UNOFFICIAL CAPPING

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 138, 15 June 1927, Page 8

UNOFFICIAL CAPPING

AUCKLAND CEREMONY

NOT A DEFIANT SPIRIT

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Pest.")

AUCKLAND, This Day. "We feel that some explanation ii due for our appearance here to-nighfc Our action in holding an unofficial capping ceremony is not:in a spirit of defiance, but rather because it is .due to the year's graduates to have B'dme honour shown them," said Mr. D. H. Steen, president of the Auckland University; Students' Association at the crowded Town Hall gathering last night in aid of the city mission, for which £100 wa» raised.

"The new University. Act has mad* no provision for the conferring of degrees in public, and the most the col> lege authorities could have done waa to have" held a ceremony such as this. It almost seems that the new Act aim* at the elimination of all. those little for malities which mean so much to university life, and is tending to make th« university merely a machinery for, educating and conferring degrees by post upon students who need not even a<v tend lectures. Such an action is going far past the university ideals, and on* own College Council has acted verjr drastically in refusing to honour it* graduates.

"It was publicly stated that thi« was done as a punishment, for th« misbehaviour of its students in public, but the depriving of a capping ceremony from one hundred graduates, not one of whom had any part in the action. condemned, seems a harsh retribution. Indeed, every effort had been made to apprehend those responsible for the dia< turbance at the students' debate at Easter, but without success."