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Thirty-one candidates are standing in next week's elections for seven vacant positions on the Executive.
Two positions were filled unopposed: the Association's Treasurer in 1971 will be Richard Greenfield and this year's Cultural Affairs Officer, Graeme Nesbitt, will continue in that position next year.
A feature of the campaign for the seven vacant Executive positions is the existence of two 'tickets' or parties.
'Rat' or the 'Radical Activists' Ticket', led by former Salient Editor and Council representative Bill Logan, promises to "lead the Association in a more radical direction". "Soap" or 'Surrealistic Operation Action Party', led by Drama Society Vice-President Roy Middleton, "spells the end of personalised attacks between bickering student leaders."
The new position of NZUSA Liaison Officer, instituted by an SGM on 13 July, is the object of a three-way fight.
The election will be held next Tuesday and Wednesday. Vote you bastards.
About three hundred demonstrators marched from the University on 17 July as part of the nation-wide Mobilisation against the war in Indo-China.
This followed a concert in the Student Union Building and an address by Andrew Pulley, a 19-year-old American anti-war activist.
The marchers first proceeded to Marion Street, near the Mall, where they were joined by members of the public. At this point it was decided by a show of hands that there would be no chanting.
At this point, the marchers numbered about 600. They walked in silence to the South Vietnamese Embassy in Panama Street. At the Embassy, telegrams of support from Mr O'Brien, Labour MP for Island Bay and Mr Young, Labour MP for Hutt, were read by Bill Logan.
The demonstrators then marched to the American Embassy in Customhouse Quay where further telegrams, including one from Mrs. Tirakatene-Sullivan, were read by NZUSA President, Paul Grocott.
When the marchers finally arrived at the Town Hall they were entertained by Simon and the Mammals. Conrad Bollinger, a lecturer in English at Victoria, introduced the first speaker, the Reverend Don Borrie. Mr Borrie had just returned to New Zealand from a visit to South Vietnam. He detailed some of the findings which he and his companions had made during their visit (see other story).
A representative from the Secondary Schools Vietnam Committee then spoke, arguing that money spent on New Zealand's Vietnam commitments could be better spent on education
Mr Harry Slingsby, author of The Rape of Vietnam, then outlined the history of the Vietnam conflict.
Two other speakers, Paul Grocott and Bob Smith, Vice-President of the Wellington Watersiders' Union, also addressed the gathering of demonstrators and onlookers.
The final speaker was Andrew Pulley. He said that the Vietnam war was "a revolution against imperialism." Mr Pulley said that opposition to the conflict is growing in the United States and that the American Government was "going to have to realise it unless they wanted red flags flying over Washington."
The student newspaper exchange scheme-curtailed by the Executive in May-has been re-established.
On 12 July the Executive agreed that, in the light of an improvement in the Association's finances, the earlier decision would be revoked.
Students are to continue to be unrepresented on the Academic Committee of the Professorial Board.
This was decided by the Joint Committee of the Council, Professorial Board, and Students' Association on 6 July.
Dr Taylor, the Vice-Chancellor, said that since the question of Exclusion had been taken away from the Academic Committee there was now no need for student representation on it.
Margaret Bryson pointed out that in the past matters have gone to the Academic Committee which concerned students. She wondered how real the safeguard was that the Academic Committee deals only with Academic matters.
The Academic Committee is responsible for Ad Eundem admissions and for interpretation of regulations.
A decision on the question of student participation in academic appointments has been deferred by the Joint Committee of the Council, the Professorial Board and the Students' Association until the next meeting of the Committee.
Student representation was opposed by a Professorial Board representative, Dr T.H. Beaglehole, and by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr D.B.C. Taylor, and was supported by Council representative Denis Phelps and by Margaret Bryson, representing the Students' Association.
Dr Beaglehole said that "senior staff members are often unaware of how their junior members perform in the eyes of students," He said that, while he was opposed to student representation on appointment committees, he felt the views of students should be sought when a staff member within the university applies for a position.
Dr Taylor said that applicants may be sensitive to being interviewed by academic inferiors. Applicants, he said, expect to be evaluated by superiors. He felt that students should only take part in the appointment process at the interview stage.
Margaret Bryson said that once a person is appointed he is "there to stay." The student has a natural interest in safeguarding his own interests, she said.
Denis Phelps said that students have an interest in appointments. "Not enough emphasis is placed on teaching skills," he said. Student representatives would ensure that attention was paid to teaching ability.
Student's representative Colin Knox attacked the suggestion that students should be consulted at departmental level on the subject of staff appointments. "In some departments," he said, "student participation is non-existent."
Mr Knox said that while "there may be some consultation between Honours students and staff, the wishes of under-graduates are not taken into account."
"The academic staff," Mr Knox continued, "appear to feel a need for mutual protection against what they consider to be uneducated opinion. They feel it is not done for one academic to criticise another," he said.
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
The Student Representative Council will not be required to confirm the appointment of the Editor of Salient.
The Constitution was amended to this effect at a Special General Meeting of the Students' Association on Monday 13 July.
The motion was proposed by Mr G. Collins who said that the Publications Board appoints someone who is technically competent to fill the position, and the SRC can remove him if they disapprove of his political views. He pointed out that there are six SRC representatives on the Publication? Board, but if the Editor has the full backing of the SRC he can fall back on it for political support.
The motion was carried by 34 voters to 26.
• • • • • • • •
A student has been fined ten dollars for misconduct at the Graduation Ball on 6 May.
Mr Peter Barker, a law student, appeared before the Student Union Management Committee on 13 July on charges of misconduct at the Ball. Appearing as counsel for Barker were Messrs P.R. Kyle and R. Green.
The - Management Commit unanimously found that Baker "was reluctant to leave the Graduation Ball on 6 May after being asked to do so and did engage in some amount of argument during the incident and that this conjunction with his entering the Ground Floor Cafeteria during the Ball through a window as conceded by him in evidence and by his counsel, constituted misconduct in terms of the disciplinary powers of the Student Union Management Committee."
It appears that one thing the author of your article in Salient regarding the Exclusive Brethren failed to understand, was the fact that many of the beliefs upheld by the Exclusives are not peculiar to them alone, but are basic, fundamental truths of the whole of Christianity. By attacking them, the author is attacking Christianity itself. This is something that no truly born-again believer, be his denomination Baptist, Anglican or Brethren, can suffer.
Christ's teaching regarding the Womans subjection to the Man, Women teaching in the Church, and prayer and fasting is not teaching for the benefit of Exclusives alone, but for all followers of Christ. Why then, attack only Exclusives for this? It isn't their teaching, it's Christ's teaching. It is not held merely by the Exclusive Brethren alone, but by all Christians everywhere.
I quote from the Article: "There is, in most Exclusives, an unshakeable conviction in the After-Life and Day of Judgement." Is this conviction of an After-Life and Day of Judgement held only by Exclusives? Most definitely it is not. The fact that there is an After-Life and a Day of Judgement is fundamental to the whole of Christian belief. If it is true that man is born, and lives his life here on earth, and then just returns to dust again, what is the purpose of his living? Why has man even got a conscience towards God? And most important of all, why was it necessary for the Son of God to become man and die at the hands of men for our sins? Take away God and one takes away the purpose of Man's existence. Christ's coming is more than a belief, it is a fact. We know not the day nor the hour, but we know it will come. The longer we wait, the closer is His return. "A day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness, but is long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (II Peter, 3 v 8-9.)
I have read with great distaste Cecily Pinker's article on so-called Exclusive Brethren. My object in writing is two-fold: I wish for my own part, and I know on behalf of the great majority of those who for conscience sake have left the Exclusive Brethren, to dissociate myself and them entirely from the sentiments expressed in this deplorable article.
Next I would point out that when carefully studied this article is not an attack on Exclusive Brethren at all, but on Christianity itself—on much that is held in reverence by Christians in many denominations. Indeed the Bible itself is ridiculed and Miss Pinker declares, as plainly as she may, that she is not a Christian.
Furthermore, this article is full of inaccuracies, contradictions, uninformed criticism, and vitriolic effusion. The entire reason underlying the Brethren's sad decline has been entirely missed.
I do not know Miss Pinker personally, and bear her no ill-will, but I much regret her action in writing this article and yours in giving so large a space to it.
Thank you for yet another worthwhile issue of Salient. Your series of long articles on such things as pop music, minor political parties and, now, the Exclusive Brethren is proving informative and entertaining.
I would like in particular to compliment Cecily Pinker on her excellent article on the Exclusive Brethren, I remember the general press barrage against the sect around
I am sorry I did not know of your intention to publish my talk to the A.U.T. seminar, since I should have been glad of the opportunity to correct an error in the cyclostyled text.
In it (third paragraph of the Salient version), reference was made to the "demise of Bologna". The University of Bologna has not perished of course (and indeed has a long and distinguished history). What perished was the early structure in which the students elected their own governing body. I apologise for failing to note that I had dropped a line of the manuscript in transcribing to the final draft. The only extenuating circumstances in this piece of carelessness is the fact that the remark was purely parenthetical and is unimportant to the development of my main argument.
May I correct some points in Denis Smalley's review of the recording of Earth and Sky:
Earth and Sky and four more are projected. Seven may not be many but it is certainly several.
Mr Smalley can have had little experience of working with children if he thinks that spontaneity could be maintained over a 2-day recording session.
Everyone else who has heard the discs, including Miss McLeod, has commented on the effectiveness of the stereo. Perhaps Mr Smalley's radiogram needs attention?
Finally I can assure composers that, should we record their works, they will not necessarily need to be photographed with the Queen and it will certainly not be mentioned in any biography, just as it was not in Miss McLeod's.
Stick to the facts, Mr Smalley. Good journalism does not rely on cheap supposition but on informed comment.
Your reporter gave a reasonably full account of the Marijuana Seminar held in the Student Union. However, I wish to correct some errors and omissions in the account of the "drug which was similar to marijuana and was freely available in New Zealand." In fact, Dr Geiringer spoke of a substance, freely available in New Zealand, which could produce all the effects of marijuana. He gave a fuller list of its properties than appeared in your report—as well as causing hallucinations, being approdisiac, leading to cancer and being potentially lethal, he also said that the substance led to drinking and was psychologically addictive.
Your reporter's biggest mistake was in parenthesis "the drug referred to is understood to be nutmeg." In fact, I checked with Dr Geiringer on my analysis of what he had described, and he said that I was quite right. This dangerous hallucinogenic substance is, of course, sunshine.
It is time to reassess the demonstration as a tool and to examine our own ideas and methods of political action.
The demonstration is a tool with two interpenetrating uses. It is used firstly to inform the public about a cause, for example the Tour, or the War. This information is heavily laced with polemic and rhetoric to describe our stand, and persuade the public to adopt the same stand, and to take whatever action is required of this stand, withdrawing troops or Fergie as the case may be. This is the second or major raison d'etre of a demonstration. I will examine the Mobilisation of 17 July to see how efficient it was in these areas.
An estimated six hundred people marched for two hours on 17 July. In the afternoon we had a teach-in, which said the same things as were said before, to the same people as heard them before. Although these things are important, and I agree with the thoughts expressed, if not the verbal form they assumed, the whole exercise was futile, since nobody new heard anything, and for those who were there it was at once a gigantic verbal masturbation and a time consumer which required little or no thought. I will return to this point later.
The teach-in was followed by a visiting speaker whose rhetoric was out of the usual mould. Not even the questions elucidated anything new, since they mostly consisted of a statement by the questioner, prefaced with "Would you agree that . . ."
Then a concert. Cynics would say that this is the modern equivalent of martial music to get the troops out, or an attraction to boost numbers, or to keep the people there between 3 and 5. I don't know what its justification was, but it was enjoyable, I grant you.
Now the march. Forgetting those who marched because they had nothing better to do on a Friday night, the marchers were sincere, peaceful, well-organised and there were lots of banners and leaflets. But the public must be getting enured to demo's. They paid scant attention to the march, and only a trivial number came to the Town Hall to hear the speeches. I admit that I listened for only a few moments it sounded like the ninety-ninth playing of a cracked record. The press gave no real coverage of the march. The Dominion devoted four column inches to the demo, giving the number marching with a picture and what happened, and a further four column inches to the numbers marching elsewhere. No debate about the War issue, no opinion, no facts. And yet this was a good demonstration. Most would agree that it was one of the best this year, avoiding arrests and scuffles which detract from the point of the demonstration. So the only people to get anything out of the march were the marchers. So the march was a failure—it informed nobody, it persuaded nobody. The march was not just for the sake of marching even though it looked like it to some observers.
The reason the marches no longer lead to any debate about the issues outside the 'marching fraternity' is that the marches have nothing positive to offer in place of the ideas they criticise. The four demonstrations had something positive to offer-no tour and a positive effect on South Africa. These demonstrations had much more impact on the ideas of the public, even though they were partly negated by the violence which accompanied them. The only causes and ideologies which have ever swept their opponents out of power are those which had a fully thought out and publicised alternative approach (withdrawing troops is a first step—but what to do with the vacuum so formed), or those which were able to win a civil war against their opponents. We have seen that one eruption of violence by marchers leads to two by the establishment's forces, so the second alternative is not open to us on practical grounds, to say nothing of its philosophical inadequaces.
Perhaps it is unfashionable but, I think, none the less true, that truth is more closely approached alone, in contemplation and quiet thought in a library than in Willis Street on a Friday night, shouting your lungs out like six hundred sheep.
At a Special General Meeting of the Students' Association on Monday 13 July, a motion "that the Executive no longer enjoys the confidence of the members of the Victoria University Students' Association" was lost by 122 votes to 219.
The motion was proposed by Mr McCaffery who said the main point of dissatisfaction with the Executive was that it was too Left-wing. Miss Bryson was accused of swearing at SRC meeting, and the Executive criticised for making political statements (as over the All Black Tour of South Africa, for example), and for its Left-wing sex campaign. Mr. emphasised that it was not "a frivolous or vexatious motion".
Other criticisms were those of biased reporting about the Executive's nominee on the Publications Board (Simon Arnold was appointed when the Treasurer was not present), and that the results of the questionnaires put out in the Executive were loaded to give favourable left-wing results. "The decisions of the Executive should represent a cross-section of the whole community rather than being an instrument of personal opinion", said Mr Beswick.
There was criticism of the Executive's action over the "student strike" held at the end of last term. They were alleged to have said it was held it was held because of the invasion of Cambodia in American troops, not because of the deaths of four students at Kent State University. Mr Phelps was criticised for the disciplinary regulations he has proposed to the Management Committee.
Mr. Neil Wright was given speaking rights. He said that the financial policy of the Executive was totally disproportionate, as regards spending on sports as opposed to cultural affairs. Mr Anastasiou objected to the Executive's action during Capping week (in condoning the placing of a car in (able Car Lane). He then accused the Executive of being "hypocritical, mediocre, sly, guileful, conniving".
Mr Wright said he was dissatisfied with the way the Executive handled finance, but he did not consider there was justification for electing a new Executive. Other grounds for criticism were the Miss Victoria Contest and the charity campaign during Procesh.
Mr Owen Gager, when asked to speak for the motion, likened the situation to that of the Russian Resolution. He said there was much revolutionary speech but no revolutionary action. A temporary compromise, under Miss Bryson's Presidency, would make for an easier transition to the Resolution.
Mr Peter Barker, who was instrumental in suggesting the motion simply said that it was a statement of what people wanted from the University.
There were speakers who supported the Executive, most of whom complained that the reasons given were insufficient for throwing them out. One speaker said, "the I Executive has acted with complete sincerity and integrity for the best for student at Victoria. Small disagreements are inevitable." Mr Buller pointed out that only twice before had a motion of no confidence in the Executive gone through. "Rarely has an Executive enjoyed such good public relations," he said. "There are overwhelming reasons for their continuity and support."
Certain members of the Executive spoke. "I've never heard such a load of shit in all my life," said Denis Phelps, Secertary, when criticised for the disciplinary regulations. Mr Nesbitt said that policies were made by the Student Representative Council, not the Executive. "You're too damn lazy to come along here and vote." he said; "No one here has substantiated an argument against the Executive and I challenge anyone to get up and say why we shouldn't have your confidence."
"I am not trying to make any excuses for what we've done," said Miss Bryson, President of the Students' Association. "I believe in everything that I and the Executive base done this year."
In his right of reply, Mr McCaffery again emphasised the seriousness of the motion. He said, "If a vote of no confidence were passed for such trivial reasons it would not be in the best interests of the students."
About 600 people attended.
"If you are stopped by a cop you are probably best advised to give your name and address and any official document that you are obliged to carry, like a drivers licence."
