Victoria Petition Presented

Several hundred Victoria University students signed a petition asking the Government to let Miss Mandy Rice-Davies enter New Zealand.

The petition was promoted by David Wright, a former Salient editor and campus radical.

The petition claimed that a most undesirable precedent would be created if Miss Rice-Davies were banned merely on the basis of her alleged moral background.

Columnist Jack Kelleher of the "N.Z. Sunday Times" claimed that the petition never got beyond the university noticeboard.

In fact it was presented to the parliamentary petitions committee at its hearing.

A majority of the sheets, totalling about 210 signatures, were presented.

The intervention of the university holidays affected the petition.

Some sheets were not returned, and students who would have signed were not approached.

An attempt to secure signatures at a special tournament forum was only partly successful.

New Zealand television interviewed the students who presented the petition, but the interview was not shown.

One of the students said that this was probably because he got "carried away" with his remarks.