Salient 18, 2013 - Self-Improvement by Salient

E I L N A T S 1938

the self-improvement issue monday 19th AUGUST 2013 VOL 76 ISSUE 18

role models: 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 News Interns: Sophie Boot

E I L N A T S 1938

An Organ of Student Opinion Since 1938

Arts Editor: Philip McSweeney arts@salient.org.nz Film Editor: Chloe Davies Books Editor: Alexandra Hollis Visual Arts Editor: Simon Gennard Music Editor: Elise Munden Theatre Editor: Gabrielle Beran Games Editor: Patrick Lindsay Feature Writers: Henry Cooke & Patrick Hunn Chief Sub-editor & Uploader: Nick Fargher Distribution Specialist: Jonathan Hobman

contributors: Seymour Butts, Harry Chapman, Catherine Gaffaney, Penny Gault, Freddie Hayek, Hector and Janet, Becca Hofmann, Ashleigh Hume, Russ Kale, Lux Lisbon, Emma McAuliffe, Rory McCourt, Duncan McLachlan, Tom McLean, Carla Marks, Sam Northcott, Fleur Oxitine, Pasifika Students' Council, Cam Price, Carlo Salizzo, Emma Smith, Joanna Tennant, Grace Tong, Julia Wells Contributor of the Week: Hilly B

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

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

"Within a few weeks, my thoughts began to have logical progression again, rather than being these sort of one-woman spirals of despair and worthlessness. I felt better because I felt less. Of course it was worth it." I get by with a little help from my friend - page 28

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, snapper, self-awareness, success, but we of Salient are proud of our beliefs and take full responsibility for them. This issue is dedicated to:

happiness, you elusive beast

www.salient.org.nz

@salientmagazine

facebook.com/salientmagazine

editorial

CONTENTS Weekly Content: VUWSA

News

Politics

Campus Digest

Features: News feature:

VUWSA BY-ELECTION let's call it a

night selfish

improvement i get by with a

little help from my friend 5 minutes with

At some point today—most likely more than once already—you will have wished you got a better mark on a test, wished you looked a bit different, wished you were into cooler music, or wished you were just... better. From grand goals to small steps, us humans are obsessed with self-improvement. Since the beginning of time, we’ve been convinced that the key to happiness is simply being better—regardless of what the end goal is. And this pursuit of happiness isn’t getting any easier. As society moves away from set expectations and moral guidelines as to what constitutes a ‘good’ person, we have to set our own boundaries: these days most of the goals we have to strive for are hyperbole— smartest, richest, prettiest, funniest. In academia, we see this obsession manifest itself in an ever-growing number of specialisations; if you can’t top the subject, simply create a new branch to succeed in. We all like to be a winner, and if we can’t win it ourselves, we want to back the winning horse. We support sports teams on the quality of their stats this season; swing voters are swayed by polls which popularise a particular leader, and if Victoria’s cleverly crafted marketing campaign brought you here, it was because you wanted to associate yourself with the best. Get amongst! In this kind of environment, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that unless you’re the best, you’re not worth much at all. If you beat the rest, then why try at all? All or nothing; go hard or go home. If we stopped for a minute to consider this way of thinking, we would realise how ridiculous it is. Failing to be the best does not make you the worse, nor bad, nor mediocre. Failing to be the best can simply mean second-best.

Which is still really very good. Our obsession with first place, top-ranked, gold medal winners means that we fail to face up to the facts of human nature: no one can ever succeed at everything; no one will ever be the best at everything. But because we are so intent on winning a title, we forget that there are plenty of qualities that go unnoticed, unranked, untitled, unacknowledged. We forget that those who we put on pedestals have faults of their own, just like the rest of us. And we forget that when we compare ourselves to others we will always come away lacking: when we turn a critical eye on ourselves we are very good at seeing the qualities that we don’t possess, and never those that we do. Even the University, which purports to create wellrounded graduates, places heavy emphasis on the “graduate attributes” they are able to measure: scores, results, rank, title. Year after year a number of our peers are offered scholarships, tutoring positions, research roles, or access to higher education because of their ability to excel within a framework that the University recognises. Attributes that are easy to label—such as test results or sporting medals—are rewarded, whereas those that are harder to define; like being genuine, or helping to build a community, go unnoticed. When it comes to understanding each other, this approach leaves us with the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. So the next time you wish you could just be better, make sure that you’re not selling yourself short.

molly & stella

conrad smith life advice from

high atop mount olympus faces to deface

dinocop

Columns: secret diary

weekly rant

laying down the

law hoopin' and hollerin' things that go

bump in the night Fixing your life

lifestyle

Arts: games

books

music

film

THEATRE

visual arts

what's on

Etc: Puzzles

Letters

Notices

VBC

Gig Guide

VUWSA 

YOUR STUDENTS’

ASSOCIATION

your students' association

feedback soon about what kind of events and bands you’d like. Another area where I really feel like we’re making a difference is at Academic Board and Academic Committee, where we recently had a big impact on the grading changes proposal (the introduction of a C-, and the moving of all other grades up the scale).

THE McCOURT REPORT VUWSA President Rory McCourt

I've got to admit, it's getting better. A little better all the time, this President thing. We’ve reached the mid-trimester break of Trimester 2 and VUWSA’s still solvent, the building hasn’t burnt down and those effigy-burnings of me have certainly plateaued. In the words of Hekia Parata, this is “good news”. I finally feel like I’m getting a real sense of the role, and how rewarding it is to be coordinating the voices of other students. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of student politics, and while I’m excited to get back to study in a few months, I don’t think I’ve ever loved this job more than now. And I think this new-found appreciation of all things VUWSA has come from a few recent developments:

We’re also getting more and more Food-Bank packs and free bus passes to Karori, Te Aro and Pip; feeding hungry students like we haven’t done since 2011. You said it was important, we listened. I used to feel like the fool on the hill, where a foreign world of academics and managers made me think every turn I took was wrong. Now, I think the Exec team and I have matured a bit. I think we’ve built really good relationships with those staff and found our voice. We’ve self-improved. University is all about self-improvement. It’s about coming to a place where, with a bit of hard work and a few all-nighters, you can come out the other side with a degree in one hand and the knowledge to conquer the world in the other. Well, that’s the case not only for academic pursuits, but the whole student experience. Whether it’s perfecting your sport, helping to run a club, volunteering in the community or serving your peers; this is the place to become the person you want to be. Better living, everyone.

We made a real difference to the Wellington City Council’s proposal to restrict the opening hours of bars in our recent alcohol-policy submission. We relayed student feedback from flats, halls and RAs. We said kicking students out on the street at 2 am won’t solve binge drinking, but instead make our mates more unsafe. In any case, incidents of binge drinking among 18–24-year-olds are on the decline. The Council also wanted to close off-licence liquor stores and dairies with wine and beer after a certain time. We said this was stupid, because students will just buy their alcohol earlier in the day. Why has this experience given me new hope? Because it renewed my faith in VUWSA as a collective voice for students. You’ll be able to enjoy your night now more safely thanks to VUWSA. Another area I’m pretty excited about making progress in is our contracts and budgeting processes. While these might not sound exciting, the underfunding of VUWSA’s services from the University and the lateness of signing contracts mean that your Students’ Association is often left in a tricky situation year to year. The University managers have agreed to look at how VUWSA is funded, and what we could change to give more stability and certainty. What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully, better-run services, welfare and events, as well as a much better Orientation. We’re currently working on our plans for Orientation 2014, and we’ll be asking for your

>>> salient.org.nz

 VUWSA

Campaigns Officer By Harry Chapman

Hi everyone! Self-improvement can be hard. We all want to be better people, but sometimes the effort required to do things is just far too much. I think a big part of improving yourself is about being mindful of the effects of your actions on other people, and listening with an open mind to people’s advice or criticism of your own behaviour. Within reason, try and listen with an open mind when people suggest you do things—it’s probably for your own good! The student body at VUW is definitely in need of some selfimprovement when it comes to participating in democracy. Voting only takes a couple of minutes, but can have an important effect on many aspects of your life. Firstly, you should vote in the upcoming VUWSA by-election! Following the resignation of our Welfare Vice-President and Education Officer, we need to fill some spaces around our table of bureaucratic power. There’s also a chance to vote for a position on Publications Committee which has been vacant all year. We’ll be having a candidates’ forum for the by-election this week, and polling will start from 9 am this Friday, 23 August, and will finish on Sunday 25 August at 5 pm. You’ll be sent an email with instructions on how to vote, and it will only take a few minutes. Secondly, you should also vote in the upcoming Wellington localgovernment elections! Local government doesn’t get paid nearly as much attention as central government, yet local government has a huge effect on an average student’s life. Are you outraged that buses and trains in the Wellington region cost so much? Do you think it’s unfair that secondary-school students recently received a bigger discount while university students didn’t get anything? Are you sick of living in a cold, damp flat? Vote for candidates who are sympathetic to your concerns, and help show local-government politicians that students are a group to be reckoned with. If you want to hear directly from the politicians, and ask them some really tricky questions, VUWSA will be holding a localgovernment candidates’ forum on the 25 of September. If you’re enrolled, you should get a voting pack in the mail, and you can vote between 20 September and midday on Saturday 12 October 2013. If you aren’t enrolled yet, don’t worry! You can enrol right up to the 11 October, but you’ll have to request special voting papers from a Council electoral officer. We’ll have some of these voting papers on hand at the candidates’ forum to make it nice and easy. Good luck getting through the last week of the trimester before the break!

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PASIFIKA STUDENTS' COUNCIL Warm Pacific greetings! A friendly reminder about our sessions that are happening this week: LOTO AHO STUDY SESSION When: Wednesdays, 4–6 pm at KK001, Kirk Building, Level 0 HULA WITH TE KURA Wednesdays, 7.30 am at Dance Room, VUW Rec Centre TIVAEVAE-MAKING SESSION Wednesdays, 5 pm at Pasifika Haos FHSS DROP-IN COURSE ADVICE Fridays, 1 pm at Pasifika Haos TE PUTAHI ATAWHAI DROP-IN SESSIONS with Pasifika Support Co-ordinators: Jenny Taotua and Sera Tokakece Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 1 pm at Pasifika Haos CRITICAL-THINKING WORKSHOP with Pasifika Support Learning Adviser: Ema Sanga Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12 pm at Pasifika Haos “Kia akakoromaki, which means be calm. Oceania reassures us that everything will be okay. It is good to wait on her, reflect, and then make it happen.” —Papa Rangi Moeka’a

NEWS





NEWs 

Straining to get involved with our news section? Calf yourself a niche: email news@salient.org.nz

A TEACHING AFFAIR Jealous University takes umbrage as rival qualification body woos Victoria students Chris McIntyre

A Victoria society is complaining of a “serious problem” after the University removed advertising for an event run for students which was hosted by a competitor.

teachers and that taken by the Teach First NZ programme, including the latter’s practice of the trainees having full responsibility for classes after only six weeks of training.”

The VUW Science Society posters accused the University of removing posters advertising a speaker night hosted last Wednesday. The speaker night was hosted by Teach First NZ to showcase the organisation’s scholarship offerings to students.

University management also downplayed the incident, with Sutherland—who ordered the posters’ removal—saying the decision was made due to the placement of the posters, not the content.

Teach First NZ is a not-for-profit organisation in partnership with the University of Auckland, which aims to reduce inequality by encouraging and training graduates to become teachers. While relatively new to New Zealand, it is modelled on overseas programmes and is currently being evaluated by the Ministry of Education. President of the Science Society Jonathan Musther told Salient posters put up by the Society were “mysteriously removed” after Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Dr Kathryn Sutherland had ordered staff to take them down.

“Staff were asked to remove posters that were obscuring those promoting a careers event scheduled for the same evening. We apologise that some other Teach First NZ posters were also taken down,” Sutherland told Salient. A University spokeswoman did not say the Science Society had breached any rules by putting up the posters, but added there is always a risk that posters put up on public boards may be removed or posted over by others. While posters cannot be put on boards designated for a particular purpose, such as careers, it is unclear

whether this was the case for the Science Society. Musther said the Science Society had a “duty to our members” which the University was trying to stifle through the removal of the posters. “[The Science Society should] present all opportunities that are available, not just those offered, or sanctioned, by VUW.” Teach First NZ was also refused a stand at the recent science careers expo, with Crabbe implying the organisation had not reached the standards required by the University. “Places at the Victoria University Careers Expo are negotiated with the various exhibitors. We need to make sure that stand-holders at the event are offering credible, proven products that are relevant to our students,” Crabbe told Salient. Teach First NZ scholarship information can be found at teachfirstnz.org, or by phone on (09) 336 0010.

“VUW is currently planning a postgraduate teaching qualification which, in their opinion, would compete with Teach First NZ. As a result, they are doing what they can to disrupt the event,” said Musther. Dean of Education Associate Professor David Crabbe denied the similarities between the Teach First NZ study programme and Victoria’s own offerings, provided through the Faculty of Education. “There are some fundamental differences between Victoria’s approach to preparing

>>> salient.org.nz

 NEWS

Messy Massey Mo’ campuses, mo’ problems as Massey students’ associations fracture Originally reported by Yvette Morrissey and Morgan Browne, Massive. Additional reporting by Chris McIntyre.

A war of words is taking place within Massey University, with the resignation of one student president as another lashes out at “possibly defamatory” allegations published in the University’s student magazine, Massive. Allegations of cronyism within Massey Extramural Students’ Society (EXMSS) arose last week as Massive revealed EXMSS President Jeanette Chapman will earn over $50,000 this year—nearly $40 an hour—after stacking the Executive with her friends. A source told Massey magazine Massive that Chapman had “shoulder-tapped” people she knew to join a co-opted executive board, after she removed the majority of the original executive members—including the Vice-President—earlier this year. The removal of the former executive happened after it wrote to her with concerns about her performance, and attempted to convene a meeting to discuss them. Chapman was issued a written warning for her behaviour by the original executive. Chapman has described two out of the three co-opted executive as “good friends”, but declined to comment on what she described as “allegation[s]”. “This is the second Massive magazine article about me that was obviously made with ‘ill-will’ and is possibly defamatory,” Chapman said in a statement last Tuesday. “In my opinion, either the editor does not care about the truth or I am a perfect scapegoat that will catapult her into greater name recognition.” Chapman will earn more than $53,000 this year for her 27-hours-a-week part-time position, it was revealed last week. On top of the $23,000 honorarium she receives for her services as President, Chapman had a newly co-opted Executive approve payments of $10,000 for media and communication, $9521 for officeoperations service delivery, and $10,479 for group advocacy. Group advocacy is included in, and remunerated for, in the President’s role, meaning Chapman is getting paid twice to do the same role.

salient.org.nz <<<

Chapman does not have any intentions of giving up the extra payments, saying in Tuesday’s statement that she will “continue to try to secure ongoing contracts that provide additional revenue that supports our entire society,” as long as she remains President. The EXMSS President’s base honorarium is $18,000, but can reach a maximum of $31,000 when experience bonuses and allocations for personal computer and study are included. This money is initially distributed by the University under Service Level Agreements, and originally comes from students’ fees. Massey University diverted responsibility for the faults within EXMSS, indicating it was not their responsibility. Assistant Vice-Chancellor of External Relations Cas Carter said Massey “takes its responsibility for delivery of students’ services seriously,” but indicated the University had limited scope to reign in EXMSS given the society is external to University management.

