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88% of you just lost the game

Sammy Carter (she/her)

I’m sorry, but you’ve lost the game and it's time to start over. After a Massive Magazine Instagram poll, we found that 88% of readers know what ‘the game’ is, while 12% do not.

Creative Media Production student Sophie Hamilton said, “it's one of the most amazing games there is, there's only one rule, don’t remember it.” For the 12% that don’t know what ‘the game’ is, don’t feel bad, even Massive’s editor Mason didn’t know! ‘The game’ is very simple. You are always playing, but you can never win. As soon as you remember the game, you lose and you have to start over. You must announce that you’ve lost the game before restarting. And now that I’ve told you what ‘the game’ is, you cannot stop playing.

Hamilton was on a one year streak of forgetting the game before I reminded her, whoops. She said ‘the game’ was a bonding moment for her friends when they were younger. “It was funny, we would always argue over the game and how stupid it is.” She first learnt about it in primary school, “it’s like an inside joke for anyone born around the 2000’s and the 90’s”.

No one really knows how ‘the game’ came about, but lots of people have claimed to have invented it. One theory is that of Russian author Leo Tolstoy who made up a game with his brother in 1840. They had to stand in a corner and try to not think about a white bear. Another theory involves members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society, who created a game called the ‘Finchley Central’ in 1976. The first person to think about the Finchley Central train would lose.

In 2005, ‘the game’ started to reemerge when a site called LoseTheGame.com was launched. Then, youtubers started to make videos about ‘the game’ and how to play it. Around 2012 and 2013 the memes began, one of the first being of scrabble with the words ‘you just lost the game’ laid out. Since then, everyone started to learn what ‘the game’ was, and here you are losing it.

Now, go out into the world and tell anyone and everyone about ‘the game’. The goal is that one day, everyone on earth will be playing.

Is Student Health worth it?

Elise Cacace (she/her)

Anyone that has required the assistance of a health professional knows how draining it can be financially. One of the perks of being a student is the entitlement to health and counselling subsidises and free health services. However, recent research suggests that saving your pennies and using these services may not be worth it.

In a recent online survey, students were asked to share their thoughts on our current Student Health System. 100 per cent of the 36 students that responded were disappointed with their experiences and agreed that the Student Health Services were operating below-par.

The Student Health Service administrators from all three Massey campuses were given a chance to have their say, however they declined this opportunity.

One Massey student says, “I don’t want to know the total amount of money I spent on multiple visits seeing doctors at Massey to not be taken seriously. I spent less on one session with a private GP and got to the bottom of my issues.”

“My Doctor said that I was complaining too much as I had come to him many times about some stomach issues. I was talking to him at an appointment about another issue that could perhaps be related to my stomach and he told me to ‘shhh!’ and said that if I wanted to talk about another issue then I had to come back and pay for another appointment. It turns out a few weeks later I ended up going to hospital and was diagnosed with advanced endometriosis. Because the Doctor didn’t listen to me it got worse, and it all could have been prevented a bit if he had listened to me. Massey Doctors do not have the students best interest at heart, they are just there to do their job but they have no compassion,” says another anonymous student.

“Something was wrong with my stomach, it was really sore and could not digest things. I tried to book with the Student Health but it took ages. I tried to go to campus for emergency support and got declined from the service and was asked to book for other date. So I went to the Wellington After Hours Medical Centre at Basin Reserve. The doctor there said I could have died due to appendix inflation, and that I required for operation,” says another student.

“I was an international student at Toi Whakaari between 2017 and 2018, and because the school doesn’t have any clinical facilities of their own, we were told to go down the street to Massey. Now, because I wasn’t a domestic student, theoretically I wasn’t entitled to domestic rates, yet the nurses at Massey could never make up their mind about how much to charge me. Sometimes it would be the domestic $30-$40-ish, other times it would be the $60-$70-ish international students had to pay. Any time I needed care, it was anyone’s guess about how much I’d be paying out of pocket.” As well as feeling ignored and confused by doctors, many students have received shocking advice from professionals working in the Student Health Services.

“When I went to Student Health, I wanted to start acne medication again (which I took throughout high-school), but the doctor told me I should instead buy more expensive makeup,” says an anonymous student.

“I went to Student Health seeking antidepressants or some kind of mental health help, and got told to just go outside more. Heaps of people I know have had similar experiences,” says another student.

“I once went to a Doctor at Student Health, and even though she was otherwise very kind to me, she told me that I would grow out of my asexuality because I explained I only wanted birth control to stop periods and acne.”

Experiences like these are not a one off, and are not only occurring at Massey University. Student Health Services across New Zealand are notoriously underfunded and understaffed, and it is stories like these that call for a change.

FRIENDS

Don’t worry students, help is on the way!!!!!!!!!

Elise Cacace (she/her)

Ask the majority of the population what they think of when they hear the word ‘student,’ and you’ll most likely get bombarded with the words “poor,” “shitty flats,” “stressed,” “overworked,” and “2-minute-noodles.” For far too long these stereotypes have been normalised and accepted, but with today’s rising cost of living and a worsening housing crisis, it is finally time we stood for change. Thankfully, the Green Party and NZUSA, Te Mana Ākonga, Tauira Pasifika and the National Disabled Students’ Association have started the movement for us.

