Speaking about ARC membership, the SAF we paid all went towards ARC membership. So they abolished ARC membership, which was $69 a year, and made us pay $265 a year for SAF, which was pretty much the payments made to ARC. far out =_=
The uni really does love our money, don't they? Though afterall, they are a business.
My apologies that this is a bit of a late response, but I just wanted to make a couple of points clear.
Arc is not only not a business (it is a non-profit), but completely separate to the uni. The SSAF goes directly to UNSW's pocket, and UNSW distributes the money as they wish. In previous years, UNSW has provided Arc with some funding (in the millions of dollars). This year, they gave half of the SSAF to Arc, after Arc spent time fighting for it. This is barely above what they've given Arc before.
To ease the burden on students, Arc decided to make membership free, stripping them of income from students and leaving them with a budget less than they've had in previous years. Meanwhile, the uni is effectively no longer having to spend its money on Arc (taking it directly from students instead), but also making a nice several million dollar profit.
So yes, the uni really loves our money. Arc, on the other hand, is not part of the uni and hurt themselves to give students a better time at uni. Keep in mind that they abolished a $69 membership fee, meaning they have significantly increased membership this year with a very decreased budget. They've also agreed to sell their Arc stores back to UNSW to secure more funding for the next 10 years, something I'm going to take a guess they wouldn't have agreed to do had a membership fee still existed.