“I believe that it is important to recognise and compensate students for their time and efforts, but it needs to be within reason. I would question whether $53,000 would be classed as within reason.” Massey Wellington Students’ Association Acting President Charlotte Webb highlighted the importance of formal processes in preventing such events. “Any remuneration and honorarium, or consultancy payments should be subject to formal approval processes ... not just for accountability, but also for transparency in being able to report the use of funds to the student body,” said Webb. Chapman justified her relatively high pay, telling Massive she had more business and management expertise than other student presidents.

“We carefully monitor all our contracts and agreements for performance and compliance. The students’ associations are independent entities. The University is always happy to provide advice and support but the students’ associations are independent entities,” said Carter. Presidents from Massey’s other students’ associations, all of whom are paid significantly less than Chapman, have expressed concern at the situation. “In my view, unless the President’s wages are fully disclosed, there should be no additional payments other than those approved by the students,” said outgoing Massey University Students’ Association President Steven Christodoulou, who is paid a $22,500 honorarium. Christodoulou resigned last week amidst a climate of faltering student engagement and rising unhappiness with the job. Albany Students’ Association Acting President Arlene Frost, who is not paid, agreed with Christodoulou stating, “the honorarium payment is not a wage,” and that $53,000 was not appropriate for a student president.

EXMSS President Jeanette Chapman (pictured) has been accused of cronyism and overpaying herself with vast amounts of student money, after student magazine Massive revealed her annual salary is over $50,000. 7

NEWS

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GOOD INTENTIONS, INCREASED RETENTION Extra attention means Victoria doesn’t drop the ball on dropouts Sophie Boot

Efforts towards retaining Māori and Pasifika students have been paying off, with decreasing dropout rates, but their retention rates are still catching up with those of other ethnicities. 2012’s 78-per-cent retention rate for Māori students was a slight dip from the 79-per-cent retained in 2011, but an increase on 2010's retention rate of 75 per cent. Pasifika retention rates are also on the rise, having increased from 69 per cent in 2010 and 2011 to this year's result of 76 per cent. However, the nationwide average for tertiaryinstitution dropouts of Māori students is 25 per cent, slightly higher than the Victoria retention rates; showing that Victoria is doing slightly better than other universities in Māori-student retention. The national average retention rate for Pasifika students is 76 per cent, the same as Victoria. Retention rates for NZ European undergraduate students are high relative to other ethnicities, with 85 per cent returning to study at Victoria in 2012. Middle Eastern, Latin American and African students and students in the 'other' category had retention rates of 81 and 80 per cent respectively. Overall, 16 per cent—roughly one in six—of all undergraduate students did not return to study at Victoria in 2012.

Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) role is the first of its kind in New Zealand, and is currently held by the Honourable Luamanuvao Winnie Laban. Professor Piri Sciascia is the current Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori). “These leaders work with the University’s Senior Management Team to engage students and staff in a community approach to enhance Māori and Pasifika students’ experience at Victoria and their retention and achievement rates,” said Thorburn. The University has also introduced more inclusive teaching practices, Māori- and Pasifikastudent support programmes like Te Pūtahi Atawhai, Māori and Pasifika Learning Advisors, faculty-based Equity Coordinators, faculty-based support programmes, orientation programmes, study groups, and exam-preparation wananga to support achievement. Several new learning spaces for Māori and Pasifika students have also been developed over the past few years. VUWSA President Rory McCourt told Salient the long-term increases in Māori and Pasifika retention rates show the hard work of Victoria staff and student groups is paying off, noting VUWSA works “everyday” to support initiatives like the Pasifika Students’ Success Plan, the Retention Plan and leaders like Laban.

“VUWSA works closely with Ngāi Tauira and the Pasifika Students’ Council to raise the concerns of Māori and Pasifika students with the University, and ensure all our programmes, courses and services are meeting the needs of these students,” said McCourt. Salient contacted Ngāi Tauira and the Pasifika Students’ Council for comment, but neither had replied at the time of publication. Similar trends emerged in students studying Master’s and Doctorate degrees, where 84 per cent of NZ European students, 83 per cent of Māori students and 76 per cent of Pasifika students returned to Victoria. While the Pasifika postgraduate retention rate dipped 11 percentage points from 2011, the relatively small number of students means a few individuals can create large percentage shifts by dropping out. Just one in ten Middle Eastern, Latin American and African Master’s and Doctorate students drop out; the highest retention rate for any degree or ethnicity. As previously reported in Salient, Victoria has a higher-than-average proportion of NZ European students with, four out of five students compared to the national average for tertiary institutions, 3.5 out of five.

Director of Student Academic Services Pam Thorburn said that there was an upward trend in Māori and Pasifika student-retention rates at Victoria. "The Pasifika Student Success Plan and the University's Retention Plan, which includes Aro Taumata actions for Māori Student Retention, are being actively implemented and have contributed to an upward trend in Māori- and Pasifika-student pass rates in the period between 2010 and 2012," Thorburn told Salient. Victoria has two key senior leadership roles for Māori and Pasifika: Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori) and Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika). The

>>> salient.org.nz

 NEWS

of undergraduate and post-graduate students in 2012:

84% stayed, 3044 dropped out under 25's

under 25's

1.3 out of every 10 people drop out

1 in 4 people drop out

undergrad dropout rates

retention rates:

Māori

24%

Pasifika

22%

Other

20%

Middle Eastern/Latin American/African European

salient.org.nz <<<

19% 15%

Students retained in study measures the proportion of students in a given year that complete qualifications, or enrol at the same university in the following year. Victoria’s 84 per cent means that 16 per cent of undergraduate and post-graduate students (not including those who graduated) didn’t come back in 2012. Drop out rates are calculated by the percentage of students who are not retained.

NEWS

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HELEN: A HANDBASKET Former PM speaks on Labour of love Phillipa Webb

Victoria students were given Helen back last week, as former Prime Minister Helen Clark went from the UNDP to MC103 to give a speech on international development. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator and former New Zealand Prime Minister was greeted by over 650 staff, students and invited guests at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs’ (NZIIA) Annual Foreign Policy Lecture held at Victoria last Monday. Maclaurin lecture theatres were packed with guests hoping to see Clark in the flesh, with a video link to her presentation streamed to an overflow theatre. In her speech, entitled ‘Conflict and Development: Breaking the Cycle of Fragility, Violence, and Poverty’, Clark spoke about the impact of conflict and armed violence on development and the importance of creating more peaceful environments “where development can thrive”. “It will not be possible to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 or by any other date if a proportion of the world’s people continue to live in fear of war, conflict, and armed violence

ripping their communities apart,” she said. Clark was also critical of the short-term charity approach of many peacekeeping missions, instead arguing for the need to see development as a “long-term agenda”. “Peacebuilding interventions provide short-term relief, but we must look at constructive solutions and the importance of building resilient institutions,” she said. When asked about the role of women in armed conflict, Clark said she took the issue seriously. “We need to get women to the table—too many ceasefire agreements are handed out by the blokes doing the fighting.” Clark was the Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years before taking up the role of UNDP Administrator in 2009—a role where she oversees a $5 billion annual fund. In his concluding speech, NZIIA President and former National MP Sir Douglas Kidd told Clark that her attendance was a “triumph” and that she had pulled a crowd of “more than anyone ever”.

NZIIA Director Peter Kennedy said Clark’s presentation was “stunning”, and before Clark, the Institute had never pulled a crowd of more than 150 people. “It’s great to see so many students give consideration to serious international issues.” One student Salient spoke to was more interested in seeing the former Prime Minister in action, than in the international issues the NZIIA was hoping to promote. “I just really wanted an update on what she’s been up to—she is such an inspiration to young New Zealand women.” After the presentation, attendees took the opportunity for selfies with the former Prime Minister as she promoted her new book At the UN: Addresses from Helen Clark’s first term leading the UNDP. Salient spoke to Clark, who said she enjoyed speaking to such an active and engaged audience, and said she had enjoyed being back in the capital. “But I wish the weather had been better.”

“We all desperately want to be associated with your success,” he said.

>>> salient.org.nz

 NEWS

Who run the world? It’s that time of the year Grace Tong

VUWSA’s annual Women’s Week was anything but weak, with festivities taking place around campus last week.

from the audience. VUWSA Women's Group President Grace Kahukore-Fitzgibbon was pleased with the event.

Organised and run by the VUWSA Women’s Group, Women’s Week had eight events around the theme “Who needs feminism?”, aiming to celebrate women’s achievements as well as drawing attention to topical women’s issues. Some events were aimed at promoting wellbeing; the week began with a Wellness Seminar held on Monday and ended with a ‘Love Your Body’ campaign around Kelburn campus on Friday.

"[VUWSA Equity Officer] Matthew Ellison organised a really diverse panel,” she said, noting the panel “covered issues everyone was really curious about.”

A Sex Work Panel discussion on Tuesday explored the realities of sex work. It included speakers from the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, and answered many questions

“Feminism should be for more than cis straight white women, and should include minorities,” said Kahukore-Fitzgibbon.

Other events aimed at promoting various discourses, with an Intersectionality Discussion inspired by the diversity of the feminist movement.

Ellison said that while there is always room for

improvement, this year's Women's Week has done well to build on the success of last years', having a good variety of events and topics and good attendance. “Women's Week is important because it raises awareness of issues affecting women, and of feminism in general, as well as hosting events which promote healthy discussion, involving the wider community in feminist discourse,” said Ellison. The Women’s Group annual debate was postponed to later in the trimester due to speaker engagements. The topic was set to be “Gender Quotas: helpful or harmful?” in response to recent proposed changes to the Labour Party, and a new date will be announced shortly.

Eureka!

Victoria Professor reeks of solvents; whittles away discreetly at discrete mathematics Catherine Gaffaney

A mathematical problem older than most students has been solved by a Victoria University Professor.

Rota’s Conjecture is a way of using mathematics to recognise these alternative structures.

40 years after the problem was conceived, Professor Geoff Whittle of the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research has solved the problem known as ‘Rota’s Conjecture’ with professors from Canada and the Netherlands. Whittle has been working on the problem for the past 15 years.

“I like to compare it to Kafka’s Metamorphosis story, where a man wakes up and realises he has transformed into an insect—the way he views the world changes entirely.

“It’s a little bit like discovering a new mountain— we’ve crossed many hurdles to reach a new destination and we have returned scratched, bloodied and bruised from the arduous journey,” said Whittle, adding that though the Conjecture has been solved, it will take hundreds of pages to write up the results of his work. The conjecture was posed by famous mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota in 1970. It relates to the matroid theory, which investigates geometric structures that can be completely different from those in our world.

salient.org.nz <<<

While it is indeed a great success, the professors still have several years of work ahead of them as they document their results so others can follow the pathway they took to solving the decadesold problem.

“Matroid theory is all about visualising a world of new geometrical structures and developing ways of describing the big, overarching structures which would emerge.” Professor Whittle’s success comes after 21 years in Victoria’s mathematical department, a research fellowship at Oxford University, his investment as a Fellow into the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the achievement of the New Zealand Mathematical Society’s Research Award. Head of School Dr Peter Donelan is delighted with Whittle’s achievement, calling it “one of the outstanding mathematical achievements in recent years”.

NEWS

ď&#x201A;ş

this week's

ions

iPredict is a prediction market run by Victoria University that has hundreds of stocks on economic, political and social outcomes. The following predictions are supplied by iPredict and may have changed since Salient went to print. To try your luck go to ipredict.co.nz.

Govt to reduce Snapper Bag limit

72%

Liberals to win Aussie Election

84%

Another National List MP to depart before the election

85%

Thomas Dorreen

check out our website at:

salient.org.nz! Read the magazine online, find out what's happening on campus, procrastinate, comment, check the latest campus bus and weather info, share, listen to the VBC, play games, and get extra online only content updated weekly.

Shearer to depart as Labour Leader in 2013

38%

Nicola Young to be elected Mayor of Wellington

13%

>>> salient.org.nz

 NEWS

The Weakest Link Goodbye to low phone bills for students Chris McIntyre

Recent figures suggest the StudyLink is broken, with over 800,000 calls unanswered over the last three years and students being left in the lurch in the meantime.

“Not getting correct payments on time can mean the difference between being able to afford groceries or having to collect a food parcel.

24 per cent of calls—roughly 270,000 a year— are not connected to an operator, recent figures show. The longest waiting time at the loan service was over an hour, something Labour has blamed on the 14-per-cent reduction in StudyLink staff overseen by the National Government.

“I have heard numerous stories where undue financial hardship has forced students to add to their debt by sourcing loans from elsewhere. And universities are reporting increased demand for their welfare services,” said Ardern.

Unanswered calls peak at the beginning of the university year, when StudyLink processed over 310,000 applications. Last summer, the rate of unanswered calls rose to 41 per cent; a 25-percent improvement on 2012’s rate. Labour’s Social Development spokesperson Jacinda Ardern has said accessibility to StudyLink is “vital” for students, after having heard stories of students who are struggling to pay bills or rent while waiting for loan issues to be resolved

LOL NEWS CHROFLIS MCLOLNTYRE

A REAL MARE FOR A DRUNKEN SLAPPER In news straight from the horse’s mouth, a Houston woman was jailed for four days last week after slapping a horse in the mouth. Diane Harvey was asked to empty her cup of beer by a police officer riding the horse, which had blocked her way after she tried to evade the officer. It is not known why the long face angered Harvey. When asked whether the blow hurt, the horse replied “neigh”.

AN AUSLOL IN AUSPOL Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott made an arse of himself last week, mistaking the word ‘repository’ for ‘suppository’ in a speech in Melbourne. "No one—however smart, however wellsalient.org.nz <<<

National’s youth wing, the Young Nats, launched a campaign in April seeking feedback from students on problems with StudyLink. The results of the consultation will be presented to Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce and Associate Minister for Social Development Chester Borrows. Students can submit to the Young Nats’ StudyLink consultation at studylinkideas.org.nz.

educated, however experienced—is the suppository of all wisdom," Abbott told a Liberal Party event, apparently not meaning to refer to the type of pill ingested anally.

stay classy, world Israel has announced it will release a number of Palestinian prisoners, while at the same time building more illegal settlements in the West Bank in a classic carrot-dressed-as-stick move. Russia continues to crack down on gay propaganda, and despite international pressure for boycotts of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Putin is continuing his refusal to put out. NSA analysts have access to 0.00004 per cent of the world’s web traffic, an alarming revelation to the people self-important enough to believe their emails are part of that group. Billionaire Paypal-founder and space entrepreneur Elon Musk has proposed a supersonic transportation system called ‘hyperloop’ which would take passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles by tube in just 30 minutes. Salient suggests Palmerston North and Wellington, or Hamilton and Auckland could have their own hyperloops, though these would only be necessary in one direction. A local man has arrived late to a bus stop the one time that particular bus arrived early. The event proved a sour aftertaste to an otherwise good day, something which “never happens” according to the man, who usually arrives at the stop on time due to a misplaced sense of organisation. “Who gives a fuck, there’s another one in 15 minutes,” said one onlooker.

Abbott’s Liberal Party is still leading in the polls: his gaffe has not made him an enema of the state, and even better, this sentence provided Salient a great excuse to use a colon.

headlines that weren't

A LONG ZIMBAB-WAY TO GO

Second-year Development Studies student fixes Africa

As African states continue to get the hang of democracy, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has interpreted it literally, telling opponents to “go hang” after his victory was disputed. The fairness of last month’s elections is being contested by opposition parties, after Mugabe’s rural strongholds had near-100-per-cent turnout rates compared to the opposition's urban electorates, which had rates near 60 per cent. "After their death, even dogs will not have their bodies for meat. They will sniff at their flesh, and pass on," Mugabe said of his enemies, describing his victory as a "mystical thunderbolt".

