STUDENTS’ PAPER ATTACKED

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24645, 15 August 1945, Page 3

STUDENTS’ PAPER ATTACKED

ACCOUNT OF DEBATE ON BIRTH CONTROL CONTROVERSY AT SYDNEY UNIVERSITY (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 4. Roman Catholic students, backed by the Church administrators, have declared war on the Sydney University Students' magazine, “Honi Soit.” They have, so far, failed in an attempt to have the editor and assistants dismissed. Exception was taken first to an article in “Honi Soif on birth control, which had been debated at the" university among students. The article was a burlesque rather than a plain report of the debate, and its tone was objected to by the Newman Society of Roman Catholic students, numbering about 200, at the university. They moved at a meeting of the University’s Representative Students’ Council for the dismissal of the “Honi Soit” staff, but the motion was defeated by seven votes to five. The principal at the University Roman Catholic College, St. John’s, , Father Thompson, then entered the : lists, and pressed the Senate to dismiss 1 the staff. The Vice-Chancellor (Professor Wallace) took no immediate • action, but said he considered that “Honi Soit” was out of touch with ; student opinion. The Sydney “Catholic Weekly’ j carried on the attack and argued that the birth control article was not the only "blasphemous” item in “Horn , Soit.’,’ A letter was written to the Sydney “Daily Telegraph,” quoting , other instances in the same issue ' which; it was claimed, mocked religion ; and showed a depraved morality. Taking this cue, the Newman Society will ■ again move in the students’ council for the dismissal of the editor on the grounds of general editorial policy. “Issue of Principle” ' The' brunt of the attack has been borne by “Honi Soit’s” editor, Miss , Jean Wilson, the first woman to edit the magazine. Miss Wilson, a 26-year-old fifth-year medical student, says she can see no evil, as no evil was intended, in- “Honi Soit.” “I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” she said. “There is nothing in the paper to justify it. But it has become far more than the matter published and now is an issue of‘principle. At stake now is the freedom of any section b f people, : even a minority, to have the opportunity to put forward its views without the threat of suppression. It must be remembered that the paper was published within the university, where . the traditions of freedom of speech and of criticism are long established. ’ Miss Wilson also replied to the ViceChancellor’s comment that the paper j was out of touch with student opinion. “The raising of any controversial question in a critical manner will inevitably come into conflict with some students’ views,” she said. “The fact that so much discussion has been engendered by the issue indicates, not that we are out of touch, but that we are raising questions with which students are keenly concerned.” Miss Wilson met the “Catholic Weekly attack in a letter to the “Daily Telegraph.”