SENIOR WRANGLER.

Observer, Volume XXXVI, Issue 49, 12 August 1916, Page 3

SENIOR WRANGLER.

people more or less interested who want the Metropolitan Ground and Government House.- On the other hand, there is a body of people who want a University College. The peopie for whom the University College may be ultimately built fere not using a college now. Ihe people for whom the University College may be built are at present more interested in marbles and lollies. A University College isn't, going to be built at Mount Eden in order to inconvenience Jack Johns of a local law office who wants, a college two minutes from the office, but for future Aucklanders who don't know where the centre of this city will be in 25 years*' time.

And a Site

The rather pathetic persons who call on us sail to prevent the destruction of Auckland Government House because of its historic associations, conveniently forget that the said House is already practically destroyed, and that the new patches won't be more historic than the Epsom tram barns. They forget, too, that the historic building is generally empty, and thiat a University College won't be kept in order that several people may live in it once a year. They forget that Wellington Govewiment House was historic likewise, that His Excellency of the moment removed, from it Avhen Parliamentary House was partly destroyed, and went to reside in a perfectly unhistoric weatherboard house built on the site of a mental hospital! This paper doesn't care twopence where a University College is built as. long as it is built, and it hasn't much admiration for the student who .wants his. education brought to his office door. The student, for instance, doesn't live in Queen Street, even though he may work in that delectable thoroughfare, and we have known students who bore up under the fearful physical strain of riding in a oar all the way from the far end of Remuera into Queen Street to attend a picture show. The young sufferers who can't go to Mount Eden to attend lectures have our sinoerest pity. May they never have to carry a 60 lb. pack and a rifle and 150 rounds 20 miles a day.

Some of these students will unhappily suffer either way. If the University College is planted on the sweetly historic site which is occupied nearly once a year, the Pale perseverer who lives at Three Kings may faint and fall by the way before he gets his evening dose of learning. If the atrocious Government which insists, on giving a site away at Mount Eden would but think of the young sufferer who risks the peril of sea and land to go from Devonport to Mount Eden it will surely build a college on wheels, or supply professors with aeroplanes. Injustice is going to be done anyhow, and Auckland never will submit to injustice. If Government House site is used by hundreds of people-daily instead, of by a few people once a veai>, injustice will be done. If a college is built at. Mount Eden on stony ground a student might stub his toe against a volcanic rock, and that wouldn't do. You cian see the disadvantages of rock if you look, at the Grammar School, which we would remark is one of the finest schools on one of the finest sites in the Empire, if we didn't know the university wranglers insisted on the unsuitability of the place for a college.

A curious phase of this dreadful site controversy is that it has resolved itself mostly into a question of dirt and rock, bricks, mortar and position. The educational aspect is the last to be considered, and there is not, as a matter of fact, a strong public opinion in Auckland that education matters. The reason? Well, people without education have been able to achieve the largest incomes in this city, mostly by barter; —that is, by the. exercise of primitive instincts. In the future. New Zealand may have to fall into line with countries in which progress depends on scientific education, and by the extension of our university system we may yet. make it . unnecessary for

IF the honour of "senior wrangler" had not been abolished, it would be difficult to allocate the distinction in Auckland. A couple of newspaper editors, members of the Professorial Board, and any number of students, would be equally entitled to the "blue." To suggest any site whatever in Auckland for a' university college is to court a flood of angry discussion, told no war, no political situation, ho grave international crisis can spur either local daily paper to such wild ink challenges as this, question. On the one hand, there is a body of

young New Zealanders. with original talents to "clear out." The need in -Auckland is not the need of a certain site, but the need of extended education obtainable in a spacious University College. It won't handicap the genius of any coming inventor, or scientist, or originator to make him even walk to lectures over two miles of roads, and it doesn't matter twopence whether the college is built on rock or loam, as long as it IS built. Perhaps it does matter after all. If the wranglers really built a college instead of wrangling about it, the occupation of a large number of estimable cranks would be gone. ~.