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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31 Number 14. June 25, 1968

'The Stranger' From Samoa Won Plunket Medal

page 2

'The Stranger' From Samoa Won Plunket Medal

Sanele Ilalio won the Plunket Medal Oratory contest on Friday night.

The Medal was presented to His Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Arthur Porrit.

Sanele. who is from American Samoa, spoke on the need to be friendly to people from other countries.

The text of his speech "The Stranger" was:

Sanele Ilalio being presented with the Plunket Medal by the Governor-General, Sir Arthur Porrit.

Sanele Ilalio being presented with the Plunket Medal by the Governor-General, Sir Arthur Porrit.

He may become the leader of his nation for the future;

He may become the premier of his country in years to come;

He may become the Head-of-State of his homeland for tomorrow;

As for today, he is the stranger in your midst.

Strangers fly in and out of New Zealand most hours of every day. Strangers sail in and out of New Zealand most days of every week. Strangers walk in and out of our lives without saying a word of greeting or uttering a word of farewell. But the stranger about whom I am speaking tonight is a man with a difference; a man of the future, a man for others, a man of destiny.

He may have come from Formosa, Vietnam, or Indonesia;

He may have come from India, Pakistan or Malaysia.

He may have hailed from the Congo, Tanzania or South Africa.

Or even from Rhodesia, Great Britain or North America.

He may have come from Ceylon, Thailand or Singapore;

He may have come from Fiji, Tonga or, in this case, Samoa.

From wherever he may have come this stranger is here on a mission of greatest importance. He has come to your universities so that he may live and share with you the life made by you. He has come so that he may share with you the future leadership of our world. He is here so that you may know his needs and thereby help to realise them. He is here so that you and he may build a binding-friendship and enjoy doing it.

Indeed this stranger is a man of destiny—for upon his shoulders rest the hopes of his family, his village, his people and his nation. He stands to you New Zealanders as a potential friend or a potential foe! If he and you become friends now, he and you will become friends forever; if he and you become enemies now, he and you will become enemies forever. But it is a wonderful thought that an individual friend made now may very well turn out to be 'nations of friends' for the future for before nations can become friends individuals should learn to befriend one another. Thus it is worth your while to befriend the stranger now in your universities.

When the foreign-student now in your universities returns to his homeland at the completion of his studies— when the temptation may come upon him to use the colour of his skin as the weapon for the destruction of his fellowmen—please God may he remember, let him look back to his university days in New Zealand that:

When he was hungry, you New Zealanders gave him to eat;

When he was thirsty, you New Zealanders gave him to drink;

And above all, when he was The Stranger you New Zealanders took him in.

Second place-getter was the Debating Society's president, Hamish Hancock, who spoke on Stalin.

Third was John Lenart, Secretary of the Students' Association who spoke of race relations in New Zealand.

Other speakers were Patrick Mahoney (on Pope John XXIII), Gerard Curry on Selina Sutherland, a pioneering nurse in New Zealand and Australia), Mark von Dadelzen (on Captain Allan Gardner, a Christian missionary), Lyn Horne (on Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Congo), and John Sauners (on inadequacies in treatment of the mentally ill).