Publicly accessible
URL: http://www.nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/collections.html
copyright 2015, by the Victoria University of Wellington Library
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line, except in the case of those words that break over a page.
Some keywords in the header are a local Electronic Text Collection scheme to aid in establishing analytical groupings.
In order to make new content available faster this work has been uploaded but does not have comprehensive name authority mark up for sub-works and corresponding authors. We will endeavour to add this mark up as soon as possible.
I write this letter to protest in the strongest possible terms against the treatment of students unfortunate enough to be taking International Politics II this year. When will the smug and/or boorish members of that academic misfit, the Political Science Department, realise that students are not shit? God knows, Political Science I in
The trouble basically seems to be a complete lack of any sense of Unity or co-operation amongst the staff "responsible" for the course. It would seem that no-one was able to decide what was really important - so everyone threw in a little bit of everything in the vain hope that something good had to come out of it Somewhere. Jesus, what a foul up!!! At this point Ray Goldstein will probably humbly protest that he was faced with great problems at the beginning of the year. Okay, I've got nothing against you personally, and okay, maybe you weren't sure who would be around to take certain aspects of the course, and maybe the book-problem is difficult - but, after all, you are supposed to be in charge of this course - perhaps your functional analysis needs looking into.
Maybe the tone of this letter is facetious and maybe it offends a few feelings. But God, things are bad!!! It's no good asking the lecture group for its opinion Ray - the only people who will say anything at a time like that are the clique of ego-trippers. If you really want to know how people feel, watch the faces of conscientious students as they are insulted for not doing reading for a tutorial (even if they are overworked in other units) - or better still, hide yourself in the keyhole of 9 Glasgow Terrace one Friday afternoon and watch the faces of the students coming up the steps for yet another Piano and Olton test. Okay, some may fail because they're just too lazy to do any swot. But do you have any idea just how difficult it is for serious students to sit down and learn for one of those bloody tests with the threat of essays and assignments for other units hanging over their heads? Okay, I know you worry that students won't get any idea of basic terms in international politics if they aren't forced to learn for such tests. But don't be fooled by the ego-trippers. These tests Are a real cause of student unrest in the class. Sometimes we just can't drop everything for a week just to study for such a test. If you must place such stress on this book, wouldn't some form of written work set over a longer period be a better idea? Or, what about something like the tests Rod Alley gives? - no marks taken, rather leave it up to the individual students and their consciences.
But getting back to the main point of this letter, students in Interpol II are fed-up. Most of us, surprisingly enough, are quite interested in this unit - but already attendance in lectures and tutorials is dropping off - History II and Political Science MA are still packing them in!!! The writing is on the wall!!! Students are not shit - or, if you prefer, if you feed people peanuts, you get monkeys - that's probably not too relevant, but I hope you get the point. I haven't written this letter for a joke - I am genuinely concerned about the chaotic and unfair nature of the course. The work-load expected of the conscientious student is unfair and quite frankly, ridiculous. Please help - do something before it is too late!!!
I would like to draw the attention of Victoria students to the recent action of the N.Z.U.S.A. executive in canceling all future Congresses.
As a member of this year's Curious Cove I question the executive's right to dictate to me, and all other Congress people, how I should react to the experience. Is it possible to measure just how much good the free and penetrating discussion at Curious Cove had upon its members, simply by calculating how many of its members now take part in "activist" work. And do they know what we are doing now?
Anyway, surely laying down such arbitrary rules is illiberal, thus completely against the spirit of Curious Cove.
I suggest that Congress is worthwhile because by its very nature, as a place for open and serious discussion, it fosters the kind of critical thinking which is very necessary if mankind is going to attempt to solve the many problems confronting it.
At Canterbury, in an SRC meeting, previous Curious Cove students encouraged their executive to pass a motion censuring the NZUSA decision. If Victoria students will take the initiative, we will probably be able to persuade the executive to rescind the motion I call upon you to make the effort too, in order that other students may enjoy the benefits of future Congresses.
Because of the lack of space in this issue, photo stories on Capping Week activities and the April 30th Mobilisation have been held over until next issue.
All students, but particularly those who have enrolled at Victoria for the first time this year, are reminded that formal entries for the October - November examinations must be made by the 1st of June. Enrolment in a subject does not constitute an examination entry for it.
Entry forms are available in the Robert Stout Building and when completed should be taken to the Records slide there for checking. If entering for more than one degree or diploma in
The Records Office should also be notified of any change of address during the period between lodging an entry and late September so that the examination timetable and admittance code-slip can be sent to the correct place.
Lincoln College
May Council, "a gathering of middle-class white liberal shits" as it was so aptly labelled, as usual brought together a collection of the greatest egos in New Zealand Universities. Student leaders attend these gatherings twice a year, and surprisingly enough work hard to produce policy for the national pressure group, and to consider means of improving the position of students. Some of it is even interesting.
Dr. Benjamin Spock will be in New Zealand in a few weeks time. He will speak in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, on unspecified anti-war topics. Dr. Spock will travel first-class, bring his wife, and speak only once every two days, at a total cost to the organisers of about three thousand dollars.
NZUSA still intends to bring out a newspaper to replace the financial disaster Focus. At Council, NZUSA approved the publication of a national magazine in folded tabloid format. This publication is to be oriented to a readership of socially and poltically active young individuals, not an NZUSA house magazine or an aloof and uninteresting commentary on New Zealand affairs.
Curious Cove Congress has been abolished. Discontent about Congress centred around the fact that it was catering for a small minority of students. It was held at a time when students were forced to give up valuable working time to attend. The purposes of Congress, which has been primarily oriented towards discussion rather than action, were also attacked. NZUSA will however hold a congress (small 'c') of some sort in
NZUSA, by a rather narrow margin, now believes in the legalisation of the use and possession of marijuana, and has called on "Government to reduce penalties for cannabis offences in the meantime.
An Overseas Speakers Fund has been set up to enable NZUSA to finance the travel of overseas speakers to this country. The committee which is to act as a selection body, will consider the relevance of any speaker to the New Zealand student body and the aims of NZUSA, the ability to arrange finance for other associations and organisations to assist in funding any tour and the ability of any speaker to speak outside the student body with effectiveness.
The status of women in New Zealand society was a topic which received heated debate. The battle between "fucking male chauvinist cunts" (Marion Logeman, Education Vice-President) and "jumped up braless birds" (a Lincoln delegate) was resolved firmly on the side of Womens Lib. A series of motions were passed under the heading "NZUSA recognises that women in New Zealand are discriminated against sexually, politically, legally, educationally and in terms of employment opportunities. Motions dealt with education, abortion, free contraceptives, equal pay and opportunity, and marriage laws.
The growing awareness amongst the student body that a group commonly known as Maoris live in New Zealand, and that this group possess a culture and a language which differ in some respects from Orthodox European, was evident at Council. Spurred on by the vociferous Nga Tamatoa observer Ted Nia, the "White liberal shits" passed a series of motions calling for action in fields of law, politics, education and social questions such as the potential worth of urban marae.
A decision was made to investigate the setting up of a domestic volunteer scheme within New Zealand, and a meeting has been called of experienced and expert people in volunteer and welfare services.
A complete list of motions passed would fill a small book and within a few weeks that small book should be available for those who are interested, in the Studass Office.
The University Grants Committee will shortly announce their decision on the bursary submissions made by NZUSA. The UGC is talking in terms of 40% increase in general bursary levels.
Professor Ian Milner, Professor of English Literature at Charles University, Prague, and a visiting Professor in the department of English at the University of Otago, is at present at Victoria. Here with his wife as guests of the university, he will give a series of lectures (the first of which was on Monday) on aspects of Czechoslovak poetry. The programme includes: Wednesday: 8.15 in LB1. a public lecture entitled "Modern Czech Poetry in the European Context." Thursday: 12.30 until 2.00 in the Memorial Theatre, a lecture on "Problems of Translating Czech Poetry"; with Jarmila Milner. Friday: 11.00am in the Conference Room of the Easterfield Building, an advanced lecture for English Students on "Post-War Poetry in Europe - Trands and Contrasts."
The other day, for the first time this year, I actually went to a meeting of the S.R.C., that noble and illustrious institution whose function it is to give the students the illusion that they are participating in the making of policy decisions. Of course no-one who attends really believes he is actually making decisions or looking after his interests or exerting his God-given democratic rights or all the rest of the garbage we have thrust at us by our revered executive. But that is beside the point. The meeting was interesting. It started, as usual, in a deceptively mundane way - the president, clad in his customary dark glasses, striding authoritatively through a crowded hall, reaching the microphone and crisply suggesting that we "zero in", (this last comment presumably being made to intensify his already pretentious and obnoxious image.) A few administrative matters. Then we reached the point that had drawn me to the meeting - a ridiculous motion recommending a tightening of already too tough exclusion regulations. No we didn't. Someone had slipped in a motion to the effect that reports from student representatives be heard first. These reports, we were assured, had great bearing on the exclusion motion.
