No Ghosts Please

As one who has endured the Siberian railway carriage for some years and is now watching with pleasure its conversion into what promises to be a very attractive men's common room. I was profoundly shocked to read J.McL.'s suggestion in your last issue that its cheerful walls should be shrouded in innumerable nameless team photographs. Printed in a brown tint, without borders and in dark wood frames for preference?

Were I not above personal Insults I would suggest that J.McL. is a fresher who feels rather out of his depth here and wishes to impart something of the atmosphere of his high school, with morning assembly and compulsory wearing of blazers to follow perhaps.

Possibly it was a glimmering of a sense of the aesthetic which prompted him to suggest that the monotony of the walls needs to be relieved, for this is so. But not please with the stares and simpers of a multitude of footballers, cricketers and basketballers.

People whose interests are in literature, music or drama are well catered for here, but why not do the culture business properly and do something for the benefit of those who are capable of appreciating the beauties of form and colour. A few paintings by contemporary New Zealand artists, the odd Nugent Welch, Sam Cairneross and perhaps a little something by R. B. Lovell-Smith would make a considerable improvement to the men's commonroom.

The money expended would be for the benefit of a much greater proportion of the student body than the handful in the cultural groups within the college which receive grants. Perhaps the exec, could even buy a few anaemic watercolours cheaply for the women's commonroom.

—B.M.R.