City Council caught with pants down after Town-Belt discussions fail Condiment scandal erupts; journalists continue to protect sauces Christmas advertising to lap Christmas by 2025, predict experts Government to reconsider Bill after use of snarky hashtag by Wellington liberals

POLITICS 

left How to Lose Votes and Alienate Supporters

P O L I

By Carla Marks On page three of the National Party constitution, you will find the values that the Party and its MPs strive to reflect. Among these are “individual freedom” and “limited government”. To an uninformed bystander, it would come as a surprise that the very government that is bound to express these values is the same government that has spent the last four years eroding our individual freedoms and expanding the power of government. The last month has seen the Government dramatically move away from the principles which many of its supporters hold dear. The GCSB Bill violates the freedom from surveillance and rights to privacy which New Zealanders hold dear. It vastly expands the legal capabilities of the government to track the communications of New Zealand citizens, massively expanding government powers of surveillance and data collection. Limited government? Yeah right. In the past few weeks, not only has the Government invaded our privacy, but invaded the lives of fishermen (and women). Showing total disregard for his own party’s values, Nathan Guy recommended that recreational fishers be limited to just three fish per day. Years of labelling the Fifth Labour Government as “nanny-state” was beginning to smell a little fishy. But that wasn’t all. Paula Bennett last week announced law changes which would enable suspected child-abusers, without conviction, to be prevented by court order from approaching children. The Government, not content with infringing on the liberties of all of us by spying or by restricting our recreational fishing quota, is now moving towards passing laws which will enable restrictions on the freedom of movement of people without conviction. Fishers, spies and (suspected) child-abusers are far from the only targets of this government. The Government has insidiously passed laws preventing young people from using sunbeds; further restricted the freedom of prisoners to vote; limited the range of products beneficiaries can buy in supermarkets; forbidden protests at sea; passed numerous pieces of legislation under urgency—preventing public scrutiny; allowed searches without warrants; eroded the rights of young workers, and the rights of unions; and even passed legislation with swathes of supporting documents withheld as “secret”. If Labour was creating a “nanny state”, then National is building a “daddy state”—and a nasty one at that. National, it’s time to take a look at yourself. You’re not like the old National. You’ve changed. It’s time for some selfimprovement.

Letters from a young contrarian By Cam Price Unpaid internships, while basically unheard of in New Zealand outside of the creative sector, are a hot-button issue in America at the moment. The concept is simple: ad agencies, fashion boutiques, and the odd professional firm employ freshly graduated students for a summer, to give them a chance to prove themselves in the real world. Perhaps ‘employ’ is the wrong word here: the interns do not get paid. Interns give their time freely in the hope that the skills and experience they get will translate to job opportunities in the future. The system has become a controversial one lately. Opponents believe the internships are exploitative of those who get them, and that they entrench inequality, because the only people who can afford to work without being paid are spoilt rich kids who depend on Mummy and Daddy to support them financially. On the face of it, these appear to be strong arguments. But there are three reasons why they're not. The first is the right to volunteer. Most of the work you do is unpaid: mowing the lawns, washing your dishes, laundering your clothes. Mothers work 80 hours a week doing the cooking and cleaning but are never paid a cent. Facebook contains the largest volunteer force in the world: people writing and recording songs, posting videos of themselves, running Walk in Wardrobe. There is no principled difference between these forms of volunteering and working for a business for free. If your type of volunteering is

at a business, you should be allowed and encouraged to do that. The second is that money isn't the only thing you can be paid in. I don't get paid for my fortnightly column in Salient. So why do I bother doing it? Same reason mothers and bloggers and bands who are starting out do: I get paid in something other than money. I get enjoyment out of it. The experience is something I can put on my CV to get a future, paid job. I feel good when my friends compliment me on my writing. Volunteering is worth a volunteer's time; otherwise, they simply wouldn't do it. It's difficult to see how interns, who enter into the job freely and who can leave at any time, are being exploited in these jobs. The third is that it is bizarre to say that parents can't use their wealth to better the lot of their children. Perhaps it is true that only the wealthy can do these jobs. But since when do we prevent the well-off from using their money to give their children the best shot at life? Yes, it sucks that poor people might not be able to get these internships, but poor people also can't afford private school, or tutoring for their kids, or the best running shoes, or summer school, or the Scouts club, all of which better a child's chances of succeeding as an adult. To argue for the banning of these things is to be spitefully jealous. To be against voluntarily unpaid internships is to be against doing any volunteering without being paid for it, to have a weird obsession with money, and to reject the idea that people can use their money to better themselves. For shame.

>>> salient.org.nz

 POLITICS

T I C S

right Why National Will Win a Third Term By Freddie Hayek

Then & Now When it’s not snapper and the GCSB dominating political news, a prominent topic of late has been housing affordability. It’s a reality most of us will have to start thinking about not too far down the track, even if at the moment the balance of our Kiwisaver accounts isn’t enough to afford a front door, let alone put down a deposit on a house. In the past month both Labour and National have released policies which they say will make it easier for us to buy our very first home in New Zealand’s unforgiving property market. This week Salient takes a look at how much easier it was for Parliament’s movers and shakers to get their first slice of the property pie. (Prices reflect average house prices in the year each politician turned 30, and have been adjusted for inflation.)

Winston Peters

1975 - $157,851 Helen Clark

1980 - $146,042 David Shearer

1987 - $167,420 John Key

1991 - $183,922 Russel Norman

1997, $243,953 Simon Bridges

2006 - $425,576 today

2013 - $441,254

It may seem like, on the surface, the odds are stacked against National. Winning a third term is hard in our political system, but National has a better record than Labour. National has always won a third term in government, every time they have been initially elected, since 1949. Labour has only achieved this feat twice: the very first Labour Government, and the Clark Government of last decade. This historical trend points towards the inherently conservative nature of the New Zealand electorate, leading to long periods of National government. There is no reason to think that this has changed. That said, the game since 1996 has been played by different rules. The electoral system we have is stacked against National. The left has a tendency to splinter due to moronic conflicts about the nature of socialism. On the left in New Zealand we have Labour, the Greens, New Zealand First and Mana. Under first-past-the-post (FPP), only Labour would get in. Under MMP, Labour brings all their crazy friends to the party, with the potential to form a government. The thing is, I don’t think they will in 2014. The answer lies in two things. The first is National’s strength. No government has ever polled so well in their fifth year in government. National polls between 45–49 per cent across all polls on a regular basis. Then there is the strength of National’s leader, John Key. The Government rises or falls with John Key. Key made National electable again. Despite Fonterra, the GCSB debacle and, umm, snapper quotas, the Prime Minister still continues to dominate the preferred– Prime Minister polling. The Prime Minister last Wednesday on Campbell Live demonstrated that he is still the master of the political day, dominating the real leader of the Opposition, John Campbell, in a one-on-one interview. The second is Labour’s overwhelming, crippling, weakness. The Labour Party is a doomed ship being navigated towards the rocks of the 2014 election, by Captain Mumblefuck, David Shearer. Shearer, I am sure, is a good man, but it takes a lot more than being a good man to guide Labour to victory. It takes political cunning, visionary policy leadership and the ability to string together a fucking coherent sentence. David Shearer can do none of these things. Shearer is Labour’s bronze medal, its compromise candidate between its warring factions. A party that cannot govern itself cannot govern New Zealand. National always gets a third term. Labour’s weakness guarantees it.

(Data was sourced from Statistics NZ)

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CAMPUS DIGEST

ď ?

CAMPUS DIGEST get amongst "the best" Overheard @ Vic: Rachael Kelly: Some moron at the library computers yelled out "matt is gay" I was to stunned by their stupidity to yell out "good for them, it's not an insult". Isaiah Bush Tawake: Overseen by the Trek Global Backpacker; Guy tied and wrapped up in GladWrap (i think..), with a skateboard strapped to his back, and being rolled down hill by his mates... Viktoria Krausz: Overheard in CLAS307: "would you imagine John Key in the Rocky Horror Picture Show?" Andrew Pett: Overseen @ Vic: A bus driver get out of his bus, get a free newspaper from the Kelburn campus, get back in his bus and leave.

#738 Ren Preece! You are such a stunner. Keep doing your thing girl. Men everywhere appreciate it #740 My, my, my. Some of those THEA 204 boys are looking mighty fine. Hell-o, boys VUW Cupid II: #105 Anon please. Lance cash, your glances turn me into the most awkward book. I just want to buy you a coffee and marvel at your intellect. All my smiles x Nerdylady348 #104 Anon plzzz Jessie Alexander You're the queen bee of my life.... Please take me out of the friend zone SInce I met you I knew we were meant to be, So please sit upon my D... or V... Love from me. #102 Beautiful girl British accent Hair with a curl I hope you consent You're always jolly Your name is Holly #100 The hot workers at The Hunter Lounge make the very average food well worth eating. -anon

Oscar Doorne: Overseen in Cotton: middle-aged woman wearing a Hope Bros hoodie. VUW Cupid:

#94 Pippa Drakeford You are one stunning lady I first saw you one Friday night and Playshop, and knew it was love at first sight. Ever since then I have seen you around uni and town, and your smile has lit up my world Save a seat for me every Friday, as I have saved a spot for you in my heart

OMG VUW Confessions: #675 WOW student elections are getting BITCHAY! Best way to have your say is to vote! #651 On Friday afternoon I was treated to the sounds of two people enjoying some hanky panky in the Student Union building toilets. They quietened up rather quickly after I walked in and I heard a few worried mumbles as I'm sure they tried to conceal what they were up to in there. Needless to say I took my sweet time in the bathroom while I imagine they were locked in an uncomfortable position for around 10 minutes as I did my hair and make-up and took a phonecall

Top Ten WORST SENTENCE-STARTERS 10. We need to talk... 9. You know, free-market economists would say... 8. I'm no racist, but... 7. I had this crazy dream last night... 6. With all due respect... 5. I think most New Zealanders... 4. Now, I have many gay friends, but... 3. This one time on the Overbridge... 2. This one time when I was really stoned... 1. Will you put me in the Top Ten if... carlo salizzo @louderthoughts

>>> salient.org.nz

 CAMPUS DIGEST

PROBING THE PUNTERS GOING UP Posters for the annual VUWSA by-election If you’re not sick of the sight of their faces by the end of this week, they probably deserve your vote. Head to page 18 for candidate profiles and information on how to cast your vote. YOUR MENTAL HEALTH One week until mid-trimester break! That’s got to count for something...

Salient conducted an extensive study of the lunchtime rush at the Hub. (n= 20 margin of error: 21.9%) 1. Do you exercise for at least 30 minutes a day?

YES - 40% NO - 60% 2. How many coffees do you have a day?

 0

60%

30%

10%

GOING DOWN YOUR GUILTY CONSCIENCE

3. Will you actually be using the study break for study?

Now you have no excuse for dumping your old electronics outside the Salvation Army under the cover of darkness. The Southern Landfill’s recycling centre is now recycling all e-waste—free of charge! Except for TVs which still cost $20 to

YES 30%

NO 70%

4. Do you know what NZUSA is?

dispose of, but who has them anymore anyway. OUR EARTHQUAKE READINESS

YES 40%

Remember that time you paid for bottled water?

5. Would you rather:

Have fingers as long as your legs? 80%

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 NO 60%

Legs as long as your fingers? 20%

FEATURES NEWS •ϟ FEATURE

VUWSA VUWSA BY-ELECTION BY-ELECTION Vote for your student representatives on VUWSA! Following the resignation of two Executive positions, VUWSA is holding a by-election to elect new members. The positions are Vice-President (Welfare) and Education Officer. A second student representative for the Publications Committee is also being sought.

Vice-President (Welfare) The Welfare Vice-President heads the Welfare Team, and is responsible for ensuring that VUWSA provides a diverse and appropriate range of welfare-based services to members and students. They work closely with the Welfare and Sustainability Officer and the Equity Officer to ensure that students are provided with the right services and support to ensure their time at Victoria is the best it can be. They work closely with VUW Student Services and welfare-based Representative Groups on campus. 20 hours per week.

VOTING Polling will be held from Friday 23 August at 9 am until Sunday 25 August at 5 pm. Online: VUWSA members will receive an email with instructions on how to vote online, which shall be open for this entire period. In Person: There will be a physical polling booth at the VUWSA Kelburn Office (located on Level 2 of the Student Union Building), between 10 am–2 pm on Friday 23 August.

Rick Zwaan Kia Ora, I’m Rick and I’m running for the position of Vice-President (Welfare), a role I’ve filled for the past couple of months. Before being appointed to the role, I worked hard as your Wellbeing and Sustainability Officer to drive the campaign for Fairer Fares. I’ve consistently put over 30hrs a week into the job because I love it and I’m incredibly passionate about ensuring students are treated fairly. Besides running the Fairer Fares campaign I’ve helped organise Stress Free Study Week, kept Council in check while they reform alcohol policy, stood up for students’ basic rights at work, and worked hard to keep the Student Services Levy low. I’ve gained a good understanding of how to effectively work with the University and Council for better outcomes for students and will continue to stand up for you and your pocket.

Arthur Bird Kia Ora. Who is Arthur? Arthur is a returning 2nd year Tourism Management Student with a passion for ECO & Sustainable Tourism products, practices and operation. His interests are wide allowing such to play a huge part in his interactions with those around him. Practical in action, Arthur thrives on his abilities to be creative and out there. He has a passion, a genuine down to earth roll up your sleeves vision and heart for people. To be an active part of VUWSA is to be a strong voice for you, You who we represent in Action not just words.

Vote Zwaan to keep a good thing going.

>>> salient.org.nz

ϟ • FEATURES

Education Officer The Education Officer works closely with the Vice-President (Academic), regarding academic matters within the University and student representation. In particular, the Education Officer works closely with education-based rep groups, seeking feedback and supporting their activities and initiatives where appropriate. They also take an active role in supporting and training Class Representatives, and, where appropriate, working with the Campaigns Officer to run education-based campaigns. 10 hours per week.

Ravitesh Ratnam Hey everyone! I’m Ravi, second year and I want to put myself out there run for Education Officer against the excellent Miss Thompson (good luck to her). I’m real passionate about getting the best education and opportunities for every student, not just the top 10%. For me this means getting better training for Class Reps and therefore allowing them to become more effective at getting each students voice heard. Better representation lets the right changes happen! It’s a personal goal of mine to be elected and it would be awesome for you guys to help me out, cheers for reading. =]

Publications Committee Student Representative The Publications Committee is responsible to the VUWSA Executive for the financial supervision of Salient. This is for the second student representative position, who sits on the Committee alongside VUWSA’s President and Treasurer-Secretary, the current Salient co-editors and one person appointed by Ngāi Tauira. The Committee is responsible for appointing 2014’s Editor(s).

John Stewart My name is John Stewart. I have completed a Political Science degree, and am continuing my Law degree. I have also begun a post graduate diploma in Commerce, specialising in public policy. I am extremely interested in governance and representation, so my academic pursuits cater toward organisation and coordination of people. These are not my only interests however. As a result of my father being a journalist, I grew up in a family environment in which expression, and the capacity for it, were placed on a podium. I believe Salient as a forum for student conversation and criticism is vital to Victoria students' university experience. We as students must take part in our own organisation to best represent our opinions.

Rawinia Thompson Kia ora tātou ngā tauira o Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui, Rāwinia is my name, and advocacy is my game. I’m a first-year student of Law, Politics and Policy, who appreciates cute, curly-haired, loveable canines that remind me so much of myself. I’m no stranger to empowering students, facilitating discussion between students and staff, or advocating for the interests of students, young people and other vulnerable groups at the highest levels of decision-making. I’m not afraid to hold the University to account and advocate strongly for a fair go for all students in the academic arena. Vote Rāwinia Thompson for Education Officer for an experienced, incredibly passionate advocate who will work to ensure the University delivers the quality education you deserve.

