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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 9. 1971

S.R.C

S.R.C.

Photo of Professor Ian Milner

Professor Ian Milner, Professor of English Literature at Charles University, Prague, and a visiting Professor in the department of English at the University of Otago, is at present at Victoria. Here with his wife as guests of the university, he will give a series of lectures (the first of which was on Monday) on aspects of Czechoslovak poetry. The programme includes: Wednesday: 8.15 in LB1. a public lecture entitled "Modern Czech Poetry in the European Context." Thursday: 12.30 until 2.00 in the Memorial Theatre, a lecture on "Problems of Translating Czech Poetry"; with Jarmila Milner. Friday: 11.00am in the Conference Room of the Easterfield Building, an advanced lecture for English Students on "Post-War Poetry in Europe - Trands and Contrasts."

The other day, for the first time this year, I actually went to a meeting of the S.R.C., that noble and illustrious institution whose function it is to give the students the illusion that they are participating in the making of policy decisions. Of course no-one who attends really believes he is actually making decisions or looking after his interests or exerting his God-given democratic rights or all the rest of the garbage we have thrust at us by our revered executive. But that is beside the point. The meeting was interesting. It started, as usual, in a deceptively mundane way - the president, clad in his customary dark glasses, striding authoritatively through a crowded hall, reaching the microphone and crisply suggesting that we "zero in", (this last comment presumably being made to intensify his already pretentious and obnoxious image.) A few administrative matters. Then we reached the point that had drawn me to the meeting - a ridiculous motion recommending a tightening of already too tough exclusion regulations. No we didn't. Someone had slipped in a motion to the effect that reports from student representatives be heard first. These reports, we were assured, had great bearing on the exclusion motion.

So we heard the reports. As it turned out, of course, their relevance to the matter was non-existent. But by the time you have been to three or four meetings of S.R.C. you will come to expect this kind of crass inefficiency. To return to the reports. They were accomplished in five or six minutes. But the nobodies whom S.R.C. has appointed to represent us on this and that council or board were not content to waste this minute fragment of our time. No, they wanted to put some motions. I lost count of how many but I do recall that each one expressed exactly the same viewpoint, was put by exactly the same people and had exactly the same things said about it by exactly the same people. And, of course, each was treated separately so that we had to endure the same boring speeches for each of nine or ten motions. Of course our learned leaders could not have treated these motions collectively for could that not be construed as tending to that terrible sin, efficiency, or, even worse, effectiveness.

I have heard these serious do-gooders who dominate S.R.C. for their own ends, actually lament, in their usual sanctimonious manner, that attendance at S.R.C. is not good enough. And so they should, for if only two hundred are present, then only two hundred will hear their nauseating voices. But can they honestly expect good attendance when the bureaucratic structure of S.R.C. deprives it not only of every ounce of its limited potential but also of anything vaguely interesting. If apathy is the alternative to such bungling, to such unbelievable inefficiency, to such extreme boredom, then long live apathy, it is a state of grace. I am convinced that only soldiers and members of parliament could be capable of this type of ineffectiveness.

R.A. Smyth.