Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol 5, No. 6. July 31, 1942

"Alcoholic Reform"

"Alcoholic Reform"

Sir,—As a Life Member of the Victoria College Students' Association I may perhaps be allowed to make some comment on a letter signed by the "Hon. Secretary" and published in your issue of the 17th June.

What seems to me to need comment and, indeed, protest, is the reference to the "N.Z.U. Drinking Horn." The women who addressed the Students' Association (however [unclear: inadvisedly]) were dealing with a well-recognized social problem and they seemed to have assumed that the students of Victoria University College constituted a responsible body which would know and appreciate its seriousness at the present moment. That they were mistaken in their assumption is unhappily clear. It is the more humiliating, from the point of view of a life member, that the reply lacked that essential courtesy which one hoped would be accorded to the general public from a University College.

The Honorary Secretary's letter, letter, however, should serve one good purpose, it opens up the question of the "Drinking Horn." If the University Colleges make public exhibitions of drunkenness—and these would seem to be inseparable from an alcoholic drinking competition—the public and the University authorities may well ask whether the University is in safe hands. If the N.Z.U. Students Association is controlled by young men who are prepared, as in the present case, to flaunt their drunken orgies before the public the question arises whether the phenomenon can be dealt with and by whom.

I venture to protest that a competition of the kind is a disgrace to the University and I hope something will be done about it by the students themselves.

—Yours, etc.,

F. A. de la Mare.

Hamilton,