The View From Here: Future of UCOL depends on accountability | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

Who in the UCOL organisation speaks for Wanganui and who has a thorough awareness of our city's potential?

PSST. That's the classic introduction to a secret. Unless it's this, from the Beatles: "Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell, whoa, oh. Closer, let me whisper in your ear." Secrets, since the first grade, have always been a way of exerting power. Unlike personal privacy, a privileged right that is increasingly eroded in our time by government in the name of security, secrecy remains the province of the powerful or of those pretending to power.

That is why, as in the case of the WikiLeaks cables or of the Pentagon papers before them, what we actually learn is that behind the curtain of the Wizard stands a very rumpled, nervous human trying to hide the truth. And sometimes to hide from the truth.

And secrets have an almost preternatural way of coming out. Which leads inexorably to considerations of my recent encounters with the principal and others of UCOL, including our local MP Chester Borrows. Those encounters which leave me with as many questions as answers, particularly because of matters held in confidence and language intended to obscure.

UCOL's stonewalling when the truth is pursued relies heavily upon corporate speak, linguistic locutions that give appearance of meaning while obscuring it at the same time. Thus phrases like "commercial sensitivity"and "downsizing" and "core business" are designed to impress the listener with the power and presumed omniscience that corporations have arrogated to themselves. They're saying, "We know better than you, trust us". Yeah, right!

The questions which we need answered are about the ultimate commitment of UCOL to Wanganui and its people. We know UCOL intends to close the fitness centre; it has cancelled this year's Wanganui summer school. In recent years it closed its ceramics department, downsized its catering school, miniaturised its computer graphics school (an internationally recognised programme) and its fashion department.

Upon direct challenge to the obvious, I was given the tepid assurance of a continuing UCOL presence through programmes in hairdressing and beauty. Both of the latter surely have a place in the world, but they are not a solid anchor in the face of a drought of resources that is surely coming as UCOL has already indicated. Who in the UCOL organisation speaks for Wanganui and who has a thorough awareness of our city's potential? Can we rely upon their assurances when no one in the actual governance comes from here or has roots here?

Based on past experiences and the manner in which the school is being dismantled slowly, it is predictable that UCOL will pull up its tent stakes within four years - providing nothing is done to impede it.

What is to be done? Now that question is not Lenin (V. I.) and not Lennon (John) nor do I recommend sackcloth and ashes. There's work here for everyone, and it's called accountability.

We need to challenge the whole notion that public enterprises, publicly funded, can withhold their books and their plans for reasons of "commercial sensitivity". The council needs to become more bold to hold open hearings into the future of local UCOL. Our local MPs need to front up with their views and whatever clout they have.

A tabloid newspaper of my childhood had on its masthead this line from John 8:23: "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free". Knowledge brings with it responsibility. If we do nothing about it, then the next line would be Kris Kristofferson's "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose".