‘Canta’ editor will appeal

Press, 3 June 1983, Page 4

‘Canta’ editor will appeal

Wayne Codlin, the sacked editor of the Canterbury University Students’ Association’s weekly magazine, “Canta,” will appeal against his dismissal. Mr Codlin was ordered to resign immediately by the association after the magazine was not published this week. He appealed to a meeting of the executive of the association on Wednesday evening, but the executive reaffirmed unanimously its decision to sack him. Mr Codlin now plans to appeal to the Student Representative Council. He was elected to the year-long position of “Canta” editor by the council last year. “If I am going to be rolled as ‘Canta’ editor it should be by the council and not by the executive. The executive has sacked me without going back to the people who elected me to the job. They have misused their power,” said Mr Codlin yesterday. Mr Codlin’s term as editor was to run until the last 1983 issue of the magazine. The post as editor of r> the. student paper was ar fulltime one and paid about V. $9O a week, said Mr Codlin.

He was paid by the Students’ Association and was now out of work. He intended to see the Social Welfare Department. The Students’ Association president, Mr Tony Gray, gave the reasons for Mr Codlin’s dismissal as ignoring legal advice in publishing an article about the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, and not publishing articles about university assessment and student representatives as requested by the executive. Mr Codlin said the advice not to publish the article about Mr Muldoon rested on a very fine legal point. The humorous article had been written by a Canterbury University student. The association’s lawyer had advised that the article could result in a defamation action but such an action could be quite well defended, said Mr Codlin. “In my opinion the article was not particularly de--famatory, and Mr Muldoon did not take any action. If he had I believe we would have had an adequate defence,” he said. The article on student representatives had not

been published. He had been asked by the executive to speak to each of the 14 student representatives and write a report. “I made a mistake in putting that off but that was not a ground to sack me. Also the fact that the executive asked for the article is not reason for including it. It is not the executive’s newspaper but the students’,” Mr Codlin said. He had not been asked to write an article on university assessment, said Mr Codlin. The May 31 issue of “Canta” had not been published for budget reasons. “The last issue last term was not published by our publisher, D. N. Adams, because it said the material was morally offensive, and so we sent it down to Gore to have it printed. The technical editor and I made an informal decision that future issues would be published in Gore and I rebudgeted because that meant extra costs,” Mr Codlin said.

He had decided that one issue djithe magazine would have to be dropped because of the extra cost and last

Tuesday’s issue was the one chosen. “The material in it would not have been damaged by being held over for a week,” he said. He had been wrong in not informing the executive that the issue would not appear. The article that the publishers had objected to was about drugs. It was called “Recreational drugs, a personal guide,” and was intended to advise those people who were “getting into that sort of thing” how to take care of themselves, said Mr Codlin. It had been well received on the campus. The article had been checked by the association’s lawyer. > The money for the magazine’s budget came from the Students’ Association and advertising. The informal decision to publish in Gore in the future would have had to have been formally approved by the executive. Mr Codlin said he felt the 1983 issues of “Canta” had been “good” and “useful for students.” Much of the material that had caused concern had appeared before in different fofcis in the magazine.

He was most upset about his dismissal because it was a “black mark against him” in the newspaper world. He had intended to follow a career in journalism. Efforts are also under way to oust the editor of “Craccum,” the Auckland University newspaper, the Press Association reports. A group of students is campaigning to oust the pro-feminist editor of the student publication. The Craccum Reform Group’s chairman, Mr Philip Ross, has accused the editor, Louise Rafkin, of promoting bias towards feminism and of censoring opposing views from the publication. The reform group also sefeks to have the women’s common room abolished because men are barred from it. . “Our group is not antiwoman. We are just opposed to positive discrimination,” Mr Ross said. Ms Rafkin denied that “Craccum” was biased. “For 50 years there has been a male point of view in the magazine, and now there is a woman’s,” she said.