So we heard the reports. As it turned out, of course, their relevance to the matter was non-existent. But by the time you have been to three or four meetings of S.R.C. you will come to expect this kind of crass inefficiency. To return to the reports. They were accomplished in five or six minutes. But the nobodies whom S.R.C. has appointed to represent us on this and that council or board were not content to waste this minute fragment of our time. No, they wanted to put some motions. I lost count of how many but I do recall that each one expressed exactly the same viewpoint, was put by exactly the same people and had exactly the same things said about it by exactly the same people. And, of course, each was treated separately so that we had to endure the same boring speeches for each of nine or ten motions. Of course our learned leaders could not have treated these motions collectively for could that not be construed as tending to that terrible sin, efficiency, or, even worse, effectiveness.
I have heard these serious do-gooders who dominate S.R.C. for their own ends, actually lament, in their usual sanctimonious manner, that attendance at S.R.C. is not good enough. And so they should, for if only two hundred are present, then only two hundred will hear their nauseating voices. But can they honestly expect good attendance when the bureaucratic structure of S.R.C. deprives it not only of every ounce of its limited potential but also of anything vaguely interesting. If apathy is the alternative to such bungling, to such unbelievable inefficiency, to such extreme boredom, then long live apathy, it is a state of grace. I am convinced that only soldiers and members of parliament could be capable of this type of ineffectiveness.
After marching in the Mobilisation I thought I'd go to the discussion about it that was advertised around. The first speaker was a bit critical of the mobe but by and large happy with it. He thought maybe a bit too jovial, maybe a silent march could be good. The next was Owen Gager, poor man, much more critical in a sophisticated way. How do you really really influence Foreign Affairs? or Labour? What Is the effect of a demonstration, really? Does sheer quantity of marchers signify? Maybe other styles of dissent would be less crude, more effective. What are the long term objectives? Was the ostensible success of the mobe due to activists or Nixon?
Gager took maybe forty minutes. There the meeting ended, in my opinion, as far as results go. After that little was said that was relevant, analytical, conscious of the lack of hard facts.
There was no reasoned analysis of the effect or value of the mobe, its aims, the danger of "counter-productivity", its problems of organisation, the possible value of advertising and market research or overseas technique for dissent, the position of the Labour party, what the power structure is in N.Z., the arguments of the opposition and their refutation, the question of why socially acceptable" dissenters tended to be elsewhere at the time of the demonstration.
Those who had been involved in the organisation spoke with the predictable idealism and subjectivity of the ardent youthful dissenters. The political parties were "really scared". For the first time secondary school boys had gained a "political consciousness". The sheer number of marchers was stressed over and over, a great leap forward.
Next came the huge potential of Drivers and Seamen for a from-the-bottom revolution in N.Z. Also the entire secondary school population is going to grow up to be leftist because of a couple of contacts with activists here and there. A very young student advocated violent action because demonstrations haven't worked so far. Another man wanted extremely-worded pamphlets. In the end a character with a loud voice, and no respect for the chairwoman shouted down the bickering and everyone left.
I do not oppose the aims of dissent at all but its primitive state now. Such meetings (I hope they aren't typical) are a thousand miles from effective subversion. They are phenomena more economically described in terms of group psychology, competition for status, identification with Che or someone, role-playing. Anyone can do it, you don't have to read anything. Is the aim really social change? would it be if it involved unspectacular study and planning, quiet intelligent subversion, no status?
I hope a better organisation exists, or evolves, it's high time. Until it does I think dissent is too crude, too likely to backfire and to strengthen opposition to it. It repulses those who would count most; it converts 16 year old instead. So it dooms itself to a viscious
This year the Malaysian Students' Association twice held a special general meeting mainly to decide on a new stand that is to reconsider its associate clause which was allegedly discriminatory. The first meeting was called off after the quorum had been challenged. The latest one was held last Saturday,
Several issues were discussed; a few are reported here.
The President of the M.S.A., Mr. Michael Lim, explained that in view of changing circumstances, the Association must reconsider its constitution, particularly the membership clause. An open membership would not only improve the public image of the Association but would also foster relationship between the Malaysian students and the Kiwi students.
On the question of affiliation to the V.U.W.S.A. it was pointed out that this could become necessary as it would be one step further in improving this relationship. Some students argued that it was not a matter of benefits but that it is the right of a group of students at this university to become a part of the larger community. Those present at the MSA meeting unanimously agreed to allow the Association to re-apply for affiliation to the V.U.W.S.A..
The MSA had applied for affiliation once but was rejected on the following grounds
Firstly, the MSA failed to produce the minutes of its inaugural meeting. The minutes were actually lost. This difficulty was overcome when the MSA held a S.G.M. to re-affirm its constitution.
Secondly, the provision allowed by 'associate membership clause' is restrictive. According to the V.U.W.S.A. constitution all affiliated clubs (with a few exceptions such as Faculty clubs) must fully open its membership, and they (the members) must enjoy all the privileges.
Now the MSA has dropped its membership clause, but inserted what has been regarded as a "moral" clause: That the committee members shall as far possible comprise Malaysians and be representative of the various races residing in Malaysia."
The problem here is whether the Stud. Assn. Executive would interpret the clause as open. Here one is never sure.
Perhaps, if the above two problems are solved, the Stud. Assn. Exec. might still feel that the MSA is a government sponsored club, and subject to government pressures. This has been repeatedly denied by the members of the MSA of Wellington. There had been talks about these allegations but nothing has yet been proved in black and white.
At Massey University, an open forum was held to prove the allegation that one Malaysian, Alex Rogers was bribed $1500 and a job promised when he goes home. Alex Rogers himself denied the allegation at the forum. It is interesting to note that both Alex Rogers and the Massey Stud. Assn. President went to see the Malaysian High Commissioner, where Mr. Rogers denied that he was offered any form of bribe at all.
One would imagine that it is time for the V.U.W.S.A. to also consider its stand. An overseas student group has opened its membership, and this initiation must gain high respect. It is now up to the host country to look into the realities of Malaysian problems and to fully welcome the Malaysian group into their wider student community.
The time has come for both sides to come to an agreement for the benefits of all students. So far the Stud. Assn. Executive power has not been challenged. The trust put in the executive by Malaysian students, however small a group they may be, cannot be left untouched for they (the Malaysians) too vote at the end of the year. Their interests must also be considered.
Just before Easter holidays, this year, the A.G.M. of the V.U.W.S.A. managed to pass a motion banning the use of Student Association facilities by the MSA. This move was seen by the MSA as (1) an infringement upon the rights of individuals to associate, and (2) a step to oripple MSA in its activities. If this ban continues then the MSA will not be able to hold cultural shows, dances, etc., and to organise its annual open badminton championship all of which are necessary to foster the spirit of friendship.
At this time when University Students all over the world are fighting to liberate the under-privileged, here right inside us, a substantial number of Malaysian students are denied this right.
The MSA meeting ended with these two motions unanimously carried, and with great applause.
One clear message emerges from all the recent discussions, arguments, and skirmishes in connection with Anzac Day: if a public ceremony is to be held on public premisses, then the Wellington City Council is abdicating its public duty in handing over responsibility to the R.S.A. or for that matter any other private organisation. It's no excuse to say that it has been that way for a very long time - that's merely proof they've been repeating the evasion for a very long time.
With the City Council elections due in October, I suggest the Association Executive lose no time in approaching the Mayor and all prospective councillors with a view to getting a firm undertaking for Anzac Day
An interesting past-time of many Vic staff members is now coming to light. It's that old disease known as moneyfucking. But you can't really blame them when you consider the pressures they're under. The May 10 issue of 'National Business Review' in an article on business administration reports that 'meanwhile Victoria University has set up a committee of businessmen to make sure the teachers keep close contact with industry. Unilever, National Mutual, Feltex, Daysh Renouf, Wright Stevenson and lvon Watkins-Dow are represented in the committee. That's not old lvon Watkins-Dow that exports New Zealand made defoliants for use in Vietnam; or the Wright Stevenson of Sir Clifford Plimmer (National Party) renoun?
Professor Bradley of our own Geology department is jumping on the bandwagon early. He has founded a prospecting company called stand Minerals Limited. He said in the April 26 edition of the 'Business Review' that his company would pay off when it was able to persuade overseas mining companies to take an interest in areas that Island Minerals recommended. An admirable sentiment - selling New Zealand overseas.
'National Business Review' tells us also that 'the lecturers in Business Administration at Victoria make sure they keep in touch with their subject. All have been involved in commerce. One was a product manager for General Foods in the U.S. as well as an account executive with a New York advertising agency; another was personnel manager for Feltex. All act as consultants for various companies on the side.'
So go to it staff members there's money to be made and all you lose is your independence. And remember all you companies, Victoria's for sale and the students/previous shareholders seem quite willing to sell out to you. Get a finger in the university pie now!
