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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, No. 24. October 1, 1968

Tablet Report

Tablet Report

Questions On Debate At Vic. University

The Victoria University Students' Association will discuss the circumstances of a debate at the university on Pope Paul's recent encyclical, and the manner in which it was reported in the student newspaper, "Salient."

The report published in Salient includes comment attributed to Dr E. Geiringer, who was one of the speakers in the debate. The subject was "that the Pope is a pill."

The president of the university's Catholic Society. Mr Tim Dyce, has written to the association asking why his society was not informed of the subject and speakers in the debate.

Mr Dyce told The Tablet's Wellington representative that the debate was not arranged in the normal way by the Debating Society's executive, nor was the Catholic Society informed, a normal courtesy in these matters.

' Not balanced '

He said that the report in Salient was hardly a balanced account either, since it did not quote any other speaker than Dr Geiringer.

Mr Dyce said that Mr Michael Hirchneld, a Jew, who, with Barbara Foot, a Catholic, and well-known student leader Tony Haas, made up the team defending the Pope's encyclical, was judged the evening's best speaker.

Mr Dyce is also curious to know how Dr Geiringer came to be on one of the teams. The other members on his side were Messrs Peter Blizard and Rod Alley. Both are university staff members and the debate was supposed to be a staff v. students affair. Dr Geiringer is not on the staff.

The Tablet has seen the Salient report, which it finds most distasteful and not calculated to improve the already sick image of university students.

It discussed it with Dr Geiringer, who said that he had nothing to do with setting the subject. He 'elt that he had been very badly eported, but he understood that his main thesis—that the Pope was anti-Christ —had been left out because the university censor felt that to publish it would be to insult a reigning sovereign—in this case the Pope.

"I am very annoyed that they reported it so badly," he said.

The Tablet wonders why they reported at at all.