Salient 12, 2013 - The Student

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Monday 3rd June 2013

Victoria University of Wellington Student Magazine

Volume 76 Issue 12

free!

THE

STUDENT ISSUE FEATURES INCLUDE News  Student Forum News Feature  State of the Nation News Feature  A Brief History of the Univers-ity  Great Expectations  Under Pressure  Town through Sober Eyes  Study Tips  Oslo Attacks Feature  Boston Bombings Feature  A Conversation About Happiness  How To Have a One Night Stand  You Must Be Ned Stark's Bastard  Double Page Dinocop  Fear and Loathing in Nelson  Salient's Cheap Holiday Thrills  Secret Diary  Weekly Rant  Full page Quiz  Things That Go Bump in the Night  Fixing Your Life (Because Ours Are Written Off)  Laying Down The Law  Mad Science  Hoopin' and Hollerin'  Secret Diary of Officious First Year  The Sweet Scoop  Books  Visual Arts  Theatre  Games  Film  Puzzles

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CLASS OF 2013 Editors: Stella Blake-Kelly & Molly McCarthy editor@salient.org.nz Designer: Laura Burns designer@salient.org.nz News Editor: Chris McIntyre news@salient.org.nz Chief Reporter: Phillipa Webb News Interns: Sophie Boot & Alex Lewin Arts Editor: Philip McSweeney arts@salient.org.nz Film Editor: Gerald Lee Books Editor: Alexandra Hollis Visual Arts Editor: Sharon Lam Music Editor: Philip McSweeney Theatre Editor: Diana Russell Games Editor: Patrick Lindsay Feature Writers: Henry Cooke & Patrick Hunn Chief Sub-editor & Uploader: Nick Fargher Distribution Specialist: Joanna Judge Contributors David Alsop, Hilary Beattie, Gabrielle Beran, Seymour Butts, Sonya Clark, Caitlin Craigie, Nick Cross, Chloe Davies, Simon Dennis, Penny Gault, Freddie Hayek, Hector and Janet, Ashleigh Hume, Russ Kale, Lux Lisbon, Rory McCourt, Carla Marks, Ollie Neas, Lydia Nobbs,Officious First-Year, Cam Price, Mereana Rademakers, Carlo Salizzo, Katie Smith, Janne Song, Wilbur Townsend, Julia Wells.

Contributor of the Week: Gerald Lee, thanks for everything! :) Advertising

E I L N A T S 1938

"

An Organ of Student Opinion Since 1938

"A woman brushes very close to me as she walks past, her hand touching my crotch for no discernable reason."

"

Contact: Ali Allen Phone: 04 463 6982 Email: sales@vuwsa.org.nz

—Town Through Sober Eyes, page 31

Contact Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University P.O. Box 600. Wellington Phone: 04 463 6766 Email: editor@salient.org.nz Website: salient.org.nz Twitter: @salientmagazine Facebook: facebook.com/salientmagazine About us Salient is produced by independent student journalists, employed by, but editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of, syndicated and supported by the Aoteroa Student Press Association (ASPA). Salient is funded by Victoria Univeristy of Wellington students, through the Student Services Levy. It is printed by APN Print of Hastings. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of ASPA, VUWSA, APN Print, Naked Bus, Ian McKinnon, but we of Salient are proud of our beliefs and take full responsibility for them.

Other Subscriptions: Too lazy to walk to uni to pick up a copy of your favourite mag? We can post them out to you for a nominal fee. $40 for Vic Students. $55 for everyone else.

Please send and email containing your contact details with ‘subscription’ in the subject line to editor@salient.org.nz This issue is dedicated to: You, the students

CONTENTS Weekly Content: 3. Editorial 4.

VUWSA 6. News 14. Politics 16.

Campus Digest Features: 14.

Student Forum

News Feature 16.

State of the Nation

News Feature 22.

A Brief History of

the Univers-ity 25.

Great Expectations 28.

Under Pressure 31. Town Through

Sober Eyes 34.

Study Tips 36.

Oslo Attacks

39.

Boston Bombings 42.

A Conversation

About Happiness 44. How To Have a One

Night Stand 46.

You Must Be Ned

Stark's Bastard 48. Dinocop 50. Fear and Loathing

in Nelson 52.

Salient's Cheap Holiday Thrills Columns: 53.

Secret Diary 54.

Weekly Rant 55. Quiz 56. Things That Go

Bump in the Night 57. Fixing Your Life

(Because Ours Are

Written Off) 58.

Laying Down The

Law

Mad Science 59. Hoopin' and Hollerin'

Secret Diary of

Officious First Year 60. The Sweet Scoop Arts: 61. Books 62.

Visual Arts 63. Theatre 64. Games 65. Film Etc: 66. Puzzles 68. Letters 70. Notices 71. VBC

Gig Guide

 editorial

Editorial demand for procrastination material your brain will soon crave.

we'll get there, one day YOU DID IT! First years, welcome to the end of your very first trimester.

Everyone else, kia ora. You know the drill: cram and you’ll probably do okay. But if you’re anything like us, you’ll get towards the end of your degree and wish your transcript didn’t read L.A.Z.Y./should have applied myself better/wonder how much better it would look if Joyce put interest on your loan/that B- can be attributed to the time I got a boyfriend just before exams.

So before you bury yourself in some new TV series, whip out a calculator take 12 per cent off your realistic graduate income—let’s say

$37,000—and divide your student loan by that.

Those digits in front of you are how many years it will take you to pay that bad boy off. More than you thought, eh?

You’d think the fact that you are taking on huge amounts of debt would incentivise you to make the most of your time at university. But the reality for most of us is that we don’t. Our loans, just like that essay we have to do, that exam we should study for, or that CV we should tidy-up, are simply jobs for tomorrow. Let’s face it: we’ve got issues.

So here—to take your mind off those big issues—is your jumbo-sized Salient Student Issue to help see you through the break and extra

Take it from us, (fifth years who are still wondering if they’ll ever graduate, telling their parents that editing Salient looks just as, if not more impressive than a completed degree), you’re not going to remember most of the papers that you’ve done. But you will remember the friends you’ve made, and that babe from your tutorial, and the experiences you have had. So, at risk of sounding like your parents, or an overbearing careers adviser, make the most of your time here, and the most of your time as a student. This doesn’t mean chaining yourself to the flashy new facilities in the Reading Room 24/7, but appreciating that although at times it can be hard, there’s a lot to be said for student life.

Sure, with the way things are going, many of us won’t have a guaranteed source of income that reflects our higher education once we graduate, but that’s a problem for tomorrow. While you’re at University, you can enjoy:  access to a source of income granted just for being you: You’re a student  a fail-safe excuse for having poor timemanagement: You’re a student  an acceptance, nay, expectation, that you will be offensive and indecent: You’re a student  a reason to talk to any number of babes in and around campus: You’re a student So get to know your mind, try to get amongst the best, but at the end of the day, don’t stress out too much. After all, you can always take STAT193 again next trimester.

Molly & Stella top ten Types of Students carlo salizzo @louderthoughts

10.

Overheard@Vic Commenters 9.

VUWSA hacks

5.

Eternal Postgrads

4.

Bros Transitioning to Hipster

8.

Puffer-jackets-with tights

3.

Rand-Dawkins Worshippers

7 .

The Chronically Ironic

2.

Overbridge Folk

1.

People Who Call It ‘The Salient’

6.

Stealth Fundamentalists

Photographs on cover sourced from Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records

VUWSA 

YOUR STUDENTS’

ASSOCIATION

your students' association

THE McCOURT REPORT VUWSA President Rory McCourt

You can’t do everything. You can’t please everyone. You can’t hug every cat. Few things in this life are certain. What is certain are these fundamental truths. Allow me to impart some advice for students, laypeople and all whose eyes shall grace this page, student presidents included: life is about priorities. It’s about determining which tasks, goals and people are important, and doing your best to complete/achieve/support/cuddle them. Stuff gets complicated when you (or others) decide other things are also important, and must too be your focus. Things start to slip, and original goals fall by the wayside when you try to please everybody.

Learning to let go is crucial to getting through life, and through Uni. Lobsters know this. It is said that they are ‘biologically immortal’.

Supposedly, they get more fertile with age, and add new muscle cells at each molt. Aside from getting eaten, attacked or falling off a sea cliff, lobsters are said to live forever (or up to 50 years). Do you think these cray crustaceans have the emotional energy to worry about every fuck-up, let-down or passive-aggressive text? Hardly. Ain’t nobody got time for that. If that was the case, then who wants to live forever?

Instead, we, lobsters included, have to go back to those priorities. In the heat of the moment, every view can seem like it matters, like it’s the most important and life will end if you don’t follow that person’s advice. If you’re in a tough place, with tough decisions to be made, you’re not going to be popular with everyone. Not everyone will like you, or share those priorities. Accept that. Try to share your vision with them, but accept that they have their own pressures.

If you’re new to uni, then you might have learnt this lesson the hard way: spending too much time hungover to get good grades on your assignments, or getting distracted by a certain someone, or something (YouTube cat videos... Amirite?). If you’re like me, family and friends are really important (see picture). Pleasing them and building those relationships might mean going broke travelling home, or refusing to cancel that hang-out despite a shit-tonne of work you need to get through. If you’re a super-busy person, or a chronic overachiever, then prioritising can be your own worst enemy.

This is especially the case when you’re in a relationship with someone at a different place in their life. Different priorities, different vision of the relationship. Or it can be the case if you’re a student association, trying to retain partnership with a university while achieving a plethora of other goals and relationships.

Management sometimes has different priorities from us as students, and a different vision about what VUWSA should be doing. That’s okay, we need to learn to accept that difference –and keep remembering what our priorities are, solely in the service of students. No one else has those priorities.

Here’s a tip: if everything is important, then nothing can be. Make time for the most important things, and remind yourself that you can’t do everything.

I think in my job as President, I will get criticised for many things, and many of these criticisms will be fair cop. The one thing I hope, in time, I get acknowledged for is having the right priorities: standing up for student voice, making Vic a more vibrant place and getting a better deal for students. Even within these priorities, choices have to be made. Tough choices. Right now, your Student Exec is going through a budget process, experiencing making those choices first-hand. Across New Zealand, students’ associations are in dire financial straits, with service contracts with our universities failing to cover all costs. VUWSA is no different, and something has to go. Not all of our decisions will be popular, but it will be remembering our priorities that get us through.

This is something I find I have to remind myself everyday. Being in a position like the one I’m in, I’m not short on advice or, er... direction. Everyone wants me, and VUWSA, to head in their direction, support their initiative, or fund their hobby horse.

Constant demand and criticism can be difficult, but the key thing to remember is that you can’t please everyone. Priorities have to be set, and choices have to be made. There’s just no way around it, so choose those people wisely.

Remembering your priorities is essential, especially on bad days. A healthy dose of perspective is also helpful. Say your special someone dumps you over Snapchat, or you get a C for an important essay.

Ask yourself: “will this really matter in a year’s time? Ten years?”

Often the answer is, in the voice of Consuela, the cleaning lady off Family Guy, “No”. That’s because the small things are insignificant with the passing of time.

4

Because you can’t hug every cat.

PS Good luck for exams. Prioritise that study, and pop along to our Stress-Free Study Week free breakfasts every morning at Kelburn, Pip and Te Aro. Better living everyone.

Rory xo

 VUWSA

NGAI TAUIRA

Vice-President (Academic)

By Sonya Clark THREE HANDY THINGS TO KNOW DURING EXAMS In Week 12 of a trimester long gone, a sleep-deprived Sonya crashed into an open door as she left the lecture theatre. My lecturer remarked that he can always tell when students are snowed under with final assessments because their spatial awareness is shot, hence the bumping and crashing. That’s right, folks. These next few weeks aren’t going to be very fun.

Aside from VUWSA’s Stress-Free Study Week (free breakfasts and lunches every day from 10-14 June, at Kelburn, Pipitea and Te Aro), good sleep patterns, exercise and all the usual (very good) advice for keeping yourself sane in this time, here are three pieces of university policy that may be useful: Heard of an aegrotat pass? Impaired performance? Compensation pass? So you’re sick, or something in your life has seriously gone wrong, and you’re at serious risk of failing your exams, final assessments, or the whole course. The best thing to do is run down to Student Health and Student Counselling. If your issue is “exam-related”, they’ll fit you in pronto. They can then vouch to the Uni for how your circumstances are affecting you, getting you on the way to completing an aegrotatpass or compensation-pass application. For more information on these processes, Google ‘VUW Assessment Handbook 2009’ and scroll to page 23, or head to your Faculty Office. But don’t delay in seeking help if you’re worried about your health affecting your exams.

Now you’ve done your last exam, slept for 14 hours and had a couple of drinks to celebrate. Then comes the awful time of logging into myVictoria every day in dread of what your final marks are.

But when WILL they be up? The Assessment Handbook (page 30) says that all Tri-1 results “must be entered” by 10 July—the Wednesday before Uni starts back. Phew. If your grades aren’t up by this date, email me at avp@vuwsa.org.nz and I’ll chase up where your A+s have disappeared to, while you... Apply to get your exam papers back! For free!

Not enough people know you can do this. Rock up to the Faculty Office and look for the ‘Application for Return of Examination Script’ form. You can ask for your Tri-1 exam scripts back right up until 31 August. To get your original paper back is free, but a photocopy costs $11. In my experience, a photocopy takes just as long as the original to get back. Remember, if you have ANY queries about your final grade or marking and want your exam scripts reconsidered, start the process as soon as you can.

Over and out, Sonya.

Tēnā koutou katoa. I te tuatahi me mihi ka tika ki a koutou e pūrangiaho ana ki ēnei kupu Māori ōku, ko koutou e whakatairanga ake i tō tātou reo rangatira, tēnei ka mihi ake.

I have recently been elected Tumuaki or President of Ngāi Tauira – the Māori Students’ Association here at Vic. I look forward to the journey this year with the other aesthetically pleasing members of our exec, both old and new.

In fact, there are many new and beautiful faces in the team this year, including Paul Edwards (Tūmuaki tuarua – Mātauranga), Mikaia Leach (Tikanga/Reo), Hinemihiata Lardelli (Hākinakina), Stace Wirihana (Media), and Te Aue Addison-Te Whare (Social Events). There are students who have decided to rejoin us, and are equally as attractive; Elijah Pue (as Treasurer) and Rueben Radford (undergraduate). Also joining us is the representative from Ngā Rangahautira, Manaaki Terekia, and from Ngā Taura Ūmanga; Anaru Toia. No doubt the enthusiasm of the new members and experience of the previous members will prove to be invaluable to us all this year.

Kāti hei whakakapi ake, tēnei ka mihi ki ngā āpiha o Ngāi Tauira i tū i ngā tau kua pahure. Ko kōutou i tū ki te ihu o te waka, ā, i okea ururoatia kia puta ngā hua mō ngā tauira Māori o te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. Ka nui ngā kupu whakamihi ki a kōutou. Kei raro.

Nāku iti noa, Hine Te Ariki Parata-Walker.

PASIFIKA STUDENTS' COUNCIL Welcome to the last week of Trimester One. “Oceania is taking the plunge and living your dream!” Viliame Lewenilovo Remember Study Wananga next week: MON 10 JUNE

KK202

KK203

9.30-11 am 11 am-12.30 pm 12.30-2 pm 2-3.30 pm 3.30-5 pm

FCOM111 TOUR101 COML203 MARK101

PSYC121 CLAS101 CLAS105 SAMO101 SOSC111

TUES 11 JUNE

KK202

KK203

9.30-11 am 11 am-12.30 pm 12.30-2 pm 2-3.30 pm 3.30-5 pm

ACCY111 ACCY130 MGMT101 QUAN102

CRIM211 INTP113 POLS112 ANTH101 ENGL111

WEDS 12 JUNE

KK202

KK203

9.30-11 am 11 am-12.30 pm 12.30-2 pm 2-3.30 pm 3.30-5 pm

TOUR104 ECON130 PASI101 COML204 PUBL/SPOL113

MAOR122 MAOR123 PHIL105 PHIL107 PHIL123

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NEWS

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

NEWs 

Become a student of the news. Send tips, goss, and my assignments that you've done for me to news@salient.org.nz.

NO CLEAN RECORD

Cleaners strangle the life out of each other, cleaning company’s reputation sophie boot

Fresh from allegations of sexual assault, the University’s contracted cleaning company OCS is facing further strife, following an incident where one cleaner strangled another in a University bathroom.

Contracts Manager for Facilities Management André Kilian stated that OCS, the cleaning company, “advised the University of an incident involving two of its cleaning staff on Friday 24 May”, and that two people involved in the incident have not returned to Victoria University campuses since that date. However, the incident was reported on the Overheard @ Vic Facebook page on Thursday 23 May, one day before the cleaning company’s account.

“Overheard … an employee being interviewed about how one of the cleaners tried to strangle someone this morning,” a student posted.

“There was a lady who from what I gathered was a cleaner … and a more senior looking staff member interviewing her quietly and from what I could hear they were talking about an altercation between a cleaner and another female this morning in one of the bathrooms where someone was being strangled.”

us these are being followed.”

Despite two serious incidents involving cleaners from the company so far, Kilian said it was “too soon to comment on whether the University will renew the contract in 2016”.

Kilian said that Victoria is “committed to providing a safe environment for [Victoria] staff and students”, and was satisfied that they were doing so.

While Salient was advised that the cleaning company had “removed [the cleaner who sexually harassed students at Cumberland] from cleaning duties at all Victoria residential halls and instructed [him] not to return to any University sites”, one of the women who reported the cleaner’s harassment said that she had seen him working around the Kelburn campus after he had been removed from Cumberland.

“Our understanding is that the cleaning company has appropriate processes in place to deal with incidents of this kind and has assured

OCS was contracted by Victoria from December 2012 for three years. They had not released a statement by the timeSalient went to print.

As recently reported by Salient, a cleaner who worked at Cumberland Hall of Residence had been banned from the University after watching multiple students shower through a gap in a wall, and attempting to gain access to their rooms.

NZQA puts the heaters on the cheaters Assignment4U Not 4 U N E More Sophie Boot

Criminal charges will be laid against the company accused of selling essays to international students, NZQA has indicated, after the website was shut down last week.

NZQA appeared at a hearing in the Auckland High Court last Wednesday, and were successful in gaining an interim injunction against Ateama Limited, as well as the directors of the company, Pengju Chen and Steven Quan Li. Ateama Limited runs assignment4u.com, the cheating service uncovered by media in May. Dr Karen Poutasi, CEO of the qualifications authority, said the application for an interim injunction was aimed at stopping the service from continuing.

6

“We want an injunction against their continuing to offer these cheating services. “[An injunction would] restrict… the Assignment4u website and individuals involved in it from continuing conduct that’s in breach of the Education Act,” said Poutasi.

Lawyers for the men told the court the company had effectively ceased trading as the website had been taken down on Monday, following a police raid the previous Friday. The injunction has been postponed until September.

In 2011, NZQA was granted the power to prosecute anyone advertising or providing cheating services, but this is the first instance

where it has attempted to use this ability.

Anna Longdill, a lawyer for NZQA, has said the criminal investigation into the scandal is continuing, and criminal charges are likely.

Police have seized ten computers and a room full of files from the company.

Poutasi said that it is “yet to be determined” how NZQA would deal with students found to have cheated by buying assignments from Assignment4u.

The extent to which the service was used by Victoria students is still unknown.

 NEWS

VUW Finally Shares Views “I’m not angry, just disappointed.”

Stella Blake-Kelly

Victoria’s Dumbledore, Chancellor Ian McKinnon, has said he is “very disappointed” to have only one of the two student seats filled on University Council, following the failure of the Forum to reach quorum and elect a Chair this year.

As reported last week, management decided to give up on the Forum as it became clear VUWSA wouldn’t rejoin and no quorum would be met.

In a statement to Salient, McKinnon said he was “most concerned how this situation [had] arisen.”

“The Student forum was established as a body that through its structure would be

representative of all students—this was a genuine attempt by senior management, endorsed by Council, to adhere to the legal requirements under the Act while ensuring student representation,” he said.

“The students on the Council in 2012 did express some reservations but recognised the reasons for its establishment.”

McKinnon believes that an agreement was made between the students on Council in 2012, then VUWSA President Bridie Hood and Student Representative Max Hardy, and the Council that in recognition of those reservations, “the Student Forum would continue in 2013 but at the same time (as a result of Council’s request to management)

there would be a full review of the effectiveness of the [Forum], with all involved parties represented in the review.”

“As per that agreement that review is taking place but, the Student Forum has been unable to continue for reasons that are both surprising and regrettable, ie the agreement has been breached.”

NZUSA last week released the details of an investigation by Public Law firm Chen Palmer querying the legality of Victoria University’s changes to student representation following VSM. Salient will have more detail on the results of the investigation when we return next semester, if you can wait that long...

Protest by Sharon Lam 7

NEWS



‘Fix us, Rory!’ U.S. begs McCourt U.S. of A’s $17 trillion of national debt no barrier to paid trip for VUW.S of A President Alex Lewin

VUWSA President Rory McCourt has been chosen to attend a diplomatic youth exchange programme in the United States.

The prestigious Empowering Youth as Change Agents programme will run for two weeks in early June, and involves stays in New York, Washington and Cleveland. The programme, which is organised and funded by the State Department’s Office of Global Youth Issues, includes 12 young people chosen from around the world.

During the programme, McCourt will be meeting with experts from the private sector, government and academia. McCourt will be representing New Zealand, with other young delegates representing countries from Bangladesh to Swaziland.

McCourt was nominated by US Ambassador to New Zealand David Huebner, who

invited his student advisors to answer what change they would make in the world if they could. Huebner believes exchanges like the Empowering Youth as Change Agents programme to be a “powerful mechanism for connecting and empowering future leaders”.

Huebner stated that although the responses he received were impressive, McCourt’s statement “did stand out” among the other responses. “[Rory will] make excellent use of the opportunity and will return to New Zealand with fresh perspectives, new networks, a better sense of best practices in different countries, and even more confidence and enthusiasm,” Huebner said.

McCourt is excited to be part of the programme, stating that the experience will help him in his day job. As part of the programme, he will hear from Phillip

Robinson, former President of the George Washington University Black Student Union and the wider student association, GWUSA. “I’ll have the chance to see first-hand how youth movements, social enterprises and nonprofits grow and develop, and what lessons we can learn here in New Zealand, particularly for student associations,” he said.

“I'm keen to explore how student associations can broaden their appeal, embrace a diverse student body and respond to a globalised world.”

McCourt will take time after the junket to travel around the States, visitng students' associations along the way.

In McCourt’s 5-week absence, Vice-President (Academic) Sonya Clark will be acting VUWSA President.

A LOAN WAY AWAY The other new arrest development spurs contact with IRD Simon Dennis

Threats from the National Government to overseas borrowers are already having an impact on repayments, with new policy directions making loan repayments imperative.

Recent leaked information from the Inland Revenue Department shows a leap in the number of overseas residents contacting the IRD, looking to set up repayments. A new policy announced in the 2013 Budget puts in place measures that allow the arrest of international borrowers at the border if they have defaulted on their loans, among other actions.

The threshold for arrest has not been set, but Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce has said it would target only the worst offenders.

“The onus is still on the person to make payments, but nobody would find themselves at border control and have not had anyone contact them about their loan."

8

Of the more than $13 billion loaned to students, $520 million of this is in default. More than 80 per cent of the defaulted money is accounted for by defaulters abroad. Overseas borrowers can keep their debt interest-free for six months while abroad, but special dispensation must be sought for any periods longer than that.

Expats living overseas often let the debt build up in the background, but Revenue Minister Peter Dunne believes these changes will amend that.

“It’s something like this that actually jolts them into action,” said Dunne.

Salient spoke to one former Victoria student now living in London, who thought the changes were “probably a step in the right direction”.

“I’m trying to pay mine off as quick as possible anyway, because of the interest. If people

aren’t paying them back, fair enough that the Government’s taking action ‘cause at the end of the day if you signed up for a loan you’ve gotta pay it back.

“It’s not fair to expect someone else picks up the tab for your education,” he said.

The IRD is currently taking legal action against 103 overseas borrowers before they are declared bankrupt, a measure taken with almost 700 loans already. If a borrower is declared bankrupt, the loan is annulled.

Along with the arrest-based impetus, the Budget also includes compulsory repayments based on the size of your loan, as previously reported in Salient.

These changes will come into effect in April 2014.

 NEWS

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE Something beginning with GCSB Lydia Nobbs

Last week, the Wellington Library’s public meeting space packed out to hear prominent New Zealanders’ thoughts on the Government spying on its own people.

Investigative journalist Nicky Hager, former Green MP Keith Locke, and criminal lawyer Michael Bott all spoke about the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the implications of state intelligence and surveillance in New Zealand. OASIS, an awareness-raising group concerned about state surveillance, hosted the panel.

Despite the government agency’s emphasis on secrecy, the GCSB has recently become particularly newsworthy, due to the discovery of illegal spying on New Zealanders at other agencies’ request. Attention was drawn to its activities by the owner of file-sharing service Mega, Kim Dotcom, and also by subsequent changes proposed by the Government to legislation governing the GCSB.

An amendment bill was introduced and given its First Reading under urgency last month.

Minister of Justice Judith Collins said it was necessary to clarify the GCSB’s ability to monitor and intercept New Zealand residents’ communications. The Bill would allow the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders in certain circumstances, and would mean the GSCB can coordinate with the Police, Defence Force, and Security Intelligence Service.

The panellists argued that a surveillance society is not in anyone’s interests. Bott pointed out that while not all surveillance is harmful, the Bill would have a “chilling effect on civil liberties and good governance”.

Hager described the GCSB as “using Cold-War technology to spy on New Zealanders”, and said the mindset of the agency in a post-9/11 world was that “the enemy was within”.

Locke has personal experience of being spied

upon intermittently from 11 years of age.

He argued that New Zealand’s international surveillance is counter to our independence and what most New Zealanders think about peace and social justice.

Submissions to the Intelligence and Security Committee close on Thursday 13 June. Hager urged submitters to request an amendment that the GCSB be required to produce an annual report documenting its surveillance, including numbers of those affected.

Contrary to popular attitudes regarding youth apathy for privacy in a social-media age, Hager believed that most young people have valid concerns about encroachments on their civil liberties. He emphasised that a unifying space was needed for this purpose of protecting such liberties.

OASIS encourages young people who want further information to contact the organisation at oasisfromsurveillance@gmail.com.

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NEWS



Students Get it in the SAC Salient headlines puts the ‘fun’ in ‘funding’ Chris McIntyre

Recently released data shows how many students went to university last year, and exactly how much the Government spent on their tuition costs.

The information was published by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) in late May, and covers enrolment and funding figures under the Student Achievement Component (SAC). SAC funding is available to universities and other tertiary institutions, based on how many students enrol at each.

SAC funding goes towards the direct costs of teaching and learning, and other costs which are related to how many students enrol. The Government decides how much SAC funding is available each year through the Budget. In the 2013 Budget, the SAC received $2.04 billion, up 0.9 per cent from last year. SAC rises are capped,

Government Funding to Victoria in 2012

SAC - $128 million

which means universities effectively have to cap student numbers.

Student numbers are calculated using a measure called Equivalent Full-Time Students (EFTS).

This is the approximate estimate of students if everyone were taking a full-time course; for example, two half-time students (0.5 of a fulltime course each) make one EFTS. The figures show there were 118,715 EFTS in 2012, 619 less than in 2011—a 0.5-per-cent drop.