Our research shows that students feel restless at the begining of the second term largely because there is very little left to enrol for at that time of the year. Most of the thrills and satisfactions of enrolment procedures are confined to term I when, strange to tell, they are appreciated by hardly anyone.
Moreover, judging by current rumours, heard by everyone from Professorial Board to Evening Post, the privilege of being allowed to enrol for anything at all at this university may become an esoteric rarity in the very near future.
The benevolent opportunists at the gym have decided, therefore, to make you another special offer, at pre-enrolment-freeze prices, to make an enrolment that may be your last.
What you enrol for does not matter much at this stage, and anyway you have had a vacation to think about it, but we are setting aside this first week of the term for enrolments to be made in a variety of activities.
Details of club and intramural games are at the gym. And there are still plenty of times to do what you like without being organised into it.
The programme begins in the second week of the term. Previous experience is no handicap and no prerequisite. Everything is free. If you forget to enrol in the first week, enrol in the second for late enrolment opportunities - or at any time thereafter.
note
At the recent Annual General Meeting of the Association the matter of a fee increase was deferred to a Special General Meeting to be held in the second term. This was understandable, as the number of people attending the A.G.M. was unrepresentative of the general student body. It was commented that the information presented, purporting to justify the fee increase recommendations, was inadequate. Further information is now available and is presented in the following article.
V.U.W.S.A. has built up a fairly sound financial base. However about
The Association's current (operating) financial position is less secure. The bulk of the operating income comes from a $5 allocation of the present $19 Students' Association fee. Other sources of income are commissions on magazines and life insurance, and interest on investments. Above are the Association budgets for the years
This year the budget includes $4000 for Cultural Clubs and $5800 for Sports Clubs. If Arts Festival and Tournament costs are added to club grants, a total of $15000 (or half the Association Budget) is, used to subsidize club activities. The actual amount is $5300 to Cultural Clubs (92 cents per student) and $9500 to Sports Clubs ($1.63 per student). This is far too much. It is obvious that many clubs do not require subsidies (grants) but apply for them all the same. The powerful clubs such as the Rugby and Cricket or Visual Arts Clubs get a large proportion of the grant funds - not necessarily through need but because they control powerful positions on the councils supervising grants. With respect to Cultural Affairs, the Visual Arts have received more money than political or religious clubs because the Cultural Affairs Officer wanted it that way.
Reducing grants will force clubs to be more enterprising in raising finance. Clubs may also be forced to raise their own subscriptions. Some sports clubs have been particularly well treated by this Association with respect to long term development finance. Development loans approved and paid over have been made to the Ski Club ($8250) and the Rugby Club ($5000). Approval on principle has been given to loan the Cricket, Hockey and Soccer Clubs $6000 for a joint pavilion in Kelburn Park.
The Ski Club has experienced considerable difficulty in fulfilling the terms of its loan. Both capital and interest payments have had to be deferred or waived. The Ski Club's continuing poor financial position has worsened through inadequate planning and too carefree an attitude to the financial responsibilities involved in maintaining the security of the loan monies. Unless the club lakes drastic measures to ensure the loan's security the executive may be forced to close the club to cut its losses. I hope the other sports clubs which have received long term finance for capital developments can fulfill their loan terms: while the executive does not wish to become tough with recipients of loan monies it has a duty to students and to the clubs to ensure funds are wisely used and the security for the loan is maintained.
With respect to Cultural Clubs; it is only in the last two years that Cultural Clubs have received bigger grants. This is principally due to the efforts of the past Cultural Affairs Officer, Graeme Nesbitt. Graeme had the personality and conviction to gain huge increases in Cultural Club grants. Whether past actions in this area are good or bad is unimportant because the grants have already been made. However with the increasing number of Cultural Clubs there is going to be an increased demand for funds (grants) to subsidize activities.
These clubs would seem to have a stronger case for subsidies than Sports Clubs: their membership is constantly changing and there is not the same financial commitment that is found amongst Sports Club members; however there are exceptions. The rather carefree financial attitude evident in many Cultural Clubs is reflected in their financial records. Occasionally these get so bad that revenues, expenditures, assets and liabilities just cannot be traced. The recent action involving the disaffiliation of the Drama Club is a good example of financial negligence.
The Drama Club was probably the biggest Cultural Club affiliated to the Students' Association. However when their Treasurer resigned after only two months in office no great effort was made to find a replacement. When I tried to prepare annual accounts for the club it became obvious that not all the $5000 funds available to the club could be traced; the financial records available were just inadequate. The executive could only disaffiliate the club and freeze its bank account. This was done on the supposition that an entirely new club would be formed which would then apply for affiliation to V.U.W.S.A. If this "new" Drama Society formed an acceptable alternative to the previous Drama Club, men it would be admitted as a new club. This is not an extreme case. Club accounts generally are a mess. This year clubs will be adopting a standardized accounted system - the financial responsibilities entailed may force clubs to take a more responsible attitude to financial records and accounting for funds.
These are NZUSA, NZUAC, and NZUSU, NZUSA and its various affiliates levy this Association approximately $1.20 per enrolled student to subsidize their activities. If the fee is not increased Victoria will not be able to meet national body levies and internal commitments - something will have to give. This $1.20 is deducted from the $5 at present allocated from the Association fee. National body levies and club grants take $3.75 of this $5 allocation. This leaves $1.25 ($6500) per student plus any sundry income to pay for administration costs - no wonder the Association will make a big loss this year.
For the $7000 paid to NZUSA and its affiliates some worthwhile services are provided: insurance: participation in the NZUSA life insurance scheme brings two benefits. Firstly there is the social welfare benefit of providing a necessary service for students. Secondly there is a monetary benefit in the form of commissions on life policies approved. These commissions will be worth at least $200 to Victoria this year.
travel: this service reaps no monetary gain for Victoria. It is purely a service for students administered by the national student body. There is no reason why Victoria couldn't run a similar scheme on its own.
political: NZUSA can put forward a national student opinion on topical issues. Such an opinion will probably carry more weight than opinions from individual Students' Associations. However it is questionable whether the political points won so far justify the expenditure in getting them.
Personally I would rather see Victoria withdraw from NZUSA. However with the present student apathy on campus at Victoria it is better we stay in NZUSA and have some political opinions, than withdraw and have none at all.
The budget at the head of this page summarizes the Association's Income and Expenditure for the years
Little can be said regarding the various items except that provision has been made for a full time accountant/business manager. This person' job will be to oversee the financial activities of the Association. This is at present done by the Treasurer. However it has now become too great and time consuming. Provision is also made for extra staffing (typists etc.) in future years. At present the Association office is understaffed, or will be by early
It is also necessary to consider the other funds which receive an allocation from the fee:
union building fund. At present $7 is allocated from the fee. By the end of
Inflation in the building sector means that cost projections made three years ago are now understated. An increased association fee will pay off the extensions sooner and provide more funds in the same period of time for the new Union building. At the end of
However indications are that the $1 increase (to $8) necessary to combat inflation over the next three years (
union maintenance fund: This is allocated $5 from the fee. From figures supplied by the managing secretary of the Union this portion will soon be inadequate.
The Union has reached a point where funds barely
to allow it to meet its current commitments and build up some reserves.
If the Union's allocation is increased, reasonable reserves against contingencies will be accumulated. This will enable the Union allocation to be held stable at $7 per student, at least until the end of
Although the University matches the Association portion of the maintenance fund the University also pays supervisory salaries and other maintenance and administrative costs entirely out of university funds. Thus in reality the Students' Association pays about 1/3 of the total costs of running the Union.
Salient account: the accounts of the Publications Board indicate that "Cappicade" profits will
effectively subsidize the Board's operations until
Trust account: The Union Extension Trust account presently receives $1 from the fee for capital development/improvements to the Union. These have taken the form of 35mm projectors and improvements to the Memorial Theatre and Gymnasium. Recently a loan was made to the graduates club. The Trust is in a healthy financial position and does not need further funds over and above the present levy.
This summary and the budgets provided are the basis for my recommending a fee increase.
If these recommendations are not approved the following action must be contemplated:
When a university is overcrowded, who are the first to be thrown overboard? The answer, as the University Administration has recently shown us, is the students. Maoris are the first to lose their jobs in a recession; Newtown or Porirua housewives cop the final punishment - the end of the line of price increases of an inflationary welfare economy; Gallery interviewers are the first to be forced to resign from the NZBC. The place Maoris have in the labour market, housewives in the affluent society and Gallery interviewers in the NZBC the student has in the university system. Is it time for an alliance?
Let's look at these four situations. Central to each is the system's insistence that it is serving exactly those people whom it most victimises. The housewife, alias the consumer, is supposed (according to the Stage One Economics textbooks) to be exercising 'consumer sovereignty' over the entire apparatus of supply and demand. In fact she is the one out of whose tattered bag the last inflated price of some half-bankrupt backyard kiwi factory is finally paid. The Maori, whose subsistence economy provided him with a guaranteed living until the pakeha arrived, was promised all the privileges of advanced pakeha society in return for selling out to Queen Victoria New Zealand's independence. (We became independent in The Compass File.
