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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 6. 4th April 1973
Another contribution we wouldn't print
Another contribution we wouldn't print
Sirs,
In the March 14 issue of Salient you boast about the amount of copy of mine you have rejected (Page 12). However, you failed to volunteer any more information on the matter, so I thought I would fill in a few details for your readers.
It is not just the copy I have submitted to you which has been rejected; everything Young Socialists Club members have submitted to you for publication this year has been rejected. The total now comes to four articles — one for each issue of Salient which has been published this year.
Did you reject these articles on the grounds of length, or on the grounds that you had too much copy for each issue? No, you made it clear that you rejected everyone of them on the grounds of its content.
Did you allow us to reply to an unsigned article which attacked YS Club in your March 7 issue? No, you told us that our reply was 'lies'.
Do you believe in the right of ail groups on campus to explain their views through the pages of Salient? It appears not. In fact you showed your real colours when you declared 'there is no room' for articles of mine in Salient (March 14).
Apparently YS Club members are not the only ones who have been sickened by your demagogy. The recent rash of letters which have appeared in your Letters Column indicate that other students are also beginning to sec through your 'radical' posturing. This is not surprising. Students are not slow to identify and condemn any anti-democratic action by their 'leaders'.
After all, this issue really reduces itself to one of democratic rights. YS Club is not demanding that you give up your political ideas (whatever they really are); it is not demanding that Salient become a mouth-piece for the politics of YS Club. It is railing a very simple demand: that YS Club members be given the same right as others to explain their ideas to students through the pages of Salient. Up to now you have consciously denied us that right but from now on it might be advisable if you start extending this right to us.
Peter Rotherham,
Co-ordinator, Wellington Young Socialists.(Mr Rotherham fails to explain where he derived the notion of his right to space in Salient. Editors of Salient are appointed on the understanding that they have complete discretion as to what they publish. If students want a paper that is edited rather than collated they have to expect that some copy will be rejected on the grounds of its content. Mr Rotherham's contributions were like political advertisements and were full of factual errors. We would be happy to point these errors out at any public meeting, but we do not want a long haggling debate in Salient — Eds.)