Looking Backward

To obtain the maximum of education at a University it seems essential that one should take part in club life and student activities. The great value of a judicious admixture of both academic and social education appears to be incontestable. There has been considerable controversy at Universities about the students' disinclination to participate in social life. There are some who would discount the academic to the benefit of the social—and vice versa. But to the writer there can be no such inequality. The one is as important as the other. In fact, they act as stimulants to each other. The first is the analysis of how people have, lived—are living—have thought; the second is the actual participation in the living and the thinking. The inter-relation between the two is indissoluble but not often realised. It is perhaps the non-realisation of this fact that has given predominance to the academic and hence a means of escape from reality, when we should, now and at all times, be coveting the latter. Tournament provides the acme of University social activity.

At Tournament we meet our fellows, engage them in sport, in conversation, and in play. At sport we discuss the basketball team and its meritorious victories, the shootists and their unfortunate two-point loss, the tennis and the fighting spirit of our women's doubles finalists, the fine performances of Scrymgeour, Eastwood, and Adams at athletics, our luck at rowing, the disqualification in the swimming, and the tenacity and courage of our boxers. Even supporters become participants by engaging, in hakas and making other invigorating noises.

Or we may repair to the cloistered calm of the N.Z.U.S.A. annual meeting and watch delegates argue the pros and cons of Student Refugees. Student Health and Recreation, the Position of Graduates in the Civil Service. All in a friendly-antagonistic manner with opinions and counter-opinions, which, although they may be tedious to the casual onlooker, are the essential ingredients of a democratic institution (providing some definite conclusion is arrived at). The informal but active meetings of the N.Z.U. Press Bureau provide another ground on which student may meet student, intimately, to delve into such matters as censorship, student opinion, and other relevancies. Both the N.Z.U.S.A. and the Press Bureau have played and will play in the future a vital part, not only in student activities, but also in the life of the whole community. I would like to see them meeting more often than once a year.

Add to these meetings, sport, and sport-discussion, the Rendezvous. Drinking Horn, and the Ball, and lastly, but most important, the bounteous hospitality of the Dunedin people—the sum of k all was a most enjoyable and enlightening Tournament with many a lingering and refreshing memory for the future.

—M.L.B.