Lecteur or Lectured?
So, this happened:
Victoria University in Wellington has temporarily banned three students for burning a New Zealand flag on campus.
The students burnt the flag outside a campus bar on May 6 as part of an Anzac Day anti-war protest.
The university has disenrolled flag burners Joel Cosgrove and Alistair Reith, and Ian Anderson, who filmed the protest, until the end of the first trimester on June 7 on the grounds they breached health and safety standards.
It also issued a written warning to Marika Pratley, who was there at the time, and banned all four from the Mount Street bar.
“These students have shown a disregard for the safety of others and of university property,” dean of humanities and social sciences Professor Deborah Willis said.
[…]
The students said the 20-second flag burning happened outside in the rain and was not a danger to anyone.
Damn university. How does an inanimate object “issue[] a written warning” or “ban[]” people?
I did this:
Dear Dr Willis,
I am writing in response to the recent action on the part of Victoria University of disenrolling Joel Cosgrove, Alistair Reith and Ian Anderson.
While I understand you feeling the need to perform some response to these students’ actions, I feel that the university’s actions are disproportionate to what Cosgrove, Reith and Anderson did and urge you to reconsider your position. The burning of the New Zealand flag, admittedly a fairly provocative gesture, was performed to draw attention to the students’ message of the barbarism and futility of war - and the idea that celebrating war “heroes” fuels damaging patriotism and nationalism. This message is surely not at odds with the university - and even if it were the message is one sent by three people (affiliated with the university solely by the money they pay it) and not intended to be viewed as one sent by the university. As such, it is fair for the university to distance itself from the students’ actions; but given that these actions were not reported in a particularly public arena, this seems unnecessary.
As far as condemning the actions on the grounds of health and safety, I struggle to see how the flag burning was dangerous. The flag constituted a fairly small amount of fuel which was burned with several people around who were well-prepared to deal with the fire if it somehow grew out of hand. Grew out of hand, that is, despite the fire being lit in the rain, outside and on a soaking wet balcony. It would take an extremely proficient arsonist to effect any significant fire under those circumstances. Further, given that there were no others near the burning flag, it seems incredibly difficult to imagine the fire hurting anybody.
I fail to imagine how disenrolling these students can help the university or send any positive message on behalf of VUW. I urge you to reverse this action, given the scale of their “crime” and the lack of grounds on which the punishment was based.
Yours faithfully,
Asher Norris
Concerned VUW student.
Good luck to you three - it’s a pity you won’t be allowed to drink at Mt St though.
A man’s library is a sort of harem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Conduct of Life. 1860
IT IS A grave day when something in which you have trusted for your whole life is revealed for the sham it is. That day is hammer in the nail of the Enlightenment’s coffin, the triumph of postmodernism, W.H. Auden’s ‘Stop all the clocks’ - though trite - ringing true.
And today, for me, is that day. After dragging myself out of my hangover and bed, I managed to make it up the hill through the distressingly wet rain to the university library. With a syntax assignment due tomorrow, it’s not the first time I’ve been there looking for grammars of obscure languages over the last few days.
I spent all of Wednesday there, unable to find a single language for which there was a grammar accounting for ordering of elements inside the noun phrase. (Ignore the specifics and bear with me.) I then went to band practice which lacked a key member thanks to prolonged sickness so ginned up and won a game of Risk. Possibly for the first time in my life.
I returned to the library on Thursday, almost had all the information I needed (on Basque) but discovered the world offers no evidence of where numerals go with respect to adjectives (in Basque). Despairing, I headed off to work. That night I even tried to find information on the internet, the last bastion of hope for me finishing the assignment. No dice, somehow.
Friday I worked. Then danced.
Saturday I felt sick. Then danced. Then got stuck on facebook.
So today, being Sunday, I realised it’s my last chance not to fail the paper in question. I, as I mentioned, got up the wet hill with most of its moisture precipitating onto your humble narrator. About an hour before the library was scheduled to shut, I at last found what I needed. A grammar of Danish which was neither too Chomskyan and inutile nor too simplistic, geared towards those learning the language. I got all the data I needed about this arbitrarily-chosen language. Realising then that I had only fifteen minutes to go before the library shut, I frantically consulted Greenberg to find another SVO language with which to compare Danish. I found a contender in the library catalogue and, praise be, Bukiyip had the perfect book on its divine grammar.
I had just headed back to my desk to type up nonsense sentences to offer Liz Pearce as examples when a library official told me that the library was closing through the noise emanating from her iPod, headphones firmly lodged in her ears. I asked her if the Issues desk was still open and she looked as though I’d asked her for her number. She responded, “Uggggh I don’t know that kind of information”. At any rate, I packed up my things and hastened downstairs to find all the lights off at the main desk. Having the utmost respect for libraries prevented me from simply walking out with its grammars, so I asked if I could just leave my name and ID card with them and return in the morning to issue the books properly. I was screeched at by someone who was apparently being waited upon by a mysterious entity called “Taxis” which was repeatedly invoked as though it were a divine power. Angrily they insisted on putting the books behind the shelf for me to pick up within twenty-four hours. Downcast, I trudged outside, the rain curdling my hair product.
Some harem.
