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At the last Annual General Meeting of the Assoc the matter of a fee increase was deferred to a special General Meeting to be held in the second term. It was commented that the information presented, perporting to justify the fee recommendations, was inadequate. Further information is now available and is presented in the following article, where expenditure figures are stated at the minimum possible.
The reader's attention is also directed to an article appearing in salient number 10, written by the previous Treasurer (Richard Greenfield). It should be noted however that the recommended increase is now $5 and not $6 as proposed in that article.
The proposed increase is divided into three parts.
At the present time $7 of the Association fee is allocated to the Building Fund. The proposed increased to $8 can be compared with the allocations at the other Universities, the figures speaking for themselves.
The building costs of the present Union facilities is $981,000. By the end of
Present planned extensions to the Union (Tower and Gymnasium contracts) will cost about $500,000 without equipment or furnature. However, cost increases in the building sector are in the order of 45% over the past 18 months so the proposed increase will do little more than keep pace with the rate of inflation: It will therefore be necessary to borrow to finance some of these stage I developments.
On the basis of official projected population estimate of 10,000 students in
An increase of $2 is necessary if the Association is to pay its proportion of the Union budget. This budget covers the running costs and maintenance of the Union Building, Memorial Theatre, Gymnasium and Tennis Pavilion.
The total budget for
In
Although the University matches the Association portion of the maintenance fund equally, it also pays supervisory salories and the maintenance and administrative cost entirely out of university funds. Thus in reality the students' association pays about 1/3 of the total costs of running the Union. We may not always be blessed with this generosity on the part of the University.
Forecast of Income and Expentiture.
When it is considered that the past Treasurer "justified a $3 increase for the General Account in his salient article, and managed to show a net depicit of $515 over 5 years, it will be affeciated that the expenditures shown above are the minimum possible.
Indeed the surpluses for
I trust therefore that the information outlined is sufficient to explain the proposed increase, something which will not be popular but nevertheless inevitable.
Is it any wonder that the University Debating Society is on the verge of collapse. By any standards of judgement debating is a very poor form of spectator sport. Six mediocre and poorly-prepared speakers defending propositions often contrary to their own beliefs can hardly make for entertainment or even intellectual stimulus. Debating is little more than a hangover from the days when it might have proved a successful substitute for today's theatre and television screens.
By continuing to hold large meetings in the uncomfortable formality of lecture theatres, the Victoria Society is digging its own grave. Debating just can not hope to compete with film, music, and theatre for an audience. It is futile to arrange meetings with unknown speakers and uninteresting topics and hope to have full halls.
A radical reappraisal of the purpose and place of debating in the University is necessary.
In a modern context debating is really only relevant as an apprenticeship for public speaking. The need to speak and argue persuasively in public is as great as ever. So many New Zealanders are inarticulate in the face of a group. One need only look at participation in the average University tutorial or Wednesday's forum to appreciate this fact.
The Debating Society should reshape its thinking and have as its primary task the provision of a training ground for those interested in public speaking. A reasonably small group of between twenty and thirty people meeting at regular intervals because all wanted to learn to speak effectively would be the best method. Of course there could still be open debates - annual events like the sex, religious and Wi Tako debates. These could cater more for entertainment while the regular meetings held the society together.
It is worth a try. Workshop meetings have attracted reasonable numbers and there must be more who would like to try speaking in public but have never found the opportunity. The present policy of arranging open debates in anticipation of audiences can only lead to increasing disillusion within debating circles.
One thing is sure. If last weeks obituary is not to be accurate there will have to be a redefinition of purpose by the Debating Society.
There are many contentious points in Mrs Davidson's article on Abortion, but I will confine myself to two or three.
It seems to me that those wanting to "liberalise" the law in New Zealand are those wanting to impose their views on the majority of the population; the Society for the Protection of the Unboard Child - SPUC - which has 15,000 members (
I would not agree that a woman has the absolute right of life or death over her unborn child, without regard to the father. A pregnant woman is in a state of hormonal imbalance and is not always able to make a rational decision, especially in the first moments of blind panic. In spite of your tasteless cartoons, I believe that the incidence of suicides among pregnant women In New Zealand is very low. Many woman has become more than reconciled to a coming child well before the end of the nine months, which is not to say that I think we should wash or our hands of the problem. I would agree with Mrs Davidson that much more love and understanding and practical help is needed by unmarried mothers and those struggling with several young children, but I would most emphatically not agree that abortion solves any of these problems; it merely postpones them at the cost of innocent lives.
It is interesting that under both the existing and proposed regulations for the B.A. degree at Victoria it is not easy for students to transfer from Waikato to Victoria and vice-versa.
For first degrees in the University of Waikato, students are required to complete 22 courses. This is equivalent to the nine units arts degree at Victoria. Thus, under the present system: 1 Waikato course equals 0.409 Victoria units and 1 Victoria unit equals 2.44 Waikato courses. Under the proposed 108 credit system at Victoria, I Waikato course equals 4.90909 Victoria credits.
Such a difficulty would be resolved if Victoria were to intoduce a 1188 credit degree, whereby each Victoria unit would be equivalent to 99 credits and each Waikato course equivalent to 54 credits.
The number 1188 has the duodecimal significance deemed so important by the Victoria arts faculty as well as incorporating the "Waikato number", 22. (It is of note that whereas the number 12 is arbitary, the number 22 is not; being the sum of the number of letters in the University of Waikato's, motto and the number of heraldic symbols of the University's coat of arms).
Such a suggestion should be received with great joy, for if introduced would provide almost limitless combinations for students to incorporate in their degrees. Eventually, it may be possible for students to have 1188 different subjects in their degree; what better argument could there be than the 1188 credit course to floor those who think university education too specialist-oriented?
I read with some incredubility the Obituary of the Debating Society in the last issue of Salient. While it was certainly a perceptive analysis of the grievous ills plaguing the Society, it was misleading in one important detail.
The Debating Society is Not Dead.
Whether the notice of death arose from a lack of integrity and scurrilous behaviour on Salient's part; or from an indecently hasty euthanistic desire to dispatch the Society; or was merely a justifiable mistake, I know not However, the Society is still alive and kicking, although it, is indeed suffering severely from "the distainful apathy... and ...spiritual and mental atrophy of the student masses" that you gave as the cause of death in your Obituary.
But be assured that the Debating Society has no intention of giving up the ghost in the immediate future.
In fact, there are indications that the Society still possesses a healthy instinct of survival. Earlier this year, for instance, we sent a 2-man team - Peter Butler and Hamish Hancock - on tour to the United States. Porbably the most formidable University debating combination in New Zealand, they debated 31 times in 20 states - all but twice against universities - and returned undefeated, earning New Zealand Universities and especially Victoria University an international debating reputation.
Later this month - the 23rd - we are holding Plunket Medal, an annual oratory contest for University speakers that has won much praise for its high standard.
A number of topical and provocative debates are also being organised. These include the classic annual Sex Debate, and religious and political debates with nationally known speakers taking part.
Some people allege that the Debating Society no longer serves any useful purpose in the University - that it ought to recognise that 'times have changed' and go under gracefully. But we believe that it is still relevant, despite the increasing number of forums of other kinds. For instance, being non-sectarian it can deliberately and impartially bring conflicting points of view together, as well as entertaining, and developing powers of verbal communication and mental agility. However, its success depends far more upon involved, alert participating audiences - somewhat scarce this year than upon the team members directly involved.
The Debating Society has its faults but essentially its success, indeed, its survival is in the hands of you, the members of the University.
Once there was a little professor who had acquired a fixation on a 'pink elephant' known by the initials 'B.A.' He had sallied forth against this munzter in a lengthy article in Wellington's respectably dull evening paper, but the windmill that he was fighting seemed oblivious of his efforts. So he summoned his Sancho Panza - the History Society - and gave a subtle hint that he would like it to call a meeting. In due course a series of posters appeared and the jousting session was called for Tuesday 22 June.
And here beginneth the news story.
To leave his audience in no doubt about his convictions, the Professor started by slating the proposed 108 credit B.A. as equally foolish as the old one. He then gave a rambling analysis of the historical development of the present degree.
Sometime last century it had become evident that a new kind of education was necessary for the training of teachers and civil servants. The solution as to that education was the area study of Classical Greece. It was held that such a detached study would give the student a proper sense of proportion which would be of benefit in any occupation. Gradually, however, it came to be realized that such an education could not provide all the answers for a complex modern world. The balloon-like expansion of universities since World War II has brought into the system a far more varied range of people than there had been before. To provide courses that were relevant to these people, the Universities fostered the growth of subjects like Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology. The old 'liberal-classical' education went into rapid decline.
But, as this was Professor Munz's greatest complaint, the new liberal arts degree was no more than a hotch-potch of several truncated professional courses. Regardless of the aspirations of the individual student, he was treated as though he wanted to become an expert in the field which he was studying.
There is also the side effect on the teaching staff. To perpetuate the myth that students really want the best possible professional training the universities have to employ at considerable expense the most highly qualified experts. But to be highly qualified, one must do some research. The end result is that, as Professor Munz put it, 'the purpose of research is stood on its head'. Much useless and irrelevant research is done to no more purpose than to gain a teaching post.
Thus far the jousting at the pink elephant. Fifty minutes of sweeping historical portraiture and numerous Munzisms to keep the audience happy. Sample - the story of the Prof's grandfather-in-law who had moved from Melling to Tauranga to a walled-in house in Tahiti to escape the corruptions of the big cities. This, in some tenuous way was supposed to be an analogy of the present attitude of the University to criticism.
But to be fair, the constructive proposals of the Professor could not in themselves have made an evening's lecture. Professor Munz's own thoughts on a liberal arts degree came in two instalments - general principles and specific suggestions. As a set of guidelines for a new degree he offered the following;
Moving on from these guidelines, Professor Munz outlined his own proposals for a coherent three year degree.
The first year would be devoted to a study of the aesthetic values of a number of major works of literature (or music).
The second would explore the contexts in which each of the works was written - the nature of the societies; the characters of the authors.
The final year would be one of extrapolation. From the basic texts would be extracted generalised approaches to objects like psychology, theology and philosophy.