Rick Zwaan (Also running for Vice-President (Welfare)) Kia Ora, I’m Rick and, as well as running for Vice-President Welfare, I’m also running to be on the Publications Committee. It’s important that this committee provides good support for student media so they can be an effective manifestation of the student voice. I’ll bring direction to the committee with the aim that it fulfills the potential it has. It’s about enabling students to be seen and heard as valuable members of the University Community, Salient and the VBC are an integral means for that. They ensure that the University and VUWSA are held to account while also connecting students to cat memes. I’ll make sure that the Salient charter has a provision for adequate representation of cats. Vote Zwaan cause cats.

Appoint me to your Publications Committee and make your voices heard.

salient.org.nz <<<

FEATURES NEWS •ϟ FEATURE

December 2013, Nationwide:

No booze from supermarkets 11pm Bars close 4am Mid 2014, Wellington:

No booze from supermarkets 9pm Courtenay, Cuba closes 3am 20

>>> salient.org.nz

ϟ • FEATURES

let's call it a night By Henry Cooke Every weekend, a lot of us get drunk and act like dicks. Some of us just yell at our friends. Some of us turn wing mirrors around. Some of us vomit all over the pavement. Some of us pass out. Some of us break shit. Some of us get into fights. Some of us end up in A&E. Some of us sexually assault someone. I could give you the stats, but I doubt they’d surprise you. One in five sexual offenders were drinking prior to the offence. 75 per cent of Wellington emergency-department admissions after 10 pm are alcohol-related. Crime in Wellington spikes heavily around 9 pm and again between midnight and 5 am. Much of it occurs within the central city, particularly the boozy golden ‘L’ of Cuba Mall and Courtenay Place, and the less populated areas that surround it. Late last year, Parliament passed the Alcohol Reform Bill, a watered-down piece of legislation aimed at curbing some of this harm. Most of the more dramatic measures initially proposed were dropped—18-year-olds can still drink, and booze is around the same price—but it did give local councils much more power, particularly over licensing, which dictates where and when you can buy alcohol. The Wellington City Council jumped at the opportunity, producing a pretty dramatic draft policy which has gotten almost everyone angry. In its draft form, the proposal cuts heavily into our hours of drinking. Off-licences—bottle stores, supermarkets, dairies—would have to shut at 9 pm, three hours earlier than most of them have to shut currently. On-licences—bars and clubs—get it a bit easier, with a varied closing time depending on their behaviour and location. Bars in suburbs would get a midnight

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cut-off, while central-city venues would have to close up at 2 or 3 am, depending on ‘good behaviour’ of the bars—providing water, transport, food, that kind of thing. On top of the central-city provisions, the Council proposes an “entertainment precinct”, stretching down Cuba Mall and Courtenay Place, where venues could stay open as late as 5 am if ‘well behaved’. There’s a map of the precinct, which notably misses Edward St and the Waterfront, on the next page. Public consultation has finished, and a finalised policy will emerge on September 12.

PLAN OUT YOUR BUZZ Most of the alcohol we drink comes from offlicences. It’s much, much cheaper, much easier to binge on, and much less regulated. A bartender can cut you off when you get too drunk; your personal bottle of tequila can’t. ‘Preloading’ drinks before heading out is more prevalent among students, and is often blamed for vomitcoloured carnage. Given the price disparity between a beer in town and a beer from a bar, you can’t really blame us. Those pushing for the law-change understand that eradicating preloading is impossible. They can’t outright ban private drinking, and pricing can only be controlled by central government, who have all but abandoned the idea. Licensing hours are only one lever, asserts Dr Ruth Richards, a public-health physician, but they can cut down on spontaneity. “The idea is that you purchase your alcohol at a time where you’re not intoxicated, where you can make a plan for what you drink.” Preloading might be a lost cause, but ‘sideloading’—where those already out buy more off-licence alcohol on a whim—may be hindered. “We might stop some of those opportunistic sales.” VUWSA President Rory McCourt, speaking for VUWSA at oral submissions on the policy,

doesn’t think organisation is the issue. “Like most students, I plan my drinking, good or bad.” Looking into the bag of anyone heading to a music festival certainly confirms this view. VUWSA’s written submission is in accord. “We do not believe that young people wander into supermarkets and then spontaneously decide to get drunk.” All the students Salient asked stood by this, claiming they bought their booze well before 9 pm anyway.

HOME BY THREE losing off-licences earlier is only part of the strategy, which aims to move our whole drinking experience back a few hours. Why? Well, the later it gets, the messier it gets. Crime peaks between 2 and 4 am, and occurs much more in venues that close between 3 and 7 am*. Maybe if we all went to town at 10 instead of 12, and made it home around 2 or 3, Courtenay Place on a Saturday wouldn’t be so horrific. “It’s a nudge in the right direction,” explains Richards. “Drinking habits do change with drinking hours.” The medical community’s submission praised the curb on on-licences, citing an Australian study which showed a 3-am closing time resulted in a 37-per-cent drop in assaults. “A reduction in the opening hours of on-licences... would result in people coming to town earlier and an overall reduction in the volume of alcohol consumed.” Predictably, the Police also support the move. On the other side are those the law actually affects.“I still gasp at the extreme stupidity of this idea,” says Clinton den Heyer, who co-owns the San Francisco Bathhouse and Goodluck. “On-licences are safe, and continue to get safer. Punishing on-licences as a means of reducing harm is literally the process of chopping down a tree by pulling off the leaves.” For den Heyer, culture is the key. He points to the Sevens, where people begin their heavy drinking as soon they wake up. “People drink to excess when the excuse is right, not because of licensing hours.

FEATURES • ϟ

A bartender can cut you off when you get too drunk; your personal bottle of tequila can’t.

It’s arrogant beyond belief to assume that closing earlier will miraculously make everyone’s drinking patterns change.” VUWSA agrees. “[Earlier closing hours will] encourage pre-loading and cause a large influx of intoxicated people onto the streets”, writes Acting Vice-President (Welfare) Rick Zwaan in their submission. “Instead of restricting hours, we think that it would be far more effective to support education and welfare programs that encourage healthy drinking habits.” Zwaan brings up a crucial point: if you really want to party, is a bar closing really going to halt your night in its tracks, or will you just find somewhere else to go—somewhere without bouncers and security guards? Councillor Iona Pannett has to keep an open mind by law, but thinks the change would point people in safer directions. “When your structures and systems operate in a certain way, it does dictate how people behave,” she explains. “I keep using the example of London, where the Tube shuts at midnight. It would not be abnormal to start a party at 7 there, where of course in

Wellington you would never do that, especially if you’re younger.” Pannett sees a parallel with the reforms which banned smoking inside bars and cafés. “There was a lot of kickback towards that but it hasn’t killed off bars.” Dr Andrea Boston, a public-health advisor from Regional Public Health, believes this change is possible. “At this stage, because it is new, people are very sceptical, but change happens over time. You change from one norm to a new norm.” Then, like always, there’s the economy. Wellington spends $33 million every year between 4 and 7 am—a fifth of New Zealanders’ spending at this time, despite Wellington being only an eighth of the population. People from up and down the country come here, often to party, and contribute approximately $557 million to the economy annually. “Wellington is a brand, and it’s a brand that attracts customers,” says den Heyer, who believes our nightlife is a strong part of that brand. “If we protect our nightlife, and expand our nightlife, then more first-year students will be attracted to Wellington for uni, and conferences will be more likely to want to re-book here.” He sees this law-change as an opportunity. “If our bars stay open until 6 am, and the rest of the country’s stay open until 2 am, well, we will win a hell of a lot more business into Wellington.” VUWSA sees an economic angle as well, as many students are employed in hospitality. “This will reduce the amount of hours they will be able to work and impact negatively on their financial situation.” On

CONCENTRATED CESSPIT Keen readers have probably picked up on the elephant in the room—the entertainment precinct. It’s a compromise that nobody appears to like. The Police came up with it, arguing that controlling one smaller area was much easier for them, but apparently backed away from it somewhat at their oral submission. Those pushing for tougher laws see it as a copout. “If the whole of the CBD closed at 3, then it would soon be the culture that everyone went home at 3 or 4,” explains Richards, but when some clubs stay open until 5, many will stay out with them. “I think it’s a bit of the Council having their cake and eating it too.” A boundary will naturally lead to a higher concentration of late-night venues, and research shows density is a

major factor in increasing alcohol-related harm. Do we really want Courtenay Place to get more terrible clubs? Pannett, once again, can’t state her views before the final policy is released, but does appear to have reservations.”The idea is to contain the area, to make it as easy as possible for the police to manage behaviour within that area” she claims, but she does “think it is healthy to disperse it a little bit, so that people can go to different zones and they’re not all hanging in one area.” Crucially, she says, “if you drink too much you’re not safe anywhere.” Ironically, the more ‘infamous’ of Wellington clubs fit pretty snugly into the Precinct. Pannett has been contacted by many operators who fall outside the zone, but have never had any issues with alcohol-related harm. “Hawthorn Lounge,” a swanky upstairs bar on Tory St, “are wondering why they should be penalised.” She claims the council will review whether policy is workable soon after it goes into effect. Over on the other side, those against a crackdown dislike the Precinct too. “An arbitrary area where bars can operate for longer will concentrate the problem rather than addressing it,” writes Zwaan in the VUWSA submission. For den Heyer, “an advantageous trade corridor is intrinsically anti-competitive.” Rent prices on Courtenay Place are already prohibitively high, and the Precinct will just exacerbate the problem. Expensive rent keeps out innovators and small operators, he argues, encouraging larger “booze barn”–like venues to proliferate.

IT’S SOCIETY, MAN Whenever New Zealanders take a look at our alcohol laws, the same refrain rings true. We shouldn’t change anything, because our culture is the problem! It’s true, our culture is the reason our drinking is so bad, but it’s become a scapegoat. It’s easy to call for more education around alcohol, as VUWSA did, or more antibinge advertising, as den Meyer advocates, but we never actually do anything. If my drinking doesn’t harm anyone, why should I have to change it? “Everyone is saying we don’t want any limtitations on our freedoms, and everyone says it isn’t their fault” asserts Pannett. “But we do have some problems, and everyone agrees with that.”

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Location of alcohol purchases 2.8%

2.5%

0.2%

Supermarket Grocery Store/Four Square

36.2%

Bar

Several people close to the situation have informed Salient that many of the controversial provisions will likely not make it into the final policy. Even if they do, licensing laws are obviously not the most powerful tool available—pricing is.

Students

0.2% 31.4%

36.9%

31.5%

2.1% Residents

* Based on research presented by the Council in The Right Mix: Alcohol Management Snapshot as at 20 June 2013.

Restaurant

Percentage of residents and students who pre-load before heading into the central city

POPULATION

Culture and the law are not mutually exclusive. Our laissez-faire approach to alcohol is surely part of the problem. “New Zealand’s drinking culture is a whole mixture of things,” says Boston. “It’s in-part legislation and it’s in-part the people who live it—it’s the whole context.” And it is. Binge culture isn’t just the expectation that first years will get fucked up three times a week; it’s the legal system which makes it incredibly easy to do so. Until we change that, our culture will have a hard time changing itself.

Bottle Store

46.2%

8.2%

17.8%

71.9%

PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS

Always

Most Times

Sometimes

Rarely/Never

Source: 2012 Role of Alcohol survey of residents and 2013 Survey of Students on Alcohol in Wellington city

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Selfish

Improvement

Why we’re self-involved, dependent slackers And why our parents were, too.

Young people today are supposed to be pretty hopeless. We’re self-involved, dependent slackers with no work ethic and no idea of how the world works. It’s an unforgiving assessment of things—but is it a truthful one?

By Patrick Hunn The bleary-eyed late-night Facebook trawl is often a lonely exercise in self-loathing. Blogs are groomed and cultivated like digital bonsai. The compulsion to share the dull minutiae of everyday life via Instagram and Twitter is one a whole lot of smartphone-wielding people seem to share. We are now the curators of immaculate digital personas that we lavish attention on without really understanding why. At the same time, never before in human history have a generation been so invested in selfbetterment. Whether this be the transformation

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of universities into what is for most people a wellattended finishing school that nebulously qualifies graduates for jobs in tenuously related fields, or the thirsty market for self-help books that promise to answer all of the darkest questions posed by modern life. One response would be that this is because often, this sort of behaviour is the only immediately apparent way out of what can often appear to be a stark future with bleak prospects. Another, and this is the one that seems to be picked up on the most, would point to these behaviours as proof that the youth of today are relentlessly self-obsessed. The claim is that young people are a legion of unknowing narcissists, raised to believe in the unrealistic myth that they are special in a way that others aren’t—that they can achieve anything if they would only try hard enough. This may or may not be true, and it is hard to sift out the reality of it all among the sometimes-vitriolic fugue of intergenerational resentment. This begs the question—is there something about our generation that is uniquely self-involved? Or are we just living in a world that poses challenges that haven’t been tackled before? Ironically, a lot of this is probably rooted in an important shift in language that began with our parents. Most bizarrely, and perhaps most importantly, we talk about the ‘self ’ like it is a tangible thing. The self has its own moods, is tax-deductible and has a holiday home in the Sounds. This language took hold in the late 20th century, and now we swallow it without question. Certain sayings, which actually pose a series of wildly complicated existential questions, are bandied about like they make sense. The imperative to “Be true to yourself !” for instance, implies that you know what the self is. We refer to the ‘self ’ like it is another person. This is marketed to by almost everything as well. Even Victoria University’s ‘Know Your Mind’ campaign preys on the idea that we all have untapped potential while managing to be almost total nonsense (seriously, what does it mean?) In her book Generation Me, Jean Twenge notes that the past few decades have seen a dramatic rise in the use of ‘self ’ words—I, me, mine—and a corresponding drop in collective words— humanity, community, crowd. This fixation with the self is typified by the idea of ‘self-help’. This movement isn’t limited to wild-eyed mothers wielding five-year-olds who