This was the advice given by Law Faculty member Rodger Clark at a Civil Liberties discussion held recently.
"Generally the Police do not have to identify themselves, but you could probably get one to if you asked," he said. "An exception is under the Narcotics act, where the officer is bound to identify himself."
Mr Clark discussed a recent Christchurch case where a demonstrator had refused to have his fingerprints taken, claiming that they were not necessary to identify him as Section 57 of the Police Offences Act states.
Mr. Evans, SM. had upheld this view and the demonstrator was acquitted, although the police through the Crown Law Office were appealing the case.
A second Teach-in in the current Indo-China series was held on Thursday, 9 July. Speakers included Mr Thomson, Minister of Defence, the Reverend Father T. Peterson, Rod Alley, Political Science Lecturer at Victoria, and John Kennedy, Editor of the Catholic magazine Tablet.
Mr Thomson and Mr Kennedy spoke supporting New Zealand's military involvement in South-East Asia; Father Peterson and Mr Alley opposed our participation.
The Rev. T. Peterson said he did not aim to speak in a political capacity, but to criticise New Zealand's involvement in Vietnam from a Christian point of view and to denounce the myths of diabolical communism and the 'Yellow Peril' He said "Let's not justify butchers by giving it the vestments humanist Christian aid. Lest we forget, the majority of suffering in the world is inflicted upon other people by our way of life."
Mr Thomson discussed the history of New Zealand's defence activity and the present Government's "fully rehearsed defence policy." He said that New Zealand did not want isolation, but did want to enter into a relationship with South-East Asian states South-East Asia, he said, was a vital part of the world. He described forces sent to the area as acting, as part of a collective security organisation against communist aggression. The Vietnam war was "an exciting challenge for the peoples of South-East Asia." Mr Thomson continued: "The problem of communism is only one of the problems of S.E. Asia. Thank goodness the United States' interests run so parallel to those of New Zealand."
Rod Alley commented on Mr Thomson's speech, saying that it had said nothing about the Government's present or future policy in South-East Asia. He said that the crisis in Cambodia was more important than any development to date, and that New Zealand's presence in Vietnam was now unanswerable. Public opinion has had some effect, but an independent stance must be taken up by New Zealand regarding Indo-China.
Mr Kennedy said that Cambodia was the key to the situation in Indo-China. He predicted that military operations would continue there because they were begun too late to achieve their desired effect. He said that he was aware of American mistakes and that the Americans would have to leave South Vietnam. He said that he expected a major Communist offensive in Laos at the end of this sear and that the aim of North Vietnam is the domination of all Indo-China.
A motion "that VUWSA enter into full membership of the proposed autonomous New Zealand Universities Arts Council and accept the 1970 levy of 18 cents per student" was passed at the Special General Meeting held on Monday 13 July.
Membership of NZUAC, non-autonomous at present, would require a levy of 6c per student. Membership of the proposed autonomous Council would require the larger levy of $5,000 per year, but would provide a cultural affairs newspaper and an Arts Festival subsidy, said Cultural Affairs Offices Graeme Nesbitt.
The sixty-fourth Annual Plunket Medal Oratory Contest has been won by Ml H.S. Hancock, a student at Victoria.
The contest was held in the Concert Chambers at the Wellington Town Hall on 10 July.
The Subject of Mr Hancock's oration was Lyndon Johnson. Mr Hancock said that Johnson had been used as a scapegoat by those opposing the Vietnam War. He said that Johnson's critics, in damning him as a war monger, had ignored his social and rights legislation.
Second equal were Mr M. J. Montague and Mr Gerard Curry, who spoke on Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler respectively.
"Students in Saigon who do not pass their exams are drafted into the army. Students who protest are taken to the front and used as unarmed messengers or decoys."
This statement was made by Mr Brian Brooks, a senior lecturer in law at Auckland University at a press conference at Wellington Airport on 14 July.
Mr Brooks is one of a group of three New Zealanders who have recently returned from a fact finding visit to South Vietnam. The other two are Rev. D. Borne, General Secretary for the New Zealand Student Christian Movement, and Mr T. Dyce, past-President of the University Catholic Society.
Elaborating on his statement Mr Brooks said that students find it hard to pass exams as they have to serve two months of military training during the year. "Students who protest are either drafted or put in Con Son prison," he said.
Rev. Don Borrie claimed that the police use a "secret weapon" in order to break up demonstrations. "They fire a cylindric aluminium tube at the demonstrators. The tube skids across the ground for about thirty yards and then explodes, often breaking demonstrators legs," he said. He said that the Saigon police use the strongest tear gas in existence.
Mr Dyce said that students are tried by military field courts, with no jury, counsel, or right of appeal. "These courts have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but the ruling is ignored by the Saigon government."
Mr Dyce went on to say that one student, who had written, in the Government's opinion, a subversive song, was given five months' hard labour.
The party endeavoured to visit Con Son prison (which is the prison of the current tiger cage controversy) but their request to do so was refused consideration. The group did, however, meet people who had been detained in 'tiger cages' and the group was certain that such cages exist.
Mr Brooks said that interviews in Saigon were arranged for them by the fellowship of Reconciliation, members of which are engaged in aid work in South Vietnam and have formed close links with Buddhist and University leaders there.
"People who we interviewed can't be identified as we would jeopardise their existence." he said.
The three claimed they had been followed by secret police during their week in South Vietnam. Their hotel, they said, was also watched, and on one occasion the people they were going to interview failed to turn up as they had been "scared off" by the presence of secret police outside the hotel. There were also indications that their hotel room was bugged.
Mr Brooks said that the people interviewed consisted of a broad spectrum of occupations, and that they did not hold polarized opinions. "There is an important middle group who want an end to the war and a return to a democratic form of government. Communism is a non-issue in South Vietnam," he said.
These middle people, continued Mr Brooks, include trade unionists, students, Buddhists, Catholics, lawyers and bankers.
Mr Brooks stated that "the economy of South Vietnam is shot—inflation has increased by 30%, and agricultural production has decreased by 50%. American aid is now the economy." He added that he did not see any evidence that American economic aid had been given to the people. "The housing problem is shocking," he said.
Mr Brooks also claimed that by the Constitution peace groups are unable to form a political party. By way of illustration he referred to a Buddhist lawyer who was a peace candidate at the last election. He was struck off the ballot roll and put in prison. He also heard of a case where a Catholic lawyer had been prevented from participating in the election because there were allegedly too many Catholic candidates.
Mr Dyce said he had interviewed the head of the Vietnamese Federation of Labour. Even though he was a Government appointee and supporter of the war he had admitted "that torture was very bad, and that the Government had failed to obtain the support of the people."
Mr Dyce said he was struck by the fact that the "ordinary people loathe the American presence in South Vietnam. I spoke to some peasants who were working in a paddy field. They mistook me for an American and told me to go back and tell my fellow countrymen to get their troops out of Vietnam," he said.
Mr Dyce maintained that some students had joined the NLF rather than be drafted. But he added that Saigon students generally "don't want to be forced into any camp, and they regard themselves as Vietnamese and not Communists, as Ambassador Bunker and the Saigon Government claims." He claimed that there is a complete mixing of North and South Vietnamese in South Vietnam, and that many of the NLF are South Vietnamese people.
At the conference a press statement was read out. Some of the claims made in the statement were:
There is a wide range of Vietnamese people who have a passionate desire for peace and who are opposed to the foreign presence in their country. There is widespread opposition to the Saigon Government. The Vietnamese resent being forced to fight Vietnamese. There is a campaign of repression on the part of the Saigon Government and the Americans. Saigon is a police state; at the moment there are 89,000 police and provision has been made for 122,000 by the end of the year. There are serious infringements of human rights in South Vietnam: any newspaper that attempts to speak out against the Thieu Government is confiscated. Political suspects can be imprisoned without trial for up to two years and Police have tortured students who had protested against the Government and forced them to sign statements admitting that they were communists. All those who oppose the Saigon Government are branded as communists. Universities enjoy no autonomy: police can raid them whenever they like. Student protesters are drafted into the army or imprisoned. All protest is illegal. The quest for peace has united traditional rival groups. Catholic priests, Buddhist monks have formed up with the students to form an anti-war coalition.
A leading New Zealand potter says that readily available clay and a marked increase in the number of shops selling handcrafted goods are responsible for an "explosion" in the number of potters here.
Doreen Blumhardt, a Training College lecturer, told a small audience on 9 July that "New Zealand is one of the countries of the world which is richest in clay suitable for pot-making."
"Now there are about forty full-time potters here. About ten or fifteen years ago there were none," said Miss Blumhardt. "We are an ingenious and vigorous people and our potters' influence springs directly from our environment."
Miss Blumhardt showed a series of slides to demonstrate "the influence trail that we can trace very clearly from China through Korea and Thailand." She also showed slides New Zealand scenery to illustrate "shape, texture, line, colour, mood and contrast." Various pots were displayed to show how each of these elements were represented in New Zealand pottery.
Honorarium for Chairman of Social Committee
The Chairman of the Student Representative Council's Social Committee is to receive $50 from 1970.
This was the effect of a motion passed at the Special General Meeting on Monday 13 July.
The motion was in accordance with the Executive's policy of honoraria, said Mr Knox, Vice-President of the Association. The Social Controller should be appointed by the Executive and be responsible to it, he said.
About thirty students attended a lecture on 'New Zealand's Political and Economic Independence' on 7 July.
The lecture, the final in the Winter Term series, was delivered by Bruce Brown, Director of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs.
Mr Brown outlined the development of New Zealand's foreign policy machinery from the establishment of the Foreign Affairs Office in 1945. New Zealand's 'Declaration of Independence' could well be regarded, he said, as a telegram sent in 1942 which recognised clearly the diminishing role of the United Kingdom in New Zealand's foreign policy. Mr Brown quoted a portion of the telegram which concluded as follows: We feel that we must have an eye, an ear and a voice wherever decisions affecting New Zealand are made."
Mr Brown said that about 90% of New Zealand's exports go to six destinations. Most of our trade was therefore confined to a large Western trading block. "A number of other altitudes of mind and assumptions of interests" are attendant upon trade relations," he said.
"We are economically vulnerable, and will be more so over the next ten years than we've been since the Thirties. We are politically independent but we are not non-aligned. I would distinguish between 'non-alignment' and 'independence' although these terms are often regarded as contradictory." Mr Brown suggested that New Zealand Governments "Can exercise more or less independence according to the disposition of the Government concerned or its interest in a particular problem."
In reply to a question, Mr Brown said he thought it was logical in terms of Seato commitments that members of the Organisation should involve themselves in the Vietnam War. The case of Cambodia threw up some rather interesting pointers to the attitude of Seato powers to involvement in similar wars to Vietnam. This attitude, said Mr Brown, was not a very enthusiastic one. He said that the countries involved in the Vietnam War had been "politically over-committed" and would not wish to pursue a similar policy in the future.
Mr Brown said that, insofar as anyone 'calls the tune' in Seato, the Americans have a clear leadership. However, the political costs of the Vietnam War had to be met by all Seato members. He said that the War had divided society in Australia and in New Zealand to an extent that he had not seen before.
Political Science lecturer Roderic Alley asked Mr Brown about the impact of public opinion upon foreign policy. Mr Brown said there was certainly a role for public opinion in the shaping of foreign policy-even if that role was only one of restraint. He said public opinion was already a powerful factor in foreign policy although it might from time to time seem that this was not the case.
A student member of the Professorial Board is to be a member of the Professorial Board Standing Committee.
This was decided by the Joint Committee of the Council, Professorial Board and Students' Association on 6 July. The Standing Committee meets "when there is urgent business not requiring the attendance of all members of the Board."
What are the main achievements of your career, such as it is so far?
It's hard to actually map out a list of achievements, you know, and say we've done this, we've done that. The protest movement's such an intangible thing that in actual fact it's the minor aspects that / consider to be terrific achievements in the protest movement. There are instances like Clifford's visit and him being impressed by the demonstrations in Wellington so much that in his memoirs he said that he had changed his mind about the War. Even though I wasn't at this demonstration, I feel part of this protest movement. Albert Park was one of the most tangible achievements in the protest movement for civil rights and we actually changed the by-law in four weeks. But I think that above that were specific instances such as members of the Hells Angels organising a sack race. Old people would come along who were obviously against you, but wanted to hear what these beardies have to say anyway. Now there is a sort of communications link-up that has had ten thousand people in the park for no commercial reason. No-one's making any money out of them; they just look at each other and talk and dance and do whatever they like. I'd say that Albert Park was one of the most successful protest events that I can recall.
When I asked you what your achievements were, you immediately described what the protest movements have achieved. What's your relation to protest movements?
I'm just a part of it. You know, I can't isolate myself from the protest movement. Because I'm So involved in it I feel a very strong part of it, and anything achieved anywhere, even when students protest in America, gives me a sense of victory. You see that as part of an international movement-of people against the war, even though their motives are fear of conscription and all the rest of it 1 still feel part of this international movement, of its new ideas and ideals.
You have spoken of yourself as a symbol of the protest movement. In what sense do you mean that?
I said this in court to deny that there were any orthodox forms of leadership in the protest movement. I wanted to deny that in the movement someone stands up at the front and says "follow me" and everyone blindly follows—which is my limited concept of leadership. But what I saw as symbols of the protest movement are people that are recognised as well-known protesters by a lot of young people. I used it more or less to explain to the Magistrate that a lot of people would be watching from all age groups to sec what would happen. Anyone in the protest movement could say they were a symbol of protest just as legitimately as I did. I wasn't trying to place myself above everyone—or saying I'm the supreme symbol—I just wanted to make it clear that what I did was a protest offence, and not a normal criminal offence.
You've been convicted several times and have had several court appearances. What is your attitude to the danger of an arrest?
These days, if you do carry protest forward as positively and as effectively as you can, being arrested is almost a by-product of demonstrating. Look at some of the charges demonstrators are arrested for—stopping on a footpath, having outstretched fingers, giving peace signs, linking arms. These are reasons why people get arrested and you can use them for propaganda and all the rest of it, or make issues of them in the court. But I just see being arrested as almost an inevitable pan of being an active protester, in the normal sense.
Wouldn't you say that the more that people heard of your getting convicted of things like distributing jelly beans to the Auckland City Council, the more they might feel that the whole law and order system was absurd?
I think it definitely does point this out. I think an even stronger case was the young girl in Auckland at the Agnew demonstrations. She went along with her boyfriend and he was arrested for waving a flag. The cops were making a rather severe job of arresting him—one policeman was hitting him in the face—and the girl was crying, but she strongly believed in love and peace, and she said to the policeman as he was hitting her boyfriend "I forgive you, I forgive you" and kissed him on the check. She was instantly arrested for assault. These factors came out in court. People can't help beginning to see, no matter however much prejudiced they might be towards protesters. When I got four months periodic detention, I was in with safe breakers, people who had been stealing cars, people who had been convicted of assault, assault and battery. And I was doing a similar length for giving away jelly beans and streamers. It does make people wonder what's going on. But I don't think that should be the prime objective. It's a separate issue—law and order and civil rights—from the main cause We should not get too sort of side—issued by police activity and by the judicial system. It is an important issue, but not the most important.
You've spoken-in an article in Guerilla—of the objective of the protest movement being the renaissance of New Zealand's national pride. Is this what you consider the main aim of the protest movement to be?
That's an objective, but I still wouldn't say that was a prime reason. I think that protesting has a lot of side effects, such as showing the world that there are some people in this country who are opposed to the All Black tour and showing the world that there are people in this country who are opposed to the war in Vietnam. There are vital issues at stake in protesting, but once again I don't think just sheer publicity as an issue in itself should be taken as the sold goal of the protest movement. We shouldn't be prepared to bow down too much to the Press Association or to the news media in making our protests.
What then would you think were the main objectives of the protest movement?
Well, I'm not speaking for anyone else and I hope that every individual protester would have his own motives or reasons for protesting. Mine are to try and communicate with people more directly. And not just through the news media, to the people who are listening and watching, because I think they get a very distorted view, but to actual people taking pan in the protests themselves and realising the significance of it. The protest movement of people rejecting war, of young people objecting to racism, is vital because of what's happening to our generation, what's happening to our world. People's attitudes are changing, and the sincerity now of hundreds of young people who really feel that the War is wrong and are prepared to act on it is a terrific achievement.
You've spoken of the protest movement as mainly young people. Do you sec this then as part of the youth revolt?
