University | Issue 17

Feature

v o l .7 7 i s s u e . 17

the university issue

editor@salient.org.nz

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Feature

contents on the cover Vi c e - C h a n c e l l o r G r a n t G u i l f o r d reimagined (re-Imogen-ed?) as Sam the Eagle from the Muppets

weekly content 4. Letters 6. News 3 0 . C r e at i v e 36. VUWSA 39. Arts 45. Odds and Ends

features 18. VC: Still a GC 20. Never Been Pissed 22. An Interview with Steven Joyce 24. An interview with Grant Robertson 2 6 . Wa r n i n g : C o n t e n t 27. Grading Scaling

columns 1 5 . R a m b l i n g s o f A Fa l l e n H a c k 16. Sports Banter 17. Bone Zone with Cupie Hoodwink 3 3 . We i r d I n t e r n e t S h i t 33. Conspiracy Corner 34. Food 35. C B T 3 5 . M Ä o r i M at t e r s 3 7 . A rt i c u l at e d S p l i n e s 37. Shirt and Sweet with Eleanor Merton 38. Bent

online content w w w. s a l i e n t . o r g . n z

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The University Issue

Take a step back and realise how privileged we are to be at university.

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n average, tertiary education will make us earn 60 per cent more than those who didn’t go to uni. Uni is a sweet deal. If we want, we can go to a couple of hours of class a week and spend the rest doing fun shit. When we’re at uni, we learn the coolest random stuff that we’ll probably never use but will always know.

We are at that awesome stage where we are old enough to do cool things (like stay up late and do drugs and fuck and stuff)* but young enough that we don’t have to do boring things (like file tax returns and console our crying baby at three in the morning and pay off our mortgage and donate to tax-deductible charity organisations). We get to make friends with people we actually want to be friends with and live in a flat with them. Compared to disadvantaged groups in society, we are living the fucking dream.

But at the same time, we are also pretty hard done by. We have all this spare time but can’t afford to do anything with it. Staying up till 3 am writing essays is stressful.

Time is starting to run out and there’s anxiety about whether we’re doing the right thing.

We have to start making adult decisions like who to vote for.

And the Government is always trying to fuck us.

And all too often, they do. Did you know that National has a bill which would remove the right of students to be on the council that decides how a university spends our money and makes decisions about our future? Did you know that a couple of years ago, pretty much all subjects had tutorials, whereas now heaps just have twohour-long classes? Did you know that if we want to do postgrad and we’re poor, we can’t get an Allowance from the Government?

Did you know that student membership of VUWSA used to be compulsory? Did you know that the Student Services Levy used to be just over $100 when it’s now almost $700?

You probably don’t know these things, but don’t feel guilty. It’s not your fault. The fact that we are only ever at university for three-or-so years means that it’s hard to know what policies you have missed out on and how much better university used to be. Politicians and admin staff can change the way universities

work knowing full well that students will only be affected by the changes for a couple of years at most, so won’t care enough to get out and protest. We are more emotionally invested in bigger issues like climate change and marriage equality. They make university policy as dry and as dense as possible, knowing that we won’t keep them in check because we are too busy dealing with other dry and dense uni work. Cheeky fuckers.

But there are some people who care about our university experience. Our students’ association works tirelessly behind the scenes to get us a better deal.

For years, they have campaigned on student fares for buses, and last week, the Greens announced a policy of free off-peak public transport. Student reps are unsung heroes and we should all be grateful. And everyone should vote in the VUWSA elections next week.

This week, we interviewed three key figures behind university policy. Grant Guilford is our Vice-

Chancellor. No one has probably ever seen him before, but he is the guy that is the king of Kelburn castle, the big boss of the Uni. We also talked to Grant Robertson and Steven Joyce. Joyce is the Minister for Tertiary Education, and Robertson Labour’s Associate Spokesperson for Tertiary Education. If anything will change in government tertiaryeducation policy, these two are the people who will do it. Feature writer Wilbur investigates Vic’s new grade-scaling policy and finds that it is seriously lacking.

But we didn’t want this issue to be all policy. Resident gonzo journalist Phil attended the infamous D-tour Weir House party (1000 STUDENTS), and wrote about his drunken experience with freshers. We’ve also got an amazing Creative section this week which showcases some of the great things that have been made this year down at Te Aro Campus.

Uni is great. Uni is shit. Enjoy it while it lasts.

*These things are not fun for everyone, and you shouldn’t do them just because we said they were.

L ove ,

Du nc an & Cam

Feature

Letters

FREE COFFEE!

Are you angry, elated or apathetic about Salient? Send us a letter of less than 250 words to editor@salient. org.nz. Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number.

These will not be printed. Letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. The Editors reserve the right to edit, abridge or decline any letters. The letter of the week wins a coffee from Vic Books.

Letter of the Week To Salient, I was disappointed upon reading your Women’s Issue to find nothing in the way of feminist criticism of sadomasochistic sex or of prostitution, and only a single short attack on pornography (in the “What Feminism Means to Me” feature). This is in spite of the fact that all three have (within this year) previously been promoted or endorsed in the pages of this magazine.

Mention was made of rape culture, but not of the fact that prostitution exists because of male sexual entitlement to women’s bodies; of women in the media, but only barely of pornography, which represents women as objects to satisfy men’s desires; of violence against women, but not of the practice of dressing up that same violence as “consensual”, “kinky” sex.

When I saw some time ago that this week’s issue was going to focus on women, I did briefly consider submitting an article myself, before deciding this would be a little absurd for a “Women’s Issue”.

In lieu of that, I would like to recommend to all readers that they take a look at the anthologies *Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties* and *The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism*, and the excellent *The Idea of Prostitution* by Sheila Jeffreys, all of which are available in the Kelburn Library.

Kind regards, Kadin Prideaux From Plato’s bakery

NICE TRY, CITY OF THE FUTURE

sick of the wellington weather??? the university of waikato offers everything you could ever want, and the hamilton nightlife gets #rowdier by the day! love @lovethetron DON’T SCOFF, GIRL READING THIS

To be female is to set alarms earlier than necessary in order to paint on a face that is fit to face the world. To be a female is to glance in car windows en route, the mind always remaining aware of the 4

The University Issue

crippling mental blocks, to be utterly enthralled in life’s teachings.

To never consider considering the perception of others. To reach full potential, released from paralyzing hindrance. I fold my legs and I ruffle my hair and I fill my cognitive capacity with the way in which others may be viewing me. AND IT SUCKS. AND YOU DO IT TOO GIRL READING THIS AND MAYBE EVEN SCOFFING A LITTLE BIT. No??? Then tell me how ill informed and vain and inadvertently sexist this is because if you don’t relate I fucking envy you. xx PENNNNIIIIISSSSS!!!!!

penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis yeah penis penis penis fuck her right in the pussy LYDIA KO TURNED US DOWN

body. To be female is to apologize for thought, to filter opinion, continuing to grow inward with self-analysis. This is more than selfconsciousness. A mind clouded with third party perspective; actions mediated through awareness of the awareness of others. I made a fucking fake email address in order to submit this because I care too much to be known for writing feminism inspired ramblings to my student publication. I just want my conscious to be free. Liberation in the form of being truly present in a lecture. To be absorbed in lesson rather than in self. To tear down

Yo Salient, I broadly enjoyed your women’s issue but I was disappointed by the sports section. It would have been a good opportunity to highlight women’s sport, which is chronically undervalued.

Indeed, the only vague references I found in any of the weekly sports columns this year were an offensive comment about Caster Semenya (I quote “is it a girl?”) and two sentences about Irene van Dyk. There were various occasions on which the columnist could have easily mentioned female athletes and sports teams - for example, when the subject was golf heroes I was surprised

that Lydia Ko was not included.

It was somewhat ironic when the fact that women’s sport is undervalued was mentioned in a couple of sentences in the editorial of the games issue, yet there was no attempt to remedy this. And here’s more irony for you - the focus of this week’s sports column in the women’s issue, was an “underrated” team. It’s possible I have missed something, but even on the off chance that I have, the fact remains that so far this year, the main focus of the sports column has never been about a female athlete or sports team. I guess it’s kind of telling of the problem that even in an issue that focuses on women, men’s sports is seen as more important.

Yours, <insert witty pseudonym here because I’m too lazy/uncreative to think of one> DIDN’T THEY CANCEL COMMUNITY?

Hi Salient, People say community is dead or dying, but when two Fiat Multiplas drive past each other, the drivers always wave. Reconcile THAT. Best, Dame Judi Dench MREINZ

A BIT CROSS, A BIT LET DOWN 2.0

About a week ago, a friend and I sent a letter to you complaining about the lack of crossword answers for your games issue crossword.

Surprisingly, you published that letter! I felt like a celebrity!

Then I realized what this meant and flipped to the back in hasty

Feature

THIS IS A SPEECH OF FACTS

Hermione Granger is fucking hot.

OK? DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT WOMENFOLK

Your recent article, “WhatFeminism-Means-to-Me” was a strong and thought-provokingpiece. However, Steph Trengrove’s piece seemed to defy the entire purpose of this week’s issue.

Firstly, why was she so offended that a “friend” was willing to speak out on women’s rights? Is this not an issue that deserves to be (and I quote) “attention-seeking” and “loud.”

Where we meant to assume that a mere belief in equality is enough to end gender discrimination?

She suggests that our “unwavering beliefs” alone should be enough for women and young girls to be liberated from the chains of male

oppression. Can she not see that universally, gender-equality is not a given? There is no “unwavering belief.” Instead, the entire purpose of the feminist movement is to create traction and further equality where there is none. Women are oppressed and will continue to be oppressed unless we get “angry” and “aggressive”.

Where we supposed to have found solace in the fact that her little sister (who only seconds before didn’t know what the word ‘feminism’ meant) is “utterly assured that her own worth is equal to that of her male counterparts”? How do we tell women or those from the transsexual community to feel “utterly assured” when each day they must fight for basic rights, to feel safe and valued?

An innate sense of equality is not enough – we need education and legislation to cement women’s rights. Our voice is our only tool. I am ashamed that you published a piece suggesting we silence it.

EQUAL PAY-LIENT

Hi Was really impressed by the women’s issue last week, here’s a gender-equal limerick to commend you. Enjoy.

There once was a girl from Yemen, Whose ability was equal to men, So she was mutually respected by all parties for her ability regardless of her gender.

On second thought, this was more difficult than I thought. It’s almost as if you can’t be funny unless someone else is allowed to feel superior over another. Funny that.

Yours, A Man from Nantucket WRONG UNI MAG (CRITIC’S THE SHIT ONE)

Dear Critic, Since your article in issue 17 about students being locked out of the

Applied Science building after hours has been in stands, students have regained their 24 hour access.

Just letting you know in case you feel like reporting further on an issue which probably no-one elese on campus gives a flying fuck about.

Chur, Zac Newton INTERNET PARTY REPRESENT (FUCK JOHN KEY)

Anonymous is all of us and none of us.

Anonymous makes changes that don’t require credit.

Anonymous is always from somewhere else.

Or nowhere. Anonymous is.

Anonymous is legion.

We do not forgive.

But often forget.

Anonymous is the horrible, senseless, uncaring monster that

you only wish you could be.

We are united as one.

Divided by zero.

Expect us. *a-HEM*

Salient! Your lack of representation for the glory that is the Internet Party in last week’s issue is most disheartening and frankly despicable for all your desire to be neutral to all parties. You shall be punished heinously for this crime through multiple site crashes and a never-ending stream of pizzas delivered to your door that you can never pay back! Muhahaha!

Prepare to be rekt, obviously.

Sincerely, Anonymous

University Quiz 1. Name the Simpsons character who said the following in ‘Lisa the Vegetarian’: “When I grow up, I’m going to Bovine University!”

2. From 2011 to 2013, Camila Vallejo led a highly influential student protest movement, railing against for-profit tertiary education and inequality, in which country?

3. What do John Key, author David Foster Wallace and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have in common?

4. According to the latest QS World University Rankings, which is the best overall university in New Zealand?

5. ‘Oxbridge’, a single word referring to both the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England, is an example of which language feature?

6. Before becoming US President, who lectured in constitutional law at the University of Chicago?

7. Name the 2009 song by American rapper Asher Roth which glorifies fraternity life and binge-drinking at university.

8. True or false: All Black Conrad Smith has a Master’s degree in Law from Victoria University.

9. What phrase, which refers to the wisdom gained from difficult life experiences, was first coined by writer Elbert Hubbard in 1902?

10. The Academy of Fine Arts of which European city twice rejected a young Adolf Hitler (in 1907 and 1908) as a student?

1. Ralph Wiggum 2. Chile 3. They all attended Harvard University at some point, but never graduated 4. The University of Auckland 5. A portmanteau 6. Barack Obama 7. ‘I Love College’ 8. False (he has a Law degree with Honours from Vic) 9. “the University [or School] of Hard Knocks” 10. Vienna

excitement only to find the answers still out of my reach.

I then threw the salient at the random walking beside me in a fit of rage.

I must tell you that I never attempt crosswords. I find them pretentious and a waste of time.

Secretly I only dislike them because I cannot even come close to finishing them. I did, however, attempt this one crossword this one time in your now dreaded games issue and only a few words held me back. I am not a gamer and the crossword was the only appealing item in this particular issue for me. Does this mean I am never to find out what a son’s best friend is?!?!?! By publishing my letter without providing me with answers in return, you have turned me into a savage monster incapable of transitioning back into a human until I get my dang answers! SEND ME ANSWERS NOW.

editor@salient.org.nz

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Feature

PERSON OF LAST WEEK

BY THE NUMBERS

THE MAYOR OF LONDON SINCE 2008, JOHNSON HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT HE INTENDS TO STAND FOR BRITISH PARLIAMENT IN 2015, PROMPTING ANXIETY WITHIN THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY (THE GOVERNING CENTRE-RIGHT PARTY IN BRITAIN) OVER HIS ILL-CONCEALED AMBITION TO SUCCEED PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON. BORIS AND DAVID HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER SINCE SCHOOL; THEY BOTH ATTENDED ETON COLLEGE, WHERE FEES ARE CURRENTLY AROUND £30,000 PER YEAR. JOHNSON HAS A HISTORY OF GAFFES. WHEN ASKED ON WHY PEOPLE SHOULD VOTE FOR THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY, HE SAID: “VOTING TORY WILL CAUSE YOUR WIFE TO HAVE BIGGER BREASTS AND INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF OWNING A BMW M3.” JOHNSON HAS ALSO TRANSFORMED LONDON SO THAT IT IS NOW THE BUSINESS CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, AND INTRODUCED BORIS BIKES, WHICH ALLOWS PEOPLE TO HIRE BIKES AND DROP THEM OFF ANYWHERE AROUND TOWN.

5 YEARS YOU’LL HAVE IN ORDER TO MOVE FROM A LEARNER’S TO A RESTRICTED LICENCE, OR RESTRICTED TO FULL, STARTING FROM 1 DECEMBER THIS YEAR. IF YOU DON’T MOVE ON IN THAT TIME, YOU’LL HAVE TO RESIT THE THEORY TEST.

932 CURRENT DEATH TOLL FROM THE WORLD’S WORST EBOLA OUTBREAK, WHICH BEGAN IN GUINEA IN FEBRUARY AND HAS SPREAD ACROSS WEST AFRICA. THE WHO IS TAKING STEPS TO REDUCE INTERNATIONAL SPREAD OF THE VIRUS, WHICH CAN CAUSE VICTIMS TO BLEED FROM THE EYES AND MOUTH BEFORE A GRISLY DEATH. IT’S BEEN NICE KNOWING YOU ALL.

13 MILLISECONDS HOW LONG MIT NEUROSCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND IT TAKES THE HUMAN BRAIN TO PROCESS ENTIRE IMAGES, FAR FASTER THAN THE 100 MILLISECONDS SUGGESTED BY PREVIOUS STUDIES.

5.6 PER CENT THE CURRENT RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN NEW ZEALAND, THE LOWEST UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURE SINCE EARLY 2009.

$1000 THE RESERVE ON A HANDWRITTEN COPY OF THE LYRICS FOR LORDE’S ‘ROYALS’. COURSE-RELATED COSTS, ANYONE?

9 SEPTEMBER THE RUMOURED DATE WHEN APPLE WILL ANNOUNCE THE NEXT GENERATION OF IPHONES, WITH SCREEN SIZES STRETCHED TO 4.7 AND 5.5 INCHES AND WITH A FASTER PROCESSOR. 6

The University Issue

Feature

NEWS KEEN EYE FOR NEWS? SEND ANY TIPS, LEADS OR GOSSIP TO NEWS@SALIENT.ORG.NZ

GREENS TO OFFER FREE TRANSPORT* *SUBJECT TO LABOUR’S APPROVAL

by Simon Dennis

T

he Green Party is promising students free use of public transport at offpeak times in the lead-up to the election.

The ‘Green Card’ would be available for all tertiary students, who number up to 325,000, as well as 28,000 apprentices.

Off-peak times will be set between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm, and any time after 6.30 pm until the end of service on weekdays. All weekends and public holidays will also be included.

The Green Card will cost the government up to $30 million per year, or from $1.70–2.20 per trip. The funding will come from a re-prioritisation of spending from the National Land Transport Fund.

Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman said the Green Card “will reduce the cost of transport for students. It is an

investment in students and education.”

“For less than the cost of one kilometre of one of National’s motorway projects, we can provide all tertiary students and apprentices with free off-peak public transport.”

VUWSA President Sonya Clark said that the Green Card was “a leap forward in addressing the cost of transport for tertiary students.”

“This is a long overdue provision that recognises the importance of access to higher education… and begins to address the financial hardship of tertiary students.”

“Students are the only group in society expected to borrow in order to meet their living costs.

Transport makes up a huge part of living costs.”

Welfare Vice-President of VUWSA Rick Zwaan said: “we would like [the Green Card] to go further and provide for on-peak travel as well, as

students don’t get to choose when they have lectures. A third of students at Vic travel during peak time so we need concessions for them too.”

The Green Card is similar to the Palmerston North free bus scheme that was implemented in 2004 and has seen a 38 per cent rise in student use of public transport.

Dr Norman continued: “research from 2011 found 67 per cent of students were spending money on public transport, with an average spend of $35.40 per week.”

“By increasing student patronage on our publictransport network, we can costeffectively provide improved services for everyone.”

“Students are facing rising living-cost pressures; transport, food, power, rent… the Green Card is a way of helping to reduce costs to help students make ends meet.”

Dr Norman concluded that “a well-utilised public-transport system is a vastly more efficient way to get around, and one that improves air quality and reduces carbon emissions.”

