Mixed member proportional (MMP)—a parliamentary system in which seats are allocated according to the total number of votes each political party receives—came about in New Zealand after a referendum to change the voting system in 1993. The referendum was in response to the huge dissatisfaction with the then-voting system, First Past the Post (FPP). Under FPP, governments were elected by a minority of voters and could easily pass unpopular legislation. Many votes were wasted, and elections were normally decided by a small number of “swing seats”. This was highlighted in consecutive elections throughout the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. The change to MMP has meant a fairer democratic political system that ensures your vote counts wherever you live in New Zealand.

Currently under MMP everybody’s party vote has equal weight in the makeup of Parliament. It means that parties that have support spread across the country rather than in one electorate can have this overall support reflected in parliament. Under the old FPP system voters only got an electorate vote—not a party vote—so if you were a Labour voter in a safe National seat or vice versa there was little chance your vote would make a difference. Under MMP, your Party vote counts no matter where you live and you still get an electorate vote to choose the local representative you believe represents your local community.

Furthermore MMP is a proportional system which means that the makeup of Parliament mirrors how the population voted in the election. This is probably the most important characteristic of the system—it means that the number of seats that parties get in Parliament reflects the share of the party vote they receive. The math is simple, if a party gets 15 per cent of the party vote they get 15 per cent of the seats in Parliament. Other systems such as First Past the Post or ‘Supplementary Member’ (SM) do not deliver a proportional outcome and tend to deliver overwhelmingly to incumbent parties rather than a Parliament that reflects the true opinions of voters.

MMP means that Parliament is more diverse and so are our Governments. Major established parties are required to work with other parties to pass legislation, a process which leads to a wider range of views being considered. It means that law making is more cooperative and more considered. Due to such changes MMP has ensured governments can no longer ram through deeply unpopular legislation at will, as was common under FPP in the 80s and 90s—they are required to discuss, cooperate and make a clear case for change.
MMP means that Parliament looks a lot more like modern New Zealand and less like olde England. This has been demonstrated by an increased diversity of ethnicity, gender and political perspectives in our Parliament. Such diversity in our Parliament better reflects New Zealand and means that more groups get a voice at the decision making table. Electoral system research tells us that a switch back to a non-proportional system such as FPP or SM would make such diversity more difficult to achieve and sustain. One clear advantage of MMP is that it allows MPs to represent constituencies other than geographical electorates. In our current Parliament we have MPs that are able to act as representatives of the GLBT community and our younger MPs often choose to advocate on youth issues. MMP allows for representation that better reflects society.

On 26 November this year you will get to vote in the referendum to decide whether or not MMP stays. Furthermore, if a majority of voters elect to keep MMP in the referrendum MMP will be independently reviewed and recommendations for any amendments will be considered. This means a vote for MMP is not only a vote to ensure we continue to have a more democratic Parliament—it will also be a vote to make MMP even better.

So here it is. The final issue of Salient ‘11. To mark the occasion, we have increased the pages, and made the paper worse. We like to think that we’re expressing a moral about clouds and silver linings: you get more Salient, but on inferior paper. But really, newsprint was the only way we could afford to bring you all 72 content-packed pages of this, our Summer Reader—a handy chunk of culture to get you through the coming four-and-a-half-month Salient void.

We don’t expect you, our dear readers, to feel as sentimental about the end of this era as we do, but it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the past year. We took over as co-editors of this fine rag on 1 February. Now, over eight months later, exhausted and unwashed, we pause to reflect on our life choices.

How would our 2011 have been different had we not taken on this job? Eight months is a long time. In eight months, Uther could have taken in all existing Doctor Who media—and still he would have been really disappointed by how fucking obvious every reveal in The Wedding of River Song was. If she wasn’t on at least two forms of contraception at any given moment, Elle could (almost) have had a baby. Would these have been more worthwhile uses of our time? Would we have had more sleep, more money, more of a social life?

In all honesty, Uther and Elle have had a baby… he’s called Giancarlo Riccardo Salizzo. Not really.* But editing Salient is much like being a parent. The frustration, the stress. The sleepless nights. The horse semen. The takeaways. The alienation of our friends. The dissolution of our social lives. The listening to ‘Like a G6’ on repeat. The only difference is that, had she been pregnant, Elle wouldn’t have drunk so much… right?

Salient has been our child for the best part of the year. The great thing is, now we get to chuck him into the unexpecting arms of Allie Emaneas and strut into the distance without a backward glance. This isn’t intended to be seen as a whine about how difficult our job has been—more a commentary on the commitment that is coming to an end and the lessons we’ve learned in the hotseat—which is to say, a lot.

We have learned that people by and large refuse to abide by the adage ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’. We have learned that sometimes people are happy to do the most tedious of tasks for no other reason than to help a friend out. We have learned that the most economical time to drink at The Hunter Lounge is between 5pm and 7pm, when Castlepoint is on the cheap.

For all the sleeplessness and human shit, we have had a great year. We surpassed 2000 Likes on Facebook. We won the only ASPA award we cared about (best cartoonist for Dinocop). We strengthened ties between Salient and VUWSA and the University. Faces to Deface made an appearance in nexus as ‘Mugs to Meddle With’. We finally caught on to Issuu. We covered protests, programme cuts, change proposals, VSM. We scooped Stuff.co.nz on the fact that Garth McVicar had not in fact written his own book. We had mainstream media outlets hanging on our every YouTube upload. We remixed a VUWSA candidate’s video rant in a dubstep hit. We revitalised SalientTV with hilarious results. We published Dinocop, the finest piece of narrative fiction since Ulysses. We took on Werner Erhard and Landmark Education and… lost. We live-Tweeted the shit out of #everything.

Most of our successes would not have been possible were it not for the wonderful, dedicated team of people we have surrounding us. To list every person who has made this year’s Salient possible would make these pages little more than a six-point text wall of names, so take it that if you’ve seen someone’s work printed in the magazine this year, chances are that they’re a good cunt.

There is, of course, one person without whom this magazine would literally not have come out each Monday. Designer Dan—you have been an island of calm in a turbulent ocean of hysteria. For as much as we whine about how stressed and busy we are, your job is considerably more demanding than ours, but you haven’t let on once. You took our ideas, filtered out the shit, and turned out a good-looking mag every week without fail. And for that, what’s left of our sanity thanks you.

Also worth a shout out are the people who contributed to Salient for the first time this year. Thanks for getting on board, and thanks for listening to our feedback: the most rewarding part of our job this year has been seeing you grow. Like flowers. You’ve all come a long way, and we urge you to continue contributing to this organ of student opinion. You carry the bright distant future fireworks in your eyes.

Oh, and Asher and Ollie—you might find it harder to make a baby, but best of luck. We’re obviously going to be a hard act to follow, but you’ll do fine. Just never cut letters to anything less than two pages and don’t publish comics that don’t have jokes. Because, let us tell ya, our readers? They like writing letters about how angry non-comedic comics make them.

Now. Go. Have a summer. But not before you catch up on eleven weeks’ worth of learning in time for exams.

When we edit we do it right (gettin’ slizzard),

Uther Dean (the Mark) & Elle Hunt (the Jezza)

*It’s called Stella Blake-Killer.

The Muldoon era provoked withering confidence in the New Zealand Government, and led the Labour Party to campaign in both 1981 and 1984 on a commitment to review our electoral system. Winning in 1984, the Fourth Labour Government kept their election promise, and set up a Royal Commission on the Electoral System in early 1985.

The Royal Commission recommended New Zealand switch to the German-style MMP system. However, despite remaining at the forefront of subsequent election campaigns, little action was taken on the recommendation. By the early 1990s when the National Government finally agreed to hold an indicative referendum, the public had endured ‘elective dictatorship’ not only under both Muldoon and the blitzkrieg structural adjustments of the Fourth Labour Government, but also under the Bolger administration, whose first term was characterised by a raft of broken election promises.

While only 55 per cent of voters took part in this first indicative referendum, 85 per cent of those voted for change, with MMP emerging as the preferred system. Labour leader Mike Moore commented at the time: “The people didn’t speak on Saturday. They screamed.”

The second, binding referendum was held in conjunction with the 1993 general election, and following a bitter campaign, the election saw an 85 per cent turnout, with MMP narrowly emerging as the favoured system for future elections.

Despite the ‘politics-free zone’ mandated by the Rugby World Cup, the lead-up to the November 26 referendum is likely to be characterized by an equally bitter campaign.
The arguments for and against MMP were fleshed out in the previous issue of Salient. However, the referendum asks two questions of voters and while last week’s discussion might help you to determine whether you think we should retain MMP or not, the second question offers four alternatives to choose between whether or not you think MMP should be replaced.

First Past The Post

Under FPP, voters choose only between candidates for their own electorate. The benefit of this is that all MPs are directly accountable to a geographic community, and represent their interests in Parliament.
Third parties, who enjoy even distribution of support across geographical constituencies, but lack majority support in any particular electorate are thus under-represented. This was clearly evident in the 1981 election where the Social Credit Party won over 20 per cent of the popular vote, but only saw a 2.2 per cent share of the seats in Parliament.
Moreover, because candidates are elected by a plurality, this can lead to discrepancies in resulting representation from the major parties. Indeed, again in 1981 the National Party won the election having been rewarded with 51.1 percent of the seats in Parliament, for 38.8 percent of the vote, while the Labour Party who had received over four thousand more votes than National, was disproportionately awarded only 46.7 per cent of the seats.

Thus, while the FPP system makes for strong and efficient government in that a single party usually has majority control of Parliament, the legitimacy of the government is undermined as the ruling party may only enjoy minority support. More concerning is an electoral system that results in majority Government under the Westminster model’s fusion of the executive and the legislature. With no effective checks on executive power, this led to a situation whereby Muldoon recognized he could dream up a policy in the morning, draw it up in the afternoon, and have it passed into law that evening. A return to FPP with no alternative checks and balances would see the same result.

Finally, FPP leads to seriously disproportionate representation from a demographic standpoint. As Dr Jon Johansson points out, since 1996 MMP has indisputably led to a far more representative Parliament. “In our last FPP parliament only seven of its members were Maori and some 22 per cent females. After the 2008 election 14.75 per cent of parliament’s members are Maori, and women, for the second consecutive election, represent 32 per cent of House members—not a perfect fit with our demographics, but considerable progress.”

Preferential Voting

Preferential voting (PV), otherwise known as the Alternative-Vote (AV), is the system currently used to elect the Australia House of Representatives. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, rather than just voting for one. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least number of first preferences is eliminated, and the votes for that candidate are redistributed according to the voter’s second preference, until one candidate emerges with a majority.

The system is seen as fairer than the FPP system, because even though Parliament is still elected wholly via constituencies, the issue around wasted votes is largely rectified. However, while somewhat ameliorating the level of distortion that sees a party awarded a disproportionate number of seats in Parliament relative to their share of the popular vote under the FPP system, under PV this would endure, albeit to a lesser degree. Of course, the focus solely on electorate representation that would mean that minor party representation would be minimal. For example, despite currently being the third-largest party in Parliament, The Greens as they stand would fail to gain any representation under PV.

Supplementary Member

Supplementary Member (SM) is a semi-proportional system. The system works much the same way as MMP, but with significantly less proportionate results. Ninety seats are contestable via single member constituencies as in FPP, and the remaining thirty would be elected via party lists.

Professors Stephen Levine and Nigel Roberts have analysed election data, and have determined that based on the last five elections, SM would have see a disproportionality of 9.54 per cent. This figure is much closer to the 13.56 per cent that would have resulted under FPP than it is to the very proportional MMP system, which has a disproportionality index of only 2.98 per cent across those elections. Thus, despite being marketed as a middle-ground system, the disproportionality of SM puts it much closer to the majoritarian FPP system.

The key problem with the system, is that despite retaining a level of proportionality, the overwhelming electorate-focus of SM is likely to sideline most minor parties, running the risk of seeing a single-party majority, or a solitary minor party that wags the dog to a far greater extent than any of the current minor parties do.

Single Transferable Vote

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) offers the best alternative to MMP in terms of proportionality, although it can still only be defined as semi-proportional. Under STV, a candidate must achieve an established quota of votes to be elected. Candidates are eliminated sequentially and their votes are transferred to other candidates, with the candidate eliminated at each stage generally being the one with the fewest current votes.

While the STV system does see minor party representation, it’s preferential nature means it remains less proportional than MMP. Furthermore, under STV, each electorate has more than one MP. A key flaw in this is that the system sees candidates from the same party competing for votes, and as such, personal interests can undermine the stability and cohesion of political parties. Nevertheless, STV is the most preferable option after MMP, in terms of retaining a check on executive power.

Strategy in 2011

It’s should be obvious by now that I am a staunch advocate for retaining MMP, and for those of us committed to MMP, it is important to consider a strategic vote in the referendum.

At present, opposition to MMP is split into two camps: older voters who reminisce over the ‘good old days’ of FPP, and those who champion SM. Those who vote to retain MMP would be best served by a vote for STV out of the four alternatives. With opinion split between FPP and SM among those voting for change, even if change is narrowly favoured, if all those who support MMP choose STV, then that option could potentially beat out the far less proportional FPP and SM options. Therefore, in a second binding referendum where MMP was pitted against STV, it would at least be a proportional system versus a (slightly less) proportional system, meaning that the benefits of MMP would not be lost with change. Moreover, if STV was the alternative, the concerns of the anti-MMP crowd wouldn’t be addressed anyway, and their campaign would likely wither.

Whether or not your support MMP or one of the alternative options, the referendum on the electoral system is the most important decision New Zealanders have faced in 18 years. Even if you’re entirely ambivalent toward the General Election result, which already seems a foregone conclusion, every eligible student on this campus should research the electoral system options, make a decision and vote in 2011 referendum.

I hope you have all been looking after yourselves through this full-on time!

This last half of the trimester has flown by and it seems bizarre that the end of 2011 is fast approaching.

This has been an interesting year at VUWSA, I loved having the opportunity to represent students and to be part of something so important. VSM is going to pose many issues for VUWSA next year and it makes me sad that after all the hard work of our executive and those before us, many of the valuable services are at risk. VUWSA will be in fantastic hands next year with the delightful Bridie Hood as President. She has the skills, passion and drive that will ensure that students aren’t disadvantaged by VSM. If you want strong representation, student welfare services and a social atmosphere on campus next year, then I urge all of you that are enrolling to sign up to VUWSA and to encourage your friends to do the same.

I am both excited to be finishing my degree this trimester and joining the big bad world of full-time employment, and sad that I will be leaving Vic. I hope that all of the students finishing this year are getting super excited for graduating and will be getting ready to start another adventure, be it work, travel or further study. Whatever you are choosing to do I wish you all the very best!
Yay future!
Jen

ADAM GOODALL

5= Submarine (Richard Ayoade); Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh)
4. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
3. The Forgiveness of Blood (Joshua Marston)
2. Rango (Gore Verbinski)
1. I Saw the Devil (Kim Ji-woon)
Horrifically violent and relentlessly stylish, Kim Ji-woon’s big farewell to South Korea (for now) is a visceral journey into the darkest and stormiest night ever put to film. Powerhouse performances from Lee Byung-hun and Choi Min-sik bring an ebbing humanity to the grotesquely beautiful production design and the ruthless, ever-escalating story.

JOHNNY CRAWFORD

5. And Everything is Going Fine (Steven Soderbergh)
4. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
3. Rubber (Quentin Dupieux)
2. Medianeras (Gustavo Taretto)
1. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)
If Kubrick had decided to use 18th Century dioramas instead of paintings as the inspiration for Barry Lyndon’s cinematography then he would have ended up with something similar to Mysteries of Lisbon. Ballsy, methodical and innovatively framed camerawork contributes to the most sumptuous, compelling and self-aware five-hour period piece ever.

JUDAH FINNIGAN

5. I Saw the Devil (Kim Ji-woon)
4. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
3. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
2. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)
1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
A movie to polarise audiences—probably because it’s hard to define as a ‘movie’ in the traditional sense— The Tree of Life is more a meditation of ideas, set to gorgeous spells of sight and sound and the most deeply personal and profound experience I have had all year.

GERALD LEE

5. X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn)
4. True Grit (Joel & Ethan Coen)
3. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
2. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
1. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)
Black Swan is quite simply a visceral tour de force, complemented by a stunning performance by Natalie Portman. Darren Aronofsky does not intend to merely please or comfort his audience; instead he astounds them with an unsettling waking nightmare that forms the most truly cinematic film of this year. 

THOMAS COUGHLAN

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (David Yates)
4. The Future (Miranda July)
3. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
2. Love Story (Florian Habicht)
1. The Lion King 3D (Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff)
Asante Sana! Squash banana! We we nuga! Mi mi apana—It means you are a baboon and I’m not!

