AN IMMACULATE COLLEGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 8

AN IMMACULATE COLLEGE.

The manner in which a communication from the Minister of Education about "recent examples of disorder among' University students" in public was received by the Victoria College Council demands a little notice. In reply to a member who wished to know what special incident was indicated in the Minister's letter, the chairman made answer: "We know what happened in Auckland." Another member of the Council, evidently feeling that the fair reputation of Victoria College was in danger of being smirched, inquired anxiously, "Were our students involved?" and he must have been reassured by the chairman's prompt and emphatic "No." Finally, after it had been decided to get a report from the Professorial Board of the College on the matter, another leading member of the Council administered further consolation to his startled and resentful colleagues by assuring them that "when the report was obtained it would be found that the students of Victoria College had been very well behaved." There is, first, an obvious desire of the Victoria College Council to shoulder off upon Auckland whatever discredit has attached to the University of New Zealand through the public misconduct of students at Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington, as well as in our own city. Then the e is an implied suggestion that the disorder which characterised certain public proceedings at Auckland during the recent Inter-College Tournament must have sprung from the innate depravity of Auckland students alone. Thirdly, there is the assurance that however wicked the students who hail from Christchurch or Dunedin or Auckland may have been, the students from the Empire City were not answerable for any kind of misdeed, but emerged from the ordeal of a week's sojourn in Auckland without a stain upon thrir spotless record. We do not believe that the students of Victoria College either deserve or desire the reputation for sanctimonious rectitude which the Council has endeavoured to fasten upon them. As to the reputation that Victoria College students enjoy in their own city, we may be content to refer to a report in Wellington, that it was impossible to arrange an undergraduate dinner this year in the Empire City because the various caterers appealed to declined to take the risks involved.