This experience is about the relationships impacting on students with disabilities.

Most tertiary education providers have disability assistance programmes, which can and should be informed by the voices of students with disabilities. However, students with disabilities tend to be quite scattered, and we are still trying to grow our representation across the tertiary sector. At my institution, the disability assistance programme would invite students with disabilities to speak at their events, but not to attend senior leadership team meetings.

Students in my network understood how important and valuable it is for students with disabilities to be included in conversations with senior leadership. They understood that leadership decisions should be shaped by our opinions and everyday experiences.

With our association’s support, we began to be invited to meetings with senior leadership throughout the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown period. We were able to help create strategies to make sure our voices will be heard and included in decision-making, both now and in the future.

This experience is about forging a new relationship between an institution and its students.

When Te Pūkenga was set up in 2020, it created new opportunities for relationships with students across all its campuses.

A group of student representatives are meeting regularly with staff. We are starting our relationship as a blank canvas, and neither us nor staff know what success looks like yet. We are all genuinely committed to partnerships and want to develop a relationship which benefits students and our institution. We all – students and staff – seem to have similar expectations and levels of knowledge, so there’s not such a power imbalance between us.

We treat all our meetings as a co-design exercise and feed all the work we’ve done back to other students. Staff have also been meeting with students at all the different campuses, so they can learn more about our diverse strengths and needs and the communities we live in. It’s been such a positive experience for all of us. We’ve really been able to participate equally in decision-making and look forwards to our ongoing involvement.

This experience is about students working with providers to improve consultation processes.

Each year, universities must decide how to spend students’ fees. Students are extremely impacted by these decisions and should be able to help decide how our money is distributed. One year, our student association was given a massive budget cut from the university. We hadn’t been consulted and didn’t feel it was fair to cut our funding like we were any other academic department at the university.

I decided to set up meetings with senior staff in our university’s finance department. Our association wanted to change the way the university decided how to spend student fees, and staff seemed keen to build a stronger relationship with students. We looked at how other universities decided to allocate their funds. We found some universities used joint committees with half staff and half students, and I helped set up a similar committee at our university.

Staff in the finance department gave us relevant information, which we used to create accessible feedback surveys. We distributed them all around campus, and were able to get some in-depth, meaningful opinions from other students. We were able to use this data to negotiate with the university and reach a compromise about how fees are spent. We were really proud of helping to make this consultation process more collaborative so students can be involved in university decision-making processes.

This experience is about Māori student participation in university decision-making.

Providers usually allocate places for students on key committees, such as the Academic Board. But these places are often given to students from the main student association, and voices of Māori students are much less represented.

One year, members of the general student association decided to give one of their seats on the Academic Board to my Māori student association, because our two associations had a strong relationship. In the spirit of genuine Tiriti partnership, we all understood Māori needed to have a seat at the table and be actively involved in decision-making. We were so pleased to be on the Academic Board – it allowed us to actively represent tauira in spaces we couldn’t normally occupy or impact. Because we were on the Board, we were finally able to persuade the university to create and adopt a te reo Māori policy, which we had been working on for a long time!

However, we were very aware that being on the Board was mainly because of our good relationship with the general student association, and not because of any university structures or policies to ensure Māori would automatically have a seat each year. Without these structures in place, we eventually lost representation on the Board and had our voices silenced once more.

To better honour Te Tiriti, we hope to work with and alongside staff from our university to create clear expectations of inclusion and representation for Māori tauira. These new guidelines could include information on how our voices help the institution achieve their Te Tiriti goals, and processes for how we will feed information and decisions back to students and tauira.

This experience is about a Māori student association engaging with Māori student support services.

Māori learners are diverse. Some may be related through hapū or iwi ties; others may have shared experiences together prior to our tertiary learning. Even though we may share many of the same goals, we each bring different perspectives, roles and approaches to our work. It’s important that institutions recognise this diversity when listening to Māori voices. Hearing from Māori support services isn’t the same as talking to Māori students directly.