JANE KING

5. Rango (Gore Verbinski)
4. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
3. Hanna (Joe Wright)
2. Gantz (Shinsuke Sato)
1. Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi)
If you appreciate earnest escapism and detailed antique animation, this is for you. Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and produced by Japan’s pre-eminent Studio Ghibli, the film is beautifully drawn and an easy favourite for the year. Arrietty is based on Mary Norton’s 1950s Borrowers novels and touches upon important environmental issues while depicting a true fairytale. Arrietty offers all that we’ve come to expect of a Ghibli film—magic, awe, escapism and beauty.

On 2 September the Supreme Court announced their decision in Hamed v R. Appearing before the Court were members of the Tuhoe ‘terrorist’ cells that had been training in the Ureweras. They had been arrested and charged with firearms offences after earlier charges of terrorist activity under the Terrorism Suppression Act had been dropped.
At issue was whether secretly filmed evidence by the police was admissible. It is a fundamental rule of our criminal justice system that the evidence used to convict someone has to be properly obtained. The police cannot obtain evidence contrary to law. For the public to have any confidence in the performance of the police, evidence must be gathered properly.

In Hamed the appellants claimed that the video evidence used against them was obtained by the police illegally as their search warrants did not give them the power to covertly film the group’s actions. The Supreme Court’s decision is lengthy, and true to form every Judge had their own drum to beat. However the result was that at least in relation to the more minor offences, the police had acted unlawfully. As a consequence the evidence could not be admitted at trial.

Up to this point the Rule of Law was clearly being followed. The Police, as agents of the Crown, had acted outside of the legal authority that Parliament had given them, and the Courts had rightly slapped them down. This was the Rule of Law in action, performing as a check on the unfettered power of the State.

However, it was what the Government did next that raised the hackles of many. The result of the case threw doubt on similar video evidence being used in other trials. Embarrassingly, even though the police knew what they were doing was illegal, they had done it anyway. Many cases (most probably serious drugs trials) relied on illegal evidence. The Crown needed a solution, and fast.

On 27 September the Government introduced the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill and announced that it would be passed under urgency. It’s often said that “haste is the enemy of good law making “, and this time it was certainly true. The bill was a constitutional travesty. There were many problems—as academics Dean Knight from Victoria and Andrew Geddis from Otago quickly pointed out—but the biggest outrage was the bill’s attempt to retrospectively validate the actions of the police.
It is a fundamental feature of the Rule of Law that the Government should never reach back in time and punish us for things that were not originally illegal. What the bill was attempting to do was a variant of this. By reaching back in time and approving of police conduct that was not originally lawful, the Government was acting contrary to the Rule of Law. They were also handing the police a free pass, trampling on the rights of defendants in the process.

However, the Government was not expecting what was to happen over the next three days. Every political party (except National) panned the bill, demanding that it go to Select Committee. Realising they didn’t have the numbers, National relented. In the space of 24 hours, the Select Committee received over 438 submissions on the bill. All of them, bar one, were opposed. Interestingly, many submissions came from law students, aghast at the Government’s attempt to change the law so arrogantly. As a consequence of these submissions and changes suggested by the Labour Party, the bill was significantly watered down and no longer breaches the Rule of Law as egregiously.

The controversy over the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill tells us something interesting. On the one hand it demonstrates the danger of government when it does not abide by our fundamental constitutional principles. But on the other it also demonstrates the strength of our political constitution. New Zealand’s constitution is unwritten; this means it is flexible but it is also more delicate. Checks on the power of government rely on the constant activism of impassioned individuals.

This is my last week at law school after nearly six years of study. In all honesty I leave with a heavy heart. But I go buoyed by the fact that as this Bill demonstrates, law school is a place that creates citizens who care deeply about their constitution, their government and their country. And in a society where the Rule of Law is so fragile, I can’t think of anything more valuable.

More to the point, you’ve probably already judged me based upon that meagre selection of things, and (disregarding the fact I’m writing Bent) your ‘gaydar’ might be beeping to hell and back. How many straight dudes own a Justin Bieber biography? How many love Beyoncé enough to add the accent to the ‘e’? How many manage to fit the word ‘Beyoncé’ four times total into the first two paragraphs of any given column? To quote a New Zealand hip-hop great: not many, if any.

Ignore, for the moment, my predilection for referencing Scribe, and my embracing of what are probably the less refined elements of camp, and you’ll see this whole thing was just an awkward segue into Bent’s final, random romp of the year: gaydars (vaguely).

A portmanteau of “gay” and “radar”, for those not in the know, ‘gaydar’ is the ability of people to assess the sexual orientations of others. The assessments are based upon non-verbal clues, including oft-stereotypical tastes, styles, social behaviours and mannerisms. But, as explained by hilarious homo Hannah Hart, of YouTube’s My Drunk Kitchen webseries, things are becoming less black-and-white: “with the advent of hipsters, us homos are in constant states of camouflage … I can just never tell anymore, and probably never again.”

Indeed, we’re continually seeing what were previously telltale signs of queerdom converting suddenly into mainstream fashion. Dudes are shamelessly wearing loafers sans-socks. Radical undercuts abound. Girls are shaving the sides of their heads and piercing their tongues ad nauseam. Frankly, all this hoohah is causing confusion for some still reliant on their gaydars in the proverbial playing field.

But I can’t have my cake and eat it too. It’s excellent that we’re progressing towards a society where people nonchalantly push the envelopes of gender and sexual expression, entirely without concern for their genders or sexualities. We’re becoming less prejudiced, as a big, swirling mass of people, and even if hipsters are fucking with my gaydar, I shan’t complain.

I take comfort knowing that I’ve been lucky enough to grow up in the 1990s. Previous generations of queers were oppressed for merely expressing the fact that they were up for a bit of same-sex coitus—something as simple as an earring in the left or right ear, or a handkerchief in the back pocket. A secret fashion fuck-me code. Gaydars, I suppose, come from a place of necessity in the past. But are they redundant now?

Well, stereotyping is not an entirely redundant way of identifying who might be homo. For example—it’s pretty reasonable to get involved with musical theatre if you’re looking for a hotbed of gays. Or student politics/Young Labour, for that matter. Heading down to the Roller Derby will probably find you a few more lesbians than going to the rugby (but only by a few). Everything’s changed; so what can we do now to find queers in a crowd?

We can talk about our sexualities. This is homosexuality in the 21st century, after all. Stereotyping is so 1997. It’s no longer necessary to adhere to a particular code of fashion, involve yourself with a particular group, or perform particular social mannerisms in an effort to get laid. Sexual empowerment doesn’t simply mean to live out your sexual identity as flamingly as possible, but to do so, rather, in whatever manner that suits you.

PS: come to the UniQ Formal at Club Ivy this Friday—check the notices section for more details. And remember Bent’s advice until we return next year: go forth, flirt shamelessly, and pash some babes. <3 *

Were Students for Palestine being simultaneously derided as self-righteous-social-justice-pricks and Hamas-terrorist-sympathisers? Yes, and in the kind of paradoxical label combination that would have the likes of Glenn Beck and his ilk frothing in neo-con[sensus].

Ultimately, the most troubling aspect was that the article’s substance itself articulated little about the dangers of racial stereotyping. In fact, it undermined its own basic premise about the rise of anti-Semitism due to the overwhelming presence of an Anti-Arab/ Islamophobic discourse, which is equally as vile as anti-Semitism. They both dehumanise and justify annihilation. I’m specifically referring to the underlying implicit suggestions that the majority Palestinians are ubiquitous terrorists and are racially predisposed to corruption. How can we honestly take a condemnation of racism as sincere if it is propped up with a barrage of racist notions?

Acclaimed Jewish and Israeli scholars/ writers such as Norman Finkelstein, Avi Shlaim and Antony Loewenstein (who SFP hosted at a speaker event in 2010) have argued that increasingly, the term anti-Semitism is sometimes being misappropriated to silence criticism of Israeli policy and its treatment of Palestinians. Although Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, it is by no means a reflection of a monolithic Jewish people globally all in agreement about its policies and conduct, and it should not claim to be so. People who wish to criticise Israel on the basis of its brutal treatment of Palestinians should be free to do just that.

In reality, it is evident sometimes that deep-seated anti-Semitism and Islamophobia masquerade as ‘political’ opinion in relation to Israel-Palestine, when in effect, they are nothing more than bigotry. I have seen examples of both of these on campus. Anti-Semitic scribbling in sharpie over the top of anonymously posted Islamophobic posters is symptomatic of this. It was probably the work of one or two independent individuals, but about as helpful for each respective cause as smashing oneself in the face with a brick.
Now then round up, 2011 has been a busy year, especially as we held a solidarity fortnight in August which kicked off with an extremely successful SRC where around 100 students filled a room and passed a motion to affiliate Vic with ‘The Right to Education’ Campaign at BirZeit University in the West Bank, stressing that education is a universal right. We also hosted Dr Nigel Parsons, lecturer of Middle East Politics at Massey University, who presented his own fascinating research on the current situation in the region. We then co-hosted the UNRECOGNISED art exhibition with the creative Concerned Citizens collective to raise awareness of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN.

I’m unashamedly Palestinian, and for me this action is about wanting my cousins to have the kind of futures where siege and occupation do not define their existences. However, other members of SFP are not Palestinians: they are simply people who see it as a worthwhile human cause regardless of their religious or racial proximity. Herein lies the reason why all over the world there are thousands of parallel university groups just like ours working to change the terms of the debate regarding Israel-Palestine. We maintain that there is only one line of division on this subject, and contrary to popular belief, it’s not a line of division between Muslims and Jews. Nor is it a line of division between Israelis and Palestinians. It is a line of division between those who stand for the equality of all, and those who stand for the supremacy of some.

No, the people of Palestine certainly don’t deserve basic rights and freedoms any more than any other group, but they certainly don’t deserve them any less either.
Peace.

Some benevolent overlord would cut apples into quarters and dispense them equally to everyone. Despite her peculiar obsession with the alphabet, she would always clean us up when defiled by the tyranny of our own bladders. When we were not dressed as tiny pirates, frequent and proud public nudity was acceptable. Life was but a vain quest to discover China at the bottom of the sandpit, hands smeared with honey and green paint in equal measure. Do you remember kindergarten?

And primary school! Bare feet and low-hanging branches to be conquered. Nudity was no longer acceptable—lesson learnt that time we were too lazy to do our fly up, and that day we abandoned our shorts on the back field. Freedom was in peril. But Coke was only a dollar a can, and the lollies were but five cents a pop.

The journey through childhood was a carefree one. Incrementally new freedoms crept into our life—we could walk to school, we could stay over at Jacinta’s—but always, they were conditioned by new responsibilities. While walking to school we had to stay clear of the friendly stranger in the fetching trenchcoat, and it was no longer acceptable for someone our age to go to Auntie Sarah’s wedding dressed as Batman—despite the eternal need for justice to be done.

At the time we could not conceive of how little responsibility we bore. We could not know how these times fitted into our lives—whether they were Good or Bad. We had no point of reference; this was all we knew. Now we reflect on those times with a reverence for the long and lazy afternoons, wistful for the time before assignments and jobs. We wish we realised at the time just how good we had it. It is only with the passing of years that we realise the unique nature of those days; clarity is borne of time.

And now we are at university. The next step. Some of you will be coming to the end of your first year, others on the cusp of graduation, and the rest of us are lost somewhere in between. But why, exactly, are we here? University costs money. It steals your time. It’s hard. As another year draws to a close, we ought take stock of all that has been and gone to try and explain to ourselves what the fuck is going on. There are many answers.

Those of a somewhat clinical bent will tell you that your degree is an investment. You, as a rational actor, have assessed the increase in your earning potential as a result of becoming qualified, and weighed this against the cost of tuition. Obviously, if you are here, that analysis lead you to enrol. Similarly, the government has attempted to measure how much it is worth for the community to have you educated and has subsidised you accordingly. You want to further your prospects and university is the tool by which you do that. This is all true—to some extent at least. But university is not, and never has been, purely a means to an end. This doesn’t adequately explain what we are doing here.
Others will tell you that university, and what it represents, is the goal in itself. This is the answer of unconditioned idealism. The pursuit of knowledge is what furthers us each as individuals; it is what sets us apart as human beings. University is that sacred place in which knowledge, and the pursuit thereof, is worshipped. The library is a temple; the professors disciples of truth. There are things that only university can teach us, that we cannot learn from travelling the world or through a nin- to-five shift, week-in week-out. We come to university to be a part of this: to gain knowledge and be exposed to new ideas, sharing our own in return. We are here to unlearn our superstitions and prejudices, and to liberate ourselves from ignorance. We are here to contribute to the most noble of ideas. But experience tells us that this is frankly not the way things are, no matter how much we hope it to be true.

These two narratives have been endlessly litigated. Here we are not going to revisit that enquiry. Both have elements of validity, but to promote one to the exclusion of the other is reductive. There’s another way to reflect on why we are here at university. It’s one that isn’t often described well in the glossy undergraduate prospectus we picked up at open day. University is about more than just what is learnt or experienced in lectures or tutorials. It’s the cumulative experience. It’s about this time in your life. As a young person. At university. Right now.

It’s the freedom. It’s simple but odd; we can do whatever we want. At first one cannot appreciate the enormity of it. At first, the new freedom is feeling sly while drinking cask wine in your hall room past 10pm. The new freedom seems to be never doing any work. It’s waking up at 4am to peer into your neighbour’s window just for kicks because mum’s not enforcing her silly rules anymore. It’s deciding that you really like spaghetti so, from now on, you will eat nothing else. But, it takes a while to find where the real liberty is at. It is not that what we do has changed dramatically—it doesn’t matter so much whether we have actually exercised these freedoms—but it is the very fact that, suddenly, we know no master but ourselves. Except for the motherfucking po-lice.

But freedom brings its own burdens.

It’s the responsibility. While our freedom is ours only, so too are our failures. Every day of university adds weight to the student loan, ever-growing and ever-hungry. “Feed me”, it cries, embarrassed by its size, alone in the dark. And still we have to pay that rent. Worst of all—unlike the primary school years—Coke now costs $1.90 a can, and lollies are forty dollars a pop. Further, lecturers don’t really care about you. No one is going to chase you up for dropping a grade or for forgetting an assignment; they don’t care. They’ll just fail you. And then you cry. And mum’s not there anymore. There’s also no one to tell you when to stop. Because sometimes you take your freedom that little bit too far. It’s that time you have to fork out fifty dollars for a rug doctor after the neighbour has one too many shandies. It’s when you have to go sober for a week because you had to pay off a mysterious internet bill, brought about by virtue of your flatmate’s (read: flatmates’) incessant porn habit. Or, it’s when you can’t return home for a week because the house has been decreed unsafe after you decided to do some ‘minor’ renovations.

It’s the people. They come in many different varieties. Fucking hipsters. Fucking library-rats. Fucking douchebros. Fucking greenies. Fucking student politicians. Fucking wannabe-journalists. Vitriol aside, the oft-touted value of diversity is in all respects true. You meet, and in some cases learn to love, people that you would never have selected to dance with at the school disco. Perhaps the communists aren’t all that unkempt (lie), and the libertarians aren’t all old white men (lie again). The right way of doing things changes, and that’s for the best. Without reference, we can’t know the true quality of our own way of life. And perhaps you’ll suddenly feel compelled to buy a Che Guevara t-shirt, start calling your acquaintances comrades and stop wearing shoes—they’re oppressive, man.

And while diversity is rad and all, university also provides the chance to find people who are fundamentally the same as us. You like dressing as a 17th-century duke? That wasn’t okay before university, but now there’s a whole collective of people who share in your depraved fetish. And who would have thought that other living things actually enjoy the subtle melodies of Aphex Twin’s back catalogue? There are also others who have read the abridged version of Nietzche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra just like you have—and they’re just as much of a wanker as you. While you used to have to be real underground to appreciate Bansky, everyone at university owns a spray-can and has an uncanny nous for cutting socio-political critique. No longer do you have to continue hiding your peculiar bohemian habits from the clutches of the backwater agrarian community from which you originate.

Most of all, it’s the experiences. Squinting as the sun rises while you’re still up writing a substandard essay on the economics of Buddhist metaphysics. It’s the futile attempt to slink home through the last shadows the following morning, as the sun rises once more, revealing the conspicuous stains on your shoes. It’s finding a glass of milk beneath your bed, concealed there by a ‘friend’ six months prior. And that fucker will always be half-full. It’s feeding five people with a can of budget tomatoes like you’re motherfucking Jesus, but more holy (Luke 9:10-17). It’s the excitement of a new sexual encounter, quickly—very quickly—followed by a deep sense of shame. But it’s a shame that will become a source of mirth by lunchtime. Too bad the rash won’t retreat as quickly.

And then there’s the loneliness. And the corrosive self-doubt. It’s when no one is home but you, it’s three in the morning, and in realising that you should have started writing that essay two weeks ago, you think perhaps you’re not as cut out for all of this as you once thought, not as smart as you had always assumed, and you wonder if maybe the future is not as certain as it once was. But then you stop. You stare out the window, watching the city seethe, and know that—despite all the shit—it was the right choice. You are where you belong.

