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Hey all,

I hope things are going well for all of you. At the moment you can feel the tension building on campus as everyone is knuckling down with assignments and exams approaching. Rest assured that we have the Tea Party coming up, and that all will be revealed in regards to acts and location pretty soon. I know I can't wait (even though it is going to be my sixth Tea Party -- I really need to get away from here).

There is still a lot of cool stuff going on, though. The UCSA's award season is raging like a P fiend, with Lecturer of the Year having already been, as will have Madcaps (performing arts awards) and Blues Awards (sporting) by the time you read this scholarly tome. It is pretty inspiring to see the winners of these awards, people who manage to balance their studies with outside activities. It can make you feel a bit stink about yourself, but sometimes that's what it takes to give you a bit of motivation. Congratulations to all the winners!

Last Friday, the University held their first Community Engagement Awards, and by some strange coincidence (maybe the fact that there was a free morning tea), it ended up being attended by the Prime Minister, the Earthquake Recovery Minister, the CERA chief executive, the mayor and mayoress, the chancellor, the pro-chancellor, the vice chancellor, the deputy vice chancellor, and a number of pro-vice chancellors. With more dodgy titles than the Peaches & Cream DVD section, most of the morning was spent trying to figure out who outranked who. This was eventually settled with an arm wrestling competition, with the outcome being that a mechanical engineering student called Maddog was ranked number one, followed by John Key's personal minder, a man simply known as "Blue". Blue was doing that bodyguard thing where they talk into the cuff of their suit jacket and he looked like he knew how to kill a man with his bare hands. In between all this kerfuffle, some members of the Student Volunteer Army leadership team were presented with Community Engagement Awards, which goes to show, if you do something awesome, someone, somewhere will invent an award ceremony to recognise it. So again, congratulations to all those who received awards!

In serious news, I have met with the university staff union (the TEU) and the University to ensure that we can find a way to keep students involved and informed should any cuts to staff members be proposed. And there is no doubt that there will be some cuts coming up, unless all the school leavers in New Zealand decide that they want to study in the home of the SVA, Sonny Bill Williams, Rod Carr, Jason Gunn, and an arm-wrestling danger man called Blue. Maybe they will.

Good luck with the assignments!

Cheers,
Kohan