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can recite Hamlet in Aramaic, or dewy-eyed yoga enthusiasts eating, praying and loving their way across the world on package holidays in comfortable shoes. Marc Wilson, Psychology lecturer at Victoria University, says that, “in the United States, more self-help books are published each year than cookbooks (it wasn’t always this way).” Indeed, the self-help genre is seemingly the only sector of publishing that isn’t withering away. Americans spend upwards of $8 billion on them annually. “Self-help and pop psychology are increasingly popular, and it might even be argued that the focus on positive psychology (focussing on the things that promote happiness) might even contribute to this.” The self-help industry is a big one. Kathryn Schulz, writing for New York magazine, described it as an “$11 billion dollar industry”. What’s popular right now? Apart from the more expected fare—lose weight if you want to have more sex, et al., among the best sellers on Amazon. com are a cocktail of tomes specifically catering to narcissists. For instance, on the main self-help page, you can find Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life by Linda Martinez-Lewi, which warns that “high-level narcissism can spell devastation for anyone who crosses the narcissist's path.” The ‘self-help’ classification isn’t limited to books, though. Zumba classes, 12-step group therapy and a catalogue of helpful (but ultimately complicating) smartphone apps, all appeal to the self-diagnosis of problems. If you buy the right things, you’ll make yourself better. Or, in other words, you might have problems but they aren’t really your fault; if you find the right cosmic panacea for them then you’ll be able to fix them. Is there an explanation for this? It might be in Wilson’s explanation that “...we are more individualistic (as a society) now than previously. Look around your neighbourhood and watch as the fences between sections keep going up.” So, perhaps the answer is in the way we think about self-improvement. Is it predicated on the secretly held idea that we are actually rather marvellous? The idea of the self is a seductive one, and what it really means is that we conceive of two selves: the one that is afflicted by the problem (our conscious self), and the self that has the ability to fix it. It gives us the confidence that regardless of how much difficulty we are having with losing weight or exercising or eating right, if we can locate this

better version of ourselves we’ll be fine. In this sense, all self-help is bogus. It functions by providing answers to problems that you probably didn’t have in the first place. You want to lose ten kilograms? Well, you can’t until you forgive your mother! And this, perhaps, is where self-help and narcissism collide. They encourage self-diagnosis by providing both the symptoms and the prognosis. They appeal to the narcissist’s belief that their failings are not due to their own actions, but because they do not have the correct forms within which to express and impress. I’m OK, You’re OK—the book that stayed on The New York Times Best Seller list for three years in the early ‘70s, and is largely responsible for the unrelenting torrent of popular psychology released upon a public thirsty for it ever since—does just this, by offering a simple set of steps to producing more out of life without having to really work for it. But there we have it—the ‘70s. Our parents. These days, it is hard to imagine a 22-yearold reading Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus on the bus without a red face. The ‘me generation’ enjoyed a brief period of use to describe that generation, but now the children of today are allegedly far worse. The assertion that ‘millennials’ are uninhibited egotists became the stuff of much debate when Time magazine published a feature titled ‘The Me Generation’. In it, writer Joel Stein used a barrage of data to argue that millennials are stunted, self-interested, and wildly narcissistic. He pointed to statistics about the way young people are living their lives as proof that they are dependent on the hard work of their beatific

The 'self' has its own moods, is tax-deductible and has a holiday home in the Sounds 25

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It gives us the confidence that regardless of how much difficulty we are having with losing weight or exercising or eating right, if we can locate this better version of ourselves we’ll be fine parents to support themselves. “More people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80 per cent of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60 per cent did.” Well, that’s very interesting, but the world of 1992 is quite a different one to the world of 2013. For instance, information from Statistics New Zealand shows that apart from a brief period between 2004 and 2009, New Zealand’s growth in labour productivity has (sometimes by a large margin) outstripped the share in GDP per capita. In the US, the productivity of the economy has grown steadily since 1945, while wages have remained more or less the same since the mid-’70s. This growth in productivity doesn’t come from the herculean efforts of the over-50s alone. People are working harder than

ever. It’s just that the benefits of that labour don’t end up in the hands of the people producing it. Criticising young people for living at home, among other things, seems incredibly unfair. Understanding ‘generational shifts’ is a fixation that is not limited to today. Moral panics arising out of a fear that the children of the age were too selfish are really pretty commonplace. This isn’t the first time that Time magazine has engaged in a little intergenerational scaremongering. Its July cover in 1990 depicted Gen X “twentysomethings” as marriagedodging, responsibility-shirking losers who would inevitably fail to live up to the grandiose legacy of their baby-boomer parents. The murky world of intergenerational psychiatry makes this more complicated. It is hard to see how powerfully the experiences of our parents affect us, whether regardless or inclusive of our own experiences. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are overrepresented in referrals to clinical psychiatrists by a terrifying 300 per cent, and while that is an example of almost useless hyperbole, it does pose the question as to whether there is something in all of us that we borrow from the experiences of those who raised us. For many young people, their parents come from a time unique in history, whether this meant a well-paying job for life or free tertiary education (although this is a blanket assumption). Is it hard to believe that children raised by parents who themselves grew up in a world where the parameters of success were more within reach would in turn want the same thing? It’s not their fault that they look a little silly in the process. One of the foci of Joel Stein’s article is his claim that his alleged narcissism epidemic is provable. The article’s opening paragraph gleefully screams that “the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s not 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health.” Taken at face value, this is frightening. Narcissistic personality disorder is a scary cocktail of words, suggesting that those afflicted are non-functional cadavers whose only interest is themselves. The science behind this claim, however, is slippery. In an article produced for the American Psychological Association by Sadie Dingfelder, it is pointed out that there are too many holes in the data surrounding this disorder to be making bold claims about it. A study published in a 2010 edition of Perspectives on Psychological Science measured some

of narcissistic personality disorder’s related factors, like egoism, self-esteem, individualism and the importance of social status. 50,000 American highschool students were involved. The result? On paper, the class of 2006 looked much like the class of 1976. The authors of the paper, Brent W. Roberts. Grant Edmonds, and Emily Grijalva, argue that there isn’t any reason to think there are more narcissists now compared to 40 years ago. The gaps, they argue, are between age groups. In other words, while young people appear to be prone to being overly selfinvolved, by and large, they grow out of it. In a 2011 paper on age-differentiated narcissism in New Zealand, Wilson and Chris Sibley of the University of Auckland point out that narcissistic personality disorder was, at the time, likely to be removed from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a distinct condition. While this ultimately didn’t happen, it is interesting to note that the disorder offers continued problems for those wanting to define it. The question still remains, is it really a clinical condition, or is it just a personality trait? Well, uncomfortable as it might be to admit it, narcissism is definitely a thing. While Wilson says that “...there is research to show that young people are typically more self-involved than their parents,” and that, “at the same time, young people today are more self-involved than previous generations of young people,” a more prescient and convincing point is made when he says, paraphrasing Twenge, that, “it’s cute to put your toddler in a ‘Little Princess’ T-shirt, but what are you really telling them?” I remember my high-school History teacher looking at us squarely and saying that he would never tell his infant son that he could “do anything”, because, as far as he was concerned, this would be a cruel untruth. At the time, we thought that this was monstrous. It has to be admitted, however, that good parenting is now synonymous with fostering the possibly unachievable in children. Whatever the case, the truth about the ‘millennials’, or whatever you’d prefer to call them, is that there is a mythologised ideal of the perfect you. Perhaps your Facebook page is an avatar of that ideal. Drawing a parallel between the seemingly divorced realms of your digital life and the murky world of popular psychology might seem nonsensical, but in many ways, the two things seem interchangeable. They both pander to this strange metaphor we’ve constructed to help us deal with things—a persona that is both the source of and the solution to our problems.

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YOUR STUDENTS’

ASSOCIATION

2013

By-Election 2013

23 - 25 AUGUST

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I get by with a little help from my friend By Fleur Oxitine I am fascinated by people’s behaviour. Not in a way that makes me want to study economics and marketing—why spoil the mystery of the reason I went Mac?—but more generally, in that people’s motivations and anecdotes and lives are of great interest. This is sort-of just a story about me. I am airing the word ‘depression’ in this cleverly constructed sentence so as to avoid any and all possible clichéd introductions: you know, to not make a mountain out of a naked mole-rat. I want to disclaim everything, but I think that perhaps if you get sick of it, you can stop reading. Or you can send in an angry letter, but just know that you ‘adding to the discussion’ still means that I’ve won.

When I was 13, I found some Prozac in my mother’s chest of drawers. I was a little scared, and confronted her with, “I found your Prozac. Isn’t that for depressed people? Are you depressed?” (I had only snooped once before, in mid-December of 1999, and found all my Christmas stocking gifts—at which point it hit me that [REDACTED]. But I digress.) She told me that she was on them as a kind of precaution, that she wasn’t depressed all the time, but that they helped. I didn’t really understand what in the blazes any of this meant, but I think she was crying, so I didn’t really ask questions. The summer after my first year of university, I was working in hospitality full-time and living at home. I was watching a lot of Ricky Gervais at the time, which is the embarrassing reason I

have left this article anonymous. While it’s not strange for an introvert like me to spend an entire weekend in the shower with a musical card, I started to come home from work and go straight to bed, because I was sort-of just done with being out of bed for the day. I couldn’t make decisions. At the beginning, it stressed me out, but after a while I sort-of just went with it. One of the less sincere but more entertaining ways for me to express what I was like at this time is to rank this city’s various hotspots in order of how well they catered to my uncontrollable sadness and crying needs. In my bed at night: 10/10. In the shower: 9/10. Driving along Jervois Quay in a car with my family: 6/10. At the beach with friends, behind sunglasses: 4/10. In the bathroom at some kind of afternoon

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event: 2/10. At my hospo job while clearing a customer’s table: 0/10. After a few of that last one, I capitulated to my mother’s requests and booked a doctor’s appointment. If my initial conversation with my doctor were a deleted scene from an amateur standup set, it might read, “So, why did you decide to come in?” “Well, I’m very sad and my mother tells me that perhaps I should come and see someone and I can’t do anything except go to bed and cry.” “Has anything major happened?” “Well, no, not really, I think I’m just an ex-private-schoolgirl who feels a bit miffed.” “Upper-middle-class people get sad too.” “Ah, yes, but they’re not sympathetic characters, are they?” “We are getting off topic.” “The point is, I have no reason to be sad.” “You certainly don’t seem like yourself. Usually you are so happy and relaxed here, making jokes about how it doesn’t matter that your antibiotics would throw off the Pill because you are #foreveralone.” “Is it normal for a doctor to use a

All I can remember upon starting to take antidepressants is relief. I felt better because I felt less. Of course it was worth it.

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hashtag as a joke in conversation in early 2011?” “Don’t look at me; this is your elaborated yet essentially true memory.” It is not particularly poetic for me to tell you that when I am being smacked around by these depressive thoughts, I wake up and just want hours to pass without caring what happens in them. I might think something negative as I leave my house and still have it swirling in my head as I arrive at uni 40 minutes later. I could decide to pick up coffee on my way, and stand on a street corner for 30 seconds every time I have to make a decision about which way to go. I am not a writer talented enough to conjure anything other than the impression that I have merely read a book about depression or been in the presence of a dementor, but for that, all I can do is beg your pardon. I went to a psychologist a couple of times to try to decide whether I might benefit from antidepressants. They are a ‘blunt instrument’, which sort of means that different kinds affect people differently. You can’t really tell at the outset what will work, so if something doesn’t, you are advised to take another happy stab in the dark. This is not The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants—one size does not fit all. Anyway, I got a prescription. All I can remember upon starting to take antidepressants is relief. Within a few weeks, my thoughts began to have logical progression again, rather than being these sort of one-woman spirals of despair and worthlessness. I felt better because I felt less. Of course it was worth it. I wasn’t overly excited to try them—doesn’t anyone who’s ever read the Listener know that all young people on antidepressants are really (a) ‘going through a phase’ or (b) victims of doctors’ overdiagnosis? Didn’t Lily Allen put in a song that we were all on them and that it was bad? Last week, a Guardian journalist conveniently opined that pharmaceutical companies’ influence over our society means that we “are encouraged to think of our problems in terms of the lucrative solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had.” Unhappiness is often “a perfectly proper response to the state of the world”—maybe we have a “shit job” or a “shit home life” about which it is “hardly

inappropriate” to feel unhappy. You know when you read stuff that irritates you for so many different reasons that when you try to articulate the first thing that is wrong with it, you open and close your mouth five times and your eye twitches? Some variation on the ‘harden up’ argument surfaces every now and again, and a swarm of commenters go inevitably apeshit. Writing an eloquent response the following day, a GP did us all proud in saying that yes, more prescriptions for antidepressants are written than is perhaps ideal. But given there’s often no clear best response, and the waiting list for cognitive therapy can be months, is it really feasible to ask people to wait? The journalist was making the point that not all such unhappiness can really be clinical, which is valid. If I were more benevolent, I would decide that he was really just trying to forge friendships between his haters in their unanimous “you’ve clearly never had a mental illness, thanks for undermining mine” backlash. To me, his conflation of “unhappiness at your lot” and “a vulnerability to destructive patterns of thinking to which you may or may not be genetically predisposed” broadens neither people’s understanding of mental health generally nor their knowledge of their own mind. Which are perhaps both far more deserving of address. It is easy now for me to be flip and make jokes about it. I’ve forgotten many of the details of the time. In the last few months, however, I have thought a lot about antidepressants. By late 2012, I was taking them less regularly, and eventually not at all. Obviously Not Medically Advised. My logic was that I had been vaguely stable for ages, pretty happy of late, and that the series of unfortunate events that had precipitated my initial decline was not going to recur. Retrospectively, this seems to me very naïve. I began to find it increasingly difficult to regulate my mood earlier this year. I became anxious that I didn’t know how I was going to feel in three hours’ time, and I stopped committing myself ahead of time. I wanted to avoid going into work, because I thought I was incompetent. When I did try my hand at tasks, the slightest slip-up would leave me hissing

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inside that I knew all along that I couldn’t do it, that they all thought I was stupid, that they were wrong to employ me and that I didn’t deserve to be there. I was happily committed to putting lots of energy into school. But I couldn’t think. I spent hours frozen at a computer, writing things down but retaining nothing, collating things but experiencing no original thought, and sitting back every few minutes, feeling my heart beat in my throat and knowing that I was bound to fail and my future entailed nothing but disappointment. All I wanted to do was learn stuff, and I couldn’t even do that. I don’t want to be that girl at the party who’s like, “I sunk into a dull headache of my own incompetence”, but I pretty much sunk into a dull headache of my own incompetence. Everyone else around me seemed able to cope with much more than was crippling me. Eventually, numbly convinced of my own worthlessness, I decided to resume taking medication. Again, within a few weeks, I felt a profound sense of relief. The fog in my head gradually cleared. Sometimes, I consider getting angry at myself over the notion that every time I feel sad for more than a transitory period, I seemingly just take the easy way out by hopping on some pills. Am I always going to do this? Will I be able to stay off them eventually? If I do want to stop, am I belittling those who remain on them? Perhaps what these tablets—with, of course, the aid of intermittent cognitive therapy— make it possible for me to do is dismiss any given destructive thought that I may have as irrational and false. I still think it, but it doesn’t really wash over me like it has done in the past. This is sort-of great, because it means I can do normal things like go to uni and to work and to parties and get rejected and cook dinner and plan the future and write vaguely coherent and extremely personal things in my local student magazine. I mean, if I’m not mistaken, I’ve just strung a fair few sentences together. It makes me angry when people tell me that, “I get depressed sometimes, and I don’t want to go on antidepressants, because I don’t want to be dependent on anything.” Everyone has a different calculus as regards their own mental health. That one happens to imply that I am somehow weak and have a low threshold for throwing up my

hands and asking for chemical help, but still, it’s super valid! I have to stop getting angry about this, and instead, think: I find them beneficial, so I’m going to take them for the foreseeable future. I hope that we can still be friends—unless you

I could decide to pick up coffee on my way, and stand on a street corner for 30 seconds every time I have to make a decision about which way to go. didn’t get the Easy A reference I made earlier, in which case I don’t care about being your friend. I know that you didn’t ask about side effects, but antidepressants have given new meaning to the phrase, “I just can’t be fucked with depression.” Sadly for the craft of writing, this is all too literal. I have not used university as the setting for my sexually formative years (the bedrock, if you will, but if I were you I wouldn’t). Not really having had much interest in such experiences before, I now cannot tell whether antidepressants have curtailed a pre-existing sex drive or whether I just don’t really have one. I mean, I felt something down there a half-hour ago, but it turned out I just momentarily shifted over the seam of my jeans. Obviously, I enjoy a GIF of a woman biting a pillow as much as the next person, but all of this sexposure (tenuous portmanteau—hasta luego, future career at The Economist)—has given me a

not-insubstantial insecurity over whether, with my disinterest in sex and inability to regulate a mood on my own, I am ever going to be worth pursuing. Ultimately, it might be as simple as the current balance of convenience favouring me taking these pills to help regulate my mood in the medium term. Conversely, I may find myself on them for a long time, if I consider my occasional derailment to be more than that expected of adult life. The successful outcome will see me being okay with things either way, I suppose. It is difficult right now to ‘push myself ’ to be the upstart millenial that I know I can be when it’s fresh in my mind just how exhausting a loss of what feels like all control is. A cheap ending would hypothetically see me going back to the anecdote with which I began, and extolling the virtues of my newfound closeness to my mother by virtue of experiences of hers that I have come far closer to understanding. Ideally, I’d have been more understanding at the beginning when she tried to explain her use of antidepressants to me, but the ‘learning-by-doing’ thing works too, I guess. Let’s go out on a limb here and say, I don’t know, the moral of the story is, if you’re going to hide one of either your kids’ stocking fillers or your Prozac, it’s better for them in the long-term if you choose the former.