SAC funding has two components. One is the number of students in each course. The other is the type of course these students are enrolled in. Not all students are the same in the eyes of the TEC, and some EFTS are allocated more money than others. This depends on which courses are taken, with courses like Engineering and Medicine getting more money relative to courses like Art History.

18%

82%

Other - $27 million

118,715 tertiary students go to university

2012 $9416 per student

that's 50.8% of all tertiary students

10 

In a bizarre twist, universities get 50.01 per cent of the funding in equal monthly payments from January to July, and 49.99 per cent in equal monthly payments from July to December. This means that for the first half of the year, Victoria received just $2133 more each month than in the second half of the year.

A spokesperson for the Greens said the party did not think the current SAC model was “particularly good”, in part as it promoted “too much managerialism”. To improve the status quo, the Greens would give universities more control over their own funding, to reflect .

Labour did not respond to questions by the time Salient went to print.

Data can be viewed on the TEC website, tec.govt.nz.

$7652

for each of victoria's 16,787 2012 students ($63 per day of classes)

$117,900,703 went to universities from the sac

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ that's 55% of total sac funding to tertiary institutions

 NEWS

Students invited to take a year off University dangles Master’s bait Chris McIntyre

Students hoping to get degrees quicker are in luck, with one-year Master’s programmes set to become a fixture soon.

Currently, a Master’s programme is generally 240 points. The new proposal would allow 180-point Master’s, or Master’s degrees consisting of an Honours programme plus 60, or 120 points.

The proposal was passed last year by Universities New Zealand (UNZ), and approved by NZQA. UNZ, through its Committee on University Academic Programmes (CUAP) sub-committee, “strongly encouraged” universities to develop shorter Master’s programmes. It is hoped that shorter Master’s degrees will allow New Zealand to remain competitive with other parts of the world, where one-year Master’s programmes have been common for “quite some time”, according to Victoria Assistant ViceChancellor (Academic) David Crabbe.

Masters programmes will be decided by each Faculty; each different Faculties are at differing stages of discussions around what form a shortened Master’s will take, and there is no timeline for when Universitywide programmes will be implemented. Crabbe told Salient that not all Master’s degrees would be affected by the introduction of one-year Master’s, and that each discipline would differ in their approach to the shorter programmes.

“There is a trend to allow for Master’s degrees which represent a professional specialisation in a particular area, building on general critical thinking and communication skills gained from undergraduate study.

These Master’s programmes can often accomplish their purpose through 180 points’ worth of study rather than 240 points.”

Concerns were raised by students’ associations as to the quality of shorter degrees when the proposal was first announced, with then President of NZUSA Max Hardy describing the proposal as “completely inappropriate”. “[It would] undermine the quality of our qualifications to get a quick buck from overseas students wanting a quick degree," he said in 2011.

Crabbe stated that degree quality is dependent on “a number of factors”, not solely based on the length of the degree programme, while current VUWSA Vice-President (Academic) Sonya Clark believes it’s “hard to say whether [one-year Master’s] are a good thing or a bad thing”.

Though each Faculty will have the power to decide what constitutes a Master’s degree, quality will be ensured by several University committees, including the Academic Committee and the Academic Board. The New Zealand-wide CUAP must also approve the qualification.

“While each faculty can decide what kinds of Master’s degrees are useful, they must all meet an internal and national standard,” said Crabbe.

“This ensures reasonable consistency in the quality of the Master’s degrees.”

It is likely that shorter Master’s degrees completed without a thesis will be suffixed with ‘Taught’, while thesis-based Masters will be defined as ‘Research’. Crabbe admits they serve different purposes, but stated each degree is “of equal academic weight”.

Victoria University Writing Courses Upcoming writing courses at the International Institute for Modern Letters: Writing For Children

Eirlys Hunter Trimester 2, Mondays 4—7pm This creative writing workshop allows you to explore different forms of writing for the pre-adolescent child—picture books, short stories and the novel—and will help you begin to develop your own clear voice.

Short Fiction

Pip Adam Trimester 2, Fridays 10am—1pm An intensive introduction to the craft of short fiction, led by an award-winning writer.

The weekly workshops will focus on your writing while also taking you through key short stories from around the world.

Poetry

James Brown Trimester 2, Thursdays 3—6pm An opportunity to work with one of the country’s leading poets, this course uses writing exercises, readings and discussion of work-in-progress to develop your skills.

Creative Nonfiction

Harry Ricketts Trimester 2, Fridays 9.30am—12.30pm In practice, ‘creative nonfiction’ tends to mean memoirs, personal essays, biographical sketches, travel writing and other kinds of prose lifewriting. In this course, students will explore a full range of creative nonfiction possibilities - but will also be able to focus on a particular area of interest.

For more information and application deadlines Email: modernletters@vuw.ac.nz Website: www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters Phone: 04-463 6854

As Honours degrees are often not recognised overseas, it is thought the introduction of one-year Master’s programmes will mean the end of Honours qualifications.  11

NEWS



eye on exec stella blake-kelly

Last week Salient sat through a four hour meeting of the VUWSA Exec (6 pm-10 pm) which was entirely in committee.

This was to be the meeting that they finally passed their budget for the year, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

Seeing as issues of fraud aren’t their steez this decade, you have to wonder why something as simple as an Excel sheet is so difficult. Aside from the Environment and Sustainability Officer Rick-triarchy Zwaan taking pedantry to a whole new level of maths—+2 for accountability -1 for self-awareness = one of us finding a grey hair in a bathroom break—VUWSA is just really quite fucked at the moment. And we won’t be at all surprised if McCourt decides never to return from his upcoming US junket. Here are a few reasons why: 1. VUWSA is being contracted by the University to do some of the things that they have decided should be continued, the negotiations of which take ages and is why there hasn’t been a budget set yet.

2. These ‘negotiations’ don’t seem to be working out too well for most of the contracts, as they’re receiving quite a lot less than what it actually costs for them to provide. This creates an operating deficit, which is eating into their reserves. The only possible reasons that jump to mind are a) management are

just trying to force VUWSA to be more efficient in their service provision (good), b) that this is an intentional strategy by management to make VUWSA bankrupt and die a gradual death (bad), or c) none of this matters because they’re intending to open up the contracts for tendering next year anyway (probably).

3. On top of this, VUWSA is providing some services that the University doesn’t fund, which they are paying for with either their savings or the miniscule amount of revenue they have coming in from their very few revenue generating assets.

4. The “well-intentioned” Student Forum (RIP) really threw the cat amongst the student politician pigeons/ started management’s strategy to ‘divide and conquer’/genuinely tried to give a voice to minority groups. Hours and hours and hours of discussions about how unhappy they are with the current situation, and possibilities for moving forward have been taking place since the Forum started to sink, mainly between VUWSA, Ngai Tauira, Pasifika Students’ Council and the Postgraduate Students’ Association. The PGSA were the only group that wanted to keep the Forum alive—why wouldn’t you support a body that props up your new-found relevancy/power?

this week's

ions

iPredict is a prediction market run

by Victoria University.

Bashir Al Assad to be President of Syria at the end of the year

61%

David Bain to recieve compensation this year

8%

Mark Lundy Appeal to Succeed

31%

Labour to win the next election

43%

Princess Kate's child be to a girl

57%

12 

 NEWS

Cleaners seek pay rise They’ve been doing so well!

Mereana Rademakers

Cleaners at Victoria are imploring the University to become the first living-wage employer in the tertiary-education sector, as they negotiate a new contract.

Representatives belonging to the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) and the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) are negotiating a multi-union collective agreement to raise caretakers’ wages, and consequently lift their minimum pay rates to a living wage of $18.40 an hour. Caretakers are optimistic that such an allowance will be established in their upcoming collective agreement negotiations.

Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh met with the TEU organiser, Nicki Walton, and discussed what would be involved in the University implementing a living wage for all employees.

“Victoria received good publicity with its number-one PBRF rating. For a relatively small financial investment and commitment to support some of its lowest-paid employees and contractors, it could be number one for the living wage too,” said Walton.

“At the moment it needs to look at its caretakers, library assistants and tutors, all of whom have minimum rates below $18.40, as well as its contracting arrangements.”

Caretakers are also interested in aligning

their agreement’s expiry date with the generalstaff collective agreement, with the objective of being included in that agreement next time.

General staff at the University currently have better leave and petrol allowance.

Victoria University told Salient it isn’t responsible for pay rates of cleaners, as the contract is awarded on the basis of a tendered contract price. Contracts Manager for Facilities Management André Kilian said the University is not involved in any pay negotiations.

“The University does not stipulate how many people the successful tenderer employs or the rates of pay for individual cleaners.

“Pay negotiations between the company contracted to provide cleaning services at the University and its staff do not impact on pay rates for staff employed by Victoria University,” said Kilian.

The VUWSA Executive, while supporting the living wage campaign, have not made a decision on whether to support the current negotiations.

The living-wage campaign has gained traction throughout 2013, with The Warehouse planning to implement a living wage, and other bodies including the Auckland City Council looking at living-wage proposals.

LOL NEWS

dictatorship, for some reason. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is providing advice to the military builders of the resort; Kim was educated in Switzerland, hence is North Korea’s pre-eminent ski-resort expert. The hill upon which the resort is being built is 768 m high, and the resort will reportedly have 110 km of track between 40 and 120 m wide. So, while Kim may be an expert on ski resorts, he’s no expert on maths.

CHROFLIS MCLOLNTYRE

WHAT A JERK (OFF) The victim of a practical joke got the last laugh in Columbia, Missouri as the practical joker was arrested by the County Prosecutor. Kaitlyn Booth, 17, changed the name of fellow student Raigan Mastain to ‘Raigan Masturbate’, affecting 720 yearbooks and requiring 12 hours of corrective work from a team placing stickers over Mastain’s new moniker. Booth was arrested for first-degree property damage and harassment for causing the fap flap.

IN SLA-LA-LOM LAND North Korea is building a “world-class” ski resort, in an effort to attract foreign tourists who are currently put off visiting the totalitarian

AUT-AWESOME Jacob Barnett, a 14-year-old ‘suffering’ from autism, has been tipped to win a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum physics. Jacob went to university aged 11, and now aged 14, is studying towards a Masters. “I’m studying condensedmatter physics, specifically I’m studying these PT symmetric lattices. It’s like a quantum system, but if you reverse it space and time is the same, so, it’s cool,” he told the BBC. If you’ve ever made fun of someone with autism, the joke’s on you.

stay classy, world Remember SARS? What about bird flu?

Norovirus? Well, the Director-General of the United Nations' World Health Organization has declared a new virus the next "threat to the entire world", so watch out or something, I guess.

Russia is providing arms to Syria in the hopes that they will deter military organisation. Salient wonders if sleeves will also be provided.

British extreme-right-wingers protested at a mosque last week, only to be met with offers of tea, biscuits, and a game of football. After 30 or 40 minutes of talking, the protesters were seen to go inside the mosque with the worshippers, which is just pretty great, really.

In sporting news, New Zealand lost to England by 247 runs in the second Test, handing a 2-0 series victory to the Brits. Unfortunately for the Black Caps, a ‘good try’ is only awarded points in rugby.

A New Zealand city was this week arbitrarily rated fourth-best in the world for something, by a magazine or other organisational body with similar cultural standing. “It’s very exciting, but we always knew we were fourth-best,” said the city’s mayor.

headlines that weren't Shoemaker left soleless by bankruptcy Shocking report reveals some people still pay for porn 2014 election to be decided

by Klout scores, Key announces Cold snap offset by amount of hot air spent talking about it Bears “could just be really big dogs”, admits scientist

 13

FEATURES NEWS •ϟ FEATURE

sounding out the student voice: part three

By David Alsop

WITH THE STUDENT FORUM ON ITS LAST LEGS, AN UPCOMING REVIEW OF STUDENT REPRESENTATION WILL HOPEFULLY GIVE A BIT OF DIRECTION TO THE STUDENT VOICE WHICH HAS BEEN LOST AMONGST STUDENT AND UNIVERSITY POLITICS. UNIVERSITY COUNCIL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE, DAVID ALSOP, SHEDS SOME LIGHT ON THE UPCOMING REVIEW FROM INSIDE THE IVORY TOWER AND EXPLAINS HOW THIS 'CONSULTATION' WILL BE DIFFERENT

14 

 NEWS

If you’ve been reading the articles in Salient these past few weeks, you should be up to date with the Student Forum and the various issues that it’s had. I won’t go into detail repeating all of the problems with the Forum, but, suffice to say, it was clear from early on that things weren’t going smoothly. Fortunately, previous student representatives had voiced their concerns to the University Council, which had previously agreed to a review, and as a result the review was moved forward. And here we are today. After a long, mucky run the entire gamut of student representation and consultation is up for review. This review will first look to identify the existing problems with representation and consultation, before working to find a solution that addresses these and builds a model that is future-proof.

This matters. Student representation and consultation, while innocuous and boringsounding, is a pretty big deal. When it is effective, it enables students to have a substantial impact on the operations of this University. When it isn’t, students have decisions imposed on them and the whole University community suffers as a result. Therefore, it is in everyone’s best interest to strengthen student representation and consultation, to help build a community at Victoria that students feel a part of and valued in.

It’s important to highlight the difference between representation and consultation, so everyone is on the same page. Now, I’m a gist person, not a technical details person. So if you’re an English Language major and I grossly oversimplify this issue, I am sorry, and please don’t send me hate mail. I’ve already witnessed one stoush over grammar this week. Anyway.

Representation is when someone is acting on behalf of, or in the interests of, others.

For instance, I represent all students on the Council. It’s impossible for me to share the views of all students, as I am one and y’all are many, but through my experience as a student and my judgment, I act to ensure that students aren’t

ignored at the highest level of decisionmaking. Consultation is when you seek the opinions and views of a group of people. Salient might ask students whether they believe VUWSA should get a cat, to which the correct answer is yes, unless a red panda is on offer, in which case VUWSA should get a red panda. The review is consulting students right now as well, and there is still time to have your say for the first stage of this review – if you have any thoughts or problems with the status quo of Student Representation, you can email me at alsopd@gmail.com

"Student representation and consultation, while innocuous and boring-sounding, is a pretty big deal. When it is effective, it enables students to have a substantial impact on the operations of this University.

When it isn’t, students have decisions imposed on them and the whole University community suffers as a result."

by Thursday 6 June. Your feedback will then form part of the discussions that the working group has.

So, who is making these decisions? Well, there are two groups – the Student Working Group and the Staff Working Group. These two groups are operating independently to do the legwork of the review – discussing the problems and trying to find solutions from the perspective of students and staff respectively. The Oversight Group is a chance for the two working groups to meet up and work in good faith to find solutions that work for everyone. There are two sides to this relationship, and as we saw with the Forum, this relationship

doesn’t work if one side doesn’t buy into it. Different people and different groups will invariably have different views as to how representation and consultation should work. The working group will try to work towards a consensus position in finding a solution to the issues we currently have. However, if there are significant and irreconcilable differences in opinion, we’ll make sure students can hear about these and are able to judge for themselves what they feel is the best response.

How do I fit into all of this? As your University Council representative elected at large, I act alongside yet outside of existing representative groups. My duty is to act in the best interest of all students, rather than a particular group. Thus, while it isn’t directly related to my work on the Council, I am chairing the Student Working Group and co-chairing the Oversight Group as I am acting in the interests of all students, and don’t need to worry about looking after the interests of any specific group. It means that I can hopefully help to bridge the gap where groups have differences of opinion.

Where does this all lead to? Well, at some point, the Council will be considering this issue. Unfortunately, the exact date this will occur is currently in flux – but it’s a case of sooner rather than later. As such, I can’t really promise much about when this will all come to a close, and when and how students can further feed into this review. We’ll keep you posted, though.

In the meantime, there are still some ongoing issues. As reported last week, the fact that the Student Forum failed to elect a chair has left me on my lonesome as the only Student Representative on the University Council. This is deeply concerning. Hopefully, the next time you read Salient, some solution will have been found—there are some big dates ahead where having a second student voice and vote on the Council is tantamount, such as fee-setting and the selection of a new Vice-Chancellor. So keep an eye on this space.

 15

FEATURES NEWS •ϟ FEATURE

state of the nation

The Salient Co-Editors take you on a tour of what has been 2013.

February January

Closer to home, doctoral candidate Chris Cherry hit the news when he discovered that University cleaner Arana Kenny was using his phone, which had gone missing months earlier. This was to begin a months-long saga, during which Cherry would write over 15,000 angry words on his blog; Kenny would plead guilty, and be discharged without conviction, and the University would do nothing at all...

March If you woke up on 1 January, you’d made it: 2013 was never meant to be according to the Mayan’s and Jason Kerrison, but here we all were.  Despite making it through an apocalyptic 2012, Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh decided that his time was nigh, signalling this would be his last year at the helm of VUW management.  As students in internships and summer school rued the day they decided to make something of their lives, the rest of Wellington was at the beach—we were in for one hot summer!

Just weeks before Uni was to re-start, the construction giant Mainzeal—responsible for the Campus Hub development—went into receivership. We’ve been fucking waiting since 2009. But for those who remember that, the bigger question is: Why are you still here?  The announcement of O-Week was quite disappointing, with the University and VUWSA making it clear for the second year in a row that they can’t co-host a party. The University delayed contract negotiations, which meant that Macklemore bypassed the Hunter Lounge on his way to Otago.  In classic Catholic fashion, the Pope pulled out. Meanwhile in South Africa, athlete Oscar Pistorious made headlines when he was accused of murdering his girlfriend.

With sports stars and the Church out of the question, where were we to look for role models? 

16 

O-Week: With appropriate amounts of exposed skin and RTDs, first years enjoyed the neon-toga party. We can’t remember what else happened. Oh that’s right, cause almost nothing did happen.

 NEWS

Tommy Ill and Homebrew performed to a pretty sizeable crowd. A member of Homebrew abused a Victoria student and then a Salient staffer via Twitter, and as a result, VUWSA said they wouldn’t book them again. Given that Homebrew are splitting up anyway, this was a pretty empty threat.

justification for the major GCSB privacy breach, and invasive surveillance legislation.  North Korea threw their weight around.  Every New Zealand politician seemed to forget every single bad thing they had ever done.

 North Korea threw their weight around.  Every New Zealand politician seemed to forget every single bad thing they had ever done.

May

 Victoria topped the country in the PBRF (research) rankings, but as the bubbles flowed over in the Hunter Building, Otago and Auckland were quick to take us up on any technicality they could that might make their results look a little bit better.

The Hub was a long way from being finished, but it had its official opening anyway, and what had opened looked pretty fucking awesome. As a result of the pimped out facilities, this was also the first time in living memory that Clubs Week was actually a ‘thing’.

Aaron Gilmore shot to fame for all the wrong reasons, and just as quickly, was forgotten again.  In the wake of Gilmore’s departure, the Budget was announced, and journalists around the country tried to pretend they understood what was going on. Everyone wished they were still reporting on a story with a narrative as simple as “Do you know who I am?”

 VUWSA, Ngai Tauira and Pasifika Students’ Council all announced they were withdrawing from the Student Forum.

VUWSA led the charge, freeing them all from Forum of which in hindsight was either ill-thought out, or a malicious attempt to ‘divide and conquer’ the student voice.

We’ll never know.

April

Thanks to the hacks setting aside their differences and working together to make a change for good, the Marriage Equality Bill passed. For the first time this year it felt like we had a brighter future...

Amanda Bynes made us all feel good about our life decisions. 

The Boston bombings gripped the world, and in an opportunistic moment, John Key attempted to use the terror attacks as a

...But just as it became more socially acceptable to be a fag, Victoria’s smokefree policy was introduced.

For the first time in years, VUWSA has made it through the first half of the year without any resignations. Salient holds itself fully responsible.

 17

POLITICS 

left WE [DON’T] NEED [NO] EDUCATION

P O L I

By Carla Marks Every year, the infamous “no one will pass hahaha you will all fail” speech is delivered to massive lecture theatres full of frightened first-year Law students clutching their lanyards tight. Other than inspiring a misplaced self-confidence in those who do manage to make it through the Grant-Morrisinduced gauntlet of 100-level, this open-entry first year leading to a selective second year provides us with a good example of the profit-driven university structure. In short, lots of people take first-year Law, lots of people fail or drop out, and the University makes a killing out of fees and “I wanted to do a BCom all along” discussions. This profit would dramatically shrink if the University introduced an entrance criteria to weed out the people for whom legal history is a bit of a waste of time.

It’s hard to make the case that high-school results should predicate placement at university. After all, that Level 3 History exam was totally bullshit, am I right? Perhaps the change needs to be at a cultural level where knowledge is emphasised over vocation in the university experience.

Our current Government has demonstrated that they firmly believed a job should be the only outcome of an education. In the 2012 Budget, they instructed universities to "reprioritise" spending to create an extra 300 Engineering places. That’s cool, because Engineering is cool, and highly skilled workers are certainly cool. But this shouldn’t have to come at the expense of Art History majors, because knowledge is important too, damnit.

Having decided that the arts aren’t important enough to direct new funding to, the Government then charged on with cutting accessibility to postgraduate allowances. Steven Joyce, who took two decades to get his degree, decided that postgraduate study, the pursuit of higher knowledge, making new discoveries and developing thinking, was not worth funding.

Why? Because you don’t need a Honours or Master’s degree to be part of the workforce. This Government doesn’t value the intrinsic benefit of higher knowledge.

I’ll admit that my continued insistence upon throwing myself on the funeral pyre that is my Law degree is in part motivated by a creeping elitist suspicion that just a BA isn’t good enough. Sure, there’s only a limited amount of jobs where knowing everything about the French Revolution is applicable. But, my scholastic friends, that’s not the point of university, and nor should it be.

And besides, Eddie Redmayne is suuuch a babe OMG.

18 

letters from a young contrarian

By Cam Price

My Fellow Comrades, Three weeks on, the vibe from Budget 2013 can be summed up in one word: boring. No controversial tax cuts.

No significant new spending. David Shearer was quoted saying that it was all a bit of a let-down. Boring Bill, the Minister of Finance, believes that boring is exactly what a Budget ought to be, arguing that “[we] were conditioned in the 2000s to believe that Budgets should be about the novelty of new, expensive spending programmes.” He’s referring here to Aunty Helen’s persistent use of the cynical and politically shrewd tactic of the Election-Year Budget Bribe.

The largest and most egregious of these occurred in 2005 with the introduction of the interest-free Student Loan scheme. Trailing in the polls, and with an election just four months away, Labour announced that interest on student debt was to be written off. The bribe worked, and typically disengaged and apathetic students mobilised to vote for Labour, allowing them to narrowly hang onto power for another three years. This resulted in two lamentable outcomes: first, the vile and despicable little racist Winston Peters became our Minister of Foreign Affairs. Like, what the actual fuck? The second, and more relevant, was the entrenchment of a scheme which exclusively benefits and enriches students at the expense of every other sector of society.

These days, to be a student and argue that interest-free Student Loans

makes for terrible policy is almost to be labeled Judas reincarnate. But before you cry heresy, I want to ask you a fairly simple question: do you know what a negative-real-interest loan is? If the answer is yes, feel free to cast the first stone. But I suspect the overwhelming majority of you will have answered in the negative, so I beg you to hear me out with an open mind.

Every year, the policy costs the Government over half a billion dollars.

Intuitively, it feels like it shouldn’t cost the Government anything to leave interest out of the loan equation, but it does. Economists use unnecessarily confusing jargon like the ‘time value of money’ and ‘negative real interest’ to explain the concept, but it’s actually very simple to grasp. If you’ve ever wondered why a dollar mix of lollies in your parents’ day bought a kilo of candy while the same small change only gets you a measly handful of tangy apples today, you’ve encountered the time value of money.

To see how this concept affects debt, imagine that your grandfather borrowed $1000 from his mate in 1960. $1000 50 years ago could buy a house. Today you’d be lucky if it could even pay for the front door. If Grandad paid his friend back a grand in today’s money, you’d be a fool to say he had squared his debt. It would be blatantly unfair and unequal. It’s the same with Student Loans—we actually end up paying less money back than we borrowed as a result

 POLITICS

T I C S of the lack of interest. This is what is meant by a negative-real-interest loan: sure, we pay back the numerical amount of the money we borrowed, but in reality we don’t pay back the full value of the loan.

If that isn’t stark enough for you, consider this: every member of society who pays tax, every last cleaner

spend more paying off the interest on our debts alone than we do on the police, early-childhood education and the Unemployment Benefit combined. It’s massively fucked up that we put a such a huge financial burden on ourselves and future generations in order to pay for the loans we give out for free.

we as a country spend more paying off the interest on our debts alone than we do on

RIGHT Check your (student) privilege, yo

By Freddie Hayek You may not believe it, dear student, but you are privileged.

You probably don’t think so. You will go home to your scummy flat tonight, freeze your arse off while eating cold baked beans, and work on the assignments you have coming out your ears, and think, “Privileged? Poppycock!”

But you are. You see, in most other countries in the world, tertiary education is hard to get into, let alone completing a degree.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of tertiary-degree completion in the entire world. Roughly 14 per cent of the New Zealand population has a university Bachelor’s degree, or polytechnic equivalent (Nursing for example). Why is our system so good at getting people educated comparatively? Well, you are not going to like this, but it is due to the principle of user pays.

the police, early-childhood education and the Unemployment Benefit combined. and fruit-picker and single mother working three minimum-wage jobs, every last one of them, has loaned those privileged few of us who go to university $13 billion. In return, we will pay them back $8.5 billion. That’s just rude. In order to pay for the cost of that $4.5 billion(!), poor people, people not intelligent enough to get into university, people who choose careers that don’t require a tertiary education, old people, and all businesses big and small have to pay higher taxes. This is the true reason why a student’s freedom from interest is such a shitty policy; not because ‘it costs heaps’ but because it literally makes every other demographic in society poorer.

And that’s not even the full cost of the scheme. NZ ends up getting double-fucked because the Government also has to borrow money in order to make up the shortfall. The problem is, this debt exists in the real world, so we actually have to pay interest on it.

And just in case you’ve forgotten from Budget 2013, we as a country

And for what? It’s common sense that the primary, if not the sole, effect of a degree is to increase the earning potential of the graduate. It’s great for us; we get to use our Commerce degree to become wealthy in future. But the unintended cost is that other groups of people miss out on that chance.

Transferring money from the poor and uneducated to the favoured and generally well-off few is exactly what this policy does. It’s one of the most deplorable, inequitable laws on our books.

So how dare we act like spoiled brats and complain that tertiary education is too expensive, when the Government is literally paying us to go to university. While everybody else in the country has been expected to tighten their belts so that the country can weather the financial storm in which we have found ourselves, we feel entitled to take other people’s money. And then have the barefaced cheek to demand more! We need to check our fucken privilege.

Yours, Cam.

Changing our tertiary-education system was a two-Government project. Phil Goff as Minister of Education in the late 1980s began the moves to scrap the bursary system. Previously, only the best and the brightest New Zealanders went to university, and our universities were world-class because of it. Goff opened the universities up to anybody who wanted to give it a go. The flipside of this is that he began the process of introducing fees.

In a sense, tertiary education was for anybody who wanted it, as long as you were willing to pay for it. Lockwood Smith, his National Party successor, broke a pre-election promise and increased the fees, beginning the process we know today with year-on-year fee increases. It isn’t all bad though.

