Courses in Mid-Stream

At the beginning of this year (if you can remember) the Registrar insisted that departments must inform their students of how they were going to be assessed, and that departments stick to their assessment policies, no matter what. All very nice... Now the Registry is insisting that several departments, with nearly two-thirds of the academic year gone, should change their policies. The Information Science Department, which has no finals paper (total internal assessment) for several of its honours courses and has stuck to this policy all year, has just been told to change its policy. The Registrar has come across an outdated, forgotten regulation which insists on a finals paper for honours courses. They can't amend it until next year, they say.

This means that the students affected, who have been working extra hard during the year because of the requirements of having no finals paper, will now have to also go thru that mind-dulling, mental breaking process of sitting a finals paper. It also means that the staff of the department who have been busy all year keeping us busy, will now have to go thru that mind-dulling, heart-breaking process of writing the finals paper and marking the scripts. The Information Science Department is not the only department affected either.

This is obviously unfair. Students affected by this change in policy should join together and make a formal complaint to the Registrar — if they have any time to do so. Any such fellow student can contact me.

Robert McDavitt

Poetry to Groan and Strain to

While sitting on the dunny seat
I thought I'd give the lads a treat
when they returned to groan and strain
so I inscribed this small refrain
I'll just repeat it once again:
"Anarchy lives, the Trots eat shit
Pete Wilson doesn't get his bit
meet me tonight at ten o'clock
and stroke my thighs and suck my chocolate
coated lime ice block"
But sirs, what was my great dismay
on coming back the other day
to sit and shit and perchance to pray
The message had been cleaned away
so now I reproduce it here
I hope it gains attentive ear
This is my last and final word
Good luck to all of you, Joe Turd.

Hate Letters

After the constant procession of "Salient is shit" etc letters in your correspondence columns I was interested to read Thorold Mays' "Salient: Light Entertainment?" contribution. This sort of criticism is the kind of material that might have improved the paper earlier if the hate mail writers had chosen to actually think about what they did or didn't want. Me? I'd be interested to sec a bit more creative writing, perhaps a bit of left wing verse.

Why don't I write the copy then? I can hear Roger Steele screaming in my ear. Have patience comrades. This epistle is my first faltering footstep.

Yours and all that Shirley Trench

The Ruination of the German Dept

Perhaps the most typifying feature of Victoria is the impersonal nature of the various departments. One of the Very few exceptions is the German Dept where there is a real feeling of conviviality among students and staff, which is centred around the house the department occupies (28 Kelburn Parade).

This surely is a situation which should be encouraged, But what is about to happen will have the opposite effect. The house is to be demolished to make way for the new ten storey Languages and Literature Faculty building (Von Zedlitz Building), where there will be little, if any, consideration for a students' room. There is a chance we may be allowed to move into a house in Fairlie Terrace, but nothing is definite. If this plan falls through, we are destined to life in a prefab, where space is so restricted that absolutely no provision can be made for student facilities. To have the department move into a prefab would not only help to destroy this almost unique atmosphere in the German Dept, but would contribute to the growing feeling in the university that the place is only a machine in which to programme people into a state where they can never acieve personal identity. Who wants this to happen?? We don't:

From students of the German Department and others. Kathleen Culliford, Glenda Howell, Rosalind Salas, Detlev Vosgerau, Chris Kelly, J. Nelson, Stefanie Oram, Elsie Bradley, Eric Schusser, Cecily Adams, Lisalotta Napp, Andrew Hibbard, John Zohrab, Jo Mitchell, Dillwyn Hiddlestone, Giilian Adsett, Harold Merriman, J. Harker, Mary Hunter, Peter Baumann, George Hendry, M. B. Johnson, Rand Baxter, Pat Scriven, Murray Needham and many more who can't fit on the page!!

Individual Worthless Under Communism

Observation one: You Marxists maintain that the working classes are "exploited" by the capitalist for profit. In a Communist society, people have no individual worth or value apart from their value as a productive unit for the state; they are given education and health care to make and maintain more and more efficient and capable units of production, not for the purpose of the full development of the individual as a person. They exist for nothing but the use and glorification of the state. In other words they are exploited for their labour by the state, the very practise for which you condemn capitalism, and urge the revolutionary fight for a Communist state.

