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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 20, No. 9. June 27, 1957

Piggery Again

Piggery Again

On Wednesday, the 12th June, students were surprised to find the common room closed. Inside was a quite unimaginably disgusting mess.

The closing was the comulation of a series of warnings against untidiness which began with the admission of men into the former women's common room last year.

A further warning was issued last month, and publicised in "Salient". It was unfortunate that many students were not aware of the cause of this drastic action, nor was the situation helped by the fact that all the notices were toin down. The preceding evening the sweepers had refused to clean the room as a protest at the mess. They locked the room and later the Exec upheld their action. The matter was somewhat confused by the fact that at 'odd intervals pressure from individual students resulted in a temporary reopening. But the common room was generally kept shut until midday on Friday after a special Exec, meeting. Unfortunately, the powers that be have the strange notion that the minutes of special Exec meetings should not be publicised. There was however, little done at this meeting of which the Exec, need have been ashamed. They discussed the general problems of keeping order, and the specific troubles raised, by the obviously deliberate messing up of the room on the Tuesday evening, the tearing down of all Exec, notices, and the removal of the door on the Wednesday night. A Common Room Control Committee with some sort of disciplinary powers was suggested to the Principal afterwards. It was decided to reopen the common room immediately in the hope that greater cooperation would in future be forthcoming from the user of the room (most of whom seem to be second-year students).

But what particularly pleased our reporter was the decision to make a real attempt to improve the appearance and comfort of the room. Previously our reporter had investigated the room, and found to his surprise that:

There were live ash trays for the whole room.

There was one enormous ugly rubbish bin—the sort that in any other conceivable circumstances would be left decently-hidden in a back yard.

There were two pictures on the walls—the sort that in any other circumstances would have been relegated to the attic.

There was only one of the four or so lights working.

There were only straight-backed, high chairs, mostly of a glaring red. It is strange that no one has thought of re-upholstering the unused divans in the lower gym.

There were no newspapers or any type of literature provided in the newspaper rack. It was our reporter s opinion that it would be impossible to give people any incentive to keep the room tidy at least until adequate facilities were provided. The vandals have at least had the effect of jerking the Exec, out action.

Now there are adequate, and moderately respectable bins and ashtrays: it is a matter of improving the appearance of the room. This could be done by a few cheap prints, perhaps a drape or two, a few chairs both comfortable to look at and to sit, in and provision of daily papers and others in proper tiles on the newspaper stand.

G.A.W.