As the University of Otago heads into another round of O Week celebrations, some students will be treated to a different sort of orientation. Reporter Carla Green has more.
Student activist Tyler West doesn't have anything against O Week.
The problem, he says, is that it is decidedly apolitical. So this year, Mr West and about two dozen other students and activists are organising an alternative, deliberately political orientation week: "Radical Orientation''.
The main event is an alternative tent city - dubbed "Disorientation'' by the organising group - that will be in operation today on the university union lawn, outside Otago University Students' Association's offices.
"It's an alternative to the very commercialised and apolitical way ... of Orientation.''
At the Disorientation event, there will be tents, speeches and performances geared towards introducing students to the more political aspects of Dunedin life, Mr West says.
There will be stalls with information about activist groups in Dunedin, including feminist, vegan and environmentalist ones.
In many ways, it will be the polar opposite of the OUSA's tent city event, which mostly serves to introduce students to businesses and organisations, Mr West says.
But the point is not to stage a protest against the OUSA's O Week events, he says.
"We don't have a huge amount of problems with any of the events as they are - it's just that it doesn't extend into the political realm.''
OUSA president Laura Harris said the association did not have a problem with Radical Orientation.
"We don't know a lot about the event, but we recognise the diversity of the student body and the events planned appear to cater to niche-group interests, which is a positive for the student community,'' she wrote in an email.
And, for his part, Mr West thinks the OUSA does good work.
But there is a limit to what it can do, he says.
"OUSA, for all the good stuff that they do - and they are really good at organising around some general social and economic problems - they can't really be a political force.''
Ever since the OUSA and other students' associations became financially tied to tertiary education institutions through the Voluntary Student Membership Bill, the associations simply cannot be as politically outspoken as they once were, Mr West says.
That meant it was up to students to form their own grass-roots student movement - or, as Mr West calls it, "flax roots''.
"It's like grassroots, but specific to Aotearoa.''
Mr West hopes Radical Orientation will help form the nub of a budding grass-roots student movement at Otago, by introducing students to Dunedin's political life.
"You hear all the time 'young people aren't political enough' and 'they don't do this and they don't do that'. And I think it's more that, it has to be built from the flax roots,'' he says.
"If student interests are to [be] a factor, either in organising on campuses or in general, there has to be a student movement of some kind that can do it. These sorts of political things can't be invented out of thin air.''
The schedule
TODAY
10am-7pm: Disorientation 2016, university union lawn.
TOMORROW
2.45pm: Screening of Chytilova's Sedmikrasky (Daisies), Evison Lounge, OUSA Clubs and Societies Centre.
6pm: Introduction to SJW Aotearoa, Black Star Books.
THURSDAY
7pm: Body Positivity Art Workshop, room 2, OUSA Clubs and Societies Centre.
FRIDAY
5pm: People's Kitchen, Black Star Books.
