barely moving. You turn the corner and stop. The glass at the front is still intact, but the small door at the back of the enclosure has been pulled clean off its hinges. One hinge is still screwed into the frame, bent sideways. The other is lying on the floor amongst the plants. The heat lamps are still on. The rocks are empty. Oh, no. Go to (21). (21) Where you were supposed to find peace at the tuatara enclosure is the opposite. There’s something crouched inside it, too big to be a mouse and too wrong to be a person. Its back is hunched under the heat lamp, skin patchy with grey fur, one clawed hand pressed into the dirt to hold itself up. For a second you don’t understand what it’s doing. Then it turns its head, and you see Spike hanging from its mouth. You scream as it grips him with both hands and rips his head off. Go to (22). (22) It looks up as you scream. For half a second, it just stares at you, Spike still hanging from one hand, its mouth dark and wet under the heat lamp. Then it drops him and charges at the glass wall of the enclosure. Its shoulder hits first. The glass bows, cracks, then shatters outward. You throw your arms over your face, but the fragments hit you anyway, slicing into your hands, your cheek, the side of your neck. When you look again, the creature is climbing through the broken frame. If you; Run, go to (23), Fight, go to (24). (24) You attempt to fight the creature, which turns out to be a terrible idea almost immediately. It is too strong. You manage to grab one of its arms, but it twists out of your hand and slams you back against the enclosure frame. Glass crunches under your shoes. Its teeth sink into your neck, and the last thing you think about is how you could have avoided all of this if you’d just attended your lecture online. You die. The end. (23) You turn around and boost it toward the nearest fire exit. You slam both hands into the green emergency button. Nothing. You press it again, then hold it down until your thumb hurts, but the door stays locked. The creature is still behind you, dragging itself out of the broken enclosure, glass scraping under its hands. You shove your shoulder into the fire exit, then kick the bottom of it, but it barely moves. Through the narrow window in the door, you see the outside path, the grey light, and a janitor pushing a yellow cleaning trolley past like this is a completely normal day. If you; Yell for help, go to (25). Try another exit, go to (26). (25) You yell for help, banging one hand against the narrow window in the fire exit. The janitor looks over. For a second, they just stand there beside the yellow trolley. Then they drop the mop handle, and you see the black gloves, the mask hanging under their chin, and the metal canister strapped across their back. They’re not a janitor after all. They’re pest control. They look past you, through the glass, at the creature pulling itself down the corridor. Then they charge towards you. Go to (27). (26) You run over and try another exit. Also locked. The whole place is on lockdown. You bang on the glass windows, yelling for help, but no one outside turns around. Behind you, the mouse-human hybrid drags itself closer, one hand scraping along the floor, its breathing wet and uneven. The last thing you see is its eyes. That’s when you realise what’s been wrong about them this whole time. They’re familiar. Around its neck, half-buried in fur, is a torn VUWSA lanyard. The name card swings forward. Matthew Tucker. VUWSA CEO. He kills you. You die. The end. (27) Just as they approach the glass, you feel a stabbing sensation in your arm. You look down and see teeth sunk into your sleeve. The rat-human hybrid has caught up with you. You yank your arm back, but it has already bitten through the fabric, leaving a dark, wet mark spreading near your elbow. The pest control officer sees it. They stop with one hand halfway to the door. You bang on the glass, yelling for help, but they slowly back away, eyes fixed on your arm, and pull out a radio. Go to (28). (28) The next thing you know, you’re waking up in a lab. The walls are plain white, the lights are too bright, and everything smells like disinfectant. Your head feels heavy. Your mouth is dry. Did someone tranquilise you? You try to sit up, but straps cut across your chest, wrists, and ankles, holding you flat against a bed with no blanket. Two doctors stand behind a sheet of glass, talking to you through a speaker. They explain that you’re now “contaminated.” There is no cure. You look down at your bitten arm. The skin around it is grey, and a thick patch of mouse hair has spread from your wrist to your elbow. You’re a science experiment gone wrong. The end. (29) What kind of idiot picks up a dirty syringe? You prick yourself with it, because of course you do. If you; Do first aid, go to (30), Continue exploring the lab, go to (36). (30) You look for a kit and then wipe your cut with an antiseptic wipe. It hurts. If you; Continue exploring, go to (31). put even more antiseptic on it, go to (32). (31) You get deeper and deeper into the labs. The doors all look the same after a while, with swipe-card panels, warning stickers, and tiny windows showing benches covered in equipment you don’t want to touch. At the very final door, you find a student sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. She’s crying into the sleeve of her lab coat, and there are red marks around her eyes like she’s been doing it for hours. When she sees you, she shakes her head before you can say anything. She tells you this is all her fault. She wanted a scholarship. She thought one successful experiment would fix everything. Instead, she made mice mutants. If you; Bite her, go to (33). Comfort her, go to (34). (32) You dump so much antiseptic on it the room stinks of it and it overwhelms you. You pass out… Go to (35). (33) Ties only dissolvable by the annihilation of one of us and all that. Your instincts take over before your brain catches up, and you bite her. Hard. For one second, both of you freeze, staring at the mark in her arm like neither of you can believe that just happened. Then her hand closes around a hammer you somehow did not see before, half-hidden beside the lab bench. She swings it at you. The first hit lands on your shoulder, then another catches the side of your head. You’re so caught off guard you don’t defend yourself. You just stand there while she beats you with it. You die. The end. (34) You tell her it will be okay, which feels like a stupid thing to say in a lab full