And so it is with students. They are told the university exists solely to educate them; and if this is not the purpose of the university one may well wonder what it is. But the first hint of financial stringency, of overcrowding, or the first caustic aphorism from a Minister of Finance, and university administrations everywhere discuss the curtailment of student numbers.
In all these apparantly very different case histories there are obvious common elements; the rhetoric, or if you prefer the ideology of capitalist democracy, must console the people who are always the refuse of the economic, communications of university systems with the illusion of power.
There is no limit to the injury a student who really believes he is being educated will endure from the university system. (Scrutinise carefully the tortured faces of your lecturers.) There is no limit to what an interviewer who genuinely believes he is doing a public service will suffer from the NZBC. (Look at the curious relationship between David Exel and the Minister of Defence.) There is no price a housewife who believes supermarkets are devised for her benefit will not pay. And have you ever seen a Maori accountant? Who makes the decision to dump the refuse from the system when it becomes too expensive to service any other way?
This article is not intended to investigate in depth the role of the weathervane of the University Council, Dr. I.D. Campbell, who backed the last student fight about admissions because the students might have won, but initiated the first move to cut student numbers once Dr. Culliford brought out his report (and Bill Logan was safely in Australia.) If Campbell wants to cut student numbers one can be sure they will be cut, but Campbell is not the real power - the Vicar of Bray should never be confused with the Cabinet he follows right or wrong. Muldoon's first misgivings about the University system were related to the numbers of students enrolled in Political Science at Victoria University, and if the funds for Victoria's expansion have now been cut by the University Grants Committee one can guess that what part of this decision did not result from the incompetence of Victoria's negotiators came from gentle leaks from the Treasury. As Bill Logan observed, last year's rumblings about admission were also accompanied at administration level by wry obeisances to the deity of Muldoon.
But there is more to this than the general rule that at the apex of every network of our plural society stands the National Government. As Eldridge Cleaver said, "The white man turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied sexpot and placed her on a pedestal... the white man turned himself into the omnipotent administrator and established himself in the Front Office." This is as true of the university as anywhere else; the summit of an academic career is to become the administrator of a department (called a Professor,) a position virtually incompatible with a sustained direct role in either educating students or doing academic research. So little real interest in education exists among lecturers that you will persuade virtually none of them to renounce the goal of a chair, even if it means the final close of his academic work.
The invisible link between the professor-bureaucrat and government is the solidarity of administrators. No matter how bad another bureaucrat's decision may be, no other bureaucrat can afford to expose his comrade publicly for, were he to do so, his own power would be threatened when he too made a wrong decision. In a society like New Zealand's where the businessmen are so relatively weak they have always needed bureaucrats to defend them. The link between the University Boards and the big corporations which exists in Britain and the United States is replaced by the link between the University Council and the Public Service. (Kevin O'Brien considered the most reactionary Council member stands as the best example of the obviousness and danger of this hidden link.) The favourite Government tool here is the 'independent' advisory or statutory body, each of which must have its token academic, who can be made to 'respect' (without directly obeying) Ministerial directives, and absorbs the whole follow-my-leader Public Service quite unconsciously when he does not do so enthusiastically. Here the same principle of bureaucrat-businessman coalition applies to all the students' potential allies. The man who deprived the Maori of his land to place him at the mercy of a pakeha boss who refused to employ him was a bureaucrat. The man who rubber stamps every businessman's price increase and refuses to believe in payment for housework is a bureaucrat. The man who stops the people who create broadcasting programmes following the news is a bureaucrat, who cannot allow businessmen to be libelled.
Why has this not been said before? (and it has not.) Because every student who thought of the Public Service as a potential buyer of his devalued arts degree has been afraid to think of it. Because few people have thought bureaucracies dangerous. And because the real lesson of history is that if everybody cannot administer their own affairs, the bureaucrats will do it for them. The real solution to the problem of overcrowding in the universities is for an Association of University Teachers and the Student Representative Council to jointly take over administration and sack administrators whose only solution to difficulties is getting rid of students. Either the students take over from the administrators or the administrators get rid of students. Of course, for the students to win they'd have to do their own administration well. But then could it be done much worse.
This of course would be only a begining. Consumer control of prices, worker control of unions, Brian Edwards, Gordon Bick and Austin Mitchell running the NZBC. The possibilities are endless. And are they really Utopian? The only real Utopians are those who believe that students (or Maoris or housewives) will always do what the bureaucrats tell them.
At its meeting on April 15th the Professorial Board received a memorandum from the Assistant Principal Dr S.G. Culliford: in it he argued the University Administration's case for its solution to the current accommodation crisis at this university - the stabilisation of enrolments.
Dr. Culliford summarised his memorandum as follows:
The University appears to have entered into an unforeseen and unprecedented period of growth which could mean a total of as many as 8000 students by 1974.
In June 1968 Victoria set out, in its quinquennial submissions, its expected enrolments for 1969 and the period 1970-1974. (These submissions form the basis on which the University Grants Committee allocates funds to Victoria.) The enrolment forecasts were derived from projections for the period 1967-1980 presented by the Minister of Education to Parliament.
The actual enrolment for 1971 has attained the figure forecast for 1973: instead of increasing at the expected rate of 15% between 1968 and 1971, enrolments are increasing at a rate of 24%, which could not in any way have been expected on the basis of the official forecasts. The simplest and immediate explanation is that the Government's official forecasts have been too low (applause). This applies equally for the total enrolments nationally:
"Whatever may be the reasons, the University appears to have entered into a period of unprecedented and unforeseen increases in enrolment and a continuation of the present rate of growth could mean a total of about 8,000 students by1974 ,"
A clearer indication of teaching and other pressures generated by enrolments, taking into account proportions of full-time and part-time students and the distribution of students among departments and faculties, is given by an anlysis of undergraduate unit enrolment.
(The following totals are derived from figures at the end of each enrolment period, and do not take into account changes in course or late enrolments.
They do, however, provide a useful indication of enrolment movements. In the table below Q represents the figures supplied in the Quinquennial Submissions; G the forecasts in line with the Grants Committee's practices; and A the actual enrolments.
The decreasing figures in the Miscellaneous group represent mainly reading knowledge half-units for Arts and Science. (In 1969 the compulsory language requirement for a BA was dropped.)
The percentage increases in the number of undergraduate units taken in the main subject areas between 1968 and 1971 are as follows:
The overall increase in this group is 26.5%, against an (adjusted) forecast increase of 19.6%.)
"
Growth to this extent has placed major strains on almost all types of accommodation within the University and should it continue at the present rate 'without the urgent provision of further accommodation it is doubtful whether teaching could continue at the present level."
With the onslaught of Muldoonism in
Lecture and Seminar Rooms: An analysis prepared for the Universities conference of
Although these figures take account neither of work in departmental seminar or quasi-seminar rooms or individual staff studies, they show a 22% increase in teaching hours since
It is impossible to say when saturation of classroom space will be reached. Some juggling of the timetable is still possible and some use can be made of an extended teaching day, but clearly this process cannot be continued without reducing the combinations of subjects students may reasonably expect to take, or reducing the teaching offered in these subjects.
Laboratories: In
A more immediate problem exists with graduate work at honours, masters and Ph.D. level where in all faculties growth in total graduate numbers has been comparable with that at undergraduate level. Research space generally, in all departments, is fully taken up and expansion can be achieved in default of extra building only by further over-crowding.
Library Space: The library provides a total of 1100 seats for readers of which 970 are available at desks for study purposes. The accepted (and UGC) standard of 1 seat for 4 students should provide 1580 scats. (Thus there is a shortage of 300-400 seats and carrels; book capacity will reach a maximum level by
Staff Accommodation: In
Thus 575 places are or can be
As things stand, then, there
Anyone who has recently been
The present building
Kirk Extension: The completed
Physic and Earth Sciences Build six months: it will provide - 3
The building, if work begins
Von Zedlitz: will provide: two
Second arts tower will be similar to the Von Zedlitz building, but at present space schedules have not been drawn up; additions are likely to include: two theatres (capacity 300, 200), 10 seminar rooms: the transfer of the Commerce and Administration Faculty from two floors of the Rankine Brown could provide 500-600 additional library reader places. As 90 staff studies will be lost in the Rankine Brown to Library expansion, 25-30 through further demolition on Kelburn Parade, the net loss in staff study places will be 115-120. Thus any increase will be small. This could be available in
Easterfield extension. Only one floor can be added, most of which will provide additional research space and is unlikely to have an effect on the space problems under consideration. It could be available for
Likelihood of this target being achieved. On all the University's experience of Grants Committee and Government procedures, the above dates are highly optimistic. The working drawings of Physics and Earth Sciences were in the hands of the Grants Committee in mid-
The immediate building programme can be summarised as follows:
The memorandum considers possible ways in which the expected 800-1000 more students can be accommodated in existing facilities until
Four other alternatives considered were -
None of these were found satisfactory.
