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The Lincoln Mafia

Several hours of the first session of International Commission at Easter Council were taken up with debate over the question of the constitutionality of Lincoln's delegation, headed by John Hayes.

Steve Blakemore, Editor of Caclin (the student newspaper at Lincoln) provided the information for the following story on John Hayes, President of Lincoln College, and Roger Payne, immediate past President of Lincoln (who must be the closest thing to a baroque Machiavelli we're ever likely to run New Zealand—if you take Keith Holyoake out of the running):

An AGM was held at Lincoln on the Monday evening preceding Easter Council. A number of international and national remits for Easter Council were discussed before the Meeting lapsed for want of a quorum. (The quorum for General Meetings at Lincoln is 100—at Victoria it is 50). Outgoing President Roger Payne said it was "a pity that we can't hand over to the new Executive as we have done in the past." Any further action on remits for Easter Council, Payne said, would have to be handled through Caclin.

The next day, a meeting was held on campus which purported to be "a continuation of the AGM". As there had been no adjournment of the meeting the night before, this second meeting was plainly unconstitutional. The meeting was told that the Chairman had decided "that the meeting would be continued." Those present at the evening meeting had, of course, been given no warning of a continuation of the meeting or of the change of vanue (from a lecture room to the cafeteria). The majority of senior students had no knowledge of the 'continued' meeting.

The Tuesday meeting was chaired by ex-President Roger Payne ("ex-" since the new Executive had officially taken over the night before) and the ex-Secretary took the Minutes. The ex-Secretary subsequently declared the second meeting to be invalid and—no doubt as a way of adding emphasis to that statement—he then burnt the minutes of the meeting.

The principal matters decided at the meeting on Tuesday were that Lincoln should dissociate itself from any decisions made in International and National Commission at Council. As a great deal of time had been taken up the previous evening with discussion of remits for NZUSA, these decisions seemed clearly contradictory to the spirit of the earlier meeting. The motion of dissociation was proposed by John Hayes, the new President (who had not been present at the Monday meeting).

A fairly evocative description of what went on at the second "AGM" is provided by the following letter to Caclin from Charles Draper, Education Vice-President of NZUSA: