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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 26. October 2 1978

A Call to Arms

A Call to Arms

Well. here is the first Salient for 1953 and it is not the only thing that is going to be different around the place. Mr. Braybrooke'S speech at Congress first sounded the key-note for what should be a new spirit pervading the University. At the last Executive meeting, on a slightly lower plane. Messrs. Dalgety, Gordon and Chatwin sounder the second note as the persons responsible for the Freshers' Welcome. The whole spirit is to be summed up in the policy of Salient for this year. In the Editor's report we wrote that greater emphasis should be placed on University affairs and particular on the corporate life of the colleges.

Mr Braybrooke called for a spirit of academic seriousness: Des Dalgety has called for a less academic spirit to make the Freshers' Welcome in the old style of varsity do's. What each is aiming at is to renew the corporate varisty spirit both in work and play. In no other college in the University of New Zealand is this so necessary. We are called a "night" college and there is very little we can do to defend ourselves against the charge. There are 600 full-timers at Vic, out of a student population of over 2300. and these full-timers are practically the mainstay of student life. Although many part-timers hold high executive position in the Association and in the clubs it is the full-timers who provide the solid core which generally ends up in doing the greatest part of the work. But worse still than this division in activity between part timers and full-timers is the dissipation of energies on extra university affairs.

It wa Mr Braybrooke's contention (and one with which we concur) that if one is a student one should be only a student devoting all the mental and physical enegry at one's disposal towards furthering the aims of the university. These aims do not necessarily conflict with even the most selfish of private aims. What he wanted was for students to work harder academically; this we want, tooffi but we want the student to help the university by helping the Students' Association as well. Too many students accept the label "student" when their thought and activity is orientated around their job, political party, or home. Such persons are not "students." as they are not part of the university but merely flotsam and jetsam on the outskirts.

T.H.H.