Sharing of rooms was discounted because in most cases staff studies are too small for sharing. In other cases seminar and tutorial work carried on would have to be curtailed if sharing was introduced.
Prefabricated buildings were not favoured because of their permanence. In the past it was found that the University Grants Committee and Government were not as inclined to act once some measure of relief had been afforded by temporary demountables.
And in the case of staff limitations, if the present staff/student ratio were to be maintained this would require a limitation on student numbers as well.)
From the foregoing it would appear certain that unless some steps are taken to bring the growth of the University into some relation with the building programme a deterioration in the quality of the University's work is inevitable.
Some shifts or expedients may be adopted to solve in a temporary way the problem of staff accommodation, but the problem of library accommodation can only grow more acute as the building programme is further delayed.
The situation is now so serious that it is essential that the University as a whole should determine firmly what steps it should take to prevent further deterioration. It would appear that the only practical step is the stabilising of enrolments at approximately their present level until facilities appropriate to larger numbers can be made available.
The administrations case then, is simply this. Assuming that it is desirable both to maintain our university system and to prevent any deterioration in its research work or the staff/student ratio it follows that in the present situation University growth must be brought into line with the current building programme. And, as a temporary measure, a stabilising of enrolment levels seems appropriate until facilities suited to Larger numbers become available.
These assumptions are not, on their face value, warranted. Present degree structures, examinations, course contents and teaching methods are likely to be altered and provide some relief to accommodation. The ratio 384 staff (graded from professor to junior lecturer) to 6300 students (a ratio of 1:16) appears more than adequate. (Such a ratio does not take into account either demonstrators, tutors who are not full-time academics, or the lesser requirement of the large number of part-time students.) When last the administration spoke of "temporary measures" to ease accommodation, a set of exclusion regulations was introduced which is now an accepted part of student life.
The administration's solution to a crowded building is to remove the crowd. The student solution is immediate pressure on the University Grants Committee and Government for a complete reappraisal of Victoria's financial situation: with a view to a priority on the construction of the first stage of the Physics and Earth Sciences Building (more correctly called the Cotton Building) which provides lecture space, 20 (non-science) staff studies, and houses the Geology Department (thus easing space requirements in the Easterfield building; and on the construction of the Von Zedlitz building, which will provide theatre, classroom and seminar space, net staff accommodation of 89 studies and 150 new library places, as well as allowing the conversion of the whole of the Rankine Brown lower classroom floor to library use and the shifting of the English department to ease space problems within the library building itself. Such a programme, which would be ready for the
This article was compiled by long-term heads who have not been busted.
Smoking grass is good fun but it won't provide metaphysical insights or spiritual solace. It ain't worth getting busted for.
Being busted is not fun. Junior freaks may get a vicarious thrill from the notoriety involved, but the aim of the game is to enjoy yourself without fucking your life up. In one recent case someone was charged with possession and had to report at Central every night for three months before trial. This gives a lot of screws a chance to get to know what you look like, and its worth remembering that the average screw is not likely to be good chums with the average freak.
Not getting busted is easy enough if you keep strictly to a few simple rules.
Know your dealer. Everyone shits on dealers but they take the risks; the friendly freak who turns everyone on is rich, naive or a cop. This doesn't happen often - puff - but it has happened, right here in your fair capital city. As the gospel spreads it will get more common.
In general, 'ware junkies, especially long-time ones. The most notorious shelfs in the country are uncontrollable hard-heads. This doesn't, of course, apply universally but for the inexperienced it's an obvious precaution. Don't talk to cops, especially the squad. It's part of their tactics to get chummy - We know you turn on but we don't really care as long as you don't make it obvious kind of scene - but it's all bullshit. It's their job to bust people, their promotion depends on it. ("I enjoy my job" - Detective Sergeant Thompson, quoted in Thort earlier this year.)
Never, repeat never, have gear in your house except when you're using it, and then not more than you can eat or otherwise dispose of. Don't expect the squad to knock and wait. Locking doors may be undignified but it would have saved a lot of people we know from getting done. Junior freaks often mumble about paranoia when others want to take precautions, but they're usually the ones who either want to get caught for some private reason, or those who don't give a thought to what it means to get caught. It means a good deal.
The same thing applies to loose talk. When people start turning on it usually goes to their head in more senses than one, but the characteristic look-at-me-I'm-stoned syndrome is no more impressive than a fourth-former who holds the school cider-drinking record. Of course if you're really whacked it can be hard not to show it, but that's a different matter. Cheers.
Points of ettiquette: Don't ask your dealer what he's paid for what he's selling. You wouldn't ask your butcher, and the mark up is probably about the same in most cases. People deal for various reasons but the great majority do it to score for themselves. The non-using pusher is a myth in this country. Dealing is an extremely competitive business, often sordid and getting more and more dangerous, especially in Auckland, where physical tactics and large rip-offs are getting more common all the time. It's a sound rule not to front money before you see what you are buying, but some dealers can be trusted. Find out in advance who they are. If you're buying in ounces you're entitled to a sample, but if you're scoring a matchbox for a night out don't expect it.
Don't talk about your dealer. They don't like it, with good reason. Remember it's a seller's market; if he hears you've been shooting your mouth off he's not going to sell to you again.
Don't carry joints or lumps of hash loose. Wrap it in plastic. Apparently new legislation is due concerning minimum amounts with which you can be charged, so it's a good idea to go through your pockets from time to time getting rid of any small traces. If you are going to pull the old my-flat-mates-have-been-wearing this jacket routine make sure that your story is carefully balanced between the plausible and the nebulous. The best idea is not to tell the cops anything, - you don't have to. Magistrates may mumble about co-operating with the police but what they're really talking about is betraying your friends. No-one is more despised than an authenticated informer.
Don't, repeat don't try and get a fuck out of the grouse neat nifty chick by poking a joint - or stupider still, a trip - into her. Chicks are more likely than males to get strange, especially if they're not used to gear. Chicks are also more likely to talk to the cops. The worst of the lot are boppers. Quite a few really straight lushes we know have been trying this tactic recently, apparently not discouraged by the fact that it seldom works. If anyone deserves to get busted, it's people like these.
Hints to up-and-comin-dealers: Try to be reasonably honest. Don't give the trade a worse name than it has. If you get short measure as a dealer, and this often happens, you can only pass the costs on. The customer can always say no, and remember he has usually approached you rather than the other way round.
Hints for beginners: Roll your joints in slow-burning (Blue Zig-zag) or licorice papers. This makes them burn slower and wastes less grass.
Inhale deeply and hold the smoke as long as possible, so that your lungs can get to work on that smoke. (The smoke doesn't get to work on your lungs as much as tobacco, even if only because most people can't smoke 20 joints a day.) Don't discard the butt or roach. The roach acts as a filter during the smoking of the joint and thus contains concentrated cannabinols. Cannabinols are to grass what hexachlorophane is to tooth-paste. Simple and disposable roach-holders can be made from match-boxes or hair-clips.
Don't expect psychedelic revelations the first few times you turn on. In fact, it takes several tries to get stoned, (in most
cases). Don't try to smoke incredible amounts at first - it will come. Remember you're doing it for amusement. There's no point in taking it for any other reason. Although strict observation of the simple rules can greatly reduce your chances of getting busted, some advice on what to do if personally confronted by the quad could be helpful.
Ask them to identify themselves and produce a warrant for search or arrest. Look at search warrants to see if they've got the month right. If they don't have a search warrant ask them under what powers they are acting. (They must quote you the Act references. Dumb cops have been known to get them wrong.)
Give them nothing but your name, address and occupation. You are not required to give any other information. Quote case precedent Elder v Evans, New Zealand Law Report
Be wary of their tactics. They may tell you that they have found traces of grass in your room, for example, or that someone has topped you. Don't lose your head - they could be making it up. Deny everything.
They usually ask very general questions. (Where do you live. Student, eh? I've got a few units myself. Like rock music? I really dig Peter Paul and Mary. Smoke a bit of grass, eh? Bag-pipes is the most amazing instrument, man. And similar rote-learned jargon. Who do you - dramatic pause - Front with.) The unwary head may let it drop that he has smoked if he believes they've found something. The squad then record his confession of using and drop the possession rap which was fictitious anyway.
The squad are not there to help you. Do not believe their stories of 'trying to help you' 'saving lives' etc. This may apply to other drugs but grass is harmless. They are not sociologists or psychologists or father-surrogates or confessors or friends or usually even decent jokers. They are cops. Decent cops don't usually end up on the squad. So laugh at their questions or answer them all No, or don't answer them at all. The latter may provoke a more physical kind of argument to spill your guts but a busted nose is better than a busted head. Stories of beatings are legion and often not true, but.... They only have reason to get really stroppy if they think you know something.