I don't like to limit it, I've often been quoted as saying "anyone over 30 should shoot themselves" and "it's the young people's world off" and all the rest of it but there are so many old people who have young minds and are prepared to listen, and there are so many young people who are totally intolerant and will never be prepared to listen. But why it's so important for young people and not even just people in their twenties, people of 15 and 16 — to become aware of political issues is that it is a young people's world. 50% of New Zealanders are under 27. It's virtually impossible to estimate, but rough calculations have been made that by
Would it be putting words into your mouth then to suggest that you see the protest movement as a movement of majority of young people against a minority of old people?
I'd agree with that, but not as a sole summing up of the protest movement. I'd say that that would be one aspect of the protest movement.
What would be the other aspects.
It's a combination of things When I said that I believe that it's young people, that's just my personal aspirations and hopes, but you can realise that there have been a multitude of effects and reactions and changes in society at all structures and levels, Just having, say, people like myself invited along to give talks after dinner at Lions Club meetings is a terrific achievement. And it's not enough just to say it's a revolt of the young people this is a real revolt for Lions Clubs—to have a dirty, jeaned, barefooted bloody lout come into one of their meetings and tell them what he thinks is wrong with them is a revolution. A terrific one. And it's an integral part of the protest movement. You can't say it's just young versus the old but I see that as a very important aspect.
Do you have any belief at all in the traditional forms of protest movement?
No. I see most of the old, or what I call the old, political beliefs—the Maoists, the Trotskyists, the Spartacists—as losing attention or attracting less and less of it. What the majority of young people are motivated by now isn't political participation within a set group, but a general and more humanitarian drive, or social protest. It's a desire for peace, a desire for racial harmony—just those sort of issues themselves, not within the context of a political dogma.
Would you describe your main ambition as trying to make other people act as individuals?
Well, I don't think you could say I've got any ambition in politics whatsoever, and you would only ask that question from a political point of view. I don't want everyone to be a copy of me, it would be a terrible world. I wouldn't even call myself an individualist, or anything like that. You know you get people who say "Ah ha, you don't believe in anything, you must be an anarchist" or "you must be an individualist" or anything like that. I'm not particularly set against groups, I'm not even in favour of the individualist role—I think it's terrific if people are participating in group movements I'm not saying my way is right, and it's only through the individual that we're going to bring about great change. I wouldn't promote my way as being way and I don't think people should. All I want to do is to provoke people to do something don't want to say "follow me" or even "follow my example." They might want to join PYM—and I'm not in that because I don't agree with them. But that might be their was I don't have any set feelings on how best to bring about change.
Highlights of this year's Arts Festival—held at Victoria for the first time since 1965—will probably be provided in the drama section and in the first public performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic work 'Hymnen'. The Festival will commence on Sunday, 16 August, and will end on Saturday, 22 August.
The Auckland University Drama Society is to present Bertolt Brecht's Edward II; Otago will present Edward Bond's Early Morning; Massey is to present John Spurling's Macrunes Guevara, and Victoria will present a series of one-act plays including Harold Pinter's The Basement and Samuel Beckett's Come and Go.
A public performance of Hymnen, a work of 122 minutes duration ("to be presented in total darkness and through 100 watt amplifiers) will highlight the concert music section of the Festival.
Other items in this section include lunch-hour concerts and three evening concerts. The Bach Choir, the University of Canterbury' Singers and the Victoria University Orchestra will perform at these concerts.
A new section this year will feature blues and/or rock bands from each university Wellington groups performing include Gutbucket, Capel Hopkins Blues Dredge and the ubiquitous Simon and the Mammals. Controller John Hannan promises "at least three concerts (including open air shows) and five workshop/lectures."
The film section of the festival will include the New Zealand premiere of Work is a Four-Letter Word, and such other commercial films as Marat/Sade, the original Frankenstein, How I Won the War, Little Shop of Horrors and Lord Lover Duck. Student films at the Festival include John Reid's First Revue Film 1970, Kevin Passmore's
In the folk music section, performing artists include Tamburlaine, Godot, the Mad Dog Jug, Jook and Washboard Hand, Pitt Ramsey. Alister and Allison Hulett and Jae Rennaut. Performers from each of the main universities are expected.
Other sections at the Festival will include bridge; chess; dance theatre; debating (for the Joynt Scroll); fine arts (including "an outdoor 'paint-in' with artists each painting a section of a large canvas"); an international concert; jazz; a law moot; literary (including several poetry readings, films and lectures); modern language drama (including Ardele, by Jean Anouilh, Der Jasager and der Neinsager by Bertolt Brecht and The Anniversary by Anton Chekhov); photograph) (including an exhibition by Australian universities); pooh (wherein the philosophy of A.A. Milne is propounded, where 'Pooh' is read, hunny is eaten, a pooh-Sticks contest is held and the North Pole is sought); and philosophy.
Arts Festival Controller Graeme Nesbitt said that he had been delighted with the response to his appeal for billets for Students from oilier universities coming into Wellington for the festival. "However, we need several hundred more billets," he Said,
Mr Nesbitt said that a feature of the administration of this year's Festival was the institution of a flat fee of $4 for entry to all activities, excluding social events.
"All overseas capital investment in New Zealand, or takeover bids, whether from within New Zealand or from overseas, should be the subject of the closest scrutiny by the public and the government."
This is the view of Mr W. Rowling M.P., who spoke to about fifty students on campus (on 8 July). Mr Rowling spoke on the subject: "New Zealand Industry Tomorrow—Who Will Own It?"
"Not, all investment from overseas is harmful, however," he said. "It can benefit an industry through economies of scale, better management, access to better research facilities, larger overseas markets, and the granting of licenses to New Zealand producers."
"Competition exists in name, but does it really exist in practice?" he asked. "As soon as one brewery put up its prices, the other one saw the need to as well."
He used the example of Shell-BP-Todd to show how overseas investment may benefit the economy. "Another example, notwithstanding Manapouri, is Comalco," he said.
"We should be careful to ensure that our economy does not develop into a duopoly," he said. "Already we have the situation where we have two breweries, two cement companies, two companies producing 90% of all processed food, and two major transport companies, especially in the field of containers."
Mr Rowling said that the problem was that too much overseas investment was coming into areas that did not need it, such as the timber industry "This sort of investment adds nothing to production and is therefore harmful to the economy," he said.
"A commonly used argument is that there is not enough capital in New Zealand to take the place of overseas investment. In
"There is also a reluctance for New Zealanders to take a part in overseas owned or partly owned companies," Mr Rowling said. "As a developing country this investment is necessary to the well-being of the economy."
"The day of the velvet glove has gone; particularly when someone punches you in the nose."—Mr E.S.F. Holland, National Party MP for Riccarton.
"The Faculty of Science at Victoria University needs a bomb under it."
This view was expressed by Physical Chemistry Professor J.W. Tomlinson at a recent Chemistry Society Meeting.
Professor Tomlinson said that it was "up to students to demand that the faculty restructure its courses".
At present, the Science faculty is considering restructuring the B.Sc. degree into 32 credits instead of 8 units, similar to a system working in many American Universities. Some departments, however, are reported to be worried that their subject will lose prestige and are holding up implementation of the new proposals.
"Throughout the world the subject is becoming more integrated, but at Victoria, Science is becoming more and more fragmented," said Professor Tomlinson. This, he said, was because too many people were interested only in their own particular field rather than in the subject as a whole.
"If the new degree structure is to be implemented there will have to be more co-operation between departments. The university will either move ahead or go back ten years students should be doing something about it." he said.
Some recent discoveries in Mesopotamia' was the subject of a public lecture by Professor D.J. Wiseman on 14 July.
Professor Wiseman, Professor of Assyriology at London University and former Joint Director at the British School of Arachaeology in Iraq, accompanied his lecture with film slides.
The Professor said that excavation work in Mesopotamia was begun by Sir Henry Lang over a century ago. However, as there are approximately 7000 ancient mounds in the area, the archaeologist's work is only just beginning. "It will, at the present rate, take 800 years to expose the city at the excavation site on which I am working," Professor Wiseman said.
He showed illustrations of pre-classical art which, the Professor said, indicated the sources of ancient Greek culture. One specific discovery mentioned was that of a Babylonian account of Alexander the Great's entry into the City. Discoveries such as this, said Professor Wiseman, would alter many notions about Mesopotamia.
Are you an avid reader of the finely-honed prose of the Motoring Correspondent of a local newspaper? If so, here's your chance to become better acquainted with the gentleman. The person who sends in the first correct entry form will receive a life-size Motoring Correspondent wrapped in a Mini-Minor. It's easy. Just list in order of merit the qualities you most look for in a Motoring Correspondent and post your completed entry to Salient. (The judge's decision will be final but correspondents may be entered into if they're of the right gender).
(Adapted from Private Eye).
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The Salient Reviews Editor swears it's true: you can't get into the Cinerama Theatre with bare feet.
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Our Police Reporter watched the Trentham police cadets stage a demonstration at the Training School recently. A scruffy lot in jeans and football jerseys and carrying placards were effectively 'moved along' by the cadets. The whole thing went very well and a splendid time was had by all—save the cadet 'demonstrator' who got roughed up and was subsequently taken to Hutt Hospital in an ambulance.
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A demon, a brace of martyrs and a small host of saints to the correspondent to the Catholic weekly newspaper Zealandia who wrote:
One very positive advantage of the recent greatly accelerated plunge into obscenity is this—it reveals as nothing else could the sickness of man; specifically, original and actual sin. That people can be found to actually defend and even praise attitudes of mind and activities leading straight to Hell serves to draw the line very clearly between the City of God and the City of Satan. It is in times like these that saints appear. I hope they come soon.
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More scenes from the life of tousle-haired revolutionary Robin Blackburn:
On arriving in Manila during a recent visit to the Philippines Blackburn was greeted by a crowd of admiring students clamouring to know if he had met the famous philosopher and revolutionary Alexander Cockburn, co-author of Student Power. Somewhat taken aback, Blackburn pointed out that he was a co-author with Cockburn of the book, whereupon he was whisked onto a platform and urged to address an excited crowd.
After a brisk impromptu speech Blackburn was appalled to hear his sponsor announce: "And now Comrade Blackburn will lead us against the last bastion of imperialist aggression—the American Embassy." Whereupon the mob surged towards a ferocious line of troops-the very same who had shot dead six students earlier in the week.
As the heroic ex-lse lecturer was pushed forward to what seemed certain death, the situation was saved by a student who cried out: "Comrades, this is suicide! Let us attack the Hilton Hotel instead."
At this, the mob sensibly changed direction, much to the relief of the hitherto armchair Marxist.
( Private Eye again)
Eight miles out of Mozambique, and isn't it meself. Captain Phineas O'Doome, and me with a raging sore on me starboard knee, God help that rotten mulatto queen if I ever lay me hands on her again, if the holy penicillin don't save me 'tis me for the Union Jack overcoat and the squid pecking at me bones, and ye can lay to that, 21° S by 37° W, no more wind than a flea's belch and the smell of a thousand ton of good Rhodesian shag rising from the forward hold fit to drive a feller mad, and every man-jack aboard on fifty a day, we'd be better off carrying a cargo of women. Judas save me pocky soul, if it's not me watching 'em every minute God gives, they'll be down below decks and rolling the little sweeties faster than a dago can spit. Praise the blessed saints, it's us for lovely Bombay in a couple of weeks, off-load the stuff in two winks, and O'Doome in the arms of beautiful Parsee Molly, God save thorn legs of hers and don't let the varicose get 'em before I do, it's little enough love a poor sailorman can find, and ye can lay to that!
Hell, hell, it's meself was born to roast, there's a terrible curse on the poor O'Doomes and me with not a penny put by. At four bells little Squint the sparks comes weeping in with the terrible news, it's the United Nations, Satan take their black hearts, has put the finger on Rhodesia, and her wanting nothing but a bit of peace and quiet to keep the hottentots out of their beds, and O'Doome's cargo to be impounded on arrival and us for the dry run home and not one rupee's bonus, and there's Wall-Eye Doris waiting in Liverpool with a paternity suit and a Protestant lawyer, what chance does a sailorman stand? Bankruptcy and jail, and it's bread and water and sewing the bags, and never a smell of the good green sea again.
A glimmer of hope, no bigger than a gnat's bum, but 'tis all a man has the right to ask, and the poor old world the state she's in. Word from the owners, and it's us to change course for Perth, where they're never expecting the Mary Beale and meself telling them it's good Virginia tobacco, and off-loading without a murmur, then it's Phineas away to the arms of little Freda Swinton, and her an immigrant from Walthamstow and not seen an honest British face these two years past and crying out for a bit of skilled UK stroking. So it's full ahead for the land of the kangaroo, and me for a haircut first thing, and a bit of pomade and a bunch of flowers, and the lovely neck of the Widow Swinton!
Hallo, log. Is here Ludwig Muller, who once Firstmate of the Mary Beale was, and now is Kapitan become. Everything is good, except under the Arms is the Jacket of Kapitan O'Doome ein wenig tight, and his Hat over my Ears constantly falling is. E in sogenannte "Peril Of The Sea," ha-ha-ha! Any road up, is ex-Kapitan O'Doome now in an Australian Jail, also Schipsbarber Fotheringay, Bosunsmate MacPhail. and Actingthirdengineer Nobbs. When we last Night heaving-to off Perth were, went by Dinghy our four Schipmates ashore, in order our Cargo of "Virginia" Tobacco to declare. Comes along the Dock ein Fordanglia, and pops out two Bowlerhatwearingmen and before man "Jackrobinson" sagen kann, our beloved Schipmates in Handcuffs are. Immediately realise I that Nothing to be done is, so steam I the Mary Beale beyond the Threemilelimit. Always have I a Kapitan to be wanted!
Liebe Log! Now fly we a Liberian Flag, und new Owners tell me towards Manila to steam, there the Cargo to unload. Not easy is it, the Mary Beale schipschape to keep; already, three Men from the Yardarm to hand have I had, in order Discipline to keep. Tonight hold we a torchlight Rally on the Afterdeck, und tell I the Scum that when we in Manila finished are, steam we south in order Mobydick to find. It is my last territorial Claim in Southpacific!
So it's goodbye, Mad Muller. 'Course. I'm only a ship's cook, mind, and never had no fancy for the bridge, but that don't mean I don't know a loonie when I see one. First ship I been on what had marching practice three times a day and a week in irons for anyone failing to click his plimsolls. Still, he's gone now, and serves him right, trying to bring down a UN helicopter with bread-rolls, and we're off to Shanghai, orders of this morning's owners. Didn't go down well with the Chinese crew, though, didn't go down well at all; keep meeting in little groups and shrieking. Terrified, of course: reckon that as soon as we dock, they'll all be grabbed as lickspittle deviationist lackeys or whatever it is, and bunged in the nick for the duration. Not that I blame 'em, but they been giving me some funny bleeding looks. I popped down the galley this afternoon, for old time's sake, and couldn't find a single knife. Nothing there but wooden bloody spoons. Beats me what's going on.
I said to Maureen just before we sailed, now don't you worry about your old Mum, a bit of sea air'll do her the world of good, and if you get on one of these little banana-boat things, well, you get more attention than the regular liners, don't you, individual cuisine, own shower, porthole, and you never can tell, there's always the chance of a nice young purser, well you know what sailors are and your old Mum's not past it not by a long chalk, I mean, I've still got the legs I had at twenty, and no one can say different, especially in the moonlight, like Claudette Colbert and Leslie Howard; only they kept me in my cabin for four months. I thought, God, they're only waiting until we're away from civilisation and they'll all come down and do unspeakable things to me, but by April I'd given up hoping. And then yesterday all these Chinese turned up, and I thought, Deirdre May Foster this is it, just close your eyes and think of something else, but they were all crying and said they were lost and there were all these icebergs outside and they missed their mothers, and would I like to be Captain? Well, you know me, anything for a giggle.
Is India the one shaped like a pear, or am I thinking of Holland?
We've been Panamanian all morning, and now we're Maltese again. It's the third time this week. Food running low. Honestly, though, and you know me, never one to take offence, but these Chinese are a, well, funny lot. Last night they came into my cabin in aprons and threw soy sauce all over me. I must say, I mean it takes all sorts, but some people have got very funny taste, haven't they?
Probably something of a record, sailing under fourteen flags, and I only came aboard at Baffin Land last week to see if they had a bit of fresh meat for the dogs. I wonder if they'll like that lady's foot? I wish the lads hadn't smoked the cargo, though—I mean, a man waits all his life for his first command, been a professional Arctic hermit these seventy-six years past, you get your boat, and there's damn all in the hold except a packet of Rizla papers and a few rats with lung cancer. They're a nice crew, though; both of 'em. You'd think they'd been married twenty years, always gazing into one another's eyes, but it's only been a week. The old lady wouldn't marry 'em, which is why they ate her in the first place, even though there was plenty of Spaniard still in the fridge. She was a silly old fool, anyone could see they were in love, known one another over two years, never set foot off the boat, plenty of time to get to know one another. Perfectly natural. Nice girl, that Henri; if you go for ginger beards, that is. She'll make little Maurice a good wife, or I'm no judge of women.
