Since 94% of you didn’t bother to cast a vote in this year’s VUWSA General Election, the only conclusion left to make is that you quite simply don’t care. It’s perfectly understandable—I was once like you. I was far too interested in banalities like ‘assignments’ and ‘degrees’ to care what Workers’ Party Nobody #453 was doing with my money. Well, technically it was the taxpayer’s money, and technically I’ve paid it back, but I digress.
The fact is this: your students’ association is having the worst image crisis since What’s-Her-Name had surgery on her thing with the face and the other thing. Yeah, I read blogs, what of it?
After all, deep within the bowels of the ugliest building on campus sits this sparsely decorated sinkhole of depression and misery—a lair dank with the putridity of self-hatred and despair, the offices where good people go to die as rudderless hulls sinking to the bottom of an ocean cold and dark; festering meatsacks pulled down by the inequities of their own expectations and tortured by the dreams of what could’ve been if they had only looked away; humourless husks of their former selves, fettered chunks of awfulness so ghastly, so vacant, so utterly fucking lost, they have no recourse but to throw their arms to the cross and scream, “Kill me! Kill me now!”
And even if they were all crucified like the most popular man in history, you STILL wouldn’t vote for them.
In recent weeks, this organisation once simply known as “VUWSA” has definitely defined itself by re-defining the definite article. Press releases released from the chambers of Mistress Freemantle now come brandishing the definite article “the” before “VUWSA”. “The VUWSA believes…” “The VUWSA understands…” “The VUWSA assures…” The. The. The. The. The…
It’s scrumdiddilyumptious. The Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association is “The VUWSA”. It is absolutely correct. For sure, many will point to the lack of “of” in “VUWSA”, but frankly “The VUOWSA” sounds like something guys like Steve would attach to their Mazda 323s to impress girls like Stace.
You don’t ever want to be like Steve.
As for the definite article and why it’s there after having been the hell away from VUWSA, it’s simple.
First of all, let’s establish a couple of things: the world loves Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He was a treat to watch in The Scorpion King, and he did that thing with the gun in that movie about the… the thing in that… gun… with the stuff. He is Hollywood’s answer to a question nobody asked, but is eternally grateful to have a response for anyway. Secondly, he’s named for chunks of endless granite left teetering in chunks at an industrial quarry. That’s nothing short of amazing.
Mark Maguire, the VUWSA’s Association Manager, is no fool’s bagel. He may have a hole right in the middle where his experience will be, but his sides are jampacked with packed jam and a sweet ‘lil creamy filling. A smart man orders a jam bagel, and that’s what Maguire is: a jam bagel of a man.
This jam bagel has wined and dined his fair share of sweet flicks too, for where else would “The VUWSA” come from if not “The Rock”? One can only assume that when asked “What professional-wrestler-cum-B-grade-Hollywood-nobody” would you invite to dinner, he’d refused to let Hulkamania run wild.
But things go deeper than that. Mark Maguire knows you better than you know yourself. He knows what makes the average Joe and Jenny College tick—and it ain’t no Krishna van meal neither. By using “the” whenever they can, the VUWSA is drawing upon The Rock’s limitless popularity. It’s a masterstroke—a real elbow to the people who’ve hit, dare I say it, rock bottom.
So when you’re ignoring your students association, just remember the. Without the, where would The Rock be? Where would the Association Manager Mark Maguire be? Where would the world be? Where would the tutorial class you’d normally attend every week be? The answer to all these questions is down at the VUWSA office. Tell them The Rock sent you—they’re practically family down there. The resemblance is uncanny.