Maximum Autonomy For Girls In Halls Urged

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 1

Maximum Autonomy For Girls In Halls Urged

Girl students in university halls of residence should be allowed the maximum amount of self-government, said Dr. Jane Soons, lecturer in geography at Canterbury University, yesterday. Dr. Soons said she based this opinion on what she had observed at the university, and on what she had learned from studying halls of residence at British, Canadian and United States universities. Dr. Soons has just returned from a five-month tour of universities in those countries, looking at halls of residence facilities and administration at the request of Canterbury University. “They were most emphatic that students should be allowed the maximum amount of self-government,” she said. “They have found that the more self-government students are given, the more responsible they are.”

Dr. Soons said that a number of important universities had found that this was the most satisfactory system. Methods varied, but usually

students would discuss what rules were essential with the university authorities, and arrive at a mutually acceptable system.

“I am quite sure that this is the best way,” she said, “from what I have seen overseas, and from what I have seen at the University of Canterburyl.” Dr. Soons said there was an immense demand for academic staff everywhere in the world. In the United States universities were desperate for staff because of the continuing growth in the numbers of first-year students. Dr. Soons attended an international conference on quaternary research at Boulder, Colorado, before beginning her tour. She studied facilities for postgraduate geography research at the universities she visited, and will make recommendations to her department on equipment for CanterburyUniversity’s new geomorphological laboratory, to be used for the study of the I development of land forms.