OTAGO UNIVERSITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22518, 12 March 1935, Page 7

OTAGO UNIVERSITY

OPENING OF CLASSES ADDRESS BY DR NEWLANDS The University year for 1935 was opened in Allen Hall yesterday morning, when there was a large attendance of students of the various faculties. The chairman of the Professorial Board (Dr D. W. Carmalt Jones) presided, and associated with him on the platform were members of the teaching staff of the University. Introducing Dr W. Newlands, who delivered the inaugural address, the chairman said the occasions were rare when they were able to assemble in one body. Competition among the various faculties was the salt of university life, but he liked to think that the brand of the University was upon them all, and that that brand was an honourable one; " Many among you," said Mr Newlands addressing the students, " are here f,or the first time, looking forward with eagerness and perhaps a littie anxiety to this new experience—the entrance upon what is to prove the most interesting and enjoyable period of your whole life —new friendships, new freedom, new ideals (or opportunities for their attempted realisation), new vistas of future mental and moral development, and in increasing measure new responsibilities. You are now members of a community in which each one has a citizen's duty and the privileges of a most delightful society in work and in recreation. TRUE AND BROAD CULTURE. " The central structure of any university is its arts and science faculty, by whose quality it must be judged to stand or fall; and clustered round this core are grouped the numerous special schools —mining and engineering, medicine and dentistry, law and commerce, education and music, and, newest of all here, home science. To those entering these schools may I appeal to remember that they are all university students, and to strive after true and broad culture as well as special training? Learn your own job certainly, but narrow specialism has its detects and dangers. If you cannot find time to take a course in English at least, try to attain reasonable efficiency in that wonderful instrument of expression, our English language. If only for the sordid object of gaining a few extra marks in an examination, say, in a paper ,on history, you will find the command of clear, correct English very profitable in keeping the examiner in good humour. Reports from examiners, both New Zealand and overseas, make frequent reference to otherwise good papers marred by slovenly and incorrect English. A WELL-INFORMED MIND. " Having chosen your vocation, you have, most of you, come to fit yourselves for it by the necessary course of study and the prescribed teste, but while working toward that objective you will find that there is much to receive, and to give, beyond what the classroom and the laboratory offer. The man who thinks to equip himself mentally by merely absorbing information there is as much astray as he who hopes to train his muscles by reading a manual of physical culture. Besides, the man who knows nothing but what is of use to him as a means'to a living is likely to be a dull fellow, even to himself. "It is true that, outside our special training for our vocation, the things around us are too numerous to know much of many of them, and we shall be wise to choose according to our tastes and proclivities, but a well-informed mind is a priceless possession in every walk of life. A revered professor ot my student days used to warn us against 'frivolous reading,' and advised us against looking at more than one daily paperhe did not say which—but I think even he would have shied at the example ot the student here who did not know that the armistice of November 11, 1918. had been signed because he was occupied wit i his November degree examinations. Such total immersion in your studies is neither commendable nor profitable. OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. After dealing with some aspects of university life in their relation to lite as a whole, Dr Newlands continued: "Bear with me if here I intercalate one fragment of negative advice, perhaps superfluous for all but a few. Do not take yourselves or your comrades too •seriously, even when writing to the Critic. ' What you are bursting to express may appear to you quite right, and vour elders here, antediluvian fossils, asking for the 'dynamite'; but the point of view may be different, that is all. ' The moral axioms accepted as a child, questioned as a youth, disputed as a young man, doubted in middle age, are recognised as essentially true and everlasting as the circle nearly closes.' Of course, it was an old chap who said that, but he was probably an ardent rebel in his day, and only later came to realise that labelline a belief or an utterance as a platitude does not impair its validity, , UNIVERSITY FRIENDSHIPS. "If I have risked wearying you with duties and loyalties, I would plead that the wire rewards are 'my justification, and of these one of the greatest is friendship. College friendships are among the great joys of life. It was a delight last week to watch the meeting of old college chums at the Medical Conference, and to preside at the conference dinner of the younger section. The joys were certainly doubled, and I do not think there were any griefs to halve. Do you recall the lines of Walter C. Smith, of St. Andrew's? We had been gathered from cot and grange, * From the moorland farm and the terriced street, Brought together by chances strange And knit together by friendship sweet. Not in the sunshine, not in the rain, Not in the night of the stars untold Shall we ever all meet again, Or be as we were in the days of old. But as ships cross and more cheerily go, Having changed tidings upon the sea, So I am the richer by them, I know. And they are not poorer, I trust, by me. " Is not that a splendid tribute to the days that, for you, are not ' days of old "! Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to welcome you to the beginning, or the renewal, of your student life at Otago University." In conveying to Dr Newlands the thanks of the gathering for his address, the chairman referred to the brief nature of Dr Newland's remarks —the inaugural ceremony occupied about 20 minutes — and commented that '"brevity was the soul of wit."