Salient. The Newspaper of Victoria University College. Vol. 20, No. 8. September 14, 1956

[Introduction]

What sort of vacation are you planning this year? Plagued by the spectre of finals which haunts all your sober waking hours these last few precious weeks of the third term you may not have thought much about it. Possibly you'll be working for most of it. Maybe, if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll be getting round to reading ail those books you've been meaning to for so long.

But before you rush away and decide to immure yourself in the wilds somewhere till the first term, consider Congress. Congress the short title of a time-honoured institution, the New-Zealand University Congress at Curious Cove, and the next one will be the ninth.

If you have been before—you needn't read any further. If you haven't—then you would be well advised to think it over. What is it?

Congress is all things to all men. It's certainly something different in the way of a holiday, a paradise for the swot-sickened and lecture-ridden where you can get away from all the drudgery of a year's work in your particular vocation and for one splendid week skim the intellectual cream of the country with no more effort than lying in the sun.

Someone called it once the University of New Zealand come to life. That's not a bad description. You meet fellow students from the other colleges in the country (including some of those rare eves, agricultural types), about 120 of them, perhaps 20 or 30 of them from your own scat of higher learning.