What is to become of the little Maurice and me, hein? We have et the last of the hermit sandwiches, we have bin owned by every country in the worl', and still we have nowhere to lay our eds. Lars wik, we try to put into Sousampton and got chase away by Interpol; it is empty, the hold, but no one believe us no more. Even Maurice not love me like he used to.
This log belongs to Maurice Grilp, 14 Mafeking Terrace, Bootle. Lancashire, England. Europe. The World, The Universe. I have rose from Cabbin Boy to Captin and widower in only three years. If this is a record, please send the guinny prize and the four-colour propelling pencil to my next-of-kin Dorothy Grilp (Mrs.). I am off the Weddell Sea now and drifting, and the penguins is looking at me in a funny way and licking their chopps. I think sanctions are beginning to bight.
As part of its celebration of Independence Day (4 July), the Massey University Students' Association hosted a Seminar on Indo-China. Speakers at the Seminar, on the subject "Prospects for Peace in the 70's", included the Minister of Defence, David Thomson, Les Hunter, a Social Credit Political League spokesman, former NZUSA President Alister Taylor, Tim Shadbolt and Bill Lee, a member of the Auckland PYM. The Labour Party was invited to send a speaker to the Seminar but declined a further opportunity to be embarrassed by its own intellectual poverty. Owen Gager reports on proceedings:
The Indo-China War has reached the provinces. Palmerston North took its turn to register the impact of the invasion of Cambodia at a Massey University teach-in earlier this month.
It was, as might be expected in Palmerston North, very quiet. A speech by Defence Minister Thomson, which would have led in Auckland to pitched battles between police and a PYM Kamikaze squad, or in Wellington to a restrained and bureaucratic student riot, led Palmerston North only to polite laughter at the more obvious pomposities. The transposition to this tranquil and only mildly cynical atmosphere of Auckland's two best-known radical activists foreshadowed things to come. Tim Shadbolt's wit overwhelmed the audience, which gave Shadbolt the best reception it gave any speaker. Bill Lee's blunt vulgar Marxism—"the United States is scuttling horn Indo-China like a frightened rat" is a choice pearl from his rhetoric—alienated some people but attracted no hostile questioning whatever and a surprisingly substantial body of applause. Indo-China, even in Palmerston North, is becoming less and less an academic problem.
But it will be some time before Palmerston moves toward the street action both Lee and Shadbolt advocated, even if the move seems inevitable sooner or later. A motion that Palmerston support the national mobilisation was not put at the teach-in which its organisers claimed was official neutral pro or con the Indo-China war. Between solidarity with the Vietnamese and its fulfilment in radical action falls the shadow of bureaucratic leadership.
In terms of conventional politics, Social Credit emerged at the teach-in as a definitely anti-war party, while Labour, which failed to put in an appearance at all, showed signs of ravage from the dissension within the Parliamentary Party over events in Cambodia. National, in fact, appeared to feel that the teach-in rated a high priority by sending a Cabinet Minister to a university that the Party may hope to preserve as a bastion of conservatism in the student radical upsurge. Here was a situation in which Social Credit could have exploited its 'new look' policies credibly at the expense of both National and Labour, but its new leader, John O'Brien, failed to put in an appearance, and political executive member Les Hunter—given an hour's notice—made an ineffective substitute. Social Credit's ability to perform at an hour's notice nevertheless contrasted favourably with Labour's inability to perform at a fortnight's notice. Hunter's speech was an exercise in watered-down Labour Party-type soapbox oratory with a more naive political and economic content. Both the 'Marxist expert' Henry Chan (who chaired the meeting) and PYM leader Bill Lee immediately labelled Hunter's approach 'Marxist'. This is how extremes meet, whether in parliamentary or extra-parliamentary politics.
At a seminar where Les Hunter could be labelled a Marxist, it was not surprising that ex-student leader Alister Taylor could appear radical Predictably, Taylor urged a return to a 'national' foreign policy instead of one dictated by an overseas country—not a new plea, and one not greatly in conflict with the main lines of the Defence Minister's speech, which was well received.
The seminar, then, was a reasonable index of the movement of New Zealand opinion on the Indo-China war: National, like Nixon, growing more aware of the dangers of extreme student reaction against its foreign policy, but unable to check this reaction significantly; Labour, moving to the right, and fearful of identification with student dissent; Social Credit trying to jump on the anti-war bandwagon far too late, and finding, to its surpirse and disappointment, that the only place this electoral manoeuvre can get it is a left-wing position it is afraid to occupy. In this political confusion, the mindless activism of the Auckland PYM leads only to an identification with the equally minless economics of Social Credit.
The only positive voice emerges as Tim Shadbolt's: "If you were being raped, would you ask for negotiations or immediate withdrawal?"—a sane and radical view of the present Indo-China situation. His second question about the war is even more crucial—what sort of "quality of life" are we "defending" (the quotes are from Thomson) when the penalty for distributing jelly beans to the members of the Auckland City Council is four months preventive detention? It is a pity that these questions have to come from a figure who, although charismatic and immensely popular, admits that he has no idea of any strategy for the growth of radical political opposition in New Zealand, and whose basic political attitudes are close to Labour's empty options of 'Humanitarianism' and 'nationalism'. Henry Chan, the teach-in's chairman, suggested after Lee and Shadbolt had spoken that their future lay as foreign policy spokesmen for the Labour Party. With this verdict, no one at the teach-in disagreed; though such a possibility must haunt Kirk's nights.
Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, boys by the year two thousand. If present trends continue South East Asia could be completely ingulfed by the Communist onslaught.
When the United States became actively involved in South Vietnam they entered a quagmire. Now five years later they are trying to extricate themselves. The withdrawl of American ground forces compensated by greater Smith Vietnamese participation was a feasible plan, only two months ago. Recent developments in South East Asia have proved that Government troops independant of American forces are no match for North Vietnamese regulars. If American forces had withdrawn as planned there would have been no democratic countries in South East Asia surviving within two decades, for the pressure from Communist China would have been too great too resist. Nixons descision has committed America too involvement in South East Asia. What lies ahead will be either victory or defeat for there will be no honourable withdrawl.
Ever since it became too dangerous for the Vietcong too remain in their traditional hideouts in South Vietnam they had found sanctuary in neutral Cambodia. Indeed Cambodia was so safe for the Communists under the Sihanouk administration that they chanelled eighty per cent ladies and gentlemen, eighty per cent of their supplies through the Cambodian Port of Sihanoukville. Russian and Chinese freighters brought the supplies in, and they were then transported north over roads, built with American aid. Lightly armed Government troops found it impossible to defend Cambodias three hundred and fifty miles of ill defined border with South Vietnam, and Vietcong infiltration was never halted by Sihanouks policy of biased neutrality.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed by General Lon Nol, on grounds of corruption and willingness to cooperate with the Vietcong. A popular ruler the prince lent to the left and to the right when the occasion demanded. Perhaps his only fault was that he guarded Cambodia's neutrality too well.
American and South Vietnamese forces have entered Cambodia to block the supply lines and destroy the bases just inside Cambodia's border, which have allowed the Vietcong to prolong the Vietnam war for so long.
President Nixon was certainly influenced by his country's history. Its first defeat under his administration was more than he would acknowledge easily. If the Americans can defeat the Vietcong before the coming of the monsoon the Communists will be forced to retreat and those remaining m Cambodia will be denied the chance to resupply and reorganise. The ruling regime under General Lon Nol will also be able to consolidate its political position, and suppress pro-Sihanouk forces in the country, who have taken up arms with the Communists. If a victory is not won before the monsoon, Richard Nixon will become a two term president.
The conflict in Laos erupted on a large scale two months ago when Communist forces moved south in force from the Plain Jars. One Laotian Army base was overrun and another which served as the headquarters of the CIA was menaced. The very fact that the CIA is in Loas conclusively proves that the United States attaches great importances to this country and is further emphasised by the fact that the CIA finnances an army of ten thousand Meo tribesmen which operates independently of the government in Vientienne. Despite strong resistence from the Royal Laotian Army the Communists now control two thirds of Laos. At the peak of the crisis the Laotian Head of State Prince Souvahanna Phouma appealed to Thailand for aid. Relief arrived in the form of two battalions of Thai mercenaries, which despite the fact that the troops were mercenaries proved that Thailand is prepared to take action against Communist aggression.
There has been some accusation that Hanoi had prepared Cambodia as a noose to entrap America into further involvement, but events moved so quickly and Nixons decision was so unpredictable that I doubt, if even Hanoi would have had the audacity to gamble every advantage she had on further ensnaring America.
In their objective the Americans have failed, no strong resistence has been encountered and the Communist Vietnam War headquarters has not as yet been located. The monsoon has come two months before scheduled and hopes that the Vietcong would be repulsed are fading and without a victory Richard Nixon will not become a two-term President.
The Cambodian front is crumbling under pressure from the Communists and the only obstacle between the Communists and Phnom Penh are a few regiments of inexperienced and disorganized Cambodians. Their weapons were made in China and obtained under the Sihanouk administration and since his overthrow ammunition and spare parts are no longer available. Despite the fact that the Americans have turned over all captured weapons and ammunition there is still a dangerous shortage. To provide experienced leadership veteran Cambodian mercenaries have been flown into Phnom Penh but despite the provision of arms and advisers the Cambodian Army is still insufficient. At Saong it took three Cambodian Regiments who had air support, artillery and armour four days to capture positions held by no more than a hundred Communists.
The Vietcong tactics are the same as employed in Vietnam and Laos-they infiltrate in squads and then regroup behind their enemy's lines to attack in battalion strength.
The Communists could easily take Phnom Penh but it does not appear that they are prepared to go that far. For one they are not leaving caches of supplies as they advance and it is possible that they have overreached their supply lines. But they could be waiting to see if American troops are sent to reinforce the Cambodian line. Hanoi however under orders from Peking may take Phnom Penh if only to reinstall Sihanouk as the head of a puppet. His popularity could be the vital influence which the Communists need to gain support from the peasant population.
The next few weeks will be vital to the security of South East Asia and questions now being posed may be answered. Will Hanoi be prepared to negotiate for peace? Will Thailand enter the Indo China War? And finally the most important question. How far will Richard Nixon be prepared to go to insure America does not become a Second Rate Power?
The answers to these questions will determine whether or not peace in South East Asia will be attained.
Hoping to discover at long last what the verb "to educate" means, I turned the other day to the Concise Oxford and was amused to find this definition: "Give intellectual and moral training to". And further down, to drive the nail home: 'Train (person) . . . train (animals)". 1 would not be surprised to see, when the next rioting season starts, a bonfire of C.O.D.s; and that definition, with its Pavlovian echoes, certainly deserves no better. But I am doubtful whether much would be gained by replacing the offensive term "training" by "guidance". That sounds nice and smarmy, but it begs the question. Guiding, by whatever discreet methods, always implies asserting one's mental powers over another person's mind-in the present context, a younger person's. And the ethics of this procedure, which not so long ago we took for granted, is becoming more and more problematical.
My own preference is for defining the purpose of education as "catalysing the mind". To influence is to intrude; a catalyst, on the other hand, is defined as an agent that triggers or speeds up a chemical reaction without being involved in the product. If I may utter a truism, the ideal educator acts as a catalyst, not as a conditioning influence. Conditioning or, to use Skinner's term, social engineering through the control of behaviour, is an excellent method for training Samurais, but applied on the campus it has two opposite dangers. It may lead to a kind of experimental neurosis in the subjects, expressed by violent rejection of any control or influence by authority. On the other hand, it can be too successful, and create the phenomena of conformism, with a broad spectrum ranging from a society of placid yes-men manipulated by the mass media to the totalitarian state controlled by the Thoughts of Chairman Mao.
The alternative to conditioning is catalysing the mind's development. I can best explain what is meant by quoting a passage from a book I wrote some years ago on creativity in science and art.
"To enable the student to derive pleasure from the art of scientific discovery, as from other forms of art, he should be made to re-live, to some extent, the creative process. In other words, he must be induced, with proper aid and guidance, to make some of the fundamental discoveries of science by himself, to experience in his own mind some of those flashes of insight which have lightened its path. This means that the history of science ought to be made an essential part of the curriculum, that science should be represented in its evolutionary context-not as a Minerva born fully armed. It further means that the paradoxes, the 'blocked problems' which confronted Archimedes. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Darwin, should be reconstructed in their historical setting and presented in the form of riddles—with appropriate hints—to eager young minds. The most productive form of learning is problem-solving. The traditional method of confronting the student, not with the problem but with the finished solution, means to deprive him of all excitement, to shut off the creative impulse, to reduce the adventure of mankind to a dusty heap of theorems.
"Art is a form of communication which aims at eliciting a re-creative echo. Education should be regarded as an art, and use the appropriate techniques to call forth that echo—the 'recreation '. The novice, who has gone through some of the main stages in the evolution of the species during his embryonic development, and through the evolution from savage to civilised society by the time he reaches adolescence, should then be made to continue his curriculum by recapitulating some of the decisive episodes, impasses, and turning points on the road to the conquest of knowledge. Much in our textbooks and methods of teaching reflects a static, pre-evolutionary concept of the world. For man cannot inherit the past; he has to re-create it."
This is what I meant by education as a catalytic process. But now comes the rub. Assuming we agree that the ideal method of teaching science is to enable the student to rediscover Newton's Laws of Motion more or less by himself—can the same method be applied to the teaching of ethics, of moral values? The first answer that comes to mind is that ethics is not a discipline in the normal curriculum, except if you specialise in philosophy or theology. But that is a rash answer, because implicitly, if not explicitly, we impart ethical principles and value-judgments in whatever we teach or write on whatever subject. The greatest superstition of our time is the belief in the ethical neutrality of science. Even the slogan of ethical neutrality itself implies a programme and a credo.
No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others, whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not. And this influence is not confined to his explicit message; it is the more powerful and the more insidious because much of it is transmitted implicitly, as a hidden persuader, and the recipient absorbs it unawares. Surely physics is an ethically neutral science? Yet Einstein rejected the trend in modern physics to replace causality by statistics with his famous dictum: "I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the world". He was more honest than other physicists in admitting his metaphysical bias; and it is precisely this metaphysical bias, implied in a scientific hypothesis, which exerts its unconscious influence on others. The Roman Church was ill advised when she opposed Galileo and Darwin, and from a rational point of view was lagging behind the times; but intuitively she was ahead of the times in realising the impact which the new cosmology and the theory of evolution was to have on man's image of himself and his place in the universe.
Wolfgang Kohler, one of the greatest psychologists of our time, searched all his life for "the place of value in a world of facts" the title of the book in which he summed up his personal philosophy. But there is no need to search for such a place because the values are diffused through all the strata of the various sciences, as the invisible bubbles of air are diffused in the waters of a lake, and we are the fish who breathe them in all the time through the gills of intuition. Our education establishment, from the departments of physics through biology and genetics, up to the behavioural and social sciences, willy nilly imparts to the students a Weltanschauung, a system of values wrapped up in a package of facts. But the choice and shape of the package is determined by its invisible content; or, to change the metaphor, our implicit values provide the non-Euclidian curvature, the subtle distortions of the world of facts.
Now when I use the term "our educational establishment", you may object that there is no such thing. I very country, every university and even facult) therein has of course its individual character, its personal face or facelessness. Nevertheless, taking diversity for granted, and exceptions for granted, there exist certain common deonominators which determine the cultural climate and the metaphysical bias imparted to hopeful students practically everywhere in the non-totalitarian sector of the world, from California to the East Coast, from London to Berlin, Bombay and Tokyo. That climate is impossible to define without oversimplification, so I shall oversimplify deliberately and say that it is dominated by three Rs.
The first R stands for Reductionism. Its philosophy may be epitomised by a quotation from a recent book in which man is defined, in all seriousness, as "nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism, powered by a combustion system which energises computers with prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information". This is certainly an extreme formulation, but it conveys the essence of that philosophy.
It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to draw analogies between the central nervous system and a telephone exchange, or a computer, or a holograph. The reductionist heresy is contained in the words "nothing but". If you replace in the sentence I have just quoted the words "nothing but" by "to some extent" or "from a certain angle" or "on a certain level of his many-levelled structure", then everything is all right. The reductionist proclaims his part-truth to be the whole truth, a certain specific aspect of a phenomenon to be the whole phenomenon. To the behaviourist, the activities of man are nothing but a chain of conditioned responses; to the more rigid variety of Freudian, artistic creation is nothing but a substitute for goal-inhibited sexuality; to the mechanically oriented biologist the pheomena of consciousness are nothing but electro-chemical reactions. And the ultimate reductionist heresy is to consider the whole as nothing but the sum of its parts—a hangover from the crude atomistic concepts of nineteenth-century physics, which the physicist himself abandoned long ago.