Of course there would be difficulties in implementing such a programme. Would the English department for instance take kindly to the idea that it should restrict its teaching activities to first year students? Also there would be the problem of providing for those who still wanted a professional course. If such courses continued and in fact commanded higher monetary rewards, the Munz scheme would be effectively torpedoed.
Some discussion followed, with Mr Doane of the English Department in the role of devil's advocate. Perhaps the final word belongs with him when he says that pressure for change must come from below - from the students who each year do battle with the 'pink elephant'.
Next Friday evening, the 23rd of July, at the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall, the Plunket Medal oratory contest will be held for the 65th time.
What is the Plunket Medal? Run by the Debating Society, the contest was established in Salient (a very polite journal in those days—Conrad Bollinger) described it as "one of the more venerable of Victoria's institutions" and decried "the remarkable apathy shown by the student body towards it".
Plunket Medal has, however, attracted considerable controversy. In Spike regretted that the contest was not for public speaking rather than oratory, describing the orator as "an extremely rare bird". The speeches themselves were criticised for being more often that not simply the recitation of a hotchpotch of fine-sounding phrases culled from every possible source and welded together by the few if any original ideas which the speaker had on the subject. But Plunket Medal was still thriving 35 years later in Salient to remark cynically of that year's contest that "in an orgy of liberal values, eight earnest young men preached humanitarian cliches to a well-fed, self-satisfied welfare state audience".
And even that great and noble pillar of the Establishment, The Dominion alleged in The Dominion.)
The impression that some people have of Plunket Medal oratory—especially those people who have never seen Plunket Medal—is of carefully rehearsed orators gesturing magnificently and ineffectively to a small, stiff-collared audience. But this is not in fact a true impression. It may have been true at some time in the past but it is not true now. Certainly a tremendous amount of preparation goes into the speeches, but the effect that is aimed at—and usually achieved—is one of spontaneity and the gaining of the audience's sympathy.
By The Dominion had found that Plunket Medal wasn't dead and buried, and so it turned sour grapes. "Oratory," it said, "jars a bit... it's got the wrong tang. All we want now, surely, is plain, even complicated things, plainly said."
What then is the difference between public speaking and oratory? Public speaking is often no more than a coldly intellectual discourse satisfying the reason, and in comparison with oratory is narrow in scope. For oratory should convince the reason, stirring the emotions and impelling constructive action. Its whole basis is sincerity, which must tend to avoid exaggerations of fact, diction and manner, pomposity and dramatic elocution. An oratory must seek to inspire his audience. A public speaker aims rather to inform his audience.
It is true that most professional public speaking is far removed from oratory, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many public speakers—especially politicians—are so abysmally poor. The need to inspire people still remains. One need only to think of Churchill and Hitler to appreciate the tremendous impact and influence that the inspired voice can have on people and nations. Despite the age of mass written media in which we live, communication by word of mouth is still by far the most important means of contact between people. Plunket Medal aims to develop this faculty of communication and to show what great potential power the spoken word can still wield.
However, Plunket Medal is no longer the high point of the university year that it once was. It faces uncertainty, especially in view of the declining student interest in it evident in the last few years. Nor is it quite the social event it once was for downtowners, as reflected by the somewhat diminished list of dignitaries who will be present this year.
Indeed,
Plunket Medal isn't everybody's thing but this year's contest proves to be thoroughly worthwhile, and deserves substantial support.
The speakers in order of appearance will be:
The Wellington Committee on Vietnam has voted in favour of a proposal by The Student Anti-War Movement that the July 30th Mobilisation be silent.
On July 30th we march against the involvement of New Zealand and U.S. troops in what is perhaps the most tragic and irresponsible war of all time. Primarily we march in protest; in individual and united protest against our Government's commitment of troops to the Indochinese war. But protest must be something more, than the releasing of our own sentiment—it must communicate—it must prompt each person who sees or hears of our protest to consider what we endeavour to say.
The mass chanting of April 30th perhaps gave the march unity, but it was a unity impenetrable to many. The chant is an aggression easily countered by a similar aggression. Even many who also wished to protest could not accept this form of protest.
On July 30th we march in silence. Silence is also aggressive, but in a way not easily countered. By our marching we protest—by our silence we express much more of our feeling of tragedy and concern. We begin to truly communicate.
At Massey University and in Palmerston North nearly ever worthwhile venue in town is already booked.
Accomodation will be mainly billets in flats. The idea of using large tents is very unlikely now. There is enough billets in the town where many activities will be in any case, and in the event of bad weather, the tents could become swamps. A/f handbook will be in a lift-out section of Chaff Massey's Student newspaper.
Blues/Rock. About 20 Rock Groups will participate and large capacity venues are available.
Film Programme - the theme is heavy. Films include The Incident, The Boston Strangler, Beach Red. In Cold Blood, The Naked Prey, Underground movies from Australia and New Zealand and supporting lectures.
Fine Arts. Entries are required in painting, screen printing, etching, pottery sculpture etc. The exhibition will be at the Palmerston North Art Gallery and there is a prize of a return Air New Zealand trip to Australia plus $400.
Chess A large outdoor game at the town square between the 2 top N.Z. chess players is sure to provide spectacle. The normal tournment will also be on.
Drama - Most universities are now working on a play to stage at Arts Festival. Victoria is sending Vasco.
Concert Music - The Auckland Choral Group will present several concerts. Victoria's orchestra will be going, as well performers from most universities.
Weir House Association Annual Ball Union Building, Top Floor Saturday 31 July $10.50 Double Available at Studass Residents Only
Do students hate finals? Do they want anything else in their place? Although students have rarely attempted to supply coherent answers to these questions, a Committee on Examining, set up last year by the Professorial Board, met many times to discuss the system of examinations within this university. The students representative on the committee was Bob Phelps (Education Officer last year). The reason for setting up the Committee was dissatisfication with the requirement that examination papers have to be written and submitted to the administration by the middle of the academic year - the ideal being that teaching should determine the content of exams and not that preplanned exam papers should determine teaching content.
Final recommendations by the Committee included the following points:
final degree examinations in Stage I units (or the equivalent) be discontinued and the results be based on work done in term.
For Arts students, a relevant factor is the introduction of the new course system next year, which may consist of quarter, third or half year courses. The proposed reorganisation of the year does not include quarter or third year examination times. This is important: they do not recommend the adoption of the American semester system.
If the new recommendations were adopted, assessment would be based on all or most of the work done in the course - if there were final exams they would only constitute a small percentage of the total course marks. It will be obvious to students that some departments have already moved many steps in this direction. However, there are several implications behind these suggestions. If the new scheme was to be effective, staff members and students would have to be well informed (and they are not at the moment) about the different types of assessment, what they measure, the types of teaching and study methods applicable and the time involved in each, This involves staff teacher training so that the widest range of assessment techniques can be carried out with valid and reliable results. The wider the range of assessment type the more accurately and fairly the teacher can measure individual ability. Results will vary according to the measurement used.
So although, in some ways, the Report is perhaps only making explicit what is now frequently practised, public recognition of changing attitudes to assessment, would make it easier to introduce teacher training schemes which are seriously needed, and generally, public recognition would force students to reconsider what purpose finals serve, and more generally, what sort of education they expect at university. Ideally, it would also lead to a more uniform (in the sense that there would be widespread agreement for a greater variety of assessment methods) assessment and teaching policy, at least within Faculties, and this would lessen confusion and uneven work loads.
The main argument for in-term assessment (left undefined) is that cramming for finals would no longer be the major occupation of many students and end of year stress would be eliminated. Against this is the argument that continuing assessment may stultify a student's intellectual growth and that strain may be more continuous throughout the year. The Report offers one answer - each department seems to have a different one. There is no final, right one, so if you want to influence assessment in your university, become informed and act at a student, departmental or administrative level - there are opportunities at every point.
Take a bright idea, borrowed from Auckland University, some enthusiastic individuals, reasonable goodwill from student politicians, and you have a new student service. Such were the origins of 'Contact' which was first planned in
The initial motivation for the service was the belief that students would be more prepared to use a 100% student operated information service than one that seemed to preserve of paid and disinterested outsiders. Such a service could further relieve pressure on existing aids like the Student's Assocation Office. The students manning the Contact desk were not to masquerade as amateur psychologists or counsellors, but be students who knew their University well enough to assist those who didn't; If, in addition there were students who just wanted to talk to someone, they could help in this way. But important and difficult cases were to be referred to the appropriate authorities.
There would seem to be a very hazy line of distinction in Contact's uses. Just where can the purely filing cabinet aspect of information and the well-meaning attempts at counselling be separated? It doesn't seem that experience has provided any guidelines either, so the success of Contact depends to a crucial extent on the personalities of the people in the office.
Just what sort of students are prepared to spend an hour each week operating such a service? Paul Guise, this year's organizing chairman thinks that they are in the main individuals who have experienced some of the alienating features of University life and can sympathize with others in similar positions. What sort of qualities should Contact look for in its applicants? Resourcefulness of mind and a good general knowledge of University and town. In fact it is a matter of policy to accept all those who apply. Paul Guise feels that this poses no danger however for experience has shown that the 'right types in fact apply. There has been no difficulty with chronic 'do-gooders' who might try to use the service to change the world.
As an attempt at training, there is a list of does and don'ts posted on the office notice-board. Simple instructions like advice on how to arrange chairs, a reminder not to enter calls in the records book until the client has gone; instructions that the room is not to be used as a meeting place for friends, nor the telephone for personal calls. The novice is given some 'on the job' advice in the first few weeks of the year and then left to his own (and the filing cabinet's) devices There are at present 38 people on he Contact staff and turnover so far this year has been as low as 3, who left for reasons other than job dissatisfaction.
In fact however, Contact may soon be faced with staff disillusionment and resignations. A quick glance at the record book reveals what the majority of staff members must be doing during their hour's duty. Calls have dwindled disturbingly from about 30 a day at some times last year to about 10 in recent weeks. So the staff, who are after all sacrificing one hour a week for what they believe to be a worthwhile cause do little more than sit on a hard chair for an hour asking themselves why they bother.