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th i w s e t u 5 min ith m s d a r con

established Smith has d ra n o C , o a decade ag Although ebut almost orld rugby. w in e tr Since his d n t ce ly the fines number-13 indisputab All Blacks’ e th himself as in ts ognised hievemen chool. Rec us for his ac ria’s Law S to most famo ic V f o e duat eu in is also a gra ina te Heuh l and Georg jersey, Smith el b p am C hn , he is the e likes of Jo last month te la s alongside th d ar w Salient Alumni A e spoke to istinguished s award. H u n Victoria’s D m lu A g e Youn cipient of th gby. inaugural re life after ru years and ty si er iv n u about his

Interview by Chris McIntyre Salient: Congratulations on your recent Victoria Distinguished Alumni Award. How does it feel to get awards off the field rather than on it? Conrad Smith: That award in particular was pretty humbling to be honest, especially considering the other recipients and what they had done. I was obviously different—they did differentiate me by calling me the ‘Young Alumni’, which I felt more comfortable with, compared to those guys, who have forged some pretty impressive careers. It is great, and like you say, it’s something outside of rugby. I feel lucky for the fact that I was able to study and do something outside of rugby, so to get recognised for that is pretty awesome. S: Was it difficult to balance your study with rugby? C: To be honest, it wasn’t too hard for me because I wasn’t getting selected in age-group sides and it was only really in my last semester that I made the Lions and was sort-of playing first-class rugby. That’s where I did find it tough. Up until then, I’d only play club rugby and rep teams, so I wasn’t expected to be training three or four days a week like guys in academies now. I think that made it a lot easier for me, and that’s why I say it’s lucky, it wasn’t by design—it was good fortune, if anything. S: So you didn’t have to sacrifice too much of the social side of university, then?

C: Nah, not at all. I’m pretty fortunate for the fact that I was a full-time student for four years, and some of my favourite memories of the past have been of that whole flatting experience. You look back on it and there’s plenty of laughs, and you form plenty of friendships in that time as well. S: In terms of the guys you’re playing with these days, is it quite rare for them to be qualified or have a university degree?

I don’t know what shape or form it will be, but I’m pretty excited about life after rugby. I know it scares some rugby guys, because they don’t know what else they can do, but for me I feel like there’s a lot of good options. C: Very rare. Some of the guys can study—the thing is that plenty of them are smart enough to do it, but you just don’t have the time obviously—when the guys are getting picked in the academies and age-group sides—to be students. And never full-time students like I was. I hope I’m proved wrong, but I don’t think you’ll see any in the years to come, it’s just too hard; rugby doesn’t really allow it, the way it’s going, and I can’t see it changing.

S: Does that mean that you’re looked up to as the intellectual in those groups? C: [laughs] I think it does a bit, but like I say, I don’t think I’m smarter than any rugby players— it was just the way things panned out for me in that I didn’t make many sides and so I was able to study. There’s a few of them probably smarter than me who are playing the game now, but they’re just a victim of the way rugby is played these days in that they don’t get the opportunity to study like I did. S: In terms of developing players, not just as players but as people—is that a shortcoming of the system now, that you don’t have the ability to round yourself if you want to be at the top? C: I think it is, but the good thing is that rugby is aware of that, and it does a lot more compared to other sports to try to make up for that. I don’t think they’ll fully be able to substitute life as a student, but they’ve gone a long way. I think what the players’ association is doing: trying to give guys free time, particularly the young ones, before they’ve made Super Rugby and whatnot, is really good. Giving them time to do meaningful study or work experience; I think it’s really good. S: So you’re taking a sabbatical at the end of this year? C: Just at the end of the Rugby Championship, I’ll be travelling and doing a bit of stuff—just giving myself a break, which I’m quite looking forward to.

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S: Will that be your first major break since your debut? C: Missing the end-of-year tour will be the first tour I’ve missed since ‘04, when I debuted on the end-of-year tour—other than when I broke my leg in ‘06. That’s the only other time I haven’t been with the guys. It will be different. S: It’s interesting that you’re choosing to travel in your time off—you don’t get enough of that during the day-to-day tours?

I know it scares some rugby guys, because they don’t know what else they can do, but for me I feel like there’s a lot of good options. I don’t really know where I’ll end up to be honest, but it’s something I am looking forward to one day. S: Any advice for students who are in the position you were in back in early 2000s, trying to make it into those top teams, and trying to study and get the grades? C: I obviously speak to a few of the guys

studying—we’ve got a couple in my club side at the moment—I always just encourage them to keep yourselves busy and study. Obviously, it’s a difficult balance, but the more you can do, I think it actually helps your rugby. I think it takes a lot of pressure off when you’re playing rugby, and you can treat it as a game and not your life. Then if it doesn’t work out, you’ve got something to fall back on. I think it’s really important for those sides that have the opportunity to stick with the study and do it for as long as you can.

C: It’s a totally different experience, you know. Travelling with a rugby team is not really travel, to be honest. You get to see the inside of a hotel and you only get sort-of one day, if you’re lucky, or a day-and-a-half to look around. I was lucky after the World Cup, my partner and I travelled. To actually go out and fend for yourself, and do what normal people do when they go on holiday—it’s something I feel I’ve missed because of the rugby, so I’m taking these opportunities to do it. S: In the future, when your rugby’s winding up a bit, do you think you’ll go back to your Law degree and look for a job in the legal profession? C: Yeah, I’d love to. I obviously worked pretty hard at it to get the degree, so that’s the plan anyway. I don’t know what shape or form it will be, but I’m pretty excited about life after rugby.

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FEATURES • ϟ

Life Advice from high atop Mount Olympus

Rhetorical question: do you ever look back at where you were a year ago and think, “my God, what an imbecile”? Every year without fail, I realise how stupid I was before and how much I’ve changed for the better since then, but I’m now aware that’s it going to be a cycle. Truman Capote noted that the sex drive, though it waxes and wanes, never dissipates; what do you do if the same thing can be said of selfawareness? By Philip McSweeney Sometimes, I like to think of myself as a ‘grown-up’, whatever that means/entails. I live in a flat, do domestic chores after studying on my own impetus, only occasionally panhandle my parents for money. I drink Coke at parties on occasion. I’ve inveigled my way into Honours and I’m not doing terribly at it. Shit, I have an automatic payment set up to pay my rent (even though that decision backfired, it’s the thought that counts, right?) I’ve started listening to classical music; I’ve read Dostoyevsky and Woolf and I might even have learned things from them (confirmation: pending). But, of course, I’m not a grown-up at all. I still fuck up. I commit faux pas (plural) on a daily basis. I forget to return library books; I say and do stupid, agonising-in-retrospect stuff without thinking about the consequences, usually on the ‘hurtful’ end of the spectrum. I try to enforce jocularity in situations where seriousness is needed (God forbid you ever give people straight

answers, Philip). So: why take my advice? Well you tenacious little shits, life imparted lessons to me that are too good to be wasted on me alone. Heed these words and get the hell off my lawn. *** - If you thought that growing up is all about learning how to talk more eloquently and often, then prepare to be disillusioned. Being mature is knowing when to shut the fuck up and listen, knowing when to cede the floor and hand over the conch, but most of all knowing that errant intellectualisation has jack-shit on life experience. - Start reading Proust—specifically, finish Swann’s Way—before deciding that actually, you should probably wait until you’re more mature to tackle the rest. (Ironically, this is a v. mature thing to do. Bridget Jones would be proud.) - If you want to masturbate, then masturbate. Seriously. If you thought being appointed the Arts Editor of Salient was validating, it was nothing compared to finding out that jackin’ it (see also: ‘shaking hands with the governor of love’) reduces the chances of developing prostate cancer significantly. SWEET VINDICATION. For the ladies in the place with style and grace (self-correction: people with femme-parts), masturbation prevents cervical infections and does wonders for UTIs (especially when used in conjunction with cranberry juice, or so my advertising deal tells me). Also: it feels good, it’s a wonderful tool in learning about your body and coming to terms with it, and, as a form of procrastination, it is second to none. Of course, if you don’t want to for whatever reason, there’s zero pressure (ayo!) Promise. - The relationship between you and your parents will always, to an extent, retain the same dynamics it had in your youth. No matter how much you insist to yourself that you understand them so much more now that you’re older, no matter how many times you pep-talk yourself with inspirational lines à la “This time, I’m

going to be an adult,” “This time, I’m not going to get defensive when they ask their thousand interminable questions,” or, “This time, they’re not going to have recourse to use the ‘this house is not a hotel’ line that fills me with familial shame;” all of the above are going to occur. This does not mean it has to be a combative relationship; the upshot is that they will always be your parents, and they will always be there to offer comfort and solace and food and love. Appreciate them. - Contra feel-good relativist bullshit: some things are just better than others. A Love Supreme will always have more value than ‘We Can’t Stop’; people who say that “there is no such thing as objectively good x” are invariably people with poor taste (or trolls). Paradoxically, there is no shame in playing Selena Gomez’s brilliant ‘Birthday’ on repeat. Like what you like and be damned, of course, but be aware at all times that some things have insurmountable cultural and aesthetic value; be aware, too, of your own gaps in knowledge that may render certain ruminations invalid. - A wonderful offshoot of the university experience is realising that you are not the smartest person wandering its hallowed halls; actually, surrounded as you are by other smart people, you’re statistically mediocre. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Try to let this be a positive experience. Let it drive you onward. Humility, too, is one hell of a virtue. Aim to be the best at it. As Anna DeWitt tells us, life is made up of constants and variables. The twist is, we don’t always know which is which—in fact, we’re lucky if we can ever even guess. For now, just soak up as many experiences as you can, because sooner or later you’re bound to strike gold. Don’t mistake youthful vigour for foolishness, and don’t confuse aged consideration for apathy. Really, you’ll never truly know another human being’s mind, so I’ll leave you with this: there are no good kissers, only compatible ones. Good luck out there.

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FACES TO DEFACE Is expressing your artistic talent confined to Faces to Deface? Submit your artwork and cartoons to Salient! Email

editor@salient.org.nz.

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BY SAM NORTHCOTT

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Secret Diary of...

A NATIONAL PARTY MEDIA ADVISER By Penny Gault

Governments like crises for two reasons: firstly, it’s what the voters remember and judge them on, and secondly, it knocks the wind out of the opposition’s sails. It’s not fair to kick a dog when it’s down. So that’s one less kettle of fish for me to worry about. I, however, like crises for their power to cover up and distract attention from the wayward things my MPs are saying. When Paula Bennett announced that what “this country needs [is] more mother truckers” when explaining the new “women in transport” campaign, I nearly fainted. As soon as I heard “I have good experiences of truck drivers”, I tackled her to the ground. After some quick consultation, we recovered from potential raunchy newspaper headlines by explaining that she is now happily married to that truck driver. Even better, he doesn’t drive trucks any more. “We’re the National Party,” I reminded her. But all that effort was wasted. She moved on to breaching the human rights of those suspected of child abuse by banning them from interacting with children. What could possibly go wrong when Paula’s “unashamedly putting children’s rights first”? At the press conference, she looked straight at me and said, “we know that past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour”, and winked. I’ve locked her in her office with her barking collar set to high voltage. She can come out when she’s no longer in heat. Britain’s Daily Mail accused New Zealand

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of being “100 per cent manure” after the botulism scare. Manure. I nearly resigned, imagining John’s poo jokes. Or worse, his feeble attempts to turn it into a positive. I could just see the ideas forming in his brain. Something about manure being good fertiliser for our clean green environment, I bet. Oh no, fertiliser. Bombs. Terrorism. GCSB. Everything came back to the GCSB. John can hardly even get the letters in the right order. I decided it was better not to tell him, and let the reporters take him by surprise. Any random waffle would be better than a poo joke. I took a small break to get a coffee. I turned around, and John was giving his opinion on what New Zealanders think. Shit. Before I could stop him, he blurted out, “I think they’re much more interested in snapper quota.” He was proud of that one. Johnnnnnnnnnn. John John John. It’s only the unemployed, who are home to watch The Fishing Show during the day, who like or have time to fish. I mimed slitting my throat and pretended to die. He grinned and said, “because they like catching fish!” I groaned, and he gave me the thumbs up. Afterwards, he said he thought I was gesturing to a fish being gutted, and therefore encouraging the fish discussion. We decided that next time he felt tempted to mention fish, he was to respond, “I don’t answer those questions.” After several years of not understanding what John was talking about, I realised he reminded me of Michael Scott and, all conventional media tactics exhausted, just ran with it. Now, every time he goes on live

television, I get him to recite his favourite Michael Scott quote to get him in the right frame of mind: “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An Improversation.” On Wednesday, John watched eight hours of The Office, and three hours of The Fishing Show. Thank God he’s got Steven Joyce to do his paperwork. After all that television watching, we didn’t have much time to prepare for Campbell Live. I had to keep it simple. Words aren’t John’s strongest point, so we worked on counting on his fingers. He was surprisingly good at that, and got all the way up to four! Small victories. John kept asking how we were getting to the studio. I told him it didn’t matter how we got there. I was nervous. He talked about fish the whole way. The show was going surprisingly well. John said he was “a bit busy running the country”. I’ve told him time and again not to say he’s “busy”, for fear that someone will ask, “Busy doing what?” and he will answer “being a bee. Get it? At the Beehive?” Yes. Every day. Every damned day. Anyway, back to Wednesday. I despaired. A BIT busy? You’re the Prime Minister, for fuck’s sake. But Campbell didn’t bite. He’s a real catch, that John Campbell. He even said Key was “a brilliant politician”. John responded, “No, I’m not.” I tore out the last three strands of my hair and held in a scream. What fresh hell will tomorrow bring? Tonight, I’ve set Salmon Fishing in the Yemen as John’s homework.

COLUMNS 

ly Week

Rant

Free Mary Jane By Duncan McLachlan “I hate to advocate drugs...to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” — Hunter S. Thompson. 80 per cent of New Zealanders between 18– 24 are currently considered criminals in our country. 50 per cent of all New Zealanders are too. They did not kill anyone. Or hurt one another. They paid a guy to pay another guy to grow something that would make them feel better. They smoked weed. And in our country, that makes them a criminal: something to be jailed for. Students should not accept such bullshit laws. Marijuana should be legal. 1. No one in the world has ever died overdosing from marijuana. They have been helped through cancer. They have relaxed after a shit day at work. They have made the best music ever to touch our ears. But no one has died. Four people died last year from skiing. Random fun fact. Here’s another: more people die on escalators than on airplanes. That fact is irrelevant. My point is this. People can make trade-offs. They know things have harms and risks associated. They do them because it makes them feel better or look better or act better. But currently, the state says no. Don’t even try making such a choice. 2. There has been a lot of media scaremongering over the proliferation of synthetic drugs. Children are taking them. John Campbell sought out the only person in the world who had a son who died from K2 and heard his heart-rending story. I’ll accept that these unnatural drugs are dangerous. But unfortunately, they have actually been created because of the prohibition on drugs. There is a demand for having an awesome night that will not go away. And some people try and fill that demand by creating things which are like marijuana but without the same chemical

make-up. People take them. They are sold at the local dairy. They cause harm. 3. Drug laws are racist. Unlike assault where someone is harmed, no one is directly hurt in the process of smoking marijuana. No one reports it happening. But cops have to come down hard. They have to search for people and find people who smoke such a killer drug; who wreak havoc on our communities. What better way to do it than to rely on their prejudices. 13 per cent of those who consume marijuana in New Zealand are Māori. Yet over 60 per cent of those caught are Māori. Random? No. Just racist.

