Editorials

While we are waiting for the executive to consider our suggestion of conversaziones, we present the idea of a Student Counselling Service. At the present time, members of the Professorial Board are grappling with the reasons for first-year student failures in examinations. The immediate cause is lack of application; this is self-evident. The underlying causes are more intricately bound up with secondary education, family life and society. If Professorial Board requested an opinion on the matter from the Students' Association, "Salient" believes that a very valuable report would be brought down by VUCSA. The first move must come from the Professorial Board.

* * *

A student counselling service is envisaged by this paper as in effect similar to the American system. The U.S. Deans have too many individuals under their care to fulfil their functions as well as they might. The service here—which could only build up gradually—would be an extension of the work that Mr. Hogg, the Liaison Officer, is doing. Task of the service would include advising on extra-curricular activities, mental and physical health, academic work etc.

* * *

An extension of Orientation Week—a most important period for freshmen students—similar to that organised by the CUCSA for the last two years could be put into operation in the meantime. At CUC, senior students were invited to act as "Counsellors" to one or two freshman-students during the first week. Counsellors invited freshmen to their homes, or to the homes of members of the academic staff. Informal discussions took place, with coffee and the trimmings, and freshmen were invited to return at a later date. Thus the activity or orientation week was not confined to seven days, but continued during the first two terms. Organisation of counsel groups was made shortly before finals and contact maintained by Orientation Controller during the vacation.

* * *

"Salient" is willing to offer full details of the CUC scheme to executive members who are not acquainted with it. Requiring organisation to some degree, neverthless it is an activity paying tremendous dividends in terms of personal adjustment to university atmosphere, easy staff-student relations, increased sense of responsibility in the freshman. Over to you executive.

* * *

Apropos the debate last Friday "That N.Z. has a colour bar", (carried) the reported statements by Rev. Manu Bennett on Saturday bear repeating. "The Maori belongs to a minority group, and hence his deviation from the behaviour pattern of the normal was more readily noticed and often regarded as spectacular. That was one reason why an intoxicated Maori always attracted more attention than an intoxicated pakeha.

* * *

"Most difficult of all for him was that, as a member of a minority group, a Maori was seldom accepted as a member of the society at large . . . The Maori had to face the problem of adaptation and adjustment. . . . The war uprooted him from the protective warmth of his tribe and collective society and he was moved from seasonal work to essential industries . . . For many, their homes changed to a single room and they were cast adrift upon the highly turbulent waters of a highly technical society.

* * *

"No self-respecting person would condone Maori drinking habits, but neither would any just man condemn, out of hand, a race because a minority were victims to the foul influences emanating from the worst aspects of the country's patterns of social behaviour . . ."