The Contact committee is concerned about this problem and has considered ways of extending Contact's use. Advertising has been very poor so far this year although in recent weeks Contact has at least had its services trumpeted through Newsheet. A series of posters is also planned. Of course there was the information sheet sent with enrollment forms at the beginning of the year but it may well have been treated as just another bit of bureaucratic excess and ignored. Does every student in fact know about Contact? Increased publicity can at least do no harm.
If the use of Contact doesn't improve the question of whether it is really necessary will have to be asked. Paul Guise feels that the service is warranted if even only 2 or 3 students a day find it helpful. But if there is staff disaffection and difficulties of recruitment this might prove impossible to sustain. Do students need such a service? Paul Guise thinks that the view that studnts are forthright and able to look after themselves in mistaken. He maintains that many students are in fact shy and unsure about approaching staff members for help. He cites the case of the third year history student who didn't know where the History Department was. Contact can act as a kind of intermediary to bridge such communication gaps. As the University grows, problems of alienation and feelings of helplessness can only magnify and Contact can be seen as a small attempt to humanize the system and provide a basis for student to student help.
Does Contat have a place in the University or was the establishment of the service at Victoria a mistake? It is the Contact organisation just taking up valuable room space in the union building and $100 of student funds for no benefit? Unless performance, and this means use of the service improves, these questions will undoubtedly assume greater significance.
The past year or two has seen a considerable shift in the consciousness of New Zealanders over the Indochina war. More and more people from all walks of life have become sick and tired of the continuing Vietnam slaughter, and are beginning to see the need to actively oppose NZ's involvement in it. Last April 30, in an unprecedented display of antiwar sentiment, 35,000 New Zealanders marched to demand the immediate withdrawal of all NZ, US, and allied forces from Indochina.
University students have always played a most important role in the antiwar movement. From the doldrums of a couple of years ago, when students almost alone provided the few hundred marchers that kept the movement in the streets, to the truly massive marches of April 30, in which thousands of students participated in all the university cities, students have been the mainstay of the movement.
It is not surprising then, that this unprecedented rise in antiwar consciousness among New Zealanders that we are now experiencing, has been most marked among students. For example, a recent poll of Canterbury students showed about 80% opposed to NZ's involvement in Vietnam. And on April 30, 60% of Auckland University's 10,000 students boycotted lectures to participate in antiwar activities in support of the mobilisation. The issue among students is no longer whether our government's support for the Indochina war is right or wrong, but rather how can students best express their oppositon to this involvement and get our troops withdrawn.
One of the indications of the rising sympathy for the antiwar movement among students has been the development of strong student antiwar organisations on at least three campuses - Victoria, Canterbury and Auckland. These organisations are concerned with building student support for the antiwar movement and, most immediately, in maximising student participation in the July 30 mobilisation.
The Victoria Student Antiwar Movement has been holding weekly meetings for some time to organise the July mobe. At these meetings the central question discussed has been how to bring the thousands of antiwar students into action on the 30th. Much of the discussion has revolved around the April 30 strike at Auckland University in which 6,000 students participated.
Following on a proposal from the Student Antiwar Action Society and the decision of an AUSA SGM, a student referendum was organised on the question of an April 30 boycott of lectures to release students for antiwar activities. Even before the results of the referendum were known (60% favoured the strike), many lecturers had indicated their support for the boycott by transferring scheduled terms tests to other days.
The boycott enabled thousands of students to participate in antiwar activities throughout the day. As well as a huge antiwar rally in Albert Park, mass pickets were maintained downtown, and several hundred students turned the student union building into a giant placard and banner producing workshop. The boycott provided the means by which thousands of antiwar students and staff could concretely express their opposition to the Indochina war, and through the alternative programme, of activities, build the mobilisation both on and off campus. 17,000 Aucklanders marched on April 30.
For July 30, in addition to Auckland, the Canterbuy Student Mobilisation Committee and the Victoria Student Antiwar Movement are also projecting university boycotts of normal lectures in support of the mobilisation. Successful simultaneous boycotts at three universites will make a tremendous impact on press and public opinion. No politician will be taken seriously who gets up again and calls protesters a noisy minority or tries to identify the bulk of students with the mysterious "silent majority". It will help tremendously in building the image of the antiwar movement as the majority that is crying loudly "Out Now!" - to a deaf government.
Already the Victoria SRC has endorsed the proposal for a referendum on whether or not to stage a boycott of lectures from 12 noon on July 30. The referendum is being held this Wednesday and Thursday (July 21-22). In addition, a meeting of some antiwar staff members last week endorsed the concept of a cancellation of normal lectures, in favour of antiwar activities. They proposed that they and other antiwar staff members prepare material to make presentations on topics related to Indochina, the antiwar movement, and protest in general. They will be encouraging further support for this idea among the staff.
The Student Antiwar Movement is busy organising an attractive programme of activites for July 30. As well as the presentations from lecturers on topics ranging from "Biocide in Vietnam" to "The University as a Generator of Protest", a rally will be held with prominent speakers from the Labour Party, churches, unions, etc, and representatives from the student groups supporting the mobe, together with folk and rock musicians. Also being organised are downtown pickets and mass leaf letting throughout the city, and last minute working bees to manufacture placards and banners for the evening march. As on April 30, a student march will leave from outside the union building at 6.30pm to join the main demonstration at Marion St.
A meeting of the University Council is due to be held on July 27. If, as the Student Antiwar Movement confidently expects, students vote in favour of a July 30 boycott with the day turned over to antiwar activities, the Council will be requested to give its support.
The university boycott is a meaningful way in which every student and staff member can say a loud and clear "No" to our government's policy in Indochina. Support the mobilisation. Vote in the July 21-22 referendum for no lectures from 12 noon on July 30.
Twenty-five years ago the dawn of the atomic era marked the beginning of man's ability to terminate all life on this planet. During the last five years the perfecting in Indochina of the techniques of ecocide marks another major step along the terminal path of aborting millions of years of evolution.
Genocide as developed by the Nazis involved the mass extermination of entire human groups. Ecocide as developed by the US military carries this a stage further for ecocide involves the destruction of the living environment which would sustain groups as yet unborn. It is defined more fully by Barry Weisberg as "the premeditated assault of a nation and its resources against the individuals, culture and biological fabric of another country and its environs" ("Ecocide in Indochina: The Ecology of War", San Francisco,
The techniques of ecocide have been devised to meet the challenge of a people's war. Given that the relation of the guerilla to the society to which he belongs i as that of the fish to the sea a guerilla enemy cannot be defeated by conventional war. Under such conditions, and given the mounting frustration of the military and the impatience of the US electorate, it was inevitable that the thinking of those who make up the American "military-industrial-academic-scientific complex" should turn increasingly to a "Final Solution" by "drying up" the peasant "sea" on which the guerilla depends. This is being done by saturation bombing designed to either eliminate or terrorize the rural population and by massive use of chemical weapons which make the countryside uninhabitable. This "Final Solution", euphemistically termed "forced urbanisation", is associated with Samuel Huntington of Harvard University. The success of the policy to date may be measured by some 4 million Vietnamese casualties (one-quarter of the entire population), by the generation of 7 million displaced peasants, by the fact that today 60 per cent of South Vietnam's population dwells in the "urban" areas, as against 15 percent in
From the point of view of the Americans the new policy had two major advantages. First, it enabled the US to make maximum use of its technological superiority - and to do this with the minimum of world observation. Secondly, the reduction in the role of US ground combat troops as the policy of "search and destroy" gavy place to the simpler policy of "destroy" made it possible for the US government to blunt the domestic dissatisfaction by achieving a sharp fall in the number of US casualites and by withdrawing all save the specialised units needed to implement the new type of war. US ground troops can be replaced by Asian mercenaries which, from the American angle, have two advantages: they cost a fraction a G.I. costs and the dollars paid to their masters help to consolidate the economic position of such rickety regimes as that of South Korea.
The technique of saturation bombing reached its peak in the bombing of Khe San early in
The immediate human consequences of this onslaught will be evident from the data given earlier; to these must be added the physical consequences - the destruction of the earth as a habitat for man. And in this context two things must be borne in mind: first, that Vietnamese traditional society was overwhelmingly a peasant society, an "earthbound" society; secondly, that it was also a "hydraulic" society, dependent on an intricate and sophisticated system of irrigation for the production of its staple crop, rice. Saturation bombing has created a lunar landscape over vast areas. In
The chemical onslaught launched by the American military against the Vietnamese peasantry may well have even more destructive long-term consequences than the saturation bombing since there is evidence that the substances used (the 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D advertised and used for weed control in countries such as New Zealand) are teratogenic (foetus-deforming) and have long term genetic effects (for a full discussion see Thomas Whiteside, "Defoliation", New York,
The immediate destructive impact of this chemical war is evident in the dying forests and "sanitized" paddy fields; scant official attention has been given to the long-term ecological and human effects of drenching the landscape with chemicals. These have, however, been analysed by several American scientists. The destruction of the forest or crop cover in a tropical climate such as that of Vietnam leads to profound changes in soil structure, above all to the development of virtually useless lateritic soils. Destruction of mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta is leading to erosion or salinization of the rice fields they protected and to the elimination of the critically important fish resources of the Delta rivers.
Finally, the vitally important question of the long-term impact of this chemical warfare on the genetic future of the Indochinese peoples has been ignored by the military men and their civilian advisers. Tests of defoliants by the American National Cancer Institute way back in Bulletin for Concerned Asian Scholars, in the USA. Meanwhile, the use of this chemical, "which may represent an ecological equivalent of thalidomide", continued in Indochina, the scale of the spraying programme being apparently limited only by the availability of the chemicals and of suitable aircraft. Commented two US newspapermen: "Not since the Romans salted the land after destroying Carthage has a nation taken pains to visit the war on future generations"(New York Post,
As Schell and Weisberg point out, "the ecosystem of Southeast Asia is one organic fabric in which all living things are tied together by an infinite number of interdependent strands". American policy in Indochina today aims not simply at destroying the "enemy", his food crops or his culture, but the whole ecosystem of which the Indochinese people form part and within which their societies have for centuries found sustenance and meaning; as such, it goes beyond anything attempted by the Nazis.
