President's Memo To Guest Speakers

Sir,—On behalf of my Association I would like to thank you for coming to our graduands' supper.

It is indeed an embarrassment for us to have asked you to give up your valuable time in preparing a speech, and attending a gathering, when the behaviour of some present was a shocking exhibition of bad manners and poor taste. My executive is most concerned about this matter, and has some definite views on changing the nature and purpose of this function.

Once again, many thanks for your valiant attendance, and my apologies for your embarrassment.

Yours sincerely,

(Sgd.) A. T. Mitchell,

President.

A letter has also been written to the Vice-Chancellor, expressing regret at any inconvenience Dr. Williams may have been caused at the supper, pointing out that students were not the only culprits.

The Students' Association turns on a supper for the year's graduands and some of the staff before Capping. It is supposed to be semi-formal, but this year it degenerated into a shocking brawl.

If you think the cafeteria in the old Little Theatre used to get in a mess, you should have paid a visit to the new Students' Union Building after the Graduands' Supper!

There are places in the Common Common Room where the new floor has been pockmarked over large areas by the imprint of stiletto heels. The same room has large black marks scraped down the decorative pillars, rings from beer glasses along the window sills, long scratches across the polished floor, and damage from stubbed-out cigarettes in many places.

On the day after the supper, a sofa and some chairs were still saturated with beer—there was a large pool of it, several feet in diameter, right in the middle of the Men's Common Room.

And this damage was done, mark you. on the very first occasion that students were allowed into this costly building!

But, not content with trying to float themselves home on a tide of beer, many of those who had drunk too much couldn't even wait to reach the toilets before disgorging the contents of their overstrained stomachs. Not only was the Men's Toilet awash, but the floor was slippery and unmanageable from the stinking effects of indiscriminate vomiting.

Some of the debris are still there at the time of writing, a week later!

Several of the guests (allegedly the intellectual elite of society, even inscribed various slogans and graffiti on the toilet walls and doors. How proud they must have been to be the very first to deface the walls! Hall to V.U.W's noble pioneers of obscenity!

Were the toilets so overcrowded that there wasn't even standing room? Some of the celebrants had to go outside to be sick. There were also "signs of occupancy" in a Committee Room—one of the rooms not supposed to have been entered.

The Building has now supposedly been cleaned up—but there are signs of damage that have not been hidden. Even the mops and buckets that were borrowed from the caretaking staff were left around in the building, the mops just abandoned standing in buckets full of dirty stinking water. Apparently, some people tried to clean up as best they could, but they were either not numerous enough, or lacked the strong stomach needed to finish the job.

What We Want to Know

• How was it that all this excessive liquor—(18 dozen beer, 11½ dozen of spirits) was paid for by the Studass, with the money subcribed by compulsion by all students of Vic?
• Why did the timetable fall completely to pieces, so that visiting speakers were insulted by being expected to address a noisy milling drunken throng?
• Is it fair to those Student Association representatives who were present to subject them to the indignity of having to apologise for the unruly behaviour of their fellow students and of certain other people? (Letters of apology have had to be sent to the guest speakers).
• And was the left-over spirits consumed by Exec, members at the abortive "Barn Dance" on the following Saturday night?