We are often told that these years are the greatest of our lives. The sad thing about this is not that it is all meant to get worse very soon, but how rarely we appreciate this. The painful truth is that so often we only really appreciate things in retrospect. Perhaps it is impossible to look upon the present with any semblance of clarity. Perhaps it will all just fly on by and it won’t be until twenty years have passed when—suddenly—it will hit us: there was something curious about those days. Or perhaps you were a particularly wise toddler, and knew all along exactly how precious nap time at kindergarten was. But if you weren’t—as we weren’t—don’t let the same become of your years at university. To never pause and realise that university means more than mere words on a certificate and dry facts in your mind would be the greatest tragedy.

There was a time when everything was simple. Afternoons were spent talking shit with friends on the porch. There were cigarette butts on every surface, and it wasn’t quite clear why they hadn’t been cleaned up. You had a lecture in an hour—maybe you would go, maybe you wouldn’t. The government gave you an allowance. And all you had to do in return was write essays and get drunk. Life was but a vain quest for glory in the glossary of a text-book and the last dregs of wine in the bottle. Bukowski said: “We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” This is why we are here.

Do you remember university?

As the release dates of the next instalments in both series draw ever closer, these arguments are growing in intensity and reducing in coherency at an alarming rate. In fact, most reading this who follow gaming news with any frequency will probably be rolling their eyes by this point. But fear not, we’re here only to give an honest first impression of developer DICE’s opus of destruction Battlefield 3, from two people who’ve spent more time with rival Call of Duty games, in all their hyper-masculine glory, than two full-time students really should have. For the purposes of this article, we’re focusing exclusively on the multiplayer aspects of these games, as both series have climbed to the revered positions they hold today by raising the bar of competitive gaming experiences over the last decade. Our experience with Battlefield 3 thus far has been the public play-testing that DICE have gifted to their fans, a “beta” test where an early build of the game is released and combed for bugs and needed tweaks.

Firstly, BF3 is a vastly different experience to anything in the COD series. The intention of realism and weight can be felt throughout everything from the game’s environment right down to the philosophy that when you are playing, you are looking through the physical eyes of a soldier. This latter element is what makes BF3 so chilling a game at times. COD games, in their modern incarnation, are an intense and reliably manic experience that borrows from the setting and mythos of the more explosive and jingoistic action movies. In that sense, they always feel like an action movie: fast, fun and requiring a certain suspension of disbelief. Their multiplayer experience is geared towards shaping your own playstyle, allowing people to be a running juggernaut, static sharpshooter, acrobatic knife-wielder or an all-around jackass. Call of Duty 4 was not the first shooter to introduce these elements from traditional RPG games, though it helped towards making them much more prevalent in future titles. Teamwork among players is definitely possible, even encouraged by some game types, but is not the norm in these games. The lone wolf, if skilled enough, can always prevail. While BF3 retains the veneer of COD’s “XP”, leveling and customisation systems, awards and unlocks flashing past your screen after every round to the game’s signature thumping electronic sound design, the experience under those systems remains true to the original 2001 Battlefield that launched the series into fame.

The feeling I got when I was first dropped onto the ruined Parisian parklands that host BF3’s beta testing was one of wonder. A feeling I haven’t been given by a game in a long, long time. At the risk of sounding like I am throwing myself down at the altar of the military fetishism displayed in this game, I’d say this will be another title that will raise the bar for future games to to come. Like Doom, Half Life, Battlefield 1942, Crysis and Call of Duty 4 before it, Battlefield 3 will set the standard for big-budget shooter titles to meet in the coming years. This is not only because of the (significant) advances in graphical fidelity and how accessible those higher-level graphics are, but because of the interesting new gameplay elements actually being produced by those advances. The lighting engine will cause enemy flashbangs and laser sights to blind you, causing you to physically recoil from your screen at times. Environmental elements like smoke, dust, rubble, trees, light and plants are not just convincing window-dressing, but strategic parts of how you play the game. Needless to say, these elements almost all require some tweaking, but DICE has already begun to list the changes that will be made to the finished product. Battlefield 3 is, quite simply, a culmination of over a decade’s worth of refinement in the shooter genre, probably one that will be difficult to surpass for a few years to come.

To wrap up the fairly pointless rivalry between fans of this game and those of the Call of Duty series, Battlefield 3 is a new and vastly different experience to anything in the COD series, but is by no means inherently better. They are to each other as rugby is to soccer, apples to oranges, Ridley Scott to Christopher Nolan. They are two sides of the same coin. Whether you crave the fast-paced arcade-style shooting gallery of COD, or the realistic and intense leap into the future of gaming that is Battlefield, there is definitely something for everyone this summer.

I love its crowded streets and the feeling that all of those houses and shops were haphazardly poured between the hills and the harbour. I love the Wellington airport descent and its ability to make people treasure how short life is; the spontaneous applause upon landing if the Southerly is particularly strong. I love that the mayor bikes everywhere in an impeccable outfit covered by a large fluorescent vest. I love Wellington despite the fact that for every latte consumed at one of its numerous cafes someone around the world is wondering why the city is named after water proof footwear.

The reason I am writing this is that for many of you this may be your first summer in Wellington and you may be less than enthused by the nation’s capital. You might not be fond of its brutality towards umbrellas and snobbery towards coffee/things that more than five people like. You might not be keen on the idea of spending summer in a place where New Year’s Eve temperatures regularly stay in single digits.
For you, dear naysayers, I have compiled this list of my personal favourite things about this city during the warmer months in an attempt to convince you that you don’t need to leave Wellington to have a summer holiday. Haere mai everyone—from the sprawling metropolis of Hamiltron, City of the Future, from the West, East and North coast, from blink-and-miss towns, the Taranaki and deep South, the King Country and Canterbury. A warm welcome, even to you Aucklanders, haere mai.

Thorndon

Thorndon has lots of potential for cheap summer entertainment despite its reputation as a posh suburb. At the moment the tulips are in full bloom at the Botanic Gardens and have been arranged in honour of the Rugby World Cup to resemble the flags of various participating nations. I have difficulty making out the flags in some of the gardens but the South African tulip display looks particularly flag-like. During the evening you can spot glowworms in the gardens or get a unique view of Wellington by climbing to the top of the circular hedge opposite the cable car. If you like swimming outdoors, but aren’t brave enough to swim in the Wellington harbour, Thorndon Pool opens on the 22nd of this month.
The Thorndon Fair takes place in December on Tinakori Road with jewellery, clothing, arts and crafts and food stalls. Every year around 25,000 people attend this event which has a gold coin entry charge to raise funds for Thorndon School.

Free concerts are held in the SoundShell over January. Last year Bella Kalolo, Lisa Tomlins, Sam Hunt, and Jess Chambers performed among other local and national acts. There is a nice relaxed atmosphere with a bubble machine and light display in the surrounding gardens. During February, outdoor movies are played from a large screen in The Dell on Sundays. The Dell is tucked behind the rose gardens and cafe in the botanic gardens. Past movies include such classics as Eagle vs Shark and Amelie.

Oriental Bay, Waterfront Area

Celebrations for Diwali, the festival of lights, are being held at the TSB Bank Arena on the 15 and 16 of this month. The festival involves Indian and South East asian food, performances, and cultural demonstrations including a Bollywood Dance Competition. Entry cost ranges from a gold coin donation to $5 depending on which day you go.
For some exam stress relief, you could give ice skating a go at the temporary rink on Queens Wharf. This is $15 for students and runs until the end of October. Other warmer weather Oriental Bay activities include swimming out to the fountain or sampling every Kaffee Eis ice cream flavour by the end of summer—nothing says colour blocking like three scoops of gelato.

The Italian Festival is scheduled for November 6 with live music stalls selling Italian products, cooking demonstrations and dance shows ($10 entry) at the Westpac Stadium. A group of traditional Italian flag wavers who have won 30 tournaments in the past 45 years are travelling to Wellington from Faenza, Italy for the event.
Homegrown 2012 takes place on the Wellington Waterfront on February the 18th. The line-up includes Concord Dawn, The Black Seeds, Shihad, Kora, Blacklist, The Adults and many other kiwi bands with further announcements still to come. Tickets can be purchased from Ticketek for $95 plus booking fees.

Karori

Sirocco, the quaint Kakapo who attempted to mate with the head of a zoologist during a Stephen Fry documentary, is now housed at Karori Sanctuary just up the hill from the botanic gardens. Unfortunately you will have to begin saving your pennies now if you want to visit him as entry for adults costs the kingly sum of $39.50 and there is no student price. The cheaper option is to view Sirocco through TV3’s live webcam feed which airs from 8.30pm each night.

Cuba St

The Wellington Fringe Festival hits the streets in February bringing interactive, entertaining and strange performances to the city CBD. A range of theatre, comedy, music, dance and visual arts acts take place over the month. Despite some speculation that the Wellington City Council was considering removing funding from the Festival and Carnival, the events will still be Council-funded, although they are now delivered by the newly established Creative Capital Arts trust. The Cuba St carnival is a great event involving diverse sections of the community and people with flats that look over the parade route become popular at this time of year.

Somes Island

Somes Island is managed by DOC and has a flourishing population of native wildlife due to the pest eradication programme they have in place. You can catch the ferry out to Somes for $17 return and camp overnight on a DOC campsite for $10 per person. There are kitchen facilities and a flush toilet in a building next to the camping area.
If camping isn’t your thing, then the Forest and Bird hut can be rented. While it says its a hut, it’s really a perfect little cottage perched on an island in the middle of Wellington harbour. It is more expensive to rent at $200 per night, but if you’ve got eight people then that’s only $25 per person. I particularly like the Somes Island’s lighthouse, the brightly coloured parrots that fly around the place and looking out at the halo of surrounding city nights in the evening.

Hataitai and Kilbirnie
The Kilbirnie Recreation centre is holding a roller disco on the 12 November from 8pm to 11pm. Why not celebrate the end of exams by dressing up and making a fool of yourself on wheels? Entry is $15 (including skate hire) and there are prizes for best dressed.

One Love, an event celebrating Bob Marley’s birthday, is held at the Velodrome in Hataitai on Waitangi Day each year. Radioactive decided not to hold One Love this year due to the cost of rebranding its station and the uncertain economic climate. However, the station intends to hold One Love again in 2012 which is good news for dub and reggae fans across Wellington.

Brooklyn

There are many things I like about Brooklyn—it has the best fish and chip shop in Wellington and is also home to a fantastic movie theatre called the Penthouse. The Penthouse was built in 1933 for a local family at a time when the name was more likely to make people think of an upper level apartment than a raunchy magazine. It once had a resident cat and is on a street which has perhaps my favourite street name in Wellington—Happy Valley Road. If you want a scenic place to eat your fish and chips, then you can trek up the Brooklyn hill to the windmill. From there you get a panoramic view of Wellington and can see the mountains of the South island on a clear day. Until the freak weather this winter, the windmill was one of the few places in Wellington that would get snow in central Wellington during really cold weather.

South Coast

The Island Bay festival takes place each year in mid February. It begins with the Blessing of the Boats, a tradition originating from the South of Italy where boats are blessed by a Priest at the beginning of each boating season according to the belief that this ceremony would protect the crew from harm at sea. The Blessing of the Boats ceremony has been carried out since 1933—a year in which four men, including three Italians, drowned when their boat sank in the Cook Strait. During the festival, local musicians play at the Band Rotunda which is close to the waterfront and looks out on a view that Rita Angus depicted in her famous painting, ‘Boats, Island Bay’.

Further around the coast to the west is a gravel road which leads to the seal colony of Red Rocks and makes for a nice bike in summer. Just around the corner to the East of Island Bay is Houghton Bay which is a good surfing location for experienced surfers. Houghton Bay also has a calmer beach that is popular during summer for swimming, snorkelling and general lazing. Lyall Bay, close to the airport, has surf conditions that suit a range of abilities and several places where you can hire boards and arrange lessons. The Maranui Surf Club has bounced back after a devastating fire in 2009 and continues to do a great Tradesman’s Breakfast on Tuesdays—$16 for a Big Bay breakfast and coffee.

Newtown

The organisers of the Newtown Festival describe the event as putting “the Unity Back in Community” and I think this sums it up nicely. People from all over Wellington come to the festival to see a range of cultural, music and dance performances and browse the street stalls. It is one of the most diverse events on the Wellington calendar and the scale of the Festival is impressive considering its not-for-profit nature.

Cricket at the Basin Reserve is another tradition at the heart of the Wellington summer. The site evolved from a lagoon to a swamp during the 1855 earthquake, and then to a cricket pitch following a successful petition by local residents. It’s a cosy ground with stray sixes occasionally making their way into the traffic which circles its perimeter. The Twenty20 matches which are usually over in about two to three hours are good for those people who prefer cricket in small doses, but the Basin also hosts multi-day tests and domestic first-class matches for the cricket purists among you.

Nonetheless, we’re left with a group of completely expected quarter-finalists, and the greatest upset of the tournament will be if the favourites don’t win.

Yes, the likes of Tonga can hold their heads very high. Beating a top-tier nation is no mean feat. But that’s exactly the issue. At a World Cup of 20 teams, effectively 12 are there to simply make up the numbers. I daresay the Rugby World Cup is the only one that large in world sport with so high a concentration of second-tier teams—each with effectively the same chance of advancing. Zero.

And with future World Cups surrounded with doubt (with the All Blacks still to commit to future tournaments), the IRB has to do something big, and fast, to improve the global game.

One option is to hold a 16-team ‘second tier championship’ between World Cups. Exclude the top eight to ten rugby nations and host it in a second-tier country. Sure, it would take a bit of money to get it across the line, but in the long run it would develop the quality and exposure of lower-ranked teams more consistently than just their quadrennial media boom. Imagine, for example, Samoa lining up against Scotland in Suva for the final, and what it would do for the Samoan game. It builds the competitiveness of the Rugby World Cup too, another plus for the IRB.

I’m not proposing we take away from the prestige of the World Cup. And I’m not saying we take anything away from the sides who are the rest of the best, rather than the best of the rest. But it’s a move like this that could do wonders for the IRB.

It’s not to say that there is no value in second-tier nations’ appearance at the World Cup. They’re given a go on the biggest stage and are rewarded for finishing high in their pool. But criticisms have been made by lower ranked teams (namely Samoa) about their unjust treatment at the World Cup.

And how much more exciting would a Rugby World Cup be if there was not one but three, ‘pools of death’? Some of the top matches in the group stage of this tournament have been those between Scotland, Argentina and England. As the tournament entered its knockout phase, we’re sure to be given games of similar intensity. But that’s only for those sides able to make it that far. And in my opinion, the second-tier sides are a long, long way from making the quarter-finals. The current format is only making it tougher.

Rugby has taken a huge foothold in its traditional strongholds. The game is firmly ingrained in the Kiwi, English, Australian and South African sporting ethos. But the IRB needs to make a big move in developing the game globally. Whether it’s another world trophy event or otherwise, it needs to happen soon, because the lack of depth at the World Cup is already there.

And bollocks to what the IRB says. If the NZRFU followed through on its threats, a World Cup without the All Blacks in 2015 would be, no doubt, a shambles.

Salient started their year in the office with the sad news of the Christchurch earthquake. Much has been written about this already, but our counterparts at Lincoln and Canterbury Universities outdid themselves in the recovery effort, and our thoughts go out to those who are still working to rebuild Christchurch and their lives.
The last week of February was also Orientation Week at Victoria, which for the most part consisted of pashes, rashes and free food sachets, courtesy of VUWSA. Maybe some people who lived in the halls made some new friends—I’m not sure, I was still living with my mum at the time.

March

We were all welcomed back to university with the fanfare of jackhammers as the quad was ripped up as part of the Campus Hub Project. An upside of these developments was the addition of the Hunter Lounge to the Student Union Building, with neighbours Salient making excessive use of the new bar.

The annual Great Debate turned into the major politics scandal of the year, with Labour MP Darren Hughes accused of sexually assaulting a Victoria University student following the event. Hughes later resigned from Parliament.

Everyone in Wellington shat themselves thinking that we could be the next big quake, while VUWSA actually did something productive, raising $8000 for Christchurch’s Student Army.

Japan were next on the list to fall victim to Mother Earth, and this disaster dominated the media for the remainder of March.
Closer to home, MGMT performed in Vic’s brand new Hunter Lounge, which made us feel pretty damn special about ourselves.
Finally, VUWSA held its IGM and reached quorum without having to reschedule, proving Seamus Brady to be already more successful than predecessor Max Hardy, probably due to provision of pizza.