But, just as the various elements of living Southeast Asia form parts of a tightly woven and intricate web, so does this region form one element in a greater global ecosystem. The destruction of Indochina cannot thus be considered in isolation; the diseases born of war recognise no boundaries, the chemicals poured on the devastated landscape find their way into the ocean, the oil bound for Vietnam spills into the offshore waters of the USA, the brutalization and the drug addiction bred by war in Indochina feeds back into the American internal situation.
And, indeed, the destruction of Indochina is different only in degree but not in essence from the world-wide social and ecological destruction being wrought by "a civilization out of control". Five thousand miles may separate the dying mangrove forests and murdered peasant communites of the Mekong delta from the menaced shores of Manapouri or the increasingly polluted New Zealand environment. But are not both the Indochinese and New Zealand situations to be located simply at different points along the same psychological continuum? James Baldwin long ago commented: "It is a terrible, an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own; in the face of one's victim one sees oneself." Do not the majority of the ecological and social problems which confront us in our own society have their roots in that denial of humanity which alone makes it possible for us to accept, or connive in, the processes of ecocide in Indochina?
I spent most of my early years on the road. I started when I was 14. I sang Coney Island on a beer keg, and got a dollar. That's the first money I ever made.
Why did you stop singing?
I didn't. I sang later at the Protestant church on Madison Avenue, in the choir, until they found out what I was. That's an old vaudeville joke, but it was true. I did sing - I got a dollar every Sunday. I had no idea what I was singing. And I had less interest in it. That's about as far as I ever got in religion. In those days, I was as innocent as the average young girl today of 14. Sex was frowned on. We didn't know anything about sex and we didn't learn anything about it. My father came from France, my mother came from Germany, and my father was a very stupid, inept tailor. My mother was bright - a shrewd brightness like Noel Coward's mother. She had a great deal to do with his success. Many mothers had, in the early days of vaudeville. At any rate, I didn't know where babies came from until I was about 18. And by that time my folks had had five boys.
How did you find out?
I don't really know. It has never been a subject that was discussed in he house. Or any place else. Oh, there were dirty jokes. We lived near Central Park, and we had heard of fellows taking girls in the bushes. But I didn't know what they were doing, so help me. The first time was when I was playing in Montreal, in some dump theatre there. A hooker picked me up, and I didn't know what that was even. She took me down in the cellar. Eight days later I had gonorrhea. And I still have it. They say it's something you really never get cured of. The vestiges of that always remain in some part of your body. I think that's true. I think it's a very dangerous sickness, and it's increasing now because of the pills, and the diaphragms, and the various devices that the kids use now. They don't seem to car whether they get pregnant, or get gonorrhea or syphillis.
When did sex start getting boring for you?
My last marriage, I was 57 years old. I had ten wonderful years with her, but by then the magic had worn off, and we got divorced, I've been single ever since, and propose to stay that way for the rest of my life. It would be folly, at my age, to start getting married again. I've paid a lot of money in three alimonies. It's not worth it. The cheapest way is to have legalized whorehouses, so if a fellow is young, and wants to get laid, his folks should give him $20 or $50, or whatever it costs to get laid. And not get married just to lay a girl. This is the reason there are so many young girls today who have three or four-year-old children, were married when they were 16 or 17, and are now divorced. There are not many men who want to take on a girl with a child, especially if they've raised three as I have. I didn't come here to do a monologue - somebody else say something.
Before the movies, when you were on Broadway, what was it like?
Vaudeville. First we were in vaudeville, small-time vaudeville, where there were rats in the dressing rooms. Frequently, it was the manager.
What lured you away from Broadway and out to Hollywood?
Paramount offered us more money than we could afford to reject. We went there and we did five pictures.
Which film was your favourite?
Duck Soup, Night at the Opera and Day at the Races. Some of them were terrible. To us, not to the audience. The kids, today... I get more fan mail now than I did when I was at the height of my career.
You're a hero for a generation that's seen your films only in revival.
A couple of generations.
Why do you think kids love your movies so much? A lot of other old films, nobody wants to look at anymore.
They're not about anything, most of them. I thought ours were generally about something.
What were they about?
They were attacking the contemporary establishment of those days. We did a picture called Duck Soup which was about monarchy. We did a funny picture about a school, and we certainly satirized the opera in America. So I think our pictures were about something. Whereas in most cases - Harold Lloyd, Keaton and those fellows - they weren't about anything, they were just about trying to be funny. We were trying to be funny, but we didn't know that we were satirizing the current conditions. It came as a great surprise to us.
How do you feel about the establishment now?
I think it's hopeless. This whole gang in Washing, at least half of them are thieves - I don't think there's any question about that. Every day you read about it. Look at the tolerance that Johnson gave to Bobby Baker, who's now in gaol. This goes on all the time. The only honest senator I ever knew was a fellow named Williams, from Delaware.
John Bell Williams.
I just wrote him and told him how much I admired his integrity, and that there should be more people like him. He finally quit. Not from the correspondence - I think he had had it. But he was an honest man. Look at the Speaker of the House, McCormack... he stole everything before he left. And they gave him a bonus besides, because he didn't steal enough.
Do you think there's any hope for Nixon?
No, I think he only hope this country has is Nixon's assasination.
But then we've got to deal with Agnew.
Well, I mean it would be near the end of the term. Agnew won't run again. I don't think. But I think Muskie is a good man. The trouble is when you run for important office, you have to promise so much, and you have to obligate yourself so much. To everybody. In Illinois, in Chicago, in Maine, North Carolina, no matter where you are - if you just move in without any friends, you just can't get elected. You have to obligate yourself in some way to get to that office. I think the other guy, McGovern, is a joke. The mere fact that he's against the war is not enough. He says he's been against the war for three years. So what? I've been against the war since the first war with the Kaiser, but that doesn't qualify me in any way to run for the Presidency.
How involved were you in writing of the pictures?
I've always been a writer. I wrote five books. One is in the congressional Library in Washington; 'The Groucho Letters'.
Do you think there'll ever be a second volume of that?
I don't know. The cast I had in those days was pretty good: T.S. Eliot, Thurber, Fred Allen. I spoke at T.S. Eliot's funeral, you know. His wife asked me to. A very dull, blonde, middle-aged woman.
That seems to be true of a lot of very talented men - their wives seem to fade into the background.
Because, as a rule, a young fellow marries a girl to go to bed with her. This is the normal procedure. I did that three times, with very beautiful girls. When the beauty started fading, there wasn't any reason to stay married. The sex stimulant was gone.
What about companionship?
For that you need a different kind of girl - you don't necessarily need a girl with big tits. You need a girl that normally you wouldn't marry, or wouldn't try to lay. But if a fellow gets both, he's a very fortunate man. If he gets a woman that he enjoys sitting with and talking to, and she understands what he's saying, he's a lucky fellow. You see, I don't believe there's such a thing as love. I believe two people can like each other, and I think that's much more important than love. Love just means going to bed and fucking.
Did you ever fall in love, in your youth?
I always thought I did, yeah. So I paid three alimonies. And I look at those women and wonder, 'What did I see in them?'
I was curious how you see the films now, in retrospect.
A scene that I like is the scene in Animal Crackers where a painting had been stolen, and Chico and I pulled up a couple i of chairs and said, 'Let's see if we can figure this thing out, where the painting is.' He said, 'How are you gonna do that? We have no house.' I said, 'We'll build a house. This'll be your room here, and this'll be my room, and this'... be the maid's room.' And he said, 'You mean I'd have to go through the maid's room in order to get to your room?' It was kind of a Lewis Carroll scene. We had a fellow named Morrie Ryskind, who had a Lewis Carroll quality about him. He could take lunacy and build it up. (The waiter arrives with a large menu, hand-lettered on a large square of cardboard which he props up next to the table.)
(to the waiter) How long did it take you to paint that?
Waiter: A little lentil soup today? Soup of the day?
Maybe a little fish...
Waiter: Lentil soup. No mercury.
That's your story. How do you know there's no mercury?
Waiter: No...
They lie, they just lie about it, they're good at it. If your don't believe so, look at those prices. This menu is as permanent as the pyramids, (peering at it across the table;) You know, unless you can see well it's advisable not to come in here at all. I can't see a goddam thing.
Waiter: We've got all kinds of hamburgers.
I know a fellow who always eats pancakes stuffed with crabmeat.
Waiter: That's the madras, that's very good also.
Nunnally Johnson.
Waiter: Oh, yeah. He was here two days ago.
He was huh? The sonofabitch, he never asked me... I'm going to have the steak tartare. It's the most expensive thing I see on there.
Waiter: Would you like everything in it? Anchovy?
Well, put something in it. And I'd like some salad.
Waiter: (leaving) Ok, Thank you.
(calling after him) You will be back?
Did you write most of Animal Crackers?
No, we had Kaufman and Ryskind. I added stuff to it, but every first class comedian is supposed to be able to do that. Otherwise you're just a schlump, you're not a comedian (to an interviewer) Are you a girl?
Am I a girl?
Yeah, a girl.
No. I'm not a girl.
I though it was about time we settled that.
Are you talking about my hair?
No, it was the moustache. Will you pass the pumpernickel, please?
I get the impression, Groucho that you don't approve of long hair and beards.
I'm indifferent to it, I don't really care. If a young man wants to wear a beard and a moustache.. Why do you wear it? Is it a revolt against the establishment?
No not exactly. I like the way it looks. Also, it's less trouble to shave in the morning.
Do you think the average girl prefers a man with a beard?
The girls that I know do.
Are they all degenerates?
In your day, Harpo had longer hair
No, he wore a wig.
But still, that was the appearance he gave to the public.
But he had no beard, no moustache.
You have a moustache. You have a famous moustache.
Yeah, I had.
I've always been curious about what you said to T.S. Eliot and what T.S. Eliot said to you, when you had dinner together.
Well, we spent a long evening talking. I don't remember...
About literature? About movies?
He wanted to talk about the movies, and I wanted to talk about his writing. And that's the way the evening went.
Have you managed to hold onto enough money so you don't have to worry?
Yeah. As a rule. I don't answer any question as personal as that.
Well, I figured if you didn't want to answer it you just wouldn't answer it.
Suppose I asked you how much money you had?
In my pocket right now?
No.
Well, I'll tell you.
But I'm not interested.
That's why we're interviewing you and you're not interviewing us.
Well, so far all I've had is two slices of pumpernickel.