SALIENT probed the punters to find out what they thought of the Green Party’s new policy. This unscientific poll has a margin of era of +/- 100%.

Have you heard about the tertiary policy announced yesterday by the Green Party?

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Would you make use of a Student Green Card entitling you to free off peak public transport?

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Will you vote for the Green Party this election?

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editor@salient.org.nz

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News

STUDENT FEES SET TO RISE AGAIN WHAT’S THIS DOING IN THE NEWS SECTION?

By Alice Peacock

V

UWSA has recommended Student Services Levy (SSL) raises should again be spent on improved services in health and counselling.

Routine increases to Victoria’s SSL annually heighten our growing mounds of student debt, unbeknown to many and largely ignored by the rest. The beginning of this academic year saw a hefty $690 taken from the pockets and future pay slips of all Victoria students, a cost deemed by 2013’s VUWSA President Rory McCourt to “contribute to academic success and a positive student experience”.

Amplifying your debt more rapidly than El Horno’s sangria jugs, questions may arise for many: what/where/who does this money go to?

Student levies are divided across a range of facilities, such as clubs and societies, recreation, and student-health services.

Allocation and price-setting of the Levy is adjusted yearly based on discussion with student representatives as to areas of funding needing increasing, maintaining, or cutting. The aim is for problem areas to be targeted; for example, in 2013, the Levy adjustments were intended to see student money go further in making lines for Counselling Services shorter.

Levy-setting for the 2015 academic year will see an increase of at least 1.6 per cent; $11, in line with the present CPI inflation rate. Further increases 8

The University Issue

plz tell me where those go). are likely to be implemented by the University, with VUWSA’s 2013 recommendation of a two per cent increase set on the provision that VUW’s Counselling Services receive a boost in funding.

Assembled by VUWSA’s Sonya Clark and Rick Zwaan, the recommendations proposed to the Advisory Committee on the Student Services Levy (ACSSL) last Tuesday identify the wellbeing of students (maintained through Health and Counselling Services) as a consistent priority of the Levy. Prioritising of this area is constant across the voices of all areas of student representation.

Funding for the creation of a comprehensive ‘Student Representatives’ online hub was also put forward as a recommendation by VUWSA, with aims to have this implemented by early 2015.

Although not addressed in VUWSA’s official recommendations, confusion regarding ‘other costs’ is a conundrum acknowledged by both faculty-based representatives, as well as Māori and equity-based groups.

In a current breakdown of where your Levy is currently spent, this mysterious sector makes up almost 20 per cent ($106.55) of the $690 fee, and is reminiscent of those vague but unavoidable ‘booking fees’ charged online when booking concert tickets (seriously though, can someone

These phantom dollars in fact disappear to management and administration costs, as well as some funding for VUWSA, PGSA, PSC and Ngāi Tauira.

All-inclusive services provided by VUWSA such as the Class Rep system rely on funding from the SSL since the implementation of Voluntary Student Membership in 2012.

This academic year has seen changes in the process of both raising the Levy and allocating this funding. The enactment of an online ‘budget simulator’ back in April gave all students the opportunity to have a say in the distribution of funding across student academic services.

VUWSA has described this development as aiming to “set a long-term strategy for how the Levy is spent and not to inform any particular year’s Levy setting”.

The preferences identified have, however, provided “a useful starting point” in determining priority areas for spending; taking into consideration students’ wishes for more of their dollars to go into Health and Counselling Services.

A percentage increase to SSL beyond that of inflation is yet to be set in stone. It is, however, guaranteed that the Levy once again will take from our pockets, and provide us in return with good health and an abundance of ‘the student experience’.

VUWSA RECOMMENDATIONS - The Student Services Levy to increase by 1.5–2 per cent next year.

- The Levy increase to be alongside an increase to the University-wide studentwellbeing campaign.

- Funding for a comprehensive ‘Student Representatives’ online hub to be created, and this to be a priority for early 2015.

WHERE YOUR $690 STUDENT LEVY GETS SPENT

News

THE COURSES OF OUR DISCONTENT VUWSA LAUNCHES OPTIONAL SURVEY OF MANDATORY COURSE REQUIREMENTS

By Sophie Boot

S

ick of compulsory 8 am lectures and two per cent terms assignments? VUWSA is surveying students on mandatory course requirements, which it says are inconsistent and sometimes unrelated to course learning objectives.

The survey is part of a

University-wide consultation that might result in the development of a Universitywide policy for mandatory course requirements.

The consultation is taking place after a discussion was had at Academic Committee about mandatory course requirements

NZUSA ADVOCATES FIRST IN FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP GUTS TO BE THE YOUNGER SIBLING

By Gus Mitchell

S

tudents who are the first in their families to attend university could study for free and get extra support with living costs if an NZUSA scholarship suggestion goes ahead.

The First in Family Scholarship proposal is aimed at students who are the first of their family to attend a tertiary institution.

The proposed scheme would cost around $77 million per year once fully implemented, and would offer 2000 scholarships worth $6000 each, to students who were first in their immediate family to enrol in a degree-level course. Immediate family would mean parents, step-parents and siblings.

The scholarships would be limited to those eligible for Student Allowance, as per their parents’ income. NZUSA says this means students “could potentially qualify [their degree] without any Student Loan debt.”

NZUSA President Daniel

Haines said some groups were under-represented at university because of a “lack of understanding of the benefits of tertiary education and the lack of familial support.”

“Once one person in a family has gone through, it becomes normal, familiar, and both whānau support and aspirations are transformed forever.”

NZ First and the Māori Party have come out in support of the proposal.

“The First in Family Scholarship is already one of New Zealand First’s education policies. We would establish an expert reference group that would bring this policy to fruition through the introduction of 2000 First in Family Scholarships a year,” said Tracey Martin, NZ First’s Education Spokesperson.

Māori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell agreed, saying it would give recipients “the best start to their tertiary experience.”

earlier this year.

VUWSA’s Academic VicePresident Rāwinia Thompson said VUWSA believed mandatory course requirements should be closely linked with course learning objectives and achieving learning outcomes.

“We don’t think compulsory attendance at tutorials or lectures always relates to learning outcomes, so attendance at tutorials or lectures shouldn’t necessarily be a mandatory requirement in courses, unless this contact time is specifically linked to learning

outcomes,” Thompson said.

“We’ve also seen problems in the inconsistency of mandatory course requirements actually being enforced. Some courses are very lenient and won’t fail a student for not meeting the mandatory course requirements.

Others are more rigid. This inconsistency can result in unjust outcomes for students, which is hugely concerning for VUWSA.” Students can do the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ C66LW3Y.

“The tertiary environment can be daunting for Māori and Pasifika students, so we’re keen to ensure that students who have no family experience of degree-level studies get the opportunity, and are well looked after,” Flavell said.

However, Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce said New Zealand already provided “very generous” support for students by world standards.

“I appreciate the sentiment of NZUSA’s proposals. But given the already comprehensive level of support that exists and that we are still recovering from the GFC and the Christchurch earthquakes and are yet to pay back any debt, it’s very early to

be coming up with new ways to support students,” Joyce said.

VUWSA Welfare VicePresident Rick Zwaan said that VUWSA supported the policy as making tertiary education more accessible.

“We know that there are thousands of bright young minds who are missing out on the potential to attend uni simply because they don’t consider it to be an option.

Providing targeted scholarships will reduce the barriers that these potential students currently face,” Zwaan said.

“However, we also need to see greater support for students currently studying, as we know what we have now is simply not enough.”

NZUSA PRESIDENT DANIEL HAINES editor@salient.org.nz

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News

IT’S QUESTION TIME BUT NOT AS THEY KNOW IT POLITICIANS TO ANSWER STUDENTS’ QUESTIONS

By Sophie Boot

A

sk Away, a website where people can directly question parties before the September election, has launched.

Users can ask questions, vote for the questions they want answered and then compare short answers from the parties.

Ask Away is a part of Massey University’s Design & Democracy Lab, and is being led by Meg Howie as her Master of Design project, in collaboration with Jon Lemmon, Code for NZ and other open-source developers.

Howie said she had developed the project to increase youth-voter turnout.

“I want more young people to vote, so I want to make it interesting. I think the way to do that is to let people engage on their own terms, and then give the politicians the opportunity to show that they care what we have to say.”

“The site is designed as a form of social media, so it’s quick response, short form, and users get to curate the content by voting. It then has the benefit of having all the parties

GOTTA HATCH ‘EM ALL! VIC’S TUATARA BREEDING PROGRAMME NO YOLK

By Sofia Roberts

V

ictoria University has captured rare video footage of a tuatara hatching.

The egg was the last of 23 eggs incubated in captivity at the University this year.

The moment is a significant one in the joint program with the Department of Conservation and local Mana Whenua, Ngāti Manuhiri. The programme stretches back to the 1990s, aiming to recover tuatara populations on Hauturu ō Toi/ Little Barrier Island, off the northeastern coast of the North Island.

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The University Issue

Tuatara were once thought to be extinct on the island, but the discovery of a small population prompted an enthusiastic recovery effort.

Partially funded by the Hauturu Supporters Trust and Auckland Zoo, and led by Professor Charles Daugherty, Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Victoria, tuatara eggs have been sent to the University for incubation and hatching, before being sent back to the island.

The recently released video captures the 255th tuatara to be hatched as part of the programme. The clip has been

answering the same questions in one place.”

At the time that Salient went to print, the Ask Away Facebook page had over 700 likes, and Howie says the project has had an “extremely positive” response so far.

“All of the main parties have agreed to participate, so people can get a broad range of perspectives from the site.”

“I hope that Ask Away will

create a platform for young people to talk about the things that affect them. That will connect politicians more closely with youth issues and hopefully simultaneously break down the perceptions that political issues don’t affect us, and that youth aren’t interested.”

compressed from seven hours of footage by Warren Butcher from Victoria University’s Image Services team, and has been described as both “adorable” and “kind of gross” by viewers.

was visibly moved by the footage. “Tuataras were all we had; now that’s been taken away from us.”

Victoria Design student Chris Kennedy, born in Invercargill,

Students can ask questions at http://www.askaway.co.nz/.

The footage can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9Ar4hG8b53

CAMPUS DIGEST

W

ould you pay for online news? A Victoria survey has found that 18–30-year-olds are the demographic most likely to pay for news as part of a ‘global package’ of news. The survey asked respondents about their willingness to pay for news in different ways – ranging from donations, crowdfunding, buying a mobile app or purchasing individual articles. Packaging was by far the most preferred purchase method. Alex Clark, a Master of Advanced Technology Enterprise student leading the survey, said young people were willing to pay for content – “they’re just fed up with paying for every unit of content individually.”

V

ictoria has been selected as a key partner in New Zealand’s second National Science Challenge, the Deep South Challenge Te Kōmata o Te Tonga. The Deep South Challenge will look at New Zealand climate conditions and plan for future changes. Funding of $24 million over the next four years will enable the Challenge to focus on issues such as drought, fresh-water availability, damaging storm events, and changes to mean climate and variability. Research into Antarctic sea ice is one example of the science to be undertaken by the Challenge. Scientists will study the growth and decay of Antarctic sea ice to gain a better understanding of its influence on the ocean, and the atmospheric components of the climate system.

V

ictoria academics are taking part in the Visa Wellington On a Plate Festival, with presentations on the future of food, from stem-cell steak to an emerging breed of male cook. Futurist Dr Ian Yeoman, described by the University as “the world’s only professional crystal ball gazer”, is an Associate Professor at the School of Management. Dr Yeoman is supervising postgraduate students who will present four scenarios on the future of food, including vertical farming and scientifically created food, at ‘2050: The Future of Food Festivals’, a lecture to be held on 18 August at Pipitea Campus.

Dr Yeoman will himself argue that a new breed of man – which he dubs the ‘gastro craftsman’ – is emerging, at ‘Why men cook but don’t wash up’, on 27 August at Rutherford House.

editor@salient.org.nz

11

NEWS

SLOW NEWS WEEK

EDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2) TO RECEIVE ROYAL ASSENT BEFORE 2015.

31%

FARE CONCESSIONS FOR WELLINGTON TERTIARY STUDENTS TO BE ANNOUNCED BEFORE 2015.

5.2%

FARE CONCESSIONS FOR WELLINGTON TERTIARY STUDENTS TO BE ANNOUNCED BEFORE 2016.

31% iPredict is a market-based political and economic prediction market owned and operated by Victoria University of Wellington. Visit www.ipredict.co.nz to get involved.

Probabilities are correct at time of publication.

12

The University Issue

NEWS OF THE WORLD BRIBECEPTION Bernie Ecclestone, the 83-year-old Formula One CEO on trial for bribery, has paid US$100 million to have the bribery charges dropped. Eccleston was charged over allegations that he bribed a former German banker as part of the sale of a major stake in the motorsport business eight years ago.

An area of German law known as Paragraph 153a provides for some criminal cases to be settled with smaller punishments, such as fines, though the size of the payment in Ecclestone’s case has led some to question a system that effectively favours wealthy defendants. $99 million of the settlement will go to the German treasury, and $1 million to a German children’s-hospice charity.

MONKEYING AROUND India’s parliament has hired 40 young men to mimic the calls of langurs, a kind of monkey found in India’s forest, to scare away smaller rhesus monkeys which are a nuisance at New Delhi’s government buildings. The monkeys occasionally attack officials and destroy government files – in 2007, New Delhi’s Deputy Mayor Surinder Singh Bajwa died after falling off a terrace during a monkey attack. The government used to use captive langurs to scare off the rhesus monkeys, but this was banned in 2012 after protests from animal-rights activists. Monkeys are not killed because Hindus associate them with their monkey-god Hanuman, and many office workers feed the monkeys, believing it will bring them good luck.

AL QAEDA’S NEW BUSINESS PLAN The New York Times have found that al-Qaeda and associates earned at least US$125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, of which $66 million was paid just in the past year. In various news releases and statements, the United States Treasury Department has cited ransom amounts that, taken together, put the total at around $165 million over the same period. In its early years, al-Qaeda received most of its money from deeppocketed donors, but counterterrorism officials now believe

the group finances the bulk of its recruitment, training and arms purchases from ransoms paid in order to free Europeans.

Negotiators take a reported ten per cent of the ransom, creating an incentive on both sides of the Mediterranean to increase the overall payout, according to former hostages and senior counterterrorism officials.

DIRTY PEACHES Peaches wearing underwear is the latest what-the-fuck purchase the internet has to consider, thanks to Chinese fruit vendors. The peaches, which retail for US$80 for a box of nine, are called ‘Ripe Fruit’ and are being sold to capitalise on the the upcoming romantic Qixi Festival. The idea was first developed by a fruit vendor in Nanjing, with each pair of underwear slipped on each sexy butt by hand. The peaches are from Yangshan, in Wuxi, an area that’s also famous for its lingerie and garment industry. Other fruit vendors in Shanghai and elsewhere have also apparently started selling underwearclad peaches. The Nanjing fruit vendor claims to have applied for a patent a month ago and is filing for infringement with the intellectual-property bureau.

STAND UP FOR MONKEY RIGHTS Wikipedia administrators have refused to take down a selfie taken by a black macaque monkey on the grounds that the animal owns the copyright, because the animal took the picture.

The selfie at issue was taken in Indonesia in 2011, after the macaque grabbed photographer David Slater’s camera and started snapping hundreds of pics.

Slater asked Wikipedia to remove the photo, claiming he has lost royalties from Wikipedia refusing to remove the photo. “It makes me very angry, I’m a professional photographer – it costs me over £2000 to do the trip. It’s my livelihood.”

Feature

tistic efforts send us your ar rg.nz editor@salient.o

14

The Belief University IssueIssue

Politics

a political party. The party lowered its ladder and I climbed. Three years later, I was writing their policy on tertiary education.

This is a problem.

Ramblings of a Fallen Hack

By Jade D’Hack

he University is a broken institution. You haven’t realised it yet, but that degree you’re studying ain’t gonna make you a millionaire.

Maybe it’ll find you a quiet job in admin. Maybe it’ll get you into that Honours programme, which might maybe get you into a Master’s. Maybe after that, the dream job will be yours (Graduate Analyst, Department of Internal Affairs). But the hope that the bachelor’s degree guarantees its holder One Fulfilling Career was abandoned long ago.

T

Governments don’t care. They sermon us about learning to critically engage with civic society.

They assert we are learning abstract thinking skills, and most

importantly, we are Learning How to Learn. Know Your Mind. It’s bullshit, of course – bourgeois elitism that insists that the only legitimate politics is intellectual. It’s also inaccurate. We don’t want to know our minds. We’re just here to get a job.

Actually, I’m not. I arrived at Victoria University in March 2010 and I was smitten. I guess my adolescence was a bit rural. My Year 13 intellectualism focussed more on booze than beryllium, more dak than Dostoyevsky. The sudden stimulation of MATH 151 and PHIL 106 asked me to think in ways I didn’t know I could. I got really excited, I became involved in debating societies, and student magazines, and the youth wing of

People like us cannot be trusted with the design of a university. We enjoy Thinking Critically About Social Phenomena. You don’t, not really. I know how excited you are when your classes are cancelled. I know you love it when you realise that last chapter of your textbook won’t be covered in the exam. But you don’t get to write the rules.

We do. And so we pour even more kids into the meat grinder, looking for the few who enjoy the mulch.

I guess the Marxists would blame it on our cultural capital if they weren’t so busy with their PhDs. Last Tuesday, the Green Party announced their election policy for students. Higher education is failing us. The best they could offer was free bus tickets. I’m unsurprised – our political parties are staffed by people who don’t think of university the way you do, people who don’t care about whether university will find them a job. If you wanted to critically engage with civic society, you wouldn’t have studied that Management degree. You wouldn’t have skipped that 9 am Sociology tutorial and that essay wouldn’t still be idling in your Google Docs, a week overdue.

You’re just here to get a job. That’s fair enough, but we’re not gonna help ya.

“Last Tuesday, the Green Party announced their election policy for students. Higher education is failing us. The best they could offer was free bus tickets.”

Political Tidbits QUOTE OF THE WEEK Interest-free student loans are “irresponsible” and “an election-year bribe”.

— The National Party, 2005 6 TIMES UNIVERSITY AND POLITICS COLLIDED 2013: Steven Joyce cuts Student Allowances for postgraduate students.

2005: Helen Clark’s Labour Government delivers interestfree Student Loans after promising to do so before the election.

1994: Todd Taskforce predicts all New Zealanders will require tertiary education and training in the 21st century; fees rise.

1992: Student Loan scheme implemented by National government.

1989: The Education Act introduced university fees. Alas.

