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Facts and Figures—

Wodins Diary

"Already the American Army has electronic computers at staff headquarters that will work out the results of battles from given factors" ("Evening Post." Saturday. 10/8/57.) Perhaps it is in these automatic marvels that we can find the solution to the present dilemna—how to reconcile man's [unclear: pctual] aggressiveness with the horrors and suicide of nuclear war. Eurasia declares waron Oceania. A fact-finding and readiness of the two countries and team then investigates the resources feeds the information into a machine which declares the winner. (Proceeds could go to charity.)

A leading educationist quotes as an example of a distorted attitude towards university education, the number of students who when asked about point X or Y, reply: "Oh. I don't know anything about it now. I did that two years ago.

We must all know lecturers who begin the year by saying: "You will get nowhere at the end of the year by regurgitating my lectures undigested." And yet at the end of the year students are asked in the exam papers to repeat parrot wise the substance of the lectures. And it is on this basis they pass. No wonder two years larte they remember nothing about it!

Certain Departments at Vic. might take note of the frustrations of their students at the system of farming out the marking of essays. It is in his essays that many a student has the opportunity to show his worth. Yet under this system the examiner does not even see them. Nor does the student know the attitudes or standards of his marker. As far as he is concerned the essay might as well go into a machine which stamped on it some mark and then returned it straight back. (In fact cynics might say that is in fact what happens—except the machine is woefully slow and inefficient in its returns.)

Defenders of our rights and liberties (and our inviolable right to property), point out that the only Commonwealth State without two chambers. Queensland, has had notoriously gerrymandered boundaries: only a second chamber could prevent such abuses. They for get to point out as well that State politics in Australia are generally corrupt—whether a State has two chambers or not. No one pretends that our former Legislative Council had any value, in other words during most of our history we have in effect only had one chamber. Yet it is not maintained by anyone that we have suffered from any of the evils associated with unicameral government, is it possible then that something else is responsible for corruption in Australian politics? And can constitutionalists explain corruption in the democracy with the oldest constitution, checks and balances everywhere, the United States?

Second chambers are a relic of our no one either has the energy to reform past. They linger on merely because them, or the courage to abolish them, deney to be several years behind the Checks and balances have an odd ten rest of the community. Where they are effective as a brake it is as a brake on progress, for example the U.S. Senate or the House of Lords.

We are doing fine with one chamber. Why waste a great deal of money anachronism?

On the restoration of an ornamental.

In a recent memorandum of matters useful to club officers the V.U.C. S.A. Secretary quotes hunks of the Professorial Board regulations. How is it that such primitive relics still persist with the apparently sole effect of irritating students and making a policeman of the caretaker. Why cannot there be somewhere for students to meet in the evening, smoke, buy supper, and be sociable. It should be pointed out to members of the Board that not all students have pleasant Professorial mansions in which to congregate.

Civilisation is slowly creeping upon the university, but has a long way to go before it can really blossom.

What is the purpose of the Exec.? Primarily to carry out the objects and wishes of the Association, as represented by the Constitution and student opinion. To administer the business, finance and organisation of the Association.

It is a valuable aspect of university life, an excellent training field for potential administrators. With an electorate consisting of the most critical section of the communist—students, an Exce. officer who steps down from a job competently and efficiently done has indeed achieved something.

While some may use Exce. as a political stepping stone, and others as a means of gaining social kudos, the majority are motivated by a sense of public service, tempered by the natural desire of us all for power and responsibility.

The willingness of many people to be elected by their fellows to run their affairs is one of the best features of a democracy. For a democracy is carried not by the M.P.'s at the top, but the many citizens administering societies, school committees, etc. The ideal citizen who is called from his hoc to help his countrymen may only be a fiction. It is in these minor organisations that people can offer the public their service But, while this may be a less advertised aspect of democracy, perhaps one of its major functions is to satisfy the itch of the power-conscious. It has been suggested that if Hitler had been British, and could have been, for example. Director of the B.B.C., no harm would have been done. There is plenty of room for petty bureaucrats, who may be harmful, but at least have their energies channeled into useful directions.