Campus Visits - Victoria University

On Thursday 27 September, I spent the day holding meetings with members at Vic on their three sites. I had a good briefing and dialogue with Branch President, Steve Blumenfeld, and some of his colleagues on Tuesday before going to Palmerston North for meetings at Massey. And then on Thursday (as Steve was in PN that day) I managed to find my own way to the venues of the three meetings on Vic's different locations; Pipitea, Kelburn and Karori.

I had been told not to expect sell-out crowds (term time and school holidays!) and I didn't. But I did manage to have some very fruitful discussions with a good cross-section of members; library staff, academics, liaison, technicians and student support services. I was pleasantly surprised that one of the members' meetings included a student from my 300 level Maori Education and Society class of 96, and another included a former employee of the Canterbury Students' Association.

Discussions on national policy centred around the results of the amalgamation ballot and the future of the tripartite forum. My views on these matters were well received and will soon be shared more widely by way of YouTube videos. (My introductory video message can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=davidtsmall)

For those members I was unable to either see or speak to on the phone while in Wellington, I do hope you will get/keep in touch over coming days.

And thanks to the Branch Committee for contributing towards my travel costs. With Air New Zealand's monopoly on the Christchurch to Wellington route, the fares are outrageous at the moment. Still, at least this time they didn't oversell the flight and try and bump me off again.