We're doing our best.
Why can't they make funny movies anymore? What did you have that they don't have?
Well, to begin with we had talent. Then we had very good writers. And we spent a year on each picture. Elliot Gould has just made four pictures in five months. How can they be any good? Especially since it's just two people in bed fucking. It takes more than that.
Still, even the films that are supposed to be funny - like Catch 22 - don't make you laugh. When I see a Marx Brothers movie I come out with my sides hurting a little bit, and the muscles in my face all tired from laughing.
You should take a doctor with you.
It doesn't really reach the point of pain, usually.
But don't you know them so well by this time that there's no more laughs left in them?
Absolutely false. I must know nearly every shot in them and I still roar with laughter The sequence at the end of Duck Soup, where with every cut you go through a whole set of costume changes
You mean in the war?
Yeah. I know it's coming every time I see the film, and I still love it.
Half the time I didn't know which side I was fighting on.
That's what was nice about it.
The kids are very smart. They've caught all these things. That's why I get so goddamn much fan mail. And I'm not crazy about that, because Harpo and Chico are gone, and I'm the only one left who can write. They couldn't write when they were living.
Waiter: One hamburger, (he presents it.)
That's all you brought, one hamburger? For three people.
Waiter; That's it. You'll have to share it.
No wonder the Chicanos are in trouble. I always thought that was a town in the mideast. You know, I have a two o'clock appointment with my doctor. If I get there at 2.15 I'll still be alive.
Many people who look at your films now see elements of surrealism and dada in them.
It's kind of an LSD effect I guess.
That wasn't exactly what I meant. I wondered whether, in 1935, the names of Cocteau or Jarry would have meant anything to you?
At that time, all I was reading was the New York Journal, with editorials by William Randolph Hearst.
So you say you weren't influenced by the classic surrealists.
I had never heard of them in those days. I was too busy making a living in vaudeville.
Of you whole life in show business, was that your favourite time, when you were in vaudeville?
I ate in cheap restaurants, lived in bum hotels, boarding houses...
And yet there's an atmosphere of half-glamour half nostalgia for vaudeville.
Au contraire. I was crazy about earning money and living well.
Always?
As soon as I found out it was better than being poor.
Then you weren't at all interested in art?
Not at all. Not in the pictures nor on the stage. I think I was a natural comedian, and I enjoyed doing that.
Did you ever think when you were doing it, even privately, that it was art?
I thought I had a good racket going. No, I never thought of it as art. I don't think the word art, which happens to be my son's name, has ever come up in my thoughts or my conversation. I didn't think there was any art involved. We were trying to be funny, and we were getting very good money for it.
Well, now that there's a vast body of literature dedicated to the proposition that at least the movies were art, have you changed you mind?
No, I still feel the same way. I think we were very lucky that, with a limited amount of talent, we fooled the public successfully for many years.
Why do you say 'fooled them'? The pictures were truly funny.
I didn't think so I wouldn't go. Oh, I like some of them I'll never forget; I think the best picture we made was Night at the Opera. We previewed it in San Francisco, and in those days they used to give the customers cards on which they would wrote what they thought of the picture. And one card we got just said, 'Youse guys are fulla shit.' Now do you expect me to have any respect for that, and call it art?
You may have to end up accepting the opinion of the critics, that whether you intended them to be art or not, they came out that way.
It was just luck. I didn't know that the youngsters were going to take these pictures up, and that we would become kind of movie gods to these kids. I was over at somebody's house the other night, and there were three girls there. Two of them were 16 and one was 18. And I looked in the other room where they were, and they were playing some Beatles records, and imitating me walking up and down the room! I think it was... like the kids are wearing beards and smoking stuff that they shouldn't smoke... I think our pictures were a protest, although we weren't aware of it, of the current situation.
I'm not quite clear on how you could have made pictures that were protests against the establishment without knowing it.
I was very dumb. I'm not too bright now, either.
Well, what did you think you were doing?
Making jokes.
But the jokes had to come from somewhere.
Oh, I knew my way around a joke. It's like a guy who builds a cement wall, he knows how to do it. I never had any writers, except in the movies. And then I had the best; Kaufman and Ryskind.
How about the scene where you and Harpo are on opposite sides of an empty mirror frame, and Harpo is pretending to be your reflection?
That was stolen from a classic German act that Leo McCarey had had in the back of his mind for years.
It was McCarey's idea?
Yeah.
Night at the Opera.
Yeah.
Who did the staging? For instance the stateroom scene in Night at the Opera?
Sam Wood was the director, but Tahlberg was actually the boss. Sam Wood would shoot a scene, we'd look at it the next morning in the projection room, and Thalberg would say, 'I don't like it, let's shoot it over again today.' He had the kind of money and control that he could say that.
As the scene developed, who were the ideas coming from?
All of us. Christ, we had been together for twenty years. Harpo was trying to fall asleep in his room, and Chico was holding him up. You couldn't write that scene. That scene just had to be done mechanically, that's all... if you don't mind, I have to go boys.
It's twenty after two.
At present before the Social Services Committee of Parliament is a private member's bill introduced by the National member of parliament for Waitamata, Air-Commodore Gill. It is called the Welfare of Minors Bill.
An Act to safeguard the Welfare of Minors
Be it Enacted by the General Assembly of New Zealand in Parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, as follows:
Short Title—This Act may be cited as the Welfare of Minors Act Interpretation—In this Act unless the context otherwise requires,—
Residence of a minor—A minor shall reside with his parents or in a place provided by his parents.Alternative residence of a minor—Notwithstanding the foregoing provision a minor may reside at any other specific place provided that:
Offences—Every person commits an offence who:
Penalties—Every person who commits an offence against this Act shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $500 and to a term of periodic detention not exceeding 3 months.Supplying narcotics to a minor—Any person who commits an offence against the Narcotics Act
There are two major areas in which the bill seeks to safeguard a minor's welfare: those relating to his residence, and his association with users and suppliers of narcotics.
At present, the Guardianship Act (
A private members Bill of this kind is rare. The National Party caucus is thought to have met and decided against supporting the Bill in parliament. Whether, therefore, it was introduced with personal conviction alone or with the approval of members of government, it will fail because it lacks the support of both parties in parliament. Another reason is that it has been superceded by three bills intorduced by the Ministers of Justice and Child Welfare: the Guardianship, Child Welfare and Police Offences Amendment Bills. The combined effect of these three bills is worse that the (so-called) Gill Bill. Using the exagerated drug scare as a pretext, and undoubtedly influenced by the almost total lack of opposition to provisions in the Gill Bill, the legislation seeks quite generally to limit the liberty of young people. The Police Offences Amendment Bill proposes to make it an offence to possess a hypodermic needle without reasonable excuse, the onus of proof for such a defence resting with the accused. If enacted, a person with a hypodermic would be presumed guilty of an offence unless he could prove that the was not. The Guardianship Amendment Bill gives the court power to commit anyone under the age of 20 to live where directed, without restriction. It also widens the powers of the court to deal with acts of contempt (such as might be committed by a person under 20 who refused to live where directed by the court) by adding to its already considerable powers (including the power to imprison) the power to impose sentences of probation for between 1 and 3 years; sentences of 3 months in a detention centre for those 16 and over; sentences of periodic detention for up to 12 months for those 15 and over. The Child Welfare Amendment Bill deems that a "child" is not under proper control if he associates with anyone reputed to sell, supply, deal in, use, or have in his possession any narcotic, or prescription or restricted poison. Were a complaint made under this Bill by a child welfare officer or police constable to the satisfaction of a magistrate or appointed justice in a children's court, an order for the committal of the child to the "care" of an institution or the supervision of a child welfare officer could be made.
This is Police Law: that is, the police have been unable with their present powers to adequately control social trends regarding the use of drugs, and greater freedom among youth. This legislation is the result of pressure on parliament for greater powers by the police themselves which, although vigorously opposed by the Justice Department, has yielded a crop of legislation designed to virtually make a criminal of anyone under 20. What is most disturbing about these bills is that, if passed, they are likely to be acted upon by the police mercilessly. Lately the police have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny with cases of assault against prisoners, fraud, and inhuman treatment of arrested persons. These cases have been presented in isolation: they are in fact a serious reflection on the inability of a group, assuming almost intolerable powers in a "democratic" society, to enforce the value-judgements of a certain class within that society. This failure connot be remedied by creating new offences or giving more power to an already discredited body. What the government must realise is that another way will soon have to be found to "deal" with those who are not prefar more than merely change the present law to cover those up to the age of 18: the Bill provides that it is a criminal offence for a minor to live in any place without the consent of their parents or a magistrate. Not only could a minor be returned to an "approved" residence and custody but by leaving he has committed a criminal act, and, along with anyone who has aided him, becomes liable to arrest, and on conviction to the punishment set out in the Act.
Surprisingly this aspect of the Bill, making a criminal of anyone who may wish to live away from his parents without their consent before he is 18, has almost been ignored. It is in its second intended function, regarding the regulation of those with whom a minor may or may not associate, and the penalty for a supplier of a narcotic to a minor, that the Bill has been subject to scrutiny. It draws a distinction between a person convicted of an offence against the Narcotics Act, and a known user of drugs, although it is an offence for a minor to associate with either kind of person.
Under the Bill any person supplying a narcotic to a minor would be liable to the maximum penalty provided for the offence in the Narcotics Act
At a recent meeting here at Victoria, Gill was reported as saying that when he makes representations to the Social Services Committee on the subject of the Bill which he introduced, he will ask that it be amended so that the offence of association will involve registered users of prescription poisons, and that provision be made to exclude marihuana from the schedule of Narcotics, and thereby remove offences involving that drug from the scope of his Bill.
One outcome of the meeting was the clear indication that many of those present opposed to the Bill considered that amendments of this sort could remove their objections; most only objected to the legislation about marihuana; some considered that the courts should have the right to determine those with whom a minor might associate, pared to hold on to a certain set of moral judgements; that the time when it was possible to regulate the private acts of a population is slowly vanishing; and that the individual is assuming more responsibility for his own actions within society.
