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Pettipoint

Have a look at your tutorials. (No, they're not part of your body. Remember now? Good.) Do the male and female elements separate and look warily at each other? In my stage 1 tut, this year the males have, all year, sat on one side of the table, and the females on the other. Even the lectures tend to be quite segregated. In my stage 3 subject last year the seminar classes invariably mixed without a thought. Which may or may not give rise to some conclusions about a university education.

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Wot a lot of rot is talked about apathy. It is assumed by a small proportion of vocal activists that because a person is forced into joining an association he should be interested in its politics. In fact, the Law of Pettipoint applies—'An individual will be concerned with the activities of an organisation in direct proportion to the relevance thereof to his own activities, in direct proportion to his dissatisfaction with the activities of the organisation, and in inverse proportion to the number of units he is doing'. Here endeth the First Law of Pettipoint, which, when C=concern, R=relevance, D= dissatisfaction, and U=units, can be expressed

and is best remembered by the mnemonic Crud.

* * *

"If a thing's not to my liking I try to do away with it," said President Uncle Chris in a conversation that never, as a matter of fact, took place. "You know —Cappicade, NZUSA …" Any applications for a secretarial post in an active and ineptly run trade union - cum - social club - cum - training ground for young politicians?

* * *

Note that the fans in the Pol Sci Department's rooms in the Rankine Brown Building blow outwards, whereas the History Department's ones are more introspective.

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No wonder Salient was only second in the student newspaper competition—no sex, by editorial decree. "I will accept a serious article, but not a snide paragraph," quoth he to me. Which leaves none but the non-controversial topics of religion, politics and what-have-you. Preferably the what-have-you.

* * *

This is the last Salient of the year. Hooray. Give you a chance to get the taste of Pettipoint mouthings out of your mouth. Mind. Mouth. I don't mind either — saves me the fortnightly nervous strain of writing this and taking lecture notes at the same time.

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