Opinion | Issue 24

NAME NAME

studies Biology and Classics at Victoria and is the resident pun-master at Salient. This year he wrote Conspiracy Corner under the alias ‘Incognito Montoya’.

vol.77 issue.24

THE OPINION ISSUE

the opinion issue

1

NAME NAME

studies Biology and Classics at Victoria and is the resident pun-master at Salient. This year he wrote Conspiracy Corner under the alias ‘Incognito Montoya’.

2

Goodbye and good luck.

This is the final issue of Salient for 2014, and what a year it’s been. This issue is filled with 31 opinions from you, the student. We wanted to make a final magazine which reflected the student body. We have a hugely diverse range of opinions. We have different ways of expressing those opinions.

to be the person you always wanted to be. Kid, you’ll move mountains!

But we have a shared purpose at university. We’re here to develop our thoughts and ideas and opinions, and then learn to express them. We’re all here to make ourselves better, and over the course of this year we have. And before the stress of exams kicks in, we should all take a moment to give ourselves a pat on the back.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who made the magazine this year and let us take the credit for it.

To Imogen, our designer and rock: you made our year. This magazine has been so beautiful; we truly have no idea how you do it every week. To Sophie, our news guru: you have been an absolute pleasure to work with. It’s been great to watch you develop into a top journalist. To Chloe, our creative editor: you are a shining light of inspiration in our lives. Thank you for making us better people.

To Fargher, our sub-editor: thanks for being our anchor. You are a true genius and we’re so lucky to have had you. To Philip, our chief writer: if you don’t become a famous wordsmith, there is something wrong with the world. You’ve been the voice of our generation. To Penny, our feature writer: you’re an amazing writer and an even more amazing mind. It’s obvious to all that you’ll be hugely successful in whatever you do. To Dex, our website developer: we’re so glad we became friends with you this year. Thank you for making www. salient.org.nz more beautiful than we could have imagined. To Distro Joe: thanks for being such an all-round legend. And thanks for moonlighting as our pizza-delivery boy. To all the people whose names are fit to be on the page but can’t actually fit on the page: thank you. This has been the best year of our lives so far and it’s all because of you.

If you’re a first-year, you’ve nailed living away from home, forcing yourself to go to class and study, finding new friends, navigating the difficulties of poor student life. Next year will be great: you’ll move into flats and be able to study better because of all the practice you had this year and you’ll flourish in this great city of ours which you now know more about.

If you’re in the middle of your uni years, you’ve succeeded. You’ve survived the self-doubt and the freezing flat and the endless assignments. And the light at the end of the tunnel is that much closer.

You go, Glenn Coco.

If this was your last year of tertiary education, you’ve achieved an amazing feat. Sure, you have shitloads of debt and it might be hard to get a job and stuff, but you’re smart. Like, really smart. And because you’re so smart and talented, you’ll be able

You’ve all been amazing. Thanks for picking up our magazine every week and reading it and sharing your ideas with us and being great. Keep reading.

L ove ,

Du nc an & Cam

letters letter of the week Dear Hilarious-pun-here-lient, Hunter Lounge chef here. I made you guys pizza and fries every Thursday night all year.

EveryMonday I’d pick up my copy, and imagine what cheesy masterpiece sustained which writer. I like to think that, in my own way, I made a small contribution to the publication of Salient. It was an experience I’ll carry forever.

Literally, forever. You’d be surprised how deep pizza oven burns go.

Food for Thought.

Grumble No. 5 Dear Can’t-count-lient I was really looking forward to the top 10 albums of 2014 but there were only five listed?

I was kind of disappointed. I mean I totally agree the albums listed are great namely Lykke (<3 <3 <3) and FKA Twigs (what a total dream and super accurate review btw) but I needed more and I feel a little let down.

How else am I supposed to add new music to my ‘October ‘14’ Spotify playlist. I need to keep my followers happy.

Thanks Salient, bye forever!

A message from the VC No, you can’t use my staff/postgrad cafe. You wouldn’t want to.

It’s pricey and Hunter Lounge honestly has food that’s just as good (as it’s run by the same people) and it’s got a pretty nice atmosphere. What Milk and 4

Honey has that Hunter Lounge doesn’t is peace, quiet, and a nice place to have a meeting over coffee outside a stuffy office. Quit whining.

Go fuck yourself Dear Salient What a year it’s been!

Your magazine used to be vaguely interesting to young, impressionable first years.

However, we can’t decide if you have dropped in content or we have simply grown as individuals.

