xiao1985 said:
lol food poisoning...
i am not a person who are fussy on food, so union food is edible... union special = 5 bucks = alryte...
Food from home = $1 = better.
Anyway, though I've probably already covered most of this, here's an article I wrote summarising the major myths surrounding VSU:
“Under VSU the Clubs and Societies programme will cease to exist”
This is a ridiculous allegation, for the following reasons:
Only 3% of the Union budget goes towards the C&S programme. This means that even if
no students paid Union fees, they could still afford to operate the programme several times over.
This is one of the most important services that the Union proves, and as such would be one of the very last things to ever be axed.
Societies that are mostly self funded, such as SubSki, are still hugely successful, This indicates that even if all Union funding to clubs were to be cut off, many of them would still be able to function.
“Under VSU the student body would have no political representation”
Under the present system a student's views are only represented if they are left wing, and there have been several underhanded tactics used by the SRC to artificially inflate numbers at protests, such as holding free BBQ's, which would encourage students who are complete apathetic about an issue to protest against it. Also important to note is that the four most recent major SRC political campaigns have all failed to change a thing (no VSU, save nursing, no HECS increases, no war in Iraq).
“Student Unionism provides discounted food”
The food provided by the on campus facilities is actually more expensive than that which is found outside the university, and in order to gain their student activity fees back in discounts most students would have to spend in excess of $5000 on food, or about $40 for every day they're at uni (assuming 5 day weeks). It should, as well, be pointed out that of the three Union catering buildings, both Wentworth and Holme make a combined annual loss of $2 million on catering, and Manning only just breaks even, while the private facilities on level 2 of Wentworth are the only ones to make a profit.
“The childcare provided by the Union is an essential service”
This would be true if women spontaneously gave birth to children without having sex and going through nine months pregnancy first, but the fact of the matter is that they do. Every single mother who wants to attend university chose to engage in an act which could conceive a child (often without adequate protection), then chose not to abort, and finally chose to keep the child rather than putting it up for adoption. They chose to have this child, and if they didn’t consider the consequences of their decision, then why should the rest of the student community bail them out? Note also that having a child that they cannot afford childcare for does not preclude them from university forever, but rather until the child reaches five years of age and can attend school while the mother attends classes at university. Most students would probably also be interested to know that 85% of childcare users are actually Union employees, not students.