Cocaine, many say, was actually created because of the prohibition on marijuana. On second thought, that is probably the only benefit of prohibition. 4. If you are a concerned parent who stays up late worrying about your dear Johnny and his dangerous pot-smoking friend Jim, then you should also legalise drugs. Because when they are illegal, you can’t regulate them. Alcohol has to be checked so that we know the percentage of alcohol in it. It can’t poison you or be laced with cocaine. Marijuana can be. Sometimes, you get drugs from a friend. Other times, they get it from someone with whom you wouldn’t want to party. If it’s legal, we can have age restrictions, content restrictions, quantity restrictions: a better joint. 5. In fact, drugs are actually stronger now because they are illegal. You are punished based on the quantity of drugs you are holding. If you have too much, you are a

supplier and thus get a larger fine or jail time. But quantity is based on weight, not on strength. So, if you are your average drug dealer, you make your stuff stronger shit. The THC level of Marijuana is four times as strong as it was in the 1970s. Cocaine, many say, was actually created because of the prohibition on marijuana. It is easier to hide; harder to detect. On second thought, that is probably the only benefit of prohibition. 6. Some people probably do have drug problems. Like others have eating problems. Or alcohol problems. Or mentalhealth problems. And those people should seek help. Drug prohibition puts them in jail next to a rapist rather than offering them the support that they need. Sure they can, at any time before they are caught, go to rehab. But they don’t. Because, quite rightly, they are worried about getting punished. People fear the consequences of seeking help. Shame. Our current law is nothing other than cultural snobbery by political elites. John Key can drink Moët with his son. He can take him skiing on volcanoes, or surfing at his bach in Hawaii. But our methods to make ourselves happy are somehow unworthy. You are the 80 per cent. Don’t be told by decree from the powers above how you should make your life better. Do like Obama did. Smoke.* People cheer themselves up in many ways. Some get drunk. Some eat burgers. Some watch Notting Hill. Some go for runs. Some engage in monogamy. Some take medication. Others smoke a joint. Only one of those people is a criminal. Fuck that. *Only if you want to, no pressure, LOL.

'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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LAYING DOWN THE LAW

hoopin' and hollerin'

“D—Would NOT Trade Again”

That’s Not A Sport, Bro

By Emma Smith

By Carlo Salizzo

You’ve just handed over all your hard-earned living costs to some girl you’ve never met, and resigned yourself to the fact that you’ll be living off mi goreng for the rest of week, just to get your hands on that babein’ KW-inspired dress. Then she tells you it “got lost in the post”, and is suddenly un-contactable. Do you (a) start a witch-hunt and badmouth her to everyone else on Walk in Wardrobe? (b) leave the group and accept the fact that you’re going to have to get out of bed and go into an actual shop if you want new clothes? (c) lawyer her?

As a worldwide sport-loving family, we sure have a lot of failings. I mean, there’s the obvious and worst ones, like when we riot after our teams lose and cause wars, or when we throw away our livelihoods on repeated $10 multis. Then there are the medium-level transgressions, like getting our (k) nickers in a twist over shocking DRS decisions and magical bat-tape. Plenty of column inches have been devoted to those problems, but there will never be enough discussion on the frankly alarming rate at which we’re making full-blown sports out of silly pastimes.

Unfortunately, if you’re buying off an online auction site, like Facebook’s Walk In Wardrobe or Trade Me, you’re not protected by the Consumer Guarantees Act or the Fair Trading Act—they don’t cover transactions between private individuals. That means that your only real option is a claim under contract law. What that means is that when you bid $40 plus postage for my top that has “a small makeup stain but you can barely see it”, you’re making an ‘offer’ (that’s the technical lawyerly term). If I ‘accept’ your offer, we have a ‘contract’. The $40 is called ‘consideration’ (contracts aren’t binding unless you give something valuable in exchange). That means that if I never get around to sending you the top, or if it’s a different size to what I said it was and it doesn’t fit you, I’ve breached the contract. You might be able to get a remedy under the Contractual Remedies Act—but first, you should try to resolve the dispute by talking to the other person like a calm and collected adult, rather than posting “This BITCH ripped me off” and watching the likes rack up. If that doesn’t work, some sites like Trade Me have their own dispute-resolution processes. If that fails, you can go to the Disputes Tribunal. Make sure you keep a record of any communications you had with the other person, and of any money you paid over—you’ll need it as evidence of what actually happened. To win, you’d have to show that: you were induced to buy the item because of what the seller said about it; that what the seller said was untrue; and that you lost money because of the seller’s false statement—maybe you had to spend money on fixing the item. It’s important that you keep a record of any communications you had with the seller, and any transactions you made, in case you need it as evidence in a dispute. You don’t have many rights as a buyer in an online auction, and it’ll cost you $45 to go to the Disputes Tribunal—so be careful who you give your money to, and check whether anyone else has posted feedback about the seller.

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By way of example, let me point you to MLG, otherwise known as Major League Gaming. That’s a real organisation that exists, with a logo and everything. Look, I love to play video games as much as the next Steam subscriber. Really, I do. I’m a Star Citizen backer, for God’s sake. But whenever I read about how seriously some people take bloody Call of Duty or StarCraft, I can’t help but weep. The fact that people are watching you play a game of some kind does not elevate it to the level of ‘sport’. Take something like beer pong, say. There are some fairly big games of that around. I’ve been to GeoSoc events with more spectators than many rugby games. But that does not make it a sport. In the US, there are enormous tournaments where they play with water instead, to keep it professional. I’m sorry, but that is wrong on a fundamental level. That game was created to provide a distraction while sinking ludicrous volumes of foul-tasting light beer. The same may be said about baseball, too, but let’s not get caught up in specifics. Back to StarCraft for a moment. You might argue that it’s a sport because it’s semi-professional. People’s families are risking potential starvation based on the construction of additional pylons (or lack thereof). That argument holds no truck with this writer. No matter how big and important something gets, you can’t just decide that it has gone beyond a simulated contest of clicking. What I’m driving at here is that we need to be more vigilant, sports fans of the world. The next time you see someone bragging to their friends over a game of flip cup about Team SWAT totally being a sport now, you have my permission to take them out with a dive-tackle from the side.

COLUMNS 

Things That Go Bump In The Night with Lux Lisbon & Seymour Butts

I've just started seeing a guy who's circumcised, which is a breed of penis I've never had the pleasure of encountering before. Am I meant to do something different? What feels good? Ah, the mysterious circumcised cock, an elusive and rare beast. Interestingly, circumcision isn’t overly common here in New Zealand, so it’s not entirely surprising you haven't encountered one until now. But figures show that about a third of men on the planet are sporting a circumcised member, so let’s get familiar. If a man has been circumcised, this means that the foreskin of the penis has been removed from the glans. Most often, circumcision is done for religious reasons, or for potential health benefits (however, this is a somewhat contentious issue). A circumcised member can look quite different from a non-circumcised one—usually, this is most noticeable when flaccid because the head of his dick will be hiding away. But when an uncut penis is erect, most often the foreskin will retract and the head of the penis will be exposed in anticipation. Because the foreskin has a whole bunch of nerve endings which are removed with circumcision, a number of medical studies have allegedly discovered that a circumcised penis is less sensitive. Additionally, the foreskin acts as a fleshy sheath which can stimulate the penis during sex in the same way. This may be more noticeable during oral sex or while giving a hand job. Sometimes, this may mean that you need additional lubrication with a partner who is circumcised. Additionally, because this ‘sheath’ is missing, a circumcised partner may need more friction than an uncircumcised one in order to reach orgasm.

But for the most part, there is no reason why you should treat your new partner’s dick any differently; foreskin or no foreskin, sex is going to be a subjective exercise either way, and every partner will like some things more than others, regardless of what type of equipment they’re packing. Circumcised or not, just have fun with what you’ve got. Lux you long time xx

I really want to have a threesome but I don't know how. Help, please! The threesome is often held up as the gold standard of sexual prowess, but obviously not everyone wants threesomes, or if you do, not all the time—they can be exhausting! How you go about finding that elusive third is very dependent on who you’re with— sometimes it might be best to negotiate the possibility with an existing partner, and just let it be enough for you both to know you’re open to it. If you’re at a party together and a likely candidate arises, you can both go hit on them at once without having to duck out for a big discussion first, or making a move with which your partner isn’t comfortable. Or maybe it would work better for you, if you’re in an existing relationship, to talk with your partner and then invite a specific person into your bed. This can be a little intimidating, but if done carefully, I’m sure it works for some. If you’re a dude looking for a threesome with two women, it’s unlikely you’ll get lucky hunting around in bars. Try not to treat it as the ultimate goal, but a bonus that may come along if you’re open to it. If you’re a

dude looking for a threesome with two other dudes, well, there’s always saunas. Please don’t go looking for a threesome just so you can tell people you had a threesome. It reduces the other participants to mere accessories to your pointless point-scoring. Have more respect for your partners than that. This doesn’t mean you can’t feel good about having a threesome, but don’t let it be the only reason! So now all that’s out of the way, and you’ve found yourself in bed with two sexy people. But suddenly there are too many limbs, too many genitals, too many mouths, and you don’t know what to do with them! It’s important to know who’s comfortable doing what—perhaps one or more of the participants will only be comfortable with oral sex. Being suddenly confronted with so many options is intimidating, and just because someone’s comfortable doing something in a good old-fashioned twosome doesn’t mean they’ll be comfortable with it à la ménage à trois. It’s unlikely everyone involved will be into exactly the same stuff anyway, and it’s even more important than usual to communicate well. Crucial in a threesome: don’t neglect one of the people! I don’t care if you’re more sexually attracted to one of your partners over the other; it’s unfathomably rude to leave one person on the outside of the group. If you’re in a three-way where someone’s not sexually attracted to someone else (due to their sexuality, or any other reason), don’t be a child—it’s not the end of the world if a straight dude accidentally touches another dude’s butt. Seymour x

Lux and Seymour are our in-house sexperts. If you've got any questions about all things

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

love and lust, or a topic you want them to cover, go right ahead and ask anonymously

a professional, rather than Lux and Seymour, or Hector and Janet, Student Counselling

at ask.fm/LuxandSeymour. For everything else, there's Hector and Janet—our resident

Service can provide a safe place to explore such aspects of your life. The service is free

advice columnists. Contact them anonymously at ask.fm/FixingYourLife

and confidential.

Phone: (04) 463 5310 Email: counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz.Visit: Mauri Ora, Level 1, Student Union Building.

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 COLUMNS

our Life Fixing Y[BECAUSE OURS ARE WRITTEN OFF]

There’s a babe sitting at the computer next to me. How do I go from awkward no-conversation to awkward banging in as short a time as possible?

Look, your best bet is to just start a human conversation. It’s not that difficult, if you can get over your crippling fear of rejection. That’s a pretty big ‘if’, though. My top tip would be first study their face and screen to ascertain how hard they’re actually working. Then, slide your wheelie-chair over and open with something all students have in common, like “can you get wi-fi printing to work?” Failing that, you can always crack a winning smile and tell them how beautiful they are, if you aren’t afraid of being that weird guy/girl whom nobody ever sits next to.

screenshotted. If you take a photo of a friend without telling them, CC them in on whoever you send it to. Oh, fuck it, there are no rules. Side note: You can find a lot out about who your contacts are sleeping with by examining their ‘best friends’.

–H Never take a snapchat of yourself in a cow onesie with your tits out.

–J I’ve been texting this absolute stunner but they used the wrong kind of ‘their’ in our conversation. How am I supposed to go on?

–HECTOR Smile at them a few times. Go over to them. Say “want to get a coffee?” Tell them over coffee either about zooborns.com, how someone in your class last week thought that John Key meant that we all cared more about Snapper cards than the GCSB, or how Kings of Leon’s later stuff was shit. Get your own fucking banter, I’m not giving away mine.

–JANET I’ve finally jumped on board the snapchat bandwagon.. Is there any etiquette I need to be aware of??

Assume that everything you send will be

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Get out while you still can. No, in all seriousness, if you’re the kind of person who is dissuaded by that, then it will be hard to get over. Maybe take a long hard look at yourself and think about whether it’s fair to either of you to carry on the charade. On the other hand, maybe autocorrect is to blame. Either way, maybe get over yourself?

I’m a staunch Greens supporter and always have been, but John Key’s unflappable media training on Campbell Live has set my heart a-flutter. How do I reconcile these two opposing feelings?

Are you one of those people whose support for a political party is based on the quirks and qualities of its personnel, rather than the strengths of its policies? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe go read the political pages or something, I don’t know. Go have sex with someone wearing an ‘I’m a Key Person’ T-shirt. Might get it out of your system.

–H Mmm, yes, that was pretty impressive, wasn’t it. That reminds me - do you know where I can get a limited edition ‘Goff-father’ T-shirt?

–J If I come up to you in a bar and ask you to put me in your next column, will you do it?

–H No Grammar is important to me, so if someone did this on a regular basis, it might piss me off. However, I’m getting to an age and stage where I can no longer filter people by their grammatical prowess (or indeed, by whether or not they are literate). So I don’t know. Maybe you should get over yourself.

–H Yes, Steven Joyce, of course I will—thanks for the G&T.

–J

–J 41

COLUMNS 

LIFESTYLES OF THE POOR & THE STUDIOUS weet The S p Scoo

In A State of Choc By Julia Wells There are some things that are very polarising. Mac versus PC, Honda versus Ford and John versus Helen float to mind as examples. But the greatest of all public-opinion splitters is, of course, cookie texture. Soft, chewy cookies, that seem to cuddle your tongue in one giant, big, fluffy unicorn hug as you bite in. Or crisp cookies, that are just waiting to scatter approximately 74 million crumbs across several hectares of carpet (although only after you've broken a tooth trying to eat them). From that reasoned and impartial description, it will probably be clear which side of the debate I stand on. To be honest, I don't really like crunchy foods at all, and prefer, for example, my cornflakes or Weet-Bix totally soggy (I also get very upset by crooked paintings and own at least three grammar handbooks; you can form your own judgments). But even if you are normally a devotee of the Krispie, or those chocolate-chip cookies with the bear on the packet, I'd urge you to put aside your prejudices and try these. Because, like, yum. Not very eloquent, I know, but sometimes it is hard to talk about things that you have a lot of emotion for. These are the perfect texture: buttery and crumbly on the outside, soft, chewy chocolate in the centre, and sweet and chocolatey. One thing that I've learned in life is that there are never enough chocolate chips in cookies. So, join me and put in as many as you can push into the batter. I also like to use chocolate drops rather than small chips, hence the name. They are bigger, and give a more satisfying chocolate experience. These are also 'drop cookies' as the mixture is simply rolled into balls and dropped onto the tray, rather than having to refrigerate, roll and slice.