April

April and Easter rolled around, the investigation into the Hughes affair continued, complete with much speculation and accusation.
Peter Dunne actually did some work as Revenue Minister, and, along with Steven Joyce, cracked down on wayward overseas student loan borrowers.
Construction work on the Student Union Building was finally finished, the University proving it was capable of achieving something. The results of a survey undertaken by VUWSA were released, showing Vicbooks to be the most-used service. Salient was second most-used and nothing much else was used at all, surprise surprise.

May

Don Brash shocked everyone by giving Rodney Hide the ol’ heave-ho which, to be honest, is pretty impressive for a 70-year-old.

The Government once again threatened to send debt collectors after overseas loan borrowers, while students escaping ‘the man’ played Carmen San Diego.
The government attempted to stop us from taking a little from this box and a little from that box, over Skynet. Essentially, most MPs just proved how little they knew about how computers and the internet actually work.

Victoria University opened Milk and Hone, exclusively for Victoria staff and postgraduate students, which most undergraduate students packed a mega sad about.

June

Trimester One ended, there were some exams, and obviously everyone was really sad because Salient wasn’t published over the break.

Bleak.

July

Most students came back bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, all ready to study in Trimester 2, but thanks to a University balls-up, some of us still didn’t know our grades from the first trimester.

Labour scared off the VSM monster-under-the-bed of student associations by continuing to filibuster every question day in Parliament.

While ACT on Campus celebrated the fact that ACT’s VSM Bill looked almost certain to eventually pass, the group won further media attention, sparking controversy when their Auckland Vice-President told an AUSA office-holder to “get raped” in a Facebook comment.

In a last ditch effort against VSM, OUSA ‘scarfie’ President Logan Edgar locked himself in a metaphorical (and literal) prison cell. It is interesting to note that this dramatic protest attracted more media attention than NZUSA’s expensive campaign did.

August

Labour continued to filibuster to avoid the VSM bill, and people actually started to kick up a fuss about it. Victoria students shocked the nation when they actually gave a shit about something, turning out in their hundreds to protest a number of cuts to University programs.

VUWSA held its AGM and enough people turned up to eat pizza and win quorum. Students defied apathy, and actually discussed something, with the Legalise Love movement and preparation for VSM proving to be the hot topics of the day.

September

The University Council asked for 4 per cent more cash money, when increasing fees for 2012. But the council couldn’t touch our levy, because Joyce introduced a proposal to limit the number of things that could be classed as ‘student services’. We Are The University, swelled in numbers by Workers’ Party and Unite members, held a protest in the Hunter Courtyard, and captured media attention when they stormed the building to find Pat Walsh, which in turn attracted the presence of police on campus.
Maori students’ associations made an eleventh-hour appeal to the Waitangi Tribunal to block VSM, but this ultimately failed, as the bill was passed into legislation (nearly ten years after it was introduced) on Wednesday 28 September. ACT on Campus President Peter McCaffrey allegedly motorboated Heather Roy at the ACT Party offices over the newly-passed piece of legislation.

October

VUWSA, having pretended that they were up to fucks all year, showed that they actually had some sort of plan in place for the advent of VSM. Enrolments for 2012 opened with the option of joining VUWSA for free, however this is yet to be confirmed by an SGM which will be held on Thursday 13 October at 1pm in the Student Union Building—go along!

He shows no sign of recognising her as he hands back the eftpos card that she keeps expecting to decline. She thinks there is a sadness in the way one corner of his mouth twitches as he punches numbers into the cash register. Like he’s too tired to even put much effort into being properly sullen. He doesn’t recognise her but tonight is the fourth night in a row they’ve met under these circumstances. Charlotte buys Skittles and cigarettes and walks home with the wind tumbling in the streets and powerlines buzzing overhead, the city’s vermillion tinge against the night sky. She thinks about people she has known, places she has seen, and she knows something is slipping, somewhere.
Something drifting away. In her room she sits at the window and smokes cigarettes and plays music quietly. She listens to sad old Prince songs and turns up the heat in her room and leaves the window wide open because she likes the sharp contrast of winter air and cloying warmth, the cold like a knife. The fluorescent lights on the roof of her room hum quietly. She doesn’t look in the mirror. Lately she’s been spending hours painting her nails, tracing them with intricate multicoloured designs. In one corner of her room sits a pile of this trimester’s textbooks, pristine, unopened. Anthropology, History, History again. Charlotte looks from the books to her MacBook. She puts the cigarette out and flicks the butt out the window. She feels awake, free.

4:30 AM, say the green digits of her alarm clock.

Charlotte sits at her laptop and opens Wikipedia. Lately she has been binging on genocides, massacres, war crimes, atrocities, devouring them, horrible facts that seem to throb and pulse on the screen.

She reads that Hitler may have had syphilis.

She reads about the Cambodian regime led by Pol Pot, which executed more than two million people.

She reads about cults, religious splinter groups, dubious paranormal events. She reads about bizarre and obscure artists who worked all their lives without ever achieving recognition or acclaim, even after death.

She reads about murder-suicides, mysterious disappearances, unusual deaths.

Eventually sleep comes through the sickly glow of the laptop’s screen and keys. She curls up in the gigantic old chair that had been her father’s and wakes at eleven the next morning with a stiff neck, golden sunlight smeared across the wall behind her desk.

“What’s wrong with you. You alright? Like, you’re all distant and shit.” Sara stubs out her cigarette and sits back in her chair and gazes quizzically at Charlotte from behind knockoff Gucci glasses. They sit at a table on the pavement outside Copyright, the café down the road from the university. The sun is bright but gives no warmth and to Charlotte the whole scene is hyperreal, glossy, the sky an impossible shade of blue. From where Charlotte sits she can see the fine hairs on Sara’s face and some not-so-fine ones speckling her upper lip.

“I dunno.” Charlotte picks at her eggs benedict. “I’m pretty tired I s’pose.”
“Tired. You look like you’re on antidepressants, babe.”
“Nah. Nah, I just, I dunno.”
“Cheer up. I’m worried about you. You need to like, get laid, or something.”
“Haaa. Whatever.” Charlotte looks away. Some men are at work across the road. All wear sunglasses and brightly coloured orange vests. With shovels and jackhammers they’ve torn a long gash in the street’s sleeping back. They gather in a circle and confer in loud voices. Now one lowers himself into the hole, crouches inside, removes the succulent innards, handfuls of brightly coloured plastic cables.
“Charlotte. Are you gonna eat that?” Sara leans forward. “I heard the eggs here are like amaze.”
“Nah. I’ve got a class now anyway.” Charlotte doesn’t move.
“Yeah. You haven’t been to hissed two-two four in ages. We’ve got an essay due, like, next week?”
“I know,” says Charlotte. Sara prides herself on telling it like it is, it’s something she says often; because of this she talks as if everything she says is a controversial but undeniable fact, everything a possible source of debate, as if she’s forever waiting for somebody to deny the obvious.
Charlotte pushes her eggs forward.
“You can have them,” she says. She hates it when people abbreviate class names.

Midnight. Charlotte has some weed that Sara gave her, free, or maybe just Sara’s still feeling guilty about that thing that’d happened with Trent last year. So anyway, a free fifty bag of weed, and at first Charlotte had said no but then she’d accepted, thinking that it might help her sleep. She rolls a joint and pauses with it stuck in her mouth, lighter in hand, thinking. Weren’t antidepressants meant to make people happier? Make them look happier? She shrugs, lights the joint, blows smoke.

After she finishes she sits before the laptop. Scans the usuals. She feels a start, thinking suddenly that she doesn’t know any of the people on her Facebook feed. She can feel the weed taking effect.

Sara Cloughton had a great time at lunch with her girl Charlotte Bingham today!

Charlotte stares at her own name. It looks strange tonight, simultaneously familiar and alien. She rolls another joint, her face lit blue-and-white by the screen. She thinks about killing herself. She can’t decide. She hates knives, razors. Too cold, too clinical. She doesn’t think she’d have the guts to jump off a building and anyways she’s heard about people surviving, even from ten, fifteen stories up. She holds her hands in the air, palms up, and gazes at her wrists, thin and pale in the light from the computer. The veins are faintly visible. She imagines the bright tracks of a razor, thin and beautiful. The way the cuts would look before blood burst free.

She Googles, how to tie a noose. There are a million hits. No, one and a half million. Some pages even provide a three-step diagram. She rubs her eyes and starts to laugh, feeling that her head has grown, that her scalp is tingling, her ears sprouting the size and colour of cabbages.

Five in the afternoon on a Thursday or maybe a Tuesday. Charlotte stands in the supermarket, in the third aisle, next to the tinned tomatoes. A green basket with black handles hangs from her left hand. Today she is wearing her prettiest and most brightly coloured skirt, pale blue. She stands with her feet neatly together and considers the stacked rows of cans. She has been in the supermarket for nearly half an hour but the sole item in her basket is a red capsicum, chosen for its smooth curves and bright, flawless skin. She’d taken it carefully from the stacked rows of its kind, feeling as if she was somehow separating it from its family, its friends, feeling that maybe she should buy another, to lessen the pain of separation. Now she stands with her basket and her capsicum and she contemplates the tinned tomatoes. She hasn’t eaten for a day and a half and there is a hard twisted knot in her stomach but she feels clean and pure. A few metres away there’s a boy with brown hair and a pale face and Charlotte watches him. He has dark quiet eyes and his nose is slightly too big and it’s crooked but his lips are beautiful, the colour of the inside of a strawberry. He wears a huge old pair of headphones and a black duffle coat with wooden toggles and in his own green basket there is a single blue-and-white packet of Budget spaghetti. Charlotte watches as he runs his gaze across the cans of tomatoes, looking for the cheapest. A dinner alone, maybe. Eaten before the glowing screen of a laptop. Can of chopped tomatoes, packet of spaghetti. A total cost of less than two dollars. Charlotte wants to push his hair out of his eyes and run her fingertips over the soft bumps of fading acne at the corners of his mouth. He meets her gaze briefly and then looks away.
The security guard is just getting on-shift when Charlotte comes into the building and punches the elevator call button, shopping bags dangling from her hands. She has milk, the lonely capsicum, a six-pack of Coca Cola and a packet of instant noodles. She tries to remember the guard’s name. Ron. No. Barry. That’s it. The sleeves of his cheap polyester windbreaker are pushed up to his elbows and the hairs are on his arms are thick and white. He nods at her and she smiles at him the way she always does but tonight he stares back at her as if he’s scared of something or confused maybe. The lift dings and she steps into it, confused, looking at her feet as the doors close.

Charlotte sits at her computer. She doesn’t want to go to sleep. She doesn’t know what she wants. She tries to imagine what Sara is doing right now. Sleeping, probably. Charlotte has no friends. This thought comes suddenly, an ominous shape, a ship appearing through the rain. Charlotte has no real friends and she is a different person with everyone she speaks to, effortlessly shifting the colours of her personality to better suit her surroundings. She stands up quickly. Grey morning light runs its fingers across the curtains. The pillows of her bed swim up towards her. What it means. What it means when you begin to draw meaning and warmth from everyday encounters, from people behind counters and at the steeringwheels of buses. When you face a professional smile and feel a jolt.

She falls asleep in her clothes, lying on the bed, above the covers.
Charlotte wakes at two in the afternoon. It is the fourteenth day since she stopped doing things for reasons she does not understand. She sits up on the bed and rubs her eyes. Her phone rings. She looks at the screen. Blocked number. She doesn’t answer.

Later on she sits at the laptop. In her inbox, two emails from two tutors. She ignores them both.

a scruffy vagrant, a
stormcreature, this
tinned-tomato boy:
i wish he said hello
to
me

Charlotte rolls her eyes at the screen. Bullshit. Trite nonsense. In high school she used to sneak down to the back field and smoke cigarettes with a girl named Martina. Martina called herself Marty for reasons nobody understood, not at the time. People’d made fun of her and said it was a guy’s name. Charlotte didn’t even really know Marty, she was just someone to smoke with, an extra set of eyes to watch for teachers, a spare lighter. One rainy lunchtime in the middle of bleak July, Marty had thrown her cigarette butt on the ground and turned to Charlotte. Charlotte was sixteen, Marty a year older. Marty rolled up the sleeve of her school-uniform jersey.
Look at this, she said to Charlotte.

Charlotte looked. Around Marty’s wrist a bright blue-yellow bracelet of bruising. A matching ring on the other wrist. Charlotte looked from the bruises to Marty’s face and saw nothing in her eyes.

Who did that to you, Charlotte said quietly.
Oh, well. My dad. He gets, you know.
Shit.
Don’t tell anyone, yeah?
I won’t.
Promise.
Yeah, ‘course.
Two weeks later Marty was dead, pills, and her father was in court, multiple charges. Charlotte didn’t go to the funeral. The father hired a million-dollar lawyer, escaped conviction on all charges but one. At her seat in front of the computer Charlotte picks at her fingernails. The polish is chipped again.

Local breweries which have been showcasing these hops have had to disappoint customers, with the likes of Epic revealing that Hop Zombie will not return until possibly 2013, and Tuatara’s wildly successful APA (American Pale Ale) being switched to Aotearoa Pale Ale.

After a lower than normal yielding crop and the loss of several million dollars’ worth of hops in warehouse fires, American breweries began pre-purchasing hops before they’d been grown, reducing the volume available for export to near zero for the more popular varieties.

But if you’ve recently discovered the holy grail of beer that is the American hop, all is not lost. Happily, the US breweries which still have access to their locally grown crops, have recently seen increased distribution amongst Wellington beer bars.

Malthouse have acquired whole kegs of beautiful hoppy American IPA’s. Recently they had the hoppy grail that is Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA (7.5%) flowing, which showed IPA can still be shipped across the world and taste great—as it was originally designed to do. While some slight oxidation was present, the rich malt and massive hop character greatly outweighed this. For the quarter finals this weekend, Malty is putting on Brewdog Hardcore IPA, which may be Scottish but contains no less than three US hop varieties, so get in there and get some while you can.

The west coast of the states is most famous for making hop-focussed beers, so much to the point where a style of IPA has been named after it. Among one of the many beers imported from the states by local beer bar Hashigo Zake is Green Flash West Coast IPA (7.3%) from San Diego. It’s straight to the point in its naming and also its flavour: this one’s all about the hops. Intense grassy hops hit your nose before your tongue is assaulted by 95IBU of bitterness (that’s a lot), balanced slightly by a fruity hop twang.

If big bitterness and intense flavours aren’t your thing, try a Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA (7%), this one’s got balance down pat. You’ll get the tropical fruit bark, but there’s no bite here. A wonderfully rich, biscuity malt tempers the huge amount of hops used, which make their presence known with a tropical fruit flavour which keeps you coming back. While these gems are imported by Hashigo Zake, they’ve found their way to The Hop Garden, Little Beer Quarter and Bar Edward in both bottle and tap form.

Well, that’s me for 2011. I hope I’ve helped someone out there achieve their beer epiphany leading them to the road of tasty beer goodness. If you’ve got any beery questions over the break feel free to tweet me @davethebeerguy.
Might see ya next year—stay beery Vic.

At an executive meeting last week, VUWSA called for a Special General Meeting to be held this Thursday 13 October, so that a motion amending the constitution to remove the membership fee could be put forward. One executive member spoken to by Salient expressed concern at the lack of consultation with executive members and the speed at which it was taking place.

Constitutional amendments usually require 14 days’ notice, but a clause in the VUWSA constitution allows for “substantial compliance”—of which the 10 days’ notice given is in accordance.

Should the meeting not meet its quorum of 100 students, or the motion not pass, the executive will instead set the membership fee for 2012 at $1. However, collection of that amount would not take place until after 2012’s Initial General Meeting, giving them room for another attempt to change it, or adopt an altogether different structure.
In the past, VUWSA has gathered $2.2 million revenue from membership fees. Despite this, VUWSA President Seamus Brady says that a switch to zero membership fees won’t jeopardise VUWSA’s financial viability in 2012.

VUWSA intends to stop its annual contribution to JSub and Building Levy, which allow for long term investments such as the Campus Hub. This leaves VUWSA requiring roughly $1.5 million to carry on as per usual.

Revenue will instead come in part from the VUWSA Trust, which has given a commitment to provide $250,000 per annum for the foreseeable future. An expected $300,000 will come from non-member revenue streams, such as advertising and car parks—leaving roughly a $700,000 shortfall.

The recent proposal by Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce on direction for the Student Services Levy includes the provision for a number of VUWSA services to be funded through that compulsory fee.

“We have been negotiating with the University over funding of specific services that students have identified as important.”

Though there are no formal agreements, it is understood that the University may contract out to VUWSA to provide certain services. Discussions will take place later in the year, once the specifics of said proposal are finalised. This week, in addition to previous consultation and research, VUWSA will consult on services online, so as to form the grounds of their Service Levy arrangements in regards to which services should be funded.

The rationale for a funding model not dependent on membership subscriptions is based on the fact that VUWSA’s mandate and ability to represent students effectively is in part dependent on how many members it has; a membership fee is seen as a “financial barrier” to joining.

