STUDENT V. LANDLADY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVXIII, Issue 53, 4 March 1937, Page 6

STUDENT V. LANDLADY.

Those who witnessed the stage production "The Wind and the Rain"—written by a New Zealander and a doctor —will remember with pleasure the character of the medical students' landlady. She was knowledgeable, understanding, kindly and firm. She and her students were well matched, and there was substantial harmony between them. If current reports do not exaggerate, it is otherwise in Dunedin, where some students seeking lodgings have been turned away, and doors slammed in their faces. The reasons attributed are the conduct of past students and the fact that students in general are "so irresponsible." But some of them have always been irresponsible, and not only in Dunedin, where it might be imagined that there would have developed before now a type of landlady magnificently fitted to deal with all the usual kinds of student misbehaviour, individual or concerted. But, unless students of recent yeafft are worse than their predecessors (which the latter would 'indignantly deny), it is not so, and something 'must be done to end the situation. Either the Minister of Education should establish a students' landladies' training school, or his colleague Mr. Armstrong must negotiate an industrial agreement. The first step, naturally, would be to form the parties into unions.