By Andrew Young
education reporter
Legal action is being threatened across university campuses as the bitter debate over voluntary student unionism boils over.
The Waikato Student Union has instructed lawyers to take action against the Auckland union for an article that appeared in the Auckland campus magazine, Craccum, yesterday.
Waikato president Matthew Flannagan said
he travelled to Auckland to warn that the article had dangerous inaccuracies but was horrified to learn that about 1000 copies were then given out anyway.
Tens of thousands of students have been urged to vote in a referendum over the next few weeks as the Government moves to take away automatic compulsory unionism.
Waikato is the only union with voluntary membership and says that in the past three weeks other student organisations nationwide have defamed it more than 30 times in pamphlets and student media.
The Waikato union last week warned Auckland, Otago, Victoria and Massey that defamation action could be taken for the damaging comments.
Mr Flannagan said Auckland had blatantly ignored the warning and added insult to injury by producing another damning article in favour of compulsory membership.
He said Auckland student representatives rushed around campus distributing the magazine for fear that editors would pull or change the article.
Auckland students should be outraged, Mr Flannagan said, because their representatives were ignoring legal threats and risking student funds. Any court settlement would have to be paid from the association coffers.
The Auckland president, Efeso Collins, said everyone was entitled to air his or her opinions and the magazine article did just that.
He said magazine staff had been concerned about possible defamation action, but the article's authors were keen for students to see it.
"None of us are lawyers and we need to hear their [Waikato's] case but we are not going to run and hide."
He said the union's lawyer was handling last week's initial warning and the issue was in his hands.