1961: University of New Zealand is dissolved, changing Victoria University College to Victoria University of Wellington and allowing it to confer its own degrees.

Countdown

40 days

‘til the election as of Monday. At the time of print, the latest Roy Morgan poll has National taking a dip to 46 per cent and Labour on the rise at 30 per cent, meaning that if an election was held today, New Zealand First would likely hold the balance of power.

editor@salient.org.nz

15

Sports

of one Super Rugby game. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure the Wallabies will certainly provide a stern challenge for the men in black, but let’s just remember who these Wallabies still have to come up against.

Sports Banter

All Blacks Still the Team to Beat

by Ollie Ritchie

After their first Super Rugby title ever, the W Waratahs’ victory has caused many pundits to rethink the way we approach this year’s Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup tests. But let’s be honest: Super Rugby title or not, the All Blacks are still very much the team to beat.

If anything, the Crusaders’ recent Super Rugby heartbreak has just given the All Blacks (who are made up of eight Crusaders) extra motivation to head over the ditch and really take it to those Wallabies.

Top 5 Players to Look Out For in the Rugby Championship

The Waratahs will form the backbone of the Wallabies, and I’m not sure they can improve a lot either environment-wise or playing-wise. Whereas I think the opposite applies for the All Blacks.

Any confidence the Wallabies take out of this result will be false confidence. It’s a massive step up to test rugby, and though the Waratahs will still be buzzing, in the back of their minds they’ll know they’re facing a massive challenge.

Kurtley Beale (Australia):

This somewhat bad boy of Australian rugby has made his presence felt in Super Rugby, and will certainly be looking to continue that form for the Wallabies. He can be a gamechanger when he wants to be, and whether he’s at first five or second five, he’ll be a handful for opposition teams.

hooker will be the key to the South African scrum. If he can get the upper hand over his opponents, then he’ll go a long way to providing the ultimate The University Issue

There’s a lot to this All Black

Sure, the Wallabies have some firepower – the name Israel Folau comes to mind here – but they lack the mental fortitude to get themselves up for such a clash against the ABs. I’m fully prepared to be proved wrong here, but I have a feeling the All Blacks will come in guns blazing for this one, and really take it to the Aussies on their home turf.

Should be an absolute cracker, nonetheless.

My pick: All Blacks 32–18 Wallabies

Nothing’s changed on the back

Bismarck du Plessis (South Africa):The highly influential

16

Get past the Read, McCaw and Carter factor if you can. The Wallabies will still be having nightmares about the last time they faced up against Jerome Kaino in that World Cup semifinal. The way he simply manhandled Digby Ioane as he headed towards the try-line. The influence of Brodie Retallick in the second row, arguably the best lock in world rugby at the moment. And what about that midfield? Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith (should he be fit) with Malakai Fekitoa coming off the bench – good luck getting through that.

side that perhaps the Wallabies haven’t prepared for. The arrogance of Ewen McKenzie against the composure and astuteness of Steve Hansen – McKenzie is certainly yet to prove himself against the All Blacks.

platform the Boks’ backs to run off. Best to keep this big lard contained at all times.

Kieran Read (New Zealand):

No words really needed for the IRB Player of the Year. This man lives to tear opposition sides apart, and his running game will be massive for the All Blacks. Read’s ability to put his outsides in acres of space has given opposition sides nightmares – expect this to continue in 2014.

Jerome Kaino (New Zealand):

Again, not too many words needed. Kaino has quickly found the form he left New Zealand in

after the World Cup. He’s been huge for the All Blacks so far, and his threatening presence at the breakdown and work rate on defence will again be a massive determining factor in the All Blacks’ performances this year.

Israel Folau (Australia):

Do not let this man run. Pretty simple instructions really, but instructions that are much easier said than done. He tends to look to go through opposition midfields, so expect Nonu and Smith to have their hands full. If Folau is given room to run, then he can put sides on the back foot immediately. So stop him. Please.

Sex

The Bone Zone

a dessert best enjoyed guilt-free.

And, even after considering all that, you’re still hellbent on hooking up with the hottie, fuck what anyone else thinks – then, I would suggest using Cupie’s ol’ rule of thumb when it comes to situations like this: how would you feel if you were in her position? Pretty shitty, huh?

With Cupie Hoodwink

Hold tight, Cupie xx

work with a hotty and we’ve got really close lately and we nearly got together but he has a gf Their relationship is on the rocks and i guess most relationships dont last first year with halls and flatting im just worried if the opportunity presents itself again i wont be able to help myself

In Review:

i

If we never fell in love with people we weren’t meant to, half of my favourite romantic comedies simply wouldn’t exist. That being said, just because something makes for a good plotline, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the greatest life choice.

Sweets, I have been where you are now, and trust me: the faster you get out of there, the better. I, too, once got really close with a hottie who had a GF but their relationship was on the rocks. Despite my once-strong convictions against infidelity, I fell hard for the guy, coming up with all sorts of justifications for my feelings and excuses for my fantasies. But as much as I told myself that they were basically over anyway, that she seemed weird, and I would be better

for him; that he seemed to be interested and we just got on so well – at the end of the day, until they broke up, I would always be ‘The Other Woman’.

Regardless of how well he and I got on or how weird she was, that fact alone would put me very much in the wrong, making me the villain to her victim, the Ange to her Jen. Fortunately for me, my dalliance with deceit ended abruptly, before anything physical happened between us.

At the time, I was distraught and heartbroken, but I’ve long since viewed the event as a bullet narrowly missed. Wellington, after all, is a tiny place, which makes the rumour mill even more of a bitch to stop once it starts.

What I’m trying to say is: I get it. I know how hard it is to talk yourself down from where you are now, especially when the end of his relationship seems like such a done deal. But while you’re right to point out that most relationships won’t survive the sexual tension of first-year halls or the stressful realities of student flats, that doesn’t give you carte blanche to start digging the grave for this one.

However close they seem to breaking up, why not just wait until they actually do? Pashes are

Sextra: Not-So-Clean Eats My good friend and former Salient sex columnist, Lux Lisbon, once told me about a wee sexperiment she’d stumbled upon while researching her column. According to the all-knowing entity we call the internet, if you eat a cheeseburger while banging you’re in for one hell of an orgasm, due to the activation of both sexy-time and yum-time receptors in your brain. Being a fan of both sex and burgers, this theory had long intrigued me; finding myself at a loss for what to review this week, I decided to give it a whirl. As my boo and I only enjoy flesh of the carnal variety, we went with Burger King’s Salad Burger, a consistently excellent burg’, but bulkier and harder to hold together while in the throes than a cheeseburger, which explains why I ended up with mayo on my forehead and ketchup in my sheets. Despite the mess and somewhat questionable pseudoscience on which this sextra is based, my compliments go unreservedly to the chef on this one – what a treat! While our experiences of ‘burger banging’ differed somewhat,

both parties agreed that the theory had merit. He was intent on devouring the burger in seconds, and said it was hard to focus on both pleasurable activities at once; I savoured my burger at length, and felt good and yum all over – and if that’s not a metaphor for male and female experiences of sex, I don’t know what is. One thing’s for sure: it’s better with the King.

Tip of the Week: Patience, they say, is a virtue, and if you’ve got a question for Cupie, you’re going to have to be virtuous indeed. As always, I’m always delighted to receive any correspondence you wish to send my way via my ask.fm – whether it be a genuine question, internet humour, suggestions for column topics, compliments (thanks!), or just to ask me out on a date. Lately, however, I’ve been absolutely inundated, and while I pinky-promise to get through each and every enquiry before the year is through, it might take me a while to get there – I’ve got things to see and people to do, after all. So, if you’ve got a burning question for me – never fear – we’ll get there eventually.

And Naughty Nips? You’re up next week xx

Sexual Connections: Got a burning question for Cupie? Ask her about all matters of the heart… and other romantic organs, anonymously at ask.fm/CupieHoodwink Got a burning sensation in your nether regions? Give Student Health a call on 463 5308, or pop in to their clinics at Kelburn and Pipitea.

editor@salient.org.nz

17

Interview

This year, Vic got a new Vice-Chancellor. Most of the students we spoke to have no idea who he is, but Grant thinks that might be a good thing.

He’s the man who leads the University. Salient went to his office in the Hunter Building to catch up and touch base.

How have you found it settling in?

It is a very welcoming university, very welcoming city. I’ve really been impressed by the University’s sense of ambition and self-belief and enthusiasm for pushing on from here and continuing to grow its influence. I’ve also begun to understand the sense of linkage between the city and the University, which is really nice to see, and something I didn’t experience as much in Auckland. Also, what I am really impressed with is the relationship between student and staff. It is a good-quality relationship. You get a sense of a valued peer-type relationship rather than the hierarchical relationship which is the usual.

Have you noticed anything about the student body that is different or similar to Auckland?

Pretty similar to Auckland in terms of the span of interest, both being urban campuses. Quite different to my experience at Massey, which was much more land-based and farming-type students: sleeves-rolled-up-on-thefarm-type interests. There are more political and social dimensions to this campus.

What’s spurred on the planned expansion of the University?

They were both in the planning prior to me getting here. The Hub in Pipitea was in recognition of the fact that the Hub on Kelburn has been a great thing for student experience. People had a chance to interact with one another. It developed a sense of community.

18

The University Issue

We want to create the same thing for the Pipitea Campus. The Biosciences building that’s really about creating modern space for the Biology programme. They are currently in a building that is not fit for purpose. It is well and truly past its use-by date.

Both Steven Joyce and Grant Robertson said that it is too expensive to go back to a fully funded model. Do you think that’s true?

I think that’s fair. The debate, though, is what is the appropriate balance between the private good of tertiary education and the public good. This often becomes mistakenly seen as a zero-sum game. Attempts to define how much is private good and how much public is always doomed to fail. Ultimately, it comes down to what the country can afford to do. But unfortunately, you do have a generation that was set up very well [free education, cruisy summer job, cheap house prices] and a generation now that has quite a few challenges.

This year, there is a student group called Reclaim Vic with some pretty provocative signage. There is a general feeling of being a bit ripped off.

What is your response to those people?

Very sympathetic in the sense that I completely understand the origins of the disquiet. There is a sense of need to right this wrong.

For me, running the University, I have a dual commitment. One is to keep the costs of the University as low as you can, and we are very

Column

cost-effective. The second one is quality of the education. If I end up driving the University into a financially unsustainable position because I feel empathy for the position that the students are in and I am no longer able to appoint the right number of people to the teaching programme or the right quality of people, then in the end, I am shortchanging people’s futures as well. It’s about finding this balancing act.

When we talked to Joyce, he said there was more discipline needed in setting the Student Services Levy, making sure that price rises aren’t too much. Do you feel comfortable with how much Vic has increased SSL? I do, and also with the way that it is spent. Any increase is carefully monitored by government, and that’s important, because government controls both the amount of students that can come in and the fees. I am very happy with the depth of consultation across the student body with the way this levy works. For example, I saw that last year, the consultation led to the view that we needed some more support in Counselling Services, and that was honoured by the University. One of the universities I used to be at said the priority was a weights room, and you can probably guess which uni that might be, whereas ours was a counsellor.

Joyce hinted at the prospect of capping the amount the SSL could rise. Would you be happy with that?

If there was evidence of abuse; but you don’t want regulation for the sake of it. There is a genuine effort from the universities to make sure they are cost-effective, but there might be abuse across the sector

and if there is, by all means there should be some regulation of that.

Last election, only 42 per cent of 18–24-yearolds voted; why should we vote this year?

You should. For me, it starts with a sense of privilege of having this right to vote. I have been in communities where they don’t have that privilege. In the Middle East, a couple of years ago during the Arab Spring, people were literally going out and dying for this privilege and you come back here and we can’t be bothered.

We are facing a lot of issues as a country. These are issues that are very important to our future and important to the younger generation’s future. Things like environmental sustainability. If we don’t get that one right, it is going to be one hell of an awful world to live in. You have a stake in that.

Also, no matter what your political leanings are, all parties have an appeal to the youth vote. There is a lot of choice out there.

Where do you stand on Fairer Fares?

The University has been partnering with VUWSA for lobbying Regional Council for cheaper fares. We aren’t prepared at this stage to put money into it, and that’s primarily out of a sense of what our mission is.

Our mission is to educate and do research for this community.

We are not a transport company.

Otherwise, you end up putting money that should have gone into education into bus fares. What’s next? Should we be supporting the health system as well? [The University currently does fund Student Health through the SSL.] However, should there be an agreement between the councils that this is a possibility for students, we might support transport for some of the disadvantaged communities from Vic.

BEING PROUD

D

espite being relatively new to Victoria, I feel a strong sense of pride in what has been achieved here and what I know we are going to achieve in the future. Many staff share this sentiment and I hope many students do too.

I would like to reflect on some of the things about Victoria that students can be proud of.

New Zealand is an egalitarian, diverse, multicultural society with deep roots in the Asia-Pacific and a unique cultural and natural heritage.

These features of Aotearoa are reflected here, through you, through our staff, our history, our academic programmes and our culture.

As a Victoria student, you can be confident in the knowledge that you are being educated at a globally ranked and respected university that offers a wide range of high-quality study options. We are well within the best 300 of the world’s 7000 universities, and within the top 150 in areas such as Law, Humanities, Business, Education and Earth Sciences.

When you graduate, you will not only have a specialised understanding of your field of study, but will also have learned skills in thinking critically, creatively and independently and in communicating effectively. You will also understand and be able to display intellectual independence and integrity. All of this will make you highly sought-after in the workplace.

You can also be proud of studying at a university that is renowned for its intellectual influence.

Victoria was founded in the same era as the ‘red brick’ civic universities of England which championed a tradition of civic engagement. For Victoria, being a civic university is intertwined with our capital-city location, our connections and our academic strengths. You will regularly see examples of the unique and leading role we play in informing public debate and decisions through our research, critical inquiry and our commitment to speaking truth to power. I hope we all feel proud of, for example, Professor Jonathan Boston’s work on child poverty, Professor Tim Naish’s research into climate change, Dr Alan Gamlen’s work on emigration and inequality, and Professor Rawinia Higgins’ leadership on protecting Te Reo Māori. It is affirming to note that this expertise is not limited to issues being debated within our shores – Victoria also influences thinking in the wider Asia-Pacific region.

I encourage you to take pride in our alumni which include some extremely eminent individuals. For instance, Richard Maclaurin, an early Dean of Law, is credited with securing the financial future of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), now one of the world’s leading universities. Victoria Chemistry graduate Alan MacDiarmid won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Victoria remains one of only two New Zealand universities to have produced a Nobel Laureate. Sir Geoffrey Palmer, former Prime Minister. Sir Kenneth Keith, a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a graduate of Victoria, and there are many, many more, very distinguished alumni.

There is much respect in the community and in other universities for our leadership programmes, such as Victoria Plus, and for the support we offer to first-year students, Māori and Pasifika students, students with disabilities, and the international students who choose to study here.

Finally, I want to note the positive relationship at Victoria between students and staff, something not all New Zealand universities can boast of. Here, I am proud to say there is meaningful and respectful interaction between the two groups at many levels.

Grant Guilford, Vice-Chancellor editor@salient.org.nz

19

Feature

NEVER

BEEN

PISSED We sent Philip McSweeney to the infamous D-tour party at Weir House.

When we found him, he was ‘bubbling’ next to the Bucket Fountain at 3 o’clock in the morning, with an empty bottle of Scrumpy taped to his left hand.

P

ut narrowly, there are two kind of events in a person’s life: small and big. Mundane and Special. Impotent and Important. Tying your shoelaces, making dinner, performing ablutions all qualify as the former, but then there are those moments that you never forget: the first

20

The University Issue

time you perform a mating ritual and lo are initiated into societal adulthood, the first time you hear Pet Sounds or read Woolf, and yes, the first time you move out of home. It’s platitudinous, but fuck it: I’ll never forget the first time my family’s sagging station-wagon pulled into Karori as a mist ominously fell upon the humble land. My mum cried, my dad stoically shook my hand, my brother quoted Arrested Development at me, and voilà! I was free to live the Student Lifestyle.

Or I would’ve been, if I hadn’t stayed at Helen Lowry Hall. The most commonly asked question of the owners was some

variation of “I’m a keen hunter. Am I allowed to bring a rifle?” and the populace were comprised of misfits, losers, loners, oddballs, Internet Mana and ACT voters. Needless to say, I felt right at home, and many fine nights were spent gorging on beer bongs and mi goreng in a nearby park – at least until a nearby resident complained about those “fucking Helen Lowry kids”. But did I really get the Student Experience? Helen Lowry was located in the hinterlands of Karori, not exactly a student hub. And, if I can channel Carrie Bradshaw real quick (yes, I can), I couldn’t help but wonder whether you have to attend an illustrious Hall, a Hall with history and prestige, to get the full experience. Besides, I went to HLH practically decades (okay, four years) ago; student culture changes so fucking quickly!

I didn’t know how, or on what, but I knew I was missing out somehow. Using the Vampire Weekend test – a timehonoured tradition that I just made up – I realised that none of their songs were appropriate to my first-year life. Now increasingly desperate, I realised I had one shot, one opportunity to make amends. I heard on the wind that there was a party at Weir House with a rumoured 1000 people invited. I had to go and infiltrate this scene of hip youth if it was the last thing I did before my 22-year-old lungs gave out. I was going to scream along to Peking Duk with the best of them. I was going to sink piss or die trying.

I was somewhere around Kelburn on the edge of the Botanic Gardens when the drugs began to take hold. I remember muttering something like, “My goddamn back has gone out again, maybe I should just go home”, and suddenly, the blessed ibuprofen kicked in. I was unconquerable; I took a swig of raspberry Scrumpy, overdid it, and choked out half my mouthful onto some nearby

Feature

wa s a I he ard on the win d tha t the re ou red pa rty at We ir Ho use wit h a rum an d 10 00 pe op le inv ite d. I ha d to go if inf iltr ate thi s sce ne of hip you th e my it wa s the las t thi ng I did be for 22 -ye ar- old lun gs ga ve ou t. pavement. No matter! I was almost there.

The imposing structure of Weir House crested in the distance.

Weir House is steeped in tradition, as its website quietly boasts, and is allegedly the most sought-after place of residence among incumbent first-years because of the prestige it has attained. It was inaugurated in 1926 after a Mr William Weir left the sum of 77,000 pounds to Victoria under the stipulation that they build a Hall of Residence for male students. Its origins are curious: William Weir was a timber merchant with no known ties to Victoria, and I personally suspect extortion or an illegitimate heir, but I digress. Since, it has been the go-to Hall for the best and brightest highachievers – at any given time, about 70 per cent of its populace study Law or Economics, and if you didn’t get that Excellence certificate at NCEA Level 2, don’t even bother.

