Interview with Matthew Lee | AUSA Undergraduate Education VP

Hi everyone, I’m Mayoora, and I’m here on behalf of Craccum interviewing Matthew Lee, the Undergraduate Education VP for AUSA. Hi Matthew.

Hi, nice to meet you.

How are you doing today?

Good thank you, how are you?

I’m good. So, before you became Undergraduate Education VP, you were already quite a busy person. You were actively campaigning for fairer student accommodation as Chair of Students for Fair Rent, you were acting, and you were doing all of this on top of being a student. How have you managed taking on this additional role with its responsibilities?

I think it comes from a bit of passion and a bit support from my friends and family. The things that you’ve mentioned, I think they were quite hard work but I was very passionate about them, which is why I didn’t mind the sleepless nights doing them, but also I had a really good support system with friends and family who really supported my goals and dreams and vision for things. Yeah, and I genuinely just find a lot of joy in doing them.

So what exactly do you study, and are you doing part time right now, or full-time?

So I’m still a full-time student, currently I’m doing a Bachelors of Law and Arts conjoint, majoring in Politics and Economics. I’m a fourth-year student, but I’m only a Part 2 student in Law because I did 2 years of Global Studies before I decided I wanted to switch into Law, so I’m a bit behind in that sense, but yeah, full-time studying.

So how are you finding it?

Great! Yeah, I’m glad that I made the switch to Law to be honest, because I’m finding it really interesting, and I think it’s genuinely given me a lot of skills that I need to do this role, and I think just in terms of my future career and stuff like that, I think that’s what I want to do as well.

So you’re saying.. You’ve said that you picked up a lot of skills from your Law degree that are helpful with this role, what exactly are those skills, and how exactly have those helped you in this role?

Yeah, I think it’s a better understanding of procedures and policies, you know, I think Law has kind of given me a bit of skill in reading things, and interpreting things, and understanding things. Through this role at least, I have to read a lot of documents and policies, and you know, they’re often quite long, so I’ve kind of learned how to pick out the things that are important but also sort of have an understanding of what that’ll actually mean, for students, and for myself, and for other people. I think in AUSA as well, because as Vice-President, I’m an Officer of the association so I have legal duties to the association, so that kind of helped me understand my roles and responsibilities as a Vice-President to this Association as well, just to make sure that this Association is operating the best it can for students.

And as well as your previous experiences, such as being the Chair of Students for Fair Rent, how has that helped you with this?

Yeah, I kind of started Students for Fair Rent on a whim, I didn’t necessarily have the skills or the knowledge that you would expect someone like that to have, so I was learning a lot from that. But I did learn a lot, we started our campaign in 2023, during the General Elections, so it was quite a big learning curve, but I had so many opportunities to talk to different politicians across the political spectrum and just… talked to them, and understand where they’re coming from, and try to convey where I’m coming from as well. I think that skill of getting along with people that you might not necessarily agree with but trying to find common ground, is a skill that I think I developed through that and I’ve been able to bring here. I think that some people see my role, or our role, as AUSA to kind of be always in opposition to the University, and I certainly thought that as well, and I don’t disagree with that, I think that’s absolutely true, but I think when we want to make things happen and when we want to progress… At the end of the day, we don’t hold the decision-making powers, so we need to be able to work with the people who can, the University, and try to get them to understand where we’re coming from, and make the best decisions for us. So I think that’s one of the big things I’ve learnt from that.

So learning how to negotiate essentially?

And just get along with people.

Right, yeah. So what made you run for AUSA exec in the first place? Why this role?

Yeah, it was out of frustration, to be honest. I had been a student, at that point, for three years at this university, and never thought that AUSA has done anything for me as a student, whether that be student experience, like, you know, the events that AUSA used to run, they always used to be quite small… and insignificant, I can say that. But on the other hand, I always thought that student associations have such a big responsibility to be spokespeople for students, and to be advocates for students, and so it was actually Students for Fair Rent when we asked AUSA to help us run this campaign, and endorse us and you know, just provide us support, and they were very reluctant to support us, and I thought that was quite worrying that, you know, our students association isn’t willing to stand up for students who live at halls. Ten percent of people [at university] live in halls, and if you think about people who used to live at halls, that number is way bigger than ten percent, a lot of people live at halls. And so, I was like, ‘Why is our student association not standing up for students?’, and you know how the saying goes, right? ‘If you don’t like something, run’, and that’s kind of what I did.

Yeah.

The reason why I ran for Education Vice-President was because I thought that that was the best fit for me. To be honest, I didn’t really have a good understanding of what the role entailed but I’m really glad I chose this role because I’m really enjoying my role.

