CONDUCT AT COLLEGE DANCES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 226, 20 June 1936, Page 8

CONDUCT AT COLLEGE DANCES

General Level “Considerably Higher” Than Outside

STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION DEFENDS ITS POSITION

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —My executive desires to refute the general impression conveyed by your article headed “Conduct of Student Dances” and, worse still, by your poster displayed about the streets today.

You state “a commissionaire has been appointed to attend the gatherings and pay particular attention to what goes on in motor-cars parked in the college grounds.” Probably this means to a reading public uninformed on university matters that our dances are nothing more than drunken orgies, with even worse “going on in motor-cars, ’ as you put it. We would point out that there are 800" students at the college, drawn from all classes of the community in and about Wellington, who with very few exceptions are decent, clean-minded citizens who resent very strongly these unwarranted imputations concerning their morals. If drinking has occurred at dances it has been to a much smaller extent, and the general level of conduct has l»een considerably higher than that met with at the majority of non-unlversity dances, the patrons of which would resent most strongly the imputations we have now had thrust upon us. As far ag we know, the appointment of the commissionaire arose out of the functions attending the inter-university tournament at Raster; and while we do not desire to avoid any censure which may justifiably be levelled at students of this college, we would point out that it was an abnormal time when students of Victoria College were in a minority at the dances held. We have never denied the right of outsiders to attend our dances, but we feel we have suffered through extending this privilege. People who criticise the dances, however, should attend them before forming a definite opinion. We feel confident that having placed themselves in a position to form a really true estimate of the circumstances, the opinion formed will lie vastly different from that which they must have gained from reading your article. We feel also that we would then be left in undisturbed enjoyment of our dances and that we would also be spared your own unwelcome intrusions into pur domestic matters. With regard to your quotation from “Smad,” we have only this to say: that you have taken a number of sentences from an admittedly humorous article of some length out of their context and used them to a most unfair and damning effect. My executive would like to add that we feel we have remained silent for long enough under the persecution of jour paper, and we wish the public of Wellington to know the true facts and judge just how wide of the mark you are.—l am, etc.,

A. MeGHIE, Hon. Secretary, V.U.C. Students’

Association. Victoria University College, June 19.