Contraceptives on the campus

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32678, 6 August 1971, Page 8

Contraceptives on the campus

The executive of the University of Canterbury Students’ Association moved with suspicious—and provocative—speed to reach and carry out its decision to install contraceptive-vending machines in the students’ union building. The executive made no attempt to consult the membership of the association, and it did not obtain or even seek the approval of the university authorities. Three years ago a general meeting of the student body overruled a decision by the executive to install the machines. Since then the director of the student'health service and the venereologist at the Christchurch Hospital have approved the proposal as a means of reducing venereal disease among students; but this does not Justify the high-handed action of the executive. The proper course for the executive was to raise the matter—after giving adequate notice—at a general meeting of the Students’ Association to explain to members why a proposal, rejected three years ago, should now be reconsidered. If endorsed by the general meeting, the executive’s proposal should then have been taken to the university council —in which body, as the Vice-Chancellor (Professor Phillips) explains in a statement printed this morning, full legal control of all the buildings on the campus is vested by statute. Much more than the disease rate among university students is involved in this question, as our correspondence column this morning will surely suggest. If the Students’ Association’s executive cannot see this thejs should be put in their place—by their own members or by the university council