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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 3 18 March 1970

We Were Misled

We Were Misled

The University Council has bent over backwards to placate the dissatisfaction fostered by Students' Association Council representative, Bill Logan. There can be little doubt that the Council is determined to ensure that justice can be seen to be done to students facing exclusion.

Mr Logan has found that many students support, on reasonable grounds, his claim that an excluded student ought to be able to appeal, in person, to the highest committee considering appeals against exclusion and that student representation on that Committee should be provided for.

At the same time Mr Logan's Memorandum for Members of the Students' Association outlining the 1970 exclusion procedures was lamentably misleading.

The impression given in that memorandum was that only 49 students appealed against exclusion, that these appeals were considered by the Academic Committee of the Professorial Board with a callous indifference to personal problems affecting student achievement, and that a sub-committee of the University Council bureaucratically rubber-stamped the Academic Committee's recommendations.

Why were students not told that only 31 out of 232 appeals were not upheld? Why did Mr Logan not explain that 183 appeals were upheld by Faculty Deans, and that every excluded student has a right to personally appeal to his Dean or Head of Department?

Was Mr Logan claiming that some of the 31 finally excluded students deserved re-admission? In his note to the Council he said "It seemed to me at least arguable that in each of the four rejected appeals that we discussed there were matters that deserved further attention." If that were so why did he tell the Council meeting that he was personally completely unqualified to judge whether these students were worthy to be allowed to return to university? And why did he not reply to Mr Phelps' comment that he had no evidence that any of the students that were excluded deserved to get back?

Had he done his homework, Mr Logan might not have told students that he was "sure that the hearing of appeals was not conducted carefully this year." Nor would he have had to finish up expressing no opposition to a motion of Council describing as "conscientious" the manner in which the Academic Committee considered appeals by students against exclusion.

Exclusion is indeed a serious business, Mr Logan. So also, is the circulation by a student representative on the Council of misleadingly scant information on Council business, and the crude parodying of University procedures. The gain of two further representatives on the appeals committee may, in the long run, be too small a reward to cover the gap in the credibility of at least one student representative on the Council.