A Brief Report of the 1930 Tour.

The exchange of student opinion by means of the tours of debating teams has become increasingly popular during the last five or six years. In fact, even far-flung New Zealand has had visits from four touring teams; but it was not till last year that our own students had the opportunity of travelling to debate with overseas Universities. In September of last year, V.U.C. sent three chosen representatives—G. R. Powles, W. J. Mountjoy and W. J. Hall—to engage in wordy conflict with students of the Universities of Canada and U.S.A. This tour was undertaken under the combined auspices of the N.Z. National Union of Students, the National Student Federation of U.S.A. and the National Federation of Canadian University Students.

Our first contest with a foreign University was at Honolulu, where we were met by representatives of the University of Hawaii. On the evening of our arrival, we were motored to various points of interest by two Chinese students. The next morning we were taken to the University of Hawaii. Honolulu is a very cosmopolitan place and at the University there were not only "White" students, but also Chinese, Japs, Hawaiiaos and various mixtures of these racial elements. We were each given a copy of the University newspaper, edited by a Chinaman. They took as to a Students' Association meeting. The chairman was "white," but the secretary was a Japanese girl. At this meeting a string quartette played Hawaiian airs, a quartette sang jazz songs, etc., and in between these items, the President would strike the table with a small hammer, the meeting would come to order, and in a silence that seemed to us very strange, conducted the business. No heckling! Yellow, brown and white, men and women, listened attentively. We thought of page 83 last year's Annual Students' Association meeting and R.H.C.! Yet there was one striking point of similarity: there, as here (as one member of the party pointed out), the women voted like sheep, in a block, and one after the other. The Hawaiian Debating Society is very keen to send a team to New Zealand, and some of the students wanted to know if there were not some way in which students could "exchange" between N.Z. and the Hawaiian University. The idea of a "Yellow Peril" or Japanese menace is "pooh-poohed" at the University of Hawaii. "Coloured" students to whom we talked said that they were pacifists, but if a war were somehow to come, they declared that the Japs and Chinese of Hawaii would fight for U.S.A. rather than China or Japan.

Our next University was a Canadian one, the University of British Columbia, which is located at Vancouver. Here we had the good fortune to be billeted at Fraternity Houses. The "Fraternity" is an institution peculiar to the American Continent. It partakes partly of the nature of co-operative boarding-house and partly that of a secret society. There are somewhere about seventy fraternities in America. Each fraternity has many "'Chapters" scattered throughout the continent, and each Chapter has its "frat. house," where the fraternity brothers live together as a kind of co-operative secret society. They have a secret initiation ceremony, secret signs and a secret organisation. The bond that binds one "fraternity brother" to another seems to be one of the strongest that one can imagine, and continues to be operative long after College days are past. The old students, or alumni, play a very important part in the life of American Universities, and fraternity alumni keep in touch with their frat. and contribute liberally to its funds. As fraternities exercise careful selection and only thirty to forty per cent. of College students have the opportunity of becoming members, election is considered a great honour, and the greatest honour paid to a freshman is to be "rushed" by four or five different fraternities. Women students have similar, though less powerful, organisations, called "sororities."

We were surprised to see numerous young men and women in the streets of Vancouver wearing on their backs placards on which their names were stencilled in big letters. We learnt that these were "freshmen" and "freshettes" (collectively: "frosh"), who must wear their names until the end of the initiation period, when, at the '"Frosh Initiation Dance," they are at last discarded. We saw many young men about the streets and at the University wearing caps and ties of a particularly bright green, and were told that these were part of the enforced uniform of the "freshmen."

We attended some lectures at the University of British Columbia, and were impressed by the much greater scope offered the student there than here. There are, for instance, nineteen different history courses to choose from. In many Colleges in the States this is carried to extremes, and there may be from forty to fifty courses in a subject. This, of course, tends to specialisation, and the American College must answer the demands of a land of specialisation. One College, indeed, goes so far as to include as one of the courses for Ph.D. "Hotel Management!"

The University of British Columbia has a very full and varied club life, and this is true of practically all American Universities and Colleges. Sport, too, plays a very important part, often so important that, next to the President, the football coach is the highest paid man on the College staff, and valuable scholarships are given to outstanding sports.

Before proceeding briefly to outline the results of the tour, I should like to record one more impression, the Co-Ed ! Her chief occupation seems to be the obtaining of "dates" for "necking" and "petting" ("petting" is below the neck). When one of our number ventured to express surprise at the amount of this that went on, a Professor of Psychology replied that, "after all, it is merely co-operation for the achievement of mutually satisfying states."

The standard of academic achievement in American Universities varies widely, and one can but say that in the best Colleges it is exceedingly high and in the worst it is very low. In fact, one of the most noticeable things, as we travelled from College to College, was the absolute lack of any uniformity. In some of the Colleges there is an exceedingly fine academic atmosphere and outlook, and knowledge is sought for its own sake; in others, the student merely spends four years at College and is churned out with an A.B.

After such a chronicle of debates and decisions, it is perhaps necessary to say that the aim of the tour was not the mere gaining of decisions, nor is the success of the team to be measured by the number of its victories. The team hopes that, page 85 as a result of its visit, it may be able to establish some more or less permanent contact between V.U.C. and the Colleges of America, and that in some small way it may be able to help to create some bond of sympathy between N.Z. students and those of U.S.A.