Anybody could now go to university. The rate of those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher began to climb. Tertiary education is no longer the preserve of elites like it was 50 years ago. Where does the privilege fit in? Well, even if you have a BA in Theatre, you are signalling to employers in the labour market that you, for lack of a better phrase, are not a complete idiot. This gives you an advantage for the rest of your life: an increase in earnings over those who do not hold a degree. You receive a government payment of either $170 for living costs or $210 for Student Allowance while studying. You may receive additional support in the form of scholarships if you come from a low-income background, or are the first university student in your family. You may be eligible for an Accommodation Supplement.

The biggest privilege of all? Your loan for fees and living costs is interest-free if you stay here. In time, as your earnings theoretically increase due to pay increases, your loan will shrink rapidly, as no interest will be charged on it.

You are privileged. Deal with it, as you sob into your merlot and camembert.

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CAMPUS DIGEST

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CAMPUS DIGEST Campus Diary

SMOKE-FREE POLICY BREACHED Students saved the University from being burnt to the ground last week, when a contractor welding outside the Alan MacDiarmid building caused a spark to set nearby grass alight.

Ciao! Wellington Adam Art Gallery’s series of evening entertainment continues this week, with two iconic 60s flicks Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Ciao! Manhattan showing in the Memorial Theatre at 6pm, Wednesday 5 May. Tickets are just $5 and include refreshments at the Gallery from 5pm.

The Evening Flix series accompanies the Adam’s current Beautiful Creatures exhibition, showing until 7 July, entry completely free!

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Students—indoctrinated from weeks of smoke-free-campuspolicy marketing—were quick to act, pushing the fire alarm and stubbing the smoking grass out. Though they managed to put the fire out before anyone arrived, the incident raised Vic’s ratio of valid uses of the fire alarm and drill evacuations to 1:938.

The campus heroes could not be reached, but were said to be very proud that once again the campus was smoke-free.

VUWSA SHIFTS TO THE RIGHT: BRINGS FREE MARKET TO STUDENTS VUWSA held an Autumn Market in the Hunter Lounge last week. Music played, stalls sold goods, prizes were drawn, campus seemed lively for once.

 CAMPUS DIGEST

get amongst "the best" Overheard @ Vic: Megan Irving overseen at hunter. classics 101: ain't nobody got time fo' dat

GOING UP

David Edmonds Overseen: A chick sucking her thumb whilst studying. Immaturity aside, I sincerely hope she at least washed it.

Ruby McGruddy: Overseen on INTP248 fb page.

Lecturer: Iceland's primary defence is probably those oversized sweaters along with Björk albums

Respect for Her Majesty. Monday was a good day.

Kim Kardashian’s awareness of her pregnancy: finally wearing flats and loose-fitting dresses!

Snowfall in Wellington. Here’s hoping...

Netflix subscription rates (alternatively, Going Down: available bandwidth).

Rhianna O'Connell Summing up Stat193

GOING DOWN Days until FREEDOM. Amanda Bynes: when Courtney Love tells you to “pull it together dude”, you know it’s bad.

Matt Macfarlane: Overheard in PUBL201 Tut More racism than your average Stuff. co.nz comments section Lucy Moss-Mason: Overheard in Maclaurin an employee being interviewed about how one of the cleaners tried to strangle someone this morning. o.O Adi Harris: Overheard on level 5 library some cunt playing really dramatic classical music on their mac book, only realising after 10 minutes everyone else can hear it too David Cheng Overheard@FCOM111 Lecturer: Monique says you're dumb Don't worry, there'll be other Moniques... Maybe

Food prices post-3-pm at The Hunter Lounge.

ask the magic 8 ball My essay’s due tomorrow, and I haven’t started yet. Will I get it done in time?

Signs point to yes

Ways to procrastinate:

13

Watch out for burns this winter!

an apple a day

Winter has arrived, and so has the use of heaters and hot water bottles.

Take extra care with hot water bottles. They are a cheap source of heat but can inflict a nasty burn. Never fill your bottle with boiling water, always check that the cap is tight and doesn’t leak, and wrap the hot water bottle in a cover or towel before sleeping.

1) Masturbation

SALIENT RATES:

Health tip #

2) Bathing 3) Puppy Cam 4) Hate-stalking on Facebook 5) Netflix

If you get a burn, the first thing to do is to place the burnt area under cool running water for 20 minutes. The water shouldn’t be freezing—between 2-15 °C is good.

You can do this for up to three hours after getting burnt, but straight away is best. Doing this will reduce the depth of the burn and help prevent scarring.

Do not apply creams to your burn.

Contact the Student Health Service if you have a burn or wound you are worried about. If we are close, called Healthline on 0800 611 116.

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A Brief History of the Univers-ity The first game of rugby to be played in New Zealand had just taken place.

The Government was at war with Māori, and had been for 25 years— roughly half of living memory, given life expectancy was in the mid-50s.

The year was 1870, and the first university in New Zealand had just been set up. During your own studies, you are likely to spend between three and five years at university. Though this means you will experience less than three per cent of New Zealand’s university history, students today still compare themselves with those of yesteryear. Salient ’s Chris McIntyre takes a look at just how good the good old days really were.

By Chris McIntyre

It is sometimes said that the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The New Zealand of the mid- to late-19th century was indeed a barely recognisable place. Our fourth Parliament was presiding over the Land Wars—still in full swing—and offered government troops £10 for the delivery of a decapitated head of a Māori chief, and £5 for a regular soldier. Our political system reflected that of the United Kingdom, and reliance on the Empire also pervaded our first universities. The Government established the University of New Zealand (UNZ) in 1870, an organisation which covered the entire country and governed local colleges. UNZ was charged with coordinating examinations and granting degrees, while the various provincial colleges were in charge of tuition. This centralised system remained in place until 1961.

The first such college in New Zealand was Canterbury University College, which affiliated with UNZ in 1873, just as the New Zealand Land Wars had come to a close. The University of Otago, which had been founded in 1869,

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could not grant degrees under the new UNZcentric system, as it wasn’t affiliated. Despite this fact, its three professorial staff began teaching in 1871, much to the ire of Canterbury academics.

Otago was a “complete sham”, according to Canterbury’s Henry Tancred—a review glowing in comparison to Otago parliamentarian Alexander Bathgate’s assessment: calling UNZ a “wretched abortion”. Keen to get in on the interprovincial action, Auckland University College and Victoria University College both opened shortly thereafter, in 1883 and 1899 respectively.

Thus the turn of the 19th century saw New Zealand, at that stage with a population breathing down the neck of a million, supporting no less than four modest universities.

These were New Zealand universities in a geographic sense much more than in an academic sense. Many academic staff were from overseas, and staff had little to no control over the degree programmes and the content taught therein. Research was limited, and New Zealand’s academics and academic institutions were very much to be seen and not heard.

Incredibly, it was not until 1939 that university examination papers were marked by New Zealanders, in New Zealand—until 1939, papers were shipped to England, marked by British professors, and shipped back home.

Through the 20th century, the British mould in which New Zealand universities had incubated began to crack. The First Labour Government came to power in 1935, altering university funding both in volume and in delivery. They established the University Grants Committee (UGC) in 1948, which they funded in block. The UGC distributed funds to colleges, which were able to spend the funding as they saw fit. This financial independence from central UNZ governance was an early indication of what was to come.

A committee was set up by the Second Labour Government in 1959, to evaluate all facets of the university system. When the committee reported back in the early 1960s, they recommended wideranging changes which affected students, staff, and the institutions themselves. Requirements for entry were altered, enrolment patterns more carefully monitored, and students’ positions subsidised.

The salaries of academic staff were revised, and staff-to-student ratios reconsidered. Most notably, the committee recommended the structure of university governance be decentralised. In 1961, the Second National Government implemented all the committee’s suggested changes. The changes were extensive, and saw the UNZ dissolved after close to a century of monopolisation on higher thought. Colleges became independent universities, the final nail in the coffin for colonial oversight of tertiary education. Universities were for the first time being governed by their own independent charters, and with bulk funding from the UGC, they had more freedom than ever. The changes of 1961 were the genesis of the system we study under today.

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The key cause of this systemic change was students. Enrolments had bulged, increasing from less than 5000 per annum in the early post-WWI years to over 11,500 by 1950—this was the first sign of New Zealanders’ voracious appetite for higher education. The rate of increase in university enrolments was over four times greater than the rate of increase in the national population, for no apparent reason. GDP growth was nothing special, hovering at a modest two per cent, and it’s also worth noting that being a student afforded no advantage with regard to evading military conscription, a reality of the time. In simple terms, optimism for the future was high and tertiary education represented a chance for a better life to many. In this sense, the explosion in enrolments perhaps reflected the dire state of the first half of the 20th century.  We students today like to think we have it rough relative to the students of the past, but in this regard we refer largely to the baby boomers.

Even earlier generations did not have such ready access to university study, with tertiary qualifications far less prolific than they are today and much harder to attain. From the outset, students paid to study. Costs were high, but not prohibitively so, as many students worked part-time and could support themselves. In 1925, more of New Zealand’s 3850 university students studied part-time than did full-time (54 per cent to 32 per cent, teachers’-college students excluded). Government bursaries, or scholarships, had been introduced in 1907, but these were limited in scope and did little to allow the majority of students the luxury of fulltime study, still an elite pursuit.

The medley of part-time study and part-time work meant degrees took much longer than they

do today. I would be flattering myself to think many Bachelor of Commerce students have read this far, but if you have, this next example may interest you: between 1953 and 1959, 115 students gained a BCom at Victoria University College (note that between 2006 and 2012, over 6100 students graduated with a BCom from Victoria University). Of those 115 students, only one—yes, one solitary student—completed the degree within three years, and the average completion time was eight-and-a-half years.

ways; the benefits offered at little or no opportunity cost to prospective students meant that uptake of study was greater than ever before. The Government was willing to invest in the sum skills of the population, and with so much to gain at so little cost, people were happy to accept this investment. The way was always paved for the programme’s success. 

The free ride through university we associate with our parents’ generation only originated in 1962, when a comprehensive bursary system was introduced. The system covered the majority of students’ fees and accommodation costs, and this allowed students to enrol full-time and not have to work to support their study. As a result, full-time enrolment rates doubled in under a decade. By 1990, annual enrolments hit 78,919—a 385 per cent increase from 1960, which was over two-and-a-half times the increase in the population. Thousands more people were enrolling in University study, and they were doing so courtesy of the taxpayer.

So, what changed? Why are we now saddled with debt, and likely to graduate with little or no certainty regarding job prospects? The tertiaryeducation policy of providing cheap tuition had relied on the assumption the public stood to gain from such an investment. Somewhere along the way, it was decided private gains outweighed these public gains and the people gaining from qualifications—students—should henceforth be responsible for more of the costs associated with getting those qualifications. After nearly three decades of unprecedented plain sailing, tertiary education was not spared from the waves of neoliberal reform which characterised the late 1980s under the Fourth Labour Government.

As more and more people achieved a tertiary qualification, a university degree no longer set you apart to the same extent it used to.

Employers enjoyed an increasing glut of qualified workers, a phenomenon of which we may be currently experiencing the apogée, with tertiary enrolments peaking at or near all-time highs each year. This means that today, it is more difficult to find a job which reflects your qualifications, given there are few such jobs and relatively high numbers of qualified people.

Another effect of increased tertiary enrolments was the increasing financial unsustainability of the bursary programme. Increasing university access was the beginning of the end in some

Fees increased dramatically in 1989, a one-two punch when combined with the replacement of bursaries by the Student Allowance. As you know, Student-Allowance eligibility is meanstested; no longer can just anyone expect a free ride through university. Instead of reverting to the prior model of balancing study and work, students began to take on loans to study fulltime. Indeed, the fee rises had been such that part-time work would barely cover study and the associated costs. The Student Loan Scheme allowed students to borrow money to cover these costs, and between its introduction in 1992 and June 2010, nearly one million people had taken out some form of student loan. By 2013,

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the balance of these loans reached $13 billion— approximately seven per cent of GDP. Even though Student Loans became interestfree, and even though the Loan enabled students to put themselves in a position to earn up to 48 per cent more than someone unqualified, debt is seen as a pitfall of the current system. What the neoliberal reforms meant for universities is apparent to the average student, but no less of an upheaval— especially in the wider context of the university system since 1870. You’re living through them right now regardless of your outlook on their fairness, and it’s likely your children will live through them too.

The fee increases were not the only change to come from the neoliberal agenda: in 1988, the Government commissioned a report on the tertiary sector. Like the 1961 commission which, among other things, decentralised university governance, the 1988 report recommended major structural changes, all of which were accepted and implemented in the Education Amendment Act 1990. The Act encouraged competition between universities, removed the monopoly universities had on degrees to allow polytechnics, wananga and other providers to offer Bachelor programmes, and dictated all institutions would become independent legal entities with individual charters, led by a chief executive.

121 years after the Government offered payment for the heads of Māori chiefs and warriors, the Government began offering universities money per head enrolled. The Act bulk-funded institutions by a formula based on the number of enrolments, a funding mechanism now called the Student Achievement Component, for which $2.04 billion was budgeted in the 2013 Budget. This

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saw the end of the First Labour Government’s UGC. Enrolment-based funding exacerbated the problems caused by the degree-centric career pathway model into which we were all indoctrinated by high-school career advisors.

It’s very likely you were encouraged to come to university by teachers, advisors, your parents, et al, as a way to get ahead; to ensure you made something of your life. Universities also gained from this mantra, by enrolling more students—until 2008, when student numbers were effectively capped by then-Minister of Tertiary Education Anne Tolley—and the perceived mutual benefit between students and universities grew enrolments despite the cuts to bursaries and increased fees. Increased growth in enrolments continued and in 2010, 179,013 students enrolled in universities. You’re probably one of these 179,013 students; you’ve travelled the pathway recommended to you and now you’re here, studying like they wanted you to, and you’re looking at maybe decades of debt and uncertain job prospects. When you wonder ‘why am I doing this?’, you can thank the perfect storm of enrolment-based funding and the tertiary imperative.  New Zealand’s university sector has changed almost beyond recognition since its origins over 140 years ago. If the past is a foreign country, it is that of our Majesty. British academic custom not only informed our early universities, it governed them in a manner so inextricable they were barely New Zealand universities at all.

Various governments have gradually developed the New Zealand university system, allowing us to develop our own academic cultures, customs, values and epistemologies. The neoliberal reforms saw universities become competitive institutions structured like companies, a theme

which continues through today’s increasing and ongoing orientation of the tertiary sector towards business.

Students today are not increasingly oriented towards business, but towards debt. We are unlikely to see a return to the days when acquiring knowledge was valued as an end in itself, and even more unlikely to see a return to the golden days our parents’ generation enjoyed.

The 30-odd years sandwiched between the hardworking, long-studying generation to which our grandparents belonged, and the quick-finishing, long-borrowing generation to which we belong came the happy coincidence of free study and an employment market with a fantastic capacity for absorbing qualified graduates.

What form the changes of the future will take is uncertain, but a contraction of the university system is probably the most likely reflex to the status quo. According to the Government, Student Loan and Allowance programmes are bordering on unsustainable, and our degrees are worth less and less—when will the writing on the wall become too bold to ignore?

What this contraction will mean for future generations is unknowable—will our access to education be envied by our children in the same way we envy our parents’, or will the end to debt-culture built on degrees for degrees’ sake mean they buy their first home earlier?

My advice would be to make the most of this access while you still can, but too many people doing precisely that is the current problem.

In lieu of that, go out and get a degree, look for a job, maybe study some more, if you like.

Along, of course, with everybody else. 

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Great Expectations  

By Wilbur Townsend and Nick Cross

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Why you should be angry at the Government for subsidising your degree

“We are looking for a talented, ambitious and focused intern for up to 6 months. This is a full-time, unpaid position.” So read Greenpeace New Zealand’s advertisement on Careerhub.

The idea of an unpaid full-time internship— working 40 hours a week and being paid nothing—should be bizarre. However, the recent recession has spawned new absurdities in the job market, as more and more overqualified graduates compete against each other for fewer and fewer jobs. While the recession has exacerbated the job crisis, the basic problem— that, every year, university degrees are worth less than they were the previous year—has been developing for a long time. Jobs which once required only undergraduate study now require Honours, BA-grads are stranded in hospitality, and school-leavers struggle to find work outside a supermarket. This phenomenon—known as ‘degree inflation’—is forcing young people into ever-increasing amounts of study, with dismal job prospects even for those who have

completed degrees. While tragic, it has not been inevitable. Rather, it is the necessary result of an unnecessary Government policy.

In 1956, Norman Shaw left high school and got a job with the Commercial Bank of Australia.

Despite his only formal qualification being his School Certificate, he worked with the bank for a number of years, first as a postage clerk, and then later on as a teller. He went on to have a successful career in sales and marketing, working with a number of textile firms before eventually ending up as a marketing executive with Nylex Ltd., a vinyl wholesaler. This is a position that would now require three or more years of university study, but back then it was possible to work into these positions from the bottom up. When we talked to Norman last week, he told us that he’d never regretted foregoing university study. “You might be the brightest bastard in the world, but an ability to learn and an ability to do a thing are

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Norman does regret the massive growth in tertiary education through his lifetime. “Young people are not doing anything until they’re so bloody old—we went into real life fighting wars, now kids are still hanging around at incredible ages. It’s a shame as a lot of them would like to be out there working. It’s very disheartening for a lot of people.”

He attributes the shift to the nature of the job market. “In the older days there were different jobs. The whole base of employment has changed. Even the banks—technology has done away with a lot of the staff. A lot of the things we used to do are gone, such as tellers and ledger-keepers. Computers have fucked the world because they’ve taken a lot of the jobs people used to do.” Still, he doesn’t see the explosive growth in university education as inevitable. “The problem is every fucker needs a degree to get into the job market in the first place. It used to be simple to get into work for there was a shortage of anyone who wanted to try. Those starting blocks are gone.”

In 2012, Carole McGee* graduated from Victoria University with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English Literature. Since then, she has worked as a receptionist at a real-estate agency, and she is about to start a new admin job in the public sector. After three years of study and having built up a Student Loan of over $30,000, her career consists of answering phones and filing paperwork.

We asked Carole whether her degree had helped her in her working life. “Not at all. [My BA] is unlikely to help me in anything except literature research. Most undergraduate degrees aren't worth much unless you are really specific about what you want to do with it—for example a business degree in HR [if] you want to be a recruiter. I know people with Science degrees that are worth very little, and Business degrees as well. I guess Architecture or Law would be a little different.”

When we asked her whether she thought her degree had given her ‘abstract thinking skills’

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such as ‘critical analysis’, she laughed. “To be honest I think I could already critically analyse pretty well. My degree probably did build my research skills, [but] a lot of research is common sense.”

Carole is torn as to whether she regrets having a degree. “Degrees are basically mandatory now. It used to be considered good for someone to finish high school. Now a degree is just expected if you are applying for almost any halfway-not-shit job. I don’t regret studying; I think it is nice to have completed something and committed myself to something, and I enjoyed the university ‘experience’ and culture a lot.

But I do wish that people hadn’t urged me so much to ‘do what you love’.” She laughs, a little tragically: “So yes. I regret my degree.”

a signal to potential employers. The ‘signalling model of education’ holds that the wage premium from having a tertiary degree comes from the signal of a person’s abilities relative to others. It’s based on the observation that most formal tertiary education is taught by professors with little experience outside the ivory tower, and that most courses are concerned with academic theory and not tailored to specific occupations. Why would these be any use in the real world? Research into the ‘transfer of learning’ suggests that education does little to actually improve intelligence or critical-thinking skills in the long run. Consider the way you approach your own education. Most of us spend weeks cramming for our final exams, but aren’t at all worried if we forget much of the material the second the exam is finished. Most of us rejoice when a class is cancelled because

Most of us spend weeks cramming for our final

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entirely different matters.” His lack of formal qualifications had not stopped him getting into certain jobs. “It was never a factor. Managers wanted experience, not degrees. References from positions you’d done in the past were much more important.”

exams, but aren’t at all worried if we forget much of the material the second the exam is finished. Most of us rejoice when a class is cancelled because it means we have less to learn.

Norman’s and Carole’s stories represent dramatic changes in New Zealand’s job market, where the level of education required for a job has exploded in the past few decades. When degrees are worth so little, one can’t help but wonder why we bother with university in the first place. Answering this question is the key to understanding degree inflation. The most common answer is that university helps you learn skills which will be useful in the job market. In technical language, it builds your ‘human capital’. This is the obvious explanation for why those with degrees tend to earn more than those without degrees, and why postgrads tend to earn more than undergrads. But if the ‘human-capital’ understanding of university were true, degree inflation shouldn’t be nearly as bad: more degrees would add value to the economy rather than merely making the rat race more brutal.

Why would people get a tertiary education if it doesn’t add value? We believe it is about sending

it means we have less to learn. But there is no proportionate reduction in fees for the cancelled class—shouldn’t we be outraged? If education is about building human capital, why isn’t our focus on accumulating as much knowledge as possible? If it’s about signalling to employers, we can understand that the most important thing to come out of our education is the piece of paper at the other end.

The signalling model predicts degree inflation well. If more and more people have undergraduate degrees, then the signal that such a degree sends becomes less powerful in the job market. This is why smart students are forced into taking postgraduate study— they need to retain their comparative signal.

Meanwhile, those who choose not to take a tertiary qualification seem like total slackers by comparison. The signalling model transforms tertiary education into a game where only your relative level of qualification matters.

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Canterbury University economist Eric Crampton is the closest thing New Zealand has to a ‘public intellectual’. He blogs at offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com, and regularly appears in New Zealand media to bring an economic perspective to issues such as alcohol regulation, breakfast in schools and the Christchurch earthquake recovery. According to Crampton: “The signalling model says that the value of education mostly comes from the little piece of paper certifying not that the graduate has learned anything but rather that the graduate is the kind of person who is able to put up with a few years of grinding pointless work without quitting, can complete assignments on time, and is smart enough to have made it through. While it would be easy to provide cheaper signals of intelligence, there isn’t a lower-cost way of signalling the ability to put up with years of grind-your-waythrough assignments. So it isn’t implausible that much of what goes on at university is providing that signal.“ Crampton believes that degree inflation could continue to get worse in the near future: “About the same proportion of our majoring students go on to pursue an Honours degree now as was the case a decade ago; we haven’t really changed the standards for entering Honours, and our Honours students place as well at Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the bureaus, and the trading banks as they ever have. I expect that this will have changed in a decade’s time; a lot of places are repackaging Honours degrees

as Master’s. If employers only pierce the credentialing veil imperfectly, then we could wind up with Master’s being the new Honours.”

By getting a degree and sending your signal, you are helping yourself by hurting others’ chances in the job market. This is the problem with the current approach to tertiary-education policy.

By encouraging as many people as possible to study, you leave nobody better off. In standard economic theory, when one person’s action hurts other people, you should discourage that action, perhaps with taxes or regulations.

Instead, this Government—and all Governments prior—has a policy to encourage that action, to subsidise tertiary education and make as many students study as possible. Similar to previous Governments, the current Government intends to spend $2 billion over the next year, encouraging school leavers into tertiary study by taking on most of the cost of their university fees.

We can only hope that they’ll be ineffective.

A common response to the degree-inflation problem is to focus on job creation—ensuring that there are exciting and interesting careers available to students when they finish university.

As VUWSA President Rory McCourt has said, "what students need [are] real jobs when they graduate". If the issue is a mismatch between the skills and expectations of graduates on one hand, and the jobs available on the other hand, then we might well think that the best solution is to transform our economy so that it supplies the jobs graduates want to work in.

‘Job creation’ sounds like an appealing concept, but it’s unclear what it means in practice. Does it mean hiring more Sociology graduates to be policy analysts, each with a $70,000 salary attached? New Zealand has one of the most effective public services in the world. Bloating the bureaucracy with unnecessary employees seems like a wasteful use of finances that could otherwise go toward more meaningful social development. We all want an economy based upon meaningful jobs, but the fact that these jobs aren’t being provided at the moment suggests that, in general, they’re not worthwhile.

Governments don’t have the capacity to create jobs for free, and it’s unclear why we should prioritise creating such jobs over the other, more important roles of the state.

We believe that while tertiary education builds some skills and knowledge, it’s primarily about demonstrating personal attributes. Even if we could create the sort of jobs that graduates feel they’re entitled to, there is no reason to keep pumping resources into higher education.

Employers who are offering meaningful work, and so demand bright, hard-working employees, will select those employees with the information available to them. A graduate in a system where everyone has a university degree will be treated the same as a school leaver in a system where most people have no higher education.

A job applicant’s qualification is only important relative to the other applicants, and so job creation—if it is possible—does not mean that we can’t deal with the degree-inflation problem.

Josiah Bartlet was wrong: education is not the answer. Our current tertiary-education system costs students tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives. This is unnecessary.

Tertiary education is about showing that you’re better than the rest, but when ‘the rest’ also have degrees, nobody is better off.

Governments fuel this problem through policies deliberately designed to maximise the number of tertiary students. By funding our degrees, the Government is condemning society to demand ever-higher levels of education, thus condemning school leavers to ever-longer periods of study. We should be outraged that the Government is subsidising our tertiary education. * Name changed

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Under Pressure

By Patrick Hunn, additional reporting Phillipa Webb

Mental health is a topic that most of us find hard to understand and even harder to talk about. But as the pressures faced by the modern student increase every year, the lines for Victoria’s Student Counselling Services just keep getting longer. With that in mind, Patrick Hunn takes a closer look at whether the kids really are all right.

How are you feeling? Okay, or a little bit gloomy? You could be forgiven for tending towards the latter. Being a student isn’t a great time for a lot of people in many ways.

If you’re living in a damp flat with people you don’t like, eating crap and having a small

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panic attack over that French translation you have to get done by tomorrow morning, it isn’t extraordinarily odd that your mental health might take a bit of a dive. Of course, Beyoncé could serenade you all day and you might still be filled with rancid nihilist bile. For whatever

reason you are feeling a little bit beleaguered, it is inarguably important that there are avenues of assistance for such situations. 47 per cent of New Zealanders, a Ministry of Health study conducted in 2006 found, will experience some form of mental illness at some point in their lives. More specifically, New Zealand has one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world.

At Victoria, Student Health Services is the first port of call for many people feeling a bit crap. However, a recent visit to the service left one student unnerved and distressed. “Like most students, I’ve had a lot going on lately— assignments due and upcoming tests, but on top of that I was dealing with some family issues and a conflict at work.” Reaching the limits of her stress tolerance, the student went to Student

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Health Services and managed to see a Duty Counsellor within half an hour.

“That appointment was great in dealing with the surface issue of contacting my lecturer to let him know I wouldn’t be sitting the test the next day.”

However, when the student tried to book a follow-up appointment, presumably because she was interested in working on the long-term causes of her anxiety, she was surprised to find that “the next available appointment was in two months and I thought to myself, ‘How is that going to help me?’” How, indeed.

The Student Counselling Service provides free consultations to all domestic and NZAid students. International students are charged for counselling (even though they pay the same student services levy as everyone else; regardless of how the Service is funded, you’d expect that, given the importance of the Counselling Service, it should have a universal reach.) The Service describes its function as providing “quality short-term counselling support for students, who may bring to discuss any issues that are impacting on their studies”.

The “short-term” qualifier is evidently the important thing here. If the support students require or prefer is more intensive in nature, then the counsellor can discuss with students the possibility of a referral elsewhere. The Service points out in gentle language that problems which cannot be treated in one or a small number of sessions will eventually be referred out of campus.

Kent Smith is a Student Health Counsellor and Counselling Services Assistant Manager who has worked at the Service since 2003. Smith says that working with students is something of a privilege, as he continues his own learning by having an active interest in research. Smith’s area of interest coincides neatly with what one would expect to encounter in student health, namely: developmental processes and anxietyrelated issues, as well as the transition from study to work.

Smith points out that the Service is “not a mental-health service, but we do a lot of work in mental health,” and offers a succinct explanation of why offering a counselling programme is important for a tertiary institution.

“It’s fair to say that the bulk of students who come to university are quite functional, but

equally, students who have been functional might not be functional, given a number of circumstances—stress, crisis, trauma, family, development, or perhaps historic trauma. Then there are the things people have brought here.

So these things might have existed and you come to an institution like this and so stress, assessment, socialisation, comparison to others, development of the individual, and suddenly they manifest differently here.”

In other words, the effect that transitioning to life at university has is hopelessly difficult to predict, and for a lot of people, the experience isn’t a terribly good one.

Like anything, recognising a problem is a towering obstacle to eventual wellbeing. The university environment is particularly difficult in this regard; I might be stressed about my workload, but then everyone is presumably dealing with the same thing. Smith has a sort of psychological litmus test for those in doubt.

“The individual must ask themselves, ‘Is my energy and my way of being a problem or is it not a problem?’ But equally it could be the community, family or friends of the individual as well saying, ‘you’ve changed’ or ‘something is not working as it used to.’ You could be entering a path of drugs, alcohol or addiction.”

The demands put on the Service continue to grow every year. The beginning of 2013 recorded the largest increase of new patients in the Service’s history.

Even so, Smith says, “We haven't grown in terms of numbers of people working in two or three years.” He’s really rather Zen about it, though: “Would it be helpful to have more numbers? Potentially, but I think there’s always

going to be more demand than supply.”

Tied to this is the fact that Smith also isn’t totally comfortable with the idea that this generation is inherently more unwell than the ones that preceded it. “The political nature of education and the growth in people saying ‘I’ll go and see a counsellor’ has created a huge growth [in people seeking help]. There are the John Kirwans of this world… who are out there saying it’s okay to ask for help… so you’ve got all this stuff mushrooming in the context of the New Zealand mental-health system which is under-resourced, underfunded, but having huge demand.”

Clearly, young people are contending with things that their parents never had to: a topic which inflames Smith’s temper in the most deliciously righteous way.

“I work with lots of cynical and angry students… the bastards have ground them down. That’s a bit of a shame.”

While it isn’t clear who “the bastards” are, the sentiment is one familiar to many students. “…Student Loans, money, working, studying their arses off. They don't have time to do any of that shit, whereas in our day we’d work summer, study the rest of the time. People want to get higher grades, [but] someone somewhere down the line has given students a bit of false information about what the real world out there looks like, and it isn’t just about A-grades. If you don't bring more than an A-grade you ain't gonna get a job.” His reasoning here is really quite indisputable.

Tertiary education in this country does not work in the same way that it did for our parents’

There are the John Kirwans of this world who are out there saying it’s okay to ask for help... in the context of the New Zealand mental-health system which is under-resourced, underfunded, but having huge demand.

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What does mental illness look like?

While students today have a wholly different and more complex set of obstacles to wrangle with, the academic expectations they have upon them remain the same. generation, after all. While students today have a wholly different and more complex set of obstacles to wrangle with, the academic expectations they have upon them remain the same. It certainly doesn’t help that the value of tertiary education is constantly put into question. Today, the stakes are both higher and more nebulously defined. It shouldn’t be surprising that students are frequently sent careering into something of a stress-spiral.

Smith doesn’t think that there is a “silver bullet” for a stress-free life. He does, however, note that people simply don’t exercise the way they used to, and that a lot of different symptoms come from physical inactivity. He also points to the way in which social media is used: a lot of issues with sleep deprivation come from long Facebook sessions shortly before bedtime, for instance. What it really comes down to, one supposes, is consuming all things in moderation.

Which is great advice, but difficult to implement when season four of Arrested Development comes out all at once (oh my God).

The fact that professional, knowledgeable people with empathy like Kent Smith are on hand is a wonderfully reassuring thing. The capacity of the Service, however, seems to be mismatched to its purported duty. Currently, it seems as if the role of the Service is to act as a sort of triage centre that offers initial treatment before referring students elsewhere (although if your need is desperate you can count on receiving help). This is understandable and probably completely acceptable, but being told that you have to wait weeks for an appointment isn’t. Of course, these waiting times are in-line with normal practice off-campus, but the nature of university seems to result in health issues that are explosive and immediate in nature.

Smith argues that the best thing to do in many instances isn’t to seek therapeutic help while you’re in the climactic throes of your distress.

But if someone has a test tomorrow and they can’t sleep, that isn’t what they’ll want to hear.

Deadlines aren’t good for you—perhaps the answer is to ban essays.

Kent Smith on...

DEPRESSION “My energy doesn’t allow me to be where I might find my normal level to be. I find that I am in isolation from people, losing interest in things that I’ve been historically interested in, an inability to get out of bed. A lot of ‘not doing’. Not exercising or seeing family and friends.”

ANXIETY “I should have been there. What if I can’t do that? What if I can’t make friends? What if my boyfriend/girlfriend leaves me? Anxiety is taking yourself away from the present moment and having a head experience which becomes physical in the form of panic. Fear of failing is common for a lot of people at university— on the other end of the spectrum, it isn’t uncommon to have a fear of success, where people really don’t know what they’ll do if they are as successful as they hope they will be.”

STRESS “Stress is a reaction to an experience that is distressing and overwhelming but I haven’t really got a way to contend with it. Stress is normal. I’m contending with what I’m reacting to and I've got some trust in myself that I can actually manage it. Procrastination and burning out are the results of ongoing and unmanaged stress. Unmanaged stress is what precipitates anxiety. If stress can be managed within the boundaries of wellbeing, potentially it can help us avoid issues like anxiety and depression.”

WHEN SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED? Essentially, when you experience a feeling of ongoing distress that you don’t feel you can alter or are in anyway in control of. Student Health Services can be contacted by email at counsellingservice@vuw.ac.nz, or by phone:    

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Kelburn Campus: (04) 463 5310 Te Aro Campus: (04) 463 5310 Karori Campus: (04) 463 5310 Pipitea Campus: (04) 463 7474

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town through sober eyes Henry Cooke

Two weekends back, on assignment from Salient to do some “raw journalism”, I went to town sober.

Town town. It was fucking terrible.

My night begins as all Saturdays should, at a party somewhere in Aro Valley. I walk there at around 9.30, while Wellington warms up.

Three girls in matching headbands occupy a space near Slow Boat: one standing, bored; one sitting, crying; one somewhere in between. Two loud guys and a pufferjacketed girl jostle their way into a liquor store, apologise profusely for “how drunk she is”, then bound back out, purchasing

nothing. Karaoke tunes blast out of Shalimar. It is very cold.

The party, when I make it there, is kinda small. Ten or so of my friends inhabit an end bedroom, with no strangers. This is good. I overexplain what I’m doing to everyone who listens, occasionally to the same person two or three times. I’m after a buddy, someone who will accompany me

through the black chucks and sticky floors in exchange for some free drinks. Someone puts on ‘Best I Ever Had’, splitting the room between Drake-lovers and Drakehaters, but without any booze I’ll only rap along to ‘Over’ or ‘Headlines’. I try in vain to secure some Ritalin. A friend narrates her ‘212’ dance. Midnight, or ‘town-time’, approaches, and the gulf between ‘them’ and me widens. They all stand in a circle singing something, I sit and write about said circle on my phone. Conversations start to repeat, mini-cliques start to develop, and I start to really want a bourbon.

The party ends abruptly, around 11.40.

I barely have time to fix my hair. Worse still, my friends are heading to Puppies.

Salient isn’t after Puppies-town. Fortunately, there is a cover charge, and I peel off a few

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people with promises of free drinks at Good Luck. They finish the last of their wine as we approach Cuba St. A block down, two girls stand in heels on their phones; I ask them for a quick interview. They’re waiting for their friends to leave a flat, heading to “anywhere but Hope Bros”, because “their bouncers are shit; they let 15-year-olds in.”

At the end of the interview they realise the black object I’m holding in between us is, in fact, recording. I probably should have made that clear. This is going okay. I’ve interviewed people, I’ve got a few friends to come along, and I’ve already got pages of what I think are trenchant observations. It’s just on midnight.

I don’t hate town. I should make that clear here. Due to an unfortunate foray into Design School, I’ve had two first-years now, and my fair share of screaming Skrillex drops at my friends while 40 other people pulsate around us. Town can be a wordless adventure, a kaleidoscope of texture you share with one other inebriated person. So, I’m not just here to bitch about town. But don’t worry, I will.

Near Vivian St, an elderly taxi driver confronts a guy and a girl. I stand awkwardly near, for the sake of journalism. They won’t pay because “you hit her bro!”, a fact the driver denies, citing video evidence. A woman in her mid-30s, staring as she walks, narrowly avoids an electricity box. “We told you to go to Bristol anyway,” interjects the dude (I’m recording this), which seems like a pretty weird direction given Bristol isn’t on a driveable street. The lights change; I hurry after my friends.

Despite the cold, Cuba Mall is packed. A blonde girl in a blue dress excitedly yells at her group. A guy and a girl sit on an ATM,

off. Bristol’s downstairs space is full of an awkward convergence. Teenagers throw themselves around to the band, while groups of uncomfortable-looking 20-somethings wish they hadn’t ordered a whole jug. A guy

I snapchat a selfie of myself, alone, to the Salient editors, captioned “bleak”. with black hair and a black shirt holds a girl’s finger. It’s 12.19, and the male toilets are already somewhat fecal. I manage to urinate without touching any surfaces. A chubby dude in his early 30s claps me on the back as I wash my hands, obviously proud of my journalistic efforts. It’s too loud to interview anyone, and the drinks here are pretty terrible, so we head back out.

Good Luck’s line is still huge; my friends decide on Ivy. I worry a little about whether Ivy is quite within the student experience Salient wanted me to write about, and whether I can even write about the ‘straight’ experience of gay bars without being an arsehole, but I love Ivy, so we head down.

The bouncer, like every bouncer ever, smirks a little at the photo on my five-year-old learner licence. Eager to appear self-aware, I interrupt his smirk with “I knowww, right?”, as I have with every other bouncer in Wellington. Ivy itself is loud without being annoying, and crowded without being packed. I buy my friends shots of tequila (I did promise!), which has never looked so appealing. One of them offers to buy me a shot in return, but my resolve holds strong.

‘Beauty and a Beat’ comes on, causing the girls in my group to coo at each other while they dump their jackets. I find myself, oddly, confident enough to join them, as I love this

My notes here read: “I hate everything”. somehow. Two guys in faded jeans and untucked dress shirts add themselves to the Good Luck queue, which is already pretty long. My whole group needs to pee, so we hurry into Bristol, where a covers band are playing. While a female friend of mine is ID’d, a random guy grabs both her arms, screams a lyric into her face, then walks

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awkwardness kicks in fully. Back with our jackets and the bored-looking boyfriends, I type notes into my phone—very aware that I look like that guy who can’t stop texting. It’s around 12.45 when we finally leave.

song. One won’t always be young enough to growl “but-you-gotta-keep-an-eye-out-forSELENAAA” at a friend in perfect time while three couples make out around you. Still, I touch my neck a whole lot, not knowing what else to do with my hands. Dancing for me is basically just moving my knees. All too fast, a new, unknown song is on, and my sober

Courtenay Place is a writhing beast. I’m constantly touching people by accident, brushing past them or being brushed past, and I’m acutely aware of it. Every second person is on their phone, swinging around to establish their exact location and relay it back. Every guy is wearing those all-over black chucks, or hideously shiny dress shoes. For every five drunk teenagers there’s a really uncomfortable looking adult, regretting being out so late. A girl runs right into me, apologises, then chases after someone, iPhone in hand. I ask a friend if she needs to be a little buzzed to enjoy town, and if so, why? She can’t quite get a good answer out. Like any good interviewer, I give her one to spit back at me, and elaborate on.

“Sensory overload, yeah, just, uh, it’s a lot.”

One of the boyfriends, eager to contribute, interjects. “It’s fucking depressing, just, I don’t know, I hate it.”

We enter Public around 1 am, and last all of four minutes. Small groups dance in circles throughout the fog, pointing at the ceiling with their mouths half-open. I am intensely aware of my jacket and where my wallet and phone sit within it. ‘Ni**as in Paris’ comes on, but my friends don’t want to be here.

Outside, four guys walk past with a pizza box each. That’s a really great idea. There’s still a feeling of energy in the crowds, but it’s starting to flag, starting to get messier.

Girls instagram photos of their shisha. A guy walks backward a metre or so in front of his friends, dancing at them before he bumps into our group and yelps “Watch out for these girls bro!” Three guys in near-matching polo shirts jump out of a cab. We sit on the corner of Blair and Courtenay and discuss whether Puppies is worth it at this stage. A few people almost sit on me. I have absolutely nothing interesting to say, no conversational

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wisdom or elegance. The music from two or three separate clubs is mixing into one, shiny, beatless mess. It’s 1.11 am.

An acquaintance, who wishes not to be named, used to be a bartender at a Courtenay Place bar. Consequently, she isn’t a huge fan of town. “This is what people look forward to every weekend; this is their way to lose control, and it’s just so... greasy and disgusting.” Which group was worse: students or young professionals? “Men. Men from both of those groups. Men will come around the side of the bar, they’ll call you names, they’ll demand a smile, they’ll refuse to be served by anyone else. Some of them tried to get my attention with laser lights. Female bartenders are expected to be overjoyed by the experience of serving.”

So, if you do want to get the attention of a bartender, without being a douchebag, what should you do? “Just wait. Waving money or clicking at us is fucking rude. We see you.

We’re sober, we know what’s going on.”

I’m outside Puppies, sober, and I don’t know what’s going on. It’s almost 2 am. My group has left. It’s much more crowded than I expected. My ankles really hurt. I snapchat a selfie of myself, alone, to the Salient editors, captioned “bleak”. I feel physically ill when I think about Courtenay Place, where I should probably be for this story. Eventually I find some new, town-bound people who I know from high school. I ask one of them what they want out of the night. “To be honest, I want to objectify women,” he chuckles.

“Don’t put my name on this.” My new town’friends’ are discussing their shoes at great length, and which one of them deserves to get with a girl they know. A woman brushes very close to me as she walks past, her hand touching my crotch for no discernable reason. I figure it’s an accident, until she

of them is keen for Courtenay-town.

The friend—let’s call her Amy—has lost her wallet. She’s searching on the pavement of Tory St without even a phone backlight to aid her, when a passing piece-of-shit “shotguns” her. My notes here read: “I hate everything”.

She finds her wallet, and we start the walk to Courtenay, planning on visiting Famous, the new Lotus. She’s trying to tell me funny stories about her night; I’m imitating laughter.

She’s drunk enough not to notice. Around 2.20 am, we reach Courtenay.

Town fucking reeks. The sweat; the urine; the booze; the cologne. I’ve never been so in love with my phone, which I’m continually using to remove my mind from the situation.

Famous’s line is too long, so we head to The Establishment. I haven’t been here in years.

Amy buys a bourbon and coke, which I have a sip of. Carbonated liquid has never tasted so amazing. I almost buy one for myself, but decide against it. ‘212’ comes on; we go to dance. Every guy who isn’t already closing looks as bored as I am. Two of them come to dance near us—near Amy—and overplay their hands, literally. She calmly puts down her drink before telling them to fuck off. I feel horrible. I’ve put her in this situation, I’ve convinced her to come to town, and now she’s been groped by some guy in a fucking Cotton On shirt. Of course, this always happens in town; I’m just better at forgetting about it when I’m drunk. Just on three, we leave.

Amy’s in a cab, and I’ve found a flatmate to investigate Manners McDonald’s with.

A guy just stumbled out of the bathroom with vomit down his front. A couple sit between two groups of friends, the guy with his hand up her lacy dress, their half-eaten burgers forgotten. My notes read “only

Every guy who isn’t already closing looks as bored as I am. turns back and stares. She’s kind of old and obviously wasted. Finally, a few friends come out of Puppies. They can understand each other’s slightly slower diction, but I’m having trouble. Still, they are comforting, and one

approached guys to interview in the last few hours because the idea of approaching a girl rn is horrific”. Following this trend, I ask the only guy alone in McDonald’s if I can talk to him about town. He’s been to Hope Bros, which was “how Hope Bros

always is”. Why did he pick Hope Bros?

“It’s sleazy, uh, to be honest.”

I try to interview my taxi driver on the way home, but he isn’t that keen. McDonald’s is terrible sober. People slam the windows of our cab as we drive by, jump out in front of it, fall over. The driver finally tells me he prefers to work weekends because of the extra cash. This has been the worst night of my year, but it’s just that: a night. Not my life. Not my livelihood. I leave the driver a tip, the first time I have ever done this, and hurry into my warm flat.

Never again.

Observations from the field

9.34: white guys singing wu tang 10.37: "we just need a song to get everyone up " but no one has trouble by taylor swift 12.30: i really love my phone 12.52: excited girls yelling about hope bros 1.34: girls who look like they went to all girls schools who study boring practical subjects really intimidate me. it's not attraction but it isn't repulsion either. Ii's just they feel both older and younger than me at the same time.

1.50: sitting on phone by self. people are yelling about star signs 2.05 fake laughing along with best friend as we walk 2 famous 2.29 met new person talked about job wasn't that hard but hard to end conversation without awkwardly just saying bye ended up doing that

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y stud tips

 Go running or swimming a couple of times a week.

You will sleep better and feel less stressed. (If you run all the time and are never stressed, stop running; Hermione Granger would say it's better to be a bit nervous.)  That app called SelfControl that blocks social media.  Actual self-control.  Spring-clean your room/flat before you start studying, this will help you focus and remain calm (mess creates stress).  Tweet and make statuses about how much study you have to do; people are really interested.  Use studying as an excuse for just about anything: a day off work, skipping Aunt Helen’s 50th, etc.

 VUWSA free breakfasts.  Student Health tips.  Other free things that are on.  www.assignment4u.co.nz.  Dispose of a family member and get compassionate consideration.  Eat raw chicken to the same effect.  Dump your significant other.  Ritalin.  Bore everyone you encounter with details of your essay/exam; talking it out will help. Alternatively discuss how TOTALLY FUCKED you are in an effort to convince yourself you don’t have to do any real study.  Make like eight flashcards on Quizlet, post the set to your class Facebook page, and ask for others to chip in.  Spend all your time at the library.  Leave class Facebook pages; the notifications are ridiculous, and you will be fooled into thinking you need to study less because everyone else is asking such dumb questions.  Taking a bag of baby carrots and a thing of hummus to the library will get you through a day.  If you consider yourself too good for the mocha during term time, you should relax this; they are surprisingly comforting.

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 Plan actual breaks—not just checking Facebook, but getting out of the house and doing something you enjoy.  Classical music.  Switch things up and study nude.  Find alternative study venues: forests, in the middle of roundabouts, farms, in the Bucket Fountain, under tables in fancy restaurants.  Put a picture of Colin Craig at the end of every page, so that you motivate yourself to avoid being as ignorant as him.  Sleep. Like planned, regular sleep, not just when you fall asleep during your Breaking-Bad-studybreak-turned-marathon.  Tell yourself that if you don’t study, you have to hang out on the overbridge.  Berocca + ice + sparkling water (+ gin).  Cover all your walls in colour-coded notes outlining every single point your lecturer ever made for every subject. Also colour-code your subjects.  Use this as an excuse to go stationery shopping (also buy: a pack of fine-tip black Bic pens, highlighters, Post-it notes, more fine-tip black Bic pens)  Find your lecturer’s blog/Twitter. Read through their archives – it’s totally, somehow, related to the work you did in class. If you reference something they’re interested in, they have to bump you up a grade. It’s like a rule or something.

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 Completely change your personality for three weeks.  Hang out in your Hall’s dining room in the middle of the night, chatting to the security lady, and watch shit videos on YouTube.  The soundtrack from A Single Man, full volume, 24/7.  Go to Kirks and get heaps of perfume samples.

Wear different ones depending on which subject you’re studying, then wear that perfume in your exam. Scent memory = totes real memory.  Take breaks to make yourself nice, decent dinners.

Download semi-related podcasts to listen to while doing this (and going for walks/runs) so you’re still technically studying.

Location, location, location: Study spaces— Wi-Fi-nk you very much  The Botanic Garden is a serene place to focus on your study, with many quiet areas for a quick gobby.  Switch it up a bit by studying in other libraries you wouldn’t usually go to; Vic has heaps of them hidden away among the Faculties.  Wellington Central Library has free Wi-Fi.  Wellington National Library, corner of Molesworth and Aitken Streets. Recently redecorated with a whole bunch of new computers, desks, and there’s free Wi-Fi.

an apple a day

Student Health's tips

TIPS FOR EXAM STRESS With exams nearly here, things are heating up. Here are a few tips to get you through: Try to TAKE THE POWER OUT OF EXAMS—they are pieces of paper with questions on them for you to show what you have learned and thought about. Can you see them as a challenge rather than a threat?

If the level of tension you feel over exams gives you a sense of energy and productivity – great! This is useful. If it makes you feel unpleasantly anxious, or interferes with your thinking and planning, it is probably too high.

Here are some stress-reducing ideas to try – experiment to find out what works best for you.

Exam preparation  Maintain a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet, sleeping, exercise, work and relaxation. Plan time out to do things you enjoy, not connected with study. Avoid overuse of stimulants and relaxants.  Have a realistic study plan that you are likely to stick to, and study when your energy and attention are at their best.

If possible, find a distraction-free study environment.  Put any unnecessary tasks, demands or problems on hold until after exams. Also, let friends and family know about your exams and ask for the support you need.  Practise some relaxation, breathing and sleep management techniques. See our website for FREE Educational Programmes that can teach you these: www. victoria.ac.nz/st_services/counselling/resources/groupprogramme.pdf.  Get familiar with general exam techniques. Student Learning Support have advisors and run workshops that can help with this: www.victoria.ac.nz/st_services/slss/.  THINK BEYOND THE EVENT. Look forward to the day it will be all over. Plan a reward – something that will help you to feel good.

On the day of your exam  By now, you probably know all you can know!  Try to give yourself the best chance of remembering and focussing on your knowledge. Excess stress and worry can affect your memory, recall, focus and attention. Hopefully you have done some of the preparation above.  On the day, have a reliable way of waking up, and consider when/what you will eat and drink beforehand. Try to get a whole night’s sleep the night before your exam.

Keep your energy and concentration up!  Get there early enough so you are in the right place. A brief walk, using the bathroom and a relaxation/breathing exercise, can be helpful before going into the exam room.  Position yourself in a space in the room that is best for you, and take a little time to breathe and relax before the exam begins.  Remind yourself you have learned all you can. Try to focus your thoughts on the exam. If you are distracted by worry or other things, notice it, STOP, and refocus on the exam paper.

All the best from the Counselling Service

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If one man can show so much hate, think how much love we could show together.

—Helle Gannestad, social commentator and photojournalism student at Oslo University College, Norway.

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As Norway nears the two-year anniversary of the 22 July 2011 government bombing and Utøya massacre, Helle Gannestad speaks to Salient about youth movements and the experience of being a student in the wake of the terror attacks.

W

here were you when the attacks took place?

I was home in Sunndal, about 300 km away from Oslo. I remember sitting in a chair in the living room, watching television and surfing the internet. Suddenly, I saw tweets saying "gas explosion near the government buildings", "big explosion in Oslo" and such. My first reaction was to text my friends in the AUF [Worker’s Youth League, the youth wing of Norway’s Labour Party] asking if they were okay, since their offices are close to the government. One texted back: "We're at the safest place on Earth." A couple of hours later I was crying and hoping to get in contact with the same people— then knowing that it probably was the least safe place to be.

It was my first day off in 14 days. I was supposed to be at AUF's summer camp on Utøya, but since I had got a couple of extra days of work at the local newspaper I didn't go. I already knew I was going to study in the capital, so I had started moving at the beginning of the month. The first couple of days after the terror attacks took place, I felt guilty for not being on the island, which is kind of absurd, but it felt natural because very many of my friends had been there.

What was your involvement with youth politics before the attacks?

I started in AUF in 2006, when I was 14.

In 2010 I became a part of the National Delegates’ Board. I was also the deputy leader of Møre og Romsdal county. My last position was in July 2011 as a journalist in the member magazine Praksis.

Has student involvement in youth political groups changed (increased/decreased) following the terror attacks?

It's hard to say without any specific numbers to look at, but for example, participation in both the student parliament election and headmaster election at the University of Oslo was at its lowest this year.

Have youth political groups become more or less active following the terror attacks?

Studies show that more youth are politically active now compared to before the terror attacks. Especially in the months after, the political youth organisations got an increased member population. The age for voting for both local and national elections is now 18 years.

Many political parties, especially on the leftwing side, want it to be changed to age 16.

Has the security at the University and around the country increased since the attacks? How do you feel about the level of security at the University/in Norway?

I don't think students in Norway feel that the security level has been raised after 22 July, but I know that the universities and colleges have been told by the state that they have to have a emergency plan. The responsibility rests on the police and Department of Justice and Public Security, and they have had many internal investigations to improve what went wrong when the terror hit.

What has Norway done to ensure student safety and welfare following the attacks?

The main consequence of the terror attacks is that the focus on students’ mental health is more important. Students that had been involved in the attacks or anybody who had troubles dealing with emotions after were allowed to go to the front of the queue for psychiatrist services in the student-welfare organisations.

In November 2011 I started to see a psychiatrist connected to the studentwelfare organisation in Oslo because of my connections to the happenings at Utøya, and a fear of failing my exam in December.

Students that were on Utøya also had the chance to take exams later or have more time to sit the exams because of concentration problems. I don't know if these special arrangements still exist.

Do most students feel safe at the University, or is there an ongoing feeling of insecurity?

In November 2011 there was a report saying one out of six students felt insecure at their university. I don't know what the numbers are now, but when thinking about how my friends and acquaintances behave, I don't see any signs of panic. Personally, I remember thinking insecure during the first couple of weeks, looking for emergency exits just in case something happened.

Do you think the attacks brought the university community, and Norway as a nation, together?

There's certainly no doubt that it brought Norway as a nation closer together, the first couple of months after the terror. I think the values and how we reacted will still be in our subconscious, and will be a part of the generations growing up. But I think everyone will admit that it was hard to have a good public discussion of the issues that followed, because there were so many feelings connected to the happenings.

Did you think about leaving Norway following the attacks?

Leave the country that has been ranked as the best place in the world to live several times? Nope. Compared to the rest of Europe this is a very safe place to be a student, both in terms of the welfare while studying and job opportunities after finishing your degree.

The only thing I was thinking about after the attacks was how fast I could get to Oslo and comfort my friends. It's very important to remember that the attacks were carried out by only one man, terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

PTO  37

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What effect have the attacks had on extremeright-wing political discourse in Norway?

Wow, this is a tough one, because everything depends on how you define ‘extreme-right-wing’.

For ten years, after its beginning in 1998, there was a Nazi group called Vigrid in Norway, but this doesn't exist anymore. Historically, there hasn't been an extreme-right-wing political party since the Second World War. Some people would say that the Progress Party in Norway have a tendency to talk about asylum seekers in a racist way, but this doesn't necessarily make them extreme.

