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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 9. 1966.

Letters to the Editor

page 10

Letters to the Editor

Sports view support

Sir,—It was encouraging to read your second editorial on sports clubs grants in Salient of July 1. The fact that sports clubs are getting a proportionately smaller share of students' association funds each year should be of concern to all those who realise the importance of the sports clubs in the life of this university.

This is especially so when an ever-increasing number of students are actively supporting their own clubs. In the days when association fees were somewhat less, many students preferred to join or remain with outside clubs. Now many can no longer afford the luxury of paying the association fee without using the facilities it is intended to provide and they are entitled to have their money spent primarily on those activities most in demand. Apart from the Union facilities, there can be no doubt that sporting facilities are used by the greatest number of students.

The success of the Sports Council organisation has perhaps made some clubs too complacent about the funds made available to them.

Through Sports Council they have been able to get grants more painlessly than previously. Clubs must not overlook the fact that as they and the university grow they should be seeking more funds for expansion of their activities to meet the increased demand.

Sports Council does not advocate that funds should be drawn off from other worthy causes. Rather it feels that too much students' money has in the past been wasted needlessly. Some of this could be better spent in improving the facilities of clubs which have, with few exceptions, spent students' money wisely and in the best interests of a large section of the student body.

Sports Council would like to ensure that the level of grants for sports clubs at least keeps up with the increasing student roll, and as more clubs are formed it is not unrealistic to suggest that the proportion should be increased. There are now 27 clubs affiliated to the association.

Sports Council is pleased to have your support in its objective. At the same time it is important to keep all students informed of the facilities available to them.

In your paper there is also comment on the treasurer's recent report. You state that the club grant system collapsed. I feel bound to point out that over the last financial year all sports club grant applications were attended to and passed with customary efficiency. The only bone of contention was the reduced proportion of funds made available. This is in sharp contrast with other aspects of the association's financial dealings.

John Stevens.

Chairman VUW Sports Council.

Iodine as a health hazard

Sir,—In his recent article on Medical Research in New Zealand, Dr. Adams has been all too modest about the output of work from Dunedin, and especially about his own major contribution to the disease, thyrotoxicosis. His failure to detect any medical research elsewhere in New Zealand is hardly surprising. Until recently, research has been discouraged in the other main centres, and even today a flair for medical investigations is likely to hinder a doctor seeking to advance in a competitive specialty. It is difficult for the lay person to understand medical conservatism, which is there to protect patients from hasty and possibly dangerous alterations of accepted medical practice.

Two examples of haste were the use of thalidomide, and the great SV40 virus experiment, the latter involving, as it does, so many of today's youth up and down the world. It is as a medical conservative, that I wish to take up one point in his article.

Dr. Adams writes that legislation is needed to prevent the sale of non-iodised salt, where marketed at a price lower than iodised salt, or at least I hope that is what he means. In the present era of quickfire legislation, we could easily find ourselves with a law prohibiting the sale of non-iodised salt. There should be no doubt in our minds as to the health hazard of endemic goitre, an unpleasant and disfiguring deficiency disease.

The introduction of iodised salt in the 1920s in the proportion of one in 200,000 was a wise and necessary measure, and in due course, as in Switzerland, this amount of iodination may have eliminated goitre. In 1939, it was considered that the programme should be hurried up, and the proportion was increased to one in 20,000. Is it possible that at this point we took a leap into the dark?

From the experience of Switzerland, it should be possible to eliminate goitre with one in 100,000 to one in 200,000 proportions of iodination. The World Health Organisation recommends a level of one in 100,000. For about 25 years we have been using about four or five times this amount. The proportion of one in 100,000 seems slightly more than adequate to correct an existing iodine deficiency. Any extra iodine is unnecessary, and at some point begins to act as a suppressor to the pituitary thyroid axis.

Does the extra iodine do any harm? To this question, there does not seem to be any definite answer, and I believe that the question has not even been seriously considered. Certainly the iodised salt programme should come into any consideration of postwar health in New Zealand, together with the many other factors which have been introduced into our environment. It would be incorrect to consider that our health has improved since the war years, and in some respects, particularly after middle age, there has been a significant deterioration. Let us view the subject of goitre prevention, with our eyes not only on the thyroid, but also on the whole of the human physiology. We have in New Zealand, comprehensive medical statistics for the postwar years and a homogenous racial background which makes us an ideal group for epidemiological studies, on a vast scale.

Dr. J. Logan.

Wellington Hospital.

Editor Wrong?

Sir,—I objected to the awarding of an honorary degree to the Prime Minister, and it is possible, with some effort, to dredge my reason for so doing from your editorial on the subject—I believe the degree debases the awarding of such an academic honour.

However most of the remainder of the editorial is to be regretted for its uncharacteristically low level of commentary.

You wrote: "For students have not forgotten—even though it seems that the university has—that just one year ago at the graduation ceremony the Chancellor of this university bitterly attacked the Government's policy towards universities."

Surely it is painfully obvious, Mr. Rennie, that the Council of this university has not forgotten the attack. In fact it is the very memory of this attack, followed as it was by certain Government concessions to education in the 1965 Budget, that has prompted the awarding of the degree.

