Student Ideas Held More Vital Than Voting Rights

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 16

Student Ideas Held More Vital Than Voting Rights

True communication between the administrative and academic staffs of universities and their students is more important and desirable than seats or votes for students, in the opinion of Professor R. L. Scott, who was chairman of the committee on educational policy at the University of California at Los Angeles last year.

Student participation in university government was a major topic during his term, Professor Scott said in an interview in Christchurch yesterday, and it was often confused with students' voting rights. “I cannot see American universities giving students extensive voting rights,” he said. “I don’t believe it would achieve much. It is one thing to give students one seat in, say, 10 on the academic senate or the board of regents, and then ignore them. It is another to forget about votes and rights and really listen to students, see their point of view, and try to satisfy their legitimate needs.”

Professor Scott said that many active student groups considered him conservative, but many others shared his view that true communication and closer collaboration of staff and students would ultimately be more effective. “However, to my astonishment, there are still some faculty members who think that students, like Victorian

children, should be seen and not heard,” said Professor Scott. Professor Scott will work in the chemical engineering department of the University of Canterbury for two months as a visiting Erskine professor. His special field is the thermodynamics of solutions He said this involved the precise relationships and behaviour of molecules in mixtures. This was important in distillation processes such as the separation of gas, petrol, kerosene and so on from petroleum, the separation of solids with solvents, and the preparation of plastics and