Observation two: Peter Wilson said recently at a Forum he thought it just fine if capitalists were taken out and shot. Strange behaviour from one whose beliefs are supposed to stem from his concern for humanity, for the dignity of man, for the alleviation of oppression and injustice etc. etc. Has he not heard we don't even take a man's life for murder now, not even the life of mass murderers like Manson, yet for what he calls "exploitation" a man can be just taken out and shot? Shows how much he really cares about human respect and justice, when you take him from abstract masses of people to specific individuals. When you get down to specifics, the only individuals who have any worth are those whom it suits the Marxists to attribute value to, which means anyone who agrees with them or at least doesn't strongly disagree with their ideas.

P. Keating

Salient Biased???

I wish to register my protest at the insidious and subversive forces of evil that are taking over the world with the evident support of fellow-travellers such as yourselves. Your support has increased markedly both in volume and tone over the past few issues, under the flimsy pretext of some few students visiting China who get three and a half pages of propaganda in your last issue. Not content with this you publish a further three pages on Rhodesia from a self-admitted biased source. How about some pretence at fairness such as an article from Ian Smith? Returning to New Zealand, you seem to be doing your best to stir racial hatred into our present harmony with three pages mumbling about the "minority race" and the "power structure". The last true words I saw in Salient on this topic came from Bob Jones. No apology is sufficient to cover the blatant pushing of your point of view in the "Salient Notes" of the last issue — how about less emphasis on "revolutionary correctness" and more on campus which the average student is much more concerned with? Whatever happened to the page on sports? — a subject much more likely to provide wholesome relaxation and character building than the present mythological paeans on China.

Yours etc Glenn Fraser

The Effects We Have

It is about time that someone pointed out what a brilliant paper Salient is. Under the wise and benevolent leadership of yourself and Peter it has become the most widely read student newspaper in New Zealand. Up at Auckland University bundles of Craccum lie unread. What are the masses demanding? More copies of Salient.

I have it on good authority that Norm (Right Hon!) reads Salient in bed every Wednesday night.

What student newspaper is sent to Jack Marshall from irate" parents of university student? with demands that the old cold war warrior do something about the commie subversion in the universities? Salient! Yes, even that ridiculous anachronism of the cold war has been asked by his constituents to read Salient.

Salient has more subversive content per page than all the others put together. Keep it up chaps.

Fraternally Yours Raymond Slicker

Cafeteria Rake-Off?

It is about time something was done about the cafeteria. Various student politicians have stated their wish to improve standards — yet nothing happens. Articles are run showing ITT's reactionary nature and its inefficiency — yet nothing happens. Letters appear in Salient protesting at the shit served up — yet nothing happens. One begins to suspect either a conspiracy or a rake—off. Any comments comrades?

Yours in anticipated revolution S. McDonald

Floored Again

What has happened to the ancient Salient of ere? Where is the traditional sex, violence and beer swilling? Why has criticism become more muted and less persecutionary? If there's not improvement pretty soon I'll have to go, with a heavy heart, back to the Sundays and Truth.

Yours pleadingly P. Ervert.

Salient

Copy Deadlines

Contributions should be typed or written legibly double-spaced on one side of the paper only, and should be in the hands of the Editors by Wednesday evening. Late contributions will also be considered.

Advertising

Our new advertising manager is Brian Hegarty, phone 70-319 (ext. 75 & 81) at Salient, or 87-530 (Upper Hutt) at home.

Salient Office

1st Floor, University Union Building,

Phone 70-319 (ext. 75 & 81)

P.O. Box 1347, Wellington, New Zealand

And As For Governments

Happened to attend a tome what issueless debate today (about whether one should or shouldn't have confidence in the Government). Both sides seemed to miss the point. In their bumblings and counter-attacks they gave me serious misgivings as to whether one should have confidence in Government per se.