It is an attempt to smooth embittered feelings engendered at this university last year.

Would it not be more responsible to face this fact, and attempt to build objective editorial comment from it, rather than sink into the morass of emotionally-loaded remarks, such as "cheap political gimmick," "singularly short-witted council," and "political act that is both dangerous and foolhardy," which are reminiscent of Truth.

The matter is a good deal simpler than this. To see direct, political intentions behind this award is to create a straw man. However undesirable a precedent it may set its aim was merely to restore some semblance of civil relaations between the Government and this university.

Look at the situation realistically, Mr. Rennie Adequate objections to the degree can be made on grounds of academic debasement. And remember a previous editorial remark you made this year:

"This paper has a commitment to the ethics of journalism, which will not be abandoned for—artificial controversies."

Amen!

M. King.

Holyoake protest

Sir,—So one of our number has seen fit to ring a fire alarm in a clumsy, crude attempt to cause disruption in the ceremony conferring the Holyoake Degree.

To protest in this manner, bringing two fire engines to the scene of a non-existent blaze, reflects no credit on the maturity of students in general, in spite of a pedantic cover-up that the alarm was "symptomatic of the mockery and prostitution of the academic tradition."

We may not agree with the award made, but it is arbitrary acts such as this that can only continue to lower the already poor image of students as mature, responsible members of the community.

Brian Beard.

Films — is Godard great?

Sir,—There is a curious unevenness about Rex Benson's contributions to the latest issue of Salient. His piece on Charlton Heston was relevant and quite well researched, and his discussion of the Roxy's Sunday screenings and the Labour Party club's screenings at the university showed a concern with the realities of films in this country completely absent from his extraordinarily one-eyed consideration of Jeanluc Godard's Bande a Part.

It is interesting to compare Mr. Benson's review with the discussion in the issue of Truth published a few days before. The Truth piece mentioned the important facts about the new wave and its representation in New Zealand which one would have thought no one could avoid mentioning (the other people in the new wave, and how many of their films have been seen here). We can expect no less than this from a writer in other respects so well informed.

Nor should we be satisfied with a review which is headed "Jean-luc Godard" and yet mentions only Bande a Part, presumably because your reviewer has not seen Vivre sa Vie or the episode by Godard in Seven Capital Sins, the only other films by him released in this country. But this is surely the first comment to be made: Godard is one of the most important, most talked - about filmmakers in the world, yet we have seen only three of his dozen or more films made since 1959 (in itself quite an achievement).

I would expect this comment even from Mr. Benson, who finds nothing to admire in Bande a Part, and concludes "If Godard intended this monotonous technique then he can show his films to himself," quite unwarrantedly concluding that this is a representative Godard film although critics have all remarked on the change in style of this film from his others, and it is generally not regarded as one of his best. Apart from the beautiful photography by one of the world's finest directors of photography (Raoul Coutard), the most notable thing about the film is surely its self-indulgent quality. The cafeteria "Nouvelle Vague", the reference in the opening narrative to Truffaut's "La Peau Douce", being made in the same year as this film, the boy in the English class who asks how to say "A big one million dollar film", the minute's silence in the restaurant, the set-piece of the dance sequence, and the apocalyptic final killing; all these show that Godard is amusing himself with "injokes", but ones in which we can share. I cannot see any sense in which this could be described as "reactionary", a word more properly applied to the direction of What's New, Pussycat, Cat Ballou and Lady L. At least Godard is doing something original which is more than can be said for these films.

However, I don't want to indulge in any special pleading on behalf of a film which will very likely be one of the least successful of the new wave (an "eddy". Truth called it); I have written this letter to point out that we are justified in complaining when a film critic gives his public any less than all the important information to hand (all the more so in the case of our lamentable distribution system) and when he concludes that a director is trivial or incompetent on the basis of one film.

I think also that it is not unfair to suggest that this is a far less well-rounded review than we have come to expect from Mr. Benson: he didn't like Muriel much either, but at least he was able to explain why. So Bande a Part isn't a world-shaker. Ok, I was disappointed too, but it wasn't that bad. It is not very informative to assert that "At the film's core lies a stolid blancmange of stagnating non-significant significance", nor to berate the photography for being "predictable". Predictability in itself is neither a virtue nor a liability: it is what is appropriate that matters. Predictability would hurt Help! but it didn't matter in America, America. I accept that Mr. Benson's emotional reaction to the film was one of antipathy, but it is hardly fair to inflict his rationalisations for this reaction on us.

Peter Boyes.

Capping Controller Doug White, who was elected unopposed. Educated at Nelson College, Mr. White is a part-time law student in his third year at university. He says he welcomes suggestions for improving capping, and is at present considering ideas for a Miss University contest, increased procession grants, post-procession parties for collectors and float-builders, and the introduction of a pre-graduation ceremony procession along the lines of those at Canterbury and Otago.

Capping Controller Doug White, who was elected unopposed. Educated at Nelson College, Mr. White is a part-time law student in his third year at university. He says he welcomes suggestions for improving capping, and is at present considering ideas for a Miss University contest, increased procession grants, post-procession parties for collectors and float-builders, and the introduction of a pre-graduation ceremony procession along the lines of those at Canterbury and Otago.