Students Climb Prison Wall

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30127, 10 May 1963, Page 9

Students Climb Prison Wall

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 9. A night • escapade in which three Victoria University of Wellington students tried to scale the walls of the Wellington prison and fly "the university flag from the prison flagpole was described by Detective-Sergeant L. R. L. Butler today in the Wellington Magistrate’s Court. Before the Court, charged with being found in WelIngton prison on Tuesday without lawful excuse, were Russell Drummond Campbell, aged 19, an arts student, William Robert Alexander Manson, aged 18, an art student, and David John Young, aged 19, a law student. They pleaded guilty. Sergeant Butler said that at 2.25 a.m. on Tuesday a prison officer saw two men on the wall, one lying flat on top and the other appearing to be about to jump into the prison. Challenged by the officer, they jumped off the wall and made off. This morning, at 4.18, the night officer heard noises outside the prison and immediately telephoned the police. Subsequently the three students were found running along Cobham drive. Sergeant Butler said. He said police questioning

revealed that Campbell and Young were the two seen on the prison wall on Tuesday morning and Manson was standing on the outside keeping watch.. Their aim was to fly the university flag from the prison flagpole and place “Extravaganza” posters on the interior walls. Mr Butler said their action caused considerable trouble and concern to prison and police officials. Extra prison staff had to be called on, the inmates of the prison had to be awakened and counted, and the grounds searched as it was thought possible someone had escaped. Last night extra staff had to be called out for duty for the same purpose and this caused considerable concern and extra expense, he said. Mr R. D. Jamieson, S.M., said: "It is very easy for boys to think things are funny when they are not. Other people who make nuisances of themselves round town have to be dealt with firmly. It cannot be said that university students are immune. “I don’t think there was anything criminal in what you did. It was just stupidly thoughtless and I want to mark the Court’s disapproval

without hurting you in a greater way than is justified,” he said. The Magistrate directed they should be remanded on bail to Monday and told them that if on Monday he found that each had meanwhile paid £5 to the students’ charity Stepping Stones he would deal with them in such a way that no black marks would be entered against their future careers. “Something has to be paid but I don’t want to have to enter a conviction,” the Magistrate said. Stepping Stones is a voluntary society devoted to the rehabilitation of persons recovering from mental diseases.

“The noblest poetry is not merely a nice arrangement of consonants and vowels, of stresses and pauses; it is also stained and roughened by a concern for human experience, by the maculations of philosophy. It remembers, with anger and pain, the loneliness and impotence of the old, the impotence and loneliness of the young, the breath on our necks of that guttler, death, and the humbling net of circumstance about our feet.”— Babette Deutsch.