What a storm in a tea cup you raise in your special issue on "Security Agent on Campus". When reduced to its elements it appears that all that happened was that an officer of the Security Service asked a person, who also happens to be a student at Victoria, to report upon the activities of certain organisations which are not university organisations. How on earth can that affect academic freedom? The officer from the Security Service might just as well have asked someone else, who happened to be say a freezing worker, and then presumably would not have objected.

The heading "Security Agent on Campus" implies that the Security Service has an agent within the university reporting upon activities there. This is not borne out by what you report. Is it not rather a dishonest innuendo on your part?

Since the community has obviously accepted the need for a security service I would have thought you would be gratified to know that it was recruiting senior students and graduates. Surely you would feel happier to think that the quality of the Service was being enhanced by having sensible fellow students and graduates at members of it. Let us hope, though, that Mr Hugh Fyson does not join. The arrogance with which he can condemn others would be an unfortunate characteristic in a member of the Service.

The editorial on the back page of the special issue, after fairly postulating some of the issues, ends with a curious piece of illogicality. In what possible way does attempting to recruit students and graduates from within the university suggest that the Security Service is unaware of what it should be defending? How does such recruitment, for reporting on activities unconnected with the university, inhibit the free exchange of Ideas? Does it mean that in the editorial writers' view no member of the Security Service can ever be permitted to go to the university because, if so, it is contrary to the report or the Hutchison Commission and would create a class of persons discriminating against, not on account of their views or the colour of their skins, but because of their occupations? Not quite in accord with those Rights of Man that the editorial writers were busy advocating. If none of these things is meant what did they mean, if anything?

If your report of what the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Taylor, said is all that he said then I can only conclude he has been given a very different account of whet occurred than which appears in Salient. To say of that incident that "it is quite inconsistent with the basic principles of a university" is patently absurd. Dr Taylor must surely have been referring to some other sort of activity than this.

The anonymous student who disclosed the incident in the first place is to be congratulated on bringing the matter out into the open. It must be nice for him to feel he is doing a public service without at the same time incurring "unnecessary publicity or perhaps prejudicing his future career". Not so the officer of the Security Service that you bravely chose to name.

R. C. Savage.