What is interesting to look at is how the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik found inspiration online. I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but Norwegian online newspapers’ message boards are dominated by angry racists when it comes to rape, jobs, murders and criminality. It's scary to see what opinions there are out there, and the worst part is that you don't know if it's your neighbour, a person beside you at the bus, or a mentally ill person writing it. So one could say there's no clearly extreme-right-wing political discourse in Norway, but we know there's a dark force in our society as well.

How are the responses/reaction to the attacks in Norway different to responses by the public in mass-shooting incidents in the US? I feel like I need to choose my words carefully when trying to discuss this, because there are so many differences between the 22 July attacks and the mass-shooting incidents in the US. Firstly, this was the first national attack since World War Two. There have been

My first reaction to the car bomb was to text my friends in the AUF asking if they were okay, since their offices are close to the government. One texted back: "We're at the safest place on Earth." A couple of hours later I was crying and hoping to get in contact with the same people—then knowing that it probably was the least safe place to be. over ten mass-shooting incidents since 2011 in the US—mostly on universities. I think I can say with quite a lot of certainty that the first reactions after the terror attacks in Norway and US are the same: the deepest, blackest grief you can imagine. It's the second reaction that makes us different from each other: instead of getting angry and vengeful, Norwegians were filled with love and care for the victims, their family and each other.

One can of course ask "Why or how are Norway and the US different from each other?" There are many historical differences, which I don't need to talk about now, but a big difference is that Norway is a peace nation—we have never been at war, except during the Second World War when we were occupied. The two countries deal with criminality differently also: the highest imprisonment in Norway is 21 years (and lifelong custody*), and in the US there's death penalty in many states, yet there's more crime in the US. It's cultural differences.

Were there many arguments to increase gun control/gun access following the attacks?

The only discussion which I can really remember is whether the police should carry guns when patrolling. Currently the gun is locked in the car, and they have to ask for permission from their boss to take it out. The Norwegian police are the ones demanding the change, probably because of the experience of 22 July. When it comes to the average Norwegian it's already hard to get a gun, and if you get a gun it's because you're going to go out hunting animals, not—as in America—as a protection for your family.

What do you think can and has been learned from the attacks?

Even though we have come a long way with our society and democracy, it's still fragile. We have a safe environment in Norway, but we cannot close our eyes for the evil in the world, even though most days are struggle-less for us. I'm so happy that we reacted with love, and wanting to fight with words for democracy and openness.

I hope, and know, that Norway's reaction to the terror has been and will be a role model for other countries in similar situations.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I think I would have answered these questions differently if it was a terrorist attack at a university. The 22 July terrorist attacks were an attack at the Norwegian Labour Party and its youth organisation—and what most people in Norway would say are Norwegian values: democracy and openness. *A sentence where the criminal is tried every five years and can in theory be in jail for life.

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While the bombings can’t and won’t ever be forgotten, the city of Boston will recover.

—Katie Smith, third-year student at Boston University’s College of Communication, writer for Arbitrage Magazine and intern at Seal Press in Berkeley, California.

PTO  39

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On 15 April this year, as the last of the runners crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs exploded. Four days later, one suspect was dead, one had escaped, and a manhunt erupted across the city of Boston.

Katie Smith describes life after the bombings.

s

ince the Boston Marathon bombings happened on 15 April, dozens of people have asked me what it was like to be in the middle of a national tragedy. Technically, I wasn’t in the middle. I was with friends about a mile away from the finish line in Copley Square, walking towards Kenmore Square to meet up with more people. Around us were hordes of people cheering on the runners and enjoying one of the first warm days of the year.

I was not close enough to hear the explosion.

The panic felt at the finish line did not reach the section of the route I was near. I did not know anything had happened until my mother, who lives in California, called me 15 minutes after the initial blast to ask if I was okay. It was different than her other calls; it was urgent, serious, and almost as if she had expected something was wrong and was relieved to hear otherwise. She told me to get home as quickly as I could and turn on the news.

It was an odd feeling to be truly scared in Boston. Before the bombing, I felt safer walking back from the library to my off-campus apartment alone at three o’clock in the morning than I did when I took my dog out at night in my sleepy, suburban hometown. I’m essentially among peers all day, every day—half of the city’s population is composed of university students who attend one of the 53 colleges in the Boston area. I would maintain awareness of my surroundings, but I would not make a beeline towards home.

The fear that followed the bombing felt like it mostly stemmed from the uncertainty surrounding the event. The constant, “Who did this and why?” plagued most conversations I had for a few weeks. At Boston University, everyone was edgy and anxious. Suddenly, any mildly strange occurrence was immediately suspicious

40 

and warranted investigation. If anyone saw anything, they absolutely said something.

The day after the bombing, the Boston University Police Department sent out an emergency alert through the University’s system to warn of a suspicious package left outside the library where I had been working on a project. It was fight-or-flight to me; I felt like I had to walk home immediately. I did so without listening to music or letting my mind wander out of fear for my safety. Law enforcement officials were everywhere while the search for the suspect or suspects continued, and although their presence was necessary, it exacerbated the fear and anxiety on campus.

That Thursday night, I received a message through the university alert system about the MIT police officer, Sean Collier, who had been shot and killed. I didn’t connect the bombing with the shooting at first; both scared me, but the events seemed disconnected. I went to bed before the story had fully developed, emotionally exhausted from the constant news coverage. What I woke up to a few hours later was, for lack of a better word, insane.

I had messages from BU urging me to stay inside, friends asking me if I was okay, if I was watching the news, if I knew what was going on.

When the lockdown ended and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured, it felt like all of Boston

breathed a sigh of relief. However, the security measures enacted following the bombings have remained in place. Bomb-sniffing dogs were present at BU’s commencement ceremony, and large bags had to be checked at tables before entering the venue. Graduating students had to carry their caps and gowns into the venue and change into them in their lines.

Interestingly enough, some people seem bitter or angry about the increase in security at university events. When the security protocol regarding commencement was announced, many students complained about how long all of the screenings would take. Others felt that this was an overreaction, and that the bombings were an individual event enacted by two people and would not happen again.

I understand the frustration that extra security creates. I remember going to the airport after 9/11 and seeing how much tighter and more intense security was. The lines were insanely long, and the process felt like it took hours to nine-year-old me. What I do not understand, however, is how such measures don’t feel worth it.

How someone can whine and moan about long lines and extra security at the ceremony without pausing to think about the possibility of a repeat attack. Without extra security, something like the Marathon bombings could easily happen again. I would much rather sacrifice an extra 30 minutes out of my day and get to the arena early and have my bag searched than live in the kind of anxiety that the tragedy caused again.

When I left Boston for the summer, the memorial for the bombing victims that had been set up in Copley was still standing, and I have a feeling that fresh flowers will still be there when I return in August. The tragedy will always be a part of my classmates’ and my experience at university.

Its effects will be felt at large University events and it will be remembered at the Boston Marathon for years to come. However, while the bombings can’t and won’t ever be forgotten, the city of Boston will recover.

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A Conversation About Happiness

Ollie: How does a philosopher of happiness differ from a self-help expert?

Dan: Lots of people think they’re exactly the same. If I meet extended family, or people at parties, it’s always like, “what do you do?” And I say, “I study the philosophy of happiness.”

And they say, “Okay, so, how can I be happy?”

And... of course I do know, but that’s not the point of what I’m researching. For philosophy, this question is mainly what is happiness?

I guess we’ll save your secret answer until the end then.

Yes, give me some time.

Is the role of the philosopher of happiness to provide an understanding of how people naturally understand happiness, or is it to provide new ideas of what we should consider happiness to be?

It’s an interesting question. One answer that philosophers might give for what wellbeing is might be: the good life is the one which the hypothetical version of you, who knows everything about you and knows everything about what is good and what is valuable, would want for you. You might say that’s a bulletproof

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Salient’s in-house correspondent-in-gloom Ollie Neas sits down with Victoria Postdoctoral Fellow and philosopher Dr Dan Weijers to uncover the simple secrets about that elusive thing called ‘happiness’.

theory—there’s no way that’s wrong. That’s fine, but it doesn’t tell us anything about how we should live our lives and how we should organise our societies. I think philosophers need to pursue more practical definitions of happiness.

I might be different from a lot of philosophers in that I do care about people being happy. I’m especially interested in public policy and how we can organise our society to make people happier.

Do philosophers agree on what happiness is?

Philosophers tend to say happiness is basically feeling good, and that happiness is not all that’s important. Most philosophers say positive emotions can be bad too. Are you having this positive emotion because you’ve done a bad thing? Philosophers often say that doesn’t count.

Are you happy because someone told you that you’re going to get this scholarship, then it turns out you don’t get it? Then your happiness is based on a falsity.

Nearly all say that there’s more to life than happiness. They’ll say other things are important, like truth or friendship—not just because they might bring happiness, but because they’re valuable in and of themselves. So some philosophers build a list of incommensurable

things that make your life go well.

I personally think that, if you were going to have a list theory like that, there’s three main candidates: happiness, meaning, and autonomy. You want to be feeling good. You want to also think that your life is worthwhile in some sense. And you want to be actually free and in control of your life, rather than it just randomly happening.

But if those things like autonomy and truth don’t actually affect your experiences, do they matter?

I’m kind-of torn between those ideas. I philosophically totally back the idea that if you don’t experience it, it doesn’t affect how good your life is. So you can imagine a situation where you experience that you have autonomy, but you don’t actually have it. But I think that in terms of the real world, we need those things on the list to prevent someone saying, I know what’s in your best interests by giving you this good experience, which could all backfire in the real world.

Do we live in a happy society?

In New Zealand we are pretty happy. There are different ways to measure it. The most

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common question is, all things considered, how satisfied with your life are you these days? And New Zealand does very well in those surveys, particularly compared to its average income. This ties in with a big question: does money bring happiness? Economists who study happiness are especially interested in that. But money is relevant for happiness. But it becomes less and less relevant the richer you get, both individually and as a society. But New Zealand is very happy, and we’re very good at turning our relatively meagre incomes into a lot of satisfaction with life.

It’s hard to say whether that’s a reflection of the Kiwi ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, or if we do actually lead happy lives.

Do you think any particular policies follow from the idea that money contributes less to happiness the wealthier you become?

I do, but it’s very complicated in policy terms.

If you look at the correlation between income equality and happiness across countries, the relationship is complex. In the US they have high income inequality but it is not strongly related to them being less happy. That’s because they have the idea of perceived income mobility.

The poor people believe that they can make it— it’s the American Dream. So income inequality doesn’t seem to affect them that negatively.

Whereas in other countries, like France for example, it does affect them more. I’m actually doing some research on this with a social psychologist. It seems that very highly religious nations and very non-religious countries— like New Zealand—are less satisfied if they have high income inequality. We’re trying to argue that, at least with the very non-religious countries, that’s because of the culture of rights and egalitarianism. When we see people who are very poor in our country, most of us think that they haven’t had a very good start, that they didn’t get as good an education, and that they may have lost out on the genetic lottery.

And that’s not their fault, and they shouldn’t be punished. It’s the same in former Communist countries. But countries in the middle that are moderately religious, are more satisfied as income inequality in their country goes up.

So... In your opinion, Dan, what is the secret of happiness?

Okay. The secret is mainly genetic.

Oh. But it’s not totally genetic. How old are you now?

I’m 21.

Okay. So your thoughts about yourself now— whether or not you’re a happy person now—are going to remain generally the same throughout your life. But people tend to dip. I’m 31 and I’m heading toward the really bad zone of happiness. And then it goes up again later on, pretty much when your kids move out of home, until you get very old when it dips again, as your health declines and you start worrying about death. What’s really relevant for people your age is the looming quarter-life crisis.

On that note, there’s a question I want to ask you. I’m 21 years old. I’m a student and I’m doing alright at university. I think maybe I’m spreading myself a little bit thin but I don’t necessarily want to change that because there’s lots I want to do. I know I’m still young but I can feel myself ageing. I’ve got bad knees. I can feel everything speeding up, and everyone says it speeds up even faster and I’m quite scared that next thing I know, I’ll be in a rest home or on my deathbed. And nothing in my life seems to have as much structure as it used to, and I don’t really know what to do, but I get the feeling that no matter what I decide I won’t achieve nearly as much as I want to, and so... what do I do?

Exactly. It’s a really common problem, and a lot of my peers have gone through this and still have exactly the same problem at 30. The way that our culture in Western society is at the moment is very much “get your dream and go and chase it”. But most people don’t know what their dream is! You could pursue journalism.

You could be an academic. Or you could be an entrepreneur. What can you do?

I think that one of the keys to happiness is finding something, finding your dream. But there are conditions. It needs to be a dream that your particular strengths and aptitudes are well suited to, otherwise you might feel frustrated in trying to achieve your dream and never being very successful at it.

It should be something not only that you’re good at, but that you value. It adds meaning.

You don’t go, it’s kind of fun to do this. You go, I feel like it’s important to do this, and other people think it’s important—particularly your society and those that are close to you.

So even if you’re not genetically predisposed

to be happy, you can still feel like your life is important, and get some happiness and satisfaction.

And then you might have a dream, and then you try it a bit and you’re like, nah, it’s not that great. And then you try something else. It is a real problem. We feel that we have so many options—and we do—but the world we live in knows a lot about marketing. So all these things that we work towards, they seem so great, but when we get them they’re not so good.

So what’s the problem? It’s expectations. If you’re the kind of person who expects too much out of life, then you’re never going to be satisfied. It sounds simple, but one of the things we may not realise is that there are all of these societal pressures to expect great things from ourselves and also from the things around us. Instead, we need to be learning how to be happy with what we’ve got. We just need to be aware of our expectations and our experiences.

For example, I’m a dad now. I have two kids. I used to have this really free life where I could choose to do what I wanted. But now I have all these responsibilities. If my expectation was to be a dad and still be free, then I would be very frustrated right now. I would be quite unhappy.

So, are you happy, Dan? I am happy. But I have noticed the steady decline that happens from shortly after 21.

Damn it.

Don’t worry. You could have another ten years before you start dipping.

You’ve got to be prepared for the inevitable, I guess.

21 is a classic peak year. At the end of your time at university, it is important to do the right thing, but by ‘do the right thing’, I don’t mean choose the right option. I mean have the right attitude. And then no matter what happens, it won’t be as bad.

Intrigued by Dan’s musings on happiness? An extended version of this interview is available online, which includes Dan’s verdict on Bhutan, the YOLO and TOLO movements, whether he would get into a machine that gave him a simulated life of perfect experiences, and why philosophers are more miserable than non-philosophers.

Enrolments for the Trimester-Three paper PHIL 215/314, Happiness and Wellbeing, which is taught by Dr Weijers, are now open.  43

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How To Have a One Night Stand

By Cupie Hoodwink

In 2010, my high-school boyfriend of two and a half years dumped me. We had lost our virginities together; moved to Wellington together, and, very late one night, we had even talked about marrying one day. As the tears rolled down my cheeks and we hugged our last goodbye, one thought passed through my head: "Now I can have

Two weeks later I was stepping out of a shiny company car in last night’s dress, the embossed business card of my first conquest clenched firmly in my hand. He was on his way to golf with a client; I was on my way to two years of one-night stands. It had begun.

DISCLAIMER: The one night stand is not for everyone, and should in no way be viewed as a mark of one’s sexual prowess. Just like the act of sex itself, one night stands are never going to be as glamorous nor as frequent as your favourite TV shows—nor my first experience—paint them out to be. Indeed, on my path to enlightenment, I had both a seven-month dryspell and foreplay involving a live axolotl. That being said, the experience of a one night stand can be empowering, fulfilling, and just a sweet way to bone someone you don’t like enough to go out with.

one-night stands like they do in

Getting there:

Sex and the City ."

Hey! I just met you...

44 

While it’s not recommended to follow up “Hi my name is...” with “Wanna bang?”, carnal body language is not that hard to read. If you have a fair idea that the two of you might both want the same thing out of your night, then the best way to make it happen is to just be upfront about it. Tried and true: “You should probably just kiss me!”; “I’m not sure if they do this in your country, but I want to spend the night with you.”, or “Mama me”.*

Your Place or Mine?

The jury’s still out on whether it’s better to take your new friend back to yours, or head over to theirs for your play-date. Informative internet message boards I have perused have told me that you should always rendezvous in your own room: then you can stay in bed all day if you’re hungover, and there’s no walk of shame to endure.

Personally, I have always preferred to play the away game: that way the experience feels more like a holiday or open home—you can check out their flat, admire their bed linen,

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comment on their wall decorations. I also have a chronically messy bedroom—suitors need not know about my bad habits until we’ve been dating for at least a month. Besides, if they get really attached, at least they don’t know where you live.

It’s Business Time: That’s a Wrap!

Use. A. Condom. I cannot stress this enough.

Whether you carry them with you, have a supply in your bedside table, get a flatmate to hook you up with the goods, or simply request their presence when the time comes, ensuring that your night of passion doesn’t leave you a-rashin’ is absolutely essential.

Other forms of contraception are not enough.

Sure, there may be no risk of pregnancy, but remember, you’ve just met this person—for all you know they rub their genitalia on public toilet seats for fun. Nothing is going to kill your no-strings-attached-banging buzz more than phoning to tell them that they gave you the clap.

And finally, if you think “But my penis doesn’t like condoms” sounds legit, then here’s some news for you: “Goodnight, and goodbye.”

OMG, sooooo awkward!

As a nation, New Zealanders are an extremely awkward people. We find a huge number of social interactions uncomfortable, and this doesn’t stop when we get to the bedroom.

There’s a reason why most of us rely on alcohol to fuel our fondling.

If you’re planning to get freaky with an (almost) complete stranger, you’re going to have to do your best to set aside these national tendencies.

Far from being overwhelming, the unfamiliarity of a one-night stand can be completely liberating.

Remember, if this person has never met you before, or at least never encountered you in this setting, they have no expectations, no preconceptions. This is your time to shine, call the shots, and tell them exactly what, how, and where you want it. If you’re never going to see them again, why not turn the bedroom into your stage?

The Morning After: Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

You’ve just woken up, and following a night in the throes of passion, you are now in the throes of tangled bedsheets, a throbbing headache, and a stranger’s limbs. It’s understandable that your natural instinct is to run, run, and never look back.

But hold on just a minute there! You’ve shared body fluids with this person; the least you can do is say goodbye in person. That being said, it’s important not to overstay your welcome. Read the mood: Spoon a little if you must, but when the time is right, get up, and get out of there.

The Stride o’ Pride: The walk of shame is only as shameful as you allow it to be. Chances are nobody will notice; if they do they’re probably just jealous that you’re getting some and they ain’t. In preparation for your Stride of Pride, there are a few things you can do to make yourself look a little more presentable in the harsh light of day: slip on a hoodie,** slop on some make-up remover, slap down your bed hair, and wrap on some sunnies.*** And if you can’t bear the thought of venturing out in your current state, call in back-up.

Flatmates in long-term relationships are often extremely intrigued by the night-time antics of their single friends; allow them to have a one-night stand vicariously through you, and you can be assured deliveries of appropriate daywear/lifts home from wherever you’re stranded in Aro Valley.

The follow-up: How you should act in the hours, days, and weeks following your one night stand all depends on what your relationship with this person was prior to getting in the sack, and what you want it to be afterwards. At the end of the day, whether you’re sleeping with your next door neighbour or a brand new friend, the most important thing to remember is that you are dealing with a human. Although you might have only ever been after a sweet piece of ass, dat ass has emotions that can be set into turmoil if you’re not up front about your intentions.

These seas are certainly easier to navigate with a stranger, where it was probably a lot clearer from the outset that this connection was primarily a sexual one. If you’re not intending to reignite the fire in your respective loins, then it is sufficient to say/write/send a “I had a good time, thanks x” equivalent, to a style of your choosing.

Where your one-time lover is a long-time friend or acquaintance, you’re going to have to tread a little more cautiously. Think carefully about where you want to go from here before you fire off a series of texts ending in ‘xoxoxoox’, or tell all your mutual friends about the experience.

If you’re not interested, keep the tone light but respectful, and try not to be weird about it the first time you see them in person (after that it’ll be smooth-sailing). If you would like to see more of your pal in a romantic setting, you can keep that door open by maintaining open but casual post-coital contact: a text or two referencing a joke shared between the sheets; the hypothetical suggestion of the possibility of getting a coffee in future, maybe. But remember, unless they’re reciprocating in kind, it’s best not to bombard the new light of your life—they’re probably trying to work out what the hell just happened, too.

Slut-shaming: Consensual, respectful, and safe sex between adults should never be frowned upon simply because it occurs outside of a committed relationship or with multiple partners in the same number of days.

If you’re made to feel guilty and ashamed following your one night stand, just remember: if you’re DTF, then you gotta be down to fuck the haters too. *Spanish for “Suck me”. **This presumes that you are going to see the person again, and can return their old hoodie at a future date of mutual convenience. If you’ve just slept with a complete stranger who you never wish to see again, it’s best not to steal their possessions.

Theft is not sexy.

In an ideal world, I would prefer that either I or the person I have just had casual sex with be about to leave the country. However, aside from spending all your time lurking in Base Bar, this isn’t really practical. The key, just as it was when it came to business time, is to not be awkward about it.

***On the treacherous route that is the walk of shame, no object is more welcome than a pair of sunglasses. Those tinted lenses can hide a multitude of sins, and you will not regret packing them in your bag. Just don’t be the douche who decides to whip them out at 3 am on the d-floor of Hope Bros.

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You Must Be Ned Stark’s Bastard

By Alexandra Hollis

“On average, these results are pretty poor...”

They were still mid-meeting when Carl walked in, but nobody looked up. Good. It was always better that way.

No need for his face to freeze into something unnaturally impassive if they weren’t looking. When they were looking he always thought he might look resentful, even when he wasn’t. Okay, maybe a bit. But only because he was almost done with the day and Jono had assigned him to HPPI. The POLS and IR guys were certifiably the worst.

But they weren’t looking at him today, so he just grabbed the rubbish bag, put a new liner in and left. Almost free – Jono had said something about the desks in Kirk, but if it was too late he’d probably let it slide. That was really more of a job for the holidays. He finished the department without seeing anyone else, thank god, then grabbed the cart and went downstairs to find Jono.

“Hey man!”

Frank bounded up to him, clapped him on his back, beaming.

Then he’d laughed, and Carl had decided, once and for all, that he liked him.

But today he was tired and didn’t want to get into a long discussion about worker rights in Bangladesh, so he made a show of checking the time then looking harried, interrupting– “Sorry Frank, I’ve got to go check in with the boss. You know how it is,” he said, knowing that, no, Frank really didn’t. He left with promises to try, if nothing else, to make it to the meeting. Those kids and their meetings.

Jono pointed at him as soon as he came in.

“How you doing? It’s been too long man!”

“Carl, my man! Need you scrubbing the desks in Kirk.

That cool?”

“Hey Frank. I’m good, you?”

What could he say? “Sure thing.”

Frank grinned, adjusting the cuffs on his coat – they’d been turned up so the red lining showed. It matched his socks, Carl noticed.

“Cool cool. Do that, then you can go.”

“Really well, yeah, great. Hey if you’re around tomorrow, about – six?” he said, yelling over his shoulder to the group behind him, nodding when a girl confirmed, “six, you should come to our meeting, maybe? It’s on José Carlos Mariátegui – great name, yeah?”

Frank was big on names. He’d taken Carl’s to be a sign, despite the spelling, that he would be a good Marxist.

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“We need guys like you, man,” he’d told Carl once, “guys on the front lines, y’know? It’s all very well and good trying to change the world from our ivory towers, but, to tell the truth we’re all a bit bourgeois, like, kinda quite upper middle class. I’ll tell you a secret,” he had said, leaning into Carl, “my real name’s actually Franklin.

Franklin! How upper middle class is that? We’re a bit sheltered, really.”

He kept his sigh to himself, and headed back the way he’d come.

Cleaning graffiti off desks wasn’t an easy job, but it was nicely repetitive. He’d probably have enjoyed it if he hadn’t been made to stay late: alone, in an empty lecture theatre at night, he had some time to himself. Really, it wasn’t too bad, even though dinner would be over by the time he caught the train home, and his mum never remembered to put glad wrap over his leftovers, so the meat always dried out. There weren’t many jobs where

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the space he was in was big enough to get rid of the smell from his cleaning products. It made him feel almost healthy, for once.

People had chimed in with their suggestions:

The lights buzzed on. Cheap vinyl and bad carpet: the big, drafty space came to life. Being there, he realised, was the same feeling he’d had, in classrooms at night, after Parent-Teacher meetings, waiting for his mum to pick him up. Even in the early evening it felt too late, and he was struck by the sense that he was trespassing.

Yes, he must be. Even though he wasn’t; even though he got to be there when they couldn’t, hours after the last class of the day when the place still held some rustle of seats being folded down, bags packed and unpacked.

Even when he got to have this stillness. No, it wasn’t trespassing. Not at all.

“I’m Perd Hapley?”

These students weren’t too messy, and he appreciated it, even if thinking that did make him feel uncomfortably like their dad, coming in after they’d all left to survey the damage. What they were was bored. Well, that was understandable. He would be too. Most days he couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting in those seats, listening to a string of old dudes drone on and on. So the graffiti was annoying, but it was also kind of okay.

Sometimes he liked it.

He was done, he thought. One last inspection, a few smudges to remove, then, yes, done. He took the cart back, he signed out, got rid of his horrible bib, then left. It was cold outside and he breathed into his collar for warmth as he half-jogged down the hill. On The Terrace he almost ran into a group of students coming up from the Church St steps, their hands growing a dangerous purple with the weight of their shopping. He jumped onto the road and ran around them, back onto the pavement when the traffic lights started again and a stream of cars went past. He was on Woodward Street in no time, then Lambton. At least, he thought as he passed the Law School, he didn’t have to deal with Pipitea.

Jono didn’t get this, neither did Jack or Te or the other guys. Yeah, but they were all ancient. These kids were around his age. Actually his age. If he hadn’t left school he’d be here now, anyway, but in a different way. Which was a thought he didn’t like touching much. Not that he was at all cut up about it, just, huh, that happened. And now this was happening. He wasn’t so much a part of the university as his mum had thought he might have been, but he still sort of was, which was weird position to be in.

But an okay one. He’d never even been much for school and the place was kind of nice, in a scummy way.

On the first desk he cleaned off the inevitable penises, a (pretty solid, he thought) feminist analysis on men’s need to draw phalluses everywhere, a couple of bored-looking trees and an expertly copied meme. On the second there was a tally of the number of times a lecturer had said “um” in one class, the word “hello” in – he counted them – seventeen different languages, and a sketch of a pokéball bong. He spent some time on the third: a more than life-sized caricature of John Key’s face, “COCKSUCKER” written above it. Alongside this, someone had scrawled “HE’S” – and here Carl actually stopped spraying clear so he could work out the word: it looked like “fucking” had been written over “raping” – “YOUR EDUCATION.” Across the top of another desk someone – Carl guessed a Philosophy student – had written, in block caps, “WHO EVEN ARE YOU??

WHO EVEN AM I??”

“I’m Chuck Bass.”

“You must be Ned Stark’s bastard.”

That one, man. He almost didn’t want to clean it off, but if Jono did an inspection after he’d left he’d be in deep shit, so he sprayed and wiped, then sprayed and wiped again. It wouldn’t remove the indentations in the wood, and in two days’ time all the lines would have been redrawn. There really wasn’t much point, except that it would make Jono and the University happy. And whatever made Jono happy made him happy, as Jono was fond of insisting.