A survey of more than 4500 students has recently been launched “to build up irrefutable evidence on the basis of making asks and pushing for interventions. It is also to help students going through these experiences to understand that they are not anomalies, that these are not individual problems that people are going to resolve all by themselves, but that they are systemic,” says Green Party MP, Chlöe Swarbrick.

The survey found that two-thirds of students do not have enough money to buy food, clothing, pay bills, get healthcare or other basics. It showed that those living in a shared flat spend an average of 56% of weekly income on rent, when affordable housing is considered not more than 30% on both international and domestic measures. 91% of students support rent controls, 82% support a rental warrant of fitness, and two-thirds aren’t able to pay for transport or the costs of a vehicle.

To combat student poverty, the Green Party has made a number of proposals, including raising student allowances and making them universal, making public transport free for tertiary students, improving the accessibility and capacity of student mental health services, and progressing the Rental Warrant of Fitness and Rent Controls proposals.

“So frequently you will hear politicians talking about how education is a pathway out of poverty, not realising that poverty is in fact a barrier to education,” says Chlöe Swarbrick.

“You’ll often also hear narratives or myths about how ‘back in my day we were still working a million hours a week and bla bla bla.’ Well the reality is, as our research shows, that students today in real terms are hundreds if not thousands of dollars worse off than students even five, ten years ago, when you take into account all the variables around rent, and increase in course costs etcetera.”

Aotearoa’s Green party are not the first in the world to recognize the imbalance in student to worker welfare. Germany, Denmark, Finland and Iceland have some of the lowest rates of student poverty internationally due to price restrictions and cost subsidies granted for those studying.

“There are a range of countries, particularly in Europe, that provide free education and people don’t have to take on debt in order to get their qualifications. Those countries realise and recognise that education is a public good, and that in turn is reflected in productivity statistics from those countries,” says Chlöe Swarbrick.

“Every time you walk into a building or walk across a bridge and it doesn’t collapse, you’re benefiting from somebody’s education. Anytime you interact with any piece of technology, you are benefiting from someone else’s education. It really all boils down to whether we want to prioritize that education and that social

advancement and the opportunity for everybody to thrive, or whether we want to keep gatekeeping it.”

On the topic of implementing more strategies in New Zealand to eliminate student poverty, Chlöe Swarbrick says, “the Greens would love to do it overnight. These are things that we have been campaigning for, for a really long time. The barrier of course is Labour and obviously National who aren’t so keen on doing them.”

“So many of our students aren’t realising that our politicians are accountable for them in the same way that our politicians are accountable for the loudest voices in the room, such as the landlords and the business owners. What it all boils down to is that we can do it all tomorrow if we wanted to, the only barrier is political willpower.”

Any students that would like to stand for this change and be a part of the hand that digs our collective body out of poverty, there are a number of things that you can do. Firstly, it is important to gain an understanding of the politics happening around us. Everyday members of parliament make decisions that go on to affect the future of our entire country. By recognising these decisions and responding to them, we can help force the hand of those that hold the vote in parliament. The next steps include getting involved in a student association.

“Research shows that far fewer students than we would hope are involved in their student associations, which prompts a range of other systemic and long-term issues around how students don’t have that kind of representation that is sustainable and long-term. Our student associations are constantly having to relearn how to do their jobs every single year with new executives and do not have that ability to have that long term planning and funding,” says Chlöe Swarbrick.

“Students have to get political, and have to realize their power. There are nearly 400,000 students in this country who make up around 6% of the population which is a huge voting block. When you consider the communities and the neighborhoods and the towns and cities and regions that students come from, and their families and all the rest who they are all connected to, well that’s a massive opportunity to push for a change and transformation.”

“It is all political and it is not going to change unless students realise their power. A part of this research process was to empower students by letting them know that they are not alone, and to encourage them to look around their lecture theatre and realise the power in that room.”

Tukua mai ō whakaaro mō te tāone ki tua

Have your say on the future of the city

The Proposed District Plan deals with some of the City’s key issues like enabling housing and protecting our natural environment.

Have your say at wcc.nz/pdp Submissions close 12 September 2022

Covid-19 is still a thing, but at least its trending downwards

Massive Reporter

Finally, some good news, Covid-19 case rates are trending downwards across all regions of New Zealand, as health officials say the “worst case scenario” previously modelled is now unlikely to unfold.

Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave the update on the state of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

The decrease in Covid-19 cases was also being seen in wastewater results and test positivity rates in people being admitted to hospital in the week to July 24. Bloomfield also highlighted some preliminary analysis of Covid19-attributed deaths, showing “convincingly” how getting boosted was “one of the most important things you can do to reduce your risk of death”.

People who had not received two doses of Covid-19 vaccine were six times more likely to die if they caught Covid-19 than someone who’d had at least one booster dose, when adjusted for all other factors.

For people under 60, that risk was even higher – more than 13 times greater for those who were unvaccinated or had less than two doses, compared with someone who was boosted.

Officials estimated half of all Covidattributed deaths of people aged 20-60 could have been avoided if all of those people had been boosted. As we’ve come accustomed to, with all good news, comes the bad news. On Friday, the beloved Dr Ashley Bloomfield will be stepping down as the Director-General of Health. Meaning kiwis will no longer be seeing the national icon on our television screens.

For many people, Bloomfield was the bright face of hope that pulled us through the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. For his duties and selflessness, Massive would like to encourage all students reading to pour one out for Daddy Bloomfield. You will be missed king x