Though there is the provision for students to pay for association membership out of their Course Related Costs, Brady says there are competing priorities, and that it would be unfair for students to forgo their limited CRC in order to join VUWSA.

The position for a zero-fee membership model will be re-evaluated and addressed following active consultation and research leading up to 2012’s IGM, where students will most likely be presented with a new constitution.

My complaint certainly doesn’t need to be said, but it feels as if it ought to be at least mentioned, and the final issue seems to be the place to do that.

Whenever I read Salient, I tend to encounter students musing upon their own experiences rather than recounting things that they’ve discovered or been told, as a traditional journalist might. It could be argued that this improves the articles: surely people would know better than anyone else things that they themselves have experienced? I know that it might seem like there nothing wrong with using personal experience as a substitute for fact-finding.

But I don’t think so, and I think it creates a problem. The narratives we create about our past, unknowingly and unavoidably, are the ones we then use to justify our actions. That means when I’m writing about myself or my experience, it takes a real effort to to accept that there could be a different interpretation of events, or see myself as being in the wrong. It’s probably—and here’s where things get complicated—equally difficult for whoever I think wronged me to think that they did something wrong. We’re unlikely to both be right, and we are unlikely to be able to overcome our differing perceptions.

In the real world, we’d take a dispute like that to court, where a neutral mediator would decide things. It wouldn’t work if the same person was judge and prosecutor in court; why would it work in a magazine?

It’s complicated to criticise Salient for doing this, partly because it might be justifiable. The magazine’s role is not only to report on things, but to try to change them for the better.
If the personal experiences of Salient’s writers inspire change in the way others behave, then they are indubitably justified. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that they do. First, they misunderstand the nature of identity, and then they preach about it to those already converted to their way of thought.

A good example is the many articles dealing with queer issues. This coverage presumably had two aims; to help the non-straight come to terms with their sexuality, and to help the straight come to terms with the sexuality of others. Both these approaches can be shown to have failed.

The fundamental problem is that identity is a personal construct, not something that can be inculcated by a magazine. I am bisexual, I was bisexual before Salient told me that it was acceptable, and I will still be bi even if Salient has the unspeakable temerity to tell me that it is not acceptable. Conversely, if Salient were to devote a future issue, a Gaylient equivalent, to murder, I would not start to believe that murder was acceptable. Even if it explained the complicating factors, the agonising provocations murdererers endured, the overt cruelty of their prisons and the invisible cruelty of an uncaring and discriminatory society, I would still not be persuaded that murderers ought to be released, or the crime legalised, and I would especially not be persuaded to dabble in murder myself.

I imagine that if I were a homophobe, I might feel the same way about homosexuality, and no matter how earnest the articles, they would not change that belief.

There is also the same problem with self-belief that I have already alluded to; no-one is likely to believe themselves to be discriminatory. Many of the incidents of discrimination that I have suffered were inflicted upon me by people who would have been terribly offended, had I told them they were homophobic. (I remember, for example, a girl who told me that she had nothing against gays, she merely found that they lied more often.) So no-one who reads such articles is likely to change their behaviour; they believe that there is nothing for them to change, only the actions of others to condemn.

So what can we do? To remove any hint of the personal from the magazine would be to reduce its interest; but if it does no good and is only one side of a story, does it deserve to stay?

Comment upon issues could be reserved to those not personally involved, but if personal experience still has a place perhaps it is best incorporated in a magazine broader than merely news and comments. Its essentially emotional rather than factual truth could be reflected in creative work, poetry or short fiction.

But I don’t know, and that’s why I have felt doubtful about this complaint. I have presented an issue that may not be an issue, and that certainly lacks a solution; and it’s not up to me to decide what happens next. That’s the job of the writers and of the editors; and of the other readers.

Your call.

Surround yourself with people who like you for who you are. Cut the shitty, negative, time-sucking people out of your life. Think about distancing yourself from those you’re a little too eager to impress.

Stop smoking. It’s an awful sign of weak character and it’s fucking expensive. You can stop smoking pretty easily if you just decide that you want to do it. All your previous attempts failed because you didn’t really want to, you just thought you should. You need to want to be a non-smoker.

Count your lucky stars. I had a friend called Catholic Carol, who would admonish me when I was whinging too much and then make me recount all the things I was thankful for in my life. It irritated me, but it helped me put things into perspective and remember how lucky I was to have what I have.

Have a laugh at yourself. You’re ridiculous. Look at that funny nose on your face. And don’t get me started on genitals and falling over in public. You’re a beautiful, unique person, but don’t take yourself too seriously.

Go dancing. Or something else that makes you feel good. I’m not a great dancer, but it makes me feel fucking good to shake my arse to ‘80s music. Find that thing that you can go do with your friends that doesn’t require money, booze or travel. Life’s hard and sometimes you don’t have any of those things but still need something to pick up your spirits.
Take calculated risks. There may come a point in your life when you realise the full consequences of everything you do and say, and aware of how fucked life is, and you are so worried and anxious about it all that you stop leaving the house. So I’m told. You have to keep taking risks, otherwise life stalls. Not stupid risks like you did when you were 16, but calculated ones. Think it through, are your worst-case scenarios that realistic? Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. But you gotta keep going.

Back yourself. The most amazing and successful people I know are the ones who thought they could do it, and also convinced everyone else of the fact. Even if you’re faking it, confidence pays off.

Get to know your parents. They’re going to die one day. Gulp. Best you emotionally prepare yourself for the fact now. But in the meantime, quit your secretive teen angst act and talk to them like people. Find out about all the stuff that’s happened in their life, all the dirty family secrets, what their opinions are on stuff, what you were like as a kid, what they were like as parents, everything that you won’t be able to find out once they’re gone.

Find a job you’rE happy in, and then figure out what to do with it. For the first couple of years out of uni, you’ll just be stoked you have a job. Cash, whoop! But after that you have to look critically at it and think, can I be happy doing this day and day out for the next five to ten years? If you’re suffering in it, do something about it. Don’t just sit there whinging. Work is a hard reality of life, but it doesn’t have to cause dread and angst every time you wake up and have to go there. You deserve to be one of the people who think their job is awesome.

Learn from your mistakes. There will be many of them. Just try not to repeat them.
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Love Auntie Sharon.

Surprisingly, adult hawk wasps are nectarivores, feeding off the flowers of milkweeds or sweet fermenting fruit. The natural alcohol in this fruit often gets hawk wasps as crunk as a first year on a Wednesday night and they have been described by one random internet blogger as doing “nosedives into the swimming pool for no apparent reason, crashing into me, falling to the ground and just laying there flailing about.” AOTW OTP.

The awards allow University Sport New Zealand and Victoria University to recognise students who excel at the highest level in their chosen sport, while also balancing study and personal commitments.

17 students have been honoured with awards for their efforts in fencing, ultimate frisbee, debating, rowing, surf life-saving and hockey. A further four individuals have been recognised for their efforts in sports administration.

“It’s great to be able to recognise the achievement of many of our top sportspeople like this. 2011 was another strong sporting year for Vic students. From Team Vic’s success at Uni Games and the World University Games to DebSoc continued national and international dominance, we have much to be proud of. Congratulations to all the winners,” says VUWSA President Seamus Brady.

The winners of the overall awards, Sports Administrator of the Year and Sportsperson of the Year, will be announced at the ceremony in the Hunter Chambers on Tuesday night.
“The suspense!” exclaimed Brady.

After the ceremony, it is rumoured that “nibbles” and drinks will be provided, though VUWSA Vice-President (Administration) Daniel Wilson told Salient that this year’s event is “massively scaled back on previous years.”

In the past, the awards have incorporated illustrious guest speakers, three-course meals and even a band, but Wilson, who, together with VUWSA Association Manager Mark Maguire and Clubs & Events Manager Melissa Barnard, helped to organise the awards, said that “there was just no money” for those kinds of bells and whistles this year.

At a meeting of the VUWSA executive last month, Wilson himself requested that VUWSA put a further $5000 towards the Blues Awards, but his application was rejected when he let slip that that amount would cover the cost of hiring Sevens coach Gordon Tietjens to speak at the event.

Sports Administration Awards

Richard Carr—Ultimate Frisbee
Udayan Mukherjee—Debating
Sebastian Templeton—Debating
Daniel Wilson—Debating

Sporting Blues Winners

William Bishop—Fencing
Richard Carr—Ultimate Frisbee
Richard D’Ath—Debating
Asher Emanuel—Debating
Angus Hines—Ultimate Frisbee
James Hunter—Rowing
Jonathan Jackson—Ultimate Frisbee
Holly Jenkins—Debating
Samantha Lee—Surf Life Saving
Udayan Mukherjee—Debating
Tamarah Neal—Ultimate Frisbee
Matthew Richardson—Ultimate Frisbee
Lauchlan Robertson—Ultimate Frisbee
Paul Smith—Debating
Sebastian Templeton—Debating
Alexandra Tully—Hockey
Luke Watts—Rowing

Dear Constance, I’ve always found it difficult to orgasm. A few years ago, I discovered the power (literally!) of vibrators. I’ve depended on them ever since, and I’ve numbed myself so much that it’s impossible for me to come manually. I’m single so it’s not a huge deal right now, but when I think about it I feel so embarrassed and ashamed. I’ve ruined myself. Whenever I sleep with someone they always want me to come, and I can’t. Is there a way to fix me? Sadly yours, Buzzy Bee

You haven’t ruined yourself at all honeybee. A few months without the vibe and your funparts should adjust to gentler stimulation. That said, if it works for you it works for you. If your sexual partners are disappointed they can’t make you come, then consider involving your battery-operated friend. And go easy on yourself—if you like more intense stimulation, roll with it. You have nothing to be ashamed of: many other people rely on their vibes to get them off.

Yo, Ms. Cravings. I have a problem. Every time I have sex, I feel really gross and guilty afterwards, as if I’ve let my girlfriend down, myself down and my life is going nowhere. I’m definitely not asexual or even confused—I definitely like girls and I’m definitely attracted to my girlfriend. I usually figure sex will be a cool thing to do, but once it’s over I consistently feel depressed. Help plox—Peter Parker

Catholic guilt? No, sorry, I shouldn’t joke. We get pretty negative messages about sex and sexuality throughout our lives, and fucking is labelled (by terrifying idiots) as ‘dirty’ and ‘wrong’. This could be lingering somewhere in your brain and making you feel ashamed and unworthy. You could also be experiencing a comedown of all of the hormones that get released when you have sex, which creates a big downer that you interpret as guilt. Either way, if it is upsetting you, then you should do some soul-searching about your feelings on sex; if you have absorbed some puritanical attitudes, think about ways to shake them off. There is no harm in sharing that journey with a counsellor or close friend so that you can work on giving yourself permission to have a fucking good time.

As a 21-year-old male virgin, do you think I should wait for the right girl to come along or just get it out of the way and lose it?

I think that there’s no such thing as ‘the right girl’, but I do think that you should wait until you feel a connection with someone. Whether the connection is ‘I really want to start something important with this girl’ or ‘this girl is heaps of fun, and I like and trust her so let’s explore’, it’s up to you. You’ll know what feels right to you at the time. Don’t do it with someone you don’t really like, because who you had sex with for the first time should be something you’re proud to answer in drunken party truth-or-dare games for the rest of your life.

Do you think size matters? I mean penises and breasts.
No. You could have the world’s biggest cock and not know what to do with it. Or you could have the world’s tiniest cock and have learned interesting angles and pressure points (and to be really adept with your mouth). Likewise, breasts of all shapes and sizes are sexy and fun. Funbits are, on the whole, fun.

Could you do a better job than the Baracks and the Johns and the Julias? The Davids and the Manmohans and the Gurbangulys? When I first heard the question I thought: of course. Of course I could do better than that lot! Then I thought about it a little bit more and I realised that ruling the world would be miserable. You’d have to think about all kinds of depressing things all of the time like rubbish dumps and poverty and the army. Being the leader of the free world would be really fucking hard. Every world leader looks so exhausted all the time. Even John is looking a bit grey from the stress. So no thank you, I won’t be taking you up on your offer of world leadership anytime soon. Does turning the offer down due to hair-vanity make me more or less narcissistic?

I may have internalised this cougar-obsessed, youth-centric beauty culture that we live in but vanity doesn’t mean that a girl can’t dream. If I ruled New Zealand I would do heaps of good stuff . In my ideal scenario I wouldn’t be the Prime Minister and I wouldn’t have to deal with Parliament or legislation or any of that bollocks about fair and equal representation. I would be a benevolent dictator, improving things this way and that way and then paying somebody else to take care of the sewerage. I’d approve gay marriage, I’d encourage gay adoption and I’d take abortion out of the Crimes Act. I’d tax the rich and I’d lower the price of vegetables and I’d make counselling sessions free. Ally Garrett’s New Zealand would be like the Scandinavia of the South. I’d nanny the shit out of that state.

If I was your ruler, there’s something else that would be first on the agenda. Something that I would do to make our world a better place: I’d regulate curry spices. I would set up a Ministry of Curry that would regulate the difference between mild, medium and hot. I’d add in a couple of extra gradients as well, including a ‘not spicy at all’ and a ‘so spicy your tongue might fall out’. New Zealanders everywhere would thank me for a little bit more certainty in their daily lives. Ordering a ‘medium’ curry would no longer be the Russian Roulette of the food world—you don’t know whether you’re going to have a perfectly pleasant time or if it’s going to blow your head off.

Hang on, is it too late to enrol as a Prime Ministerial candidate? I’m sure that after reading this you’ll be voting for me raita away. I could just bhaji on in there and win the whole thing. Hey, Mr Key! Move over dhal-ing!

If you have enjoyed/enjoyed hating Ally’s writing this year you can read more of her work at iamoffendedbecause.blogspot.com. She is trying to brainstorm more curry puns to use on her blog but she’s coming up with naan.

Time is of the essence: please try to schedule a travel health appointment two months before your departure date. This is necessary as some travel immunisations take a few weeks before they are able to provide you with protection against infection. However, even if you are leaving in one or two weeks it is still recommended that you discuss your plans with a doctor. This is particularly relevant if you are travelling to a high risk area, for example parts of South East Asia and India, both of which are popular destinations for students.

Travel appointments with the doctor take thirty minutes and cost between $56.00 – 63.00. There will be additional charges for any immunisations the doctor may prescribe for you. It is important that that you are able to provide the doctor with your immunisation history. To obtain this information you may have to search for your Plunket Book or ask your family or your current and possibly your previous health centre. It is particularly helpful to know if you have had the following immunisations or diseases and when you had them:

- Tetanus\Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A and Chicken pox.

- When you see the doctor tell them about your health history including if you have any allergies. If your doctor prescribes travel immunisations you will also require an appointment with a nurse. You can either arrange to have this appointment straight after seeing the doctor or return to see the nurse another day. Often you are able to receive all the immunisations you require in one visit. Some students may require two or three visits to complete the immunisation course prescribed for them.
The doctor will also provide you with: written information regarding food and water safety, malaria prevention and common infections experienced by tourists such as travellers’ diarrhoea; prescriptions for any regular medication you take and other medications such as oral replacement salts, antibiotics to treat diarrhoea and urinary tract infections, tablets to help reduce the risk of contracting malaria, condoms and the emergency contraceptive pill; and general safety advice including how to deal with jet lag, sexual health, safe air travel.

If you are planning to go diving during your trip it is also recommended that you schedule another appointment at the SHS with a doctor for a Diving Medical. It is important to remember that it is dangerous to dive before air travel. You will need to wait at least 12 to 24 hours before flying.

If you are travelling to South America or Africa, planning long term travel, or if you may require immunisations for Yellow Fever, Rabies or Japanese Encephalitis we recommend that you make an appointment at The Travel Doctor rather than the SHS. This is because the those vaccinations need to administered from a specialist travel clinic by authorised staff. The Travel Doctor is located in the Grand Arcade, 14-16 Willis Street, telephone 473 0991. The Travel Doctor offers a 10 per cent discount off products such as insect repellent and water purifying tablets for students with a current Victoria University Identification Card.

The prestigious accolades, scholarships to overseas institutions, and her constant involvement in the Wellington music scene, see us meeting just days before she records an EP with her band, The Dreamers. Shrouded in a cloak of self-assurance, the unrelenting tenacity that saw her as a 6-year-old memorize her lines for a school production despite her inability to read, has subsequently seen her go from strength to strength.

Gollan is the first to acknowledge how fortunate she has been “with the experiences I was able to have quite young”. Lending her voice to the Kiwi Kids albums, which were distributed around New Zealand schools, afforded her valuable exposure to recording studios. Her euphonic voice has been fostered via singing lessons that began at the tender age of seven through to thirteen. While they focused mainly on a classical repertoire, her love of jazz, already nurtured by her father, compelled her to croon jazz numbers in her own time.

