No means No unless you are a Student

No means No unless you are a Student

As student outrage at Critic Te Arohi, the Otago University student magazine’s publication of Diary of a Drug Rapist and Max Hardcore: The Most Offensive Man in Porn continued to grow today the Locke Foundation asks why students are forced to fund Critic or risk not graduating.

Compulsory unionism, a relic of socialism, died for workers in the 80’s but students have never been freed of it. Those few in control of New Zealand’s student associations take and control $16 million dollars from broke and indebted students every year and use the bulk of it to support narrow political and social viewpoints and of course to prop up their flailing student media businesses. University councils demand on average $100 per year from every full time student for compulsory student association levies and any unpaid amount on a student’s account can jeopardise that student’s ability to graduate.

At Otago University, student association budgets show that Critic loses approximately $20,000 every year so the student association props it up with student monies. Student politicians ‘elected’ by typically 2-3% of the student body make the decisions as to how to spend 100% of the levies taken from all students.

Fiscal responsibility is something rarely seen in student politics and media. This week’s edition of Critic is sadly not a rare example; instructing the reader on how to get away with date rape and on how to have anal sex and talk your girlfriend into it because it is apparently safer than vaginal sex, amidst descriptions of hardcore sex involving vomit and urine, is blatantly irresponsible in both the message being given and the use of student money. (We would quote from it verbatim but we would like to be able to get our release published)

If Critic wish to produce this type of publication they need to give students the choice as to whether they fund it or not. Critic’s appeal to freedom of speech to justify its "Offensive Issue" rings hollow when one discovers that Critic itself supports the regime that offers students no freedom to dissociate from offensive speech and forces them to underwrite it financially or risk graduation.

Equally hollow is the outrage of NZUSA and Otago’s females student representatives who also support no choice for women students as to whether they fund articles encouraging rape, abuse and denigration of women and false sexual health messages.

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