Yeah. So one of the things that you talked about during the election last year, in your candidate debate, was about how AI usage needs to be legislated in university policy as it becomes more relevant, and from my understanding, you’re on several committees that would deal with this: the Academic Programmes Committee, Education Committee, and the Teaching and Learning Committee. Could you enlighten us about what progress has been made with that?

Yeah absolutely, I think by the end of the year if you were to ask me what’s the focus of the year in terms of education, it has been on AI. So, for a bit of context, the University last year endorsed a statement on AI, but they didn’t do anything about it, so this year what we did was… I helped, I worked with the University to write the action plan on AI, which has now been approved and adopted by the University. So essentially what that means is that the University has a plan for what they want to see in terms of AI, so that includes real big changes in terms of our assessments, in terms of the way that we deliver education, in terms of, literally, what does education mean? And what are we able to offer students at the university, and that was the point I kept making as well, AI is going to be here, whether we want it to be here or not, and at the end of the day, the University’s responsibility is to make sure that us, as students, are equipped with the best skills possible so that we are hireable essentially, you know? We need jobs. We need to be competitive in the job market. If employers are looking for graduates with AI capabilities, then the University needs to give us those capabilities. So, that’s the approach that we’re taking, is that from a programmatic level, we’ll be rethinking the way that we deliver education, and not necessarily incorporating AI into there, but just rethinking, reshaping the type of education that we’re giving, given that we’re in an age of AI.

Okay. So one of your other responsibilities is also supporting student
campaigns, such as the Fair Fares campaign that’s active right now, and the Fair Rent campaign that you’ve spearheaded. Student campaigns are important, no doubt about that, but how exactly is that relevant to your role as an Education VP?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. In AUSA, the way that we- So we’ve got three pillars at AUSA, student voice, student experience, and student support, so as the Education Vice President- one of the Education Vice Presidents, I spearhead the student voice pillar. So that has two understandings of student voice, on one hand, that’s student voice within the university, so I’m the ultimate representative on majority of the academic committees, but I also lead the student voice externally as
well. So, maybe the title of the role is a bit misleading, but it’s very much part of my role, and it’s a part of the role that I really enjoy doing as well.

So to be clear, your title’s misleading in the sense that you’re not only dealing with the education aspect of the student experience, you’re also dealing with some of the experience part?

Yeah so the way that we’ve- this is not necessarily something we’ve created, it’s something we’ve inherited. The structure goes: The Education Vice President looks after student voice, the Engagement Vice President looks after student experience, which includes events and community engagement, that kind of stuff, and student support is the Wellbeing and Equity Vice-President. So just by the way that we’ve structured things, student voice falls under the Education Vice-Presidents.

Yeah, so as Undergraduate Education Vice-President specifically, you’re dealing with the student voice of the undergraduate students?

Yeah, not necessarily. So Fania, who is the Postgraduate Education Vice-President, and I both oversee the student voice pillar, but I think it’s also important to remember that I don’t just represent undergraduate students, we all represent the students of the University of Auckland. So we’re constantly looking at issues that affect students, because even undergraduate students now, will be postgraduate students in the future, undergraduate students will be women, Māori, Pasifika, there will be disabled students, you know, so it’s important to look as it holistically as well.

So… very intersectional.

Yes, very intersectional, yes, that’s true.

Yeah, okay. Well, how do you feel about the progress you’ve made so far in your term, given that we’re coming up on the next AUSA elections?

I feel very positive about it to be honest. Obviously, there’s always more to be done, but when you think about this year, lots [of things] have been happening. Before my term even started, the University proposed to merge two massive faculties, two faculties that I’m a part of as well, and so it was a massive learning curve at first, but I think that kind of gave us the confidence we needed to do what we wanted to do. So, we did the whole merger proposal thing, and then we went on to look at our Operations Plan, we looked at, ‘what do we want to do this year?’. And at the end of the day, for our student voice, what we wanted was be the student representative on campus for students, for all students. So we looked at how we can do that, things like: What are the issues that students actually care about? Hence, the transport campaign. We looked at things that were coming out of Parliament that were affecting students today, things like the Pay Equity Amendment Bill, that we thought was a very harmful and damaging bill for our students. So we organised a rally against that with some clubs on campus, and we released a statement on that. You know, I could give you various different examples but all of that kind of culminated into the current project I’m working on, which is the Students’ Manifesto, and I think if there’s something that I’m really proud of this year, it’s starting the working on the Students’ Manifesto. Like I said before, the most important responsibility of AUSA is to be the student voice, right? And I always say, student voice is the one thing that the university cannot take away from us, because if they do it, it’s not student voice, right?