After all, government by definition is the rule — or mis-rule — of one group of individuals over another i.e. suppression of the populus.

This is not necessary. Let me postulate the concept of a nihilistic u'opia, where in men live in harmony; and coercion and restraint are nonexistent. This state of being is not only far more desirable than the rule of law, but is also feasibile in fact inevitable.

Counter arguments to this type of political philosophy would come under two headings. Both can be discounted, Firstly, that it is hope lessly idealistic. So was Karl Marx condemned. Secondly, that human nature being what it is, mankind will always need laws and policing. This is the kind of argument used by the Christians against Darwin, and is tangible bullshit. I put it to you that not only have our minds, our morals and our bodies evolved, but so has government. Compare, for instance 18th Century justice with todays. Some evolution, at least.

Government by becoming less arbitary, is evolving itself out of justice. I submit, therefore, that persons attempting to stem the tide of evolution are not only being futile and reactionary, but by putting their ideas into action are endangering the progress of humanity.

I further submit, that in time when progressive leadership is vital in the dismantling of what is fast becoming an anachronism, such conservative reactionaries — whether they be fascist, spartacist or Trot — who still believe in the efficiency of government should be sweetly and harmoniously liquidated.

Yours divisively, A. Narky

Nuclear Tests

I feel compelled to comment on Rob Campbell's and Graeme Clarke's apologism on China's nuclear tests in Salient July 5.

Many readers may doubt the sense of "US Imperialists wifi never blow up the world, which they have the capacity to do, as that would defeat the reason for their existence. They want world hegemony, along with the USSR, to ensure their profits. No world equals no profits." That peculiar statement overlooks the USA's 'better dead than red' suicidal and homicidal crusading zeal so globally evident in recent years.

There might be no obstacle to the 'militarisation' of nuclear devices that cannot be surmounted by the application of nuclear theory and extant data to research and development. Militarisation of nuclear devices requires that they be made practical ordnance produced in such quantities as to be of significance in war, and 'logistically viable' — optimum weight/destructive capacity, so that they may easily be delivered great distances and produce more blast and heat damage than any non-nuclear high explosive, in addition to lethal and disabling radiation.

Nuclear tests as a political demonstration let a country's enemies surmise that it has 'militarised' its nuclear devices, particularly when it can, as China has done, demonstrate a reliable and accurate long range delivery system. In 1970 China successfully launched a satellite and the Pentagon inferred (Newsweek May 4 1970) that China would have perhaps at least 50 ICBMs today.

If matters of this sort are considered as facts by a nation's enemies then nuclear testing is more for politically demonstrating military capacity than for research and development of weapons. Current political and technical developments in Israel and India make it likely that those countries may gate-crash their way into the exclusive nuclear club with nuclear weapons research and development, and of course, political demonstrations of capability by testing. Is nuclear proliferation really likely to lessen the chances of a nuclear conflagration? It might be sensible to suppose that the opposite is more likely.

Pardon the Pentagon jargon, Les Slater.

Where Are They Now?

Could you please tell me who the President of the Students' Union is this year as his/her name slipped my mind in March and nothing has since happened to assist me in remembering.

Yours, M. Maurice.

Vox Populi?

Your 'People's Voice' critic Rob Campbell seems to have stirred up a little flutter in the darkening dovecot of the CPNZ. "Chicken Man and the Roosters" have replied to Campbell's criticism with yet another example of the blind lashout at any questioning of their weekly squark. Well, Mr Vic "Chicken Man" Wilcox, lets see what your wrote and what the facts actually are.

P. V. July 18, 1973 (above the list of donations.) In huge type — "The list below represents solid support for the working class press. The regular support from workers around the country proves that, despite what some opportunists may claim, there is widespread working class support for a Marxist Leninist newspaper."

Fact. The list below contains no more than four hundred names at the most. In my experience the bulk of the present readership comprises party and ex-party members, members of other small parties and factions, kind hearted students and drunks. In 1945 P.V. circulation was 14,000. In 1963 it had dropped to 5,100. What it is now is anyone's guess.

