Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University, Wellington Vol. 24, No. 6. 1961.
[Let's Face It]
People! You are at university now. Let's forget that you're a bunch of isolated, unsophisticated New Zealanders. Alright—so you have been brought up to exhibit the mannerisms and accept the ethic of an archly conservative middle class Victorian age culture. Does this mean you have to accept this way of life? Accept its isolationism, its self righteousness, its mental sloth?
And you believe you're civilised, you're well educated and broad-minded, you're mentally and physically ranked with the best in the world.
Ignorant cant!
Wake up and take a look at yourselves. You are well fed. Stuffed and bloated with New Zealand self-righteousness and insularity.
You're at university now. Not night tech. Not the Victoria Training College For Memorisation Of Textbooks And Granting Of Entrance Tickets To Cushy And Regularly Paying Jobs.
Now is the time to take a mental purgative. For just a brief period of your lives you have an opportunity to Think. Why just calmly accept the ideals and ambitions that are passively stuffed into your heads by parents, schools and press?
Listen people, listen! Gather up the glad news and start shouting it out. You Can Plan Your Own Lives!
Sure, you can settle for a reasonable income, many the girl next door, and all that. But this is not the only ambition going the rounds.
Start now, you 17-year-old sophisticated freshers, you jaded and world-weary part-timers.
First: you want to learn more about the world and the peoples in it. Do you realise that here in this university are people from Canada, Sarawak, Latvia, Malaya, Borneo, Ceylon, Australia, Cook Islands, Samoa. to marry a woman doctor or a woman lawyer or a woman executive."
All these opinions show that women graduates see many disadvantages deriving from their university education. Many feel it would have been better if they had never attempted to invade the professional world.