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Pot-smokers, homosexuals, abortionists, and (worse) moralising do-gooders. These it seems are the people who run NZUSA and pass all those God-forlorn motions concerning what (they think) is wrong with out great national heritage.

The image itself is laughable. How many of New Zealand's student leaders have, after all, smoked pot at some stage anyway? Probably very few. In fact the number of pot-smokers on campuses in New Zealand is nowhere particularly great. But one doesn't doesn't have to be a pervert to know that the state of sex education in schools is so outdated as to precede even the reign of Queen Victoria. Nor does one need to be a member of the Communist Party to presume to question the activities of New Zealand's Security Service.

It is the violent reaction of New Zealanders to suggestions of change which should indicate to students just how important it is to take up social cudgels on behalf of depressed universities and in defiance of intransigent laws wherever they occur. This reaction appears in the pages of the Dominion every morning — and not simply in the letters to the Editor column either. "The Rev. Borrie described your excellent Editorial on race relations as scurrilous. I thought it gave some lucid and good middle-of-the-road advice to an organisation professing to be Christian in intent, yet determined to promote racial upheaval, and bloodshed in this more than liberal country".

Robin Blackburn, at least, would have laughed. If there was one thing which his visit here has done for us, it is to make more people aware of the social injustice crying for attention in our own back-yard. To many of our liberal student community, Blackburn was "Good stuff, but it hardly applies here of course". But it does. A visit to Ponsonby or Albert Park or the Intercontinental Hotel during the Agnew visit would show this. So would a perusal of our restrictive immigration legislation or an evaluation of New Zealand's role in he South Pacific where we grant political independence while imposing our own economic vice. And if things were really [unclear: ad], one could read Hansard and see what Mr Grieve had to say about homosexuals, now the Prime Minister was repulsed by the thought of a contraceptive vending matching, and compare the comments made about Manapouri by the Labour Party in 1960 and in 1970.

They're there all right. The underlying attitudes of the New Zealand Joe Hunt which are fast turning this country into a fool's paradise. It is these attitudes which we, the student community, must accept or reject: there is no middle course. Either we drown in the deep waters of indifference which, like Manapouri, the Government would seek to raise, or we can turn what is now a trickle into a flood which will break the dam.

The two issues which in 1970 are going to take precedence in the minds of many concerned for New Zealand's future are race and censorship. Students avoid these issues only at the price of strengthening the intolerant hand of the conservative mass As a crucial aspect of both these issues, the opposition to Muldoonism in educational planning is one university administrators, teachers and students alike must relentlessly continue to lead. And there will be other causes. The drug scene is one we cannot ignore. The Blake-Palmer report on drug abuse and drug dependency in New Zealand "does not recommend any change in the penal provisions relating to drug offences. It considers them enlightened in the penalties provided..........." At Canterbury a drug offender will not only be maltreated by the Courts but is now threatened with immediate expulsion from the University.

Gradually the injustices imposed upon society (and us!) by an unenlightened establishment become clear. At this point (hopefully) NZUSA comes into the picture. As Gerard Curry said in Salient on February 18, NZUSA is potentially a highly effective political pressure group. Yet too often too little happens. It is not necessarily important that something must always happen. It is not for NZUSA to take up the cause of every would-be-Jesusfigure and do homage. Rather NZUSA, with the students of New Zealand, can concentrate on two or three issues which with balanced enthusiasm and restraint we can impressively place before the people of New Zealand.

But if nothing does happen, if students are inactive, in effect something has happened: our vote has gone to the status quo by default. The issues which lie before us are clear. Only our decision is uncertain. If local student leaders and the students they represent can write in open cause against what is wrong in the established order, then perhaps the changes which reformers imagine can begin to occur.