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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 13. October 4, 1951

Dear Staff

Dear Staff,

We have been studying under you for eight months. Your lectures are in our notebooks shortly to be regurgitated for those exams. When that process is over a few more students will be able to attach a degree, leave the University and demand perhaps, a living wage. Learning for learning's sake does not interest us particularly. We have not been taught that way.

In 2000 students there are sure to be some duds. Few prepare for lectures beforehand and those reading lists are often neglected. Those who do emerge from Victoria with a philosophy of life in all probability brought it with them and as students we are probably a fairly dull lot. Anyway our exam papers will tell the usual story.

For this confused and unsatisfactory state you are partly to blame. Our share of the apathy is clear: 600 students elect our Executive and about two hundred are really active in University affairs. Your share is more difficult to pin down.

It is not untrue to say that lecturing is not of a high standard, some lecturers being almost incomprehensible. Some students do not know and have never had a lecture from the Professor in charge of their faculty. Values are not taught and theories are never set out as personal preferences. Intellectual controversy is therefore dead. A few members of the staff are exceptions to the general rule that the staff do not interest themselves in the students as human beings or in student affairs.

We were, for example, entertained by a debate between staff members and students but for the second time in two years you, the staff, chose to entertain rather than to argue seriously an important subject. Serious argument does not prevent wit. During this year there have been lectures on religion, peace, biology, international law. College organisations have produced plays and organised verse readings and debates. The staff do not take part.

Students are well aware of the staff shortage and the demands upon the time of all staff members. Students who are interested in the University realise that students are to blame for some of the intellectual apathy at the University, but you are in a better position to discuss remedies.

In recent years two books have been published criticising the modem University: "Crisis in the University" and "Redbrisk University." Yet this matter does not cause great concern. In fact one staff member assured the writer that discussion in your common room about profound issues and between faculties is negligible. I am inclined to think that the attitude of neutralism, of objectivity, carried so far in our lecture rooms pervades the University as a whole. No student will be provoked into intellectual enquiry by a fence sitter. No student will have views to hold, or ever seek to have views, if he sees that the University staff avoid absolutes, values and personal theories like the plague. Obviously there are too many students. There is a dull mass which litters lecture rooms and takes up time without being really interested in University life or in learning. You have to cater for all and most of us are only interested in money. This attitude is excusable. Society has taught us to worry about little else, but it does not excuse all students nor does it excuse the staff from their first duty: the search for truth.

It was once a truth, and it needed no searching, that the University was a corporate body. University claims were common claims, University causes common causes. It is not so at Victoria. What causes have we in common? Has the staff vigorously supported bursary increases or the application by N.Z. U.S.A. for a student representative on the Senate? If they have done so students are not aware. Have the students taken up the cause of your meagre salaries? During 1951 the staff showed two signs of activity: two letters to the paper.

We are no longer a University. We are a number of faculties using a building, subsidised by the Government, for the passing of examinations which consist of the statement of various theories, for the gaining of degrees in order to earn money. That is the first result of the University system as it stands. Even the Senate, at its last meeting began to suspect that somewhere the University was failing in its task to search for the truth. Perhaps the University does not believe that truth exists. If that is so let us say so and forget the platitudes and the righteous cant. For ever afterwards our intellectual apathy will be consistent with our intellectual confusion and there will be no need to reconcile our declared purposes with our mercenary results.

At the moment we do not lead the community nor do we lend much vigour to its intellectual life. It is our common responsibility but you at the moment are the teachers. Are you facing your responsibilities?