In 1949, a ribald exposé of the Hall was written by a W. H. Oliver. He identified an inhabitant of Weir as “a creature of great appetite – he attacks food, alcohol and women with equal gusto” and recalled the “incidents of sexual licence presuppose residents equipped with the insinuating grace of Don Juan, the opportunities of Solomon, and the potency of an Olympian god”. Female students have since begrudgingly been allowed admittance, but I imagine that the general ethos held true. These fellow raconteurs were surely my people!

Flaneuring about with them would be easier than first thought.

Upon my arrival I immediately befriended some people who were smoking by the entrance by offering them a hit from my pipe. “Only if it’s the green stuff eh,” one plucky lad replied, making a curious motion where he drew his thumb and forefinger up to his mouth. “I’m not sure what this ‘green’ ‘stuff’ is, but I assure you I have the finest bourbon-spiced pipe tobacco known to mankind,” I replied cheerily. For some reason, interest in me dampened and one of them even asked “Who the hell” I was. “Oh, just a fellow youth looking to have a sick old time,” I explained, but they looked uniformly unconvinced, so I took my leave and ascended the stairs to C-block, where the party was being held.

The place was swarming with people, and a bleary racket emanated from the speakers like a cruel, sensory-overload torture. It was here that I put my intrepid journalistic skills to use. I overheard one girl talking about a certain ‘Josh’, saying: “he can get it any time… and he can get it hard.” I never discovered what this ‘it’ was because I was jostled by a drunk young fellow wearing a ‘normcore’ outfit.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Maaaate.

I’m OTP. On the wets. Getting #turnt.”

This was fascinating, but I still felt like I wasn’t getting at the heart of Student Life.

So I asked about his choice of outfit. “In high school I was TC, y’know, the kind of person who’d yell the F-word at people

from cars, but I’ve turned over a new leaf, but now I’m here, everyone wears skinny jeans! I have to fit in, and they’re my steez, but I don’t want to wear them too skinny because I don’t want the laydeez thinking I’m a fucking eunuch. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna take a slash.”

I excused him happily, as there was a bit of dram occurring on the other side of the room. Someone had just noisily expelled the drinks of the evening on what looked like very expensive carpet, and some kind soul was discreetly vacuuming the evidence away – at least until an enterprising young lass suggested that the vacuum nozzle be repurposed as a bong.

The response to this suggestion was drowned out by cheers as ‘Fancy’ came on the speakers. “How can you tell Iggy Azalea doesn’t like Modernism?” I asked the person nearest. “Well first things first she’s a Realist”—then, disaster! A pompous-looking young man with a lanyard around his neck stormed in, shouting about things getting out of hand. “I like your choice of attire! Very dashing!” I tried to appease, but he turned on me with a nasty stare and told me to fuck off before he called the riot police, and I knew he would be true to his word. I got out of there like stink, sculling my Scrumpy on the way.

Before Salient found me in a compromising position, I thought back on the night’s events. I hadn’t found solace in youth culture; not even close.

Perhaps this particular door was closed to me forever. Besides, as Matthew McConaughey proved in Dazed and Confused, people who refuse to grow up are a pretty pathetic bunch. But still, I couldn’t help but yearn for the excitement of youth and the joys of the past. “And so we beat on…” I mused. Next thing I knew, the editors had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water on my face and were laughing hysterically. Fucking shitcunts.

editor@salient.org.nz

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Feature

THERE’S A MAN WHO SITS IN THE BEEHIVE AND DECIDES HOW UNIVERSITIES SHOULD WORK IN NEW ZEALAND. HIS NAME IS STEVEN JOYCE. HE DIDN’T HAVE TO PAY TO GO TO UNIVERSITY. HE THINKS THAT SYSTEM WOULD BE UNAFFORDABLE TODAY. HE WORKED AS NATIONAL’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER IN 2005, THEN AGAIN IN THE 2008 ELECTION. HE ENTERED PARLIAMENT THAT YEAR. IT’S BEEN CLAIMED HE HAS DESIGNS ON THE LEADERSHIP OF THE NATIONAL PARTY. SALIENT WENT TO THE SEVENTH FLOOR OF THE BEEHIVE TO GET TO KNOW THE MAN.

THE MAN TELL US ABOUT UNIVERSITY: WHERE DID YOU GO AND WHEN WERE YOU THERE? I went to Massey

University, from 1981 to 1985 in Palmerston North. I did a Vet intermediate and didn’t quite make the cut for Vet School so I did a Zoology degree for two years. In the first three years, I passed all my papers: I was very excited. In my fourth year, I was doing Economics papers. I sat six and passed three. In my fifth year I enrolled for three and passed none.

WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE THEN? Nothing really. It’s hard to say what’s changed because I’m not there now, but they were much smaller back then. And of course, radio has changed to some degree – we [the student radio station] were the first FM radio station in Palmerston North.

TELL US MORE ABOUT THE RADIO STATION. There was a bunch of

us at university who thought we would like to be in radio, but we were insecure enough to think that people wouldn’t hire us. The group was made up of Jeremy Corbett,

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myself and three other guys. We decided we would start our own radio station. We decided all this during the 1984 snap election when we were doing a Radio Massey current-affairs programme, which are sort of like the Insight documentaries that Radio NZ does but really low budget.

We did all these interviews with politicians, and it was novel because student radio didn’t really do current affairs. We were conscious of the fact there wasn’t a large audience and the ones who were listening probably just wanted to hear a track from Joy Division. We went on every night for a week, and after that, a bunch of us realised we wanted to do radio. We did our first summer broadcast in New Plymouth in the summer of ‘84/‘85, went back for the next summer and moved to full time in 1987.

from us wanting to play REM on the radio. Initially, we weren’t even that entrepreneurial: we just wanted a decent radio station.

That was our gig.

AND THEN YOU WORKED YOUR WAY UP TO EVENTUALLY OWN RADIOWORKS.

didn’t really get into hip-hop, for some reason.

Yeah, we owned the first one between us. We had about 51 per cent of Energy FM, then bought Tauranga, and then Hamilton, Taupo and Rotorua and Hawke’s Bay. We ended up with about 650 staff and 22 markets at RadioWorks. And it all started

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE BAND BACK THEN? It’s always been pretty eclectic. A bit of Hunters & Collectors, The Cure, I was an REM fan early on, U2 was great early on. All sorts of things, just a whole range. Prince. I had a mate of mine who made me recognise Prince’s artistic talent.

A LOT OF STUDENTS THINK YOU LISTEN TO DRAMATIC OPERA IN THE DARK WHILE YOU’RE SCHEMING AND PLOTTING THE NEXT FUNDING CUT. [Laughs] Not at all. I learnt the piano when I was a kid, so I always have enjoyed classical music. That’s why my taste is so eclectic.

DO YOU LIKE ANY HIP-HOP? No,

THERE’S SPECULATION THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE THE NEXT LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY. IS THAT TRUE? No, it’s not something I’m

interested in at all. For a start, the PM is going to be around for a long time. The second thing is that

I think I get to do a huge amount working with industries like the tertiary sector. You don’t get to do that in the big job. He [John Key] works harder than me and he has to front everything. I get to do things in portfolio areas. I’m very happy and privileged to be doing what I’m doing.

THE POLICY NATIONAL HAS MOVED TO REMOVE THE REQUIREMENT THAT A STUDENT SITS ON THE GOVERNING BODY OF THE UNIVERSITY. CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF WHEN A TERTIARY INSTITUTION WOULD BENEFIT FROM NOT HAVING STUDENT REPRESENTATION ON THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL? Well, firstly, I’m not

sure that’s the test. The test is: are councils looking after students?

That’s a bigger test than whether students are on the councils or not. I feel it’s a bit moot anyway, because my strong view is that the universities, all of them or nearly all of them, will put a student rep on their councils anyway.

What I don’t want to do is enshrine it in the Act. Next thing you know, students and the general staff and the academic staff and the CTU [Council of Trade Unions] and the employer’s representative and the mayor all want designated spots. I actually think we should trust the councils and the universities to make the call about their own constitutions.

IT’S STRANGE THAT YOU SAY YOU DO WANT STUDENTS REPRESENTED, BUT THEN YOU’RE TAKING AWAY THE REQUIREMENT THAT THEY ARE. My view is that they will be on, because in practice that’s what universities will do. I think we should trust them to be smart enough – I mean, we already trust them with billions of taxpayer dollars, so we should trust them

to make the right calls for their institution.

THE BUDGET THIS YEAR SHOWED A SHIFT TOWARDS FUNDING STEM [SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS] SUBJECTS AND RESEARCH. WHAT PLACE DO YOU THINK ARTS DEGREES HAVE IN NEW ZEALAND? Well, I think they have a very strong place, and I don’t have any concerns that we have weakness there. In fact, if anything, we are slightly overdone in Arts and Social Sciences. If you look at our international rankings, we tend to do best in those spaces, and not so well in the Applied Science and Engineering areas.

Compared to Australia, we fund Commerce and Arts at a much higher level than they do. It has been much more profitable in the past for universities to add Arts or Commerce students. That’s because STEM subjects, with labs and practicums and so on, are much more expensive to provide.

Not surprisingly, we end up with more Arts students.

QUIZ TIME: HOW MUCH DO YOU GET PER WEEK FOR YOUR WEEKLY STUDENT ALLOWANCE? [$175.96] It’s about 170-something. It goes up with inflation so changes slightly all the time. I should add that it only started going up with inflation under this government.

THE AVERAGE RENT IN CENTRAL WELLINGTON? [$155] I don’t know

the answer, but I would be careful to assess that. I don’t know the per-room rate of a student in Wellington.

RENTS ARE OFTEN DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT IN DIFFERENT CITIES, SO WOULD YOU CONSIDER TYING STUDENT LOANS TO THE COST OF LIVING IN EACH SPECIFIC CENTRE? I

think we have to be really careful, because that would be one of the things students factor in when

they choose where to study. The unintended consequences of that could be that more students study in bigger cities.

THE NZ UNION OF STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATIONS HAVE COME OUT RECENTLY WITH DOCUMENTS SHOWING THAT YOU HAD CONSIDERED DECREASING COURSE-RELATED COSTS FROM $1000 TO $500. WILL YOU DO THAT IF YOU WIN THIS YEAR? No,

we are not considering decreasing course-related costs. We’ve made our call on that – we feel it’s in the right place now.

THE DOCUMENTS ALSO SUGGESTED YOU MAY BE CUTTING THE STUDENT ALLOWANCE AVAILABILITY PERIOD FROM 5 YEARS TO 3 YEARS. WILL THAT HAPPEN?​ I NOTE THAT THIS WOULD HAVE STOPPED YOU FROM GETTING AN ALLOWANCE IN YOUR LAST TWO YEARS OF UNIVERSITY. There’s no plans to change that. And actually, for me, I should have moved on in that fifth year. Our sense is that overall it’s in the right place.

IF NATIONAL GETS BACK IN, WOULD IT CONSIDER PUTTING INTEREST BACK ON STUDENT LOANS? No. That’s out.

HOW DO YOU THINK VOLUNTARY STUDENT MEMBERSHIP HAS CHANGED UNIVERSITIES? I think it’s great in

principle that people are no longer forced to belong to an association.

I think different institutions have been successful, some more than others. There’s work in progress on compulsory Student Service Levies. I’d still like to see a more robust critique of those from student reps, and I am happy to look closely at making sure that levies are only going up by how much they need to go up and that the services that are being provided are fairly costed. And we need more discipline around that.

It’s important that student money goes to things that students value.

THE ELECTION AT THE LAST ELECTION, ONLY 42 PER CENT OF 18–24-YEAR-OLDS VOTED. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THOSE PEOPLE THIS TIME ROUND? I’d say

get in there in and vote, and think about what it is that you want for your country and vote. In some ways, as I said on the TV last week, it’s a healthy skepticism, but If you don’t vote you can’t complain. And you should have a look at what it means for your future to vote either way, and if possible, get out and vote.

WHY SHOULD A STUDENT VOTE NATIONAL WHEN PARTIES LIKE INTERNET MANA AND THE GREENS ARE SAYING— [Interrupts] Here’s

the news. Students won’t vote en masse for Internet Mana. Two reasons. One, they’re smarter than that – they know nothing in life is ultimately free. Somebody has to pay. And they understand there is a balance of things.

So why should they vote National? Because ultimately, we are delivering a stronger New Zealand in an economic sense.

If people are talking about job opportunities or the opportunity to grow a business or working in interesting occupations once they leave university, then I am absolutely 100 per cent convinced that they’ll get far more choice and far better incomes if they choose a National government. That means they have the option of being in New

Zealand and being successful in New Zealand. And they’ll have a much better chance under us than under the alternative.

HOW MUCH HARDER DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE FOR NATIONAL TO WIN THE ELECTION IF JOHN KEY WASN’T A MEMBER? Well, fortunately, that

doesn’t come up for discussion.

Look, we’ve got a great team, and we’ve got a great PM, and you can’t divide the two. He’s a great Prime Minister for New Zealand, he’s also got a great team. So you can’t divide one without the other.

He’s going to be, in my view, around for a long time yet.

I THINK THAT’S ALL THE QUESTIONS I HAVE. I see you were going to

ask me about Labour’s tertiary package, but I don’t think they’ve got one. There’s nothing on their website. Presumably they will announce it eventually.

HEAD TO WWW.SALIENT.ORG.NZ TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THIS INTERVIEW.

editor@salient. org.nz

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Feature

THERE’S A MAN WHO SITS IN PARLIAMENT WHO WANTS TO DECIDE HOW UNIVERSITIES SHOULD WORK IN NEW ZEALAND. HIS NAME IS GRANT ROBERTSON. HE DID HAVE TO PAY FOR UNI – HE STARTED THE YEAR THEY INTRODUCED FEES. HE THINKS THAT FREE TERTIARY EDUCATION WOULD BE UNAFFORDABLE. HE WORKED IN HELEN CLARK’S OFFICE WHILE SHE WAS PM, AND ENTERED PARLIAMENT IN 2008. HE RAN TO BE LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY. SALIENT WENT TO GRANT’S WILLIS ST ELECTORATE OFFICE TO GET TO KNOW THE MAN.

THE MAN

you can get them for a dollar. But on average, up to four bucks for a Molenberg loaf.

HOW DO YOU GET TO WORK IN THE MORNING? I mostly drive. I live up in

HOW MANY HOURS A DAY WOULD YOU SAY YOU WORK? I work about

Wilton. I drive a Toyota Caldina. I don’t think they make them anymore – it’s like a Corolla but cooler.

HOW MUCH DOES SOMEONE GET ON STUDENT LOAN LIVING COSTS PER WEEK? [$175.96 AT THE TIME OF INTERVIEW.] $172.50.

WHAT DO YOU USUALLY HAVE FOR LUNCH? Lately, I’ve been trying to lose a lot of weight, so have been eating a lot of salads. A year ago, there might have been a bit more food on the plate.

WHAT’S THE PRICE OF PETROL? [$2.20 AT THE TIME OF INTERVIEW.] It’s a bit over $2 a litre.

NAME YOUR THREE TOP BANDS. The National is my sort of band of the moment. Unfortunate name. I grew up in Dunedin so that hugely influenced my musical taste – The Clean and a band that no one has heard of called the DoubleHappys.

WHAT’S THE PRICE OF A LOAF OF BREAD? That depends, because there are bread wars at the moment so

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70 hours a week, but that doesn’t average out to ten hours a day.

When the House is sitting, I’m often working 15 hours, 16 hours.

In the weekends, more like eight to ten.

SO YOU DON’T GET MUCH SPARE TIME AT THE MOMENT? None.

Well, that’s not completely true – yesterday afternoon, I got four hours.

WHAT DIFFERENCES DO YOU SEE IN YOUR TIME AT UNIVERSITY TO UNIVERSITY TODAY? The

politicisation is much much lower.

I started in the year that upfront fees were introduced. In 1989, the year before I went to uni, it cost $125 to go to Otago University for a year. That was the students’ association fee. The next year, it cost $1250. So I arrived, and there were a lot of protests going on. For the first few years, people thought we could stop it, change it.

I think if Steven Joyce did what he really wanted to do and reintroduced interest on Student Loans, you’d probably

generate a protest. But overall, politicisation is significantly reduced. At orientation this year, the Minister of Tertiary Education just wandered around the Hub. Most people didn’t have a clue who he was.

THE POLICY YOU WROTE AN OPINION PIECE IN] SALIENT ABOUT ALL THE CUTS THE GOVERNMENT HAS MADE TO UNIVERSITY FUNDING. WILL THOSE THINGS BE REVERSED IF YOU WIN THE ELECTION?Our tertiary-education

policy will be announced very soon. [At the time of print the policy was still yet to be released.] I can tell you one thing: we want a complete review of Loans and Allowances.

The biggest feedback that I’ve got was from people saying that: “My daughter doesn’t get an Allowance because my husband and I each earn $30,000 a year but down the road is a farmer who’s paid an accountant to structure his affairs so that it looks like he earns nothing and his kids get Allowances”. And so that’s the kind of thing you’ve got to look at in the system.

Having said that, I think that

the removal of postgrad allowances is the worst of all of the changes.

We have an announcement to make on that that I’m sure people will like.

WHAT SORT OF CONSULTATION WOULD THIS REVIEW BE?We want

a formal review. We will set up a working group to do that. We will have students on that group.

I will tell you what I personally favour: the system that I had in my first year at university. There is a fee that you pay, but it’s reasonably modest and it’s discounted based on your parental circumstances and so on. Everybody gets a base allowance. In 1990, I got 80 bucks a week as a base allowance. To give you an idea of what that was, my rent was $45. So it easily covers your rent and then there’s a bit more on top of that.

It meant everybody got something. It’s much easier to administer as well. That was a system that I think worked. It was fairer.

NATIONAL, IN THE BUDGET, HAS REPRIORITISED SPENDING TOWARDS STEM SUBJECTS [SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS], AND THE GREENS HAVE MADE A SIMILAR PROMISE. DO YOU THINK THE BALANCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ARTS FUNDING IS ABOUT RIGHT?NZ has a shortage of particularly engineers and also research scientists. So we do want to encourage people into that.

The issue that you’ve got is that in the end, those subsidy rates don’t translate into massively lower fees. We probably would look at a system of scholarships and so on that would encourage people to those subjects.