Know a good lawyer and remember his phone number. Insist (continually if necessary) on seeing him. Maybe you are a law student, or maybe you think you can talk your way out of the situation you're in, but your lawyer can handle the matter better than you and has the background to lay counter charges if required.
Do not accept invitations to 'come and have a chat sometime.' If other heads see you it can only make you suspect and the squad are very skilled at eliciting information very subtly. Their whole system is based on a large-scale association process. They can make accurate guesses that A is holding if they bust C and B who are known chums of A.
Don't admit to knowing anyone, not even your mother. More and more mothers have their own little stash.
In conclusion; remember that staying cool is not a set of rules but a state of mind. What junior freaks may call paranoia is the head's prerogative.
This article is intended to save non-criminal 'criminals' from a lot of hassle. The only way to change the law is for a large proportion of the population to break it. Remember there was a time when you could get hung for a loaf of bread, that law is evolved to meet the needs of society, and that grass is not only a moral issue but also a political one. Heads of the world unite! A slower world will be a saner world, and a bit more entertaining into the bargain. Do your bit to help the vegetable population and strike out against big business, entrenched privilege and personal management. Anyone can be privileged after a joint or two and your personal management is your own affair.
Keep New Zealand Green!!!!!!
The following articles describe the hypocracy that has grown out of the idealism of the generation which hip capitalists now call the counter-culture. The first is by Richard Neville, author of "Play Power" and editor of the British underground paper "Oz" from which the article is reprinted.
The second, a subsequent commentary and extension to Neville's article, is by John Snelling, and is reprinted from the British Anarchist weekly "Freedom."
The flower-child that OZ urged readers to plant back in '67 has grown up into Bernadine Dohrn; for Timothy Leary, happiness has become a warm gun, Charles Manson soars to the top of the pops and everyone hip is making war and loving Ft. Movement sophists can easily reel off the oppressive chain of events which has propelled us from dropped-out euphoric gregariousness to the contemporary gunslinging gang bang. It's a logical hop from Kent State to the trendy genocide of, "to kill a policeman is a sacred act". (Leary).
But I cannot pull the trigger. Indeed, sometimes I suspect that a more appropriate target would be my fellow marksmen. Such despondent scepticism in the fortunes of the Movement seems confirmed, if not articulated, in the actions of those around me. Some of my best friends are going straight — cutting hair, wearing suits, seeking respectable jobs. These are the same people who were freaking out at the first UFOs while I still lurched home from gambling clubs, who were plugged into the Pink Floyd while I breathlessly awaited the verdicts of Juke Box Jury, who were mastering chillums while I still thought Panama Red was a Hollywood bit player. Appalled at the profusion of meaningless, mediocre and repetitive pop these friends seek refuge in the music of the twenties and thirties (Jack Hylton, the Best of Ambrose and his Orchestra, Al Bowly, Hutch, The Golden Age of British Dance Bands etc) and have drastically reduced their drug intake. John Peel wanders London a pop undertaker, sickened by the preponderence of pseudo stoned 'Underground' groups who flash V signs while flattering their audiences with: "peace" and "remember Woodstock, man". Martin Sharp, responsible for much of the best psychedelic' artwork (in early OZes, Cream sleeves and Dylan, Donovan, Van Gogh and Legalise Pot Rally posters) now always carries an indiginous musical instrument from Zambia as an anti-pop device and spends most of his time in the front stalls of Noel Coward revivals. Such reactions are more than the result of a cultural overdose. It is surely the tough realisation that today's heads treat each other no less savagely than the grey flannel skinheads of Whitehall; only without the latters' courtesy.
Anyone who disagrees with a viewpoint is a pig. Anyone who disagrees from a position of economic or intellectual strength is a superpig. Machievellian intrigues, ego explosions and power tussles have always been rife within the Underground and can Often be rationalised as a sign of growth. Nowadays, however, the backstabbings are no longer metaphorical. A typical example of a contemporary dialogue occurred during the recent making of the Warner Brothers film, Medicine Ball. Throughout the progress of this film, the caravan of 'hippie stars' was trailed by a cadillac of militant politicos protesting Warner Bros' cultural exploitation. At one college campus the two groups collided in open debate with the students, and discussion ended when one of the cast almost succeeded in knifing one of the protesters. An unobtrusive paragraph in this morning's Times tells of students who, when refused admission to a local dance, returned home to get their guns for a shoot out. One of them died.
It is not only the escalating instances of brutality that are so discouraging. The social style of the head scene has become pretentious and anti-communicative. At a recent party to celebrate the demise of Nell Gwynne's historic playground. The Pheasantry, the cream of Kings Road stood around staring dumbly at each other — a dank Chelsea remake of La Dolce Vita without even a false sense of gaiety. One couple of my acquaintance who have now dropped out of dropping out, first discovered the hypocrises of the head scene when they were compelled to clean up to enter Morocco. They found themselves ostracised by local longhairs. All efforts to communicate floundered because they looked straight.
One of the promises of the new lifestyle was the abolition of flase criteria for judging human beings. Today, hip symbols and fashionable rituals count for more man ever. Dishonestly doubling travellers cheques earns the required A-levels, familiarity with a super group's pedigree outmatches Allen Brien's literary snobbery and a replay of last week's bad trip is flaunted like a duelling scar. Even the legitimate new freedoms are being bankrupted through criminal selfishness. Venereal disease may even be a new now status symbol, but the gonococcus germ unfortunately hasn't heard of women's lib — its effects on females is more damaging and less easy to detect. An alarming number of friendly young girls are collapsing of salpingites, which involves a gruesome operation, because liberated men are not bothering to mention they might be harbouring the clap. Another groovy affliction, hepatitus, is carried around proudly, like a public school boater, by people indifferent to its infectious consequences.
The next example, essentially trivial, is worth recording because its sheer banality renders it so typical of the prevailing morality. One night, on arriving at Newcastle station to catch a London train, I noticed two dishevelled, artsy laby types surrounded by British Rail authorities and policemen. The uncomfortable pair caught my eye and asked for help. They desperately sought to get to London that evening but British Rail were refusing to honour their proferred cheque. Naturally I accepted it and purchased tickets on their behalf. A few days later I realised my misjudgement when the cheque was returned. I would not have cared particularly, if only the signatory, one Anthony Rye, had since made a token, apologetic contact.
In the formative stages of the counter culture it was possible to draw inspiration from the open behaviour of Albion's children. It was tempting, if naive, to hope that with the intake of id liberating rock, lateralising dope, the emerging group tenderness, communal living style and an intuitive political radicalism... that from all this a qualitative change in the conduct of human relationships might develop. But now, as the Movement's utterings reach fever pitch, as the rhetoric becomes more frenziedly fascist, affectation suffocates reason and arguments lose their conviction, one's bursts of depression become elongated into a melancholy permanence. The advertising campaign is an abounding triumph, but there is nothing inside the wrapping paper. When I think of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, whose spirits had been identified with the generational outburst against inhumanity, I wonder whether their apparent despair was purely personal or whether they too somehow sensed the revolution might be going sour. If the Underground press is the voice of the new movement, then it is a choir of soloists, each member singing a different tune. When I travelled through California recently, it was unnerving to be caught in the flak of exchanged animosity. The dedicated, amiable Max Scheer, founder of the Berkeley Barb, had been branded a pig by his one time employees, who were now publishing the Berkeley Tribe. Scheer does not deny his former mistakes, but while the Movement does not forgive, it does forget — his pioneering contribution to the growth of the Alternative Press has gained him no credit. The Barb still struggles out single handed against raging prejudices and destructive sorties by Womens Lib (Scheer runs sex ads).
Across the Bay is Rolling Stone. Its editor, Jann Wenner, is a tirelessly sincere exponent of rock culture and a personal friend; but the offices of his paper are as icily functional as IBM and his workers moved more by mammon than by music. Jann himself becomes at times so engrossed by the battle of being a Success, that the battle of being human is ignored. (One result being that many of his ex staff are bitterly forming rival publishing cells.) Of minor cheer is that one of the better papers in the area. Good Times, produced collectively from a house, exists first as a commune and second as an editorial board. Although, its staff identify so heavily with the role of being revolutionaries that all events are immediately programmed into a dishonest Us/Them dichotomy. Eg Charles Manson is a hero because he sabotages the system. London's first 'Underground distributor' has just collapsed. A few hours before the liquidators arrived he ordered 8,000 copies of OZ. These could never be paid for, so, even by City standards, the ethics of such a transaction are, to say the least, dubious.
"I declare that World War III is now being waged by short haired robots whose deliberate aim is to destroy the complex web of free wild life..." (Leary)
But those who burn you with bad drop, jump your bail if you happen to stand surety and - when you've made your house available as a BIT crashpad - steal what little you own, do not have short hair.
