THE UNIVERSITY SPIRIT.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 477, 8 April 1909, Page 6

THE UNIVERSITY SPIRIT.

During the coming holidays the eighth annual University tournament will be held in this city.. It would be incorrect to say that the average man is greatly interested in this annual variation of the routine of work at the University Colleges, although the sporting side of tho. tournament invariably receives the well-deserved support of the public. But the tournaments do not depend very largely upon the public interest for their success, so far, at any rate, as success means the fulfilment of valuable purposes for which they were established some seven years ago. Widely isolated from each other, and occupying, a very modest and oven obscure corner in the lives of their respective towns, the four Colleges had no opportunity until 1902 of realising their, community of life and purpose. There was the University as a parent, to hi sure, but it was only the machine that arranged the examinations and the degree statutes, and it came into contact with the students only at the annual capping ceremonies. In such circumstances ,tho College spirit could flourish, but

there was nothing to encourage tho University spirit, nothing to induce the Otago graduate to regard the Auckland graduate as belonging to the one fellowship. The undergraduates of one College, too, could hardly avoid feeling that their fellows in another centre were a sort of aliens. That was a condition of things highly unfavourable to tho wellbeing of the University, for while it did not impair the efficiency of the several Colleges it kept them parochial,- and kept the student's outlook rather narrow. The tournaments have fortunately changed all that. The students have now been brought into tho best kind of contact for several years, and the University spirit is quite alive and flourishing as .1 consequence. Some time has yet to elapse, of course, before that spirit is fully developed, but when the long distances that separate the Colleges arc taken into account, tho enthusiasm with which the tournaments are carried out must be taken as the best possible evidence that a broader and more wholesomo outlookhas opened in academic circles. All of the young people who will have gathered _ for the impending tournament will in time take their places as working citizens, and it will be beneficial to them and to the circles in which they will move that they will have had their minds cleared of the provincial prejudices that still, unfortunately, set cities and districts by the ears. But it is for their groat value to the University itself that tho keen and friendly contests between the Colleges are most worthy of support. From time to time wo have noted the working of forces hostile to the University idea. In an age of pulling-down and vulgarising in the name of progress and democracy the University could not hope to escape the attention of the "reformer." The occasional proposals to widen the scope of University teaching far beyond reasonable bounds and the anxiety of some of the University Senators to dispense with examinations are examples of the kind of unwise "reform" that threatens the University. Nothing could better assist the movement to convert the University into an association of large Technical Colleges full of hustling certificate-hunters than the absence of such a University spirit as is being fostered hy the tournaments. The best of University life is not in its degrees and the knowledge that men and women seek in it: the University's highest funcis to encourage a love of learning for its own sake and to bring its children to realise that money is not the only coin in life, and noisy energy not the soundest evidence of real vitality. By making their membership of the University a vivid fact to the students the annual tournament is doing fine work. So long as tho scattered students are thus annually brought into contact with each other, so long will there be reason to hope that the University tradition is safe from decay.