We suggest you investigate each of our individual personalities and accordingly adjust your content to suit our blossoming minds. Alternatively we are looking forward to using your publication as kindling in our cold, cold flats next year. Or just add some Frozen-themed colouring in pages (with free coloured pencils and pictures of Sven).

Yours truly, Disgruntled.

Thank you I just want to thank everyone for the Mental Health issue.

It goes without saying almost that I suffer from anxiety and depression. I once even tried to kill myself. At (another) low point in my life, I became so sick of my depression that I tried to commit myself to Ward 27. Seeing the condition of the patients and the ‘facility’ made me so angry that it had the effect of helping me overcome my sadness. It makes me mad to this day that mentally ill people are ‘thrown away’ in some grotty little hospital ward

and forgotten. Thank you for helping to bring awareness about something that people are so reluctant to acknowledge.

Orwell, nothing we can do When was a journalist’s home last raided in NZ? A squad of five spent 10 hours at Hager’s home last week while he was not there, allegedly searching for evidence of his source, who Hager has a right to protect.

Journalist raids occurred during the Nazi era and probably during Nixon’s when people criticised the Government, but is this acceptable to people now?

If media are not entirely owned by the current Government as people are claiming, the public would like some questions answered. If this search warrant was enacted in response to someone supporting Slater, do police not have a responsibility to weigh up circumstances and motives of both Slater and Hager’s accused source?

If a gang leader sought to prosecute one of his victims for allegedly criminal behaviour, would the police not consider these factors? The police should be concerned about perceptions of fairness and political interference here. Why has Cameron Slater’s home not been raided when Hager’s book describes his hackers and collusion with Mrs Utu herself, the presently invisible MP Judith Collins? Why was Collins’ PC not seized when she has been accused of illegal activities? We can make police complaints as citizens to hold these guys to account, but access to legal aid for everyday

people has been downgraded, while those with funds are supported to mount dodgy legal battles. Slater has expressed his glee. If Key was a real PM he would be outspoken about this abuse of police resources and the justice system, but this is unlikely as his spin doctors took Hager to court a few years ago (and failed). His tactic is to keep a distance from negative campaigns run on behalf of the Party. Even if he made some show of action, #Team Key’s objective has been achieved.

Hager has been their most effective critic, and as legal means have not worked in the past to silence him, having his name associated with ‘crime’ (rather than ‘leaks’) is an effective strategy. It effectively lowers Hager’s standing in the minds of people who do not follow things closely, and scares journalists or anyone who wants to leak material, or assist them.

It will be interesting to see if our top independent journalist is defended on this issue by fellow journalists and others, or if everyone is running scared in our little piece of paradiseturned-police state.

Is that you Lars?

Hi there, I would just like to second last week’s letter about the hot guy at VicBooks (who is even hotter now that I know his name is Lars) and I want him all the more that he’s taken. I’m the girl with the laptop who comes in every morning and orders a flat white.

Love, Secret Admirer Squared

Pipitea Toastmasters Pipitea students – communicate with confidence! Toastmasters helps you improve your communication and leadership skills in a supportive learnby-doing environment. Now Toastmasters is at Pipitea Campus for the first time. Develop your skills along with fellow Pipitea students – increase your selfconfidence, become a better speaker, learn to run effective meetings, and add essential experience to your CV. Find out more at our regular meetings every Tuesday, RWW 310, 5.45 to 7 pm. All welcome.

Careers and Jobs Applications closing soon…

Organisations: Closing Date Bluelab Corporation: 15 Oct Aviat Networks: 17 Oct CPA Australia: 17 Oct Fisher & Paykel Healthcare: 20 Oct Parrot Analytics: 20 Oct Taranaki Bio Extracts: 20 Oct Datamine: 22 Oct Datamine: 22 Oct Skope Industries: 30 Oct Alltech: 31 Oct ARANZ Medical: 31 Oct Naked Bus: 31 Oct McKesson New Zealand: 1 Nov Compac Sorting Equipment: 2 Nov Torque IT Solutions: 2 Nov TracMap NZ: 3 Nov MetOcean Solutions: 15 Nov Vensa Health: 15 Nov MetOcean Solutions: 18 Nov Milford Asset Management: 19 Nov Upcoming Free Careers Event for all students How to Give Yourself the X-Factor in the Grad & Intern Recruitment Process: 13 Oct Check details on CareerHub: www.victoria.ac.nz/careerhub

THE OPINION ISSUE

14 Questions About 2014 1. A provocative numberplate got Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson into trouble in which country earlier this month?