Jean-Jacques Lebel has been a key figure in the evolvement of the European Underground, from the staging of anti-tourist happenings in St. Tropez in '67, the storming of the Paris Odeon in May '68 and the wrecking of the Isle of Wight fences earlier this year. I recently met him in Paris, where he was playing host to Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Jerry Rubin et al. Lebel is angrily disillusioned with pop exploitation and, from memory, he said something like this:
Mick Jagger was in television here the other night and said he was an anarchist. An anarchist? Mick Jagger is staying at the Georges Cinq hotel. If he wants caviare, the head waiter says yes sir Mr. Jagger and sends someone off to Russia. Now I love and need Mick Jagger, but he has totally lost touch with the people...and the people meanwhile are being conned into paying for something they shouldn't have to. We can't rely on the stars to change the system for us anymore. I used to believe Ginsberg when he said that war would end if we put Kennedy and Krushev into the same room without any clothes on. But leaders don't identify with the people anymore, they get used to the caviare... The kids at the Isle of Wight were being totally controlled and manipulated by superpigs. They had to pay exorbitantly for their own music and they became completely exhausted, sleeping in the lavatories, hungry, so weary they were pissing over each other, completely fucked up... Those kids were worse than the jews... the jews at least didn't pay to go to Auschwitz... (Nor to be burnt to death in a French provincial dance hall.)
Lebel talked within the confines of one of the nastiest environments I have ever endured and one all to unhappily representative. The offending house belonged to Victor Herbert, who helped finance International Times, brought the Living Theatre to London, sponsored the roundhouse Chicago Benefit last year and so on. On top of this, he contributes to the Movement what he calls 'space', ie his enormous residence as a crashpad. Current guests include a poet who came for a weekend two years ago and won't budge, a pair of video heads, remnants from the Living Theatre and several nameless others. The atmosphere created by most of these supemip freeloaders manages to be simultaneously hostile, slovenly and as exclusive as Whites club. Membership to the inner sanctum revolves around facility with drugs and as the pleasant Victor himself is rather slow on the draw he is excluded, in spirit, from his own house. I regret to report that the presence of Abbie Hoffman, Jean-Jacques and the yippie entourage did little to improve the emanations. Like the pop stars Lebel so accurately berates, the American visitors were arcane, inaccessible, aloof... the tensions and awkwardness surrounding their presence must be reminiscent of a Royal Garden party; and the groupies uglier but no less protective than their pop counterparts.
I have an intense personal respect for Abbie Hoffman and consider his book. Revolution for the Hell of it, to be the first major literary/political document of the post-acid Underground. How disappointing to discover he converses almost exclusively through his lawyer and becomes animated only at talk of possible advances for his books in Britain. Wearied no doubt by the trial and obviously exhausted by his journey, it seems unfair of me to raise such niggardly considerations. However, many people have shared my disappointment, and in the context of Herbert's household, Lebel's anti-star declamations, the entrances and exits of yippie heavies drooling enthusiastically about Leary's fiftieth birthday present, a gun, lengthy endorsements of acid's ability to transform shits into (revolutionary) saints one must, to preserve a scrap of intellectual integrity, raise doubts.
Roaming Paris - a charming subplot to all this activity - was Jim Haynes, fearsomely unimpressed at the prospect of yip meeting Mao and carrying forth his own erotic brand of revolution in a thoroughly convincing union of his public policies and private life.
The above observations are not meant to imply a wholesale rejection of the counter culture or yippie left politics. Mass hysterical confrontation with the napalmers, arms bargainers, fascists and power flunkeys of every type are still valid, as are all experiments with new ways of living and caring about each other. (A message so innocuously limp in print that it makes that disgusting, simplistic and exploitive movie 'Getting Straight' fiercely iconoclastic by comparison.) I wish merely to record a few points of reservation a verbal safetycatch to Leary's birthday present.
Of course the new ways of living and loving might be the old ways after all. In a new book 'Keep the River on the Right' the author, Tobais Schneebaum, recounts his solitary journey through the remote depths of Peruvian jungles. Without knowing quite why, he sets out to find the Akaramas, a reputedly ferocious tribe of cannibals. His first meeting:
"...and I came out from among a huddle of bushes to a long rocky beach, at the far end of which, against a solid wall of green, some spots of red attracted my eye. My first thought was that they must be blossoms of some kind that I had never seen before, but they were too much like solid balls, and they moved slightly, though there wasn't the slightest breeze. A few steps further on I frowned and shook my head, wondering even more what they could be and then it came over me in a shiver that these spots were faces, and they were all turned in my direction, all unmoving. Still closer, I made out a group of men, their bodies variously painted in black and red looking tiny against the gigantic backdrop of the jungle that stretched so high above them. No one moved; no one turned his eyes away or looked anywhere but straight at me. They were frozen in place. They were squatting tightly together, chins on knees, arms on one another's shoulders, leaning over resting heads upon another's knee, or thigh or flank. They continued to stare, moving neither a toe or an eyelash. Smiles were fixed upon their faces, mouths were closed, placid. Some had match-like sticks through their lower lips others had bone through their noses. Their feet and toes curled round stones and twigs in the same way that their hands held vertically bows and long arrows, and axes of stone tied to short pieces of bough. Long, well-combed bangs ran over their foreheads into the scarlet paint of their faces and hair and covered the length of their backs and shoulders. Masses of necklaces of seeds and huge animal teeth and small yellow and black birds hung from thick necks and almost touched the stones between their open thighs.... Still no one moved, still no one made a gesture of any kind, no gesture of hate or love, no gesture of curiosity or fear. My feet moved, my arm went out automatically and I put a hand easily upon the nearest shoulder, and I smiled. The head leaned over and briefly rested its cheek on my hand, almost caressing it. The body got up, straightened out, and the frozen smile split open and laughter came out, giggles at first, than great bellows that echoed back against the wall of trees. He threw his arms around me almost crushing with strength and pleasure, the laughter continuing, doubling, trebling, until I realised that all the men had got up and were laughing and embracing each other, holding their bellies as if in pain, rolling on the ground with feet kicking in me air. All weapons had been left lying on stones and we were Jumping up and down, and my arms went around body after body, and I felt myself getting hysterical, wildly ecstatic with love for all humanity, and I returned slaps on backs and bites on hard flesh, and small as they were, I twirled some round like children and wept away the world of my past."
If that is how the Akaramas greet strangers from another race, it almost gives them a right to gobble up their enemies. We, on the other hand, blithely declare World War Ml on our parents and yet have already forgotten how to smile at our friends.
The latest OZ bills itself as the 'End of an Era' edition. This isn't merely because the magazine is faced with annihilation by the present court case. In a leading article, Richard Neville describes various recent developments which he believes indicate that the new revolutionary movement is being dissipated and, in some ways, perverted. What he says strikes me as very accurate and ties up with what I said in a couple of articles in Freedom last summer. This being the case, it is relevant to ask why things have gone wrong, and what is coming next.
We know the pattern of things. Life proceeds in cycles of birth, preservation and death. The period between death and rebirth, however, is the most painful and confusing. People crave the faith and love have been strained beyond endurance. What often happens is that they recede into themselves and tool themselves up to survive in an alien and stultifying world by reinvoking self interest and self-assertive willpower. Everything in fact reverts to a narrowly individualistic struggle with all the erosion of caring, sensitivity and outgoingness that that involves. It's a kind of adjustment to 'reality', to Things As They Are', with ideals rejected, or shelves. We're back at Stage One.
This seems to me to be very much what's happened. It's very much my experience of people at the moment. And a very painful experience as I discover so many old friends 'changed', having become realistic, adapted. Whole areas of former contact are eroded, sympathies turned to antipathies, and a kind of inexorable deadness the prevailing mood of things.
Probably the most influential British thinker of recent years was R.D. Laing. The theories he propounded in his books were not strikingly original, being rather a synthesis of a whole gamut of existing positions. What unified them, however, was his passionate belief in humanity, in human beings in their own terms — in terms of their own experience. This lent his work a dynamic and genuine human warmth and clear insight which, it was then apparent, were what were conspicuously lacking in all those other works purporting to be about us and our life.
Laing was an extremist. He held no brief for concepts of relative sanity or adjustment. For him, the basic axiom was that we are all hopelessly alienated: estranged from our true selves and from others, marooned in an insane society whose concrete and institutional structures are dedicated to the perpetuation of this devastation, even to an enlargement of it to embrace new and more terrible forms of violence and madness — although always masquerading under the vestments of positive virtue. Thus, when two people stand before each other, the only thing they can honestly assert is the lack of a real relationship. A nullity, a void. The cosmological nothing.
In a twisted world of false values, the recognition of this nothing is the repository of our greatest hope. For once it is fully experienced and embraced the possibility of creating a new and more positive world becomes apparent, a world in which full discharge of pour energies and the realisation of all our deepest desires becomes possible. A world without physical or mental pain and frustration. However, this nothing is also terrifying. It involves a painful process of personal breakdown and unlearning, a tearing away of all the skins of folly and falsehood — those very things whereby we sustain ourselves in a sick society. Most people shy away from such agony, even if they are capable of comprehending its possibilities.