STUDENTS HAVE BEEN HIGHLY CRITICAL OF THE GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSED UNIVERSITY-GOVERNANCE REFORMS. WOULD LABOUR REVERSE

THOSE REFORMS? Yes. We would

definitely reverse it. This is a solution in search of a problem.

There is actually nothing wrong with the governance of NZ universities.

WE ASKED STEVEN JOYCE AND JOHN KEY LAST WEEK FOR AN EXAMPLE OF WHEN A STUDENT COUNCIL WOULD BENEFIT FROM NOT HAVING A STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE. AND THEY SAY THEY DON’T THINK THAT SITUATION EXISTS. The institutions

don’t want this either. Nobody wants this, so why are we doing it? It’s a stupid, stupid, stupid idea.

Apart from just the sheer principle of it, students pay a hell of a lot of money now and actually deserve to be represented on there.

VSM. WHAT DO YOU THINK ITS EFFECTS ARE AND WOULD YOU SEEK TO CHANGE THE LAW? The answer to

the second question is yes. In the 1990s when VSM was proposed, one of the posters that we put up when I was NZUSA President was: “Do you want the ViceChancellor to choose the music for orientation?” That almost literally happened at Victoria University this year. And that the University was making calls about what was going to happen at Orientation.

So that’s the effect.

VUWSA, with due respect to Rory and Sonya, they have done a really good job over the last few years, but you know, they are struggling. They are struggling to get recognition from Victoria University.

And I just think that diminishes the student experience. I think that makes students very vulnerable to the institutions. And so the changes I am seeing are that students’ associations no longer have the strength of advocacy that they had.

THE ELECTION LAST ELECTION, 58 PER CENT OF 18–24-YEAR-OLDS DIDN’T VOTE, SO WHY SHOULD WE? Because it matters. Because the kinds of decisions we are making now are going to define the lives of 18–24-year-olds. And if students need a reason to vote, the reason you have got interest-free Student Loans is because a political party said, “Yes we will do that,” after students campaigned on it. So it makes a real difference to their lives. Politics matters.

WHY SHOULD STUDENTS VOTE LABOUR? If you are talking about tertiary education, I just ask people to look at our track record.

We are the party that brought in interest-free Student Loans.

We massively expanded access to Allowances. We brought in the Fee Maxima so the fee increases stopped being in the double digits and went down to being four per cent or lower.

Beyond that, it is about the kind of country people want to live in. I get the sense from the time I spent talking to students that they do want to live in a country where we look after each other and the environment.

Where we have an economy that is thriving, but that everybody gets a fair share from it. You’re only going to get that with a Labourled Government.

HOW WILL A COALITION WORK? FOR EXAMPLE, SAY THE GREENS PRODUCE A TERTIARY-EDUCATION POLICY WHICH SAYS FREE EDUCATION. WOULD A VOTE FOR GREENS BE A VOTE FOR FREE TERTIARY EDUCATION? It’ll obviously depend on the

size of each party in the coalition.

But my experience with coalitions is that what you can work towards is a broad direction. In the case of tertiary education, we want it to be as accessible as possible, but equally, we have got an obligation to spend taxpayers’ money wisely and balance the budget.

The Labour Party is held to a certain level of standard about that which the Greens aren’t. The Greens are allowed to promise that and everyone goes “Yay the Greens”. We promise that we have to fully cost a policy and show how it’s going to sit in the Budget.

What you get with Labour is that we are being honest with you.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE AND LEAST-FAVOURITE POLICY OF NATIONAL? The favourite is actually the stuff they have done in Treaty negotiations. It’s lowered the temperature down now to such an extent that it’s not really an issue for anyone in New Zealand, and we are just getting on with righting the wrongs of the past. My least-favourite was without a doubt the decision in 2010 to cut taxes weighted towards the most wealthy at a point when a lot of New Zealanders were struggling. It says everything you need to know about the National Party.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE OPPOSITION MP? I am saying Chris

Finlayson because I enjoy teasing him.

AND I GUESS YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO SAY YOUR LEAST-FAVOURITE? I don’t really have a least-favourite.

The thing about being an MP is that it turns out the people on the other side of the bench are human beings. While you disagree with them on the policy prescriptions, they come here with a genuine intent. I disagree with them but they are genuinely motivated. I was watching a National MP the other day with their kids at the airport and I was just thinking, “You’re a really good dad and I can tell that by the way you and your kids are relating to each other.”

THERE’S NOTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SAY TO STUDENTS? Vote.

You have the most fantastic thing for the first time ever: an early-voting booth at campus, two weeks before. Because it is conceivable that some students will wake up on the morning of the 20th of September with a force-ten hangover and decide that they are not going to get out of bed. So now you know you have two full weeks to vote.

HEAD TO WWW. SALIENT.ORG. NZ TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THIS INTERVIEW.

Feature

N RIGGER O ULL THE T P E W D L TENT? SHOU URSE CON O C L IA S R E CONTROV IA

BY RĀWIN

hat the %@$*?” I thought to myself every time this guy in my 100-level Political Science class raised his hand to try to convince everyone that New Zealand should abolish the Treaty of Waitangi and adopt a Chinese form of Communism. #ControversialOpinion University is supposed to be a great place to get to ‘Know Your Mind’. As learners in our richly diverse academic community, students are constantly challenging themselves and being challenged by those around them, debating and discussing issues facing New Zealand and the world. This raises a difficult question – how should highly controversial and triggering content be dealt with when some vulnerable members of our university community have been affected by the issues we’re discussing?

Triggering can be interpreted narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, a person who has suffered trauma might be provoked or triggered when faced with images, writing, discussion, or any other thing that takes them back to the initial traumatic event and may cause them to relive it. Broadly, a person affected by a particular issue may become distressed. Whether we interpret triggering narrowly or broadly, the situation remains that sometimes, classroom 26

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T

-PRESIDEN

EMIC VICE

N, ACAD THOMPSO

discussions around controversial content go far beyond mere difference of opinion and can cause vulnerable students to feel unsafe.

Victoria offers many courses that explore triggering content.

This content includes sexual violence, domestic abuse, mental health and suicide, abortion, race relations, gender issues, sex and sexuality, and other contentious and highly sensitive issues. Some of these courses are compulsory for majors or degrees. For example, a student pursuing an LLB who has been sexually assaulted cannot avoid taking Law of Torts or Criminal Law, which both closely examine the explicit details of legal cases that involve sexual violence.

I sat down with Professor Simon Keller, an academic in Philosophy, to talk about his teaching on the ethics of abortion and his thoughts on teaching triggering content here at Victoria. He strongly believes that exploring highly contentious issues is a core part of studying the humanities and social sciences, and said: “I’d feel I wasn’t doing my job if I wasn’t making my students feel uncomfortable, challenged, or like what we’re discussing is relevant to their own lives.” He said that, while he has “certainly had some obnoxious students” making vocal contributions in his classes, it is important that

students learn to think critically and consider views they find “outrageous.” He interprets triggering more narrowly, and is not aware of any of his students suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of any content taught in his classes.

I prefer to interpret triggering more broadly. It’s an incredible privilege to be able to debate controversial or triggering issues in courses from a purely academic and intellectual standpoint. If you’re a woman discussing gender issues, Māori discussing the relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi, or not white and discussing race issues, then you are personally invested in the point of class discussion. This is not just your opinion: this is your life experience.

In conversations with students, overwhelmingly the response has been that it is crucial to explore this controversial content at university. Many students felt that issues like domestic violence, mental health and suicide are often swept under the rug, and need to be discussed. Other students believe these conversations can raise awareness of social issues like gender, sexuality and race, and help students develop tolerance. Considering the value of teaching this content, how can we ensure all students – especially vulnerable students – feel safe in their learning environment?

The question of how to deal with triggering course content has sparked controversy recently among the academic community in the United States. Oberlin College, a private liberal arts college in Ohio, has developed an extensive policy on trigger warnings. The policy interprets triggering broadly, stating: “Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma.” It goes on: “Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism,

and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.”

The policy suggests that triggering content be removed from courses where it does not contribute directly to specified learning objectives, or otherwise, students should be issued with a warning of upcoming triggering material.

If a similar trigger policy were to be pursued here at Victoria, it may risk similar criticism for impinging upon academic freedom. Section 161 of the Education Act 1989 defines academic freedom as “the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.”

Asher Emanuel, a tutor in Law of Torts, delivers and facilitates discussion around triggering content. He sees this kind of content as giving rise to issues of accessibility, saying: “The University should work towards making education accessible to everyone.” He notes that different learners have different needs, and that “some students need to avoid encountering distressing content in circumstances that are difficult or impossible for them to control.” In order to accommodate those different needs, he takes care in his teaching, indicating at the beginning of his classes that he expects everyone offering opinions to be considered when approaching discussion on serious or distressing issues.

If university students are supposed to constantly be challenging themselves and others, then here is a challenge for the university – how are we going to maintain a safe, accessible learning environment for our most vulnerable students?

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ou wouldn’t think it’d be too bloody difficult. Grades, they constantly tell us, are very important things. When a lecturer changes a student’s grades after their essays have been assessed and their exams have been examined, you’d think the hierarchy would want to be informed.

Four weeks ago, we submitted an Official Information Act request to the University, asking for their data on lecturers’ grade-scaling. We were curious whether our own grades were due more to academic discretion than our derivation of maximum-likelihood operators (we’re cool like that). Also, we figured it would be hilarious to see which courses had been scaled (I told you we we were cool). Of course the Uni would have the data, so why not ask if we could have a look?

Except they didn’t. Victoria had no idea how often its lecturers were scaling.

But not to worry. The University’s solicitor would contact the University’s 28 schools. She would ask them for

their own data, collate their responses, and get back to us. We would have our answers soon enough.

Four weeks later, 11 schools have responded in full, another eight in part. Nine of Victoria’s schools have told us nothing. The school administrators insist that asking them at such short notice is unfair. Why would they know the scaling habits of their lecturers? The school responsible for Maths and Statistics could give us no statistics; Economics and Finance have economised on their data. We heard nothing from Engineering and Computer Science, from Design, Te Kura Māori, Modern Letters, Music, Biology or Geography. This year, the University has made fairly significant changes to its marking schedule. You’d think it’d matter if this had changed the way academics graded. But our beloved Victoria didn’t want to know.

It’s impossible to know whether the scaling we were told about represents

the scaling throughout the University.

That said, most scaling we were told about was small and justifiable – often just a few marks given to those on the cusp of passing, or five per cent added to compensate for the new marking schedule. While academics have the option to scale their courses downwards, none admitted to doing so.

But not everyone was content with working at the margins. Four courses scaled either an assessment or a final grade by more than two letter grades.

15 percentage points were added to one paper’s final grades – and no, it wasn’t PHYS 307 or LAWS 340. Students in MARK 301 whose assessments gave them a C– were given a B–; to get an A+ on your transcript only required a B+ in raw marks. As one MARK 301 student described his exam performance: “I was fucked as. I didn’t even answer enough questions to pass so I was sketching the whole time but then I got results and I got a C.” We asked the course coordinator if we could discuss editor@salient.org.nz

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Feature

“15 percentage points were added to one paper’s final grades – and no, it wasn’t PHYS 307 or LAWS 340. Students in MARK 301 whose assessments gave them a C– were given a B–; to get an A+ on your transcript only required a B+ in raw marks. As one MARK 301 student described his exam performance: “I was fucked as.

I didn’t even answer enough questions to pass so I was sketching the whole time but then I got results and I got a C.” We asked the course coordinator if we could discuss her scaling methods.

Unfortunately, she was unable to meet us.”

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The University Issue

her scaling methods. Unfortunately, she was unable to meet us.

Further, scaling was sometimes based entirely on class engagement. LAWS 320 reported that “some students were scaled up based on exceptional contribution to class participation.”

We can’t see what “exceptional” participation required, nor how many students were scaled or how much their grades were changed. But lecturers are not meant to be examining extroversion.

Two papers used scaling to get consistency between markers. MGMT 101 added three marks to selected exam grades to bring a tough marker into line with others. PSYC 232 added 0.3-ofa-mark to the raw grades of one of its assessments. Of course, students should be assessed consistently, but it’s unclear how sophisticated this consistency was.

Five schools told us they didn’t scale at all. These included English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies, and Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. Any teacher will tell you that essay-marking is deeply subjective, so maybe in situations when a Physics paper would scale, an English paper would just mark more leniently.

Victoria’s Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health also didn’t scale, but we didn’t even know Vic had a nursing school, so who knows what we should make of that.

Most frustrating were the schools who only disclosed some of their courses.

Except for one, those schools that scaled didn’t mention whether undisclosed courses hadn’t been scaled, or whether they were just courses the school administrators didn’t know about.

In total, we were told the scaling of 102 papers from 14 schools. Even counting the five schools which don’t scale at all, that leaves most papers

unaccounted for. In case you’re wondering, none of our own papers reported their scaling. All that effort was an exercise in futility.

According to Victoria’s Assessment Handbook, it’s only when course grades are “seriously out of line with expectations” that scaling should be considered. After looking at the number of courses being scaled, it seems lecturers’ expectations could do with an adjustment. The Handbook also insists that “where possible scaling should be applied to individual assessment rather than to final grades.” Of those scaled courses which we were told about, only 31 per cent scaled individual assessments.

Lecturers write exams weeks in advance, so expectations will always be rough. According to the lecturers we chatted with, whether a course will need to be scaled often isn’t obvious until marking time. And often, exams don’t end up assessing what they need to – maybe one question was too ambiguous, or another penalised a stupid mistake too heavily. Changing the marking schedule and remarking when you’ve already looked at 40 exam scripts is a lot of work. Scaling might be the only fair option.

Scaling is often a good idea. Often, it makes assessments less arbitrary and grading more fair. But of course, it’s sometimes misused. And when it is, Victoria doesn’t want to know.

Jan Stewart manages Victoria University’s Student Learning Support Service. When we chatted to her last week, she told us she’d seen no gradescaling abuse, though she believed “some people do and some people think it’s the norm.” She didn’t believe the solution

Feature

was central moderation of grade scaling. Instead, she believed schools should be “supervising at a higher level – programme coordinators or heads of schools looking at distributions”.

Given that many schools couldn’t tell us whether their lecturers had scaled at all, Jan’s comments cannot be interpreted as a ringing endorsement. She also believed students should be better informed.

“How many people know if their mark has been scaled? Lecturers need to be honest.”

But there’s a reason honesty is hard to find. Universities are under pressure to be passing more students, and gradescaling achieves that. One Victoria University academic we spoke to – he asked not to be named – explained how the University encourages academics to engineer their pass rates. “There is pressure, but they aren’t stupid about it, they’re not explicit. They try and get moderation systems in place, and I guess they communicate through the moderation systems to try and get the pass rates up. They’re obviously feeling the incentives.”

By incentives, he’s talking about the Government’s Student Achievement Component funding.

Of the University’s income last year, we estimate about $5 million was contingent on passing rates – about half of their operating surplus. Of course, even if there wasn’t performancebased funding, the University would want students to be passing. And so the University moderates the grade distributions of courses, ensuring academics are teaching their courses well.

Well, that’s what they say. Our academic friend recalled a meeting “where it was very clear that they wanted higher pass rates in certain classes.

There’s no way for the University to tell whether its academics are teaching well – and given the flaws with student feedback, neither can the academics.

But demands must be met, and sometimes there are few options. And so they scale. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

They never said mark easier – they always phrased it in terms of teaching more effectively.” But he believed compelling lecturers to lecture better was impossible. He pointed out that even without scaling, assessment is often fairly subjective. “If you get slapped around for passing too many people or passing not enough, you can change the way you mark the assessment. Changing the way you teach would be a pretty indirect approach to the problem.”

The academic wasn’t sure whether this had resulted in an easier system overall. “There are informal complaints every so often that the standards are low compared to ‘when I was a boy’ – but no one spends the time to check that, and I know of no non-subjective measures that are preserved over time.”

Nonetheless, he believed some standards were slipping. “Some moderation is kind of invisible to me – I don’t necessarily see what’s happening in some other classes – but there are other courses where the moderation is much more transparent. And then I would say that there definitely has been a change in marking. It’s much easier to get high grades in some courses now.”

There’s no way for the University to tell whether its academics are teaching well – and given the flaws with student feedback, neither can the academics. But demands must be met, and sometimes there are few options. And so they scale.

Don’t ask, don’t tell. By monitoring students’ grades – but not monitoring whether those grades are the result of good learning or good mathematics – the University maintains its statistics while ignoring the manipulations behind them.

Scaling happens in many ways, across many faculties, and for many different reasons. But no one knows what it looks like overall. From what we’ve been told, most scaling is pretty minor, though there are some outrageous exceptions.

The deeper problem is a university incapable of better teaching and facing steep incentives to pass more students.

The solution is to change assessment, but when that fails, grade-scaling is the only option. Mention completion rates often enough and lecturers get the right idea. The reason so many schools didn’t know whether their lecturers were scaling is that the schools didn’t want to know. But the solution isn’t more central moderation – that could discourage good scaling and replace scaling with easy assessments. The solution is a university that cares about the integrity of the grades it insists matter so much. <For those interested, our raw data is attached to the online version of this article at www. salient.org.nz> editor@salient.org.nz

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1. SINGING BOWL by Ash Stevens for INDN 311.

Stevens has reinvented the Tibetan gong for todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s society by changing how users interact with it. It spins at a constant pressure and speed against the stick, the bowl begins to sing among its environment where

1

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the user is free to unwind until they feel rejuvenated. The amount of vibration, and therefore the volume of sound, is determined by the level of pressure applied by the user between the perimeter of the dish and the mallet.

2. ELKA STOOL

by Oscar Pipson, who just

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The University Issue

completed a BDI major in Industrial Design.

Inspired by the Cervidae (deer family), specifically the geometries and joins of its antlers and its strong, tall, aggressive stance, the Elka Stool is an exploration of organic transitional geometry and multi-axis CNC machining.

3. PaperPlane by designers Logan Adams and Maximillian Kerr Hislop and three software engineers Esta Chiang, Tania Jacob and Melby Ruarus for COMP313.

4

It is a game where you have to race against the changing weather conditions and achieve the highest possible score. Such game is playable on the iPad, and uses tilting as the main mechanism. Additionally, due to the glider nature of the plane, to gain altitude and remain within acceptable height limits you must blow into the microphone.

4. END OF FILE by Adrian Turjak, James Otter, Scott Brebner, Chris Read, Reece Patterson and Josh Brake.

It is a first-person ‘perspective’ puzzle game. The emphasis is on observation and exploration. The world, an abstraction of a broken piece of software that you are attempting to traverse. By using ‘portals’ we were able to create connected/disconnect spaces that were huge but still self-contained. The target platforms are PC, and possibly Oculus Rift. Our target audience is fans of games like Antichamber, Portal and Myst.