At the train station, he turned. Kelburn was still there, slightly hidden behind the buildings and hills. The library was side-on from him, so he didn’t get the full impact of the view he would have from town: a solid block of lights, an ugly building made for looking out rather than looking in. But the best view of the city was from there. Anyone who’d been there could look up and be safe in this knowledge. And in looking at it, they were looking out of it, remembering looking out of it, tracing the curve of the hills as they grew into the evening, the sky sinking into the land, the city slowly lit up, block by block, until it was night. The leafless trees would be standing out against the rest of the bush as if a pattern had been burnt into the Green Belt. Soon, the windows would stop showing the ferry’s movement across the harbour. Reflections would take over. Looking out, the faces would become beautiful for a moment; quiet and haunted, so much like their parents’, before they all turned away from the windows and back to their work. He would move between the aisles, emptying the bins, pens scratching all across the building.

Yes, he had something too.

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ART BY SAM NORTHCOTT, COLOURING BY CHLOE PALMER. FEATURES • ϟ

by sam northcott

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Fear and Loathing in Nelson Philip McSweeney

Nakedbus offered Salient fully-paid transport and accommodation to small-town New Zealand for one writer, so we packed up Arts Editor Philip McSweeney and shipped him off to Nelson for a weekend.

Some days ago, having little or no money in my bank account, nothing in particular to interest me in Wellington, and it being a damp, drizzly, err, May in my soul, I thought an adventure was called for. Perhaps I should take to sea? Visit the South Island?

Fortunately, Nakedbus graciously offered me a trip to Nelson via the Interislander. I quietly accepted. This is why I arrived at the ferry terminal at 7.30 on a Saturday morning, hopelessly tired, under-caffeinated and ready for anything.

Seafaring aboard the Interislander ferry offers within its decks a treasure trove of viewing platforms, reclining lounges, and cafés. In order to make the most of being at sea, I spent the majority of the time outside and I was rewarded about halfway through the journey with a school of dolphins merrily diving just metres from the ship. “Avast,” I cried, “tharr be the most majestic sea-beasts I e’er did gaze upon! Man the harpoons and ready the first mate; we have bounty

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to catch!” My pride in picking up the sailor vernacular so quickly was tempered by a bored-looking worker informing me that I was disturbing other passages. Alas and alack!

I did, though, spend an inordinate amount of time admiring the exquisite New Zealand scenery (something of a recurring theme during this trip), and leaning over the side of the balcony to take in the salty breeze (not a euphemism). I actually find the lulling rocking of ships more relaxing than nauseating, but this might be down to a fortunate sailing time—apparently, the day before, there had been six-metre swells in Cook Strait, and a classroom of schoolchildren were left “holding a pot of chips in one hand and a sickbag in the other”. That, I discovered, is the nature of Cook Strait; renowned for being mercurial at best and treacherous at worst, swells in the two-digit range can “come from nowhere” according to a crewman.

Fortunately there are a number of herbal remedies available from the in-boat shop.

In any case, by the time the ferry stuttered and lurched its way into the Picton port I was quite sorry to depart so soon. There was no time to sight-see in Picton. I was ushered straight from the ferry to my Nakedbus (Legal disclaimer: do not attempt to enter one of these vehicles in any state of undress.

Trust me.) run by a driver whose adherence to the rules of the road can only be termed ‘liberal’ (by my count, we careened through three red lights during the trip, while the poor French woman behind me grew a particularly bright shade of green). His bedside manner hardly redeemed him.

When I arrived in Nelson, I asked him politely how to get to my backpackers.

“Falkjlsl-isle dflkfdl” he mumbled, gesticulating me away as he would a pesky fly. Not even this brush-off could dampen my spirits though. I was in Nelson!

What a place it was. The township is surprisingly small, more Feilding than Palmerston North, but it contains both chain stores (Whitcoulls, Brumby’s, etc.) and charming little locals. I was particularly besotted with a very cheap second-hand bookshop on Hardy St, where I talked with the skinny-jeans-wearing elderly owner about Thomas Pynchon and William Faulkner at length (hipster cred: maximised) and gushed over his first-edition Steinbecks.

And the food, oh the food! Hardy Buggers offered me the best steak burger I’ve had the pleasure of eating (a bold claim, but one I’ll happily back up) along with enough

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fries to feed a family of four. Staying in a backpackers also gave me the opportunity to meet a host of quirky characters, from a professional blues guitarist to the thickly accented Scottish couple I shared a room with (and who were less than taken with New Zealanders’ standards of decorum: “there was a lass in [another hostel] who got ‘erself really stoned, sat down on a chair and jus’ star’ed fartin’! O’er and o’er, aye!” one of them said, appalled).

Don’t even get me started on the scenery.

I must admit that I tend to take New Zealand’s unique landscape for granted, but the South Island displays it in such abundance and in such a diverse palette that it’s breathtaking, even for cynical bastards like myself. Put it this way: if I lived elsewhere, I can see myself spending hours on Google Maps trawling through New Zealand scenery, transfixed. During my stay, I traipsed up to the ‘centre of New Zealand’, and seeing the vista that spread for miles before me would require Nabokovian powers of prose to do it justice. It may have been a steep hike for my less-than-athletic bod, but mother of God did I get recompense.

The downsides of such a place are the toll taken on the nightlife. Admittedly, I didn’t quite make it out on Saturday (see the ‘Handy Tips’ section for more), but I ventured out on Sunday evening to an eerily quiet, profoundly empty ghost-town.

Only one bar remained open by 9.10 pm.

I conducted interviews, which confirmed that this was the status quo. Though one resident, Jay, said of some Saturday nights:

“The streets are packed, like fucking Mardi Gras… I see girls pulling the crotches of their panties over to piss in the street and blokes getting into fist fights, fucking each other up.” His girlfriend retorted: “Don’t listen to anything he says—he’s from Blenheim.” A popular hypothesis puts this down to the weather—the sunshine and heat of the day means that few want to face the chill of the night. Whatever the case, though there are a lot of things to love about Nelson, “there’s just not that much to do” (quote: barmaid). The upshot of this is “a problem with minors getting pissed off their faces” in lieu of other entertainment.

Idle hands, as the adage goes, are the Devil’s playthings.

the uncollected rubbish bins of the alley, illuminated in the dim artificial light of a faraway street light, being staggered past by someone who looked very, very drunk—in that moment, I was infinite.

Speaking of: thanks to the barrenness of the town and the kindness of the aforementioned couple, I was privy to a truly marvellous experience that I will recount here. In a back-alley that runs off the main street, there lies a strategically placed crate next to a steel hand-hold that those with agility and upper-body strength can use to reach the roof of a first-storey kitchen. From there, one can climb up to the top of all the buildings on this main street, and take advantage of being rebellious and see astonishing views. My two guides were seasoned experts (both had been arrested for performing the task, being accused of unlawfully entering public property. “What the hell right?” said a very indignant Jay) and gave me a helping hand up to the first rooftop—and though my chronic fear of heights prevented me from going any further, looking down at

P.S OH and thank u Nakedbus u r the beez kneez <3

“The streets are packed, like fuckaing Mardi Gras… I see girls pulling the crotches of their panties over to piss in the street and blokes getting into fist fights, fucking each other up.”

His girlfriend retorted: “Don’t listen to anything

On the ferry-ride home, I did an Ethnohydrology survey for an American exchange student in exchange for a couple of beers, which I took to one of the decks while I mulled over the weekend I had just spent. I felt bereft, almost—the foray was all too short—but as I got half-drunk in the winter sun the moment passed, and soon I saw Wellington on the horizon—in her retracing search for new arrivals, she only found another child.

HANDY TIPS:  If you decide to stay at a backpackers, I recommend you bring your own towel/ shampoo/other amenities. The owners generally charge a fee per item; that’s where they getcha.  Travel by Nakedbus; it’s the cheapest and fastest service available.  NEVER TRY TO MATCH ANYONE FROM SCOTLAND DRINK-FORDRINK.  Shop around if you’re going out for dinner, even if it is late and you’re absolutely ravenous. Your bank balance will thank you and you’ll get to discover some out-of-theway gems.  A French place in Nelson does a breakfast deal that involves a fuck-tonne of crêpes smothered in maple syrup and adorned with bacon for $7.50. You’ll be full for hours.  Take the Interislander when and where possible. Its aesthetic merits and student discount more than make up for the slightly long voyage.

he says—he’s from Blenheim.”

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salient's cheap holiday thrills  VUW has lots of DVDs, so you can avoid using up a month’s broadband limit in your first week.

internet exploring (aren’t we all internet explorers?) Beware of anything deeply disturbing.

 Get drunk.

 Work on your personal brand.

 Start next trimester’s readings early.

 Get vajazzled.

 Unprotected sex.

 Now is the season for magic mushrooms (I think). Take some and have an experience.

 Change your drinking habits—meths and turps are cheaper per standard than vodka, for example.  Put off expensive things until the end of the holidays and then just don’t do them—just like you do with assignments.

 Join a Buddhist monastery – free food and accommodation.  Go skipping gaily through rolling meadows – more fun than walking and less strenuous than running.

 Fall in love (requited).

 Create a series of pseudonyms and write strongly worded letters to the editor in the Dom Post on some pressing issue. A nice way of having a very public argument with yourself.

 Fall in love (unrequited) (cheaper).

 Doubt yourself.

 Move home and sublet your flat.

Literally tens of people want to live in Wellington at its most rainy.

 Finally admit to your socialist friends that you have a beach house, and go there with them.

 Take a holiday in Waikanae. You can train/bus there for like $10.

 Bitch about Tobey Maguire being cast in Gatsby.

 Using a child Snapper during school hours is both thrilling and costeffective.

 Think to yourself, "why wasn't 'Toby' phonetic enough for his parents?"

 Switch up your sexuality for a few weeks.  Hibernate.

 Have an existential crisis/devote time to figuring out who you really are.  Watch every single episode of Seinfeld.  Start a blog.  Work on your personal manifesto.  Go home and revert back to being an angsty teenager/completely ostracise the one high-school friend you have left.

- Sleep with someone during the first weekend. Spend the rest of your holidays regretting it.

- Knit something/learn to knit.

- Explore the Deep Web or enter a YouTube/Wikipedia K-hole. Do extensive

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 Find a kid that you know and take them to the zoo and make them sandwiches and love them for a day, then give them back to their parents and convince yourself your 'career' will be 'satisfying'.  Sleep with your friends—it will probably be fine.  Fringe Bar.  Come Dine With Me omnibuses.  Pasta.  Switch internet browsers for three days, then realise that whatever you were using before was better.  Reread The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; feel miffed at your

inability to curate sister-like female friends.  Work the whole time so that you don't have much of a holiday but are able to pay rent (REAL TALK).  Listen to R. Kelly's ‘Real Talk’.  Take up PUA.  Spend a few days on the lawn pretending you’re at Splendour in the Grass.  Make jewellery out of macaroni.  Start a cult.  Learn the words to the Barenaked Ladies’ ‘One Week’.  Buy Raro juice sachets, rate them all by taste, colour and thirst-quenching ability. Post results on your specialised juice blog and/or Facebook.  Spend a week telling everyone they HAVE TO WATCH GAME OF THRONES “BECAUSE ITS LIKE THE BEST SHOW EVERRRR”.  Visit your nan. She would love a visit.

It’s the least you could do.  On the first night of the holidays, aim to stay up all night. Only go to sleep as the Sun rises. You’ll be so exhausted that you’ll sleep through the day. Repeat this pattern; listen solely to The National; go for runs in the dark in strange suburbs; have a complete mental breakdown.  Spend your time at home trying to get to the bottom of your grandparents’ sordid secrets/horrific war stories. Teach them how to use Facebook. Add them on Facebook. Post outrageous drunken pictures. Go to their house high in the middle of the night, pretending to be their ghosts. Tell your parents that this is all for a reason.  Perform a slam-poetry rendition of ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ at every open-mic night in town.

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Dessert Date Diary RY

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PE

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( P I C B Y A DA

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BU

John Key: David; here, you’ve got to try a bite of this lemon cake.

Oh, wait. Is it carrot? I can’t recall.

David Shearer: I hope no one sees us here.

JK: What are you worried about? No-one’s going to vote for you, anyway. Come on! Everyone already knows you like to have your cake and eat it too. Remember that time you forgot to declare your UN bank account with $50,000 in it?

DS: Good to meet you Pot. I’m Kettle. Remember when you forgot phoning Ian Fletcher? Remember whether, or rather when, he briefed you on Kim Dotcom?

JK: My mum brought me up in a state house— DS: You can’t keep using growing up in a state house as an excuse for being an arsehole, John. You’re just talking out of your mouth.

JK: Well, yes. Where else should I talk out of ? Look, I’m just saying that no-one’s going to go for a far-left Labour-Green Government.

Everyone knows when you mix red and green you get brown.

DS: Russel said he thought it would look good…

DS: I suppose it was only a matter of time before you tried to sell our people. Let me guess. You want to refrigerate them too, in case they have to sit awhile in the ports of China?

JK: Not all of them! Just the poor ones.

DS: More tea? Do you take sugar? How much is a pot of tea these days, anyway? I need to know how much the people are forking out.

JK: Four dollars.

DS: FOUR DOLLARS?! That’s it. When I am Prime Minister, the Labour Government is going to buy all the tea, and sell it back to the people for a reasonable price.

JK: You can’t just nationalise everything, David. That’s too easy to understand. You need online registrations of interest. A website that doesn’t work. You need to talk about stock markets. Trade. Confuse them a little. You sound too sensible. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

No wonder no-one’s voting for you. You can say what you like when you’re never going to have to follow through. Heck, come to think of it, you can say what you like all the time when you own the media, as well. Textses. Aushtraya. Troty!

JK: Ahaha! Or a happy little place where fruit meets loop.

DS: I wonder if I can get some more milk. Do you think the waitress knows who I am? Actually, better not risk it. I’ll get it myself.

DS: This is politics, John. Not primary school. Banoffee pie? No? The other day I was down at Robertson Road School, making porridge for the kids’ breakfast…

JK: Look at you, standing up! You’re a real stand-up guy. What’s that?

Me? A stand-up comedian! Oh David, stop it!

JK: So why should I provide food in schools, if you’re doing it already? I bet they didn’t even eat it. Porridge? Yuck. The National government isn’t into dramatic change, as you can probably tell from the Budget. We’re about starving this week to save $1 to spend next week. I don’t expect you to understand that, David. It’s economics.

DS: Yes, but what happens in the meantime? If you starve yourself for a week, you’ll die.

JK: What are you talking about? I’m not starving; I’m eating cake.

So anyway, I was thinking: forget porridge. We’ll give all the kids Weetbix, right? Feed them up ‘til they’re big and strong, and then sell them off to other countries as All Blacks. Bingo. Exports. Ka-Ching!

DS: I didn’t say anything.

JK: Pardon? Hey, what do you think of my next sensational joke?

Here’s how it goes. You pretend to give me a hard time about Aaron Gilmore, you know, shouting like you do – great stuff after the Budget announcement by the way. Anyway, so you bring Aaron up again, and I’ll say, “If Aaron were a type of cake, he’d be a scone! Because he’s gone!”

DS: Do you think they’ll get the cake reference?

JK: Well, yeah. See, look over there – what’s that on the table? Is that … is that a tape recorder?

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COLUMNS 

nt

Ra eekly

W

WITH

TTIE A E B HG

Papers I Have Taken and the Personal Crises I Used Them to Claw My Way Out of

By HG Beattie

All I really feel like I’ve done at uni is apply concepts from the papers I’ve been taking at the time to my personal life. As such, these are the life lessons I have extrapolated from the papers I have undertaken. I have helpfully included an overview of what I was like in the relevant year, because (a) I am nothing if not helpful, and (b) Salient is cheaper than therapy.

First-year I spent 2010, my first year, in the early stages of a love affair with both caffeine (still going) and the NZQA gravy train (regrettably finished). I had a bob that grew out triangular. At one point I sobbed “I’m so broken” into a pillow.

QUAN: If gin makes you cry, that’s causality.

If you are only ever attracted to people that hurt you, and you often drink gin, the most you’ll be able to show is correlation. True fact.

Economics: supply, demand, blah. In 2010 I paid $4 for 150 mL of water at The Temperance.

FCOM: In a spasm of generosity, Vic let students name this paper. Its full name is “Fffff commerce mandatory papers that stretch out my degree."

Second-year I don’t remember much of 2011. I had a Rachel for a haircut, made a few stir-fries, and took the Myers-Briggs test too seriously. I also pashed no-one for the entire calendar year.

200-level Finance is a bit like what Adam Sandler says in The Wedding Singer, when he interviews at a bank: “I'm a big fan of money. I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I'd like to put more in that jar. That's where you come in.” Okay, so I clearly didn’t get much from 200-level Finance, but that movie has the best soundtrack of all time.

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I also did first-year Law, and learned that Law students are to university what rowers were to high school, i.e. always going on about something that probably is hard but that no-one else wants to hear about. In fairness, 16-year-old rowers probably don’t spend as much time googling “famous footballers breach of confidence name suppression” to while away the hours until they can leave the library.

Third-year In 2012, I finally went to the now-closed Americana diner on Willis St, and watched a man ply a woman with Cruisers. My hair was pretty big. I watched Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder while drinking Blue Lagoon the afternoon after a test, later got a C+, and defeatedly said “They teach you everything as a rookie, except how to live with a mistake.” The following lessons arose from third-year: Contract Law: social interactions cannot be regulated using formal written contracts. People are not willing to define relationships, and will seek to avoid even the most basic of ‘liabilities’ by turning off read receipts.

Public Law: if you tweet at the right people, the Official Information Act means that one of them will eventually be legally required to tell you what public servants eat at morning teas.

Criminal Law: a drunken intent is still an intent. (You know who you all are.)

International Corporate Finance: I had started describing my Finance major as ‘ironic’, but 2012’s excellent selection of financial-crisis movies encouraged me to keep going with it.

The big banks are just teeming with guys that look like Penn Badgley.

Macroeconomics: to misquote ‘LoveStoned’, the economy looks like a model, except it’s just a little more ass.

Fourth-year I am spending 2013 walking to and from uni in shoes that aren’t cut out for it. Hair-wise, I’m typing this with one hand because the other hand is cracking through accidental dreadlocks.

In property law as in love, register your interest or some other dick will swoop in.

Succession lawyers must hear ‘when there’s a will, there’s a way’ and automatically think ‘to get some to your mistress without your wife finding out’. Also, how much money did all our grandparents awkwardly lose in those finance schemes? I have a vague and bleak memory of my mother being visibly shaken and my father smoking up the rangehood in our kitchen, snarling like Uncle Scar in ‘Be Prepared’—“Look, I told him to go secured.” I was busy peaking too soon with Level 1 English, so the memory kind of ends there.

The Economics paper I am taking sneers at me that the government doesn’t reckon I’m particularly rational and it makes decisions for me. I am worried that the word ‘paternalism’ is inherently friendly because my dad’s the smartest man I know, and some paternalistic anti-smoking policies might ensure that he quits, lives longer and continues to make all my decisions.

I think you and I are both reaching the same conclusion, namely, that I didn’t learn life lessons from any of these papers whatsoever. I was generally LIFO of the Commerce lectures (that was an excellent accounting joke, for the unacquainted) but perhaps, looking back over them, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Or something. I don’t know. Don’t you get a bit manic at the end of term too?

'Weekly Rant' is a space for one-off opinion pieces.

Want to write your own? Contact editor@salient.org. nz to run riot.

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Quiz Vic-life

5. What drink is popular from Apu’s KwikE-Mart?

1. Why did Vic put “We’re #1” on all their TV screens around campus?

6. What former child-star has been making headlines for her trashy downward spiral?

2. What animals can you watch in the Murphy building?

7. Heihachi Mishima, Lei Wulong and Bryan Fury were all characters in which video-game series?

3. What other job does Vic’s Chancellor Ian McKinnon have?

5. Who was the construction company

9. The film Apocalypse Now was loosely based on a novel by which author?

responsible for building the Hub that went into receivership at the start of the year?

10. What film won the Palme d’Or for best film at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival?

10. Which international organisation celebrated its 50th anniversary last month?

Sports 1. Where is the NBA team known as the Heat based?

2. How many consecutive State of Origin series have Queensland won in recent years?

6. Who is the VUWSA President?

News

7. What is the name of Vic’s student radio station?

8. What colour is the hood that BA graduates wear?

9. What is the name of VUWSA’s campaign for cheaper bus fares?

Arts 1. Who is the 16-year-old North-Shore singer that recently joined musical ‘royal’ty?

2. A beloved comedy returned from cancellation this week. Who brought it back?

3. What are the names of the two songs Kanye West recently debuted on SNL? 4. What is the name of the much-reviled porn parody of Girls?

9. Who is David Shearer?

8. Which reggae artist had the nickname the ‘Cool Ruler’?

4. What has Vic recently changed its marketing slogan to?

10. Where is the Faculty of Education?

8. Which country has been ranked the world’s happiest in the OECD’s 2013 Better Life Index?

3. Which Brazilian football club did Neymar, FC Barcelona’s recent signing for next season, play for?

1. The Japanese PM issued a statement recently confirming he was “not afraid” of what?

4. The official ten fastest marathon runners in history all come from which two countries?

2. Which European city has recently been the scene of youth riots?

3. True or false: Guinness World Records has officially recognised Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, as the city with the highest density of white marble buildings in the world.

4. Who is Meka Whaitiri?

5. What was the biggest story in New Zealand last week?

6. Which US Senator and former presidential candidate recently visited rebel commanders in Syria?

7. An abandoned baby in Jinhua, China, known only as ‘Baby 59’, was rescued from where last week?

5. Irene van Dyk plays for which ANZ Championship netball team?

6. How many New-Zealand-born players have been selected in the British and Irish Lions squad for their upcoming tour of Australia?

7. Who is the current UFC Heavyweight Champion?

8. Which individual player scored the most runs in international test cricket in 2012?

9. Where will the 2014 Winter Olympic Games be held?

10. Which country has won the last five Softball World Championships?

Answers: Organisation of African Unity).

10. Karori

10. The African Union (known until 2002 as the 9. Leader of the Labour Party.

10. Blue Is the Warmest Colour.

8. Australia.

9. Joseph Conrad.

8. Pink.

7. A sewage pipe (he had been dumped in a toilet).

8. Gregory Isaacs.

7. The VBC (Victoria Broadcasting Club).

6. John McCain.

7. Tekken.

6. Rory McCourt.

6. Amanda Bynes.

5. Mainzeal.

by-election being held later this month.

5. Squishee.

4. ‘Know Your Mind’.

4. The Labour Party candidate for the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti

4. This Ain’t Girls XXX.

3. Deputy Mayor of Wellington City Council.

3. True.

3. ‘New Slaves’ and ‘Black Skinhead’.

2. Tuatara.

2. Stockholm, Sweden.

2. Netflix (brought back Arrested Development).

the latest round of the PBRF rankings.

1. Lorde.

1. Because they came first for quality of research in

Arts answers

Vic-life answers

9. Fairer Fares.

 55

5. Snow.

1. Ghosts.

News answers

10. New Zealand.

9. Sochi, Russia.

8. Australian captain Michael Clarke.

7. Cain Velasquez.

Vunipola).

6. Three (Dylan Hartley, Sean Maitland and Mako 5. The Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic.

4. Ethiopia and Kenya.

3. Santos FC. 2. Seven.

1. Miami.

Sports answers

COLUMNS 

things that go bump in the night Seymour and Lux, perhaps you can help me out. I am both terrified of and intrigued by anal... I have a few questions. What are the chances of causing serious damage down there?

Will I accidentally poo on my partner?

The chances of causing any permanent damage are very low, and if you prepare properly, you’re not going to get poop everywhere.

Taking a dump sometime in the few hours beforehand will be enough to ensure you don’t get poop all over the place— douching can be more trouble than it’s worth and isn’t essential. The most poop you are likely to experience is a slight discolouration, or the odd small piece on the condom afterwards. That said, having sheets that are not white, and having a towel handy are both recommended.

If you’ve never put anything in your butt before, do a little self-exploration beforehand. The sensations will be totally different to anything you’ve experienced before, which can be a lot to deal with when you’re with your partner. To start with you will feel like you need to poop but this is just a reflex, and it will fade gradually—don’t panic! While you’re here, learn a bit about your anatomy—you have two sphincters—rings of muscle—in your butthole, one right past the other.

The outer one is under voluntary control and the inner one isn’t. The inner one is the reason everyone tells you to relax—if you’re not comfortable with what you’re doing it will be closed up, resulting in pain when you try to put things in. Take deep breaths, go really, really slowly, and gradually loosen up.

When you’re ready to get down to business, get your partner to finger you first. Make sure they have short nails with no sharp corners, as the rectum is sensitive and it doesn’t take much to

56 

tear it. Most importantly: go unbelievably slowly, and use huge amounts of lube.

Once their finger is in, just leave it there and get used to it for a bit. If you are someone with a prostate, then they should search this out (about 5 cm in, on the front side of the rectum, behind the bladder) and gently rub it. You’ll know when they’ve found it because you’ll involuntarily moan quite loudly. Prostates are pretty sweet.

If you’re someone without a prostate, anal sex can still be plenty pleasurable.

Your anus has heaps of nerve endings, so is very sensitive, and there are stretch receptors inside your rectum that can make it a very satisfying experience.

When you’re ready for the main event, use a condom to protect from bacteria.

Insertion should be super, super slow. Start with the head against the anus and gently guide it in. If it hurts, stop; you’re damaging yourself if you’re moving too fast. The more relaxed you are, the easier it will be, and gently pushing out like you’re preparing to poop can help relax your inner sphincter and make entry easier.

Take a moment (or longer) to get used to it before slowly starting the thrusting. I’m sure you can figure out what to do from here. It will still pay to be a little careful though, and it may take a while to work out what works for you and what doesn’t.

There are heaps of positions for anal sex and many will feel quite different.

Remember that as the receptive partner, you’re the one with all the power! This is your show, and you get to call the shots.

Love, Seymour xx

Lux Lisbon and Seymour Butts are 2013.

Confused about cunnilingus? Baffled about boners? Just can't work out what goes where? Ask Lux and Seymour completely anonymously at ask.fm/ LuxandSeymour our resident sex columnists for

with lux lisbon

and

SEYMOUR  BUTTS

Does wanting to be tied up, blindfolded and slapped on the arse make me a bad feminist?

Being a ‘good’ feminist (if such a thing exists) doesn’t mean casting aside all things considered to be stereotypically feminine, nor does it mean taking on traditionally masculine roles. Feminism means empowering yourself to seek out what you want from your sex life, your relationships, your career, or anything else which is important to you. And on the flip side, being a ‘good’ feminist means not pushing your own ideas of what it means to be a ‘woman’ onto another—instead, allow and encourage them to decide for themselves what is meaningful to them.

Feminism is a force that enables women to take a hold of their own lives and decisions; it encourages us to say yes to the things we want and no to those that we don’t, regardless of what society expects from us as ‘women’. To tell a woman how she should have sex with a partner and what she should enjoy in the bedroom is to control her sexuality.

So, if you enjoy playing a submissive role, being tied up and having your ass slapped, then bite down and bend over.

But in the same vein, if you do not like being dominated by your sexual partner, that is totally cool too. So long as you are doing it for yourself, you feel sexy and you feel safe, you need not feel you are living a double life.

Lux you long time xx

If you have issues or concerns that you wish to discuss privately and confidentially with a professional, rather than

Lux Lisbon, the Student Counselling Service can provide a safe place to explore such aspects of your life. The service is free and confidential. Phone (04) 463 5310. Email counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz. Visit Mauri Ora, Level 1, Student Union Building.

