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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University, Wellington. Vol. 24, No. 3. 1961

"Middleway" Objected

"Middleway" Objected

Dear Sir,—By a happy chance, your correspondent "Middle Way" found his letter aptly illustrated by its adjoining the benevolent old sage, Prof. I. Zac. Postige, inhabitant of Kelburn.

"Middle Way's" cautionary tale will fortunately go unheeded by most Freshers, I feel. If memory serves me right, "young people fresh from school" have far too much ambition to allow themselves to be marched straight back into the "middle way" from which they have only just managed to matriculate.

It is, I suggest, most foolish to suppress their desire for individuality—(and I fail to see anything strikingly individualistic about sex and beer). In this "wellfed State," where the graduate seems to deserve only a third the labourer's wage, every student should greatly honour the value of the individual, and revel in whatever personal liberties he has not yet been deprived of.

I agree that students want to be accepted by their contemporaries, but let them be accepted as individuals, prepared to devote themselves fully to some pursuit or other. If they must be beatniks, let them be enthusiastic and convinced beatniks.

If only students would go so far as to "violate their own natures" (natures rapidly becoming conditioned to "middleism"), they would be able to approach their studies, interests and beliefs, with an enthusiasm to find truth, no matter how far it might take them from the accepted middle ways.

Yours faithfully,

—"Religious Legalist."