P. V. July 18 1973. "The People's Voice is the only Marxist Leninist newspaper in New Zealand. For this reason it is the only paper which works in the long term interest of the working class. Others may sneer at the political line, and deny the ability of the working people to understand Marxist —Leninist politics — but by doing so they abdicate from providing the working class with politics which will build the forces needed to seize state power."

Fact. This outrageous mixture of self- praise and distortion has typified the writing of the "Voice" for years. On what grounds does it claim to be a Marxist Leninist paper? On the grounds that it says it is, that's all. Which is not good enough. Many well meaning people, party and non-party, have banged their heads against the concrete wall of Vic's chicken coop in a vain attempt to criticise the grass lack of Marxist analysis in the "Voice". All such criticism is dismissed as "sneering at the political line." So you have the wonderful choice of the P.V. — love it or leave it.

Fifty two years after its foundation the CPNZ has been reduced to a few old men selling a wretched newspaper and the occasional leaflet. Lenin said: "New Zealand is the paradise of Social Democracy," and this is still true. The conditions of our country are not those that produce a vigorous Marxist—Leninist party at the present stage of history'. It's understandable that Chicken Man should cling to his illusions, he has little else. But it would be unfortunate if progressive people were to betaken in by his buffoonery at this stage of the game. The working class and its allies are not an appropriate subject of ridicule.

Yours, necessarily anonymously, Ex—Party Member.

Apathetic Elections

So its another election. Can't you seeah at the politics is shit of course who wants to get involved? We've got our individual development and degrees and careers and degrees to get.

Isn't if everyone that moans and then does nothing. The elections or non-elections are just what you moaning, do-nothing students deserve. Just a small group of Commies is what you get. They may do something which most of you apathetic mass won't.

Retired Student

Race Relations and Justice

I do not think the writers of the Nelson Race Relations Action Committee have said anything constructive in the whole two-page article included in Salient of July 18.

Have they any record of what Maori justice was like in the age before settlers arrived? My guess is that it would have been more severe and more dictatorial than the present-day magistrates ruling. If, on the other hand, all members of the Justice Department, Police and other administrative authorities were now Maori, what would be the difference in todays world?

I happen to be a pakeha who adopted two Maori boys aged 7 and 8. Now at ages 17 and 18 the elder is in detention centre and the other tending to be closely following his brother's example. The 18-year-old became so engrossed in the pleasantries of the Wellington non-working society that he could not be coaxed by me or others to report as required by the Probation Service. Now I do think he had to be disciplined and this unfortunately meant a re-survey of the original offences which everyone would rather have put out-of mind. So he becomes another unit in your Maori Offenders statistics which you protest about. What other alternatives have you got?

Bad up-bringing in an unloving home may be your criticism — but I would call you hypocrites because we took them from a Children's home, sought all possible advice in their up-bringing whereas you no doubt would have left them alone. I also think of the number who could have possibly helped with advice or offers of practical assistance during my last four years of solo parenthood and maybe changed their lives.

Could it not be that you learned ones are the ones who show my youngsters that "life" is — guzzling alcohol., living loosely and trying to get away with what you can in this world. And of course it is so common to hear of someone's offspring getting into trouble that these things become laughable jokes.

But, if you feel you have better methods of correction and up-bringing, advice and constructive criticism could still be useful to me in training the I 7-year-old. However I alternatively suggest that your help is needed in your own neighbourhood to watch Maori children growing up and advise them when they are straying and doing wrong.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat?

Last night on the TeeVee Sir Keith Holyoak assured us that we are living in a "socialist dictatorship" under the new Labour Government. Might I ask Don Franks, who apprarentlv knows all about these things if this is, in fact correct.

Recycling

Last night (Monday, July 16, at 8.1 5pm) in the seond floor coffee lounge we saw one of the 'caf' minions pouring the remains of the milk from the adjoining restaurant into the large milk jugs, i.e. out of the little jugs into the big ones. I have some idea that it is illegal of present food, which has already been presented to the public, to the public again. Perhaps a representative of the caf would care to make some comment before the matter is referred to the Health Dept.