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editor@salient.org.nz

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Columns

Conspiracy Corner “Starbucks in the Hub 2015”

By Incognito Montoya

n case you missed the I quickly removed posters, “Reclaim the Hub” is/ was the grassroots campaign to re-establish the Hub as a student centre in protest against its encroaching commercialisation.

For instance, VUWSA was prohibited from serving free soup

Weird Internet Shit

By Henry Cooke

ay way back, in those halcyon pre-Recession days when the internet was still novel and a sense of economic dread didn’t pervade your every waking moment, YouTube introduced its first time limit. It was 2006: the one-year-old website was exploding into the public consciousness, and onto the desks of law firms all over America.

W

during study week because it was unfair competition for Hub businesses. Which brings into question who exactly the Hub exists for: the food corporations who stock its walls like an airport lounge, or the students for whom their coffee and textbooks are essential to their existence?

There are those who believe that the Hub is a student centre and should be reserved for student interests only. Near as I can tell walking through it, you’d be convinced that we’d fall into anarchy if the sushi place ever closed down. And still you get the odd demand for a Subway or some other corporate bread-andcircus. Point is, it might not be made for you exclusively, but it knows what you want. So how do we reconcile this conflict of interest? The want to protest but the need for easily available foodstuffs? Fear not! You don’t need a Subway, just a Dumb

Starbucks.

‘Dumb Starbucks’ was a venture set up by American comedian Nathan Fielder for his Comedy Central show Nathan for You. By using a loophole in American parody law, Fielder opened up a parody coffee enterprise in the heart of LA under the globally recognisable corporate banner of Starbucks.

The result: ‘Dumb Starbucks’, which simply appropriates the brand and shoves the word ‘dumb’ in front of everything. You can buy a dumb espresso or a dumb chai latte, buy dumb merch and or protest against ‘dumb plastic’ single-use cups outside. The point is complexly twofold; to test the fringe of parody law, and to fool others into finding ironic meaning out of a business that was merely there to make money.

Unfortunately, the venture was shut down for not operating with a proper health permit, but not

before it made the news cycle, claiming it was everything from an anti-corporate protest to a legitimate business with a selfaware twist. This was, however, exactly as Fielder intended. It stands for nothing and everything.

This, I propose, is the solution to ‘Reclaim’. The one setback is that currently, New Zealand’s parody law may not allow it (however, a new Bill put forward by the Greens is set to bring it to USA’s standards), but a place like Dumb Starbucks would hardly seem amiss in a place of such self-appreciated irony and smug intellectual appreciation as a university, and could serve as a compromise between the corporate types and the students want to drink their coffee ironically and still protest corporatisation. Wake up the sheeple with caffeinated beverages, I say!

Bandwidth was expensive, and most of the longer videos were copyrighted episodes of TV shows and films – a ten-minute limit seemed perfect.

The years wore on. YouTube upped the quality of its videos, it partnered with the people so eager to sue it, and it became part of the Google behemoth. After a small increase to 15 minutes in 2010, YouTube went all out with a ten-hour limit in 2011. Why not, right?

Like water filling a glass, tenhour videos appeared immediately.

It is natural for any medium to be stretched, to be tested – but these videos aren’t just experiments any more, they are a subgenre unto themselves. A weird subgenre.

Most of them aren’t actual ten-hour narratives, duh. They are loops – sometimes of a song, sometimes of just a few seconds of a shitty meme – replayed for

ten hours. As such, it’s easy to dismiss them as simply an update, a bandwidth-hogging alternative to the video+sound loops of YTMND in the early 2000s. But the ‘ten hours’ element changes things. A good loop might divert you for five or ten minutes.

You understand that you could theoretically watch it forever, and thus watch it for as long as it is funny. With that ten-hour limit, a goal is introduced, a narrative. Ten hours is achievable.

A friend of mine’s little brother watched ten hours of ‘Epic Sax Guy’, broken up into chunks, like a project. That’s what today’s 14-yearolds are doing with their time.

Then, most of the videos aren’t construed as challenges or jokes; most of them are just songs that people like listening to on repeat.

Underneath the ten-hour version of ‘Let It Go’, various commenters thank the uploader for providing

something they could have achieved with a ‘repeat’ button, ask for ten-hour versions of other songs, and congratulate each other on ‘finishing’ the video. While many simply comment on the novelty, there are clearly people who use these videos earnestly, usually as background music, to play video games or do homework to.

It’s the kind of thing only a child would do. Only a child has that kind of freedom, that kind of soul-crushing boredom and single-minded obsession with a single piece of pop culture. Kids can watch the same movie every day and be entertained every time.

Once, on a long summer’s day deep in my tweenhood, a friend insisted we listen to Akon’s ‘Lonely’ on repeat throughout the entire day. The years roll on, the seasons ever shorter, but some things never change.

editor@salient.org.nz

33

Food

Little Hanoi

Meals and Feels

Carrot, kumara and lentil pies with vegetarian gravy

by Eve Kennedy hen I became a vegetarian, at the earnest and W self-righteous age of ten, the thing I immediately missed the most was roast chicken, but mostly for the gravy and stuffing. As a teenager, I started making vegetarian gravy and stuffing (not that stuffing isn’t normally vegetarian but its eponymous cooking method is). The combination of stuffing/gravy/roast vegetables is one of my favourite winter comfort foods, but here’s a more interesting alternative.

I bought puff pastry because I’m lazy as heck, but my tip for making it is to freeze the butter you use for half an hour or so, then grate it into the flour. This makes it easier to rub in.

Method: Roast the kumara and carrots with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Fry the mushrooms and garlic in butter.

Sauté the onion, oregano and sage in the butter at a medium heat, then add the flour and turn the heat down.

Stir with a wooden spoon until all combined and the roux (butter and flour mixture) has turned a light brown colour. Slowly add the stock, bit by bit, stirring constantly.

Once all mixed in, turn the heat back up to med-high, and add the Marmite or Vegemite. Add some pepper and check the salt levels; add if required. Reduce the gravy over a low heat, stirring often to ensure a skin doesn’t develop.

Assembly: Roll the pastry out and cut it into circles to fit into your muffin tray/pie tins/etc. Cut smaller circles for the tops of the pies.

Mix the gravy and the vegetables together, add the lentils, then spoon into the pie cases. Attach the pie tops and brush the tops with an egg wash of one beaten egg mixed with three tablespoons of water if you have it.

Cook at 180 °C for half an hour or so, or until the pastry is golden-brown.

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The University Issue

Location: 210A Left Bank, Wellington CBD Cuisine: Vietnamese Price: Cheap BYO: Yes

Filling:

1 large or 2 small

kumara, chopped into small cubes

2 carrots, chopped into 1-inch cubes

200 g mushrooms, diced

1 teaspoon

crushed garlic

olive oil/butter for cooking

1 can drained, cooked brown lentils

Gravy:

1 onion, finely diced

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour 2 cups vegetable stock

2 tablespoons Marmite or

Vegemite (I’m a Vegemite girl) 1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon sage

’m always excited about a trip to Little Hanoi. Not quite as excited as I would be with a trip to non-little Hanoi, but excited nonetheless. Despite being a small and unassuming restaurant at the end of Left Bank (off Cuba Mall), it serves up some of the best Vietnamese food in Wellington.

I

On the night I went, although it was a freezing cold Tuesday evening, most of the tables were already full. The décor is plain but functional, although I would have preferred the TV attached to one corner to be permanently banished (along with every other restaurant television ever). The service was excellent – fast, friendly and efficient.

I ordered the Pad Thai, and was delighted with it. The portion was extremely generous and the taste was delicious. The tofu pieces were piping-hot and well flavoured, and the noodles had a perfect balance of sweetness, bitterness from the tamarind, and salt from the soy sauce.

The peanut garnish added the final touch. I also love the fact that they served chilies as a garnish, allowing you to adjust your own spice level (or frantically move them away from your food if you’re me). I also had a Jackfruit Smoothie, which was very enjoyable – cool, aromatic, and very sweet.

Overall, Little Hanoi offers a great dining experience. Their meals are beautifully presented (many of them plentifully garnished with piles of fresh herbs, nuts and chilies) and taste fantastic. For their prices, you’d struggle to find many better meals in central Wellington.

by Julia Wells

Columns

CBT

by Jane T

his instalment of CBT was brought to you by paranoid Saturdays.

thoughts then become my guts and my guts are real. I’m dealing with T my guts by lying on my stomach and then the nice side of my mind CBT tells us that paranoid thoughts is like you should try to un-rationalise the situation. I’m thinking that this are intrusive thoughts.

CBT tells us that intrusive thoughts is wishful thinking but my nice mind is like listen. Don’t engage about trust in relationships are with these intrusive thoughts because difficult to rationalise. their content does not matter – don’t CBT tells us that trust in a engage with these thoughts and relationship can be very difficult beat them in a debate because their to build but also can be very content does not matter – don’t therapeutic, once established, in engage with these thoughts because combating intrusive thoughts. you do not need to draw up a rational, CBT-style, evidence-‘for’I’m lying on my bed and it is raining. The rain has got in through and-‘against’ chart about the ways that people love you. My nice mind the windows and some of my is like forget about using all the nice unread books are wet and I’m things your friend has said about you laughing at myself because those as ammunition against paranoid books were never going to be read intrusions because these are irrelevant anyway. I’m txting my friend who hasn’t liked my latest Instagram and when your mind hates you, but: remember that you trust her, and my thoughts are all it is probably her actions indicate that you are because she is angry at you or bored with you and this is probably because worthwhile. You can trust her. My mind is like: be less like Fiona Apple three months ago you said a thing. in ‘Valentine’ and more like Keri My mind grips my head and then Hilson in ‘Pretty Girl Rock’. You can it is all you speak too quick and you need to be less intense at brunch times ring your friend and trust that she and you need to keep on sending good loves you and other content does not matter. links from the internet to lay at her feet like the cat that you are because you need to make yourself worthwhile. CBT tells us that trust in a relationship can be very difficult to My thoughts are like you need to build but can be very therapeutic be impressive and make yourself worthwhile because otherwise she will once established in combating not love you. And I am kind-of-aware intrusive thoughts. that this whole thing is a shallow Cognitive behavioural therapy illustration of the swallowing and (CBT) is a talk therapy used to treat destructive process of unwanted, ‘irrational’ paranoia in relation to a disruptive thinking and mental illness. Each CBT client will use it sort of mysterious insecurity w/r/t in their own way, and students who interpersonal relationships but the think it could help them can visit point is my thoughts are real. My Student Health.

Māori Matters Nā Jamie Yeates

ne of the current O issues that seems to be the currently most debated in the Māori world is the normalisation of te reo Māori in all facets of life. There seems to be two factions: those who support a normalisation of te reo Māori in Aotearoa as a whole; and those who support the idea that te reo Māori is for Māori, and must be almost reverently treated.

Personally, I agree with the former more than the latter. A language cannot survive, grow and thrive if it is relegated to ceremonial purposes or restricted to private homes. E ora ai te reo, me kōrero i ngā wāhi katoa.

In relating to this Māori-wide issue, we can focus an aspect of it towards the university context.

Can we, as New Zealanders, normalise te reo Māori in a tertiary institute? We see bilingual signs everywhere at Vic. I believe taiwhanga kauhau is the most widely used, seen on nearly every entranceway to the lecture theatres. Even Faculties and Schools have a Māori translation, such as Te Wāhanga Aronui (the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) and Te Kura Mātai Hinengaro (the School of Psychology). We have shown that we can translate signage. So what?

It’s all good and dandy to tick off the “Yes, satisfied the minority” box, but what can Vic and we as students do to normalise te reo Māori?

The more people are exposed to any language, the more they are normalised to it. If you go to France, you are expected to encounter French at any point in your travels. Why not the same for Māori? This is New Zealand, the country internationally famous for haka, tā moko and fierce, brown warriors. We are famous for BEING MĀORI. However, when push comes to shove, the Government does not support cultural re-genesis as much as it should. But is it the Government’s fault? No. It is all of ours. Te reo Māori cannot be revitalised in a day, but we can at least expose as many people as possible to it, can we not? Te Taura Whiri’s new idea for Te Reo Māori Week, of introducing people to one ‘new’ Māori word a week, is one strategy that allows us as agents of cultural regenesis to normalise the language.

TL;DR: My university issue is the representation of te reo Māori at Victoria. Te reo Māori is still on the rocks and it is with us as University students and as the University as a whole to normalise the language and help with its revitalisation.

The Māori Matters column is brought to you by Ngāi Tauira, the Māori Students’ Association.

Ph: +64 4 463 9762 Mobile: +64 27 7406253 Email: ngaitauira@vuw.ac.nz

editor@salient.org.nz

35

Your students’ association

Sonya Says

by Sonya Clark

VUWSA President ello! Nominations close on Tuesday at 4.30 for positions on the VUWSA Executive for 2015. If you’re umming and aahing about whether to give it a go, my advice is: do it.

H

Back in 2012, I first ran for the VUWSA Executive. I still remember how nervous I felt, putting my ballot in the box, checking the noticeboard every day for news of a competitor, and getting up and speaking in front of a crowd. Two years on, I can say that being on VUWSA has been one of the most worthwhile, interesting and challenging experiences of my life.

Here’s why you should run for VUWSA: 1) You get to make things better for students. This can be on the individual right up to the institutional level. If you enjoy working one-on-one with people, you’ll enjoy talking to individual students who want to know the right people to talk to to create something new, or who need support in solving a problem. If you enjoy more systemic change, you’ll enjoy writing submissions or working with the University to address broader issues for students.

No matter your skill set, VUWSA requires them all.

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The University Issue

2) You’ll learn HEAPS. Being on the VUWSA Executive is a governance role, which means the Executive is responsible for setting the strategic direction and budget of the organisation, and ensuring the organisation, including the paid staff, has the resources to realise the vision. Most university students haven’t experienced a governance role before, and learning about governance is is an epic learning experience both personally and for your future employment.

3) It is really flexible – there are recommended hours for the positions (10 for Officers, 20 for Vice-Presidents, and 40 for President), but they can mostly be worked remotely or at the office, and at whatever hours suit your study timetable. You can work on weekends or work late nights, or work mostly during the day. The focus is on what you can achieve with the time you have, and how you can utilise the resources to do good things for students.

4) Finally, you should run because this is a really exciting time for VUWSA. It is a time of change and rethinking the organisation.

Next year’s Executive will have the opportunity to work alongside experts whose job it is to turn average organisations into great ones. This is pretty cool, and really interesting. There will be big decisions to make and lots of things to consider to drive VUWSA into the next era.

What are you waiting for? Go and put in your form by end of Tuesday!

Nomination forms can be found on VUWSA’s Facebook page, website, or at reception on Level 4 of the Student Union Building.

Sonya Clark

VUWSA President M: 027 563 6986 | DDI: (04) 463 6986 | E: sonya.clark@vuw.ac.nz | W: www.vuwsa.org.nz

Exec Column Rāwinia Thompson

Vice-President Academic

Q

uality education. It’s one

of those nice concepts everyone likes to get behind. We know it’s important.

We all want it. We’d probably go out and rally for it if we had to.

The funny thing is, most of us probably don’t even know what it is exactly.

It’s hard to imagine what a quality education looks like when you’re sitting in a crowded lecture theatre of 300+ students to one lecturer, who is talking at you off of a PowerPoint slide. There’s a girl sitting in front of you scrolling down her news feed on Facebook, liking her friends’ photos from the weekend. It’s hard to concentrate, because you didn’t have time to wait in the long queue at Vic Books for your morning coffee.

You did the readings for this class last night, and the lecturer isn’t saying anything new. You regret getting out of bed.

It’s hard to even think about the quality of your education when you’ve got a lot on your mind – will you be able to work enough shifts to cover this week’s rent?

Can you afford to get to university every day this week, when transport is getting harder and harder to afford?

It’s hard when you’re struggling as a student. Every student struggles

in different ways. You could be struggling to maintain the grade average you need to keep your scholarship that allows you to study at university in the first place (it’d be too expensive otherwise).

You could be struggling to keep up with your friends, because you’re taking five papers this trimester in hopes of fast-tracking your degree, and can’t help feeling isolated and lonely on campus. You could be struggling after suffering from a really traumatic event, and can’t figure out the overly complicated process to apply for an aegrotat (pass with special consideration).

You’ve received a letter from your Faculty Dean, saying your lecturer has found plagiarism in your last assignment, and you are facing serious consequences – but you’re sure you understand what plagiarism is, as your lecturer explained it in class, and that you didn’t do it.

These are all issues I’ve dealt with this year in my role on VUWSA. These are the real experiences of students who have decided to uptake a tertiary education here at Victoria. Admittedly, it’s a pretty bleak picture. I’m getting a lot out of my education here at Victoria, but I’ve managed to get amongst all that university life has to offer, and I’m pretty privileged in that regard. When students are stressed, time-poor and cash-poor, it’s hard to think of the bigger picture that is a quality education. I’ve got a lot of hope that we can turn that around. Students deserve a quality education here at Victoria.

Rāwinia Thompson | Academic Vice-President

Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association | M: 027 726 4202 | DDI: (04) 463 7406 | E: rawinia.thompson@vuw.ac.nz | avp@vuwsa.org.nz | W: www.vuwsa.org.nz

Columns

to the passion that is meant to drive us. It’s hard to remember to stay cute and shirty. But it’s okay; that’s why I’m here to guide you on: How to make the institution care about how fucking excellent you are

Shirt & Sweet with Eleanor Merton

Your weekly column on how to be annoyed but still cute

y this point in the year, B it’s hard to ignore the fact that university is an institution. There are hierarchies and forms and processes that are hard to ignore. There is money.

Capitalism. All around. And in the middle of all of this it can be hard to remember what we’re doing here. It’s hard to hold on

Here you are wandering through the endless halls and stairwells of a university that has four different campuses and more buildings than an arts major can count, tracing the footsteps of generations of other students.

And no one cares.

Now picture yourself strolling through these same halls. Every second person stares admiringly at you. Every fifth person stops to ask your opinion or advice.

Every 11th person drops to their knees, scattering flower petals at your feet as you pass them without blinking, utterly right, I want to discuss some of the weirdest games I’ve played in the last few weeks. When I wasn’t playing the Destiny beta, naturally.

Articulated Splines

by Carlo Salizzo

Nobody Suspects a Thing ne of the accusations that my inner voice has levelled at me this year is that my columns have been overwhelmingly dominated by PC gaming. Another has been that I don’t spend enough time talking about actual games, preferring to wax lyrical about whatever issue is hot on Polygon right now. So to prove the latter wrong, and the former utterly

O

The first is a browser game from Orteil, the creator of Cookie Clicker. It’s called Nested and it’s been around for a while, though I only discovered it recently after a write-up on one of the bigger gaming websites. Basically, it’s a text-based procedural universe generator, where you explore existence through the wonder of the nested folder system. And it’s addictive as hell, particularly once you start reading the innermost thoughts of your random ‘verse’s tiniest inhabitants. It can get a little overwhelming once you get drawn into its only-slightlygameish interface, and to be honest, you’ll probably walk away frustrated, wanting a little more. To quote a giant squid

majestic. The real question is how you get from the first reality to the second.

As with any hierarchical structure, it’s best to start things at the top and wait for them to trickle down. (Please note this model does not apply to the economy.) By this principle, your first course of action should be to plaster copies of your most successful selfie all over the inside of the Vice-Chancellor’s office. This will certainly gain his attention. From here, be sure to mail him personalised invitations to each and every one of your social engagements, from coffee meetings to your 21st.

Include in these invitations an outline of your most significant professional and academic achievements. Charm him with your skilled use of emoticons to communicate complex patterns of emotional response.

If your ambition is not

quite up to this level yet, you may wish to practice on tutors or lecturers to warm yourself up. However, remember to temper your high-functioning psychological manipulation with home-baked goods. If you do emotionally blackmail your tutors and lecturers, always also bake them muffins.

Also, it is vital that you don’t neglect library staff. The library is the lifeblood of our academia and as such, it should be clear just how much the library is your domain. If there’s a spot that you particularly like, move the books off the shelf nearby to store your personalised stationery. Mark out your territory with a decorative rug, perhaps some candles. If need be, claim a section of every level.

Also, cordon off a lift for your personal use.

You don’t need to get amongst the best, you ARE the best.

I found on the young sea of a telluric planet: “chug chug chug. okay too much party.”

about anything other than killing and conquest. Don’t be surprised if that changes dramatically very soon.

Following on from the theme of games that were released quite a while ago, Octodad: Dadliest Catch is something I have been meaning to play for a while but never quite managed to. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a game where you play as an octopus, pretending to be a human, hiding your true identity from your wife and kids. Just go with it. Having finally picked it up for a song in the Steam Summer Sale, I’m so glad I finally gave it a go. There’s something you can really appreciate about a game that is a long way from Call of Duty, and while it’s not that hard to explain why the game is so much fun (tentacles are hilariously difficult), it does draw into focus the fact that there aren’t that many games

The landscape of games is widening pretty quickly as production costs fall. Sony and Microsoft have been embracing indie developers, while Nintendo just fired their number-one indie liaison. I’m in no position to question multinational companies’ business decisions, but when you can sell quirky, interesting games to demographics outside the gamer stereotype for the price of EA DLC, why would you want to lose that income stream?

Also, Destiny was pretty sweet but I really don’t have the time to foster an MMO addiction anymore. I mean, I might even have a job by the time it comes to PC.

editor@salient.org.nz

37

Column

Hot pink – Sexuality Red – Life Orange – Healing Yellow – Sunlight Green – Nature Turquoise – Magic/Art Indigo – Harmony Violet – Spirit

Bent

by Jonny Abbott

ey all!

As you know, I’m the Communications Officer; this means I create the hella-rad posters for UniQ as well as other things like this column.

In the Creative issue of Salient, we were attacked by an “Angry Poof” about my font and colour choice! So this week, we’re going to explore the rainbow colour scheme that is ever so common in the queer environment!

First things first, I agree with that angry poof that pride is incredibly important; it holds the community together and shows that there is still need for change in the world. Pride, not even necessarily queer pride, is great if you have it, be it in yourself for succeeding in something great, or be it in your community because as a minority you’re accomplishing change and equality. March for those who can’t; make a noise, be heard.

Everyone knows the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet – but what not everyone knows is why. The first flag had hot pink and these colours. Created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker in San Francisco, the flag has since lost some of these colours due to cost or fabric shortness.

H

The original colours represented the following:

Okay okay, so this is a little lame, but it brought a community together that had been through abuse and violence by everyone, including by the government. This flag also gave a positive alternative to the pink triangle that was used to persecute homosexuals during the War, a symbol which was adapted into a gay pride symbol to show survival.

The current flag used, because commercially, it can be produced more cheaply, includes red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. This flag is generally used because of its history and the fact that the multiple colours represent the diversity within the LGBT* community!

Our history is nothing to be ashamed of; we have really come a long way with human rights, and if a little bit of rainbow has to follow the fonts to stand out, to make our mark, so what about ‘stereotypes’?

I’m sorry that the curly font upset you; I really enjoy “Wolf in the City” as a font and I hope you can get past your hatred of fonts and enjoy what pride is. If colours and fonts are making you feel ashamed or embarrassed to celebrate who you are, I think you need to take a look at yourself, who you are and how you have the freedom you have.

If you guys have issues about how UniQ is being run, come to our AGM (more info soon!) so we can get next year sorted out!

Much love (all the homo), Jonny Abbott uniqvictoria@gmail.com PS Hope you had fun at Ivy xx

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The University Issue

Arts

If you want to write about the arts, or think there is something we should review, email arts@salient.org.nz.

LOW LIFE

BY PARENTS

LEMONADE / HARD

BY SOPHIE

P

O

EP Review by Henry Cooke arents have the formula for a hardcore song down: immediacy, surprises, a sense that everyone in the band is disgusted by their instruments, and 120 seconds or fewer of runtime. Low Life, the new self-produced EP from the Auckland four-piece, is a lot tighter than their 2013 LP – there isn’t any sludge here, or breaks for clean guitar lines – just a lot of discordant rage. It’s great.

While some punk bands take the whole ‘distaste for professionalism’ thing into just not practising, everyone in Parents clearly knows what they are doing, especially the drummer. Their guitarist can blend in with the rest of the noise when necessary, then jump out at perfectly calibrated times, as he does with remarkable urgency in closer ‘Ravagers’. (Not that there is anything approaching melody here.) The vocals are handled perfectly, like pleas from someone dying of thirst, all gravelly and pained. The lyrics are predictably second- or firstperson, far from boilerplate but also far from the point. The weakest song is the only one that breaks the two-minute barrier, as this gives them too much time to indulge in excessive low-chord-HIGHNOTE-low-chord-HIGH-NOTE stuff, which is fine in moderation but sticks out from the other tightly wound fury here.

Funnily enough, it’s called ‘Let Down’.

Parents feel disciplined, even experienced, but this hasn’t let them lose any energy. Low Life clocks in at just over eight minutes, but it will stay with you for days. Find it on Bandcamp.

PEANUT PEANUT BUTTER WOLF WOLF BUTTER @ MEOW MEOW @

C

hris Manak, better known as Peanut Butter Wolf, is an LA-based hip-hop producer, DJ, and the founder of Stones Throw Records. A few Sundays back, he ripped up the night to an overflowing crowd at Meow.

If you’ve never heard of Stones Throw, J Dilla and Madlib were creating albums for them at the height of their game. The label has more recently birthed notable talent such as Mayer Hawthorne and Aloe Blacc. Behind it all is Peanut Butter Wolf.

The night started with two screenings of Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, a documentary on the history of the label and testament to everything Stones Throw Records

12” Review Review by

by Henry Henry Cooke Cooke 12” h my God.

Sophie is an anonymous ungoogleable producer from somewhere in the United Kingdom, with four officially released tracks to their name. These last two, ‘Lemonade’ and ‘Hard’, were just released together, and dominated my entire weekend. ‘Lemonade’ starts all trappy, stuttering female vocals over a synth that feels like something charging up, before suddenly taking a left turn into sugary K-Pop, then back to trap, then back to K-Pop. It all works far better than it has the right to, even if the lyrics feel like a nursery rhyme meeting a saccharine rom-com speech.

On the other side of the record, ‘Hard’ is more consistently trappy, but there is so much going on here that calling it anything other than ‘electronic’ is silly. There’s female vocals again, and drums that scatter over every region of your headphones, but even at its most chaotic, with walls of sound entering for milliseconds then leaving indefinitely, Sophie clearly has it all under control. Unforgettable, and as catchy as music gets.

is. The atmosphere was fucking dope, the venue packed.

Of course, the highlight of the night though was his actual set.

It didn’t matter which decade of music you loved, Wolf had it covered.

Spinning ‘90s

hip-hop classics to begin with but progressing through The Jackson 5, Prince and James Brown, almost everyone had some kind of tribute. I realised I’d been dancing to Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ mixed into at least three other songs for the past ten minutes and had loved every second.

Quite the Sunday night.

Gig Review by Tom Shore

editor@salient.org.nz

39

The The Film Film Festival Festival

by Charlotte Doyle

A social cushioning. For its

film festival provides lush

duration, inquiring whether your companion has been to anything on the programme gets the conversation off to an ideal start. A mutual response usefully indicates compatibility.

A less than desirable response indicates lack of need for further pursuit. It provides the prime opportunity to advance an awkward acquaintanceship into a flourishing friendship. Then, if you exchange enthusiastic responses to a Danish thriller about a girl who turns into a werewolf over a drink afterwards… match made in heaven. The most beautiful thing about this film festival is this exact provocation of discussion.

Whether that be in what your ‘type’ of movies are, the fact your lecture timetable prevented attendance to the last session of Boyhood, or getting heated about the irony of an intellectual declaration of what is ‘truth’ in a documentary (which an academic should honestly be able to realise is an entirely subjective notion in itself). It’s the infiltration of this film-related personal dialogue, the full cinemas with full shared reactions and shared contemplation that indicates the brilliant success of this year’s NZIFF. Upon experiencing the film

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The University Issue

festival in Wellington for the first time, there came the unexpected realisation of a need to actually book tickets in advance. It is perhaps this transient element of competition that makes a festival film so much more of an event than a movie normally is. With only a few sessions of each film, spread throughout different locations and the risk of it never seeing the light of a cinema again, it becomes survival of the culturally fittest. Generally, when experiencing your generic blockbuster in a cinema, you don’t have to share an armrest, and putting your feet on the seat in front won’t generate any social shunning. Dior and I on a Saturday afternoon, by contrast, filled the sweeping, grand Embassy cinema entirely.

Numerous films were sold out before I even had the chance to work out availability, which was enormously helped by the ability to book online and the overall professional organisation of the festival in general.

With the experience of each film you belong to a different demographic. Emerge with a new-found knowledge about who you either are or aren’t. For example, in Dior and I, you either fall in love with the gorgeous right-hand man for Raf Simons, are disgusted by the excessive decadence of a room full of

“It is perhaps this transient element of competition that makes a festival film so much more of an event than a movie normally is. With only a few sessions of each film, spread throughout different locations and the risk of it never seeing the light of a cinema again, it becomes survival of the culturally fittest.” orchids, or feel a somewhat guilty but more wistful desperation to just wear ball dresses all day. The festival took over the city not only geographically but in providing something for everyone. The higher the number of witnessed films, the higher the dedication, the higher the social standing.

Oh, the cultural capital. The fun and the dialogue is always over too soon.

New Zealand’s Best 2014 winners announced…

The third annual NZIFF New Zealand’s Best Short Film competition was dominated

by Ross & Beth winning the Madman Entertainment Jury Prize for the Best New Zealand Short Film, the inaugural Allen Guilford Cinematography Award and the 2014 Audience Award. This notable short film

by Hamish Bennett is a character study of ageing rural New Zealand, widely admired for its crafting and engaging poignancy.

The jury consisted of Eleanor

Catton, Rolf de Heer (a visiting filmmaker), and Michael Eldred, who represented Madman Entertainment. Director of short film Eleven, Abigail Greenwood was selected for the Friends of the Civic Short Film Award for distinctive creative achievement.

In other film news

There was a girl at high school who loved Daniel Radcliffe so fervently that on his birthday, she would carry around a paper bag of lollies with a picture of his dreamy face splayed on the front. We had to sing him ‘Happy Birthday’ in history.

Turns out she is surprisingly not alone. Last week, the premiere of his new indie rom-com in Mexico City had to be cancelled after unexpected numbers of enthusiastic, love-declaring fans turned up to breathe in some of the air he may have walked through.

That is all.

Feature

Autobiography of a Marguerite

Aardvarks After After Dark Dark Aardvarks

Reviewed by Nina Powles

Reviewed by Emily Alpers

Edited by

by Siobhan Siobhan Harvey, Harvey, James James Edited Norcliffe and and Harry Harry Ricketts Ricketts Norcliffe

O

n a windy Thursday night in Wellington, Jenny Bornholdt read to a crowd gathered around her at Vic Books: “somewhere beyond the manuka/ the creek makes a low whicker/ as though the soul of the valley was a horse.”

A murmur, a few exhales of breath. A ripple went around the room.

Some, like me, already awed to be standing in the same room as the great Jenny Bornholdt – then floored by this terrific poem by Cliff Fell.

Hinemoana Baker, Ashleigh Young, James Brown, Gregory O’Brien and Harry Ricketts also joined in reading their work at the launch. They are among 150 poets featured in Essential New Zealand Poems.

In the introduction, the editors confront a big question: what is an ‘essential New Zealand poem’? Firstly, they point out the sheer diversity of voices. This in itself is an ‘essentially New Zealand’ trait. Then there are more particular commonalities: distinctive New Zealand geography, and an engagement with our society or culture. But looking for ‘essentialness’ anywhere is problematic. They suggest a better title might have been Some Rather Good New Zealand Poems the Three of Us Rather Like. Either way, they ultimately hoped to offer “a memorable sounding of the depth, diversity and vitality” of New Zealand poetry today.

There are poems that could only have been written here, and poems that could have been written anywhere. “someone’s been sweeping the sky/ clean as linoleum after an accident” writes Amy Brown, while Glenn Colquhoun’s poem takes place “at the checkout/ counter of Whitcoulls bookstore in Hamilton/ on a faintly blue September Tuesday.”

At the launch, Harry Ricketts mentioned the difficulty and brilliance of allowing each poet only one poem, and choosing to arrange them alphabetically. Aside from the poems themselves, this is partly what makes Essential New Zealand Poems succeed.

The subtitle Facing the Empty Page comes from a poem by Elizabeth Nannestad. Harry Ricketts said he might have liked this to have been the title of the whole book. It ends with a fitting thought: “The empty page, it’s hell to live with. And to live without.” Anthologising something as limitless and diverse as contemporary New Zealand poetry can seem like an impossible task, but a necessary and rewarding one. Essential New Zealand Poems is a rich volume with many layers, voices, and worlds inside it. Anyone interested in New Zealand poetry, newcomer or expert, will find something new to love.

by Michael Michael Gould Gould by

T

he world of self-published e-books is a frightening place. Even worse is the ‘humour’ category, where there are such titles as What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Accidentally Flirting with the CEO. (Incidentally, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is by distinguished author Tucker Max, whose bio reveals: “He currently lives in Chicago, and when he isn’t drinking or fornicating, he writes for his website tuckermax.com”.)

This is the special circle of internet hell where you’ll find a book called Aardvarks After Dark by Michael Gould. I use the word ‘book’ liberally. It’s a 140-page-long list of ‘imaginary book titles’, drawing on some kind of wordplay. Except wordplay is usually witty and clever and pun-tastic. Aardvarks After Dark is none of these things.

Self-publishing is cool when it lets young poets and writers get their work out there. There are tonnes of poets creating handbound editions of their poetry and selling them on Etsy. Tumblrfamous poets Shinji Moon and Clementine von Radics recently self-published limited-edition poetry collections in the US. These are two genuinely good young writers for whom self-publishing has been a wonderful thing.

Online publishing in a kind of e-book format is increasingly becoming the preferred form for small literary journals in New Zealand and elsewhere, and for long-form science journalism. Selfpublishing online lets people do whatever the hell they want, which is great, but also quite terrible.

“This book is for lovers of wordplay, who enjoy odd juxtapositions and satire, who aren’t bothered by the politically incorrect and the risqué,” Gould writes in the foreword to Aardvarks After Dark.

Straight away, I don’t want to read any further.

The juxtapositions are there, but his definition of satire is rather loose. And hardly any of his ‘wordplays’ are really “politically incorrect” as he would have it. Instead, they have the feel of someone desperately trying to be politically incorrect but failing, which is even sadder. (“Babes of Arabia”, “Gangster Gang Bangs”, “Rectal Sects”). I don’t know what’s going on here. It just keeps going and going. This book is a perfect gift for your uncle who likes pervy jokes, Nigel Latta documentaries, and thinks Paul Henry “just says what everyone else is thinking.”

editor@salient.org.nz

41

‘A Universal Sign of Angst and Dread’ Angela Tiatia Tiatia and and Shahriar Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, Asdollah-Zadeh, Enjoy, Enjoy, until until 30 30 Aug Aug Angela Review by

by Simon Simon Gennard Gennard Review

Teconomy tanks. Investors his is what happens. The

pull money from risky opportunities. Governments cut and cut some more. The art market, meanwhile, does just fine. Investors want something safe, something tangible, and so they invest in objects. Those without the means to enter the art market, those most affected by massive cuts, can’t do much.

May 1st, 2012. Edvard Munch’s The Scream is sold at Sotheby’s for $119.9 million, becoming the most expensive painting ever to be sold at auction. Months later, across Europe, tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest massive cuts to public services. These two events collide in Angela Tiatia’s Cream, currently on show at Enjoy.

Pixelated images of police brutality are interspersed with images of the polite, suited battleground of an auction house.

Tiatia’s critique, at first, seems obvious. So used are we to bemoaning the excesses of the rich that complaints become noise. This is what happens. The people get angrier. The rich get richer.

Such a reductionist reading is denied by the eight television screens that make up Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh’s 2012 work Michael Jackson Motorcade piled in the opposite corner of the gallery.

June 26th, 2009, sometime after 9.26 am. I’m sitting in Maths class, a tweet is sent to

42

The University Issue

my phone informing me of Michael Jackson’s death. I tell the friend sitting next to me. He doesn’t believe me. He says if it were true, the major news outlets would be reporting it.

Footage of Jackson’s funeral motorcade occupies five of the screens. Static plays on another.

The others are blank. Suggesting something is not being revealed.

The shots are shaky and awkward; at times the reflection of a camera is visible, behind which stands an ominous figure.

There is something peaceful about the languorous unfolding of black cars in even motion, filmed from above.

Meanwhile, in Iran, following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, protests were taking place in major cities around the country. These were met with state violence. Protesters were arrested, beaten, killed. Official news channels were blacked out.

Protest organisers used Twitter to engage with masses of people.