The second of the three Rs is what I have called elsewhere the philosophy of ratomorphism. At the turn of the century, Lloyd Morgan's famous canon warned biologists against the fallacy of projecting human thoughts and feelings into animals; since then, the pendulum has moved in the opposite direction, so that today, instead of an anthropomorphic view of the rat, we have a ratomorphic view of man. According to this view, our skyscrapers are nothing but huge Skinner boxes in which, instead of pressing a pedal to obtain a food-pellet, we emit operant responses which are more complicated, but governed by the same laws as the behaviour of the rat. Again, if you erase the "nothing but", there is an ugly grain of truth in this. But if the life of man is becoming a rat-race, it is because he has become impregnated with a ratomorphic philosophy. One is reminded of that old quip: "Psycho-analysis is the disease which it pretends to cure". Keep telling a man that he is nothing but an oversized rat, and he will start growing whiskers and bite your finger.
Some fifty years ago, in the heyday of the conditioned reflex, the paradigm of human behaviour was Pavlov's dog salivating in its restraining harness on the laboratory table. After that came the rat in the box. And after the rat came the geese. In his recent book On Aggression, Konrad Lorenz advances the theory that affection between social animals is phylogenetically derived from aggression. The bond which holds the partners together (regardless whether it has a sexual component or not) is "neither more nor less than the conversion of aggression into its opposite". Whether one agrees or disagrees with this theory is irrelevant; the reason why I mention it is that Lorenz' arguments are almost exclusively based on his observations of the so-called triumph ceremony of the greylag goose, which, in his own words, prompted him to write his book. Once more we are offered a Weltanschauung derived from an exceedingly specialised type of observations, a part-truth which claims to be the whole truth. To quote the Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl: "The trouble is not that scientists are specialising, but rather that specialists are generalising".
A last example for the second R. About a year ago, a popular book on anthropology was heading the bestseller lists in Europe and America: The Naked Ape-A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal by Dr. Desmond Morris. It opens with the statement that man is a hairless ape "self-named "The insides of houses or flats can be decorated and filled with ornaments, bric-a-brac and personal belongings in profusion. This is usually explained as being done to make the place 'look nice'. In fact, it is the exact equivalent to another territorial species depositing its personal scent on a landmark near its den. When you put a name on a door, or hang a painting on a wall, you are, in dog or wolf terms, for example, simply cocking your leg on them and leaving your personal mark there."homo sapiens . . . I am a zoologist and the naked ape is an animal. He is therefore fair game for my pen". To what extremes this zoomorphic approach may lead is illustrated by the following quotation:
To avoid misunderstandings, let me emphasise once more that it is both legitimate and necessary for scientific research to investigate conditioned reflexes in dogs, operant responses in rats, and the ritual dances of geese-so long as they are not forced
My third R is
Some schools of modern
These schools of
Let us remind ourselves
One could go on quoting such diametrically opposed conclusions drawn by different scientists from the same body of data. For example, one could hardly expect neurophysiologists to belittle the important of brain mechanisms in mental life, and many of them do indeed hold that mental life is nothing but brain mechanism. And yet Sherrington was an unashamed dualist; he wrote: "That our being should consist of two fundamental elements offers, I suppose, no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only". And the great Canadian brain surgeon. Wilder Penfield, said at an interdisciplinary symposium on "Control of the Mind" at which we both participated "To declare that these two things [brain and mind] are one does not make them so, but it does block the progress of research".
I quote this, not because I am a Cartesian dualist-which I am not-but to emphasise that the neurophysiologist's precise data can be interpreted in diverse ways. In other words, it is not true that the data which science provides must automatically lead to the conclusion that life is meaningless, nothing but Brownian motion imparted by the random drift of cosmic weather. We should rather say that the Zeitgeist has a tendency towards the devaluation of values and the elimination of meaning from the world around us and the world inside us. The result is an existential vacuum.
At this point I would like to quote again Viktor Frankl, founder of what has become known as the Third Viennese School of Psychiatry. He postulates that besides Freud's Pleasure Principle and Adler's Will to Power, there exists a "Will to Meaning" as an equally fundamental human drive:
"It is an inherent tendency in man to reach out for meanings to fulfil and for values to actualise. In contrast to animals, man is not told by his instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by his traditions and values what he ought to do . . . Thousands and thousands of young students are exposed to an indoctrination along the lines of a reductionist concept of life which denies the existence of values. The result is a world-wide phenomenon-more and more patients are crowding our clinics with the complaint of an inner emptiness, the sense of a total and ultimate meaninglessness of life."
He calls this type of neurosis "noogenic", as distinct from sexual and other types of neuroses, and he claims that about 20 per cent. of all cases at the Vienna Psychiatry Clinic (of which he is the head) are of noogenic origin. He further claims that this figure is doubled among student patients of Central Furopean origin; and that it soars to 80 per cent. among students in the United States.
I should mention that I know next to nothing about the therapeutic methods of this school—it is called Logotherapy—and that 1 have no means of judging its efficacity. But there exists a considerable literature on the subject, and I brought it up because the philosophy behind it seems to me relevant to our theme. However that may be, the term "existential vacuum", caused by the frustration of the will to meaning, seems to be a fitting description of the world-wide mood of infectious restlessness, particularly among the young and among intellectuals.
It may be of some interest to compare this mood with that of the Pink Decade, the "Devotion to pure Utopia and rebellion against a polluted society are the two poles which provide the tension of all militant creeds. To ask which of the two makes the current flow-attraction by the ideal or repulsion by the social environment—is to ask the old question whether the hen was first, or the egg".
Compare this with the present mood. Today the repellent forces are more powerful than ever, but the attraction of the ideal is missing, since what we thought to be Utopia turned out to be a cynical fraud. The egg is there, but no hen to hatch it. Rebellion is freewheeling in a vacuum.
Another comparison comes to mind-another historic situation, in which the traditional values of a culture were destroyed, without new values taking their place. I mean the fatal impact of the European conquerors on the native civilisations of American Indians and Pacific Islanders. In our case, the shattering impact was not caused by the greed, rapacity and missionary zeal of foreign invaders. The invasion has come from within, in the guise of an ideology which claims to be scientific and is in fact a new version of Nihilism in its denial of values, purpose and meaning. But the results in both cases are comparable: like the natives who were left without traditions and beliefs in a spiritual vacuum, we, too, seem to wander about in a bemused trance.
It is, of course, true that similar negative moods car: be found in past periods of our history, variously described as mal de siecle, romantic despair, Russian Nihilism, apocalyptic expectations. And there have been Ranters, Messianic sects and Tarantula dancers, all of whom have their striking contemporary parallels. But the present has a unique and unprecedented urgency because the rate of change is now moving along an ever steeper exponential curve, and history is accelerating like the molecules in a liquid coming to the boil. There is no need to evoke the population explosion, urban explosion and explosion of explosive power; we live in their midst, in the eye of the hurricane.
This brings me back to my starting point. The ideal of the educator as a catalysing agent is for the time being unattainable. Exceptions always granted, he has been a conditioning influence, and the conditions he created amount to an explosive vacuum.
I do not believe that the crisis in education can be solved by the educators. They are themselves products of that Zeitgeist which brought on the crisis. All our laudable efforts to reform the universities can at best produce paliatives and symptom-therapy. I think that in a confused way the rebellious students are aware of this, and that this is why they are so helpless when asked for constructive proposals, and why no proposed reform can satisfy their ravenous appetites. They are, simply, hungry for meaning, which their teachers cannot provide. They feel that all their teachers can do is to produce rabbits out of empty hats. Up to a point the rebels have succeeded in imparting this awareness to society at large; and that, regardless of the grotesque methods employed, seems to me a wholesome achievement.
You have asked for my comments on the question of the resumption of weekly publication of Salient. You are welcome to them, but I offer them with these requests:
Salient of reasonable quality ever?—if it does, it had better get stuck into finding out how weekly publication can be achieved).
In what ways could weekly publication—given the maintenance of standards, no marked increase in costs and so on—be regarded as more desirable than fortnightly publication? There are three reasons, it seems to me, but they do overlap. The first, in my order of priorities, is that one has more pages overall (as opposed to per issue) to play around with. More pages because, while advertising revenue per issue falls, total revenue is greater. The second is that the newspaper can (rather than will) be more topical. The third is that, through being published more frequently, the student paper can further accelerate the growth of a feeling of community on campus—this is, of course, one of the student newspaper's most significant functions.
These advantages of weekly over fortnightly publication are worth looking at in slightly greater depth since there are small caveats in each case:
Yes, more pages but fewer per issue. By cutting out the use of an additional colour in every issue (as was provided for in the budget) and by using a much cheaper paper than was originally budgeted for, I have managed to save approximately $60 per issue. This has enabled us to produce issues of Salient comprising a minimum of 16 pages and a maximum of 32 pages. (The Monash fortnightly, Lot's Wife, publishes regularly in 24-28 pages and that paper carries very little advertising indeed). I don't see, however, that one could avoid having to reduce, for financial reasons, the number of pages in each issue if the paper went weekly. The best one could hope for would be an alternation between 12 and 16 pages. I'll go into the reasons why I feel a minimum of 16 pages per issue (with scope for the occasional 24 pager and up)—whatever the frequency—is desirable when I talk to the subcommittee. It's all a matter of contrast—making each issue markedly different from the last. Too much uniformity is to be avoided.
One hopes so. The only weeklies which we know well here—Salient '68 and '69 and Craccum '70—have been totally unsuccessful in demonstrating in any way that weekly publication enhances topicality. Each of the newspapers referred to was or is superficial. This is extraordinary, when one considers that their fortnightly predecessors—Salient from Craccum in
I don't see any riders to this—the more frequently Salient appears the better as far as creating a sense of being part of the campus community goes. Provided, of course, the paper is relevant to the community for which it is published and provided it's good (and therefore gets read).
This discussion of the merits of weekly publication may seem to have been a little tangential to the question of how more frequent publication can be achieved (as opposed to why it should be). But I think we should clearly establish the reasons for feeling one way or another on this issue. In attaching riders to the first two reasons cited above, I have not meant to detract from them in any way; I am merely warning of the dangers that lie in making over-simple statements about this matter.
One final example: weekly publication may bring more pages overall but a weekly newspaper is just as liable to financial mismanagement and extravaganza (and I'm thinking of matters within the Editor's hands and beyond the immediate control of the Publications Board Treasurer) as is a fortnightly one. The remedy in each case seems invariably to be the same—the number of pages per issue is reduced. This last example may not seem a particularly good one—until I point out that it seems at this stage that the total number of pages which will be published in the 15 fortnightly issues of Salient this year will be 328—and this is only 4 pages less than in the 25 issues published last year.
The differences are there, of course—a fortnightly newspaper has more stable advertising base and I have made the cuts (colour and paper quality) already referred to—but I think there is a message in there somewhere. (It would also be reasonable to ask why, if we are to publish as many pages anyway, we haven't reverted to weekly publication. The answer is a difficult one, which I feel the subcommittee should bear in mind. It is this: if the students newspaper is to be edited, as opposed to collated, students must expect that an Editor of Salient will expect to be given the time and resources to 'see each issue whole' as it were. A good student newspaper develops an editorial shape and voice over the year's issues, but each issue is at the same time a distinct and coherent entity. This is what editing is all about, as I understand it: selecting and then shaping written and graphic material into a whole (that is, an individual issue) which makes sense. I think it must be obvious that publication of 25 instead of 15 issues this year would have involved the duplication of many activities which are not relevant to editorial standards—posting out the magazine, for example).
The favourable preconditions for a good weekly Salient are as follows:
More Staff:
A budget of at least $1000 for staff in addition to the Editor. I think it so unlikely that Salient will ever be any good again with one full-time staff member that I have no hesitation in recommending that a full-time (that is, no units at all) staff of three be catered for (which could be done under a payment scheme revised as above). I sincerely hope that my successor, should he be so unlucky as to inherit a situation which approximates mine, will prove me wrong. If he doesn't give it a go he shouldn't be the Editor.
The question of payments should be examined closely by the subcommittee. To recap the present situation; I am paid $700 per annum and I am allocated the sum of $450 to distribute as I choose amongst other staff. (It is worth noting that this is in fact a smaller amount-by $50—than was available in
I shall spend this money by paying $250 to my Technical Editor, a full-time employee of the Sunday Times, and $200 to my Deputy Editor, who is taking five law units this year. For the information of the subcommittee, the Editor and Technical Editor of Craccum are paid $720 each for their work on that newspaper. Comparison of the amount of technical work and editorial work undertaken in the case of Craccum with similar work in the case of Salient is complicated by the difference in the frequency of publication of the two newspapers. However, it is immediately obvious to the eye that there is less technical work involved in Craccum than there is in Salient. On the editorial side, the policy appears to be more passive than is the case with Salient but closer comparison is difficult.
Comparisons with some of the Australian universities whose newspapers are of reasonable quality would appear to be worthwhile and the subcommittee may wish to ask one of its number to write to some of these papers enquiring about their salary structures, accordingly. I do know that the Editor of National U-a fortnightly newspaper of rather less than Salient's size but of high quality (it is the best in Australia this year so far as I can see)—is paid $2400 per annum.
A full-time Publications Secretary responsible to the Publications Officer but under the executive control of the Salient editor. It is becoming quite apparent that the hours of the Publications Board Secretary must be formally extended (they have been informally extended for some time). The job of setting
To take a small example: any letters to the Editor published in Salient are set in a standard type, density of type, column width and leading (spacing). The paragraph indents are always the same width, the headings and signatures in the same type, and the style of introduction remains unchanged. I have to indicate all of these individual points on each letter set at present. Were the Secretary to be a full time employee, she would have time to familiarise herself with the job to the point that I could, for example, just write the word 'Letter' at the top of the original and let her do the rest. And, to a lesser or greater degree, the same situation applies to nearly all of the material in any issue of Salient. The type-style of all interviews, reviews and feature articles (of the Exclusive Brethren type) doesn't vary from issue to issue. The news stories are a little bit more complicated but much the same situation holds true. The page numbers have to be set for each issue. And so on. A full-time Secretary could take a great load from the shoulders of the Editor or (if he's got one on hand to sub-edit material as it comes in) the Technical Editor.
The Secretary should, on a day to day basis, be under the control of the Editor of Salient—this for the obvious reasons that Salient has to meet deadlines and there is an enormous amount of work in each issue. This raises the question of relations with other editors and this is best dealt with under the next heading.
Salient and its Editor must have their own offices. Most students are not aware that the expression "
In fact, there is no Salient Office, let alone an office for the Editor. All Editors of Students' Association publications are freely entitled to use the Publications Office during the tenure of their respective editorships and they are responsible only to the Publications Officer for their behaviour in the Office. As is probably known to the members of the subcommittee, I objected strenuously earlier this year to the way in which the Editor of Student Handbook, Simon Arnold, used the Office. I think it unlikely that the Office will ever be able to return to its former state of chronic dishabille and still function at all. At times, it seems as if there are a million small pieces of fly-specked paper on the desks in the Office waiting to be pasted up. Untidiness and cold type just do not mix and the selfish use of the Office by one editor can no longer be tolerated.
I may seem to make too much of the need for a Salient Office (though Victoria is, as far as I know, the only university in New Zealand without an office for the exclusive use of the staff of its student paper) but I would refer to the case of Craccum once again, by way of example. The Craccum Office (that's what it's called and that's what it is—other editors may use it by arrangement with the Craccum Editor) comprises a room which is slightly larger than our Publications Office, a darkroom which is slightly larger than ours but infinitely more sensibly shaped (ever tried working in a room the size of a triangular coffee table?), a small office for the Editor (for which office we have no counterpart), a small office for the Advertising Manager (for which office we have no counterpart) and a small office for the Publications Officer (for which office we have no counterpart).
This sort of resource—a decent office (an office of any kind, please?)—is imperative. It has a priority one, I understand, on the plans for the new administrative block and so it bloody well should have. The close conjunction of the Publications Officer in Auckland to the Craccum Editor leads me to a last point.