We are on the road again with Vanishing Point (Fox), something of the phenomena of the debauched outsider existing in the Nevada and what not where spaces, and on the desert line to SF, chased by the Phredly Kops, and the ESP'd-off Super-soul, a blind disco responsible for beaming Delaney Bonnie & Friends, Big Mama Thornton, Mountain (you name it?) towards the rocketting hero. Through directional anaesthetis of monotony taken as the freedom of the soul through speed, in essence (pace Hagemann) the ingrediant taken for purposes only known to the bitz und pices, who hang around this fresh, beaming desert like the snakes that are poured in slow writhing motion into your lap. No advance notice about this one, an R 18 uncut classification, banned across the river for violence, drug abuse and incitement to crime, and a GP (General Patrons) classification in the States, and coming to us so soon? Having a feeling that a sensa may have dozed off (he's bin fed quite alot of this you know) or only played a few reels, and throught that pill-popping (oral speed?) was non-addictive to freaks anyway. But these aren't freaks, not the sorts one associates with these speedy, dusty yarns, anyway.
Director Richard C. Sara fian, has done a few strange things before, even with a child's charmer, Run Wild, Run Free (mentioned in this journal
What other relevancies are there? Costa-Gavras L'Aveu (The Confession) (Warner Bros) naturally went a week. I cannot, and won't understand how this terrifying work, hundred times more realistic and passionate in treatment than the melodramatoses of Z, could pass everyone by. Did the Lido kill it? No obits by request. Perhaps Father Kerridge didn't think a large lovely audience would be able to read subtitles on a film so historically and personally accurate, that "gives socialism a face" and so put it in the catbox where it dieded. Yves Montand and Mme. Signoret giving outrageous, poised performances in a film more intimate, less frenetic than Z, but more absorbing, and as cinema based on an incident only a few years old, making all the crud on in the city pale into insignificance. I'd like to call it proud and provoking and make some ashamed for not seeing it, but I don't care what anyone would say.
Same with the Strawberry Statement (MGM) (a miracle it lasted more than a week) which has been seen by almost no-one any-where (except Wellington) but our favourite oft-quoten office of bored old men have been at it and at it, removing so much of the dialogue, and one sex scene which parodied the Graduates sublimations, and a fellatio downer on the hero. Though perhaps it does not entirely harm the film as a whole, it apparently makes the hero's position a little clearer, not like the Paula Prentiss/Arkin scene in Catch 22, where she knees him continually in the knackers with obvious affection, which has been entirely removed, only known by those little men in that little greeen building.
Strawberrry has provoked much reaction, and reactionary comment (good), but more serious US reviewers were sympathetic to its statement, and original of same (adapted from Kunen by Horowitz) and dismissing all the other rubbish which are pale and repulsive in comparison, like Getting Straight & RPM and god knows what else. To compare it to the others isn't exactly being argumentative, or honest - or perhaps interpretation has been sealed off from the cells, and what we believe we feel, and what we read we accept. Strawberry is all the more sad, because it is the first film I have acknowledged that for once goes insides a guy's brain and lets him for the first time experience a new system that is obviously beyond his control. Because it is full of honesty, and relevancies, it is more upsetting if you attend a screening where people are boiling with hate, more than perhaps a similar strata who are choking back their plastic bile at that other "thing" down the road. Well if Strawberry is plastic and phoney What is that other "thing" referred to? Strawberry is an awakening and initiation into another place, or collapse into an idealistic state of non-conformity And treated lightly, almost romantically. It is as rosy a case of subliminal reactionary master bation I have seen yet on film. But the emotional emphases are switched towards the inevitable finale, but necessary to show the initiatory-system-change, and so the two persons are plunged into the nightmare raid which is also one of the most frightening of its type. Hagemann's treatment is amazing, because he has completely changed the world through the eyes of his hero, and girlfriend. One scene is example enough: a group of people on improvised insturments sing in the dark streets, watched by a small group of happy old people. The guy and the girl are hesitating in their honesty towards the other. She says she's going to catch a bus. He doesn't care. Next moment she is rising in a yellow-glasses elevator up into the black sky.
This film needs so much careful thinking about. It is exhilarating, and more important, far more original than any other of its type. A pity more younger people aren't allowed in by law of the stupid R 18 certificate. (I know why, but will reserve opinion until clarification later). If the rowers can say "One, two, fuck, you," (which out of all the other language cuts, wasn't) why can't we?
Some late festival news due to printing dates - the Auckland Adelaide Inter. Film. Fest (No. 3) is now on, and for those who wanted to go you have missed Eric Rohmer's My Night with Maud, Gaal's The Falcons, Godard's La Chinoise and not much else. For those wishing to thumb up for a few days or weekend, the best fest is still to come. I doubt very much at this stage what will eventually get screened commercially, but if you are in doubt, I'd say risk it. Worth your consideration: Wednesday 20th Le Depart, dir by Jerzy Skolimowski, a brilliant little film, shot by Kurant. I was privileged to see S in Sydney and his new film Deep End, which is magnificent: so if you loved Barrier, Depart is the natural resolution; Thursday, The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan, by Shinoda (His Double Suicide has yet to be seen in Wellington): this, his latest, seems to be a chronicle, like Shinjuku; Friday, Dairy of a Teenager (Denmark) by Finn Karlsson (given a special R 18 for festival audiences only certificate - what a privilege!) on young love, uncut style! Saturday, first screening of Ken Loach's Kes, promises to be one of the fest's finest films; along with If.. Bronco Bullfrog, Performance, finest British film in years; Sunday Salt of the Black Earth (Poland) by Kazimierz Kutz, earthy and, well earthy etc; Sunday (nite) Yoshishige Yoshida's Eros & Massacre (Special R 18 priv.) lots a fun anyway; Monday (26th) Pasolini's Theorem, which no one should miss; in Sydney entire 2000 audience freaked messily out-hope you do, made in '68, it is still an unbelievably brilliant film from one of the world's greatest; Tuesday, The Dreamer director Wolman, Israel. I have been assured that Israeli films are better than Rumanian films. Someone should be; Wednesday's Une Femme Douce from St Robert de Bresson goes about as far as austerity can; though it is visually calmatic, it is pretty challenging stuff; last day, Thursday, is Bo Widerberg's beautiful Adalen '31 concerning strikers at turn of century in Sweden, colour resembling Renoir et al, and no Mozart. One condition this year (and rightly so) is that NO film cut by the Censors would be shown. Along with those mentioned above is Shindo's Libido (already shown on Sunday) and a thing by that movie-martian Franz Zwartjes (in the 16mm Fest prior) given the seal of approval.
Make your way..............................
Frank McKay's hopes for Poetry New Zealand are that "it will publish the best poetry being written in this country and the work of the most promising new poets"... If these have been realised with this volume, then we are in la pretty bad way. Except for very few poems, this anthology is uniformly without penetration into life and uniformly without dynamism. Add to this the uniformity of vision (the city creates nostalgia for the sea; the sea reminds of a long dead love; the hills are vaguely wild and somehow mysterious; lovers meet by the sea; I am uneasy that everything has been seen before, the meaningless echo of the shell) and a uniform poetic language ("kelp", I think, seven times; for girls are flowers; numerous place names -Milan, Gubbio, the Rhine, Damascus, Eden - are stirred in for exotic flavour; while Sydenham, Ponsonby, Albert Park, add the touch of puha) and you have the same dreary, monotonous goo that distinguished New Zealand poetry twenty years ago.
The poetry can be considered, for the sake of convenience, in four rough sections: portraits; descriptions; love/personal; relationships/religious; and jokes, the latter comprising about half the poems in the volume.
In the portrait gallery we may include such as Dorothy Parkes's 'Old Man'. He lived (as we could expect) on a pension (as we could expect) in an old leaky shack. Well, he caught pneumonia and went to hsopital, and the kids got in and broke all his collection of clay pipes.
"After that there could only he reliefat the news that the old man had died."
Or Sam Hunt's Torirua Friday Night', about a pimply girl working in a supermarket and dreaming of "her man". Very capable, this, but when you think of it not at all penetrating, one you could comfortably tackle with, say, a fourth form (see Cynical Observations). Bruton's poor old man, Petrus van der Velden, the failed, harassed artist, ironically grows to poetic grandeur by comparison, when he concludes, in his ultimate failure.
"the heart pinched and dryAuckland,Nov 10, 1913 'colour is light - light is love -love is God & when you understandthis you are an artist'"
"Remember Ruapehuthat mountan, six months ago?You sat in an alpine hutsketching scoria, redrusted outcrops in the snow.I climbed some southern peakand made up the sort of songmen climbing mountains sing:how, no longer your lover,I knew it was over."
Or, to come back to a dominant theme of the book, ozone, kelp, spuming waves, seagulls and love songs, I could, were it not so long, quote the whole of Frank McKay's 'Le Bon's Bay', a simple, pleasant ramble along the beach. Or, not to leave out the bellbird, large parts of K.O. Arvidson's more adventurous circumloqaciousness. But more in the line of twentieth century poetry is the cliche perpetuated in the ghastly jingle, 'Little Boxes', or in the words of Louis Johnson's Thoughts on the Graren Image' "each man lives in the same house or another like it". In this group we can put Dorothy Parkes's soggy 'Demolition - Auckland':
and Gloria Rowlinson's The New Motorway', that takes hold of the stereotype from the other end. From the numerous suburban bore poems I must extract Kendrick Smithy man's long, meandering 'An Ordinary Day Beyond Kaitaia', which, despite its rather indiscriminate use of poetic language does substantiate the New Zealand alienation myth.
"If we live,we go. You go. They, a common gender, go.I am a stranger. Too facile, to sayWe are all strangers. The land is madeTo our liking".
A number of poems I have placed in the love/personal relationships/religious section should be relegated to the jokes department, the tears have fallen so many times before. Fleur Adcock's child-nightmare-poem 'Bogyman' and her nostalgic-sentimenatl 'On a Son Returned to New Zealand' ("He is my bright sea-bird on a rocky beach"); Alistair Campbell's 'Blue Sunhats, White Horeses' and 'Rain in January'; Marilyn Duckworth's 'Karori Cemetery'; Sam Hunt's 'A Young Girl Watching Mist' are just a few of the many poems that, in groping for answers, finally hit upon inanity. But as well as producing rubbish, this section also hits upon some of the best poetry in the anthology. Rhys Pasley's 'Lost Crusades', simple and bald compared to much of his writing, nevertheless towers impressively over most of the volume. And Ian Wedde's unabashed dream-love sequence of 'Ruth' poems provides a welcome break. Instead of churning out emotions Wedde describes all in flashes and silvers of life, at first quite disjointed, but later unifying in a great call of longing.