Now just shy of her 21st birthday, the confidence that she exudes has seen her unperturbed with the sizeable audience that filled the TSB Arena as she serenaded them at the World of Wearable Arts recently. While Wallace states that this is the result of a gradual process whereby “You stop worrying so much about what the audience is thinking of you, and you just start doing it for you,” it could perhaps also be attributed to the adulation she has received in the form of numerous awards and scholarships. Impressively, she has received the ‘Most Outstanding Musician’ and ‘Most Outstanding Vocalist’ awards at the National Youth Jazz Festival, along with the ‘Best Vocalist’ award at the Queenstown International Jazz Festival, and has received and undertaken a scholarship with The Jazz Workshop Sydney.

However, it’s the sensation that Wallace is fast becoming that far exceeds her numerous accomplishments. As we meet, it is only a few days before she enters the studio to record an EP with The Dreamers, which sees her bringing some of her own work to tangible fruition. Gollan, a team player to the very end, is quick to point out that the material was a collaborative effort, though she admits to an apprehensive excitement at the prospect of showcasing one of the songs for which she penned lyrics. The effort that Gollan places in The Dreamers, is put forth equally into her other projects, the Wallace Gollan Trio and her other latest endeavour, though they are “just rehearsing at this stage”.

This coming February will see Gollan relocating to Sydney, where she has previously performed and attended jazz workshops. While this affords her some familiarity and a network from which to draw from, she is intent on making the most of the mini musical empire that she has forged for herself in Wellington, hoping to record an EP of her own work before the end of the year. Conceding that Sydney is merely a “stepping stone” for her before she heads to London, she is understandably “excited about it because you get a bit blasé and safe here”.

While the next few years will see her exploring Europe and other foreign lands, it has already become clear, that although 1951 may have seen Nat King Cole sing ‘Unforgettable’, over sixty years later Wallace Gollan is well on her way to becoming it. *

Cake
225g butter soft but not melted
2 1/3 cups sugar
5 egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 1/2 cups milk, zap in the microwave for 30 seconds
Red, blue and yellow food colouring, gels work best

You will need to bake 6 cakes from this recipe. I used three 22cm spring- loaded cake tins and reused them. Line the bottom with baking paper and grease the tin with butter. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Sift dry ingredients (except sugar) into a bowl. In a large bowl cream the sugar and butter then add the egg whites and vanilla and beat to combine. Add milk and then flour mixture to the egg mixture until everything is combined. Split the cake mix between six bowls. Colour each bowl a different colour (you want them really bright). I made yellow, orange, red, green, blue and purple. Pour each colour into a cake tin and bake till firm to the touch (about 15mins).

Swiss butter cream frosting
9 egg whites
1 ¾ cups sugar
450g butter, soft but not melted
2 tsp lemon grated lemon rind
Cook the egg whites and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly, until the sugar is completely dissolved then whip on high speed until room temp. On a medium speed, add the butter, bit by bit. After all the butter has been added, turn the mixer back to high speed and whip until it has come together, about five minutes. Add the extract.

Once cakes and cooled, sandwich them together in rainbow order with the Swiss butter frosting between each layer, coat the whole of the cake with the remaining frosting so it looks plain and white from the outside.

But it is a seductive and subtle point, this one. It’s not unknown for even highly intelligent people to simply accept this in some cases without much question, and nor is it a problem that is restricted to the sciences alone. It is pervasive reminder to us all to constantly be critically thinking, first of our own ideas and then of other people’s. For when we are not, we come up with wonderful little gems like this newspaper headline I found today on stuff: “Poor skills behind Aussie pay gap.”

This was a nice little article which reported on statistical research by NZIER. The researchers had measured how many people we have employed in what kinds of industries, and how productive they were on average. It then compared those figures to the same figures for Australia, which is a really good idea to get an understanding of what may drive the pay gap between ourselves and the Australians. One of the key findings of the report was that the NZ services sector* is 25 per cent less productive than the Aussie services sector. With more than 70 per cent of all New Zealand jobs being in the services sector, the report suggests the lack of productivity in this sector is a large factor in the pay gap. So far, so good!

Now the article takes a turn for the worse, drawing from a completely different report the fact that more than one million kiwi workers have only basic qualifications or worse. It also takes from this report the fact that jobs have been lost recently in manufacturing, and that hospitality (services) is gradually taking up those employees. And now, armed with those two facts the article declares: “One million poorly educated and trained workers are the cause of a growing income gap of more than $14,000 a year between Kiwi and Australian workers, a report says.” Wow, what a leap! Nowhere in the report is the pay gap blamed on one million poorly educated and trained workers. In fact, the report explicitly states that the combination of “quality of labour, capital, and management, and regulatory environment” is of the highest priority (personally I think the poor quality of management/leadership is a bigger part of this equation than the skill of workers). And yet, by linking these two facts together and unreasonably imposing causation between them, this article has turned a wonderful and insightful report into a simple attack on low skilled workers in the public eye! If I was one of the authors of this paper, I’d be up in arms trying to defend my report, but as I am but a magazine columnist, I will turn it into a lesson: Never, ever assume causation between two correlated facts. Never.

*the report just seemed to assume the reader would know what the ‘services’ sector was, but if you are anything like me you will have been wondering exactly what ‘services’ actually is. As best as I can tell, services includes: wholesale and retail, finance, and community services. It might possibly include transport, but does not include construction, manufacturing, agriculture, utilities or mining.

The dynamic fostered between a couple harmonizing, playing and subsequently bickering, can be seen from the days of The Carpenters and, Sonny and Cher, while more recently The White Stripes and The Kills have tantalized audiences with innuendo that does nothing to solve the mystery of their union.

In every case there is one half of the duo that surpasses the other, enveloping their companion in a blanket of self-doubt and resentment. While Jack White’s charm and Jamie Hince’s high profile relationship see Meg White and Alison Mossheart shunted into the shadows, in the case of the Cults, it would appear that Madeline Follin commands the most attention with her doe-eyes and dulcet delivery.

Sonically, these latest purported purveyors of so-hip-it-hurts rock music don’t appear to be remarkably different from any of their alternative rock contemporaries. Nevertheless, Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion have produced a tight debut filled with equal parts melancholy tunes and cheery guitar riffs. With comparisons easily drawn to both The Raveonettes and Elliot Smith, it becomes clear after an initial run through of their album that their strength lies not in the lyrical depth of their songs (“tell me what’s wrong with my brain cause I seem to have lost it”), but rather their rugged instrumentalism and innocent enthusiasm. While the more upbeat ‘Go Outside’ and ‘Oh My God’ are bound to be on high rotate at soirees the world over, the universally relatable Abducted, sonically dripping with despondency, is sure to become the musical backdrop for many a bitter separation.

Perhaps the best track, ‘You Know What I Mean’ has Madeline and her Mary Weiss-esque vocals reach dizzying heights, though whether or not this is reflective of their future remains to be seen. Only time will tell whether the Cults are just another brick in the wall.

The formidable Mike Chunn, NZ music legend and co-author of I’m With the Band, a how-to of everything musical in Aotearoa (with Jeremy Chunn and Salient’s own Barney Chunn),

I’m With the Band; How to make a career in popular music in New Zealand
Mike Chunn, Jeremy Chunn, and Barney Chunn
Hurricane Press, Price TBA

I’m With the Band is a sequel to your 1997 publication The Mechanics of Popular Music. Why did you feel that now was the right time to release it? Is it that NZ musicians need a bit of a call to arms, or that the nature of the industry has changed over the past decade?

The industry bears little resemblance to 1997 in its technologies and distributions. They could not have been imagined back then! The slow eradication of the stranglehold the major record companies had is the main shift. And of course the Internet has provided tall platforms from which songwriters and artists can fling their recorded music all around the world. It’s important that NZers realise that their options these days are plentiful.

The book gives advice on every part of the musical process—from forming the band to writing songs, the roles of managers and entertainment lawyers, publishing, performing, and promotion. How did you manage to compact everything in to such an incredibly detailed but easily accessible book? Were there sections you felt you had to emphasize more than others?

We felt it was important to avoid theory. We talked to those artists who have carved out proactive, rewarding careers as well as those administrators who (as well as being passionate about music) have worked like bastards to bring the music of NZers to the people. In Blink—Malcolm Black, Becs Caughey, Ian James—we have gone for a spread across pole positions (as such) to cover the various domains that this crazy, amazing industry has.

You have interviews with some iconic New Zealand musicians—Supergroove, Shapeshifter, Neil Finn…. How would you describe NZ’s musical community today? Do you think there’s still a sense of camaraderie or has corporate competitiveness muddied the waters, so to speak?

NZs musical community is fabulous. There IS a sense of camaraderie amongst those of us who are now in later years (i.e old!). We all knew we had to front up to a nation that in our formative, emerging years was backward and quick to dismiss a belief in the importance of song in the lives of any nation. And NZ, well, we’re a young nation. NZ songs were desperately needed back then so we took it on the chin and wrote and recorded them.

There’s a chapter in the book titled ‘Creating the difference’, where you talk to Ian Jorgensen about the split between ‘live’ bands and ‘radio’ bands. Why do you think there’s such a disparity in NZ between artists who get airplay but hardly do gigs and artists who have huge live followings that almost never get airplay?

It’s inevitable in an isolated nation with a small population. The radio world is about Top 20 music from overseas—the Anglo-American pop flood. It has been and will always be there. But really—Top 40 radio is about the song in the first instance. So an artist like Zowie will have a Top 10 song in ‘Broken Machine’ but won’t get 100 people to a live show because those who prop up the sales and research at radio for that recording like the song . They don’t care who’s singing it. Whereas an act like Shapeshifter carved out a huge following on live shows. A live show is an event at which the punter thinks—“they’re playing to me. It’s about them and me and those around me who sense and know the wonder and emotional connection that this room is holding for us. That’s unique. And if from there, an artist like Shapeshifter crosses over to Top 10 radio with a song or five then they will be enormous! That’s what happened to Split Enz. Those first seven years established a figurehead of musical exploration and stagecraft… and then came “I Got You” in their 8th year.

You’re the recipient of a Living Legends Award, among others, founder of Play It Strange, and one of the most respected people in NZ music. With so much experience in the industry, what’s the most important piece of advice you have for up- and-coming NZ artists?

You have to be unwavering. You might be booked to play a bar and as you start you see absolutely no-one in the room. You play like there is a full house. You stand and deliver! Watch the World Cup rugby games. A team can be down 50-nil. How are they playing? Do they walk off the paddock ‘cos they think “Bugger this. We’re losing”? No they don’t. That’s why they’re in the team. It’s the same in the world of taking your music to the people. You must be unwavering in your self-belief and musical dedication to excellence. Oh, and you must love your fellow man. Songs, live performance and recording all collide in a perfect way when human relationships are complementary and complimentary. In the end – and I am deadly serious about this—a fulsome and vibrant path in the world of music falls on the relationships you have or make with other people.

Somewhat confusingly for many, it has no leaders and no single list of demands or requests. What they do all have in common is that they are “the 99%”, a group of people (which includes you and I) who have financial concerns, largely as a result of the top 1 per cent of society who have amassed large amounts of wealth and aren’t sharing. The protestors are using the Arab Spring tactic, essentially a wave of unrest involving strikes, marches, occupations of land and use of social media to create enough unrest in a region to force extensive change—this tactic has been credited with the overthrow of three governments (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya).

Currently, protestors are occupying Zuccotti Park in Wall St, New York City. They began the occupation on 17 September, and the number of those residing in the park nightly fluctuates around the 200 mark. The occupiers have set up everything from a kitchen and medical booth to a library, have met with local apartment dwellers/owners to ensure their living arrangements don’t clash, and are daily donated enough food for the entire movement. Various websites broadcast requests to ensure the occupiers can remain safe and healthy, for example, use of washing machines and driers after rainy spells. There is talk of how to ensure the occupation doesn’t peter out throughout the fast-arriving New York winter. Occupiers are in for the long haul. Per the Arab Spring process, marches and rallies occur almost daily, and many other groups use the occupation as a springboard for their protests. On September 27, over 700 uniformed pilots protested heavy pay cuts in the wake of the recession, and even the Canadian Postal Union wrote to express full support. Occupy Wall St is a resolutely peaceful occupation, as opposed to a prolonged protest awaiting the city to meet specific demands.

Occupying Wall St was started by the website Adbusters, who per their website are “a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.” The aim, in short, is to “end the monied corruption of our [the USA’s] democracy.” So, as the financial centre of New York, Wall St was chosen as a target to occupy. Wall St, an eight-block street, contains the New York Stock Exchange, and has historically housed four other exchanges, such as the New York Board of Trade. John Robb, of the Global Guerillas movement, writes,

“What’s the real goal of this protest? Frankly, it’s probably a recognition that the center of power in the US doesn’t reside in Washington anymore. It’s on Wall Street. This protest dispenses with the middle men (the US Government) and goes straight after the real power.”

Most importantly, Wall St symbolizes the entire financial and banking systems for most Americans. When the corporation Enron was found guilty of fraud, for example, “Wall St” was blamed despite Enron not having any headquarters near the street itself. The occupation of Wall St as a location highlights financial corruption as the thread running through all protestors’ complaints.

So what’s the point? Where is the piece of paper everyone can refer to, to tell you why this is necessary? Everyone protesting has a slightly different cause. While there is a document everyone supposedly agrees on, it isn’t published on the official Occupy Wall St site, nor is it necessarily useful to those trying to summarize the movement, as it simply lists everything from objections about the cleanliness of the water, to wars overseas, to workplace discrimination. To put it in a sentence, the protestors at Wall St are furious with the system—economic and political, which allows wealth and power to be so unevenly distributed, with catastrophic results for humans and the Earth alike. They have been put into situations which they have no control over as a result of the world as it stands. The idea of the slogan “We are the 99%” is to help with the knowledge that few of us choose our situation, and most poor people are not poor as a result of some bad choices, or any choices, they personally have made.

How did poor people get to be so poor, then? Well, in the case of the USA, remove the safety nets we New Zealanders take for granted, and add a few generations of poverty to the family line. As an example, if you get sick, your ability to get medical assistance is largely based on the amount of money which you have—in 2009, individual insurance costs averaged $4,824 annually, or $92 weekly. With no insurance, a hospital visit for a birth, broken bone or similar can cost around the $10,000 mark. The Commonwealth Fund’s 2010 survey found that 33 per cent of American adults went without needed healthcare because they couldn’t afford it, and 20 per cent were struggling to pay existing medical bills. A friend in Wellington recently visited the Accident and Emergency Medical Centre. After the taxi, doctor’s fees and medication, he was out of pocket by $160, because one of the two drugs he needed were unsubsidized. We would consider that an expensive visit, and at that price many of us would be unable to afford such care, while an American would be unsurprised and out of luck for better options. Protestors old and young have no unemployment benefit to fall back on, and left university with debt on their tails to find that previously thriving industries have no job openings.

Westerners often fail to consider the state of the USA to be bleak because we are comparing it to the previous belief that there is a minimum level of poverty in Western society. There is perhaps a minimum level of poverty in New Zealand, but certainly not in most countries. Wealth disparity in the United States of America is the highest in the developed world, so while 13.7 per cent of Americans live on less than $15,000 a year, the top 1 per cent live on $350,000 or more. The money is there, in the country, but not remotely evenly dispersed in one of the wealthiest countries in the developed world. G. William Domhoff writes,

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1 per cent of households (the upper class) owned 34.6 per cent of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 per cent (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5 per cent, which means that just 20 per cent of the people owned a remarkable 85 per cent, leaving only 15 per cent of the wealth for the bottom 80 per cent (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1 per cent of households had an even greater share: 42.7 per cent.

Hence, for Occupy Wall St, the cries “We are the 99%” hold meaning beyond income or class level—they reflect the absence of assets, of control, of power, for the 99 per cent of the population who are affected by the economy on a daily basis, and literally do not own the country they live in.

Anyone may successfully argue that Occupy Wall St doesn’t have the answers as to how to fix the problems the movement highlights. No plan of action to change society, and the world, has been released by the movement. There are, by design, no leaders in this movement, so no single person to ask, and no fixed ideology to recommend. While the culture of a leaderless, demand-free movement is incomprehensible to many, its strength lies in these aspects. To pull power out of the hands of the top 1 per cent of society, Wall St has to lose its grip on the Government, and the lives of the bottom 99 per cent. This will require more than a few bills passed in Congress, and significant reforms in most areas of society. To do so, the cry “we are the 99%” must be heard and repeated by most of the 99 per cent, something which can only happen when those occupying Wall St, and various locations in the world, bring enough awareness to the atrocities happening in the financial sector to make our lives so different to those in the top 1 per cent.