2. Morgan Freeman voiced a wizard named Vitruvius in what film released this year?

3. According to official results, about 97 per cent of people in what region of Europe voted to break away from their country earlier this year?

4. Amethyst Kelly is better known by what name?

5. True or false: since the election last month, National has become the first party to win a majority by itself in Parliament under the MMP system.

6. What was notable about the death of Thomas Eric Duncan in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, last week?

7. What was the largest city in Scotland to vote in favour of independence last month?

8. Who has scored the most tries for the All Blacks so far this year?

9. What do famous writers Gabriel García Márquez, Maya Angelou and Nadine Gordimer have in common?

10. The Australian TV show Jonah From Tonga is a recent spin-off based on which earlier show?

11. The Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups are the main rivals in which African country’s ongoing civil war?

12. Musical duo Broods come from which provincial New Zealand town?

13. Which Central American underdog managed to advance to the quarterfinals of this year’s FIFA World Cup? 14. Who plays Clara Oswald, Doctor Who’s current companion, in the latest season of Doctor Who?

1. Argentina 2. The LEGO Movie 3. Crimea (They voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia.) 4. Iggy Azalea 5. False (Now that special votes have been counted, National is one seat off a majority – 60 seats out of 121.) 6. He was the first Ebola patient to die in the US. 7. Glasgow 8. Julian Savea (with eight) 9. They all died in 2014. 10. Summer Heights High 11. South Sudan 12. Nelson 13. Costa Rica 14. Jenna Coleman

notices

Would you rather eat cat food or eat a cat?

Would you rather have a pet which was a turtlesized horse or a horsesized turtle?

Would you rather get carpet burn or a blister on your foot?

Would you rather sleep with the hottest person in the world but no one ever finds out, or not sleep with them but have the whole world think that you did?

Would you rather have hair that grew at a rate that made it impossible to cut, or no hair at all ever?

Would you rather have wet socks or wet jeans?

Would you rather sleep with the hottest person from the gender you are not attracted to, or the ugliest person from the gender that you are?

Would you rather be able to swim like a penguin or fly like a flying squirrel?

Would you rather be always slightly too cold or slightly too hot?

Would you rather be the most famous person in the world, the most powerful person in the world, or the richest person in the world?

5

YEAR THAT WAS THE

BY SOPHIE BOOT

FEBRUARY •

370, a Boeing 777 airliner en route to Beijing from Kuala

The 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak begins, eventually infecting 7493 people and killing

infections and deaths.

•

around 100 people dead in Kiev.

Salient returns!

• •

MARCH •

Malaysia Airlines Flight

forgiven us for running the story.

board. The aircraft is presumed

Love u Myles call me xoxo

APRIL

New VC Grant Guilford is • An estimated 276 girls and

campaign to wins hearts and

Yanukovych from office, replacing

•

Garden Party; they still haven’t

of Thailand with 239 people on

appointed; proceeds with

to remove President Viktor

after days of civil unrest left

Lumpur, disappears over the Gulf

Ocean.

•

The Ukrainian parliament votes

him with Oleksandr Turchynov,

women are abducted and held

minds. Is mostly successful,

hostage from a school in

except for Reclaim Vic.

Nigeria.

Vic’s law school drops to

•

third in New Zealand.

sexually assaulted on the

Shane Jones tells

Boyd-Wilson path over the

Auckland students

Easter break, following

that there are too many

years of security concerns

international students in

from students.

New Zealand.

•

•

Gareth Morgan and the VUW beer in exchange for dead •

Three women are

Synthetic highs,

which had previously been

Science Society offer students a rats.

legal, are banned.

•

Kate, Will and George visit.

•

The Hunter Lounge and VUWSA

John Key

call for students to be able to

announces a flag

smoke on The Hunter Lounge’s

referendum in

balcony; the Uni is having none

the Hunter Council Chamber; this will be held in this 6

VUWLSS in hot water over their

to have crashed into the Indian

at least 3439 people, the most severe both in terms of numbers of

government’s term.

•

of it.

•

The Wellington City Council proposes cutting the number-18 bus route, sparking VUWSA protests.

SEPTEMBER • The Scottish independence referendum is held. Scotland votes ‘No’ to • independence with a 55 per cent majority. Only four (of 32) councils vote for independence.

• The United States and several

M AY • •

after being shot down by a missile.

298 people die, including 15 crew

Student representatives regain the ability to vote on Academic Board.

Budget 2014 doesn’t have much

members.