There must be a profound reorientation towards Salient on the part of students at Victoria. Guidelines for a physical reorganisation have been laid down in Auckland University's establishment of a
I'd be happiest if there were no SRC members on the Publications Board. The only valid argument for their inclusion is the training of new Publications Officers. The contribution they've made has been even worse than my initial and fairly uncharitable estimation of its unlikely value. As far as I am aware, none of them has ever reported back to the SRC, so we're not even benefitting from some public relations. For all the impact the SRC appointees have made, the Board is just as 'unrepresentative' as it ever was. The only SRC appointee who has shown any real imagination and understanding in discussions hardly ever attends meetings. Then there is the subcommittee itself: discussion of reversion to weekly publication of Salient has been crippled by the fact that the members of the subcommittee cannot even be persuaded to gather enough energy to meet. And two members of the subcommittee are SRC appointees elected on the basis of a shrill promise for a weekly Salient. Now the Executive appointee on the Board is no longer a member of the Executive—as was the clear intent of the new constitutional provision—but Simon Arnold, whose contribution promises to be as completely negative as it has been in the past.
This is chaos. You have no right to expect that a good Salient will emerge from it in in spite of this administrative cock-up. The appointment of an Editor is not per se a political matter. Allocations of funds within a budget for salaries, materials, expenses and so on are not per se political problems. Weekly publication is not per se a political question. Politics can be brought into these questions, but for the health of the newspaper it must not be allowed to enter into discussions.
We have already seen three instances this year of gross political interference in Salient: the first was the rabble-rousing debate over weekly publication—never has so little been said by so few to so many about nothing etc. etc. ("if the Dominion can be published daily, why can't Salient be published weekly?" asked one moron); the second was the successful move to introduce politics into the appointment of the Editor of Salient-a move which, more than any other single step, seriously threatens the editorial independence of the paper; and the third was a move to suspend payment of my salary until weekly publication was resumed or, when that gambit failed, to cut my salary in half. (I, presumably, was expected to assume a total and personal responsibility for a decision by the Publications Board to suspend weekly publication). I am often accused of placing too much emphasis on personalities—and I admit that I do tend to feel that it is hypocritical to conceal the fact that one detests someone if one does in fact detest him—but the members of the subcommittee may understand my point of view a little better if they recall that Arnold and Logan were together involved in the first two attacks and Arnold, at least, was prominent in the third. I don't know whether Arnold and Logan feel that they have the interests of Salient at heart or whether they simply feel the same way about me as I do about them. If the former is the case, I would suggest that they have done Salient no good in the positions they have adopted.
All of which leads me to this point: just as some changes (administrative ones, principally) can be made, so some changes can be led. Here I look to the individual members of the subcommittee, to the Publications Board as a whole, to the Executive and to other students who care about Salient to start espousing a feeling of pride in the campus newspaper. Salient is a good newspaper. I don't think one has to be a friend of mine to see that. It is worthy of support. And one doesn't have to agree with all of the points in this letter—or any of them, I suppose-to reach the conclusion that a good Salient is a vital factor in this community. If one agrees with this, and I hope that your subcommittee members can prop themselves into wakefulness long enough to concede the point, then I'd suggest that the questions outlined earlier need to be discussed seriously and dealt with now. It's getting nearer and nearer to the time when students won't be talking about 'Harcourt's Salient' any more-it'll be somebody else's (in that strange sense of 'possession' which appears to mean something to everybody but the Editor of Salient). And it'll then become clear, perhaps, that what was at issue was not 'Harcourt's Salient', just Salient. Then someone will have to make some decisions in a hurry. They might as well be made now and they might as well be fully informed.
I'd very much appreciate an opportunity to discuss the question of weekly publication of Salient with the members of the subcommittee.
Fresh from correcting Tom Stacey's errors of fact in Salient 8, law lecturer Gerald Bowden sails into our American supplement. "Would it be presumptuous," he asks, "to suppose that this litany of America's apostasy and degeneration is the manifestation of some sort of Napoleonic inferiority complex?" We don't know. However we're grateful to Mr Bowden for his article and also for his suggested headline (which we've used despite some reservations about its suitability for a newspaper such as Salient.)
A retired grade B movie actor once considered a line from the film King's Row to be so expressive that he chose it as the title for his autobiography. The scene was a hospital operating recovery room. Staring down at his amputated legs (he protagonist uttered with all the melodramatic anguish he could muster, "Where is the rest me?" An American's reaction to the anthology "Salient looks at America: dying or merely insane?" can only be "where is the rest of it? Where is the other America?"
That there is another America there Can be no doubt. Salient's dogged refusal to acknowledge the existence of this 'other America', on the other hand, raises considerable doubt. The doubt concerns Salient's motives in choosing to portray America in such deprecatory and pejorative terms.
Visitors to New Zealand are constantly struck by the sense of fair play and sportsmanship which seems to infuse its people. It is perhaps for this reason that displays of unfairness stand out as starkly uncharacteristic. The Salient view of America is a graphic example of the sort of propagandistic unfairness which Americans normally expect to find in less egalitarian countries.
In New Zealand one expects more. Perhaps Robert MacIver had the kindest explanation of this when he said "the only things we know as immutable truths are the things we do not understand." No one has the right to expect saintly objectivity, but everyone has the right to at least a token presentation of both sides of the issue. America's warts and moles are visible enough. It has never been one to hide its own blemishes. But is it useful to dwell at such length on her haemorrhoids? One wonders: what of the America which reversed the cop killing conviction of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton on "procedural grounds." What of the America which more than tripled the Russian contribution for Rumanian flood relief? What of the American Peace Corps? Indeed what of the America which tolerates the sort of dissent described in the Salient view of America? Has dope addiction been made a prerequisite for U.S. citizenship? Are people like Kingman Brewster and Senator Fulbright not Americans too? What of the other America? This was an America conspicuous only by its absence.
One cannot but wonder why this 'other America' was so carefully ignored. The temptation is strong to read this to be as much a commentary on New Zealand society as a critique of America. One is tempted to explain this evident need to demean in psychoanalytic terms. Would it be presumptuous to suppose that this litany of America's apostacy and degeneration is the manifestation of some sort of Napoleonic inferiority complex? Perhaps that would be unfair. But is it rendered wholly implausible by Salient's dogmatic and preconceived thesis? Salient tipped its hand, after all, when it condensed its message into the pellucid headline: "America, dying or merely insane?" There are apparently no alternatives.
However, if epistemology will permit only these two explanations of the American phenomenon, we are less constrained when it comes to Salient. Indeed, the permutations on good old fashioned xenophobia, chauvinism and unabashed ethnocentrism are truly cosmic. But surely such an analysis, superficially tempting as it may be, is as one-sided as the Salient view of America itself. It is unfair not so much for what it says as for what it leaves unsaid. It leaves unexamined the entire cultural matrix in which both Salient and its readers exist.
When viewed in this broader context, one notes a series of paradoxes. The contradictions are as numerous as they are revealing. For starters, we note that the same issue of Salient which gave the world Uncle Sam disguised as Simon Legree, also gave us a slice of New Zealand. While Salient was content to play the reportorial scrivener when dealing with New Zealand, it felt an irresistible itch to import copious bits of trenchant criticism when dealing with America.
The front pages were given over to detailed accounts of events surrounding the All Black tour demonstrations. It could have been noted that had the events chronicled in those pages taken place in America, the result would have been quite different. In America, for example, the rights of assembly and protest are significantly broader than those in New Zealand. Once arrested, American defendants have numerous other rights not available to their New Zealand counterparts. Perhaps the explanation for Salient's failure to draw these obvious parallels can best be explained in terms of Salient's peculiar insistence that this 'other America' does not exist.
It may, on the other hand, reflect nothing more than a reluctance to indulge in social introspection. This understandable reluctance, however, did not inhibit Salient's eagerness to reprint selectively culled samples of American self-criticism totally unadorned by balance, context, qualification, or by any elaboration of its own. Bob Scheer's words were given to us from on high-rather like the Mosaic Tablets sand stone. That may not have bothered the Editor of Salient, but for those of us who know Bob Scheer this is a bit much.
Why mince words. Lopsided reporting is irresponsible regardless of the subject. This, to use an American idiom, is nothing less than yellow journalism. You can deliver, and your readers deserve, better.
The Johnsonville Times-Herald, a weekly Wellington suburban giveaway newspaper, published the following article in its issue of 23 June. The headline given to the article was that given in this reprint. The article was written by, the Times-Herald said, "Our Political Correspondent". Now read on . . . The stage has long since passed where demonstrations in Auckland's Queen Street or Wellington's Parliament Grounds might have awakened public sympathy.
Today's demonstrating groups have, with few exceptions, emerged as rabble-rousers who seem more, intent on creating a disturbance than in attracting support for whatever bandwagon they have hopped upon.
Issues of the day have merely become a vehicle for organised trouble-making, and an observer could be forgiven for believing that the protesters' objective is more specifically intended to alienate public opinion.
With each fresh demonstration the participants are becoming less reasonable and more antagonistic in their manner.
Obscenities are becoming the catch-cry; paint-hurling and vandalism are regarded by some mental quirk as typifying a strange brand of democracy; scuffles and fisticuffs are growing commonplace.
Worst of all, however, is the mounting danger of some form of counter-reaction developing.
Recent disturbances outside Parliament and in Willis Street on the eve of the All Blacks departure graphically illustrate the ugly nature of some demonstrating elements.
Regardless of their political colour, the nation's leaders are beginning to voice some justifiable concern at die disgusting and near-vicious trends which are developing in public demonstrations.
By all accounts, some of the placards were ill-concealed attempts at filth. Offensive language was commonplace, and, coming from the depths of the crowd, created no danger of reprisal.
The same bulk of numbers similarly concealed the individuals who spattered the steps of Parliament with paint bombs and flour bombs.
With barricades having been erected it can hardly be claimed by those who usually allege "police brutality" that the Police scrambled over the bars to initiate the scuffle which transpired. In fact, the Police showed commendable restraint.
The same could be said of the Willis Street disturbances where the protesters in many cases tried to push Police restraint to the limit.
There is no gainsaying that both incidents were not organised, but it is stretching the imagination to accept that the hapless group of unskilled workers and university students who were arrested were behind the affair.
It is easy to blame communist influences and the Progressive Youth Movement as instigating some of the most offensive demonstrations which have occurred with growing frequency over the past couple of years. It is equally easy to make the retort about "looking for Reds under the bed".
But it is a fact that communist involvement exists and that the Communist Party—if not the actual inspiration behind the demonstrations—has an intimate fore-knowledge and has used its power to stir the pot.
Advance notice of the repulsive disturbances which occurred at the Prime Minister's pre-election meetings last year was given faultlessly by the Communist Party's weekly paper, the People's Voice, and the same paper was quick to incite support for these demonstrations.
Idle curiosity is that which prompts most of the activity in the Salient Office. Idly curious, we telephoned the offices of the Johnsonville Times-Herald to enquire about the newspaper's 'Political Correspondent'.
Hello, I'm a member of the staff of Salient, the Victoria University Student Newspaper. You published in your 23 June issue an article headed 'Growing viciousness in Public Demonstrations' which was by-lined 'By Our Political Correspondent'.
That's right.
Can you tell me who your political correspondent is?
No, I certainly will not tell you who it is.
Is he a member of your staff?
Yes, he most certainly is a member of the staff.
I see.
You're taking this down, are you?
Yes, I'm most certainly taking this down.
I'm not going to allow this newspaper to be dragged into any political sculduggery you may care to drag up.
You're probably being unnecessarily defensive.
Don't be so bloody silly, don't be so bloody silly. Is there anything else?
No—I think that will be enough, thanks.
The accompanying article, written by an American 'feminist' and published in the Berkeley Tribe on 3 July, suggests the course Women's Liberation movements might follow in this country. When they reach the point indicated by the authoress—in about 1984 or so—we may well ask ourselves how to liberate society from Women's Liberation movements.
The Phoenix Art Gallery in Berkeley is a perfect example of how men find excuses to portray women as cunts. Cunts were all that was to be seen in the entire outside showcase. By the time Laura and I got there, the window was pasted with women's liberation stickers; it looked really beautiful.
We walked inside where a group of sisters was playing guitar and singing women's liberation songs to disrupt the cocktail charter. (Then we went back to get ourselves some cocktails and cider and cheese. Small reparations for the shit in the showcase). After that we went back into the main showroom to figure out a strategy. One woman suggested that we all station ourselves in front of a picture so that it couldn't be seen this really got some of the 'artists' uptight and their attacks (defences?) began. One person came over and began screaming that someone had put a sticker on a frame, and didn't we care how much the frame cost (it was cardboard anyway). Then some man said that we had a lot of nerve to put our greasy hair on the $400 works of 'art'. Another man went around asking us to move. He said that we were ruining costly works of art and that for 'art's' sake we should move. For art's sake we didn't move.
Some men have got to the point where they think they have to be 'sophisticated' about showing women as cunts. So they make women look like fancy bits of meat and pass them off as 'art' to satisfy their egos. Then they come on with the line that we don't know anything about art, and that a day in art school would do us good. We still didn't move (to their indignation) so they pulled the old trick of getting their women lackies to ask us to move. Just like getting Dick Gregory to stop blacks in Newark from noting, or getting him to sell Sea and Ski.
At this point two boys about 18 or 19 with longish hair came up and told us that we had better get ourselves together and think about what we were doing, because they were art students and knew where it was all at. They called us names for about an hour, told us to go hassle Playboy, not 3rt, and got really nasty and left. Only they didn't just leave. When they went out, they tore down all the stickers from the windows. This got us really pissed. These 'hip' guys ripping down our shit.
About twenty of us tore down the block after them. They thought that because we were women we wouldn't do anything—that they had free rein. We caught up and surrounded them to give them a taste of what it's like to be a woman and to be defenceless when surrounded by men on the street. They tried to push their way out of the circle; no good, together we were too strong. They squirmed for a few minutes and then told us if we didn't leave them alone that they would call the police. How cute. Then somebody grabbed at their bodies to let them see what it felt like to be ogled and pawed. They backed off and fell very uncomfortable.
They were perfect examples of how 'hip' men are just jocks with long hair when it comes to women. Most men when they being to feel that their cock privilege is being threatened will strike back no matter how unchauvinist they claim to be. So we have to stick together. Together we are strong enough to off them. Together we will win. Sisterhood is powerful.
Stringalong with Gilbert
The fast-fading Director-General Gilbert Stringer has finally opened up on that taboo subject which has haunted the NZBC throughout his term of office. Why no satire on TV? Gilbert's answer "Good question—ask me another". Apparently he would be delighted to see some coming along (possibly because he is retiring from a position of would-be target) but is quite sure that there is nobody in New Zealand capable of writing satire. Thus he recognises the demand but falls back on the good old NZ standby that there isn't any of it in the country at the moment sorry.
Bitter personal experience however has proved to my satisfaction that the NZBC is pathologically afraid of satire. Any corporation which regards such milk and water puerility as In View of the Circumstances as potentially subversive cannot be any friend of the satirist. Certainly the Corporation does nothing to encourage satire although it could be said I suppose that almost every local programme is essentially a satire—of itself. The most notable anti-satire ploy is to take a pointed script and lose it in the bureaucracy wherein it is submitted to scrutiny by every possible nonentity so that for example a particular Cabinet Minister referred to becomes just "a cabinet minister" and eventually a back bencher. Then by the time the 'all clear' is given the political point has been lost in the mists of antiquity.
If the Universities of New Zealand alone are incapable of providing the Broadcasting media with as many satirists as are required I would be most surprised. Perhaps Mr Stringer thinks that a satirist is an Indian musician.
Gallery have once again kicked the lid off the sewer with an epoch-making expose of 'gangs' in Auckland. It will be interesting to see the effects on the Police whose scourged backs are once again firmly planted against the wall as indeed are those of the inadequate social services. This programme displays immediacy through unlaundered scripts and filmed material (some very mature editing at last). The acid test is now for the team to keep up the attack relentlessly and hopefully without any doctoring of their findings.
Happy marriage of resources and skills gives a very smooth finished product for Journey to the Unknown. Apart from a tendency towards the predictable this series is recommended. American stars and British supporting actors in Old-World surroundings combine well even if there are tinges of 'Peytonplacism' (in the form of William Self). It certainly has the most chilling opening of any TV show and manages to do it all without recourse to violence or even actors. The technique is simply to insinuate menace from normally happy surroundings (the fairground) and reinforce it with musical build-up followed by sudden hiatus. Hollywood's loss has increasingly become TV's gain.
Personal: Town and Around: please come home, all is forgiven.
