Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No 24. September 18, 1974
The Tower on the Hill
The Tower on the Hill
Dear Salient,
The article by Mareko Maruru on the shortcomings of Victoria is the most refreshing I have seen in Salient since my first year in the ivory tower in 1967. Gaining a bachelor's degree gave me a certain amount of pride, if only for not failing; five years on the outside has given me a much greater degree of insight and understanding of the student syndrome.
It is embarrassingly apparent when a university — or even 6th form high school student — is in a group, a job, or a bus. The patronising stand-offish attitude of the so-called intelligensia is a pollution in the air of our whole society. Too many students go on year after year doing units, whether passed or failed, degrees, diplomas etc or at least going with the same crowd. Sometimes for genuine love of learning and intelligent conversation, but sometimes also for fear of the outside world and the equalising effect of the Lambton Quay lunch hour rush.
The university may be expensive and a lot of hard work, but, if only for its geographical situation it offers a cushion against the outside world. It never ceased to amaze me, while at varsity, how students could mindlessly down booze to the exclusion of all else then demand freedom for the individual and the downfall of capitalism. Some of the biggest boozers I met were the radicals on campus — selling themselves shamelessly to DB etc — and no one, in my mind, is free when the mind is blown with any drug.
Students might be able to theorise to high heaven about the dialectics of materialism, the oppression of women, the economics of Samuelson etc etc blah blah, but a sobering existence to be a man working a 60 hour week on Todd's assembly line, a housewife bewildered by her resentment at having four grizzling children in a suburban home, or a pensioner budgeting for the week. Students would learn a lot more of far greater value if they would come down from the tower on the hill, if not in body at least in spirit.
Sincere love and peace,
Margaret Davey