Editorial

Sited on a windswept hillside, at a steep climb from anywhere. Victoria University is an uneasy failure as a community.

Hutt Valley residents are forced to commute, Wellington students ties are elsewhere and part-time students aim at a meal-ticket. All have contributed to making this a nine to five brains factory.

Yet another year of emancipated schoolchildren have just muddled their way through the enrollment machine, and after that it is hardly surprising that any will feel affinity to the University as a community.

For all anyone can see, the only bond between the confusion of departments, lectures and students that parades as the University, is the amorphous and impersonal 'Administration'. Signing forms in triplicate, receiving a computer number, or undertaking a course wrangle with the bureaucracy is hardly likely to encourage a feeling of warmth.

The setup from enrollment on, is so confusing that it is easiest to jump into the first academic rut that appears, and never be seen or heard again.

Very few lecturers will have the guts to confront you with their personal beliefs. You are under no pressure to form your own. You barely even need to think if you follow a well-trodden degree path.

The student community may struggle along while you bury yourself in mountains of library books. A few 'self-seekers' continue to run the nearly dead Student Representative Council and its string of important committees. A few people will produce Salient every week. You may safely ignore their attempts to produce a community out of deadwood. After all your own search for academic irrelevance is much more important.

More architectural coffins like the Earth-Sciences building will make this tiny area of Kelburn into a memorial to shortsightedness. Balloon-like expansion will add to personal problems of adjustment.

The Administration isn't geared to worry about the future. Its task is to spend the funds given by a reluctant government, in the most economical way possible.