Western media outlets dubbed the protest the ‘Persian Awakening’. Like the Arab Spring, or the less popular Twitter Revolution, these terms act ahistorically. Emphasis is placed on the role of technology, rather than on dissent. They displace the ownership of these moments.

The role of social media is significant, obviously, as a means of bypassing outlets already co-opted by the state. But there is something evaluative about these terms, an implication that

these far-off places were shaken from their slumber not simply by technological advance, but by a specifically American brand of innovation.

Like Tiatia’s work, AsdollahZadeh offers a simplistic reading at first, a work concerned with celebrity obsession. But this falls apart under scrutiny.

Both of these works can be considered as attempts to navigate how we process information now. There’s something of Robert Heinecken’s layering of news footage, the bringing together of disparate

elements to disorientate. Where Heinecken used the televising of war as a point of departure, both Tiatia and Asdollah-Zadeh are concerned with newer forms of proliferation.

This is how it happens.

Everything is equally as important as everything else, and everything happens all the time. We filter, as a means of comprehending, as a means of accessing only the most relevant information. Images of the world, like Asdollah-Zadeh’s screens, are left lacking.

OBJECT REPORT (spotlight on the V.U.W. Collection) ECHO LOGO // Philip Dadson

Oa 30-foot glacier streaked with melting mud, a team of eight

n a day in 2003, in the pale light shortly after midnight, beneath

scientists perform a slow ritual. They pace beneath the great ice-shelf, emitting guttural wails and high-pitched barks. Their screams are accompanied by the shifting of rocks and flint underfoot. Their pace is considered and careful, representative of a mutual understanding between participant and artist. Dadson, in representing the remote, and the inhospitable, embarks on a project of altering the landscape as little as possible; of rendering the unrenderable for means of conservation.

Dadson’s practice, which began in the late 1960s, has involved an examination of environment through small gestures, precisely timed rituals documented on camera and microphone. In his Polar Projects series, Antarctica is rendered not as an empty site of heroic expedition, but the site of human intervention, both monumental in scale, and indelibly precarious.

Echo Logo screened throughout New Zealand as part of Dadson’s Polar Projects exhibition, and was nominated for the 2006 Walter’s Prize. It can be viewed online on Dadson’s Vimeo profile.

In Review: The Fall Reviewed by

by Michael Michael Graham Graham Reviewed

Tof recent television which

he Fall is another example

ostensibly serves itself up as a familiar dish, and then gives you something else. In previous drafts, that metaphor had become quite engorged, but for now we’ll let that sit.

This came out last year: it’s on Netflix and HBO Europe and stuff, but I don’t know that it’s made it to NZ, so you guys might not have seen it yet.

And so we have Gillian Anderson playing Detective Stella Gibson.

Also, Jamie Dornan – that dude from Fifty Shades of Grey (:/) – who plays the serial killer.

That’s not a spoiler; there’s no pretence as to who the killer is: we’re introduced to him right from the start. And actually, that’s an example of how this show subverts certain genre conventions.

Interestingly, and really ironically the more I think about it, he’s the one getting nominated for all the acting awards (we’re mostly talking about BAFTAs here), whereas Anderson is the actual star of the show. I don’t even really want to touch her acting and character because I need some time before I can be properly critical and objective on that. Not that the point is to be objective. Anyway.

The reason I say it’s ironic that Dornan would be the person to be recognised for his acting is twofold. Firstly, Anderson is

the primary protagonist. She’s therefore the natural choice for some Best Actress things…

Secondly, the show is an explicit critique of male hegemony, focussing on male hegemony from the perspective of power and how that plays into sexuality.

So they give Dornan the nominations…

I dunno. It’s possible, as always, that I’m just being a little unfair and need to relax a little. It’s also possible that I’ve made an error in addressing acting nominations for awards at all, given that I literally know nothing about how these awards processes operate.

But I feel as if this is a pretty important television show, and if judges (I assume many of the judges are going to be men) of these award processes are going to ignore the thematic foundation upon which The Fall is built, then either they’re not really watching it properly, or it’s not as effective as I think it is. Or Dornan just does a good job of his character.

In fact, there are many things to think about on that score.

Anyway, that’s one thing.

The other thing I wanted to briefly discuss was the way in which the audience is positioned.

It seems to me a reasonably uncontroversial generalisation to say that the audiences of these kind of serial-killer dramas are usually male. Where the killings are misogynist. More male than female in any case. I don’t really

want to speculate on why that is (though I have some theories) because it’s largely irrelevant to my argument. Yes, argument.

And even if you do disagree with that assumption, I don’t really care. So we assume that. And then there’s this show, which takes that male audience and explicitly and at times viscerally, uncomfortably, critiques aspects of male identity and, importantly, sexuality.

There’s a distinct focus on the connection between violence and sexuality, which I think is something that might resonate with an audience here (regardless of gender). Obviously, we understand that the killer’s attitudes are very fucked-up – but more than that, we see that attitudes of the other male police officers are as well, much of the time. It’s perhaps an easy shortcut to use the police as a mechanism to expose the patriarchy, but then again, it might also be a pretty effective one.

In any case (that’s close to being a pun), it’s interesting (and positive) that a male audience would be targeted with this kind of content.

On patriarchy, there is also considerable, though more subtle, attention paid to notions of victim-blaming and the like. This might not be an exactly relevant example, but Gibson’s actions are at one point criticised by her boss (male), who says something along

the lines of “Don’t you know the effect you have on men?” Lots of the male cops are part of the boys-will-be-boys club, I guess.

There might be a likeable male character in the show. Which is just so cool given that it’s a male audience. You know?

Strangely, I’m at the end already and haven’t really said anything at all. Which is not so surprising but is still kind of annoying.

Some quick words on televisual things: it’s a slow-paced drama, not a procedural but a drama.

Five episodes. There’s a lot going on with water imagery and femininity, which is a thesis I’ve had in my back pocket for a number of years now. Lots of creepy doorway shots. In fact, the cinematography is largely outstanding, as is the dialogue, which is pretty subtle. And there are some intense parallel-actions sequences between the killer when he kills and Gibson, which also get the brain firing away.

Should also say, there is some violence but it’s not graphic, and often the filmic focus is on the effect and cause rather than the act. Actually, I might need to think about that more…

Another thing: many of the episodes are available on YouTube in Spanish. If you speak some Spanish.

Watch this. Watch it and then we can chat about it. My name’s at the top.

editor@salient.org.nz

43

What’s On

What’s On On What’s Film:

Releases – 14 August The Expendables 3 The Hundred-Foot Journey Postman Pat: The Movie Wellington Film Society – returns on 18 August with The Crucified Lovers (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan 1954) The Film Archive Pull Down the Shades: Why Chris Knox is ****ing Brilliant!, Wednesday 13 August 7 pm, 90 min, $8.

12.15 pm, 67 min, $8 including a cup of soup.

Visual Arts:

Cerith Wyn Evans Welsh London-based conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans is engaged by questions of language, perception, and transmission; his works mix the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic.

City Gallery, 8 August – 27 October Julian Schnabel: The Empire Strikes Back Peter McLeavey Pop-Up, cnr Webb St and Torrens Tce, until 16 August.

Film for Change, Thursday 14 August – short films celebrating and promoting charity work in New Zealand.

6 pm, 120 min, Free admission.

LUX Light Festival Wellington Waterfront, 22 August – 31 August

Huloo: Soup & A Seat, Friday 15 August – documentary on New Zealand’s t’ai chi master, Loo-Chi Hu.

The Polly Johnson Set Fri 15 August, 8 pm Fringe Bar, $12 (Under the Radar)

Plagiarism Plagiarism and Hello Hello and Essay Essay Your writing, whether in the form of an essay, term paper, or personal statement, is essential to your academic success. However, there is one pressing issue that can have disastrous consequences for students around the world: plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the intentional or accidental presentation of another’s work as your own.

You probably know that you are required to cite an author’s exact words and reference the source at the end of your essay. Easy enough, right?

It may not be so straightforward.

Turnitin cites 10 different types of plagiarism from the results of a survey, including the citation of illegitimate sources and the combination of material 44

The University Issue

Music:

Yumi Zouma !!!!!!

Sat 16 August, 9 pm Meow, $15 (Under the Radar) Life Is Rich With Pikachunes, Mongo Skato, and more Sat 16 August, 8 pm Valhalla, $10 Books:

IIML Presents Writers on Mondays: New Zealand at War Historians Kirstie Ross and Kate Hunter discuss new book, Holding on to Home Mon 11 August, 12.15 pm, Te Marae, Te Papa. Free entry.

Literary Notes lecture series on Katherine Mansfield Anna Smaill on ‘Time Signatures: Experiences of Melody, Narrative and Apocalypse’ Thu 14 August, 6 pm, Old St. Paul’s in Thorndon. Gold coin.

Theatre:

Breakdown 7 pm at BATS Theatre 12–16 August Shadows of Algora 8.30 pm at BATS Theatre 12–16 August Constellations 7.30 pm at Circa Theatre 26 July – 23 August A View from the Bridge 19 July − 23 August at Circa Theatre Tuesday and Wednesday 6.30 pm Thursday–Saturday 8 pm Sunday 4 pm Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 6–16 August at Gryphon Theatre Wednesday 6 – Saturday 9 August 2014 at 7.30 pm Sunday 10 August at 3 pm Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 August at 6.30 pm Thursday 14 – Saturday 16 August at 7.30 pm Open Home 9, 10, 16, 17 August at 7 pm Newtown Community Centre

Man on the Verge of a Nervous

from various works. Plagiarism violations can also occur when students are helped by friends, parents or tutors who rewrite passages, write new content, add concepts or research, or alter the author’s message.

Ultimately, the writing, ideas and conceptual thinking of an academic work must belong to you. It is easier now than ever before to copy-and-paste ideas from the internet or purchase a paper from an ‘essay mill’. Passing others’ work off as original ideas has become a common practice on university campuses.

This is particularly troublesome because it contributes to the confusion of what constitutes plagiarism and its consequences.

According to the University’s academic integrity policy, if you are found guilty of plagiarism, you may fail your course or be suspended! Think it’s a good idea to get your friend to rewrite your paper? Think again.

What steps can you take to both avoid plagiarism and write an excellent essay?

website that has emerged as a leading resource for effective and ethical writing support.

Avoid Plagiarism: The

Hello Essay connects students

Student Learning Support Service (SLSS) has excellent resources to help you hone skills such as paraphrasing, referencing, and citing sources.

Write an Excellent Essay:

The SLSS also offers one-on-one appointments to discuss your writing assignment. Furthermore, if you need a pair of objective eyes to review and edit your essay, check out Hello Essay. Hello Essay is an online essay-editing

with experts – Ivy League academics and former admissions officers – who provide thorough edits, detailed suggestions, and comprehensive critiques to help students improve their writing.

Most importantly, Hello Essay is transparent about the practices its editors follow, and the company’s strict standards comply with academic-integrity policies.

Best of luck with your essaywriting this year. Stay safe!

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ACROSS 1.Children’s paper 5.Motorized cycle 8.Mimic 9.Nocturnal mammal 10.Spoil 11.Bird of prey’s claw 12.Terrible 14.Oarsman 16.Soak up 18.Deceiver 21.A native of Cuba 23.An article of furniture 26.A synthetic material 28.Large North American deer 29.A set of parts to be assembled 30.Zero 31.Infested with Lice 32.To broadcast againare nervous

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4. A deep orange vegetable 5. A measuring instrument 6. A friend 7. A giver 13. A spider’s trap 15. Secretion of the ear 17. Beneath 19. Snakelike fish 20. Celestial beings 21. Man made waterway 22. A children’s nurse 23. One who accepts an offer 24. bread maker 25. Consumed food 27.Currency of Romania

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notices THE ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET, BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW THEM! Jim Murphy, who has just completed his PHD thesis on mechatronic sound sculpture at Victoria University, has created a kinetic sculpture for ‘Satellites’, one of the ballets (pictured) in the RNZB’s contemporary mixed bill Allegro: Five Short Ballets which runs in Wellington, 15–17 August, St James Theatre.

Described by The NZ Herald as “stylish, sexy and awe-inspiring”.

Don’t miss it! 10 per cent student discount on all tickets, and Student Rush seats are available on the day of the performance for $20 (good seats available at Sat/ Sun matinees at 1.30 pm). www. rnzb.org.nz DCM BOOKFAIR The Bookfair is DCM’s largest fundraiser of the year, and every cent raised goes toward our work to end homelessness in Wellington. It is held every year at the TSB Bank Arena, where booklovers will find over 90,000 books, along with CDs, DVDs, puzzles and vinyl. This year, the Bookfair will be held on Saturday 16 August (9 am – 5 pm) and Sunday 17 August (10 am – 4 pm).

VUCF AGM Victoria University Christian Fellowship is having its AGM on Thursday 14 August, at 6 pm at 2 Kelburn Parade. Everyone welcome.

VIC OE – VIC STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMME Why not study overseas as part of your degree?! Study in English,

earn Vic credit, get StudyLink and grants, explore the world! Weekly seminars on Wednesdays, Level 2, Easterfield Building, 12.50 pm. Deadline for Tri 2, 2015 exchanges is 1 December. Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange. Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building.

Drop-in hours: Mon–Wed 1–3 pm, Thurs & Fri 10–12 pm.

Missed the deadline for exchanges in Tri 1, 2015? Contact Vic OE as you may be able to submit a late application.

PIPITEA TOASTMASTERS Pipitea students – communicate with confidence! Toastmasters helps you improve your communication and leadership skills in a supportive learnby-doing environment. Now, Toastmasters is at Pipitea Campus for the first time. Develop your skills along with fellow Pipitea students – increase your selfconfidence, become a better speaker, learn to run effective meetings, and add that spark to your CV. Find out more at our regular meetings every Tuesday, RWW 310, 5.45 to 7 pm. All welcome.

CAREERS AND JOBS Applications closing soon: Organisations: Closing Date Unilever Australia & New Zealand: 12 Aug Palantir Technologies: 13 Aug Wairoa District Council: 14 Aug New Zealand Superannuation Fund: 15 Aug Auckland Council: 17 Aug Fonterra: 17 Aug Methanex New Zealand: 17 Aug Aviat Networks: 18 Aug Simpson Grierson: 18 Aug ANZ: 22 Aug Powerco: 22 Aug ASB: 25 Aug Upcoming Free Careers Events for

all students: Clemenger Presentation – 11 Aug IAG IT Graduate Programme Presentation – 13 Aug Careers in Focus Seminar (Humanities & Social Sciences) – 14 Aug EY Presentation – 19 Aug Careers in Focus Seminar (Tourism) – 14 Aug Victoria Business School: Executive Careers Expo – 11 Sept 2015 JET Programme – 19 Sept Check details/book on CareerHub: www.victoria.ac.nz/ careerhub VIC IDS PRESENTS: THE GREAT AID DEBATE! Monday 11 August, (TODAY!) 5.15 pm, Cotton Building Room 304, Kelburn The election is fast approaching, which means the VicIDS Aid Debate is back! Join us and hear your political leaders discuss, debate, decry and defend, on the topic of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) efforts through the Aid Programme. You’ll also get the chance to put your burning development-related questions to the speakers.

We are joined by: Barry Coates, Greens Maryan Street, Labour

Paul Foster-Bell, National And Professor John Overton as the Chair This is sure to be a lively debate; don’t miss out! As usual, we will have Fair Trade tea and coffee on offer.

RED CROSS @ VIC PRESENTS: COMMUNICATING IN DISASTERS International Aid Work in the Aftermath of Cyclones and Earthquakes Tuesday 12 August, 5–6 pm, Student Union Building Room 218, Kelburn Campus Have you ever wondered what it is like working as an international aid worker? What sort of challenges would you face and how would you respond? Corinne Ambler, former One News reporter, has been on several aid missions with New Zealand Red Cross. She has recently returned from the Solomon Islands and will share her experiences working in communications in the aftermath of tropical cyclones Ian and Ita and the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. How do individuals and organisations communicate in times of disaster?

Come along and join us at 5 pm Tuesday for an enlivening discussion and chance for Q&A.

giveaway COMEDY TICKETS PlayShop LIVE is Wellingtons late-night improv comedy show. Every Friday, 10 pm at Paramount Cinemas, it brings the laughs with a troupe of trained performers transforming any suggestion to life on stage. If you like Whose Line is it Anyway? you’ll love this show. A rotating cast of 39 members means every week is different.

Send us your favourite joke to win a double pass valued at $26 to next week’s show!

If you want a notice in Salient, email us at editor@salient.org.nz. Notices must be sent to us by Wednesday 5 pm for the following week’s issue, and must be fewer than 100 words in length.

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contributors editors: Duncan McLachlan & Cameron Price d e s i g n e r : I m o g e n Te m m news editor: Sophie Boot c r e at i v e e d i t o r : C h l o e Dav i e s c h i e f s u b - e d i t o r : N i c k Fa r g h e r distributor: Joe Morris f e at u r e w r i t e r : P h i l i p M c S w e e n e y ( c h i e f ) , P e n n y G a u lt , Alex Hollis w e b e d i t o r : D e x t e r E d wa r d s n e w s i n t e r n s : S i m o n D e n n i s , S t e p h Tr e n g r o v e arts editors: Nina Powles (Books), Charlotte Doyle (Film), H e n r y C o o k e ( M u s i c ) , D a v i d W i l l i a m s ( Th e a t r e ) , S i m o n G e n n a r d ( V i s u a l A r t s ) , M i c h a e l G r a h a m ( Te l e v i s i o n ) C o lu m n I l lu s t r at i o n s : P h o e b e M o r r i s general contributors: Jo n n y A b b ot t, E m i ly A l pe r s , S o n ya C l a r k , S i m o n D e n n i s , M a d e l e i n e F o r e m a n , G r a n t G u i l f o r d , Z a c k H o m e r, E v e K e n n e d y, M o l ly M c C a rt h y, Jo rd a n M c C lu s k ey, E l e a n o r M e rto n , G u s M i tc h e l l , S a l ly O w e n , A l i c e P e ac o c k , O l l i e R i tc h i e , S o f i a R o b e r t s , Z o e R u s s e l l , C a r l o S a l i z z o , To m S h o r e , J a n n e S o n g , R Ä w i n i a Th o m p s o n , W i l b u r To w n s e n d , J u l i a We l l s , J a m i e Y e a t e s

contributor of the week W i l b u r To w n s e n d Advertising Manager Tim Wilson sales@vuwsa.org.nz (04) 463 6982

Funded by Victoria University Wellington students, through

of the

student services levy

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The University Issue