Posts by George Darroch
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I'm confused. Is it okay to torture students associations, or not?
Keith?
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Democracies don’t get to torture. And they don’t get to convict people of crimes without fair trials. And they don’t get to unreasonably limit freedom of expression or freedom of religion or freedom of association.
Hyperbole much? An association with an opt-out clause doesn't really fit what you've described.
And, in any case rights always conflict. Always. There are no such things as fundamental rights, rather ones with stronger claims on individuals and society. So there's a balance of rights, and we accommodate some freedoms against others, and some against interests. The right to meaningful democratic participation in the institutions that govern you, and the institutions that you participate in is one such right, a right that is discarded or ignored by VSM proponents.
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I wouldn't want everyone doing it, though. It could get messy and confusing.
Quite. I like real names. Though I drop my surname most places on the web, and pseudonym entirely in a few - different spaces, different things, different Google results.
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So it turns it okay do it with two handles at the same time. As long as everyone involved meaningfully consents.
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I don't get how Graeme gets from Russell's comment to his own. I don't. There was and is nothing inevitable about voluntarism.
bFM? It doesn't take kindly to being told what to do by its sole shareholder. Perhaps it's stronger because of it - I wouldn't know, I kept well away from those turf wars. It worked, perhaps it could have worked better, but it was pretty much an oddity; something that was a self-funding standalone entity. Graeme piles on associations, but most of their functions run well, and go on working no matter who is in charge from year to year.
As for bad presidents and executives; there's a fairly tight reign over most of these, because of incidents in the last two decades. The institutional structures are pretty strong. Which is why you have people being detected for fraud and prosecuted, and Mr Penis paying back his holiday. But that doesn't get you good leadership. What gets you good leadership is having the best people there, and the best people only step up if there's sufficient prestige associated, and that comes from having a large engaged membership of the student body, and associations with untarnished images. Otherwise, you only get opportunists who see a quick CV boost, and ideological dregs.
I (and I presume Keith) don't know what do about those problems, but think that this law is a large ideological reaction to them. Graeme suggests that the solution to those problems is to abolish them, and let them fend for membership, and others suggest that these problems are not significant in context.
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So, why can’t universities fund the student association out of fees? Individual students can then choose to be take up free membership or not?
Because then there's no representative body.
Now, the argument is that they're currently not very representative. But the solution to a body which is not sufficiently representative is to make it more so. Not destroy it completely. Unless you believe that a representative body should not exist. Which is the position of ACT, and apparently of Graeme Edgeler, who just made them equivalent in standing to a private anarchist club.
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I like how you distinguished music from opera :)
I also distinguished sex from chocolate.
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Sex, penis-holding, personal experience, evidence, porn, chocolate, music, opera.
I love this thread.
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If you don't vote, you can't complain.
More seriously, there is an issue here. And it is not a matter of life and death, on the one side, but nor is it a matter of liberty over oppression on the other. It's something minor, in a small institution that is rather marginal to the running of this country.
Most students don’t know they’ve joined.
Yes, that is a problem. As I said upthread, if I hadn't actually been on the AUSA, I don't think I would know that such an institution existed, so spare is its presence at my satellite campus. -
Now how would you feel about being compelled to join that association and fund the political activities of all those young ACT and National student politicians? I’m guessing you’d feel pretty damn angry.
I don’t think I would. They’re democracies. Nobody is being ‘compelled’ to take those positions – unless you believe that collective organisations should not exist. The mere fact that an organisation composed of its members collectively decides on a position does not make the organisation illegitimate. (Certainly not when the organisation has a range of very useful functions – as even the least well managed do, by way of institutional continuity).
It’s an issue I’m familiar with in in other contexts. I have refused to join any worker’s union affiliated with Labour (and the ALP), in which I could not take a vote on the position. I don’t want to be forced to support Labour. I’ve been bereft of representation.
However, there has been a breakdown in participation. Rather than take less drastic steps to address this, the Government in its ideological wisdom has taken the sledgehammer to the nut.
ETA: my position on the Labour Party is because I think the role of a union is first to represent workers. If those workers believe that Labour best represents their interests, and an association is productive, then good. However, I think there are other parties that better represent workers, and hundreds of thousands would be better sent their way. It's a decision I think that members should be able to take, not high officials with cozy institutional relationships. (Which would be like having VUWSA affiliated to the ACT Party, without elections).