exec. officers report Accommodation

-Sue Kedgely

"The ignorance surrounding halls of residence at this university is amazing. Popular mythology appears to view halls of residence as a regimented, single-sexed, and singularly undesirable institution, where out-of-town students are —in the last resort?forced to live. For this reason the halls of residence campaign has been given very little student support (apart from. a ten thousand pound Students' Association loan).

"In spite of predictable, and often mis-guided, popular criticism, halls of residence, I must insist, can provide outstanding advantages, for individual students and for the university.

"I am convinced that the reason for the modesty of the successes of orientation and capping weeks at Victoria does not stem so much from the apathetic nature of the Wellington public, and the Victoria University student, or the rather unfortunate "town-gown" relations. as from the fact that there is no base around which student activities can focus and revolve. This is most apparent during orientation week during which, despite gallant attempts of various university clubs, activities and functions are generally lacklustre, and occasionally disastrous, gestures to welcome eager and expectant freshers, Similarly at Capping.

"In other NZ universities, especially Canterbury and Otago, halls of residence provide the necessary initative, and the necessary base, for such activities. At Canterbury for instance, collection committee, stunts committee, charity collectors etc. traditionally stem from and are led by the various halls of residence. While this can be overdone, it does ensure that such activities have a central and established location, as well as sufficient personnel to mobilise them into maximum efficiency, creativity and action.

"Largely in an attempt, therefore. to dispel popular ignorance and popular misconceptions about halls of residence, an "inter-halls of residence" committee has just been set up at Victoria, composed of student representatives of the current student halls (Weir house, Victoria house,Helen Lowry, Fielden Taylor, Stuart Williamson, and Rudman house), and chaired by the Accommodation Committee Chairwoman.

"This committee intends to publicise, for the benefit of school leavers likely to require university boarding accommodation, for 'uninformed' students, and for the public at large, information about the location, conditions etc. of both current and projected halls of residence. As such, this committee proposes to expose what living in a hall of residence is really like, and, incredible as it may seem, to point out the tremendous advantages that can be obtained by living in them (especially in the new halls with their superior facilities).

"Other aims of this interhalls of residence committee are: to stimulate liaison between halls (at present there is virtually none) : to establish and encourage interhall activities—especially social; to support the halls of residence campaign. and finally, to enable students in halls of residence to play a more positive role within the university, especially during orientation and capping weeks."