Lindsay Anderson's latest film, If.., pleases me greatly for two main reasons. The first is that the film is sufficiently entertaining and thoughtful to erase unpleasant memories of some of Anderson's previous efforts, notably those tedious, interminable documentaries spawned by the British Free Cinema movement in the 'fifties (which proclaimed a mistaken belief in "the significance of the everyday") and his later This Sporting Life, a particularly grating piece about a loutish (but sensitive) rugby player. In If . . . Anderson appears to have eschewed the bleeding heart liberalism which permeates and stifles his earlier films. There is a refreshing cynicism here which is much at odds with Anderson's previous concerns, and this new-found awareness is seen in the fact that the protagonists are Public School rebels rather than dregs of the Free Cinema's kitchen sink. Perhaps it has finally dawned on Anderson that the working classes in Western industrial societies have been, and remain, the pillars of conservatism.
The second reason is that If . . . is the nearest thing to an anarchist film I've yet come across. The revolutionary stance is that the enemies are the forces of authority. No programmes of reconstruction are offered, no blueprints for a 'just', 'socialist' society, no appeals to the rights of the individual in the face of his masters. This has always seemed to me to be the only way working for real social improvement. After all, the school masters and prefects in If . . . might just as easily be the scungy politicians and policemen in our own country. It is gratifying to see the lines battle drawn up on film. We have come to expect from many British movies, either by way of incidental vignette or clearly stated theme, a criticism of society and its accepted values. Anderson wields his scalpel wider than most, and even those concepts deemed sacred by conventionally radical film makers are whittled into the rubbish bin with all the other shibboleths. Let not these remarks deter prospective viewers: If . . . is a vastly enjoyable and many-faceted film, not a political tract.
The narrative is divided into chapter-like sections, each marking a further stage in the developing consciousness of the chapel-and-ivy guerillas. This device, besides being attractive simply as an unusual change, lends an air of impending conflict to a film otherwise noteworthy for its many brilliant and amusing diversions. The acting throughout is extremely good. The renegades concoct their schemes with suitably nonchalant fervour, while the instruments of authority, whether corrupt in youth or beyond redemption in old age, bleat, bray, and posture about in convincing and varying manifestations of their despicable condition. There is a parade of characters and caricatures that melds both familiar and unseen aspects of school life: the rector who is both sadist and pervert, the teacher (there's one in every school) who lounges indolently during prayers and conducts his own rebellion in the classroom, the pimply and obsequious dormitory prefect, the headmaster who shouts his understanding and liberalism from the turrets, and in so doing perpetrates the systems he claims to suspect. The camera peels the veneer from these and many other characters, acutely observing every foible and nuance of behaviour. The way in which every gesture is defined and then exploited to maximum effect is one of the outstanding features of the film.
If . . . is not without its occasional fault, though these are few and far between. There didn't seem to be much justification for the odd passage filmed in tinted monochrome, but it's quite likely I missed a point here. I was having such a good time watching the film that not much urgency attached itself to trying to apprehend the rationale behind this visual jugglery. The pseudo-violent ending is a wee bit confusing. Presumably the intrepid band escapes injury for an uncommonly long time in order that we might appreciate the clam loathing directed at the motley. The final shot, that of the youth blazing away with casual contempt at the louts and lackeys gathered below, is a powerful and lingering image. Lindsay Anderson, with creditable support from his actors and technicians, has mad remarkable film. As entertainment it is a trenchant yet often amusing story of youthful rebellion within strict and stringent confines. As something of an anarchist testament it might make a few people, both conservatives and 'radicals', sit up and take notice. One of the high points of this year's filmgoing.
John Drawbridge is one of the leading figures in the New Zealand art scene, being best known, perhaps, for his prints. His experience in international competitions and exhibitions gives his work an assurance and sophisticat lacking in other New Zealand artists.
All Red and Mainly Blue are carefully worked out tonal statements. Mainly Blue departs from the rather more static All Red in the use of contrasting orange and red which bring the blues forward in some areas. Nothing definite emerges from these patterns. The restrained, carefully defined squares also give a mosaic effect.
These two didn't appeal to me directly. 1 feel that they are rather conscious exercises, though interesting in the different densities of areas. Some parts of All Red have a glowing incandescence while other areas are 'dead'.
20,000 ft and 35,000 ft deal with subtly shaded and highlighted surfaces. The areas of shade go with and across the lines. The effect, though, isn't accidentally beautiful. There are carefully defined areas within the picture frame that give and indefinable shapes. 35,000 ft is, 1 think, the most thoughtful and interesting work in this exhibition. The wide horizontal band that imposes itself over the surface and overlaps onto the blue border gives another dimension to he background. The background recedes further, its coldness and distance already emphasised by the heavy metallic blue. 35,000 ft extends the approach used in 20,000 ft in that it is not just a mere examination of texture and tone patterns but also explores their relationships of colour and shape.
Nos. 5 and 6 are again deceptively simple. View of O explores the relationship between shapes by taking a Familial shape and distorting it. It explores, too, the relationship of the contrasts red and green, disturbing the expected balance.
In Red, Green-Screen the areas are partially obscured by a nearly opaque textured screen, which shows interesting tone changes. The vibrating effect of the juxtaposition of red and green is modified to a softer combination.
These paintings show several techniques, all of which explore some of the possibilities of surface in terms of texture, colour and shape. The illusions created show how deep the surface is. None of these paintings strike me as being very provocative or avant garde.
I think these paintings, as a group, are compelling for their complexity and honesty. The variety gives a fairly good idea of the range of John Drawbridge's work.
There's a file in Truth's Wellington Offices marked "The Story To End All Stories." When exactly Truth proposes to publish it, we have no idea. (Perhaps when New Zealanders decide that having sex is more fun than reading about it). Anyway, freelance reporter W. Keith managed to photograph the contents of the Tsteas file last week so Now it Can be Told:
Red Pope (38-48-58) Backs Birch & Pill
Male stripper and Scientologist, Peter Thomas Smith, whose name was withheld by the Court, slid between the warm sheets of hi-acking murderess Shani La Rue's bed following a night of orgy and brutality. "I'm still a virgin," claimed Miss La Rue to a jury of eight, led by NZ-born Peeping Tom "we-were-shocked-and-amazed" Jones. Miss La Rue went on to tell how, when she was sixteen, her balding migrant banned-by-Aussies father had bound her to a brass bedstead and, clad only in army socks and puce suspenders, ridden round her on a tricycle until she "went mad with desire".
Roger La Rue, the girl's father, later gave evidence. His forty-seven years of debauchery showed on his lined, puffy face. "I am a victim of my own sins and a rugby-less life," he pleased, and asked that his roles in the famed Vice Exposure Deal and the Poison Pill Ploy be taken into consideration. "I did it all because of Truth's campaign for support for the police" (La Rue then showed the Court a small silver swastika he was wearing round his neck). "New Zealanders want to know the until," he said. I have been molested by a nocturnal visitor and had my toilet meetings interrupted. I have even had my face gashed by bottle louts and Would like to see the hoses turned on them and the point dogs let loose. As an average citizen, tax-payer and third party in the Love-Loft scandal, I can say with some authority that the birch is preferable to the lash. Nothing's been the same since illicit love forced up beer prices."
Later, when Smith's flat was visited by a Police Inspector named Fred Anderson (no relation) and Invcrcargill's fetish-mogul sex-change swinging Bishop, the walls of the flat were found to be papered in stolen panties. The Inspector remarked that it called to mind tin Case of Porirua's Mad Axeman and Basher, and that Thug Cancer and Secret Love Potions were making NZ rile for a new Hotel Probe. Appearing that evening on television, Smith said he was now giving music lessons which usually ended in bed, and that he was organising a porno march down Queen Street in support of Auckland's chief Lurker ("He lurks so beautifully") who was standing for parliament.
"And," Smith is reported to have added later to a member of what is believed to have been tin NZBC, "if they don't like it here why don't they go home?"
Don't allow yourself to be put off by the bombast and inaccuracy of the title. Go down to the sub-title "A Record of Wellington Protests against the All Black Tour Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
The Whole World Watches was a rush job. More careful editing might have tidied up a few things, like occasional repetitions and lapses in coherence. All relevant photographs seem to have been included, though some are so murky they defy interpretation, and others seemingly meaningless in spite of lengthy captions. (But someone said a picture was worth a hundred words, so don't let's begrudge these a mere twenty-five or so.)
But in general the photographs are as horrifying as the text. Some we have seen in bowdlerised form in the dailies, and there are some no newspaper would dare print. Any police apologist would have a hard job explaining them away. And I am full of admiration for the men and women who risked (and in some cases incurred) pain and humiliation to get them. (And preserve them good old Alister again).
What I didn't like about The Whole World Watches was a tendency to sacrifice straight reporting to cult emotionalism. The Rugby Union is racist instead of wooden-headed, and the reporter, not content with having an inspector use his fists, has to make him use his fists "to demonstrate his potency." Someone else fell good even though they could not slop the plane from flying: "It was the strength of being morally right even if you were powerless to prevent events," Cultism rears its head in the adulatory tone of "Shadbolt in Court", (What was the point of running after the plane, anyway just to add another laurel to his martyr's crown?)
And then there was the picture of some of the arrestees, with the caption "Do these people look like criminals?" Well, to me some of them looked remarkably like Manson. And there's something too conventional about a protest movement that can report "He wasn't part of the demonstration, was respectably dressed with shorts, white shirt and tie."
Congratulations, Cock. Expose a few more abuses in this masterly fashion and you'll make protest self-terminating, instead of a way of life.
That so many talents should be spent on Naftali Yavin's Precious Moments from the Family Album to Provide You with Comfort in the Long Years to Come as a shame. The play a not worth the really good production is received. It is in four episodes, each a fantastic treatment of a recognisable family situation. In the first, it's Mother's Day, and the husband, two children and grandmother join in expressing their love, hostility and dependence on the Mother. The second shows the daughter growing up and (you'd never guess) her inability to communicate with her parents. This was less light-hearted, and the third not light-hearted at all. The son has discovered a huge mysterious egg. His parents drop off and eventually he dies, never having solved the riddle. The end of the scene, with his dead body lying on the stage and the weather-balloon egg slowly deflating in the cornet was the sign for murmurings From all over the audience of "Oh, how ironic!" The Fourth scene had lots of interesting action. Father and Mother exchanged sex, brother and sister make love (after father has died in childbirth), sister becomes pregnant, gives birth to grandmother. This was all rather funny of course, but the laughs were a lot fewer by now. The first scene was spritely and we laughed, waiting to see what it meant. I think most of us lost patience somewhere in the third scence and were vexed that nothing in the final scene gave us the explanation we had been desperately hoping for.
George Webby's cast works together at a high, even standard. Their smooth concerted work in the fisrt scene was admirable. Mostly, however, one didn't notice the acting at all, which is as it should be. I last saw fergus Dick in Two Gentlemen of Verona playing coarsely for easy laughs. Here he gave a good, intelligent performance, as the father. His final appearances, as a woman, were very funny without Falling into travesty. He was restrained, almost sincere. Maybe by now this is no longer true. I imagine it would be hard to sustain such a delicate performance. When I saw Bryan Aitken in Misalliance I thought he acted self-indulgently and very badly (admittedly in a difficult part). I'm worried that I may received his performance in this play too coolly, in mind of that one. Still, there's no denying the long monologue that is part three simply requires greater skills than his. His delivey is manneristic and his recurrent slides into falsetto unpleasant. Adequate enough when playing with others, he lacked the weight or skill to carry that long scene. Pamela Hewes, the grandmother, was popular with most of the audience, but didn't appeal to me. Perhaps this is my idiosyncratic dislike of that which calls itself "whimsy" (e.g. most of A.A. Milne). It's hard to say anything about Dorothy Smith as the mother. She was good all the time, and it's hard to notice anything but the mistakes. She carried the first scene very well, and one hopes to see her again in a more testing role.
Ginette MacDonald is something special. Her soliloquy was handled very well and was really moving. She looked as if she had been crying. She was also (elsewhere) funny. If one were going to tell her where she makes mistakes, one would mention that she pulls faces, that her movement lacks precision, it sudden, even sloppy, that she shouldn't fight against her text or her fellow actors, and that she should discipline herself like a nun. But it seems churlish to try to change what is so delightful. Ginette is unpredictable, insanely honeyed or casually truculent. She reminds one of a rather baffling child who you cannot safely categorise as fey or clumsy or earnest. She is almost beautiful and very funny. I would pay to hear her give readings from the Cambridge log tables.
Downstage's efficient stage management and lighting now seems quite able to be taken for granted. The set is very cunning, revolving to give infinite variety of background. The sets and costumes are done in the trendy purples, yellows, blues, reds; terribly attractive and, I suppose, appropriate to the play. The music is awful, too much and too loud, quite at odds with the visual design.
What is the matter with Yavin's play? Well, it's boring, trivial and been done before. I was puzzling about structure, wondering if I'd missed something, until I learned that we'd seen four of six scenes, that the author says may be presented any number in any order. To approach the whole structurally is pointless. Each scene should stand on its own; none does. Yavin tries to have it both ways when he writes open, boring didacticism, and then says "of course it doesn't really matter much anyway." Perhaps the reason he does not develop the ideas he's thrown up is that he cannot. The philosophy is trivial, the humour is scarcely gratifying. The first scene is successfully funny, apart from the Earth Mother business. After that it becomes very grim. The Tom Stoppard plays (The Real Inspector Hound, Rosencrants and Guildenstern) although also striving to seem deeper than they were, were at least funny all the way through. And the more one thinks about it, the more one feels Yavin cribbed it all from lonesco, even the clumsy bits.
In one part someone actually quotes Chekhov. The line, "Men and lions, eagles and partridges, geese . . . spiders" is from The Seagull and is spoken in the play in the first act. Treplev has written a rather bad experimental play, groping For a new art form, in reaction to the true, artificial stage of the time. Now Chekhov himself was rebelling against the same sterile theatre, but in a more mature way. His plays are about particular people, who have their own names and their own homes. No one is called "The Daughter" and the play is never set "in your house". Yavin's play is written in rebellion ("why should we perform ail the scenes in a play? Why should it make sense?") and is as naive as Treplev's, really.
In the course of the rest of The Seagull we see a little of a mother-son relationship that is hostile, vet dependent, of two artists who have to face their own failure, of people who love but are not loved, of parents and children who cannot understand each other. Chekhov, that is to say, has the same sort of subjects, but talks of them tentatively, respecting his characters and their feelings, Chekhov refuses to "squeeze a moral out of the tritest words and emptiest scenes—some petty little moral that's easy to understand and suitable for use in the home." Chekhov absorbs Yavin, with his good intentions, his generalisations and confusion, he absorbs him, and goes far beyond him.
I think George Webby has, of anyone in Wellington, the skill, training, sensitivity and heart to produce Chekhov. Perhaps "need" goes in there somewhere too.
"The weight of ignorance weighs heavily on the Western world, it would seem" wrote Rewi Alley of Western attitudes towards China and the Chinese Revolution. A Learner in China, Professor Willis Airey's account of the life and work of this "extraordinary ordinary New Zealander", will, in most cases I think, convince readers that his subject's contention is correct.
Alley first arrived in China "to have a look" forty-four years ago and found himself sickened at the conditions in which the vast majority of Chinese, exploited by their own Government in collusion with the West, lived and worked. First as a factory inspector, then in famine and relief work and finally as one of the guiding lights in the development of the Chinese Industrial co-operatives during the Japanese war, Alley set about "doing what he could".
He quickly became convinced of the, at best ineffectiveness, at worst corruption and avariciousness of the Chinese Nationalist Goverment headed by Chiang Kai-Shek.
Indusco (the Industrial 'Co-operatives) were conceived as a way of helping keep the Kuomintang (chiang kai-Shek's Nationals) in the war. The task was never easy; elements of the Kuomintang, while paying lip service to the worth of Indusco, unofficially harried its workers unmercifully, distrusting its co-operative nature. Alley himself appears to have incurred considerable odium in Kuomintang circles because of his work, and was classed as a political undesirable.
It had been Alley's opinion from the late thirties, however that "the reds would win in the end". Accourdingly, after his discharge by the them Chinese Government in
Professor Airey, in recounting Alley's work, has succeeded in weaving together a fascinating and detailed biography, interspersed as it is by relevant but somehow curiously dated excerpts from Alley's writings and letters (machine drawing is a "nice exact thing"). Surprisingly however, having gone this far Airey, in a sense, fails to deliver the goods. He mentions little or nothing of the development of Alley's political thinking, relying largely on the contention that Alley was interested in peace and the lot of the common man, and peace and the common man was what the Revolution was all about. Hints of the existence of a greater degree of political sophistication, however, are to be found. As early as
Airey also erects an early barrier between himself (and possibly Alley) and the reader by reason of his lengthy, and often rambling, attempted justification of Alley's adolescent attitudes which could, perhaps uncharitably, be described as militaristic. The fact that they were adolescent attitudes should have been enough.
