New student leader targets mental health
Student mental health is top of the agenda for the new Massey University Students’ Association president.
Michael Salmon is the new MUSA president after he won the election in September, but his term officially began at the start of the month.
He takes over from welfare officer Ngahuia Kirton, who was the acting president after Ben Schmidt left in August to work for the Manawatu Tenants’ Union.
Salmon, 27, has finished his third year of studying genetics and microbiology and there are a few issues facing students he would like to work on.
‘‘Mental health and wellbeing is my No 1 focus,’’ he said. ‘‘Financial security, community engagement and volunteer opportunities are all related to each other, but mental health is the biggest issue for us at the moment.’’
He said there were many factors that contributed to poor student mental health.
‘‘The reality is we’re a high-risk country for mental health and wellbeing – a high demographic is tertiary students and age 18 to 44 is for men. As far as a population that will have issues or needs, [students are] pretty much in the danger zone.’’
Salmon wanted to push for lifestyle changes to improve mental health and get people doing volunteer work.
Another regular student topic is financial hardship.
Before Salmon ran for the presidency he had started getting expressions of interest from students for a ‘‘1 per cent fund’’ where people give a dollar a week into a community fund for people to use if they get into trouble or if their flat gets burgled.
Another problem for Salmon and MUSA to tackle is engaging with students. Many students are apathetic about student politics and lifting voting in elections has been something MUSA has been working on.
‘‘Historically, we’ve had a problem with it. The vote itself for the executive is a pretty clear indicator.
‘‘It was 17 per cent [of the student body].’’
He said he would like more people involved in politics in general and student politics.
Originally from Whangaparaoa north of Auckland, Salmon used to be an environmental health technician in the army with the rank of lance corporal.
After he started at Massey, he spoke at an open forum at the college of science and research.
He also used to be a swim coach at Linton and he said doing something with a community benefit made him feel better about life and he would like to pass that on.
The other new members on the MUSA executive are Alannah Hoskin and You Bo Guo.
Kirton, Callum Goacher and Kyle Fitzgerald all return for another term.