Editorial

October 8, 1968

Now is the flowers

Opinions expressed in Salient are not necessarily those of VUWSA.

Salient 1969 is brought to an end with this issue, and there are a number of people I should thank. I won't, not only because it is traditional to refrain from thanking people for work done around the campus, however unpublically, but also because the people who expect thanks deserve little.

The people who deserve thanks expect none. Amongst the latter are the associate editor, Nevil Gibson, who cared competently for the review pages and anything else I asked him to do, and the Publications Officer and political editor, Owen Gager.

He would be the last to see himself as having the skills of a businessman, and the absence of these skills he may not have been an ideal Publications Officer. But from an editor's point of view it is more important that the Publications Officer does not in any way use that position to influence editorial policy than that he is a businessman.

It is to be hoped that next year's Publications Officer realises the importance of this fact, and does not misuse his position in any way.

There are very few people who could successfully combine any position on the Executive with membership of the staff of Salient, let alone the position of Publications Officer, but a precise knowledge of the natures of the jobs he was doing led Owen Gager to defer in editorial matters more easily than any other senior member of the staff, despite his experience and ability.

The revelation of what exactly the bright new people of Salient 69 have in store for us can only come with 69, but Roger Wilde is an enthusiastic, liberal and competent choice for an editor.

It is hoped that the Students' Association Publications Board will make about twice as much money available for technical assistance as at present. This would free the editor for the real job of editing. The full potentialities of all the people interested in Salient could be better exploited with this development. Those potentialities are very large indeed.

Many of the chores associated with running a newspaper are uninteresting, and by no means literary. It is such people as distribution managers and administration officer that make Salient work, and it will be necessary one day to pay a student to do this sort of work, too.