The religious verse of Ruth Gilbert, Frank McKay, and Christopher Strom is not worth more than this R.I.P.
It is as well that Hilaire Belloc is dead. He would not, I feel, have been honoured at the unconscious tribute paid to him in the first poem. 'The Three-toed Sloth' by Fleur Adcock. For what he would have executed ingeniously in three lines, here takes a painful eighteen. However he might have been amused at the irony that this poem actually builds up seriously and even the punch line is likely to be considered a problem rather than something to laugh at. Patricia Godsiff has a trifling piece, 'Signal', that talks of "Radio Heaven", and Alan Roddick comments inanely about Balloon Trees. Other than that all the jokes follow the same old pattern - a painful description of some scene, capped by ironic comment. The only person in New Zealand who can do this consistently well is Barry southam. His 'Development' contains a conciseness and a quiet cynicism which the others lack.
I should, in all fairness, also exlude from the formula one person well known in New Zealand. The inimitable Denis Glover has a number of light pieces that could well match Belloc for brevity and wit.
"Man with a tuft of hairOn his head, not everywhereElse, must cause the apeTo scratch and gape.The man-animals also failIn hanging by the tail."
There are others that deserve mention because they stand out like oases in the barren desert. Dennis List has four superb poems (though two have somehow been run together under the title of The Landmark') 'The Hedgehog's Gift of Parody' is the most imaginative poem in the entire collection, and his absurd logic of words murders Shakespear in This Poem Consists of 79 Dried Spiders'. Mike Doyle stuck me initially through his incisive, staccato style, so different from any other poets in the book, (I later found from the Biographical Notes that he was Canadian). He seems to be the only person that shows the influence of current overseas writing in his poetry. (In the Introduction McKay deplores the "Preponderence of sprawling free verse and the ignorance of what contemporary poets in Britain and America have done".)
At the end of an almost incomprehensible paragraph in his Introduction Frank McKay states "One should, I think, be generous to emerging writers". The "emerging" writers in this volume, by and large, show much greater talent, versatility and relevance than the older "established" writers. Frank McKay perpetuates the fault of considering no writer fully fledged until he writes with great aplomb in the "New Zealand Tradition". That this tradition has no relevance, that this tradition is lifeless as a biscuit tin lid, he does not realise. The poems that he has accepted from people like Wedde and Pasley are, in the main, untypical of the sort of poetry written by these people. I must conclude that they have been chosen because they deal with the innocent/romantic style of poetry that pervades the anthology. That they can still be strikingly effective is a tribute to their skill and versatility. That the editor can consider himself "generous" to include them only reflects on the editor.
I hope the pallid unifromity of this volume has not already rung the death knell of Poetry New Zealand. McKay mentions that "almost two thirds of the submissions were from New Zealand housewives". I feel that his editorial criteria are displayed so ably in this volume that he could well outstrip this proportion next time. I hope this is not so. An anthology like this is worth supporting, but should never become the crust that feeds a few mean sparrows while the peacocks fend for themselves.
The Government Audit Office, the largest auditing organisaion in N.Z. offers you an interesting and challenging career in the following areas:-
In the public sector profit cannot be relied upon as a measure of efficiency. Government auditors must not only see that accounts give a true and fair view but that the organisation under audit has received value for the funds spent.
Government auditors cover Departments of State (both administrative and developmental) public corporation (N.A.C, Tourist Hotel Corporation etc), marketing boards (Dairy Board, Meat Board etc.) and local authorites (City Councils, Harbour boards, electric power boards, hospital boards, education boards etc.).
Government auditors on behalf of Parliament and the citizens of New Zealand ensure that the stated social and political purposes of these agencies are carried out with the most effective and economical use of funds allocated to them.
Like all modern auditors, Government auditors evaluate the accounting and other administrative systems in operation but not only to assess the accuracy of the accounts. Systems are evaluated with a means of assessing their adequacy in assisting towards the effective use of resources contributed by the taxpayer and ratepayer for particular stated purposes.
Government is the biggest business in N.Z. As such it has been at the forefrontin the use of computers for accounting and management information. The Audit Office is heavily involved in this area and has a special computer audit group of auditors trained in E.D.P.. Promising officers after initial experience in the field are eligible for training and attachment to this section for varying periods.
The N.Z. Government in common with overseas trends is introducing new techniques of public sector financial management such as programme budgeting, integrated management accounting, cost effectiveness studies and cost/benefit analysis. Increasingly Government auditors are going to be involved in appraising the effectiveness of these techniques.
Branches are situated at: Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Wanganui, Masterton, Wellington, Nelson, Greymouth, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill. Staff are also located at London who periodically visit posts in Europe, and North America. Staff from New Zealand carry out audits in Australia, Fiji, Western Samoa, Niue and Cook Islands.
All top positions in the Audit Office are open to qualified personnel and promotion is rapid.
Some very senior policy-making and management positions are held by officers still in their forties.
Middle management positions are held by officers in their thirties.
Supervisory positions in full charge of audits are held by officers as young as 24.
Your career is developed from first appointment by on-the-job training and off-the-job courses suited to the various levels. All qualified officers are treated as professional men and as a consequence have a greater degree of autonomy and freedom than would be expected in a normal organisation of this size.
Experience in the Audit Office qualifies for admission to the N.Z. Society of Accountants.
These are on standard Public Service conditions. Starting salaries are competitive with those of other professional organisations offering a future of challenging professional-level work with a social purpose and increasing financial rewards.
Senior officers of the Audit Office will e in attendance at the Careers Advisory Board 6 Kelburn Parade on Wednesday 28 July and if further information is required please contact the Administration Officer, phone 559-929.
Serenity - it's something found infrequently in popular music, being rather a characteristic of age and maturity. Very few performances are truly serene: the only notable example so far this year would be the soprano/ organ duct in Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. One of the former leading groups in this field was the Byrds. While other people were marketing catchy commmercial material, this group was one that concentrated on the ethereal nature of music, that induced a catharsis so overwhelming it left you exhausted. It is this ability to propagate an emotional response that David Crosby brought from The Byrds to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Since the release of the CSN&Y albums the members have indulged in a session of own-thing-doing. Neil Young produced his collection of classic delights After The Goldrush, and Steve Stills displayed himself in his all-stars assembly. For our pleasurable perusal is now presented David Crosby's gathering of friends on his debut album.
The lineup is rather impressive, although individual performing credits for the tracks are not given. Present are Graham Nash, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, also Jefferson Airplane (now Starship) personnel Grace Slick, Jack Casady, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, with Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, not to mention Santana sidemen Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve. And a few others.
Most of the numbers are Crosby's own composition, and in the rest he had a share in the writing. All are characterized by a radiant but lethargic tranquillity - the CSN&Y immediacy is not as strong but the serenity I spoke of earlier is all there, in a collage of spiritual musical experiece.
Not all of Crosby's music is as ethereally light as the general CSN&Y-style numbers like Tamalpais High (At about 3) and Laughing on this album. Indeed, on Cowboy Movie he builds up the intensity until he ends up screaming the lyrics. However, the CSN&Y-like songs with their incredible lush blend of soft voices are wonderfully beautiful, emitting a slowly rotating charisma of sustained calm and peacefulness.
Traction In The Rain uses what sounds like an electrified autoharp to back Crosby's gently sensitive, lilting lyrics:
The intimacy achieved on this track is a superb example of the child-like simplicity and beauty of Crosby's music.
Song with No Words (Tree With No Leaves) is far from bare. Voices and piano interweave with a quiet guitar lead in a low relaxed mood. The traditional song Orleans is sung entirely in French with a couple of acoustic guitars as backing. The treatment is reminiscent of The Byrds.
To cmplete the album, I'd Swear There Was Somebody There, reverts to the wordless vocal treatment, unaccompanied. This mystical sound conjures up images of a choir of monks shuffling through an ancient monastery.
Serenity - elusive, undefinable, and greatly desired - includes the music of David Crosby in its realm.
So here it is, the last release of the first non-Top Twenty superstar, capturing all the grace and power of the part Cherokee Indian, part Mexican, part Negro from Seattle. The relaxed feeling and the overpowering twilight that this record engenders serve as a beautiful, poignant testimonial to the intense craft of Jimi Hendrix. The master of special effects, who used electricity in a way that was never obvious as mere volume, took his bag of tricks - the fuzz-tone, the wah-wah pedal, the stack of Marshalls - and used them as a series of stepping stones to create wave upon wave of intense energy. The fluid-fingered picker who could ripple off runs with an unexpectedly perfect style burst out with phrases that filled every loose chink in a song.
In the sense of a breakthrough The Cry of Love is not anything that might not be expected from Hendrix. Still, the songs are all uniquely his, styled his way, and after so long an absence they are more than welcome. The album opens with Freedom a pyrotechnic display of classic Hendrix. From the hard-driving chords at the opening, it's solid gold. His quieter side is exemplified by Drifting, a slow pretty piece that manifests Hendrix's talent for moulding his music superbly to the lyrics (remember Manic Depression) It is a ghostly track of lovely images of "Drifting/On a sea of forgotten teardrops/ on a lifeboat...," one of the most moving pieces he ever created.
My Friend, with its tinkling glasses and party noises is notable for a set of lyrics which Hendrix almost casually injects. The style is slightly surrealistic, a lot of friendly nonsense, and some very aware, deeply personal lines;
Straight Ahead and Astro Man are routine rockers that make good listening in stereo. The deathlike images of salvation and resurrection in Angel provide an appropriately memorial touch. It's a beautiful piece of work that moves nicely into the frantic In from the storm. This is Hendrix at his most furious, charging like a proud stallion before the wind.
The final touch is saved for Belly Button Window a kind of slow and mellow blues which Hendrix performs accompanied only by his guitar. It's in this pensive, nostalgic mood that Hendrix's last album ends. Now that he's gone, it has something precious, something to savour slowly, because there'll be no others. It does him justice and I don't think we could have ever wanted anything more than that.
