University Halls

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30858, 17 September 1965, Page 10

University Halls

Sir, —Halls of residence contribute greatly to the education that a university gives its students, and the Christchurch public will surely support them. However, one aspect of the proposed halls needs comment The university could have appealed for public support to build both secular and church-sponsored halls, recognising the need to educate for a world in which the Christian ethic is only one among many. Christianity is traditionally important in this country’ and the university must reflect that importance, but it has a duty also to foster the free development of ideas. The university’s failure to provide for roughly half secular accommodation seems to show again that church organisations are stronger than the ideas they represent.—Yours, etc., EX-STUDENT. September 9, 1965. [The vice-chancellor of the University of Canterbury (Dr. L. L. Pownall) says. “The University of Canterbury greatly welcomes the initiative and the concern

for student welfare of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian and Methodist Churches in undertaking the £lOO,OOO appeal for halls of residence at Ham. The three church halls it is proposed to build as a result of the appeal will meet only a fraction of the demand for student accommodation. It is hoped that additional halls will be built in the future.”] Sir, —At a time when eminent churchmen, including the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, are striving for a closer rapprochement among the various churches, it seems a trifle strange that in the plans for development of Canterbury University a measure of religious “apartheid” should be visualised in the form of separate halls of residence for certain religious denominations. Surely, in any university worth the name, liberal-mindedness, no less than academic distinction, should be fostered among the future leaders of the country’s thought and action; and arbitrary exclusiveness avoided as far as possible. So far as one recalls, this “apartheid” was never a feature of Oxford or Cambridge colleges; and one is inclined to believe that both the colleges and the university benefited accordingly.—Yours, etc., ILAM. September 9, 1965. [The chairman of the Halls and Residence Consultative Committee (the Rev. M. W. Wilson) said: “The writer of this letter is unaware of the facts concerning churchestablished and churchcontrolled halls of residence. Such halls are open to students of all denominations of the Christian church and to those who are not connected with any church. This is the situation as regards existing church halls and will certainly be the policy of the halls to be erected in Christchurch Of course any student apply ing for admission to a church hall would be aware that the hall was a church institution, that worship was offered regularly in its chapel, and that he was therefore expos ing himself to the influences of Christian faith and life.”]