of overturned equipment and mutant mice, but she looks like she needs to hear it. She wipes her face with her sleeve and asks if you’ve been infected. You look down at your arm, at the bite mark under your torn sleeve, and say yes. She goes very still. For a moment you think she’s going to run, or scream, or pick up something heavy from the bench. Instead, she nods once, like she’s made a decision. She says she’s going to protect you. Go to (28). (35) When you wake up you are in a white walled room. There’s a doctor staring at you. You can’t remember the past day. She tells you there was a gas leak on campus, but you’re okay. After observation, you can go home. You believe her. You survive. (36) You notice something on the bench of the room. It’s a log book. You open it up. Most of the pages are filled with experiment data: dates, cage numbers, sample notes, tiny graphs drawn in pen. Someone has been investigating cloning mice. Only, the more you read, the less it looks like cloning. There are repeated references to “human compatibility,” “behavioural transfer,” and “failed integration.” From these logs, it looks like they were trying to splice mice and human DNA.… Go to (37). (37) You have a bad feeling about all this and decide it’s time to leave the labs. Go to (38). (38) You find the elevator and go up. Go to (39). (39) And up… Go to (40). (40) And up… Go to (41). (41) And up… Go to (42). (42) You’re back wandering the campus. Where do you go now? If you; Go to the tuatara enclosure to check on Spike, Shorty and Hazel, go to (21). If you go to a fire exit, go to (43). (43) This has been too much for you. You want your flatmates to get Uber Eats for dinner. You go to the fire exit and push it open, an alarm goes off and you don’t care. In the distance you see a van pull up with “Pest Control.” You ignore it. Go to (44). (44) You make it back to your flat safe and sound with a story your flatmates don’t believe. You survived. The end. (45) Peering around the podium, you see your favourite lecturer. For a moment, you almost say their name, because it’s definitely them: same haircut, same rainbow lanyard. Only, some things are wrong. They’re hunched over, breathing through their mouth, with their lecture notes crushed under one hand. Their sleeves have been pushed up to the elbows, and there’s fur there. Not a lot at first, just enough that your brain tries to make it into shadow. Then they turn their head, and you see it covering their arms, their cheeks, and the side of their face. If you; Run, go to (19). Get closer, go to (46). (46) Surely HR would have something to say if they were going to hurt you… right? You go up to them, keeping one hand on the edge of the podium, and reach out for their shoulder. For one second, they don’t move. Then your fingers touch their jacket, and their head snaps around. Their eyes are bright red. Their teeth have grown past their lips, too long to fit properly in their mouth. Before you can step back, they grab your wrist and bite into your arm. If you; Run, go to (47). Fight back, go to (24). (47) You run and run until you find an empty lecture theater. If you; Keep going, go to (48). Hide inside, go to (49). (48) Something about that lecture theatre feels off. Or maybe it was the fact you got attacked in a different one. You keep running until you bump into someone. A man in a Pest Control suit. He asks if you’ve been bitten. If you; Lie, go to (50). Tell the truth, go to (28). (49) You hide in the theater and smell… something! It is a piece of cheese left behind. Do you eat it? If yes, go to (56). If no, go to (55). (50) You say no. He looks at you suspiciously but decides to believe you. Go to (52). (52) You walk with him until you reach the fire exit. He keeps checking over his shoulder, one hand on the strap of the canister across his back, and you start to think maybe he knows more than he’s saying. Then something drops from the stairwell above you. You scream. It isn’t a lecturer. It looks like some sort of rat-human mutant, all bent limbs, grey fur, and hands that hit the floor before its feet do. The pest control man reaches for something at his belt, but the creature gets to him first. It pulls him down by the legs, and you watch him disappear under it, yelling for help. If you; Help him, go to (53). Ignore him, go to (54). (53) You try to help, which is noble, but not especially useful. You grab the pest control man by the arm and pull as hard as you can, but the rat mutant turns on you too. It moves fast, and suddenly its hands are on you, dragging you down onto the floor beside him. You kick, yell, and try to crawl backwards, but it’s already too late. You are ripped to pieces. You die. The end. (54) You watch as he is killed. There isn’t much you can do except press yourself against the fire exit and try not to move. When it’s over, the rat mutant turns to you. Then another shape appears at the top of the stairs, and another behind the broken door. They come close enough that you can feel their breath on your hands. They sniff you. Your bite throbs under your sleeve. One of them tilts its head, then gestures down the corridor for you to follow. You survive. You are one of the rats now. (56) You eat the cheese… then suddenly get very sleepy. Are there sedatives in it? Go to (28). (55) You ignore the cheese, curl up in a corner and hide. Go to (56). (56) It is morning, and your arm is incredibly itchy from the bite. You pull your sleeve down over it and sneak out of the university just as the lecturers start coming in for a normal day, carrying keep cups and laptop bags. The campus is squeaky clean. No broken glass. No blood. No scratch marks on the floors. It’s like nothing happened all night. No one stops you. No one even looks at you properly. Maybe last night was all just a dream? When you get home, you go straight to the bathroom and look in the mirror. You have whiskers. Your eyes are red. You survived, but at what cost? (57) The Hub doors are locked but you can see a figure outside. If you; Call out, go to (58). Turn around, go to (19). (58) You call out but he doesn't hear you. You decide to try the biology labs, go to (8).

Easy Beginnings? Entitled and Sordid: Global Finance: Word Fill: Connections Answers: First Connection Restrain/secure: Yoke, Bind, Lash, Pad Second Connection Seeds/cores/inner parts: Kernel, Pit, Bulb, Clove Third Connection Car models: Civic, Focus, Camry, Accord Fourth Connection Places/stands where someone speaks to an audience: Altar, Pulpit, Lectern, Stage