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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 38, Number 7. 15 April 1975

Dear Salient..

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Dear Salient...

Court of Convocation A Closed Shop

Dear Bruce,

As a rank and file member of the District Court of Convocation I would like to register a most emphatic protest about the blatantly undemocratic fashionin which the Court of Convocation election for Council has been handled.

Roll on the day when the National Party gives us a Human Rights Commission so that those who run the Court of Convocation can undergo the closest scrutiny. Imagine! In the two years and more that I have been a member of this so-called Court, it has called not one meeting. No officers have been elected, let alone by secret ballot.

Yet the other day I got a ballet paper through the mail telling me I could vote, as a member of the District Court of Convocation, for three members of the VUW Council.

Your readers will no doubt be shocked to know that the seven men and women who contested this election did not have an opportunity to express their political views in the statements distributed with the ballot papers. Even the Engineers Union gives its election candidates this opportunity.

The candidates statements read something like this:
Pitcairn, Francis Wilberforce
Occupation: Banister and Solicitor; partner Oats, Oats and Fodder, Barristers and Solicitors, Wgtn.
Place of Residence: Messines Rd., Karori
Degrees: LLB (N.Z.), LLM (Oxon), M.A. (lions) (N.Z.), LLD (Sydney)
Academic Posts: 1952-1960 Part-time lecturer in Law
1960-1966 Senior Lecturer Faculty of English and NZ Law
1967-1973 Visiting Lecturer Sydney University
1973-1975 Post-Doctoral fellow, Faculty of Law

Other Relevant Information: Member of Council of Legal Education; minutes secretary; Law Society Conference, 1950; member, Stuart Williamson Demolition Committee, 1974; chairman, Karori Progressive Association, 1960-1969; Wellington City Council election candidate. 1956, 1959, 1968; parliamentary candidate 1963, 1966.

What reason is there to vote for someone with qualifications similar to the above? What idea am I given that Mr. Pitchaim will serve his Constituency in the Court of Convocation wisely, that he will take up our demands and Tight for them? None whatsoever.

It would be a waste of time for me to seek redress from the faceless men who have the Court of Convocation in their grasp. I can only hope that the MP for Wellington Central reads these lines and gives an unequivocal pledge that control of the Court will be returned to the rank and file. That such an outrage was perpetrated for so long under a National Government is simply bewildering.

Yours sincerely,

P.L. Franks.

Comber on Bursaries

Many Victoria University students will be angered and disillusioned by the vacillation of the Minister of Education on the question of student bursaries. It is at least heatening to read of recent events which indicate that the Minister is having second thoughts on the issue.

I am sure that many of you will have started out or returned to University this year with grave fears as to your ability to remain there long enough to complete your courses.

As one of the National Party Members of Parliament who met students on the steps of Parliament a week or so ago I can say that I was impressed by the sincerity of your case. You were angry and justifiably so. I know that most of you will accept the fact that all sector) of the community must bear its share of any downward trend in the economy of our country. All you ask for is a 'fair go'.

The Minister's recent announcement of an extension of the 'hardship allowance' for holders of fees and boarding allowances is quite unsatisfactory. It will do little to alleviate the financial situation of students and the introduction of a means test is of course quite contrary to the basic principles of the present bursary scheme. To carry the Minister's argument to the extreme it could well be that every student will apply for the allowance as you are all suffering from some hardship. It is the very economic crisis that the Minister refers to which has increased the financial plight of students. Under the National Government, slthough bursaries were not directly tied to the cost-of-living, never once since the present scheme was instituted in 1962 were they allowed to fall behind to the extent that this Government has let them. Many of you will not have earned enough during the summer vacation to supplement your bursaries throughout the coming year. I do know that women students especially have suffered in this regard. The argument drawn together by the NZ University Students' Assn. shows graphically how the Minister of Education has not been prepared to speak up for the groups which he was elected to represent. The National Party Spokesman on Education, Hon. Les Gandar, did not make extravagant promises when he spoke to students on the steps of Parliament. He did ask for a 'fair go' for students and as the Member of Parliament for Wellington Central, which encompasses Victoria Uruversity, I endorse that recommendation.

Imbecile Review — Marat/Sade

Dear Sir,

It's understandable that a review as imbecile as the one you printed of Marat/ Sade should also be anonymous, but I hope it doesn't reflect a new editorial policy.

May we take it that Salient will refund Downstage the price of the reviewer's comps or take steps to have Weiss and the production properly panned by someone who can read, actually see and hear the actors, and write?

D.F. McKcnzie

Professor of English

Marat/Sade — a True Picture?

Dear Sir,

It disturbed and saddened me to read your anonymous review of the Downstage Touring Company's production of Marat/Sade. Your reviewer ascertained correctly that the play was Marxist in orientation. In his ideas of the abolition of property and privilege, Marat's thinking forms some of the common foundation of Marx writings.

However, your reviewer's man bone of contention lies with the interpretation of the mass struggle in its depiction within the confines of a mental asylum. He/She appears disappointed because the proletarian struggle was insufficiently glorified. He/She misses the point, that because Weiss chose to set the play within the confines of one of the Marquis de Sade's entertainments the actions of the inmates would appear almost inevitably inglorious. The Marquis was after all a member of the aristocracy and was accused of being such by Marat. He/She probably regards it as an insult that the people's struggle should be portrayed by people who are abnormal therefore in the reviewer's mind insulting the whole revolution.

Your reviewer was expecting Marat/ Sade to be something it was never intended to be. Instead of being able to recognise this and then criticise the outcome for its performance, the reviewer condemns it out of hand. Marat/Sade is no Chinese Revolutionary Opera. The Imperialist Capitalist Baddies are not vanquished by the Simple Virtuous Peasantry.

Essentially Marat/Sade is an intellectual confrontation between an ascetic pro to-socialist revolutionary and a hedonist seeking freedom from sexual constraints 'What's the point of a Revolution without general copulation?' This confrontation takes place on a face to face basis and requires some smalt measure of intellectual effort from members of the audience, and it appears on the reading of your reviewer's comments that in their particular case the challenge was not met.

In common with a socialist viewpoint typified by the Maoist line, your reviewer appears to he anti-intellectual. In taking such a standpoint he/she is threatened with having drama that only confirms — largely complacently — whatever views that may be already held. The possibility of question, uncertainty and change is thereby ruled out.

Weiss is a German writing for a German and a generally European audience. Your reviewer is aware as I that the theatre of the 'West' is patronised by the bourgeois middle class, or whatever other catchphrases you may like to use. Your reviewer is probably also aware that this audience likes to fancy itself as being intellectual. Weiss flatters them by meeting them on their own ground, and also I feel challenges those perhaps perceptive enough to grasp the import of the argument.

In all this I have said nothing of Mervyn Thompson's production. Space precludes this apart from saying that it had many aspects that were exciting, challenging and that It is perhaps one of the best pieces of production to have been Ken in Wellington for some years. This, however, is a rather milk and water statement and I would be pleased to further elucidate at a later date. However, as your reviewer also did not really discuss the production but entered the political arena, I feel justified in doing the same and perhaps may have succeeded in challenging, in some way his/her particular interpretation of the play.

Alistair Macfarlane.