Double Chocolate Drop Cookies 100 g butter 1 heaped cup brown sugar 1 cup white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder ¼ cup cocoa powder at least 1 cup chocolate drops

Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Warm the butter until softened, but not melted. Cream (beat very hard) the butter with the brown sugar, until light and fluffy. Mix the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, then mix into the butter mixture. Add the chocolate drops. The texture should be very thick and crumbly, but able to be melded together into balls. Grease two baking trays, then take dessertspoon-sized lumps of the dough, squeezing them into balls, and place them on the tray. Push each one down slightly with the back of a fork. Bake for about 15 minutes, then leave to cool. They should still be soft on top when you take them from the oven. These are great cold, but my favourite way to eat them is still warm from cooking. Makes about 15

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Health tip # 18

The Nurse's Note

Get your repeat prescriptions early

make you feel unpretty too

AN APPLE A DAY

Realising you have run out of medication you need to take every day can be stressful. Plan ahead by ensuring you have four to six weeks supply of your daily medication, and always carry some of your daily medication with you in case of emergencies. If you attend the Student Health Service you can request repeat prescriptions for most medications by completing a request form at the reception desk or by leaving a message on our prescription request line by calling 463 5308. Some repeat prescriptions for medications such as antidepressants require an appointment with a doctor. University Pharmacy is conveniently located on the Kelburn Campus by the main entrance of the Easterfield Building around the corner from VicBooks. They are open Monday to Friday 9.00am to 5.00pm

By Joanna Tennant, Mental Health Coordinator and Counsellor at the Student Counselling Service We are subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda about our appearance, from advertisements, movies, TV, magazines and newspapers. It’s impossible to look at any of them without seeing images of slim, sexy, tanned, toned, fashionably dressed, groomed, made-up, botoxed, and photoshopped people. There are articles about how to whiten your teeth, tone your abs, slim your thighs, make your legs look longer or your eyes bigger, develop a pert bottom or a six-pack, or disguise hair loss. There are endless articles about diets, and how to lose weight so that you’ll look good in your togs come summer. There are shows where stylish people sneer at those less endowed, and tell them how to dress better; there are programmes where people compete to lose weight. Beauty contests still exist. Jeans manufacturers have changed their sizing because smaller numbers on the label make women feel better (and of course buy more jeans)—after all, what could possibly be more affirming than to be a size zero? While most of this is targeted at women, men are also a market: because of course, this is all about money and power. We are constantly being told how inadequate we are—how fat, ugly, badly proportioned,

salient.org.nz <<<

wobbly, smelly, lazy, and badly dressed we are; how we fail to meet the standards imposed by a consumerist society, and how we should try harder to improve ourselves: eat less, buy more, and feel worse about ourselves. The consequences are frequently self-dislike, even self-loathing and selfpunishment. Many of us are deceived into believing that if we just get thinner, life would be happy and we would magically feel acceptable. Tragically, for some of us, restricting our eating in order to become thin becomes a personal challenge, and the only way we feel able to exercise power over our lives. Even those with a robust sense of self find it hard to maintain their self-esteem in the face of such an onslaught. But we do not have to succumb to this! We can aspire to better things. We can reject these artificial, commercially driven standards of attractiveness and beauty, and develop less superficial ways of assessing ourselves and others. We can work on accepting and liking ourselves: this means making choices based on what enhances our lives, takes us further along our chosen path, makes us more joyous and better people. It means giving up judging our bodies and our appearance by the standards of the advertising industry. We don’t have to measure up. What we have to do is be fully alive, and celebrate uniqueness, individuality and diversity.

Things Your

Grandmother Should Have Taught You By Alexandra Hollis

Cheesy supermarket bread: Best hangover food. But also stale/mushy/ generally unsatisfying after a few bites. Brush with a little bit of oil and put in the oven for 15 mins. Crunchy and greasy! Eyeliner 4 pros: You can scrimp on technique if you go smokey eye. Just smudge the eyeliner up with your finger and add some dark eyeshadow. But don’t scrimp on quality: cheap eyeliner kills (your eyes). Eat this: Peel eggplant, chop it up with onion and garlic. Stir-fry with a little bit of oil and black pepper. Serve with brown rice and a dollop of sweet chili sauce. Drink this: Whisky and cranberry juice. Vodka and elderflower cordial. Fun! Craft ideas:  Paint stripes on a sponge, use it to make art.  Make needlepoint cushions with pictures of bunnies.  Sew owls on everything you own.  Make origami flowers and give them to your friends.  Don’t do crafts.

ARTS 

ARTS SALIENT ARTS RATING GUIDE: 5 Stars: Gin and Tonic, 4 Stars: Gin and Juice, 3 Stars: Gin Ricky, 2 Stars: Gin Fizz, 1 Star: Straight Gin, 0 Stars: Gin Hangovers

games 

trash talk ARTICLE

patrick lindsay

For a lot of people, trash-talking is part of the fun of playing multiplayer games. Being able to shout at your friends with sometimes real, sometimes put-on rage while trying to get the edge is always a great outlet for all that pent-up adrenaline you get while playing competitively. Sometimes, it's a matter of incoherent anger-noises, other times creative and oddly poetic insults, and others, malicious and even sort-of sickening suggestions. Online multiplayer has the added bonus of anonymity, which can make a lot of trash-talk lose the delicious gooey light-hearted centre that can make it kind-of acceptable. Xbox Live is a renowned hive of scum, villainy and seething hatred, though this holds a little less true in my experience, at least with New Zealand users (let's all have a pat on the back for not being online dick-bags!) In most competitive online games, though, your mother, face and skills are more likely to be insulted than if Jimmy Carr became the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket (note to self: stick to video-game references from now on). There's still a bit of unpredictability and spurof-the-moment-ness to Xbox Live insult-chatter because it's spoken, and as much can't be said for typed trash-talk. When you type a comment, it (presumably) takes a little longer to reach the world than

speech does. There are a few more beats to think and word written trash-talk, and this is what makes it a little more unsettling—it's not so much a sudden emotional outburst, but a bit more calculated. Of course, it's still a direct reaction to what's happened in-game, but the permanency and the thought that needs to go into it are the issues. It's much, much easier to shake off spoken trash-talk than to have to read someone bitterly and hatefully berating you in a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) like League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) when you're learning the ropes. What brings me on to this topic is not crying myself to sleep over being insulted by strangers like it might sound, but a couple of court cases currently in the American media. Last October, a Texan 19-year-old called Josh Pillault was arrested for comments he made while playing the online game RuneScape (Jagex Games Studio, 2001). Responding to a player that told him to kill himself, Pillault wrote that he would do so and “take out a local high school”. This other player made federal authorities aware of the conversation, and the teenager's home was raided a few days later. Though Pillault has had no history of violence, crime, mental instability or even access to the materials needed for an attack, the teenager pleaded 'guilty' under advice in the hopes of a lighter sentence. For his online comment, Pillault has been in prison since October and is facing up to ten years further and $250,000 in fines.

Eerily similar is the case of 18-year-old Justin Carter of Ohio, who was arrested in February for comments made while playing League of Legends. In response to another player calling him “crazy”, Carter remarked he was “crazy” enough to “shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts”—followed by “lol” and “jk”, suggesting it was a joke. A Canadian woman saw these comments, tracked down Carter's address through Google and contacted the police, who charged the teenager with making terrorist threats. This was of course only two months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, but Carter's follow-up comments certainly suggest they were made jokingly, if in poor taste. Fortunately, an anonymous donor posted Carter's $500,000 bail bond earlier this month, but the charge carries a potential prison term of eight years from sentencing. The American justice system is not New Zealand's, and it's difficult to imagine similar cases happening on our shores and to our overly caffeinated, internet-saturated teenagers. However, it's important to know that those looking in from the outside of gaming might not understand the context or the value of trash talk. The take-home point of these cases is watch yourself and your tongue a little more, and that the gaming community needs to remember it's just that—a community.

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books 

A Tale of One City

ARTICLE

Tom McLean & Alexandra Hollis

Once upon a time, literature mattered. James K. Baxter’s polemics divided the nation; the majority of our early premiers and prime ministers wrote on the side. And now it doesn’t. It’s a long time since there’s been a writer in the news for something other than writing, and bookshops are closing rather than opening. All of this is a bit odd, because viewed another way—sitting in the middle of the Kelburn campus—New Zealand literature’s never been in better health. On one side at 49 Rawhiti Tce there’s Victoria University Press, headed by Fergus Barrowman, which is as good as any overseas publisher, and consistently putting out the best New Zealand literature. Down the hill on 16 Wai-te-Ata Rd is the conspicuously successful International Institute of Modern Letters, manuscripts flowing out of it and into publication on the other side of the campus. Together, they’ve monopolised the literary scene, and out-competed everyone. VUP’s really the only large publisher of new poets left; it’s the most prestigious imprint for literary fiction in New Zealand. And though it’s starting to seem like there’s a school of creative writing on every campus, the IIML is still the place to go. Bill Manhire set it up; Damien Wilkins now runs it; Emily Perkins teaches there; Janet Frame’s desk is in the lobby. It’s a who’s who of New Zealand literature.

But does that matter? VUP and the IIML are great: why not just let them get on with it? Because any small group, no matter how talented its members, will inevitably become conformist, and any monopoly will benefit from competition. The oddities of literature in a small country combine to give disproportionate power to publishers and writing schools in New Zealand, and the advantages of Victoria’s institutions mean they’re the ones who matter. Good literature feeds off conflict with what has come before it, but these groups cannot meaningfully create conflict within themselves. Imagine publishing a book in the UK: first you’d submit it to an agent, then they’d get the best deal they could for it from a publisher, then it would be widely and sometimes caustically reviewed, and then it would reach the book-buying public. Here, it goes straight to a publisher—without an agent: where you learnt to write becomes a mark of quality in itself—and on publication, reviews will be invariably positive. Reviewers see it as their duty to promote New Zealand literature over giving an accurate assessment of its value; as Professor Mark Williams says, “New Zealand

reviewing is certainly more anodyne than it was in the 1980s,” driven by a culture of consensus and falling budgets with little theoretical underpinning. The publisher has become the sole arbiter of quality, instead of one of three. Since most literary fiction and probably all poetry more or less relies on state patronage, the book-buying public lack commercial influence, and the publisher becomes all. It’s easy to see how this can lead to a worrying homogeneity; poems that all sound a bit like Manhire, short stories that are sort-of bloodless imitations of Emily Perkins. This is a problem. And we—over-opinionated undergrad English students—don’t have the answer. But we know what we want. We want a national literature that comes from and thrives on various sources and creative ideologies, manifested in a diversity of publishers, reviewers and book-buyers. We don’t want a national literature arbitrated by one group and one set of literary values, no matter how high-quality. We especially don’t want this to be confined to one small campus of one university.

It’s fair to say that most of this is because VUP and the IIML are the best (and, to a certain extent, the only), but part of their advantage is more complex. In a system like the teaching of creative writing, based around cooperative peer workshopping, there are huge advantages to a stratified system where the best get amongst one another, feeding off each other, reinforcing their collective dominance. Even somewhere like the Manukau Institute of Technology’s creative-writing school, which has some of the best writers in the country on staff, suffers from this. None of its students have yet produced work with a major publisher. VUP, meanwhile, owes something to its university backing—it’s able to take risks on less commercially tenable work—and something to having the first dibs on MA theses of IIML students. All of this makes it difficult for anyone else to compete on artistic terms, if not on commercial ones.

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ARTS 

music 

CONCERT ETIQUETTE: how to not be That Guy

ARTICLE

ELISE MUNDEN

If you have ever attended a gig which involves standing amidst the (quite literally) unwashed masses, then you have most likely experienced That Guy. ‘That Guy’ is a gender-neutral term for That Fucking Prick Who Gropes Your Breasts/ Knees You in the Scrotum/Threatens to Stab You/ Spills Their $12 Beer On Your Chuck Taylors/ Instagrams the Entire Concert then Complains that Their Favourite Song Wasn’t Played. Here is how to NOT be That Guy.

1) Acts of Violence Firstly, I totally understand that the many subgenres of hard rock music often prompt senseless acts of violence, a.k.a. the mosh pit. In these instances, I have but one rule: do not draw blood from your head-banging compatriots. Or from yourself, for that matter. Ew. Aside from this select group of gigs, purposeful

SOUNDBITES INTERVIEW

ELISE MUNDEN

violence—including sexual assault—should not be tolerated. But, I hear you whimper feebly, what about when you’re being sucked into a whirlpool of sweaty teenagers and your limbs are literally being torn from your body?

2) The Whirlpool of Sweaty Teenagers in Which Your Limbs are Literally Being Torn From Your Body By all means, you gotta fight for your right to party. It is entirely acceptable to push back against the crowd as it surges forward, BUT, make sure that you apologise to those people immediately around you who you are pushing against! Don’t worry, it definitely does not need to be a sincere apology.

3) Band T-Shirts Personally, I have no issue with wearing the T-shirt of the band that you are going to watch. But for the love of Apollo, DO NOT WEAR THE T-SHIRT OF A DIFFERENT BAND OR CONCERT. Nobody cares if you went to Rhythm and Vines in 2011, douchebro.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. As I said before, Kanye is the best and only truly classic current pop star in my opinion. No one else ticks the boxes of outrageous, consistent, original and super-famous in the same way.

The Eversons

What can we expect from you in the near future? We are currently hazing our new member Alex and recording our second album. We just released a buzzy animated music video to our song ‘Creepy’, so we're gonna come celebrate at Puppies on Saturday 31 August. What is your favourite Kanye West moment?

Admittedly, it can be truly annoying when your abnormally small body gets stuck behind a member of the Harlem Globetrotters (sports reference in an arts feature, whaaaaat). Yet let’s be fair and acknowledge the lottery of birth; they can’t help being tall, and are probably already self-conscious about their height. Don’t harass them, just move to a different spot in the crowd.

5) Electronic Devices Being able to document and share the memories of an amazing night watching James Blake live is an incredible privilege for our generation. By all means, text and call your buddies (if only to rub it in their faces that they’re not there) and take videos and photos to upload on Facebook. However, the point at which you are spending the entire night on your phone is rude. So, so rude. Not to your peers, but to the musicians who are dedicating their energy to entertaining you. Acknowledge their effort and talent, and put your cellphone back inside the tight, tight back pocket of your skinny jeans.

What is a sentence we will never hear you say? "People at the Library are having a better time than us."

Race Banyon (a.k.a. Eddie Johnston)

When/Where: 31 August, Puppies Which current musicians inspire you? Salad Boys, Princess Chelsea and Jonathan Bree from NZ, and our buddies Boa Constrictors in California. Kanye is the best pop star, Tame Impala favourite (current) international band.

4) Tall People

More Fun Than the Library When/Where: Friday evenings, busking on Cuba St Which older musicians inspire you? Our influences come from the street jazz of New Orleans, Louis Armstrong All Stars band, the Dukes of Dixieland, Glenn Miller Orchestra, and Count Basie Band. Swing party vibe! What can we expect from you in the near future? Complete domination of the streets of Wellington, with the possibility of opening several franchises across the nation.

When/Where: 22 August, Puppies Which NZ artists inspire you? Everyone on Kerosene Comic Book (Yvnalesca, Totems, Skymning etc.) inspire me heaps. That seems like a shameless plug, but it's true. It's a really cool feeling being inspired by your friends. What can we expect from you in the near future? A whole lot of shows... Which Beatle would you take on a date, and where would you go? George (before he grew a moustache), anywhere where there are no ukuleles.

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film 