UNOFFICIAL “CAPPING”

Evening Star, Issue 19583, 15 June 1927, Page 6

UNOFFICIAL “CAPPING”

AN AUCKLAND FUNCTION

STUDENTS CONDEMN COUNCIL'S HARSHNESS

[Special to tub * Sxi«. r J

AUCKLAND, June 15. “Wc feel that some explanation i* due for our appearance here tonight. Our action in holding an unofficial capping ceremony is not in the spirit of defiance, but rather because it is due to the year’s graduates to have soma honor shown them.” So said Mr D. 11. Steen, president of the Auckland University Students Association at a crowded Town Hall fathering last night in aid of the Lity Slission, for which £IOO was raised. “Tho new University Act has made no provision for publicly conferring d©* (Trees, and the most this college s authorities could have done was a ceremony such as this. It almost that the new Act aims at the eliminaI ion of all those little formalities which mean so much to ’Varsity life, and it tending to make the ’Varsity merely machinery for educating and conferring decrees by post upon students, who need not even attend lectures. Such action is going far past ’Varsity ideals, and our own college council has acted very drastically in refusing to honor its ‘graduates. It was publicly stated that this was done as punishment for the misbehavior of its students in public, but depriving of a capping ceremony hundreds of graduates, not ono of whom had any part in the action condemned, seems harsh retribution indeed. Every effort was made to apprehend those responsible for the disturbance at the students’ debate at Easter, but without success.”