 COLUMNS

e f i L r u o Y g n i x i F

[BECAUSE OURS ARE WRITTEN OFF]

Hi Hec-Net. I have built myself a pit and fallen into it. It’s entirely my fault, but I need to get out, and quickly. Basically, I’ve had a class at 8 am all semester and have not attended since week one. Now the exams are looming and I don’t know a thing. How do I pass? Help.

longer. He gives better advice, so it’s in your best interest.

papers, steal your friends’ notes. Go out there and kick some ass.

BYE!

Realistically, though, you probably don’t want to go talk to the lecturer. That will only make it clear that you haven’t been attending class, and it will be megaawkward. We have Blackboard now, so you wouldn’t get anything out of it anyway.

Hector What up, Phil.

Regards, BANANA PHIL.

Janet P-hil, Some people can get away with not going to class. Maybe they’re nocturnal, or maybe they’re just lazy. They’re usually really smart, hence the ‘getting away with’. I find that once you miss one, it becomes easier and easier to miss the rest. WAIT. This isn’t helpful. You’ve already missed them all. Sorry. Are there lecture slides on the internet? Is there a textbook? Does one seem to fit in with the other? Do you feel right now as though you’re letting yourself down, every day, and so slowly that it’s difficult to tell? No? Is that just me?

Take a deep breath.

At this stage of the semester, it’s probably pretty normal that you’re freaking out.

I’ve gone to all my classes, and there’s still a fair-to-middling chance that I’m going to fail one of my papers. My heart is beating too fast right now, because I’m comparing myself to you. I don’t even know you. I’ve taken the smart way out, and asked Hector to write something

Look, I can completely understand where you’re coming from. I’m in a pretty similar situation right now with one of my classes, and I was in the same tight spot 12 months ago. I, too, am feeling rather weak in the knees right now, and that’s normal. Human beings are panic machines, but thankfully we’re finite panic machines. We don’t have the capacity to feel the unlimited depth of despair that we really should, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to function. That’s why we don’t all just break down sobbing for hours when we read the news or our Twitter feeds, and if we do sometimes, we get up and keep on keeping on. Also, the world has good things in it too. But I digress.

My point is, accept that you are panicking right now. That’s only to be expected; after all, you are under the pump here.

But you can take it. The moment you let yourself believe that it can’t be done, you’ve already failed. Instead, let that panic drive you into getting it done— don’t let it pound you repeatedly into the hole that you mentioned in your letter.

There’s a lot you can accomplish in two weeks’ time. There’s even a hell of a lot you can get done in 24 hours’ time.

Read all your course notes, read the past

Maybe you don’t have the confidence to just back yourself. Sadly, if this is the case, you might be screwed. You just don’t have the right stuff to be able to get by without going to class. I wish there was a nicer way to say it, but boy are you in trouble. Maybe you should drop out of university and start working your way up the career ladder, on track for a far more successful and wealthy lifestyle.

On the other hand, maybe you should just play some more video games, eat some more pizza, and rewatch Arrested Development season four. Then call me and we can talk about how they shouldn’t have structured each episode around one character. I mean, come on, that’s such a lazy way to deal with the time break. Then, come exam time, you’ll fail without having bothered to try, and look really cool to all your mates and bros.

There’s always next year—you were too busy finding yourself and being young this time around. Sigh.

Frankly, you still have two weeks, minimum. That’s a long time. Chill the fuck out and do some study. You’ll be fine.

Pip pip, Hector.

Janet and Hector are our resident advice

If you have issues or concerns that you wish to discuss privately and confidentially with a

columnists for 2013. If you've got a problem you'd

professional, rather than Hector and Janet, Student Counselling Service can provide a safe

like them to solve, send your queries through to

place to explore such aspects of your life. The service is free and confidential. Phone (04) 463

editor@salient.org.nz, subject: 'ADVICE'.

5310. Email counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz. Visit Mauri Ora, Level 1, Student Union Building.

 57

COLUMNS 

mad science

laying down the law Wee

kly

are you feeling this?

a crash course in library ettiquette

By Caitlin Craigie

By Rant Morris

This week, Mad Science is looking at the topic of pesky emotions and what light science has shed on them.

Anger and Venting So maybe you’ve suffered the injustice of getting an A when you deserved an A+, or you’ve had the epiphany that Big Macs really have gotten smaller since childhood. Your fists are clenched, your blood is boiling. Decades of research has shown that venting, far from releasing anger, actually makes it worse.

Bushman found in 2002 that doing nothing at all for two minutes was actually effective in reducing anger, while in contrast punching a sandbag while thinking of an offending person increased anger towards that person. A recent study by Martin et al found online ranting seems to increase anger, and that reading another person’s rants online for five minutes had a negative effect on mood. So contrary to popular opinion, these studies show that venting is a terrible anger-management strategy.

Apologising For some, apologising comes easier than breathing, while for others, they would rather climb Mt Everest in light cotton while listening to the chipmunk versions of Bindi Irwin songs.

In a recent paper, Okimoto et al discovered that refusals to apologise, in some cases, make people feel better than an apology would have. They found that refusing to apologise can make you feel more empowered, translating into greater feelings of self-worth, and can result in boosted feelings of integrity. Who knew there was such an easy path to self-esteem?

Facial Expressions Charles Darwin once wrote “the free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it”. Studies have shown that the facial expressions you make or fail to make can influence mood.

University of Cardiff psychologists found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by botox injections are happier, on average, than people who still have the ability to frown.

Furthermore, a study in The Journal of Pain (the most badass of all scientific journals), found that those who frowned during unpleasant medical procedures reported feeling more pain than those who do not. Research by Dr Zajonc found that smiling leads to less blood volume being supplied to the brain, which in turn decreases the brain’s temperature, triggering a happy feeling.

58 

Ran

t

It’s that time of year again—graduation! Being a final-year Law student myself, I began to consider what it meant to be a Law student at Vic before I get to throw my own mortarboard upwards and beyond. Apart from being arrogant pricks, Law students are naturally…

Sorry, my thoughts have been interrupted by a couple of jerks discussing how pickled they are going to get at Stein 2.0 on a BLUE floor in the Library. What it means to be a Law student is, in part, how to behave in the Library. I thought I’d take this opportunity to provide a crash course on library etiquette.

First, for those filthy Commerce students who believe it is their right to take up as many desks as possible in the Law Library, fuck off. It is the Law-School library—go crawl back to the inferior cave from which you creatures came. Notice the arrogance in my narrative? You betcha! As I said, it comes with the territory.

The intelligence of Law students is only paralleled by the stupidity of their eating habits. Apples are a no-go. So too are crackers.

I mean reeeally?! What type of student is bringing crackers to a library expecting to make friends? That constant crunch is like being bowled constant doosras. The crunch is only rivaled by the tap-tap-taparoo of keypads on laptops. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it’s necessary. But maybe it’s not essential to slap the keys so hard the letter is imprinted onto your finger.

For the sniffers, snuffers and snorters out there, please use a tissue. Such a simple solution, yet such a difficult concept for people to grasp. Do not inflict the continuous sound of snot upon your fellow pairs. Believe me, it is not well received.

Finally to those bastards who leave the elevator doors ajar so us poor folk have to contend with the stairs while juggling books, coffee, and coats, again, such a simple solution—so why do we have these continued problems?

If you avoid the above-named habits, I’ll respect you and obviously you’ll understand what it means to be a Law student at Vic. For the cool kids, take some Panadol to reduce the swelling of your heads. You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.

Yours sincerely, A severely pissed off law student.

 COLUMNS

Hoopin' and Hollerin' Round six: the biggest losers In theory, after each loss or poor performance by a fan’s team of choice, fans can react positively or negatively. In practice, it’s almost exclusively the latter. While we like to think we support our players and coaches, we sports fans are often quick to turn.

Every muffed Sonny Bill offload brings derision from the masses, Black-Caps jokes are as much a part of the national psyche as cricket, and when the All Blacks lose, the only question asked is: “How could this happen?”

It’s very easy to be a sideline expert—indeed, anyone with a TV and a voicebox often becomes one by default. It’s equally as easy to deride or dismiss the aptitude of sports stars. It seems silly to say it, but the thing is, not everyone appreciates the fact that it takes a special sort of person to become a professional at their craft. When I was younger and playing sport heavily, we were told of the 103 rule. That is, to be a world-class athlete requires ten years of dedicated training, 10,000 hours, and even then, only ten per cent of people make it. You have to be a genetic freak, and have a natural ability which you hone over time. No matter how hard you work, the odds are still stacked against you.

Once a sportsperson gets to the top, the divide between them and the rest grows even further. They’re now subject to the best everything, with the sole goal of improving their performance.

Chris McIntyre Consider the best sportsperson you ever encountered during high school. Now consider that person training and competing full-time, with the best coaches, technical staff on all sides, the finest facilities, the latest gear, the perfect preparation and recovery techniques, expert nutritionists, specialist medical staff, masseuses; the list goes on.

Improving performance is a big business: Sport NZ, the Crown entity responsible for sport and physical recreation in New Zealand, spends over $70 million a year. The High Performance Budget is $60 million. And this is just New Zealand; other countries spend much, much more. The amount of money and research which goes into professional sport is staggering, as are the benefits provided by such investment. As technology improves, so too does human performance.

While it’s fair to always want the best, perfection is elusive.

We’ve been conditioned by Top 10 Plays lists to expect the best, every time. Let’s re-evaluate our expectations; we have the privilege to be watching the most finely tuned human specimens of all time compete at never-before-seen levels of competition.

Instead of turning on our sportspeople, why not celebrate their achievements and the context in which they operate constructively? Even Marina Erakovic.

secret diary of officious first-year Changing directions I’m a firm believer that you don’t choose a profession. A profession should choose you. And lately, I feel like my calling has changed. University was always going to be a journey of self-discovery for me, and in the past few weeks my waka has changed bearing.

It’s not that I don’t like law. I just don’t think it’s for me. I mean, I like Grant Morris, I like the Socratic method, I like Boston Legal, but I somehow get the impression that Law’s not all about that. In actual fact, lawyers are capitalist vultures. Reading ahead in my Law Alive book, I’ve discovered that there’s this thing called Marxist legal theory, led by this cool cat called Karl. And when it came to the legal system, he hit the nail on the head. See, I don’t want to be part of a system which oppresses the lower class. I just want to express myself.

That’s where Theatre comes in. All my life, I’ve known I was made for the stage. In my younger and more vulnerable years (so well-read, amiright?!) I thought my theatrical style would be suited to gracing the courtroom. In fact, the

stage was to be my calling. I’m not dropping out, I’m just reevaluating my career path – changing to a quadruple major in Theatre, Film, Politics and Philosophy.

Sometimes I wonder whether I’m a square peg in a round hole, or a round one in a square. We’re forced to conform, and if we don’t fit the mould, we have to move on. Law didn’t allow me to flaunt my creative talent, but my BA really spins my wheels. I think I might move to Waikato actually. All the best lecturers get their PhDs there.

Law just isn’t for me. It’s really nothing to do with the fact that I got shitty grades in the test, or that I like to go out to Hope Brothers on a Wednesday night, or that I’m even a little bit envious of my BA friends who spend their weekday mornings in bed. Nothing like that all – sometimes you have to make this sort of call for the greater good.

It’s with regret that I sign off for the last time, your everloving, no-longer-officious first-year. Bye. Farewell me on Twitter - @GMo4Lyf

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COLUMNS 

The Sweet Scoop I bet you know what I'm talking about.

You've invited someone round for dinner.

You've got a plan; you have the pasta and the cheese to throw together in the ten minutes between when you get home and they arrive, and then they tell you.

“Oh, by the way, I'm vegan/gluten-free/ only eat locally harvested fruit juice.”

Then it's panic time, frantic googling “do vegetables contain gluten?” and last-minute treks to Kelburn Four Square or New World Metro, in search of the soy cheese that they inevitably don't stock.

Well, in large, friendly letters, Don't Panic!

I've heroically done the googling for you...

Salient: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Julia Wells

Vegan Veganism often gets a reputation for pretty dire food, mainly through nonvegans' experiences with really awful vegan baking. I think the best way to successfully cook vegan is to pick dishes that are already vegan, or nearly so, rather than attempting elaborate substitutions. In other words, skip the tofu soufflé, and try a curry, vegetable soup or bean dish.

Doesn't eat: any animal products. Meat, fish, eggs, dairy and honey are all out.

Does eat: Tofu, beans and pulses, grains, fruit and vegetables, oils, coconut cream.

Vegetarian Definitely the most common on the list.

Even if you aren't vegetarian, chances are that you know at least one person who is.

Despite this, for habitual meat cookers, feeding a vegetarian can be pretty mystifying. Like, where's the meat?

Doesn't eat: There are different grades of vegetarian—some identify as vegetarian, but still eat fish, or white meat, or eat meat sometimes. It is safest to assume that a vegetarian doesn't eat any meat, fish, or meat products, such as chicken stock or fish paste.

Does eat: Eggs, dairy products, tofu and other soy products, any vegetables and grains.

Recommended meals: Vegetable soup with bread; burgers made with bean patties; nachos with beans, guacamole and lots of cheese; quiche with tomatoes and onion; stir-fry with vegetables and tofu; pasta with mushrooms and cheese; any meat-free curry; roast vegetables; potato salad.

60 

Recommended meals: Thai curry made with coconut cream and a fish-free red/ green curry paste; pasta with a tomato sauce, fried in olive oil not butter; rice or barley risotto, made with olive oil not butter, and without the cheese; pasta or potatoes tossed with pesto; meat-free chili, served with natural corn chips (watch out for dairy products in the flavouring powders) and guacamole. For dessert, try a fruit crumble, using a flavourless oil rather than butter in the topping, or chocolate fondue with dark chocolate.

Gluten-Free The gluten-free diet has boomed in popularity over the last five years, yet most gluten eaters (myself included!) find it difficult to know what does and doesn't contain gluten. Those on a strict gluten-free diet, particularly those with coeliac disease, need to avoid all gluten sources, which are far wider than just wheat products. It is also important to check the labels. Traces of gluten lurk in the most unexpected items (I'm looking at you marshmallows, cheese corn chips and soy sauce) and could make a gluten-free person sick.

Doesn't eat: anything containing gluten.

This means wheat, rye, barley, semolina, spelt, oats, beer, ale, lager, and malt vinegar. It also includes couscous

and most pasta. When in doubt, look carefully at the packet.

Does eat: meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, corn products, rice, quinoa, potatoes, millet, nuts, gluten-free flours (rice flour, almond meal, coconut flour, chickpea flour etc.), buckwheat, and seeds.

Recommended meals: Rice risottos; meat/vegetable and chickpea casseroles; quinoa salad with sweetcorn and feta cheese (so good!); falafel (beware of wheat-based tortillas); roast vegetable salad; shepherd's pie; Thai curries. For dessert, try ice cream, anything fruitbased (baked apples and custard are pretty great; so is any fruit, e.g. pears, boiled with sugar and wine until just soft), rice pudding, chocolate mousse, jelly.

Freegan Freegans are vegans, who also totally boycott the economic system (at least, according to their website). They buy nothing, or as little as possible, and prefer to forage for food, both from gardens and through dumpster diving. The internet wouldn't tell me whether it is enough that they haven't bought the food, or if you have to scavenge too. Try raiding your parents'/neighbours' vegetable gardens, or visiting VUWSA for their free bread or instant-noodle giveaways.

Recommended meals: Large salads, with lots of different vegetables, nuts and seeds; ribbons of vegetables (use carrots and zucchinis, cut into fine ribbons with a potato peeler) with a peanut-butter sauce or pesto; raw sushi, made by filling the nori paper with vegetables/fish and skipping the rice. For dessert, try fresh fruit.

S

ART

 ARTS

BOOKS 

The Baz Age?

ARTICLE

Alexandra Hollis

That whole what-book-would-you-have-on-adesert-island question is fundamentally flawed.

If, in the event that I was on a sinking ship conveniently near a desert island, and there was a library with an infinite number of books, I’d drown trying to choose one. I think in the end I’d get choice-anxiety and start grabbing, I don’t know, Where, Oh Where, Is Kipper’s Bear? (actually a literary masterpiece, tbh. There are pinky-purple bleeper-people living in the Moon!) That said, I know that one of the books I’d be agonising over when sent to my watery tomb would definitely be The Great Gatsby. Alongside Goodbye to Berlin and The Secret History, it’s one of the few books I enjoyed more on the second, third, fourth, reading. I think it’s basically perfect. Which is why I’m worried about the forthcoming film.

Film adaptations of books. I don’t even know.

Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad: it depends so much on the book and the director.

I don’t want to be a pretentious English major (box: checked) who dismisses adaptations out of hand, but I’m often really worried about films ruining the sanctity of the book, ruining favourite characters, or missing the point altogether, forever tarnishing my impression of a great work of art.

I’m scared this will be the case with Gatsby.

Reviews so far have been mixed: while praising the

cinematography and acting, they also emphasise Luhrmann’s characteristic extravagance, “a cinematic buffet of such sense-addling, smack-youin-the-face-with-a-halibut brazenness,” wrote Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph—“the Gatsby that Gatsby himself would have made.” This seems to be a pretty good representation of what Fitzgerald meant when he talked of the Jazz Age as “the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand dukes and the casualness of chorus girls.”

But the point of Gatsby isn’t the ostentatiousness: it’s that all the ostentatiousness is for nothing. It’s a novel in decline, and it has been in decline from the beginning. I’ve always read the pivotal moment of the book as being told in flashback, when Gatsby first kisses Daisy. If you’re just describing the action it’s a pretty inconsequential scene: they kiss, and that’s it. No dialogue, nothing except the kiss to make it remarkable in a film. But Fitzgerald was the master of lines, and there’s this bit when he says, of Gatsby, that “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.” And that’s the whole novel.

With Gatsby’s choice he doomed himself.

The novel’s beauty lies in this. He had one moment—this moment—when he both had and lost everything. The Gatsby who Nick et al meet is a hollow king: all his opulence

is compensating for an irreparable loss. And yeah, your English teacher was right: this is all an analogy for the American Dream.

My favourite film adaptations aren’t always wholly faithful to their source material: the onus on adaptations is to translate the spirit of the text into another form. Tom Ford’s film of A Single Man superimposes the attempted suicide scene from Isherwood’s earlier The Memorial onto the events in the novel, and this really works: it’s a way of addressing subtle thematic considerations in a way that feels true to the novel, even while it isn’t. But with Gatsby, the meaning of the text is so intrinsically bound up in its form. The impression this novel leaves is far more about how it feels to read it than what happens. With novels like this, I don’t think there’s any way to express all the subtleties of the text without it being gaudy and tasteless, or, worse, a boring two hours of Gatsby and Daisy exchanging desperate looks. It would be like trying to film To the Lighthouse.

Luhrmann’s got it right with the opulence.

Yes, the dukes were insouciant, yes, the chorus girls were casual. But Gatsby no longer romps with the mind of God, Nick is simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life, and we are being borne back ceaselessly into the past. This is probably the one situation where a Jay-Z song just won’t cut it.

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ARTS 

VISUAL ARTS 

HOW TO APPRECIATE ART

ARTICLE

SHARON LAM

Art has the tendency to be standoffish and elitist, when it should really be the complete opposite. You don’t need to have any prior knowledge to enjoy it—this quick guide aims to brush away its pretensions and misconceptions, and make art genuinely enjoyable.

1. Don’t try to understand it.

This is probably the most common mistake one makes in a gallery.

Modern art especially is full of queer, strange things, and it’s easy to scoff at the pointlessness of it all. As Keith Haring puts it: “The viewer should be able to look at art and respond to it without wondering if he "understands" it.

It does not aim to be understood! Who "understands" any art?

If art is that easily labelled, then it is only existing for those who "understand" it and all the others are ignorant of it.

To define any art is to destroy the purpose of it.”

This creative writing workshop, convened by Eirlys Hunter, allows you to explore different forms of writing for the pre-adolescent child: picture books, plays, short stories and the novel, and begin to develop your own clear voice.

Workshops run in Trimester 2.

For information, and course dates contact: International Institute of Modern Letters phone 04-463 6854 email modernletters@vuw.ac.nz website www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters

AA

62 

Mil

ne

So the purpose of art is that there isn’t much of one. Clear-cut meanings and intricate backstories are completely irrelevant here. Art should be thought of as something that serves no other purpose but to entice a feeling from the viewer—any feeling at all.

2. Art is your friend.

In ‘California Dreamin’, the Mamas and the Papas sing about stepping into a church and pretending to pray to get out of the cold weather. Instead of a church, why not step into an art gallery the next time it’s raining? Art galleries are able to provide viewers with an environment as conducive to self-reflection as that of a church, Buddhist monastery, or mountain top.

In the hushed rooms of a gallery, paintings and sculptures are waiting for you to find solace in them. As the mind wanders freely over brushstrokes and as it tries to find recognition among some ambiguously shaped piece of clay, the entire process is strangely soothing. Whether it be a certain expression held by some painted figure, or the resemblance a shade of canvas might have to an ex-lover’s shirt, it is surprising how personal art can coincidentally be.

3. Don’t take any of it seriously!

There are two misconceptions to art that make it less accessible to people—one, that to enjoy ‘finer’ art we need to know about a stuffy and long art history, and two, that the new stuff that artists are churning out is incomprehensibly abstract to the degree of pointlessness. These things are all completely irrelevant; names, dates and painting techniques are not prerequisites, nor is the ‘insight’ to be able to find depth in a minimalist piece.

Instead, one should look at art without wondering about any of this at all, not what it means, who did it, or where it’s from, but instead let us feel— why and how is an inanimate object of decoration able to make one feel anything at all? And to think—there are beautiful buildings in every city of the world devoted to the display and preservation of these pieces that do nothing more than to let us feel!

So go look at some art, visit a gallery, google ‘art’ and print out the favourite thing you find. Art has been here for us since the first cave painting, and continues as a rare quaintness among the human race, deserving of our appreciation.

 ARTS

THEATRE 

The Kick by Andres Veiel and Gesine Schmidt review

Translated and directed by Bronwyn Tweddle. Presented by THEA302 and THEA308. review By Gabrielle Beran

Documentary theatre, the style of using verbatim interviews to create a dramatic narrative, has been an interesting medium for exploring social events issues since Anna Deavere Smith premiered Fires in the Mirror in 1992.

Victoria’s THEA302 Conventions of Drama class follows in this tradition with The Kick, a dramatic portrayal of interviews with those involved, either directly or indirectly, with the murder of a young man, Marinus, by a kick to the head.

and the plastic sheets had huge dramatic potential to further develop the uncommunicative nature of the village. The way this was used at the opening of the play was intriguing, then disappointingly redundant. Some of the other elements, like the sand and rubble, lacked the stylistic unity that pervaded the rest of the set.

It is an adventurous concept, to translate a documentary play and perform it using university students. The hard work of the cast and crew are evident, but the slow plot and pace of presentation are hard to move past.

Set in 2002, the year of the incident, and using only words taken from interviews, we see a very different Germany to the powerful, economically successful country we know from the media. Potzlow is a town that has suffered from the reunification, where ex-GDR citizens are unemployed and their children are troublemakers; the West has not been gentle with them. This theme of the negative impact of reunification is one of the most interesting presented in the play, and it is a shame that is not explored further.

What the play revolves around is what is too common here: kids drinking, doing drugs, dropping out of school, being cruel. In that sense, it is something that we have all seen too much of and there was not a fresh perspective provided, other than the sad reality that these social ills are not going away.

The tension between parents and their failings unites some characters, but also creates a tiresome blame game as distraught guardians defend themselves against their children’s actions.

The plot has little content, with the incident being recounted repeatedly, and the issues and sorrows of many of the characters being the same. The pace was too slow for such a long, static story, and the empathy created for the first few monologues dies out quickly.

Having a play where all the characters are constantly in a state of despair and talk of little else was not helped by the space at Studio 77 being too large for the intimacy required. The cast’s voices did not travel well and their anger and frustration got lost in the space, not giving it the force the actors were obviously trying to portray. There was honest sincerity from Hannah Kelly, playing Marinus’s mother, and Trae Te Wiki-Wall, playing his friend. Keith Labad makes a delightful turn as the Mayor of Potzlow and provides some much-needed light relief.

Tweddle’s decisions as to movement and use of space were effective, if at times, overly ‘experimental’. The gender- and ethnicity-blind casting was a good choice to challenge perceptions of gender roles. The cast had a great sense of unity about them, and worked well to support each other.

THEA308, The Scenographic Imagination, under the tutelage of Jim Davenport, designed the set, sound and lighting, which all displayed Davenport’s usual professionalism. While the lighting could have been stronger on some parts of the stage, the sound was an effective addition to the landscape. The set of metal frames created a fluid jail-block area

 63

ARTS 

GAMES 

Press Start: Becoming a Game Developer

market is where developers themselves, rather than the suits who boss them around, can rule as economic giants.

ARTICLE

PATRICK lIndsay

I remember turning on my computer one early afternoon in December and starting my daily internet routine. Open several tabs in Firefox, log into Facebook and my email account, bring up the gaming news for the day. Of little surprise that day was a slew of articles about how Activision's latest title, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, had broken yet another record in a blitzkrieg of financial dominance. The game had shattered the $1-billion barrier in a little over a fortnight.

Most developers can only dream that their game will achieve these lofty heights in a lifetime of sales, let alone in the time some of us have to wait between paychecks.

I struggled to dredge up sympathy for the creators of this game, and thought they probably wouldn't hear my angry tirade while submerged in their swimming pools of money. That was until I read that Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, had treated himself to an 800-percent pay rise and bumped his salary up to $65 million. Maybe that one guy who coded the floor tiles isn't buying his third Lamborghini after all. This got me thinking – maybe the indie

64 

After an evening of browsing the internet, the results were inconclusive. The cost of a 'cheap-todevelop' indie game can fall in the ballpark of anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to a couple of hundred thousand. Take for example David Galindo's Cook, Serve, Delicious!, a game for multiple platforms developed for around $8000 (one-sixth of my current Student Loan—oh the better life choices I could have made). To date, this has made slightly over $28,000, not bad for a one-man development team. While not a sum which guarantees an early retirement, it is one of many stories of adequate success. Your game costs less than a used Ford Fiesta to make, you sell a few thousand copies and you get about a new Ford Fiesta's worth of money at the end.

However, maybe you're lucky. Just maybe you sell a few more than 5000 copies of your game.

Maybe your game is Angry Birds or Minecraft.

Angry Birds has hit a rare winning combination of success, as much as it pains me to say, by blending a simple physics-based catapult simulator with cute, lovable mascots that appeal to all ages. Reported to have a development and running cost of €140,000, the game, in all its various incarnations, has made over €50 million and is played for an equivalent of 200 million

hours a day. I know Angry Birds probably falls in a category closer to triple-A rather than indie titles now, but the same basic idea is still there, and that's what matters.

So gather up your remaining course-related costs and get cracking! Better still, get a Kickstarter up and running—the current indie game scene is brimming like a ball pit with Kickstartered projects. All you need is a wicked title and some sweet screenshots or concept art. Also, already being a known developer apparently doesn't hurt. Tim Schafer of Double Fine recently surpassed his Kickstarter goal on the first day—in eight hours, the $400,000 threshold had been obliterated by a total that stood at over $1 million. Not bad for a man who just wants to make point-and-click adventures.

At the end of the day, being an indie games developer, or a triple-A developer for that matter, is all about having a passion for games. I'm sure many will tell you stories that don't quite meet the rock-and-roll lifestyle you expected or hoped.

