The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1953. Canterbury College

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26985, 10 March 1953, Page 8

The Press TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1953. Canterbury College

It is clear that Dr. Jobber ns’s article in “ The Press ” a little more than a week ago has brought home to many citizens for the first time the full implications of the decision to move Canterbury College from its present central site to Riccarton. All the debates over the rival claims of the central and the distant sites seem in retrospect to have been vague and theoretical. Dr. Jobberns’s disturbing questions about the future of the abandoned college site and of the pleasant and dignified area to which the college gives much of its distinctive character have given the whole questidfi a new meaning and reality. It probably was not Dr. Jobberns’s intention to raise the question of reviewing the decision on the future site of the college; he was concerned with the town-planning problems that will be created by this gap in the physical structure of the city. Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, he questioned whether the gap should have been allowed to open. From the many letters received by “ The Press ” it is obvious that citizens found it an easy step from anxious consideration of the physical gap to even more anxious thought about the threatened 'gap in the educational, cultural and intellectual life of the city. This, after all, is as much the business of citizens as of the University. The college and tfce city have grown together. In recent years, especially, •the college has bedbme increasingly an important influence upon the life and work of citizens. The policy of the “ open “door” has brought commerce and industry into close touch with the college and has made it a centre of activity in music, art and drama for the whole city, not merely the student body. Can this liaison, so mutually advantageous and stimulating, be continued and strengthened if the college leaves the centre? Not many will think so. The physical difficulties of distance will militate against these fruitful associations, perhaps, disastrously. The enormous transport problem involved in the attendance of parttime students at lectures will, of course, have to be solved—and will be solved; but the cost and inconvenience will certainly be great. Since the Canterbury University College Council took its decision in 1949 time has strengthened all the arguments in favour of the central site and weakened many of those for the remote one. It is doubtful whether many members of the council then, in taking a “ long- “ term view ”, realised just how far they would have to look into the future to see even the start of their plans, let alone any substantial progress with them. The division of the college, during its transfer in stages to Riccarton, appears now as something that will have to be endured, with all its disadvantages, for decades rather than years. New Zealand is a capital-hungry country in a capital-starved world; and it is not possible to look forward with any confidence to a time when a government will be able to authorise university building or any other kind of public building except to meet the ’most pressing needs. But the strongest argument for developing the college on and arcund its present location is that the site is not only adequate but magnificent. The long-term view takes in—as it should—not merely the present block and that to the north, but the whole area from Antigua street to Armagh street. In all this area there were then and there are now very few buildings which would remain for long as obstacles to the development of the College. The strongest argument of the many which favour the central site is that there never has been and there is not now any compulsion on the college to move away from the heart of the community which it serves. Few universities in other parts of the world have taken this step; and those that have have done so for'the'good reason that there was, literally, no alternative, Canterbury College is not in this desperate plight.