Except for some small aching for its constant stimulation in the forms of links, access to friends and to their ‘lives’ I was doing pretty well. Just when I thought I had gotten the hang of cutting away virtual contact, I saw an interesting work of art by Ben Rubin called Listening Post whilst doing research for my Art History essay. In this work, the artist has created a live-update of all mentions of the word “I am” (and the sentence surrounding it) in low security chat rooms. Intrigued by this wonderful idea of tapping into the thoughts of strangers, I decided to try something I had never done before. I went on Google, and typed in ‘chat room’. I found a page called chatting.com and logged in. And so, armed with the screen name ‘Hippokiller’ and lilac italic font I entered into this mysterious realm on the 27th of September 2011.

Nervous and intrigued, I walked into the ‘foyer’ room. I scanned the conversation preceding my entry. To no surprise there were open casting calls for Bangalore girls for “friendship/chat.” There was also some vaguely boring thread about Christmas which MadelineSunshine and Enya21 were having. I watched as the room’s conversation paced past quickly. Christmas. Bangalore. Reaper, another user, talking about shooting possums.

Wonderful.

Being the open and confident person I am, I decided to quip up and said “hi”. Nothing. Christmas became a conversation about Christmas in summer compared to winter. Mr. Bangalore was joined by another man who wanted some Tamil ladies. Reaper had a friend, Within_the_darkness, and they discussed various hunting guns. It felt like I was in small room with people shouting over each other.

Like the friendly, slightly naïve person that I am, I piped up again “So, I’m new here.” Nothing. “So, why do you guys come to chat rooms?” Nothing. The chat room crowd were a tough crowd. It felt like my high school years all over again. I decided a new strategy. The next user who logged in was Urcz. I saw him log on, and said immediately, like that over-enthusiastic kid said “hi Urcz!” (I hoped would come across as a friendly conversation-starter). I was not going to be defeated by the chat space. Nothing. At this point I became disillusioned with the whole process. A virtual world filled with paedophiles, old men, desperados, and all the other rejects of society were on no terms going to reject me. Tamil man made his usual rounds. I put on my capslock and wrote TAMIL! Tamil man whispered (a chatroom term where only you and the other person can have a private conversation) “Are you Tamil?” Success. My next move was an open forum question. I asked them (the room) what they did with most of their time besides sleeping. Urcz, one of ‘in’ crowd, responded “I sit in front of the computer all day, I hate the sun” I responded “Why, are you afraid of the daylight, are you a vampire?” Urcz said “lol, yes.” I had just made my first online joke.

Even Reaper and Within_the_darkness got into the conversation about vampires. People were even starting to use my name, addressing me by the shortened nickname ‘Hippo’. I continued badgering the Tamil and Bangalore men by shouting out “TAMIL!” and “BANGALORE!” every time they did their rounds. Another user was asking for a mature woman. The one below him(?) for a 14 – 16 year old. I told them I was a mature 14 year old Tamilian. I also ‘confessed’ that I was too darn ugly to go outside and that I had no friends (perhaps if I kept staying in chat rooms that would be a self-fulfilling prophesy?). After that I had one good conversation with SouthernSkies47 about why he(?) should be out making the most of his lives and not wallow in past regrets, and another simultaneously with Urcz and MadelineSunshine about dreams. In the end, after half an hour, I was the chat room queen bee. Satisfied, I logged off and finally started my essay.

Thesis Survivor Stories
Marilyn Waring and Kate Kearins
AUT Media, RRP $39.99

This is such a fantastic idea. What was the trigger that made you think, “We should really do this”?

Kate and I were discussing our supervision experiences and realised that no one had covered the personal journeys of those who complete theses—who are just a fraction of those who initially enrol. I have also noticed that the ‘personal’ stories are those that are of most assistance to others following in the wake of those who ‘survived’. I run a monthly pot luck for a large number of thesis research students, and it’s the getting through each challenge that is most shared, rather than the latest piece of software or the latest authority.

Was it difficult to find people willing to share their stories or was everyone quite eager to come forward?

Kate and I made a list of those who we thought might be willing to share their stories, and approached them, and I can’t remember one person refusing to participate. Every story is different. Every student I have ever had has learned a lot about themselves, as well as a lot about their thesis topic, on the way to completion.

What have you found to be the most common problem, or piece of advice, across the stories?

We have a list of tips at the conclusion of the book. The major mistakes students make is to think they know the answer before they have done the research, and to not understand that a thesis is a full time job. People in either of those categories are unlikely to complete.

Do you think there needs to be a better support system for those undertaking post-graduate study?

A key is to choose the right supervisor, which doesn’t mean the best authority in the world, but an academic with a raft of successfully completed theses. All the post graduate support structures a university offers can’t compensate for a poor supervision team.

Finally, never research a subject you ‘should’ do. I won’t supervise ‘shoulds’. You need to research the subject you are most passionate about. Then you have massively upped the odds you will complete. *

The official statistic, 82 per cent, is based on a study of 20,000 New Zealand residents who told researchers that in regards to Channel One News, 76 per cent of viewers prefer to watch the meteorology segment of the news, and in regards to Channel Three News a whopping 88 per cent prefer the weather to the sport.

Clam Graemy, one of 4200 Wellington residents who took part in the survey, was in the majority. “It’s not that I don’t like rugby, don’t get me wrong, I love the All Blacks, I’m going absolutely wild for the World Cup, like fucking mental for it, but what the hell is Three News on about? Some clumsy looking ham sandwich called Janet Smunt has won the Budapest Tiny Yellow Cars race? A Lithuanian juggling team came second at the sack-of-turd Commonwealth games somewhere in Estonia? Who gives a shit? But if it’s raining tomorrow I’m not going to wear my new suede boots to school! That’s good current affairs, that is!

“I will admit, I tuned in last weekend when it was announced that Dan Carter was out of the World Cup for good due to a groin injury, that’s a real shame for the ABs. I tell you what though, I wouldn’t mind giving that Carter a groin injury of a different sort! By which I mean that I would like to do a lot of sex on that handsome fellow!” Graemy offered winkingly, unprovoked.

The results from the survey have proven “very interesting, but entirely useless,” divulged KiwiPoll Director of Operations, Rosco Dandre. “We weren’t quite certain what the outcome was going to be, and we can’t really remember why we launched this whole investigation—you would’ve thought we’d write our thesis down when we started! Hah, but no. We didn’t, so, we don’t really know where to go from here.”

Other noteworthy yet unhelpful results from the survey include that: 75 per cent of all children aged 8-10 have never even heard the term ‘MMP’; 32 per cent of women aged 17-30 are ‘better at cards than team sports’; and a mindboggling 48 per cent of all Salient readers aren’t going to notice that the last paragraph of this article doesn’t have a proper

The team was the first from New Zealand and from the Southern Hemisphere to compete in the international Solar Decathlon in Washington DC, coming in at third place overall with its modern take on a kiwi bach.

The contest required 20 university teams from around the world to design, build and operate a solar-powered house. Teams then faced off in ten contests which judged each house’s performance, livability and affordability.

Victoria’s Meridian First Light house placed highly in a number of categories, winning first prize in Engineering, first equal in Hot Water and Energy Balance, second in Architecture and third in Market Appeal.

Team member Nick Officer says of the competition, “While we may not have won overall we are incredibly proud to have represented New Zealand on the world stage. We had such an amazing response from the US public here along with supporters back home.”

Both former Prime Minister Helen Clark and Deputy Prime Minister Bill English visited the house while on display in Washington D.C., and are said to have enjoyed the kiwi touches, such as the jar of Marmite in the kitchen cupboard.

This year they took a step back from the limelight and have produced a record that, while still being everything we’ve come to expect from John the Baptist, might actually be just that little bit more. Shaun Blackwell, the band’s singer and guitarist, shared with me a cup of coffee, his thoughts on British and American comedy, the pros and cons of the RWC, and the process behind the making of John the Baptist’s latest offering, The Great Mountain Haul.

“We put a lot more time into this one, compared with the first one. The last EP was a snapshot of the band’s beginnings. It took only about three hours to record. For The Great Mountain Haul we spent a bit more time in the studio, even though we did most of it live, there’s still a few overdubs and stuff.”

The sense of a slightly more deliberate sound and overall consciousness of what they are trying to achieve is obvious. There is a sense of sophistication in the songwriting that has developed too. While it’s still energetic and firmly founded in the folk and country tradition, there’s a focus on the songs themselves, with little intricacies and complexities that may not be so prevalent in the earlier recordings.
“Yeah this one, for want of a better word, has a bit more thought behind it. We spent a lot more time in the studio. And we went back over the songs, trimmed the fat off them.”
While the songs are stronger and the production and arrangement of them are fuller and more carefully designed, don’t let that trick you into thinking this isn’t the hoedown John the Baptist that can make even the most sullen of suspicious heathens throw their beanies in the air and yell yee-haw! Musically, the songs are often narratives, of drinking, leaving lovers and drinking. The banjo twang and the rollicking snare twitch at your feet like they darting tongue of a venomous frog.

‘Whenever we played we were having heaps of fun, and that’s why we recorded most of the EP live and have the live track on there, to try and capture that energy as much as possible.”

If criticism has been raised against John the Baptist, it’s that they are propped up on old tunes; playing comfortably within genres. Those thinking along these lines probably aren’t going to be forced to change their mind with this record, but then they’re probably the same people who don’t enjoy music per se, but its representational possibilities in a post modern global environment. All of which John the Baptist is having too much fun to care about.

There was one important point that needed to be asked of Shaun though, and I could tell he was getting geared up for it.

If you had to invite three people to dinner, one living, one dead, and a kiwi, who would they be and what would you serve?

Dead: Chet Baker. Before he was addicted to heroin. Yeah he might be a bit more talkative. Yeah and better to look at too, he was quite a handsome man. And his voice? I’d just get him to sing all night. Dead: Miles Davis. I don’t know why I’m choosing all these jazz musicians but I read this article the other day about his explosive wit. And then maybe I’d invite Scribe so Miles and Chet could just take the piss out of him. And, I don’t know, pretty much the only thing I can cook is nachos, so I’d roll with that.

johnthebaptistnz.bandcamp.com

Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The UDHR lists a number of characteristics that cannot be used as a basis as a legitimate form of discrimination. These characteristics include, race, colour, sex, language and religion, however there is no specific mention of sexual orientation anywhere in the UDHR. The absence of a policy of non-discrimination based on sexual orientation in the UDHR, came about because at the time of drafting there was no visible movement for gay and lesbian rights anywhere in the world. Some argue that ‘sex’ includes sexual orientation, however this is not sufficient as although gender discrimination is related to sexual orientation discrimination, there are important differences between the two.

The lack of a consensus on gay rights means that many states feel it is okay to discriminate. For example Iran regularly executes gays and lesbians, Russia bans gay pride parades, describing them as “satanic”, and New Zealand denies two people that love each other the right to marry. Furthermore international criticism of Uganda’s “Kill the Gay Bill” prompted The Observer (one of Uganda’s leading newspapers) to state that homosexuality was not a human right while citing the UDHR. Across the world gays and lesbians are denied rights that are granted to everyone else.

There is still hope! This year a historic gay rights resolution was passed at the United Nations human rights council which expressed “grave concern at acts of violence and discrimination, in all regions of the world, committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation and gender identity”. Although this resolution is a step in the right direction, the UN has no mechanism to back up the resolution; it is therefore up to civil society to change these governments way. You can help in this process by coming along to the Legalise Love March for Equality on October 20. For more information visit legaliselove.org.nz

As we look forward to Wellington’s summer, we farewell another year of studying and, of course, Salient for a well-earned holiday.

Victoria University is a special institution. It’s more than a place where skills are learnt. It is a place where we develop how we think and how we analyse the challenges ahead; the ideas we exchange in the common rooms are just as important as in the classrooms; the friends we make can last a lifetime; and the experiences we share can change lives.
You are our Wellington ambassadors now, wherever you live.

With exams looming, perhaps there is little time to reflect­—but with many of you thinking about what courses to take next year or what careers to tackle, and how you might influence the local and global world.

In 2011, Wellington City embarked on a significant rethink of Wellington’s development toward 2040. Wellington is New Zealand’s most knowledge-intensive city—more of our jobs need a tertiary qualification than anywhere else in New Zealand, and at the heart of our strategy is a desire to make Wellington a smarter, greener Capital with a flourishing economy, especially in the digital and creative industries.

We are designing Wellington to be a connected city, a people-centred city, an eco-city and a city with a dynamic CBD. There will always be some paradoxes between short term outcomes and long term plans.

For those of you concluding your studies, congratulations, but for all of you studying in Wellington in 2011, thank you—you’re making a difference for the Capital’s future.

Celia Wade-Brown

As many leave to go into the world, many will remain, and many more will join in on the coming journey. As reflections of the year pass, like the Wellington wind, we are reminded of the ups and downs, the challenges we faced together or alone, the people we have met through our time at university and the success we have sought. From first years to post-grads, one door is closing but others are opening. Through their time at university, many have found their place, their friends, relationships and their true ambition in life. Because of this we can stand anew, and proclaim:

It’s a new world—it’s a new start 
It’s alive with the beating of young hearts 
It’s a new day—it’s a new plan 
I’ve been waiting for you 
Here I am
-Bryan Adams, 2002

Bryan Adams’ lyrics seem appropriate, as for many of us it is indeed a new world and a new start. The job that awaits us around the corner, the flat we are moving into next year, and the trip overseas which is long overdue. It is a new start for all students, young and old. As Salient sees the sun set on 2011, there will come a time for the dawn of new beginnings. The world is just in waiting. Sure it says ‘the beating of young hearts’ but that doesn’t exclude the old. Growing old is inevitable, but growing up is optional. So as we reminisce over past events, we must not forget that the path lies ahead of us, not behind us. For all students, ones that are hopping off at this station and ones that are continuing the journey:

Whaia te iti kahuranga ki te tuahu koe me he maunga teitei.

Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain.

This next step in life can be like a circus: some acts will be terrible, and some will be sensational. It doesn’t matter what act life will hand to you, continue to aim high and achieve greatness in any endeavour you chose. From Ngāi Tauira to all tauira across Victoria University; your journey is not at an end, it’s simply the beginning of something new.

The Masters student is one of three New Zealand recipients of the prestigious Woolf Fisher Scholarship, which funds students to study towards a doctorate at the University of Cambridge.

Matthew says of the moment when he found out about the award, “It was pretty overwhelming, I had to pinch myself to make sure it was really happening!”
The 24-year-old is no stranger to travel; he spent a year in Lyon, France during his undergraduate studies, and has recently returned from a six-month internship with the Asia Europe Foundation in Singapore.

In Cambridge, he will study how relations with New Zealand, Australia and the European Union have affected regional integration in South East Asia. “If we can understand the impact of trade and other relations between regions, we are better placed to anticipate the process of regional integration,” Matthew says.

The Woolf Fisher Trust invests almost $1 million each year in its scholarship programme, awarding up to three scholarships annually. The scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and demonstration of the virtues prized by Sir Woolf Fisher, including integrity, leadership, boldness of vision, zeal, and keenness and capacity for work. Each scholarship has an annual value of almost $100,000.

Matthew says of receiving the award, “Working with some of the most respected academics in my field will be an amazing experience. Cambridge also has so much else to offer—amazing history, buzzing social and sporting environment, and it attracts really talented people from all over the globe.”

He will be joined in Cambridge in October 2012 by Chris Jenkins from the University of Auckland and Kane O’Donnell from the University of Canterbury.

Despite the fact that VUWSA’s failings were among the most-cited examples of why Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) should be introduced, Hardy, a former VUWSA President himself, seemed adamant that these awards, including a category for Best President, should go ahead.

“I wish they had awards for best students’ associations.”

Only just managing to hold back from commenting that, if such awards existed, VUWSA would lose every time, staff went on to speculate what the awards categories would be and who would be the winners.

Alongside the category of Best President, Best Pash, Most Expensive Scandal, Most Babein’ Executive Member, Most Timely President’s Columns and Best Attendance at Meetings were named as possible awards categories.

Although Salient staffers predicted that VUWSA would lose in nearly all of these categories, ‘Best Pash’ became hotly contested over the course of the final production night.
Former News Editor Molly McCarthy said that Max Hardy was “by far the best pasher on any exec. Ever.”

Current News Editor Stella Blake-Kelly disagreed and said that Otago University Students’ Association President Logan Edgar was the better kisser.

Co-Editor Elle Hunt, on the other hand, claimed that current VUWSA President Seamus Brady would undoubtedly be the Best Pash, despite having failed to lock lips with Brady at the student media awards ceremony.

“I just want him to come up [to the office] so I can pash him!” said an anxious Hunt, in anticipation of the president’s arrival to the Salient office.

The night ended with Hunt attempting to throw herself at Brady on the office couch, and, following her second rejection by Brady, threw her arms up in the air, screeching “I was rejected by Seamus Brady!”

Well, apart from all the others…

Because you, yes you, have an opinion on something. And Democracy allows you to express it. You might advocate a sustainable green economy like me, you might be a monarchist, an anarcho-communist, a conservative. You might even think ACT care. But you think.

