Students just able to stay afloat

Press, 17 April 1982, Page 1

Students just able to stay afloat

The Lincoln College team, Bruce Thorrold (front), June Thompson, and Keith Shaw, taking part in a raft race from the Bridge of Remembrance to Victoria Square yesterday in protest against the cuts to bursary and education grants. The message was that they were being “sold down the river” by the 3 per cent reduction in education spending. The theme was carried through with a series of watery puns written on placards and tacked to the rafts. Among them were: “$27 a week doesn’t hold water,” and “We are all in the same boat.” The “we” referred to the University of Canterbury, the Christchurch Polytechnic, Lincoln College, and the Christchurch Teachers’ College, all of which entered rafts in the race.

The participants were issued with pieces of sticking

plaster as “victims of the cuts.”

The race, which was timed to begin at 3.30 p.m. was delayed until almost 4 p.m. because the Teachers’ College contingent arrived late. Its trailer had been stolen.

A student, dressed in a suit and with a scar crayoned on one cheek, introduced himself as the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) and ordered the rafts into the water and started the race. He was accompanied by another student “representing” the Minisier of Education (Mr Wellington). Both heckled the participants as they poled their unsteady craft down the river.

The race was won by Lincoln College with the Polytechnic second, but the organisers were quick to point out that there were “no winners with the education cuts.”