Distance advocacy struggles after recent resignations

Recent bottlenecks in advocacy for distance students may lead to a revamp of how the service is handled in the future. Massey @ Distance Co-Presidents Jax Watt and Jacalyn Clare are not happy with how distance advocacy has been handled following the resignation of both MUSA’s distance student advocates a month ago. 

Distance advocacy was contracted out to MUSA, but MUSA has been unable to take care of it during an organisational transition. The two MUSA Distance advocates recently resigned this past month, one citing that the values of MUSA no longer aligned with their own. In the meantime, a single staff member at MAWSA has been taking on all distance advocacy cases, creating a bottleneck. This staff member currently also handles all of Wellington’s internal advocacy cases.  

The distance co-presidents had sent a test email to the temporary service and never got a reply apart from an automated response which said, “We’re really busy.” 

“Given everything that’s happened, it has proven the need to streamline advocacy between all the associations,” Jacalyn said. 

Jacalyn says one set of procedures and a single point of contact for all students would ensure when staff go on leave or resign other advocates could handle the change in workload between them without impacting the students. 

“Having consistency in services and decreasing confusion as to who students need to contact for support, will only benefit students. This is something I’m heavily advocating for with the single SLA operational merger,” she said. 

Long term, the co-presidents want distance advocacy services to be run by M@D. In the meantime, they have spoken with Massey about the aid they could provide. A Massey spokesperson said Massey supported MUSA and MAWSA with distance advocacy when requested. “The University is also assisting with the recruitment process for the distance advocate role which is due to be taking place this week,” Massey’s spokesperson said.