Dear Students,

It is so easy to conform. On the other side of this page the other half of this article says an unkind word or two to the staff who are one part of this University. They are accused of bad lecturing, but that you know.

They are accused of being a long way from the students, but that also you know and the fact that they never have personal opinions in lectures is notorious. We except one learned gentleman from this but then he has only recently arrived as a welcome addition to the small band who dare to say "I think.." May he survive and prosper.

In all probability if you are reading this you cannot be included in the dull grey sludge which floats up here to get a degree. Salient only had about 300 readers, about the number of persons who do show some interest in the College. Nevertheless how interested are you?

Most of you have never written for Salient. Your opinions are unknown at annual General Meetings and in lectures you are silent. That is your privelege. It is also a danger. For eight months we sit in lecture rooms listening to the various theories in philosophy, political science and even in English. Those are the stuff examinations are made of and we note theories down one after the other.

In some faculties, zoology is a good example, we take books and books of notes at a breakneck speed. In the law faculty we discuss the nature of law and come to no conclusions, hear no conclusions, but we do not worry. The economics faculty deals with the piece system, the co-operative system and the iron laws but gives the community no lead. Has research in the economic field led to conclusions. Are there other economists besides Professor Tocker? University teaching appears to have no coherent result or purpose. Even the value of furious note taking is questionable and yet there has been no serious attempt to question the present system of University education.

The recent visit of the Evengalist Canon Oreen pointed out one thing: some thousands of people thought that religion of some kind was important At the highest educational institution in the province religion is admitted as an afterthought and through the efforts of student organisations. Our society is called Christian but by the trend of University teaching no one would know. Have you as a student heard a lecturer postulate the thesis that God docs exist in a lecture. Every subject taught here is affected by that question. Do you as students consider that to bo true? if you do do you ever say so or does the objectivity force you into an acceptance of the neutrality, the shelving of basic issues?

This year students have been very apathetic. One subject was a certain provocation: red politics but that has gone from this University—at least for a time. No other intellectual controversy has caused any disturbance in [unclear: sight] months. Our minds have been [unclear: dulled] into the kind of neutrality which emasculates the search for truth. As students we have done very little about it. Time and time again we have sat and listened to lecturers talking nonsense or implying nonsense but because we are so used to that approach which means that the lecturer only repeats other men's views we know there is no point in enquiring and in criticism. If the truth be known we are frightened of failure in examinations and we let our teachers get away with excuses which do not satisfy. "We have not the time now. We have these notes to read and this book to get through." The lawyer can ask what is law, the philosopher is there a God, the economist is there a better economic system but the questions will, for the most part go unanswered.

Are you as students all satisfied with that degree when you have it? Has University study developed your attitude towards life and solved any problems? Or has it merely added to the amount of accumulated knowledge, given you a degree and confused the issues ? More likely the result is the confusion.

If so it may be compensated for by the living wage assured by that degree but it is from our confusion that the tyrannies: Fascism and Communism sprang and unless we have some positive solutions tyrannies will eventually win. George Orwell predicted victory by 1984 and he was no alarmist, what good will our B.A.'s be then? You can quite easily conform to the knowledge machine which is our University but it would probably be wiser to rebel.

This article will probably do little. It may annoy some but at least it has been written to show that someone at the University looks at the system and sees chaos, watches the results and glimpses despair. A tradition of confusion is no tradition and the only one we have in its place is, as the first issue tried so hard to disprove, the tradition of the University red. That we have such a tradition is your fault and mine.

Professors And....
Diverse interpretations
Of any kind.
Welcome deliberations
Of a free untrammelled mind.
We reach no conclusions
We are safe from delusions
Of an absolute kind.