University May Be Delayed Year

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31306, 28 February 1967, Page 1

University May Be Delayed Year

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canterbury (Professor N. C. Phillips) yesterday told the University Council that it might have to accept a year’s set-back, from 1971 to 1972, for the completion of the third and last main stage of building at Ham.

Professor H. J. Hopkins said he would not like to think that the council too easily dropped its present objective of completion by 1971.

He said he appreciated the economic situation of the country but delay or curtailment would hurt the university, hurt the country through its students, and hurt the building industry as well.

Mr C. H. Perkins, the former Chancellor, said students were already unable to take exactly the courses they wanted because they had to move between the two sites. He too realised the economic situation but would regret delay.

Mr T. H. McCombs, the Pro-Chancellor, said the council must distinguish carefully between delays caused by the state of the economy and administrative

delays on what needed to be done.

“We must be alert to see the first is not used as an excuse to cover delays arising from administrative channels not flowing freely,” he said.

Professor Phillips said that formal approval had now been received to prepare working drawings for the library-arts tower with a net floor area of 105,136 sq ft. He hoped this was an earnest of the Government’s intention to complete building as soon as possible. The third stage would be the largest and, in some ways, most complicated of all. Professor Phillips said. It would involve transferring the remaining half of the university from the central site to Ham.

The plan envisaged this by the end of 1971 but the economic stringency which had since developed “may mean we have to accept some

delay as our share of damping down public expenditure,” said Professor Phillips. “It may be as much as a year behind.”

There were three compelling reasons why the university should press unremittingly to have the final transfer made by the end of 1972 —pressure on the central site which now has as many students as when the whole university was there in 1959; the good health and sense of unity of the university; the university’s centenary in 1973.

“By then nothing else but a university on one site will do," he said. Apart from all this the wellbeing of thousands of students must be considered.