At my institution, some of the Māori support services team used to be leaders of our Māori student network. This had some advantages for us but created tensions when the line between student advocate and staff became blurred. At one point, I became leader of the student network. I sometimes felt pressured to act as an extension of the student services team and felt like I was representing staff and not always students. Because of this, some of the students in our association seemed to be uncomfortable going to events and workshops the support services team had helped to organise.

To build a stronger relationship between students and our support services team, we could have convened a hui to discuss why things weren’t working. We also could have agreed to a clearer set of shared expectations at the beginning of our time together.

This experience is about Pacific student participation in Faculty decision-making processes.

An ongoing priority for Pacific student networks is ensuring equity and access to a full range of university programmes and courses. At one provider, we had been trying to achieve this goal for years, but there was little engagement from staff, and nothing happened.

Finally, one academic staff member recognised the need and opportunity at hand. They reached out to our association with a proposal for a quota of Pacific students in their degree programme. We were really excited to have a staff member on board, and finally able to make progress. We worked collaboratively with staff and other students, and made sure Pacific students had opportunities to engage meaningfully in decisions. We worked with dedicated Pacific engagement advisors to suggest the proposal to other academic staff at a Faculty meeting.

We are very proud of achieving this quota and ensuring equitable opportunity for Pacific students across the university. Being able to influence decision-making within university structures was only possible with the collaboration and cooperation of students and staff.

This experience is about students collaborating with staff to improve student services.

There are student organisations in every university which bring together students based on shared interests, culture, whakapapa and academic goals. We tend to recruit new members at orientation events each semester and then run activities throughout the semester to help our students transition to university life. In our university, Pacific student organisations come together every year to host our annual Pacific meet and greet. Our event is usually aimed at welcoming new Pacific students and helping them connect with different Pacific student groups.

One year, we wanted to increase the size of our meet and greet and approached different faculties and departments across the university. We were able to collaborate with university support services staff to create an event of more than just student organisations. We were able to bring a whole range of university services together, including academic, pastoral, and health and wellbeing services. Many of our Pacific student organisations have multiple years’ experience connecting and networking with students. In turn, staff brought their knowledge and expertise which was invaluable for our event and wider collaborations.

Our meet and greet was a huge success. Students and staff were able to collaborate and bring new Pacific students more information than ever before about the full range of university services. The following year, academic staff also attended, and Pacific students and their families were able to learn and understand more about university life and courses. Because of our collaborative approach, our meet and greet has continued to evolve and improve every year and has become a highlight on the university events calendar. We’ve been able to have significant impact on Pacific students’ ability to feel welcomed, connected and supported – at the time they need us most.

This experience is about students collaborating with staff to improve student services.

There are student organisations in every university which bring together students based on shared interests, culture, whakapapa and academic goals. We tend to recruit new members at orientation events each semester and then run activities throughout the semester to help our students transition to university life. In our university, Pacific student organisations come together every year to host our annual Pacific meet and greet. Our event is usually aimed at welcoming new Pacific students and helping them connect with different Pacific student groups.

One year, we wanted to increase the size of our meet and greet and approached different faculties and departments across the university. We were able to collaborate with university support services staff to create an event of more than just student organisations. We were able to bring a whole range of university services together, including academic, pastoral, and health and wellbeing services. Many of our Pacific student organisations have multiple years’ experience connecting and networking with students. In turn, staff brought their knowledge and expertise which was invaluable for our event and wider collaborations.

Our meet and greet was a huge success. Students and staff were able to collaborate and bring new Pacific students more information than ever before about the full range of university services. The following year, academic staff also attended, and Pacific students and their families were able to learn and understand more about university life and courses. Because of our collaborative approach, our meet and greet has continued to evolve and improve every year and has become a highlight on the university events calendar. We’ve been able to have significant impact on Pacific students’ ability to feel welcomed, connected and supported – at the time they need us most.