Yeah.

So that’s kind of where the Students’ Manifesto came from. Students need to have a voice, and we have the ability to give that voice, so why not put it into one document, and tell politicians and decision makers and tell them, “Hey, this is what students want, please listen to us”.

Is this Students’ Manifesto something you’re working on in conjunction with other students associations across New Zealand, or is this just an AUSA thing?

Yeah, it’ll just be an AUSA thing, and it’ll be representative of the University of Auckland student body.

Do you think other universities across New Zealand will look at this as
something they should model themselves?

I mean if they want to, absolutely. It’s something that we thought was better suited for ourselves. I mean, start small and go big, right? But yeah, other student associations… it’s a difficult thing, because, some student associations aren’t allowed to get involved in anything political, some student associations wanna go way further political than we do, so it’s a huge spectrum, and it’s quite a difficult task in tying in all those different interests, and the other part of that would be every student community has very different needs, and wants, and issues, so putting that into one unifying document is quite a difficult task. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t look into it, I think if the AUSA Student Manifesto goes well, that’s a good next step.

So to clarify, what exactly is the Student Manifesto? I know that you’ve
recently posted about it on the AUSA social media, but what exactly is it, and what do you want students to do about it?

So the Students’ Manifesto is a compilation of our asks to decision-makers and politicians as students, it’s a document that says… So we’ve got three pillars: Economy, education and community, and these are three big topics that we’ve identified as the Manifesto working group to be important topics, and we’ve got sub-topics in there that include jobs, housing, healthcare, that kind of stuff. And, what we want politicians to do is when they receive this document, is they can read it, and have a good understanding of what University of Auckland students are asking them to do. If politicians choose to ignore our document, students can sort of make a judgement about that at the general election next year, but it’s our responsibility to be raising the voice of students. So that’s what the Students’ Manifesto is about, right now, we’re about to be in the consultation phase of this, and we’re hoping to spend about a month consulting students. So we’ll be doing events, workshops and we’ll have a formal submissions process, where people can read the draft that we’ve written as half of the executive, and ask them to give us their thoughts and opinions of that manifesto.

So, just to have a… sort of expected deadline in mind, would this be wrapped up within the end of your term? Like well before, or…?

Yeah, we want to publish it by Politics week.

So that’s…

End of September. In a month and a half.

And that’s in line with the local elections?

Yes.

Oooh, good timing.

Exactly, yeah.

Wow. So how do you want students to contribute to this?

Yeah, I mean I want people to think about what they care about, every student has different experiences, but there are experiences that unite us together, and I wanna hear what those experiences are and what those issues are. At the end of the day, the Student Manifesto should be a representation of the University of Auckland student community and so I think you’ll find the consultation process that we set up will- We will be trying our best to engage with different communities at UOA, and I want people to be thinking about, you know, if they want the government to be able to enact a policy today that would change their lives, what would that policy passed be? Whether it’s totally unrealistic, or you think it’s never gonna happen, doesn’t matter. I just want to know what students’ ideal vision of a world for students is, and that’s what the Manifesto is, it’s an ideal version of the world for students, and I think that’s what we should be aiming for.

Is this something you expect to be revised annually going forward, or sort of be like a baseline going forward for AUSA in terms of advocacy and student voice?

I mean it’s obviously up to the executives of each year to decide what they want to do with this one, but this is just something we wanted to do for our term. But I mean in terms of what I want, I think the reason why I wanted to do this was in the lead up to the General Elections next year, because this will be the time when different parties are formulating their manifestos, and we want to say “Hey, hold up, while you’re writing your manifesto, why don’t you listen to what students have to say first, and then write your manifesto”. So, you know, that might not work next year, when it’s at the end of elections, but you know, decisions are being made every day, and every day politics happens, it doesn't happen every three years. So, you know, if future executives want to do it every year, then I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all.

Well, speaking of elections, are you planning on running again this election?

Yeah, I’m re-running for my position.

So why the same position again?

Yeah, multiple reasons. I made this commitment actually last year, a year ago, that I didn’t really want to run for any other position but this one, mainly because I thought this role would be quite relational, and I was right. I spend a lot of time trying to build relationships with different stakeholders, whether that be students, people at the University, or politicians. And a lot of the work that I’m able to do is because I have a good relationship with those stakeholders, and I’ve heard this quite a lot from people who are involved with AUSA as well, if you have a bad relationship with the main people you’re working with at the university, they’re never going to listen to you. They won’t even meet with you to hear what you have to say. But I’m really, really proud of myself for being in a position where they will listen to what I have to say, even if I outright disagree with them, they will respect what I have to say and will incorporate that feedback into their work. So, I’m quite proud of that, and I want to continue that, and I think it’s quite disruptive to have changes in this role every single year. There’s still so much more that I want to do, you know? Like I’m still working on re-writing class rep policy to make the programme much better for students, still working on AI stuff, and you know, like I said, next year is General Elections, and I really want to be involved in making the student voice heard.

