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Salient. Special. Vol. XVII, No. 17. September 1st, 1953
[Introduction]
Every year as Capping comes around the inevitable happens; a greater or lesser controversy arises in the University and in the city about the state of student humour. This year even the police were called upon to make a study of our annual version of "Laughs." which, we may take it they did with dutiful thoroughness. It is true that throughout the world students are traditionally the objects of a certain amount of public disfavor for activities which fail to conform strictly to the standards of the average citizen. These activities, more often than not are of a radical nature and fly in the face of social and political norms. As such they are to be welcomed as signs that students are thinking independently, if perhaps a little wildly, and willing to act accordingly. Usually a synthesis is arrived at. Society gradually comes to accept what was once considered heresy, and students, as they grow older, become the conservative opponents of the next generation.
However at the present moment no such process is evident in our universities. We are a singularly conservative body of students, in politico as in almost everything else. We tire proving most Infertile mound for new and progressive ideas. Our conformity to generally accepted norms is strikingly evident We are placidly satisfied with society which has little need to brand our non-existent reforming zeal as rebllion And so the bourgeois content themselves with maligning our annual Capping orgies.
In fact they have no real right to do so because in keeping with our conscious or unconscious desire to conform we are modeling our humour on the standards of the people. Same 18,000 of them buy Capping Book and find in it what they expect and want to find namely what they already find in "Humour." "Man." "Burlesque." and countless other such "edifying" journals.
(The reference in this as in the first paragraph is to the Otago University "Cappping Book" which was this year made the subject of a police enquiry.)
It starts even at the children's level with comes that appeal to the same kentiments. "Honi Soit." the student newspaper of Sydney University calls all this "seemed hand prostitution."