"....after following my client's advice and disguising myself as a female member of the "G.T.O.'s" (whom I later discovered to be a subversive group of transvestites and nymphomaniacs - with the sole function of feeding Mr Zappa's apparently endless and perverse sexual appetite), I gained easy access to the household, a multi-million dollar mansion in Beverley Hills, complete with 300 bedrooms (all, as far as I could tell, occupied), a private zoo and a heated phallus-shaped swimming pool set in four acres of plastic 'syntho-jungle' and not-so-syntho giant marijuana plants.
Various longhaired, bearded young people of both sexes wandered and lounged aimlessly naked among the tropical plants and closed circuit televisions, showing endless images of the most disgusting and lewd kind -apparently filmed the night before at one of the routine 'group-gropes'. A sinister person in a morning coat and wearing a fish's head mask, (referred to, I believe, as 'The Captain', led continual community singing, obviously of a communist, black magic nature, which included the Iyrics to the hymn, 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter....' sung backwards to the melody of The Star Spangled Banner.' At this point my automatic slipped from its holster attached to my daisies' and fearing that discovery was imminent I attempted to make my 'excuses' and leave."
(from Oz 31)
At last - Zappa has made music! His new, tenth album is a shameless sellout to the forces of harmony and diction. Admittedly, some of the material on it is a rehash of earlier pop music styles, but there is also some fine music, in terms of construction and style. The musicians work well together under Zappa's inevitable leadership to produce an album that will possibly be unrecognizable to Zappa freaks.
There is a great variety of styles, from fifties' rock 'n' roll through cool jazz combo to hard rock. Zappa's humour pervades his lyrics, incorporating satirical elements and bold eroticism. However, there is not much new here insofar as rock in general is concerned, and Zappa's attitude to this album seems to be well expressed in his early morning bedraggled yawn on the front cover. Ho hum.
Fans will be pleased to know that Ian Underwood is still playing saxes and keyboards with him. Aynsley Dunbar, once with John May all, is on percussion. The other sidemen include Jeff Simmons (bass) and George Duke (organ and trombone).
The album opens with Transylvania Boogie, a powerful rocker with some attractive guitar phrases. Road Ladies is a remarkably effective blues about touring;
Zappa's guitar figures are well backed up by the organ, and the voices are strong. There's a cool little instrumental number called Twenty Small Cigars with Zappa double-tracked on harpsichord and guitar, and an acoustic bass in the backing. Piano by Ian Underwood is soft background for Zappa's lead.
The Nancy & Mary Music was recorded live in Minneapolis before an incredibly responsive and alert audience. There's some good guitar leads, an electric piano break, some drum solo, and some particularly striking vocal effects by George Duke, all making pretty good listening. On the title track. Ian Underwood uses an electric alto sax with a wah-wah pedal - it's about the only innovation on the album. The tone sounds like a blend of a crow's cawing and a strangled cat's last cries. This track is more in the classic Zappa and Mother fuckers style than the rest of the album.
The Clap, in which Zappa performs a short percussion solo, leads into Rudy Wants To Buy You A Drink a rock 'n' roll song for the unions;
Finally Sharleen, fine stuff for the Everley Brothers, though the backing is somewhat stronger.
And that's it. Something old, a little new, perhaps something to please you. Regardless, Zappa has the last laugh.
Intramural sport is that mildly strenuous activity which enlivens the gymnasium most lunch times of the week. Vigorous hoards have been engaged in the various competitions since
Intramural means, "within the walls of" and the Intramural Sport is for members of the university. No bulldozer drivers, fishermen or members of Parliament here! Team members are not competitiomaniacs, nor are they super stars who battle against each other for some elusive supremacy: they are average, ordinary, unique individuals very much like you.
The Physical Welfare Staff arrange the draw and take team entries and sustazin the competition for as long as teams want to continue, usually into the third term. Anyone can form a team, groups of friends, people sharing a flat or doing the same unit, "old school" groups or spontaneous combinations can be included. It is important that team members be available to play anytime between 12 noon and 2.00pm as games are scheduled throughout this time. The regular pattern (for regular guys) this year has been:
The first term was a "Round Robin" Competition, followed by a "Championship Knockout" Competition this term. Results for
Something of the diversified nature of a university sports club was evident in the 'Vic' Harrier Club's championship held last week. The leading runners personified a varying mixture of dedication and ability (not necessarily in that order) whilst a distinct social outlook was evident further back in the field. Nonetheless, all tackled the strenuous 7½ mile course in a manner designed to achieve some personal satisfaction from their exertions.
The course at Queen Elizabeth Park, Paekakariki provided an excellent test of crosscountry ability. Runners were confronted with torturous sand hills, beach running, muddy ditches and the "bull-paddock". An assortment of tricky fence obstacles gave scope to the more athletic types to demonstrate their gymnastic prowess.
A fine run from Ian Stockwell gained him his third successive club championship title. Stock-well is in top form at present and should go close to Wellington representation later this year. George Seconi ran a steady race for second some two minutes behind Stockwell.
Most interest in the race centred on the three-way battle for third place between Bruce Batten, Ian Hunt and Tony Woolhouse. Batten finally won through with a determined burst at the beginning of the third lap, opening up a gap which he held to the finish. Wool-house showed up the value of a fine hurdling technique on the obstacle-riddent course, but lack of training showed through in the final stages and Hunt pulled ahead to ensure fourth placing.
Unfortunately, the club has lost a number of top runners this year and it appears that teams for Tournament and the Wellington Provincial championships will be weaker than last year. However, several promising new members including Bruce Batten, Frank Nolan, Bruce Cummings and Ian Tracy should ensure the basis for stronger teams next year.
Friday night was the meeting that involved the most shit-stirring. This was the meeting of the finance commission of NZUSA and was attended by most student association Treasurers along with their sports reps.
Rob Garlick of Auckland set the tone of the meeting with a general shit-stir about the minutes of the last meeting. After his objections were sorted out discussion of the NZUSA budget arose. Last year the NZUSA Executive was expanded to comprise: (a) President Exec and (b) Full Exec - includes representatives from each university.
It was planned in this year's budget to allow for the cost of return air fares for university delegates to the full Exec but strong disagreement arose.
Auckland proposed deleting the travel cost altogether but there was no seconder for this motion. Massey then proposed that 2nd class return surface fare only be paid and this was seconded by Vic's Treasurer, "Scrooge McWebb".
Auckland abstained from approving the budget because approximately 70% of it went on travel. Although this was altered in areas it wasn't enough to suit Auckland whose exec seemed slightly pissed off with NZUSA. Due to an administrative mess up budgets were received only four days before the A.G.M. and Auckland felt it hadn't had enough time to go into it.
As regards the travel costs it should be pointed out that NZUSA Exec members and Blues Panel members give their services voluntarily and the travel costs are for the cost of transporting them to the various Tournaments which, of necessity they must attend.
Finance Commission recommended to the A.G.M. that the constant 6c per student p.a. levy for tours by sports teams overseas be amended to allow the Treasurers to fix the amount payable to the tour fund each year.
Distribution of costs arose and while Auckland agreed to a pro rata basis for the allocation of the administration budget they wouldn't agree to the same type of allocation for the recovery account for Tournaments.
The situation at the moment is that Auckland, Vic, Canterbury, and Otago bear 20% of each Tournament with the remaining 20% being borne by Waikato, Massey and Lincoln. It was proposed to change this to payment on a pro rata basis. Auckland would then pay 27%, Vic 16%, Canterbury 21% and Otago 15%.
Needless to say Auckland wouldn't accept this increased cost although Canterbury would. As the recommendation to the AGM had to be unanimous it lapsed becuase of Auckland's dissent. At the same time Lincoln made it clear that it was opposed to the present system of allocation and wished the pro rata system to come into effect.
Briefly the following was done:
(a) Eligibility regulations were amended to enable any person enrolled at University who had paid his Studass fee, and is a competing member of his club to play for his University at Easter and Winter Tournments. The academic requirements were however retained for eligibility for N.Z.U. teams and Blues, namely that a student must be enrolled in and attending at least six hours of lectures, tutorials and practicals per week. The reasoning behind this change is that it enables all enrolled at Universites to compete in the internal Tournaments but still requires them to be "full time" students to be included in N.Z.U. teams for tours overseas. Australia has made noises about the teams not comprising full time students and would probably not accept a team from N.Z.U. made up of people who were perhaps doing 2 hours of university work per week.
(b) Waikato joint Campus Council applied for admittance to N.Z.U., the Council being comprised of University and Teacher's college students. The main hang up was that they wanted their Teacher's college students to be eligible for N.Z.U. teams which they wouldn't be unless they were doing a minimun amount of time at University.
While the eligibility regulations as amended will enable students of the Council to attend Tournament they exclude them from N.Z.U. teams & blues unless they comply with the academic qualification. Waikato made an application to join on these conditions, subject to approval by their S.G.M.
Clubs have had quite a few weeks notice of deadline dates for Winter Tournament if they cared to clear their mail.
Just to put them in the picture again.
Eligibility and Billeting fomrs must be in at the Stud Ass Office by Monday 26th July.
If they are not in by this date your team may well crap out at Tournament by not being eligible to play. I have no intention of nurse maiding teams by chasing them up for the relevant forms. If you want to compete its your respondibility to meet the above deadline or come across with a bloody good reason why you can't and a firm date as to when they will arrive.
The relevant forms are obtainable from Stud Ass Office. Note that the eligibility regs have been changed so make sure you've got the new ones.
If you picked your eligibility forms up before 9th July you will neeed new ones.
Travel: 8.30pm train to Ak on Sat 14th August.
Return in wee hours of Friday 20th. Train leaves at 2am and will be at the platform from midnight.
This year out of an income of $28,650 the Students' Association will spend close on $8,222 on Sports' activities. This figure is constituted as follows:
When it is considered that 96 competitors went to Easter Tournament and 150 are proposing to travel to Auckland for Winter Tournament, the cost of sports activities seems to be coming disproportionately large. This year I am proposing that no travel subsidies be given for Winter Tournament, the reason being that $8222 is well above the amount budgeted for sports activities.