The new revolution was certainly about creating a new world. All its major theorists rejected the existing one wholly. Concomitantly, a great burst of creative energy was unleashed: the music, the poster art, the poetry, the jargon, the communes, the drug culture, etc., etc. All that's, however, mostly on the grander scale. What happened down among the people? Well, I think, most people who were disposed to pay attention were affected. The high pitch of optimism and the rebellious, questioning attitude to things, all linked to a profound sense that things were really beginning to happen, probably did cause many people to re-evaluate themselves and their relationships, with others and with society, if only to a limited extent.
Why then does Richard Neville pronounce the end of an era? Why did things go wrong?
Laing would probably put it down to the fact that thy process did not go far enough: that people did not totally destructure and remake themselves and their world. There were too many copouts and compromises, too many problems that couldn't be resolved as easily as growing a new head of hair or learning Blues guitar. There were a lot of hits too, that were, perhaps, too much for untempered youngsters to take (for a time, 'paranoid' was the foremost In-word).
Also a great many people were happy just to parasite a collection of superficial gimmicks for their own personal enrichment without being concerned or capable of finding out what it was all really about. What should have been a return to the egg and a regrowth became just the sprouting of a set of new feathers. What ultimately evolved in the sphere of human relationships was not a new authenticity but a new set of games, games perhaps more imaginative and sophisticated than the old games, but games nevertheless, with all the invalidation of real experience that they involve, and the concomitant loneliness and despair.
Of course, the great difficulty with staging any mass movement of regeneration is that it has to take place within the existing social structure, there being no no-man's-land available in an area where the forces of authority have monopolised all resources. Thus the System was able to absorb so much that was new and revolutionary into itself, and emasculate it. The case of the music is particularly obvious. As a result, the musicians were cut off from their roots — the people, the kids. Of course it was okay for them as they could play out their own dreams in their own dreamworld: the sublime Xanadus of youthful, long-haired Citizen Kanes. But for the kids, staring star-stricken across that inexorable gap that divides slow, mundane reality from the transcendental sphere of medical super humanity there was just a pain of severance and failure. Thus the girls who gueued outside stage doors to fuck with lead guitarists, the boys who told their friends how a friend of a friend had been to school with Mick Jagger. In other words, they felt that there was no really regenerative life available to them outside the honeyed arena of the media and so were not caused to re-examine themselves in the context of their local ambit, in relation to one another.
Thus the rock revolution failed because it was split into two separate worlds, and both went dead for want of the necessary fertilizing influence of the other. The kids wither between the factory and the council estate; the superstars fly off into the void and go into cernal orbit.
To be with hip people today is to experience strange things. There are many who seem thoroughly devitalised, bereft of all energy and drive, who just sit waiting for something to happen, some bolt from the blue. It's rather like those primitive tribes who espouse cargo cults and, giving up word just sit in silence waiting for a galleon from the skies to bring them all they need. Others still practice the mandatory activities — take dope, put on cool, talk in a John Peel mumble about beautiful things and mystical experiences, burn joss-sticks, play records endlessly. It gets strained and barely credible but goes on day in, day out, and if anyone were to question it they'd gel hounded as a heretic. Others are moving into more ruthless scenes: becoming preoccupied with money ('bread' is more acceptable), power and, in extreme cases, with violence.
The truth is that hipness has now itself become a process of mystification. It is a false explanation of what is happening, a veil drawn over the true facts, an evasion. The reality of experience and then imperative to come to grips with it in its own terms, both within ourselves and in others, remains the greatest call upon us. Only through this can we be regenerated and move out like an expanding crystalline growth to regenerate the world. Hipness is not now about this. It has become, like the ethos of the straight world it purports to oppose, yet another false system: a way of standing still, existing in a distorted way in a wrongheaded world.
There are alternatives. One can get violent. Dr. Leary apparently now believes that killing cops is a sacred act. Maybe in South Africa but what about in South Shields? If people are going to go over to bloodshed and hatred, how are the real ideals of kindliness, love, creativity, spontaneity, and a genuine concern to relate to others as they really are to be preserved?
That they must be preserved seems to me to be incontrovertible. Yet, as I said earlier, this is going to be difficult. We are into a fallow, wintry period between death and rebirth. More and more people are copping out, adjusting, hardening up, adopting negativistic positions to keep alive in the bitter weather. When they come together socially for a little warmth they are going to play false games among their false selves; and even though that may generate a little temporary warmth, they're going to be twice as cold afterwards. Bereft of genuine human contact, how are people going to stay alive yet alone keep their ideals alive?
The probability is that the forthcoming period will be a time of slow, quiet, but profound renewal. A period rather like the Dark Ages, which superficially seems a spiritually dead period until more deeply examined, when it transpired to have been in reality a time of consolidation—during which the wisdom of the Ancient World was thoroughly absorbed in readiness for the great upsurge of the Renaissance. It is necessary that people now reflect upon the whole wealth of ideas thrown up by the recent past, and come to more thoroughly understand them, undistracted as they will be by frenetic and sensational peripheral happenings. This is nowhere more true that in the case of Laing's ideas. But it also applied in, say, the case of Oriental mysticism and, closer to home, in the case of anarchist belief. But reflection must also be married to emotional renewal — to a process of psychological liberation which will bring people into contact with the basic void. Then, when they are properly prepared, they will be ready to being to create something new again. It will certainly come and it will undoubtedly be better than the last, although it will equally certainly not be the end of the story, if indeed the story can ever have an end.
If you missed "One in Five" relax. It'll be back again for another run at the end of June.
"One in Five", presented during the last week of the first term, had a fantastic run, having full houses for nearly every performance. The only times when people weren't turned away were for the two late night shows (when half a dozen seats were to spare) and the first night. As it was the cast had to put on one more performance than planned, and this was quickly filled. John Clarke undoubtedly was the star of the show with his cool off-beat style but Dave Smith came a close second with his impersonation of the National Band.
It had been hoped to arrange the return season earlier but the theatre was fully booked. However the delay gives the cast a chance to include new material which is already being written so for people who see "One in Five" again there will be something new to laugh at. And we think that one person who missed it the first time around will be there the next time....
Unity Theatre is presenting its first major production of the year at the present time. It is the Ted Hughes adaptation of Seneca's "Oedipus". Hugh Phillip, who plays the lead role, is seen here in rehearsal with Jane Thompson, who plays the dual role of his mother and his wife.
This traditional Greek tragedy, is transferred in Unity's production to a modern environment, where it is hoped the similarity between the violence of Seneca's prose and plot, and the uglyness of a technological world can be shown.
In transferring "Oedipus" to an environment with easily identifiable symbols, this production uses those symbols (TV, radio, pop songs, film) in an endeavour to show the influence or non-influence of political leaders on the mass. The traditional Greek chorus has been converted into that "mass". The plague of Thebes which both Oedipus and the people try to overcome is seen in this context as the forces of technological knowledge and economic pressure.
The production is directed by Paul Maunder, recent winner of the Ngaio Marsh TV play-writing award, and director of the late-night spot at Downstage, "I Rode My Horse Down the Road".
"Oedipus" is running for two weeks until the 29th May, at Unity Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace.
Jocasta (Jane Thompson) and Hugh Phillip as Oedipus
Ho dere! It's de new and revamped and low-key undisputed king of the blues, B.B. King. The guitar/watermelon (watermelon/guitar) on the sleeve of the LP frightened me somewhat, as, on the first listening, did the use of violins: the B.B. King sellout? No, it's okay, just takes a while to get into. In fact, when you've heard it a few times, it sounds rather good. Even if you're a bitter blues purist I don't think you could argue with this little winner. The blues have gotta move with the times and hell, mand, B.B. has paid his dues, and really I don't think he'd release stuff like this unless he was satisfied with it.
I think this is one of B.B. King's best LPs for some time. The definitive (another felicitous phrase!) King LP is Blues is King, the
The use of violins in blues, which created a great furore a year or so ago when Fleetwood Mac did it, is now, seemingly, accepted. What has to be realised is that the strings in such records are not the large orchestral sound of Tom Jones' backing, but merely a harmonic underpinning, and a method to add to tension of the song by their drawn-out sound. When used sparingly, as a substitute for organ, strings can add a lot, as they do on this record. Chains and Things, (also released as a 45) is an example of this.
Some of the songs on the LP are beautifully funky. The small size of the band means that all have really got to work, and Ask me no questions, with Leon Russel on piano, really jumps. Finally, Hummingbird, by Leon Russel, is a more jazz-influenced song, more adventurous than most of King's material, but, though a ballad-type song, all one can say is that King gives it soul.
The LP is thus generally understated, but moving into a new style, and I consider it an experiment that has worked.
Published by Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association, P.O.Box 196, Wellington. Printed by the Wanganui Chornicle Ltd., P.O.Box 433, Wanganui.