STUDENTS GO “GUNNING"

Evening Star, Issue 22336, 12 May 1936, Page 12

STUDENTS GO “GUNNING"

CANNON REMOVED FROM OVAL I IS AGGEPTAHCE A CAPPING JOKE? The first of Dunedin’s much-discussed guns under banishment from the city’s reserves was removed from the Oval today by the students of Knox College. It was the smaller of the two guns by the monument, the rusty brakes of the big gun defying the far from puny efforts of the sledge hammer wieldors. Before noon about CO students, garbed in the dress of carnival and the bedroom, assembled at the Oval to assist in the heavy removal operations. A rubber-tyred tractor was backed on to the lawn, and a gang took turns with the sledge hammer at removing the shackles and brakes of the small gun. It was quickly removed to

the roadway, but the students found the bigger gun a tougher proposition. The swingers of the hammer toiled in vain, and operations were abandoned for the time being when the hammer broke. Headed by the motley musicians of a very brassy and blaring band, the tractor moved off from the Oval at noon with cheering students mounted on the cannon and on the attached cart. The gun lumbered along the byways of the city to Knox College, where the “ gift ” of the gun was to have been made to the master (Dr E. N. Merrington) at lunch hour, the mischicviousness of foisting the armament piece on to the college, with its large pacifist element, appealing to the more militant members of the Students’ Association. The City Council has succeeded in ridding itself of the guns by makng a gift of them to the students, provided that a sanctuary is found for them, but whether or not the Knox College Council considers that they will grace the sweeping lawns of the dignified institution is another matter.

T'ho students must have their pranks, and this is their “ silly season.” Hav-

ing been made a gift which it is most unlikely they will be allowed to accept —at least so far as keeping the guns on college ground—they will probably be in a dilemma as to how to pass on the cumbersome and useless ordnance. It would seem that they have had a joke at the expense of the City Council. If the college council will not give its approval to the guns lumbering the lawns, the students will have to haul their one piece of antiquated destructive machinery out on to the road, presenting the City Council with another problem, or return it to the Oval. Possession is nine points of the law, and having been made_ a gift of the gun, under certain conditions, which, in their carnival mood, they have probably accepted with insincerity, the students might feel that the conditions could not be more honestly fulfilled than by returning it from whence it was taken to-day by hauling it back to the Oval to-morrow as part of their burlesque on the Abyssinian campaign. That would bo a climax to what appears to be a big joke which the students have perpetrated on the grave and meek City Fathers and the austere college council.