Attitudes towards Alley, towards China, and Alley's and Chine's attiude (or attitude) toward! the West, are dealt with in the doting chapters of the book and it is here that the reader can learn something more than about the work of a great humanitarian and historical justification.
Alley, as Airey is at great pains to point out, is a great man; he was, we are told, sounded out by the British Government as to the possibility of his accepting a Knighthood (hardly a standard, one would have thought, by which Alley would like himself judged) while Nehru asked him more than once to work in India. Alley, as the Security Service made clear during his visit to New Zealand in
3rd Year Arts Student (one unit to finish BA next year)
Alter system of SRC to have it at set time. Hold it once every two weeks and insist that all motions be submitted one week before the meeting. This will allow for a printed agenda to be circulated some days beforehand. Thus all interested persons would have a chance to prepare their case.
Committee Chairman of SRC committees be made members of Executive. Thus motions from SRC could be discussed at all levels and the confusion of who is responsible for what can be reduced.
Request a complete reappraisal of examination system asking all departments to consider allowing for some specified values placed on the year's work at all stages.
Set up a fund for students who lose books possessions through fire earthquake etc.
Strong recommendations for increasing bursary allowances, especially boarding bursary, to bring into line with increased living expenses caused by inflation and rising prices.
To avoid problems caused by pub crawls etc. I suggest reinstating Procesh but hold it on a Sunday.
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An essential reason for my independent stand in this election is an attempt to erase the bias which will creep into the Executive if it is controlled by a single-minded Ticket. The same viewpoint would bring constantly the same Executive results and does not allow for a change of mind on the part of the student majority when it decides against a ruling Ticket's policy.
I promise a flexible Executive leadership, neither Left nor Right, having only the majority student interest as a guiding influence.
The function of the Executive is to care for the welfare of the students of this university and only an injection of flexibility and the resulting impartiality will implement this.
Publications Officer on Salient Staff for 3 years; Cappicade Staff and Contributor.
Reduce President's Honorarium, the money is required elsewhere.
More student participation in University and Association bodies.
Closer liaison among staff/students/stent representatives.
Accommodation (particularly flats)-the first student welfare priority.
NZUSA more relevant on campus.
Increase funds and interest in cultural, sports and political activities.
Perhaps the most notable feature of student administration is the dismal lack of interest that is usually evident. This means the few are having to bear a greatly increased work load. If the student body is to be adequately represented there must be more students encouraged to do the basic work of the Association which is far removed from the glamorous status it is supposed to have. The work is tedious and exceedingly time consuming but It Has to be Done.
Graeme is prepared to give all the time, effort and experience the job requires. He is, and will remain, impartial to all. He will serve you to the best that his abilities allow.
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Andy Easton
No photograph and no election policy supplied.
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After Margaret Bryson has done such a good job it would be a pity to let the presidency lapse into the clutches of a mere male; so I am offering my services—as it were.
My policy is as follows:
I have always thought SRC to Stand for Society tor Re-election of Crap-outs and will endeavour never to increase my knowledge of this organisation any further.
Previous experience in administrative matters will not influence my dealings with the Executive and your affairs Like you, I have no previous experience I will be a truly representative president. Give politics a miss (Gollan).
Think about yourself not your friends. Vote me vote Gollan.
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Bill Logan is the Radical Activist Ticket candidate for the presidency. He was editor of the then weekly Salient in
Bill says he believes that with an Executive "strong and unashamed in its radicalism" the Students' Association will become "a real force for change in the university and in society".
"Change must give more choices and more power to more people. Individuals must be given more choices in their degree structures, and by the provision of facilities ranging from creches and contraceptive services to a freer access to education —more choices in their personal lives. The membership of the university as a whole must be given more power in running the university.
"I believe that democracy is both the most practical and the most just method of government. It is impossible to establish full democracy in a university financed to service businessmen—but we can fight for something better than we have," he said.
Logan: King Rat
More Choices and More Power to More People
Politics at this university over the past few years have reached a point of absurdity. It is now time that sanity was restored. I wish to emphasise (i) Students own the Sub, they should therefore have full control in the running of the building, (ii) The Sub with its now improved facilities should become the cultural centre of Wellington (iii) We should stop worrying about our downtown image and concentrate upon running things on the hill in the way we want them. Thus (iv) Emphasis will be placed on SRC to find the opinions of the student body, (v) Executive will follow the majority decisions of SRC but will do its utmost to influence that decision, (vi) This ticket promises Active Leadership from the top. The issues that Soap will be tackling Art Student Issues, (a) Housing, (b) bursaries, (c) discipline, (d) finance, (e) cultural affairs, (f)social life on campus, (g) women's rights, (h) the planning of the campus (i) catering, (j) co-operative shop, (k) parking, (l) opening of meetings to all students. This platform is concerned for students and their rights on their own campus.
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Background: Age 26. BA in Classics, one year of Commerce, presently studying Maori. Extensive experience in chairmanship, administration and representation on committees of organisations both within and outside universities in Austral including membership of co-ordinating committee for overseas student weltare, two years elccted member of Canterbury SRC for commerce, trade union delegate in carpet factory, clerk, social worker, in
Policy: The president is not only an administrator but also the spokesman for the expressed views of the Association. The main issues today concern political, racial and economic injustice in the community and the allied questions of education. I don't subscribe to the doctrine of the homogenous society with its faceless, viewless, colourless stereotype members On different issues I may tend towards either right or left wing, but a student associaton will never really get off the ground unless both wings are given their due.
E Tu, E Noho, Na Te Iwi Koe E Ue.
The incumbent Women's Vice-President, Lesley Jacobs, is standing for re-election. An independent candidate, Lesley is on the Rat ticket and the Law Faculty ticket.
A student representative on the University Council, she is also on Student Union Management Committee, is Secretary of the Women's Liberation Front, President of the Daughters of the Anarchist Revolution, and is a candidate member of the Sparticist League.
Student Welfare is Lesley's main concern (she is on the Council's Welfare Committee next year), and she endorses Rat's policy on installing a condomat in the Men's Toilets. A student Pharmacy is a possible addition to the Student Welfare Service-its primary function will be dispensing contraceptives. Lesley will work for the initiation of this service as soon as possible. This is only one of the areas in which Lesley is interested.
For an experienced, competent, and efficient Women's Vice-President (Denis says so) vote for Lesley Jacobs, the all encompassing candidate.
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I am a third-year science student whose main subjects are Maths and Psychology. I take part in a wide range of student activity, for example, my conscience demands I march against Vietnam and anti-Tour-I also enjoy Arts Festival and compete at Tournament (two Victoria blues).
I demonstrate and will continue to do so because it is the only method I have to express my opinion. However, for some time now demonstrators have been doing nothing to further their cause. I am against violence, and the police will always have the advantage there. Instead the public should be educated so prejudice against students breaks down. This is more than just Public Relations. Students have progressive ideas and good reasons for them as they are better informed than the public, and are not in a 'security-at-all-costs' rut. More publicity should be given to our thoughts, and the reasons why, with supporting references. The public must be made to respect educated opinion.
Anti-pollution campaigning and practical charity help are other mature activities.
Also more shop facilities should be available. I'm sick of wasting time buying groceries off-campus.
Icrease cultural grants.
My policy complements Mr Pope's.
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Lisa Sacksen
No photograph supplied.
Sitting on the verandah, sunshine, blue sky and darts in trees, Jane rushes in and says "I'm going for Women's Vice, why don't you?" And I thought "Why don't I?" The momentous, earth-shaking decision was reached. Then I thought of p. 120 of Puckoon, always a thought that occurs at times like this. Then I thought, what sort of fool would elect you anyhow? And scanning the dear ol' common room I saw lots of sub-standard fools wiating to vote for a fool who would offer refunds on used biros. Another thought struck; you foolish fool, you don't want power-gets in the way of influencing people. Thought this thought totally just, still do. So here I am, contesting a position which seems to have no purpose except ceremonial, and I don't want power. Why then you may ask? Because I think I've got this hang-up about helping people, which gets in the way of helping me. I don't know whether you should vote for me, I'm not sure I'd vote for me, I'm not sure I will vote for me. But, to quot Eugene McCarthy (not too prophetically I hope) "If I do get in it'll be fun."
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Beth Tolley
No election policy supplied.
I am a third year student experienced in both success and failure.
I propose to divide finals into two half-yearly papers with the possibility for those with D grades to re-sit before tho next year's work begins.
We should be given some idea of how well past students have done in different subjects and how well they are likely to do in the coming year.
I am in favour of the credits system for the science faculty. We sit the exams and should know our finals mark for each paper.
There should be special D-passes for students who gain 45-49% on their third try.
It's about time special consideration be given to foreign students who don't get three units in two years.
We are sensible enough now to choose our own courses with the only prerequisites for Stage III units being the corresponding Stage II and Stage I units—though guidance will still be necessary.
The time has come to take a positive look at student accommodation. More accommodation is obviously needed at a sensible price. Students should be able to afford single rooms. More finance for students near the breadline.
Peter is a 4th year BA/LLB student. He was National Affairs Officer on the Contact). Peter was also inter alia Student Representative on the University Appointments Board and a Victoria Delegate to NZUSA Easter and Winter Councils. He is currently Student Representative on the Law Faculty Library Advisory Committee and Co-ordinator of the Indo-China lecture series.
Peter Would Work for
Effective student welfare services. In particular the development of a more helpful loan scheme for those students in need of finance and for the healthy continuation of Contact.
The weekly purchase by the library of a half dozen of the leading student newspapers from overseas to help keep Victoria a little more in touch with international student developments.
Peter Believes that
Social and political concern should be vital to the University.
Social, sporting and cultural (as well as educational) aspects of student life are most important.
Informed student opinion needs an effective voice on the University's decision-making bodies.
Increasing bursaries, holding coffee prices down and planning for future Union facilities are of fundamental importance.
Finally: "I would consider it my privilege to serve you all as best as I am able."
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I stand for the office of MVP for the purpose of using that executive position, if obtained, to urge a policy of social reform in student accommodation, welfare services and student participation as opposed to representation.
If elected I would press for:
Student Accommodation: The Students' Association to provide flat and apartment accommodation for students in this regard:
Student Health Services: A pharmacy to be run in conjunction with the present service, thus eliminating the need for students to take prescriptions downtown. Also such a pharmacy to provide all the other services a pharmacy contains.Student Participation: Here I endorse Rat policy.Increased Budget for Cultural Affairs: to a level equal to that of the Sports Clubs.Special Exams: Reproduction of specials for finals failures.
I also urge students to vote Jacobs for WVP and Nesbitt for Cultural Affairs.
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third year science student majoring in Zooloy
in
as a commercial artist and cartoonist he has contributed to magazines such as Playboy, Focus and Cappicade
member of the Housing and Karate-Club committees
primary aim is to improve relations between public and students. He has already begun to do this, in his capacity as Advertising Manager for Arts Festival; by orientating his campaign to
believes in equal wages for equal amount of work for women
inexperienced in the establishment of student politics but believes that this would make him more alert and senstive to "string pulling"
opposes war of any form. This results from six-year childhood experience in a revolution-torn country. From this also stems the fact that his re-adaptation to New Zealand life would be invaluable to him in helping overseas students adapt to our culture.
politically he is a liberal
believes in the virtues of socialism and the righ of an individual to voice and hold an opinion
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I advocate and will research and implement the following:
Contact which has files on relevant social and political issues and other issues directly affecting students.
Furthermore, I endorse the policy of Drusilla Megget.
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2nd Year Pol. Science student-ember of Socialist Club, Labour Party, Pym, Rat candidate.
I am standing on a ticket because the most effective way to achieve radical action in the University is by the presentation of a programme that can be chosen in contrast to alternative policies. The problems of society created by self-interested pragmatism are reflected in the University structures which, despite efforts by some of the present Executive, do not encourage student participation. All those involved in education must control the educational structures to the extent of their abilities regardless of class and position in the structure. The aim of Radical Action Ticket is to democratise all institutions to involve all individuals. The university should be a weapon to destroy apathy in society—the immediate problem is to create a confrontation with Muldoonism. As part of the de-bureaucratisation of society, I intend if elected to make myself superfluous. What power I have will be used to achieve Rat policy, but I hope to see the remaining Executive responsibilities (e.g. financial) shifted to the SRC.
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The position of Men's Vice-Prsident is only as effective as the holder is prepared to make it. I have a great interest in student affairs and will use the position to get done what I think should be d#entity;one on Executive.
My knowledge of the problems of running the Union is gained from the experience of working for it (under the custodian). Hence I have a practical knowledge of the problems. I stand for the more effective use of the Union by students (as opposed to Fritz.)
My other stands are:
In general, my policy is between that of Rat and Soap, extracting the from, but independent of, both.
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Victoria University still tops the poll as the most apathetic campus in New Zealand, lacking the necessary imaginative leadership, the student body has had as much identity as a large herd of cows who are annually milked. This year has seen initiative and responsibility in student affairs drifting hopelessly in a no-man's land somewhere between Executive and SRC. Soap aims at restoring the leadership that Executive has consistently failed to give, and at the same maximise student participation in decision-making and campus activities. We envisage a Student Union controlled democratically By Students Themselves becoming a forum for new cultural and political ideas. So-called 'idle funds' will be invested in student clubs and societies rather than outside organisations such as the City Council.
Students are increasingly becoming a repressed minority even worse-off materially than old-age pensioners. Inadequate bursaries and extortionist rents combined with astronomical price rises have meant that many students are almost on the poverty line. Soap has realistic plans for a student housing scheme, a student co-operative and stronger action for increased bursaries. Soap promises you revitalised leadership and a move towards a better university.
I am a third year BA/LLB student and have been a member of many cultural affairs clubs at Victoria-ranging from the Drama Club to Pooh Club to Amnesty International. This year I am also Social Controller of Arts Festival to be held here in August.
The position for which I am standing is a new one, and, I believe, a very important one. Until now there has been an unfortunate ignorance within this university of the business of NZUSA and I envisage my main tasks as Liaison Officer would be both to inform Victoria students of these activities and also to convey to the national body the policy remits of SRC. However, as the position is still very much an unknown quantity, it is essential that the person elected is a student with initiative and enthusiasm. I claim that my record of student pursuits-political, cultural and academic-make me a candidate worthy of your vote. I promise that, if elected to the position of Liaison Officer to NZUSA I will remain loyal to the interests of Victoria students, and sincerely strive for progress and the successful accomplishment of your will as expressed by SRC.
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Most students, when asked in the recent questionnaire whether they thought NZUSA was a worthwhile institution, answered yes, but it was obvious to me that many were not sure why. I am convinced that it does have a positive role to play and that this is representing and assisting students as a national body. Apart from making policy statements on behalf of students, I would like to see some action in the shaping of these policies on the issues which students are most concerned with. I feel, for example, NZUSA could do much more in the way of co-ordinating action by individual universities on both national issues, such as student bursaries, and race relations in our cities, and international issues, such as the Vietnam War and South Africa.
If elected 1 shall do my utmost to maintain a liaison with NZUSA, both by informing people what it is doing and, even more important, what it can do for them.
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Maths Honours student; Executive of Socialist Club; Member of Pym; A Radical Activists Ticket candidate.
Being a Rat candidate I believe we should lead the Association in a more radical direction, that we should lead students in putting active pressure on the state and university authorities to make a freer society and a freer university. I believe any form of revolution in society involves not only political change but the introduction into society of new life styles. Our culture, art, music, newspapers, posters, even the way we talk, fuck and grow our hair should reflect our freedom from the sick politics and the reactionary way of life so many people live today. The executive should take the initiative in revolutionising student life.
Students should be able to decide what type of education they desire they need more than just the token representation they are getting on university committees. University should not be closed to the poor; bursaries should be increased to cover living expenses and should be periodically revised.
As liaison officer I would like to see increased militancy in NZUSA and more return for our financial commitments to that body.
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Glen Thomas
No photograph supplied.
3rd year arts. I have a certain amount of qualifications for this position. This year I am the Chairman of the National Affairs Committee of SRC and attended Easter Council as the National Affairs delegate. I have also been a member of the committee set up at the AGM to study the relationship between this university and NZUSA.
From these activities I believe that students at this university are not getting value from NZUSA for the money they put into it. The fault is mainly at the university level. NZUSA has much to offer but it requires that there be someone at the university with the experience and knowledge of NZUSA who can ensure that students obtain maximum benefit from it.
On general matters I will press for greater student representation on all committees of the university. I also believe that the universities are becoming the conscience of our society. In any way possible I will attempt to further this trend. I am not a member of any group or faction on campus and if elected will try to represent student opinion as students express it, not as it fits into any ideology I may have.