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Staff unions were this week notified of the proposal, as required under the Massey University Collective Employment Agreement. The 201 staff members whose roles are affected by the proposal – either because their roles are to be disestablished or reporting lines changed – received letters today outlining the proposed changes.

All other staff will be notified of the full proposal and provided with access to it electronically. Staff will be able to ask questions of their managers and meetings with members of the senior leadership team are being arranged at which the reasons for the proposed changes will be discussed.

Staff members and their representatives have until July 30 to provide feedback for consideration before a preliminary decision is made in the week beginning August 2. Feedback on the preliminary decision will then be invited and must be received by August 18 for consideration before a final decision is made and communicated to staff.

"Becoming a Class Rep was one of the most rewarding things I think I did," said 2nd-year BSW student Mavis Stuart, "So often you don't realise you can help improve things for everybody by just speaking up when it's appropriate or knowing where to seek out people to support you when you don't. The training provided by the students' association was excellent and it turned out to be a small but important contribution I got to make and a nice little note on my CV."

If you are interested in becoming a Class Rep - click 'Class Reps' at the top of the site and enrol today - its quick, easy and painless.

For more information about becoming a Rep - contact the ASA Advocacy Coordinator, Penny Lyall: advoacy@asa.ac.nz; 443 9781.

Here at ASA we have been busy beavers getting our websites all ready for the start of the semester.
Check out the links to Satellite, Clubs and Class Reps and we think you'll be impressed.
We now have online sign-up for Class Reps and Rideline, places for you to read and place ads for Flatmates, Textbooks and Classifieds.
There is now the facility to follow us by linking to our RSS feed, become a friend on Facebook or Twitter.
So have a look around, we hope you'll like what we've done with the place.

'Almost all new students won't know they have until the 31 March if they want to put a submission to the Education and Science Select Committee in support of preventing this amendment becoming reality,' says ASA President Rawa Karetai adding 'and since this time there will be no referendum to determine actual support for what Sir Roger Douglas is proposing, the decision is effectively going to be taken out of student hands. That just doesn't seem right when the reason ACT is proposing the legislative change is to place the decision to support their association by funding it in student hands.'

The website will provide supporters with an avenue to express their opinions, resources to educate them as to the benefits of membership and explode the myths and confusion being promoted by ACT.

'Our fear is that the ACT Party will run a campaign dredging up examples of students' association mismanagement, which is frankly laughable and hypocritical when the ACT Party in its first year of govenment has its leader swanning around the globe with his girlfriend at the taxpayer's expense and he has to be confronted over the morality of it before he takes some public accountability. At the same time Sir Roger Douglas is using taxpayer money to fund the printing of his financial memoirs and the author of the Bill, Heather Roy, when she isn't trying to get Rodney's job is charging people to attend public meetings to raise money for their party when they are acting in the capacity of government ministers. If it isn't illegal it would appear ACT is happy to rort the public till the cows come home. We hope National won't let a party with 2% support detrimentally affect hundreds of thousands of students, but the reality is that the decision will be made on party lines by the over 40s (in Roger Douglas case over 60s). We just hope we can reassure the voting MPs of the sense of maintaining the status quo.'

15% of those with student loans owe 20% of the $11 Billion debt (and growing) which ironically sits on the Government books as an asset. The Minister however does not believe the new measure will be entirely successful as there is limited information about the final destinations of many people making the job of chasing them down that much tougher. The reality is that the Government will continue to write down the asset and write the defaulters' debts off the books as many will never return.

AUT's Vice-Chancellor, Derek McCormack said that moving to a funding model of this type should be approached 'very carefully' as it risked losing focus on New Zealander's 'liberal approach' to tertiary education and risked devaluing non-market driven courses that 'added value in other ways'. Steven Joyce responded to criticism suggesting that the focus 'stretched beyond University degrees to all Tertiary Education providers including wananga and polytechnics' whose training courses lend themselves more easily towards career paths. The comments come on the back of the Minister's calls to review and reduce tertiary education courses by up to 15% as well as a desire to streamline courses into careers.

Current President Rawa Karetai will be Master of Ceremonies as each of the 19 candidates presents their case for why students should vote for them.
"With major education issues surrounding loans and allowances, retention, capping of courses, the perenial increase in student fees, the new Student Amenities Centre development and the shadow cast by the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill, candidates have a lot to consider and hopefully a lot to say," said Mr Karetai.
He added, "I hope we get a group of serious and sensible individuals wanting to contribute and make a difference as opposed to getting a gold star on their CVs, but it's all down to the members."
Copies of the speeches will be available on YouTube and as a link off the main voting page for those students who cannot attend.

The key date was the 1st of November but this was "conditional on availability of remaining places." International students, who are not part of the cap, may continue to apply but because of continued enrolment pressures, no further dopmestic student enrolments can be accepted.

"It's obviously disappointing," said ASA President Rawa Karetai, "but we understand the long term intention is for the service to return to the campus as part of the Student Amenities Centre."
In the meantime, ASA will be working closely with SJS to ensure that Albany students continue to receive a quality service. One initiative is to attempt to understand that while the campus has an above average uptake as far as enrolments are concerned, why the number of domestic placements is well down on expectations.
Mr Karetai added, "We need to understand what the barriers are to students using the service and we need to help shift the mentality of students to one where they understand that SJS can help add value to their CVs as well as help them get through the tough times of being a student."