But do you put that thinking into practice? Most people don’t seriously consider views that fall outside their own limited perspective. Everyone pays lip-service to equality, and standing in others’ shoes, but at the end of the day the sad fact is most don’t seem to practise it, or protect it. And it’s that kind of selfish, ignorant non-thinking that breeds extremists, whether they’re religious, political, financial, or completely illogical. It’s very hard for us to shrug off what we ‘know’, what we’re brought up with, what we think is the worldview. But we need to!

If we didn’t fight for change, where would the world be now? Humanity has come forward by seeing what doesn’t work, and improving it. We seem to think, as a world, that we’ve done it. That this world is a finished product, that we’ve become something better than our predecessors, achieved the end goal. Or at least, we indicate that from our lack of political involvement. Most people don’t seem to give a shit, so long as they don’t get taxed more.

But the world is not a finished product. Though from our perspective some views might seem crazy, unprofitable, or the products of pricks, that’s not how history works. Martin Luther King, Jr., the head of the American Civil Rights movement—the man who had “a dream”—was a prat. Recently released tapes of JFK’s widow, recorded shortly after his 1963 assassination, reveal that King was an adulterous boor, drunk and laughing at the President’s funeral. But does that diminish his dream? No. It diminishes the man. His legend, and what it inspired, is more important than one person, and we should remember that. Just because the politicians are fucked up, corrupt, or complete pricks doesn’t mean they’re not worth voting for. It’s their views, and how they correlate with improving the world, that matter. Not what pay-per-view channels they watch.

Politicians are human too, and humans are fucked up. Vote for the politicians with a worldview that’s not fucked, if they have the integrity to see it through. Vote for the politicians, and parties, that you think are steering the ship in the right direction—not the politicians you think would be fun to have a drink with. Voting for a smile is ignorant, if the man smiling is an assassin.

There are a number of politicians who can steer correctly, and who you can chat with. Politicians who will take your opinions into account. Politicians who remember their job is to represent you, not their own goals. To represent all New Zealanders. Gareth Hughes comes to mind as a strong politician, a combination of values and integrity that puts the welfare of New Zealanders first. And he’s fun to have a drink with.

Politics isn’t boring. Politics runs through every seam of your life, whether you want it to or not. You may not agree with the government we have, but that is the best reason to be a part of it. Because you are not alone. Because your vote counts. We all think the system is fucked, to varying degrees, for diverse and contrary reasons, but we all have an opinion. “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” Don’t assume your opinion is the strongest. Think on it. Fairly consider others. Then act with wisdom.

So fuck the system. Fuck it long, fuck it good, and fuck it hard. But fuck it for the right reasons—fuck it because you think, because you consider, because you care. It’ll be a lot more enjoyable that way.

In 1981 Mr Key is ambivalent teenager being pressured into picking a side. Ms Clark is being pressured to lay off the protest by her father. Helen goes to protests, John drinks beer. We count down to the final between the All Blacks and the Springboks, and we wait with bated breath to find out how the match will unfold for both the protesters and the passive bystanders.

In 2008, Helen is prime minister. Her commitment to the Labour party has seen her rise to leader and she is attempting to retain her title, but John is closing the gap…
McCubbin has mashed together two hot topics; politics and rugby. The comparison of political race and rugby game is a key part of McCubbin’s writing, and it informs the staging, set and costume. As Helen Clark reminds us; “it’s just what you do to play the game”. The metaphor climaxes with a sublime final sequence fusing rugby, protest, and voting.
This is all played out on a delightful unit set that is full of surprises and the lighting, projections and sound design are impeccable.

There is a fine line to walk when portraying well-known politicians, particularly when blending actual interviews and quotes with fictional conversations. John and Helen are crafted as figures that don’t ignore the stereotypes as much as imbue them with humanity and dignity.

Alex Greig plays a slightly gawky John Key, someone who wants to be everyone’s friend and is inspired by Obama’s use of slogans. To my mind, his reaction against the tour, rather than a refusal to take sides, is a response to the extremities of one side or the other. Harriette Cowan is the perfect Aunty Helen Clark. Her authoritative gravelly voice endeared her to the entire BATS audience within one word. Eerily accurate, Cowan pulls of the public and private Clark with dexterity and charm.

The remaining two cast members play a scattering of politicians, interviewers and protesters. Erin Banks is nothing short of incredible; she plays her bit parts with a confidence and comic flair. Her Gerry Brownlee is a mini-masterpiece and her more human Joan Caulfield (née Anderton) is presented with sensitivity and compassion. Paul Harrop does a wonderful job rounding out the remaining family members and press secretaries.

Rather than affirming one political ideal over another, McCubbin focuses on the human story behind the political games. What vigorous Labour supporter hasn’t wondered what Helen thought after she stood down, and what YoungNat wouldn’t be interested in which TV programme John Key watched the day after his election? Like Taki Rua’s Awhi Tapu, this is provocative New Zealand theatre about our recent past for a 2011 audience. Whether you were for or against the tour, or for or against National or Labour, this play is for us. It’s relevant, it’s hilarious, it’s stylish, and it’s on now. The Engine Room is the sort of play every university student should see.

The Engine Room
By Ralph McCubbin Howell
September 27 – October 8 at BATS

This goes hand-in-hand with the general panic that an almost-graduate in the Arts feels when considering their place in the world. I found myself in mid-rant about how art galleries often alienate their public, when I asked myself “Why do I care?”

Self-doubt is a common ailment of the human condition and I am constantly asking myself if I am studying the right subject or following the right career path. What is the central passion that keeps me trudging up the Kelburn hill every day? What often pulls me back from the brink of madness is remembering what it is that first drew me to study of the visual arts. That inspiration is often found in a single painting.

It is at such times that I remember The Kiss (Der Kuss) by Gustav Klimt. I have been familiar with the work all my life, Klimt being one of my mother’s favourite artists. I have had a poster of this work on my wall throughout my six years of university education, constantly watching over me as crouched over a computer screen for hours on end. I have never studied the work academically, although I suspect that is what keeps my love of the painting going.

There is nothing quite like appreciating an artwork purely for visual pleasure. I often think that is what art should be. Not about the artist’s intentions or the historical significance, and certainly not about the price of the work. It should come down to what it is that captures the viewer on a purely visual level. Not necessarily what is beautiful or spectacular, but what is interesting and grabs our attention.

The Kiss has always satisfied that criteria for me. The work explodes with beauty and colour, from the intricate robe to the bursting meadow of flowers at the couple’s feet. I find the way the male figure leans over the woman and protects her in a shroud of gold, extremely comforting. I am transported in her serenely beautiful face, carried away in a lost moment of joy. There is also something imperfect or unsettling about the work. The woman’s head is tilted slightly too much, to a point that looks uncomfortable. The pair embrace on the edge of a meadow that falls away like a cliff, over which the woman’s feet dangle. These elements create a feeling of unease that in turn adds interest and that keeps the work from ever becoming banal. Just like falling in love, the emotions that this painting provokes are not quite calm or settled.
The work has been described by many as the most romantic painting of all time. However it has never held any false sentimentality, for me at least. It is far too raw in emotion and interesting in unusual detail. Instead it holds a captured sensual moment, which allows me to disappear into a painting and find hidden inspiration. *

The administrators of VUW, led by Pat Walsh, continue to implement policies that radically change the provision of education by this institution with little or no real consultation with students. Most of the cuts are being made in the Humanities as part of an international trend towards the corporatisation of universities. The crisis is the subject of a recent paper released by academia.edu, focusing on “the close relationship between the crisis in the humanities and the corporatization of higher education, and the deep political significance of that relationship. For the humanities, and the related set of disciplines known as the liberal arts, are so essential to democracy that an attack on the former is an attack on the latter. Democratic political culture cannot exist without the humanistic disciplines of history, philosophy, literature, rhetoric and so on. Running colleges and universities on a business model, focusing on profit margins as the primary objective of higher education, is a serious threat to the foundation of democratic societies.” The threat is real. Last month’s termination of two valued papers in the subject of International Relations at Victoria has reduced the discipline to a training programme for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and cuts to Criminology have devastated the quality of the major here. These ‘changes’ to our education, to use the euphemism of our detractors, do represent a process of dying education, as they represent only the most recent offensive in a sustained attack against critical thought.

We Are The University exists to promote discussion and action against threats posed to higher education in New Zealand by Government and university bureaucracies. Given that the administrators of VUW have shown that the ‘student consultation process’ in the form of written submissions is redundant, we have been looking at other ways to express our opposition to their policies of higher fees and corporatised education. Angry, militant protest action is not an illegitimate means of effecting political change. Struggles won through popular protest include those against slavery, apartheid, segregation, the war in Vietnam, and the list goes on. The Arab Spring should serve as a further example.
We have to understand that there is a time for dialogue and compromise in all circumstances, but when dialogue fails, new means of resisting illegitimate authority must be developed and employed. We must also understand that there are times when the interests of social groups conflict, and dialogue alone will do nothing to change that. Major corporations tend not to be in the habit of granting decent wages and better work conditions out of goodwill; workers win these rights by striking, demonstrating, occupying. In the same way, we cannot expect governments, public servants and students’ associations to represent the interests of students unless students themselves are willing to fight for them.

The most rational thing people can do is understand when their interests are threatened and take a logical approach as to what can be done to resist the threat. If dialogue has consistently failed, then the next step must be taken, and to promote dialogue alone, as a recent Salient opinion piece and guest editorial have, defies reason. Protest has worked here at Victoria; it saved the Film School in 2008. Please, if you have grievances concerning our tactics, I invite you to become involved in the group and be a part of the discussion. To do nothing and accuse us of being unreasonable is unfair and unhelpful.

Salient has heard that a number of Residential Advisers (RAs) from the residential complex—which includes Cumberland, McKenzies and Education House—are dissatisfied with the pay they receive and the conditions under which they are expected to work.

As part of the job, RAs are required to live on-site. But one RA has stated that they pay more back to the hostel in rent than they actually earn, meaning they are forced to rely on loans, allowances and other employment to cover the shortfall.

The RAs are also often required to work extra hours, especially when planning large events and dealing with significant problems, but are not paid for this extra work. They believe this is unfair, particularly as RAs from other university Halls of Residence receive a wide variety of benefits and compensation.

Earlier in the year, one RA left their role due to the conditions in which they were expected to work. The RA’s bedroom had a number of leaks which uStay management failed to resolve and on one occasion the RA was pressured to miss a class at university in order to attend a fire drill.

The RAs say they have approached management about their concerns but have been largely ignored. They also hope to raise awareness and secure fairer contracts for the RAs of 2012.

Formerly known as Unicomm, uStay has been plagued with problems in recent years. In 2008, many Cumberland residents spent the year in leaky rooms and on one occasion a sewage pipe burst, causing numerous issues. In response to these conditions, a number of students made national news as they protested at Study@Vic Day and prevented tours of the complex.

Twenty-four columns later, not much has changed. Though my grandmother has come to understand (read: accept) that I’m actually doing something worthwhile (and planning on leaving Uni)—others still stare at me blankly. But I am still incredibly lucky to have been your VUWSA President for 2011.

If anyone had told me back at the start of 2008 when I was first elected as humble Education Officer B, that in 2011 I would be President, I would have told you to get a grip and stop being silly. But looking back, it is incredibly satisfying to see the progress VUWSA has made. I have seen it move from being an organisation quite rightly ridiculed by many as a dysfunctional embarrassment to once again being seen as a vital part of the University environment, actively improving the University for students. Most importantly, we have a positive outlook and we still have a way to go to reach our goals.

This has been a sustained effort from many people; no one person has made the difference or achieved change on their own, but I am proud to have been a part of it. Most of all it demonstrated the importance of electing competent people to represent us, and ensuring robust governance structures. I am proud to have been part of a bigger picture—a picture that spans 112 years.

There have been many highlights throughout my almost four years at VUWSA. Some were obvious—such as our great O Week and the opening of the refurbished Student Union Building, the Hunter Lounge, new meeting rooms and Mauri Ora. Others have been on a smaller scale, such as student reps getting solid wins for individuals or groups of students through policy and advocacy, personally giving out hundreds of food parcels and thousands of study week breakfast servings to students, raising important issues critical to student interests, and facilitating student opinion and input on important work, such as the Review of Undergraduate Education.

Voluntary Student Membership has dominated the many discussions about VUWSA this year. A key challenge for me and our Exec was to put VUWSA in a sustainable position. This now means that students are no longer guaranteed an independent student voice. Instead, we must work for it.

The fact is good universities have strong students’ associations which give students a strong collective voice from which we all benefit. Victoria gets this and the arrangements that we are moving towards should be pragmatic, simple, and transparent. However, we will need to work to retain a system based on independent student-led representation to which VUWSA is committed to.

A huge thanks needs to be given my long-suffering friends, the VUWSA Trust (notably Dave and Alistair), the VUWSA Executive, the student reps, alumni and staff—especially those who went above and beyond what was expected, the babes at Salient, Max and Conrad, the many University staff who, despite never agreeing on everything, always showed a commitment to partnership and to improving the University. But above all, thank you the students who helped make VUWSA and Vic what it is.
Thank you for having me.

You know what’s interesting is that I am starting to genuinely think some people don’t have fantasies or fetishes. Well, further than your ‘I like girls in sexy lingerie’ stock standards, and given that I have people with poop-happy boyfriends and garden nudists writing in to me, I feel like the stock standards probably don’t get enough attention. So I’m glad you wrote in.

I’m hesitant to give you tips and tricks because there are a million places like that, and frankly regular sex with your boyf should be just as important as the times when you decide to try something you saw in porn.

Your boyf might not have some deep longing for you to be bound in rope and ball-gagged, but he will have preferences. He will enjoy it when you dig your nails into his back a little bit when you’re fucking, or when you play with his balls while you’re giving him head. Whatever those little things might be, focus on them, and get him to focus on your little things. That way, even though you might not be having wild crazy sex—you’re having good sex.

Wild sex is awesome, but you don’t need that to have passion. Passion is exploring the other person, bouncing off their reactions and generally being in the moment focussed entirely on what’s feeling great. Build things up really, really slowly from teasing to full on fucking, and let him know when you’re enjoying it with some seriously vocal appreciation.  Build-up is so important—double the length of your foreplay, get him to wind you up with all of the things you like and refuse to fuck you until you’re gagging for it. And (if you have ladybits) until you are wet like a monsoon. Then by the time it’s P into V action, you’ll be so fucking into it you’re a little bit dizzy.

Let’s be honest though, when you’ve been with someone for a really long time, it’s not always going to be headboard clutching, heart pounding stuff. Getting into ruts that can last a really long time is super normal. Just ease yourself out of it with a renewed sense of interest in making him feel really good and taking your sweet time when you’re together, and I’m sure he will return the feeling. You say you love him, so make sure those moments really focus on that and how much you enjoy being with him. He’ll feel how much you’re into it, and hopefully give back. Which is pretty much the best thing we can all hope for when we get those moments alone. If it happens to go into wild territory because you really feel like being spanked that day then good for you, but work on the connection first and foremost.

Loves x

The billboards, which originally towered over Willis St, Courtenay Place and Lambton Quay, infringed a number of sections fundamental to the Public Places Advertising and Expression Act. Section 67(a) of the Act states that ‘no public advertising may contain racial, sexist, or religious slurs,’ a provision clearly contravened by a billboard boasting Grobertson’s face and the phrase, ‘What are we going to do with the Pakis? Vote Labor and help us decide.’

Wellington Pakistani Nationals Society President Asif Ali Zardari spoke out against the advertisement: ‘It was totally obscene, isn’t it? A completely abhorrent outburst from a party who we used to believe in and look to for support as immigrants. Besides, they should be more worried about the Koreans, they’re the ones stealing all our jobs.’
Other banned posters include: ‘National are losers. Kohn Jey is a pussy. Vote for a party that doesn’t all suck dick’ and ‘I’m Rant Grobertson and I have a Maori friend. Can Kohn Jey say that?’

Jey has since responded with official radio ads denouncing the offensive billboards as slander tactics, inappropriate for a democratic election in a liberal society like New Zealand. The ads also asserted that ‘Rant Grobertson is a useless prick who can’t play footy to save himself’.

These displays of political child’s play are not the first instances of squabbling between the two major parties. In 1978 during the lead-up to the general election, Sir Mubert Roldoon made a number of unsavoury television adverts. ‘Biwling’s a fancy boy and he wears ladies’ knickers. Don’t vote for a man who’d push over your mother and spit in your porridge given half the chance’ was a more memorable statement made by Roldoon in his ‘Keep The Poofters Out’ election campaign.

Roll Biwling, well known for an inability in coping with Roldoon’s aggressive style, crumbled under the pressure and released a press statement claiming that ‘You probably shouldn’t vote Labor, we are just a big stupid bunch of pansies,’ whilst weeping into his lilac-coloured hanky.