You will probably hear stories of those who lead a comfortable life, happy if only because they live frugally. You will probably hear even more of those barely making a living, holding on by the skin of their teeth. However, the passion shines through, and the most common story you will hear is how regardless of how hard a developer's life is, it is still a life they enjoy pursuing.

 ARTS

FILM 

Major Asshole review

Director: Steven Scarborough.

Review by Rearald Gee

Porn. The final refuge for indecency, immorality, and lewd behaviour. Here there are few boundaries. Genitalia is abundant and whirled about with confidence. Decrepit sexual acts are performed by people who have thrown aside morality in favour of satiating their lust for orgasmic pleasure. It’s now time for Salient to throw off the shackles of “good taste” and give in to our gnawing base urges. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to review porn.

Porn hasn’t typically been a very accurate barometer of social progress or changing sexual norms. Sure, its mere existence might represent a more liberal attitude to sex, but it remains predicated on bizarrely impersonal notions of human sexuality. Steven Scarborough’s Major Asshole is a sad continuation of this trend. While a functional display of male sexuality, it fails to build any sort of erotic atmosphere, instead relying on trite stereotypes to stimulate its audience.

The story is, unsurprisingly, shallow, acting as a pretext to 20 minutes of fantastical penetration.

A private (Jackson Wild) is called in for a

verbal scolding by Major Asshole (Brandon Bangs). What starts off a simple conversation soon transforms into some elaborate sexual penance, with gobbies, rim jobs, and good old anal fucking! Unfortunately, the overt message underlying the plot is troubling, and relies on a remarkably heteronormative view of what gay sex involves. Throughout the proceedings, the feminine private is the willing plaything of the major, seemingly glad to pleasure his heterosexual superior. I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not have fantasies of being a ‘straight’ guy’s sex toy. After years of marginalisation and discrimination, gay-porn audiences deserve a more realistic portrayal of their sexuality than what Scarborough offers up.

In a more positive (and shallow) sense, both the men involved are relatively attractive, and don’t lack for impressive endowments. I cannot deny that the sight of Bangs’s gleaming (if pasty) chest and large cock did cause my heart to race.

Wild isn’t quite as muscular, but does manage to remain hard throughout the film (uncommon among bottoms). They aren’t supermodels, but as far as porn actors go, you could do a lot worse.

However, Bangs’s obvious heterosexuality serves as a massive turn-off, simply because it’s clear that his pleasure is limited to the paycheck waiting offscreen. He’s more interested in ‘plugging the hole’ as opposed to satisfying the man attached to it. Moreover, both Bangs and Wild are appalling actors. Unconvincing bleats of “Yes, sir” and “Give it to me!” are repeated ad nauseum, just so you know that they are both in sexual heaven. It is forced and it shows.

Moreover, the action is also patently unrealistic.

Bangs throws the private onto his desk and proceeds to ‘pleasure’ him with sheer brute force.

My question is, who on earth would want to be drilled like a jackhammer? Additionally, some of the positions on display are more uncomfortable than alluring. Sex on a desk seems like a bizarre fantasy; my back is already crook and I’m not aggravating it just for a few minutes of physical jubilation. It comes off as a lot of contrived fucking, which isn’t especially erotic.

To top it all off, the poor production values make it extremely difficult to even focus on the aforementioned action. The framing of shots is relatively poor, making the act feel like a mechanical exercise in shoving fleshy bits into orifices rather than an expression of intimacy.

Extreme close-ups of penetration certainly convey the physical force of intercourse but little else. Pounding on flesh-coloured sacks of jelly would produce roughly the same effect. There’s no warmth or soul to the proceedings, and you never get a sense that actual human beings are involved in (or enjoying) this act.

In the end, Major Asshole comes off as an overly mechanical and narrow-minded rendition of gay porn. Sure, the actors possess large members and they certainly fuck with vigour, but this doesn’t equate to good porn. Scarborough has stripped an innately intimate act of all its emotional heft.

View only if you have a desperate need to relieve sexual frustration.

2/5  65

PUZZLES 

PUZZLES 'extra dimension' - DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM crossword during 44. Location of the Champagne vineyards 45. CCCP, to the Allies 47. River through Belgium 48. Online community, collectively 51. Actors Asner and Harris 52. 'Stormy Weather' singer Horne 53. Author Scott Card 55. Cartographer's work 57. Type of barge 59. Less nasty 63. Compound used in fire extinguishers and to stop bleeding 65. Multicoloured 80s fad 68. Tape made by a new band 69. Salon.com is one 70. Perched on 71. 'SportsCenter' channel 72. 'Cheaper by the ___' (2003 film) 73. Lions' lodgings

ACROSS 1. Award for Mumford & Sons and One Direction in 2013 5. Athletic track shapes 10. From Chiang-Mai, e.g.

14. It may drop down 15. Fix the attention of 16. A proper one has a capital 17. Crunchy Mövenpick option 19. JD's friend on 'Scrubs' 20. Whacked, Biblically 21. Like a high school with two

Sorting into Houses Difficulty: medium

uniforms, maybe 23. Utter 24. Son of Mufasa, in a Disney film 27. Stride easily 29. Mont Blanc, for one 32. Healthy-eating diagram 36. Dutch settler in South Africa 38. '___ Ben Adhem' (James Hunt poem) 39. Often-misused literary concept 40. Divisions of 3D space 42. What you may be doing this

DOWN 1. German autos 2. Copier paper amount 3. Prefix for -graphic or -mercial 4. Fluffy clumps 5. Paydirt 6. This campus, informally 7. Fruit with a Hass variety 8. Current 'Tonight Show' host 9. ____ Dan ('Do It Again' band) 10. Demolition abbrev.

11. Rhyming pest animal 12. Invisible emanation 13. Blue 'Pac-Man' ghost 18. Erikson with a holiday on October 9 22. Style of Greek column

25. Watery fortification 26. Floats to the surface 28. Stag or toga event 29. Object that ended WWII 30. Reasonably close by 31. Stand that gives unleaded 33. Thing that throbs, maybe 34. 'Woman ___' ('The Matrix' siren) 35. People that change colours 37. Gamut 41. Fluro colours 43. Messes up 46. Debut album from Muse 49. Holy 50. Very long periods 54. Abbrev on some rechargeable batteries 55. Constructed 56. Pub beverages 58. Anise-flavoured Greek liquor 60. Adorable 61. Jet black, in poetry 62. Weightlifting counts 64. Start of a work wk.

66. Chopin's 'Prelude ___-Minor' 67. Ex of Barbie

ISSUE 07 SOLUTION

The sixteen words below can be sorted into four groups of four words.

The four words in a group can all be followed by the same word, to form a compound word or phrase, and that word will be able to be followed

VARIETY SOLUTION FROM LAST WEEK: 12.

by the word 'house'. For instance, the words Kangaroo, Supreme,

Rearrange COMPUTER USER into a phrase that

Tennis and Fore can all be followed by 'court', which means they would

appears in this week's puzzles (7,5).

be sorted into 'Court house'. Some words may fit into more than one category, but there is only one way to arrange the sixteen words evenly.

YEAR LONG PUZZLE:

Art

Home

Super

Atomic

Horse

Torch

Black

Mocking

Traffic

Bower

Private

World

Finishing

Song

High

Sun

12. Rearrange COMPUTER USER into a phrase that appears in this week's puzzles (7,5).

variety puzzles & CROSSWORD by puck — ANSWERS NEXT ISSUE

66 

 PUZZLES

Target

e r o

l c b h a s

Target rating guide: 0-15 words: do you even go here?

16-25 words: alright 26-35 words: decent 36-50 words: PRO

Anagram Magic Square Difficulty: Easy

Find an anagram for the 5-letter word in each box. The anagram will answer one of the clues. Put the number of that clue into the small box and write the anagram on the dash. The five numbers in each row and column will add up to 65. When you're done, write the first letter of each anagram on the correspondingly numbered dash at the bottom of the puzzle. To start you off, one anagram and clue number has already been entered, and the first letter has been placed on the dash. The first letters will spell out the second half of a quote by Terry Pratchett:

80+ words: free drink

“Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em...”

1. Pulls roughly 2. Should 3. Make into one 4. Sterile 5. 'Tomorrow' musical 6. Equine sound 7. Object 8. Composer Joseph 9. Map within a map

10. Photocopier additive 11. Lecturer's assistant 12. Core 13. Poet T. S. 14. Press, TV, etc.

15. In which location?

16. Magazine edition 17. Hourglass, maybe 18. 'Grand _____'

19. 'Akira', for one 20. South Korean capital 21. Greek underworld 22. The deep 23. Sci-fi author Jules 24. Ewok planet 25. Trustworthy

Sudoku difficulty: easy

difficulty: medium

difficulty: hard

 67

LETTERS 

letters you missed the yellow stickers Letter of the

win a $10 voucher for the hunter lounge

week

Walking up Kelburn Parade recently I noticed something so shocking I am ashamed to say it has taken me three years to notice. The properties directly across from the University are completely and utterly useless. At least six VUW owned properties side by side, operating as

rasta-fair-ian Hail Jah-lient, In de last week mi read someting which don mek me go “Woyy yey yey yey”. Big mistah Young Nat dem write a lettah all whiney bout yah likkle left-wing bias. I and I seh keep on standin op to de downpression, mon, we nah want de Nashnal Party. Meh de Lion of Zion mek yah big-strong an’ natty. Jah-lient, yah affi emancipate de nehshan from mental slehvry an’ lead de peepal outa Babylon.

Hail Jah Rastafari, King Selassie I de first, Marcus Garvey, an’ such and such before I, Buffalo Souljah

little more than a black hole absorbing funding (your taxes) and squandering space. Next time you’re walking down Kelburn Parade turn your head to the left and you’ll see integral pillars of the University including The NZ India research institute, Accent Learning House (Accent

stories “are very cleverly drawn together as we pull out through the different layers of manipulation”, in contrast to Hollis’ stated reactions of apparent confusion and exhaustion.

Tropic of Skorpeo deftly intermixes humour and melodrama in a highly original piece of alien fantasy, where the author regularly tips his hat to the likes of Lewis Carroll and Kurt Vonnegut often on the same page, but without wearing his influences on his sleeve. To quote Toon again, “I heartily recommend this to anyone who wants to detach themselves from the essence of reality and immerse themselves in a healthy dose of madness.”

Andrew Mouat

learning, really?) and The Research Institute of Research Centre for Analysis studies. These are great locations are being used only by students

smoking rainsforth

enquiring about a career working in the booming industry that is Accent House and the occasional lost cat that’s strayed from the cemetery. Lets end the madness, demolish these places and build something of real practical use; A church for instance. To include everyone it could even be pro God Monday to Friday then used for Devil worship on weekends, it doesn’t really matter.

Yeezus Christ anything is better than the current state of desolation!

A. Young

Sup Inhalient.

I know VUW thought it would be an awesome idea to make the campus smokefree, but did they ever consider how fucking annoying it is to have every entry on Kelburn Parade swarming with smokers?

At least when you were allowed to smoke on campus, they were evenly distributed and it never really bothered anyone that isn't a pathetic cunt.

Lots of love from a non-smoker.

why can't they put it on a sign?

To those who spend an ungodly long-ass time painstakingly inputting their vic username + password to use the printers, Type in your student number, then press the enter/next button twice.

You're welcome.

With much platonic affection, A socially awkward starfish

someone reviews review In a review of Michael Morrissey’s book Tropic of Skorpeo, published in the May 6 Salient, Alexandra Hollis incurred a number of errors. First of all, she calls it “steampunk-meetsSpace Opera”. Well, although the second term is fine, the book actually has nothing even remotely steampunk in its makeup. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction – the standard reference work on the subject - defines the term as “ a modern sub-genre whose science fiction events take place against a nineteenth century background.”

undie 5-

The work in question has no historical dimension at all - just fantasy, as illustrated by giants, gorgons, spells and talking unicorns and

Hi Salient, Congratulations on getting to the last issue and we're all very proud of you xxx

world needs to be based in realism.” Where is

world record for the smallest ever pyjama party, did we hear that right?

I got beef. I got beef with the guys who got beef. You know who I'm talking about. "Fez Guy" and "Bitter-and-Alone". Would you two pretentious CUNTS just fuck off?! We get it.

You're both assholes. No need to preach about it in Salient. Bringing your little tiff to our student magazine isn't solving anything. It's just telling the rest of us who we should fuckin' avoid. Stop writing your shitty letters and do something useful with your lives. Getting mad in a magazine will get you no where.

Peace Out.

Secondly, I would beg to disagree that “the conceptual geography of a science fiction story

apparently VUWSA's trying to break its own

Yo Salient.

dragons, among many others.

of the semester. You guys worked really hard, Have a great break, and enjoy Vic's re-O -

irony

Dear Editor,

my brain hurts

the realism regarding time travel, teleportation or telekinesis - common topics of S.F.?

In a review contributed to amazon.com some

Interesting space issue last week right? Now I know all about galaxies and black holes and

months back, Joanne Toon notes that Morrissey’s

extraterrestrials and "universal truths" which

Luv yoo,

book is “so surreal that it can’t help but draw

include the exact fate of the universe pinpointed

Critic

you in”. She also notes that the wildly disparate

by Matthew Ellison... wait what?

How is it possible for a fallible, finite human

68 

 LETTERS

letters to know the exact fate of the entire universe,

Dear ‘Old Man on Campus’

most of which hasn't even been discovered yet?

Shut up. First years in LAWS121 have already

And why, after detailing how the universe will be

heard enough of your nonsensical bullshit.

destroyed, does he go on to merrily add "Not all

Forever and always, Better than U

hope is lost though. There's still plenty of cool

p.s. it's pronounced gif, not jif.

stuff to see on our tour"? The subsequent blurb

just pash already

but why does that give me hope?

I certainly don't put my lifetime hopes in the concept of warp drives or pretty supernovas,

To Keepin' It Real

and why would I? They don't deliver anything

Hello, is it me you're looking for? I can only

we as humans yearn for; peace, happiness,

hope so - my friends are nudging me with

satisfaction, approval, love, the list goes on.

sly expressions and exclaiming about 'secret

These human yearnings are just as much (if not

admirers'. Your description was a little vague and

more) a "universal truth" as Ellison considers the

this could be wishful thinking on my part. What

destruction of the entire universe in 100 trillion

can I say - cross the great divide of approx. 4

years to be. Yet finding hope in his "truth" does

metres and say hi. I don't savage or maim.

having "plenty of cool stuff to see".

Would seeing cool space stuff satisfy you when you are horribly wronged? Would

And don't worry - I'm going to 'Into Darkness' just after the term ends and no one has spoiled it yet.

Cheers, Quizzical

knowledge of a supermassive black hole

you are on your deathbed realising its too late

beyond the finite universe, and look instead to the creator of the universe, to see where our hope lies? Or are we going to be so short sighted that a visually appealing supernova impresses us more than the power who created it?

Re: ‘Fez-gate’ For too long I been content to hold my cynical tongue firmly in mouth, permitting the ceaseless and banal discussions of Turkish head ornaments, but no more! I cannot sit idly by and watch the sacred letters section turn into some weird hat themed literotica, with its sole purpose being the facilitation of a long distance love triangle.

On that note, the Salient letters section is

dat sass

for two things: The first is to complain about audible obnoxiousness in Library blue zones, and the second is to lament the liberal takeover

Dear this-magazine-is-sah-mundane-lient.

of Salient (and our proto-socialist warlord

Let me address some of your past letter

VUWSA President Rory McCourt). This is it. No

writers.

Dear ‘Keepin’ It Real’ If you’re on the Overbridge and she’s on the

exceptions.

on, it’ll be fun. Your written correspondence indicates you must be SUPER fun to hang out with. Plus you can get matching fezes. You could

Dear ‘Your Favourite Young Nat’

call yourself Fezbians. It would just make it easier

‘Favourite Young Nat’ is an oxymoron. No one

for the rest of us to know who to avoid around

Grindr with the perfect hair (you're my fav).

Dear ‘Sophia’ Tl;dr Dear ‘Fez Guy’ You’re still boring, just stop trying. Joan

campus.

Yours hopefully, Person who doesn’t let a fucking hat define my personality.

P.s: Fez guy, you need something else. That’s hat is gonna get old eventually. Maybe take

Stevens’ food is shit and always will be. If you

up knitting on the over bridge, you can be the

make egg from powder, you lose.

“Knit of the round table”. Or even better, start

Dear ‘Harry Hippie’

biking everywhere and become really good at it.

Tip: stop reading Salient and buy some MRP

The position of Lance Armstrong is still vacant.

shares

of Wellington my network of people from the rolling hills of Scotland to the crowded throngs of Beijing has ceased to exist with the banning of my beloved Omegle. I would usually spend 3 hours, desiginated in three one hour slots, for widening my international circles and generally giving me a reason to live. Why would Vic ban such a key rescource? C'est ennuyeux!

I'd like to write a list of all the things of all the things I love about Omegle but I can't even do that now without Omegle inspiration. Omegle is my muse.

HISTORICA RATIO EXPLICATIO For those who take an interest in political history. Ideology of Independent Electorate Candidate, Wellington Central; Peter Franklin Robinson: 2013-14.

Edition: Monday, 13May2013. No restrictions on public commentary.

Reference: 804/03; Hocken Library; 65 Albany St. P.O Box 56, C.P.O. Dunedin, Otago 9054 ask. Library @ Otago. ac.nz Dies Novus, Yours sincerely Peter Franklin Robinson

So am proposing a solution: everyone who

together and hopefully the Overbridgers will

has a favourite, well... unless you’re the one on

(www) but since attending Victoria univeristy

is involved in this Fez issue should meet up. Go

Overbridge, you’re each other’s type. Breed eventually cease to exist.

myself a socialite of the world wide web

give it a fez-t already

to change anything? Science is interesting, and

to ultimately put our hope in. Shouldn't we look

these measures seems obscene. I consider

Vic'. Let the riots begin.

Would reciting the speed of light fulfill you when

but it doesn't fulfill. Its not what we were made

I respect the universities liberties to chose

Like our facebook page- 'Unblock Omegle at

complete you when you feel painstakingly alone?

it can explain many cool things in the universe,

Dear Blasalient the websites that it resricts but in one instance

of solar-system jargon sounds very intellectual,

not give us any hope unless all we care about is

welcome to the dix-tatorship

Seriously, sort it out.

SALIENT LETTERS POLICY 2013 Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate – be it serious or otherwise – through its letters pages.

Write about anything you like: Beyoncé, puppies, or the metaphysics of space-time. Send us love mail, send us hate mail, send us party invites. We want it all. Letters must be received before 12pm on the Wednesday for publication the next week. Letters must be no longer than 250 words.

Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number, these will not be printed. Please note that letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar.The Editor reserves the right to edit, abridge or decline any letters without explanation.

Letters can be sent to: Email: letters@salient.org.nz Post: Salient, c/- Victoria University of Wellington Hand-delivered: the Salient office, Level 3, Student Union Building (behind the Hunter Lounge)

 69

notices 

NOTICES CAREERS AND JOBS

We are affiliated to the TaeKwonDo Union of NZ

higher fame than The Beatles, then disappeared

(TUNZ)

without a trace.

Details on CareerHub: careerhub.victoria.ac.nz  When: 6:30 pm, Thursday 6 June.

Applications closing soon: Organisations

REFUGEE BACKGROUND STUDENTS

 Where: Memorial Theatre, Student Union Building.

Closing Drop-in centre for refugee background students.

AECOM New Zealand

 Cost: Gold-coin entry, or $10 for annual membership.

FMG

June 3

 Every week day 4-6 pm, there is a drop-in

 Popcorn and soft drinks provided.

centre in on the 10th Floor of the Murphy Building

Motu Economic & Public Policy

in Room 1010, to help you with your studies.

Research Trust

www.facebook.com/groups/vicunifilmsociety

 The Centre is run by senior students, and you

Shell

can drop by at any time for help with essays,

Provoke Solutions

studying for a test, dealing with a tutor, planning

Opus

your degree, practicing an oral presentation etc.

Transfield Worley

June 7

New Zealand Steel

June 9

 You can also just drop by to de-stress, get

Victoria Engineering Club E-Sports Tournament!

something to eat and have a chat.  For more info email vuw.dropin@gmail.com

20th & 21st July.

Fisher & Paykel

June 17

 HOW TO ENTER: Email to:

AIESEC (Argentina)

June 22

HenryAMWilliams@gmail.com

Deutsche Bank

June 27

Westpac (IT)

June 28

Koorb Consulting

June 30

STUDY OPTIONS, CAREERS AND JOBS  Unsure of what to study/do with your degree?  Need help with your CV/Interviews? … visit Vic Careers (14 Kelburn Parade)!

Wellington Law Revue 2013

and league.

returned! Auditions for the Bell Gully Wellington Law Revue, a skit-based show performed by

Entry fee: No refunds when pulling out after

Victoria University Law students and young

22nd June.

professionals, are on Sunday 9 June.

LoL: open to all teams. $50 per team ($10 per player).

The Revue needs a team of fun-loving,

Dota 2: open to all teams

extroverted, and not overly sensitive people

$50 per team ($10 per player).

(talent is an optional extra) and not just on

Starcraft 2:

stage...from the leading lady to the guy dressed

Bronze - Plat league and Diamond - Grand

as a carpet; from the make-up team to the stage

masters.. $10 per player

manager; come and have the most fun your

Upcoming Deadline for Tri 1, 2014 exchanges:

To register for auditions or backstage roles email

JULY 16! Earn Vic credit, get StudyLink and

wlrevue@gmail.com; alternative times can be

pending career will allow (NB: non-Law students

Cash prizes and spot prizes for teams and

are welcome!).

audience!

arranged, just plead your case! In the meantime,

experience!

find us on Facebook and keep an eye out around

 Weekly seminars on Wednesdays, Level 2,

campus for more information.

Easterfield Building, 12.50 pm.

“It changed me. In a good way? I don’t know.”

- Cast member ’12

Victoria University Taekwon-Do Club (WTF style)

 Information: Dota 2/LoL: Team name, player names, and handles. Starcraft 2: Name, handle,

Your favourite law-oriented musical comedy has

Vic OE – Vic Student Exchange Programme

grants, explore the world! The best university

 Subject line (include brackets): [VEC e-sports]

JUSTSPEAK JustSpeak’s holding its annual camp during the uni holidays. Registrations are now open. For more info visit justspeak.org.nz What: Get empowered as part of 150 young people coming together to discuss justice in

Vic Uni Film Society

Aotearoa.

When: 12-14 July Where: Pipitea Marae

Interested in Taekwon-Do? New to Taekwon-Do? Learned Taekwon-Do before? Come along and

Dearest reader, join us for some popcorn-fuelled

Cost: Koha, travel grants available.

join us! Great way to keep fit and have fun!

mania!

Highlights: New friends, new ideas, new skills,

 Training times: Tuesday 6.30-8 pm, Long

This Thursday, we're hosting the WORLD

Room, Victoria University Recreation Centre.

PREMIERE of EX/position (2013), a short film

Saturday 3.30-5 pm, Dance Room, Victoria

about five students and a night full of alcohol

Notices Policy: Salient provides a free notice service for

University Recreation Centre.

and dark secrets. We'll also be enjoying the

all VIctoria students, VUWSA-affiliated clubs not-for-profit

 What you need: Drink bottle, comfy trousers/

critically acclaimed documentary Searching for

shorts, T-shirt

Sugar Man (2012), the true story of folk rocker

 Contact us: vuwtkd@hotmail.com

Sixto Rodríguez. In South Africa, he rose to

chocolate pudding.

70 

organisations. Notices should be received by 5pm Tuesday the week before publication. Notices must be fewer than 100 words.

For-profit organisations will be charged $15 per notice. Send notices to editor@salient.org.nz with 'Notice' in the subject line.

SALIENT 'S YOU

VBC

Tune in to your student radio station! 88.3fm or stream online at vbc.org.nz

tues

sat

sun

DJ MP3 Player beep....

DJ MP3 Player beep....

Raw Politik Emanuel & Neas

Brooke

Wake N' Bake w/ Pearce

Joe McKay

Maddie

Michael Berriman

The VBC Hip Hop show w/ Fabulous G

Alex, Michael & Nick

Dave & ED

Thursday Drive "Add w Aidan"

Keegan Rawiri Russel

The Beatdown

The Vinyl Countdown

The B-Side Revolution w/ Rich & pals

Making Waaves w/ Kariiba & Guests

Diddakoi w/ Keszia Tyler

Railroad Blues w/ Ray

7–10am 10–noon

James Rivers!

Podcasts + Mixtapes

DC Current w/ Duncan & Cam

THE BEEF! w/ Matt & Alex

Grace Ace Fills the Space

INFIDEL CASTRO w/ Philip McSweeney

The Imposters

SALIENT w/ Molly & Stella (3-4pm)

Olivia

What Is ART? w/ Virginia

Parallels w/ Cookie

Ctrl/Alt/Dlt w/ Keegan &

Tbodega he Mixtape w/ Sam!

Slim Picking's w/ Slim & Bunny

The Drop w/ Gussie

Train-Spotting w/ Holly & Stumble

PRE-LOAD w/ Matt &

George Armstrong Dead Air

Chris Gilman The Night Shift

THAT'S SO METAL w/ Mitchell

Compulsory Ecstasy w/ Vic Serotonin

DANCE! DANCE! DANCE! w/ Tim

12–2pm

The

2–4pm

fri

4–7pm

thurs

7–9pm

weds

9–late

mon

Missed out on getting a show? Spaces come up throughout the year; email your interest to stationmanager@vbc.org.nz

VBC Breakfast Show

w/ Sally, Amber, Keegan & Rohan Sweet music, news, interviews & giveaways

rohan

Miriama Aoake

w/

Domo Arigato Mr Robato

w/

Sunday Fly Lorenzo &

w/

gang

friends

GIG GUIDE mon 3

tues 4

weds 5

CLOSED Queens Birthday

2 for 1 Margherita Pizzas

Pool Comp Amakai

After school

Mali Mali 9:30pm ($5)

Die Die Die 11pm ($10)

Gutrot-Rough Guts Album Release

as

Alan Doherty/ Tola Custy/ Gerry Paul 8pm

Big Trouble

Latin Club 8:30pm (free!)

The Jam 8pm (free!)

Omri Mor Trio 8pm (free!)

Mashtown County Massive

Poppy Dust and The Love Freaks 8:20pm ($15)

bodega meow cafe

sat 8

special

Secret Mystery Party 9:30pm (free!)

san francisco bathhouse

fri 7

State of Origin Mighty Quiz 6:30pm

mighty mighty

thurs 6

The Dan Yeasbley Trio (free!)

The John Rae Trio (free!)

John Rae All Star Collective

puppies

SANDWICHES

Square Peg 10pm  71

HAPPY PROCRASTINATING! XOXO SALIENT

academia

critical

holiday

notification

salient

achievement

cunliffe

hub

overbridge

sex

aquarius

debt

internet

overheard

smokefree

arrested

development

investor

party

stress

beyonce

dinosaur

judith

passive

student

binge

distinguish

joyce

procrastination

taurus

bragging

enhance

knowledge

progress

trimester

brunch

environment

lecture

prospects

tuatara

bubblebutt

essay

legislative

puppies

typo

campus

exam

library

qualification

university

catalogue

failure

loneliness

rainsforth

vicbooks

citation

geordie

manawahine

referencing

victoria

coffee

graduate

miami

relationship

concentration

hangover

network

regret

good luck with examsâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; see you next trimester!