Yeah, is there anything you would hope to do differently in your second term?

Yeah, I think I said this before but when I ran for this role last year, I didn’t have that good of an understanding as to what the role entailed, and it took me a little while to try and grasp exactly what my role required of me. And so, what will be different next year is that I will have that understanding and I would be able to hit the ground running or just continue with what I’m doing now. In terms of what I…
Was it what I regret, or?

Like, is there anything new you would do, like are there any changes you would make in your approach to the role?

Hmmm, anything new I want to do, yeah, like I said, AI, right? That’s not necessarily new, but there is one change that the University is coming with, it’s called the two-lane approach and it’ll change the way that assessments are delivered, and required of students. And that’s something that I want to continue doing, and… Actually, well, it’ll start at the end of the year, so I want to be on that project to make sure that there is, first of all, continuity of knowledge, but also the student voice is actually able to shape the way that our assessments will do, cause it’s not… It’s a once in a lifetime experience to be able to shape what education means at a university, right? And the other thing is, I want to actually establish inter-university relationships. So NZUSA, which is the national body that doesn’t exist anymore, it’s the New Zealand Union of Student Associations, encompassed all of the student associations, and that fell apart for various different reasons, which I won’t get into, but we’ve been trying to kickstart that this year, and it hasn’t been very successful. For example, the President, Praneel (the Finance and Operations VP), and I went down to Otago for a conference to try and build up that relationship, but it didn’t go too well. But I still think that there is a lot of merit working together. Collectively, we represent a massive proportion of the student body, and we need to leverage that for, not just within our universities, but on a national level as well, so I want to build on that relationship and leverage that to get students more wins.

You mentioned regrets, would you be comfortable elaborating on that?

I don’t think I have any regrets with what I’ve done this year. I don’t usually say this, but I do think I’m quite proud of the work that I’ve been able to do this year. I think if I have to say one thing, just timing of progress, being in such a big association does mean that things you want to do are sometimes bogged down by processes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s typically a good thing, but I think there is so much more that I wanted to do and could’ve done, but couldn’t do, because of just, you know, the nature of this association, which is fine. So I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a regret, it’s just something that… I wish I could have done more, but yeah.

Do you have any advice for this year’s candidates? For your competitors or like anyone else running for the other roles?

Yeah, I mean, this job is really, really fun, that’s why I wanna re-run for this, right? In terms of my role specifically, it’s an incredible job. It’s also a huge responsibility, you’re relied upon by 47,000 students to make sure you’re saying the right things, and the hours and hours of meetings that you have… It’s kind of what keeps me going, is just remembering that students count on me to do my job correctly, really, and again, that comes down to the relationship thing as well, right? If I’m in a position where they won’t even listen to me or reply to my email, then I’m failing the student body, so I need to make sure that I’m able to work with them, and deliver what’s best for students, but I think we’ve been able to do that this year. So for the candidates that are running for AUSA this year, if they get in, I think genuinely, just enjoy the job, it’s so fun. You learn so much, you get to meet so many people. At the same time, remember it’s a huge responsibility. Students might not know so well what we do, but it is a job that genuinely does impact students everyday so, yeah.

And to conclude the interview, do you have any advice for students at this university in general?

Yeah, similar advice, enjoy your time at university. This is my fourth year, right? And ideally, I would have graduated by the end of this year, but I’m not, but that’s okay because I think that the… In the first couple of years I don’t think I really… made use of the opportunities at university, whether that’s joining clubs, meeting people, or doing thing., I think I really missed out on a lot of opportunities, so I’m actually quite grateful that I get the chance to stay here, obviously now that Hiwa’s open as well I get to use Hiwa as well, before I leave. Yeah, genuinely just make the most of it. University is a really fun time, and it’s a time where you get to launch a lot of the things you want to do in life, you know. So really just put your hand up for things that you want to do, if it’s club exec, if it’s AUSA, if it’s whatever, if you wanna do it, just go for it. And yeah, just enjoy your time at the university.

Yeah, well that brings us to the end of our interview. Thank you so much for sitting down and doing this with us.

Of course, thank you.