•

•

Over 300 students march along

•

Allowances. Thank fuck: I need a

of the new School of Biological Sciences at Kelburn Campus, and

We were on holiday. BUT IN

plans for the redevelopment of

WORLD NEWS: •

A Sunni militant group called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant

Rutherford House are released.

•

•

The 2014 FIFA World Cup is held

•

Amid growing tensions between Israel and Hamas following the kidnapping and murder of three

teenager in July, Israel launches Operation Protective Edge on the Palestinian Gaza Strip starting with numerous missile strikes, followed by a ground invasion a week later. In seven weeks of fighting, 2100 Palestinians and 71 Israelis are killed.

•

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (a

THE OPINION ISSUE

the election.

•

of fuckface Assange’s involvement.

•

the theft of money.

•

AUGUST

•

Rick Zwaan is elected 2015 VUWSA President.

•

@peace releases ‘Kill the PM’: OUSA and Kiwiblog have a spat about it.

•

Dirty Politics is released.

THE ELECTION. What a great night.

•

VUWSA withdraws from NZUSA.

•

VUWSA becomes officially prochoice, following a referendum at its AGM.

OCTOBER

The Pasifika Students’ Council former president is implicated in

Kim Dotcom’s ‘Moment of Truth’ is a massive flop, not least because

Over 100 students gather

elects a new president after the

Israeli teenagers in June and the revenge-killing of a Palestinian

voting on campus in the lead-up to

commercialisation of uni.

•

in Brazil, and is won by Germany.

J U LY

4000 people made use of advance

in the Hub to protest the

(also known as ISIS or ISIL) begins an offensive through Northern Iraq.

Work begins on the construction

Hundreds of students pack the Hub to hear politicians debate. Nearly

new laptop.

•

Uni fees increase by four per cent for 2015, as they always do.

•

Steven Joyce rules out cutting course-related costs and Student

to the attacks in April.

•

•

board.

the Boyd-Wilson path in response

JUNE

Air Algérie Flight 5017 crashes in

campaign in Syria.

Mali, killing all 116 people on-

in it for students other than STEM students.

Arab partners begin their airstrike

Boeing 777) crashes in Ukraine,

•

The Fruju Tropical Snow returns.

Brendon McCullum Viktor Yanukovych Lupita Nyong’o Passengers of MH370 Fred Phelps Rukhsar Khatoon Whales Prince George John Campbell 276 kidnapped Nigerian girls Bill English Chris Cairns The German Football Team

the journalist 2014 was a massive year for news: we had an election, there was an outbreak of Ebola, MH370 disappeared, and MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, which was also involved in a border dispute with Russia. Israel and Palestine had a war.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) foisted itself on the Middle East. There was a Football World Cup, and a Winter Olympics, and a Commonwealth Games.

New Zealand experienced an Americanstyle shooting incident. The royals came.

Scotland almost voted to leave the United Kingdom. And we’re not even finished yet.

In addition to bringing us this news, journalists also became the news.

ISIS beheaded a number of innocent correspondents. A BBC reporter made headlines for rifling through the luggage of flight MH17 victims. And Nicky Hager (pictured) uncovered something rotten at the heart of New Zealand politics. It’s too easy to say that news media is going to hell in a handbasket, but we think that journalists do a bloody brilliant job (but then again, we’re the press, so we are biased).

Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip Passengers of MH17 Valerie Adams Boris Johnson WINZ shooting victims Peggy Noble, Leigh Cleveland and Lindy Curtis President Barack Obama Glenn Greenwald John Key Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.

NAME NAME

studies Biology and Classics at Victoria and is the resident pun-master at Salient. This year he wrote Conspiracy Corner under the alias ‘Incognito Montoya’.

contents the opinion issue 10. Nina Powles

27. Ruth Corkill

Friendship Cove

The Dyslexia Paradox

11. Henry Cooke

28. Anonynous

17 Again

Stains

12. Imogen Temm

29. Hudson Mills

I Do the Pictures

Hooray for Hypocrisy!

13. Sophie Boot

30. Ruth Barnard

Salient’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Couscous Volcanoes and Fragments

14. Chloe Davies

of Men

Listen to Your Mum

31. Tia Punja

15. Gus Mitchell

Why We Should Be More Open-

Bleak Male Rage

Minded About People

16. Penny Gault

32. Sonya Clark

Shut Up, Just Shut Up Shut Up

Sonya Said

17. Cupie Hoodwink

34. F. T. Procter

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

Coppers Become Croppers: A

18. Jayne Mulligan

Philosophical Defence of Killing da

Finding Faux-Adulthood

Police

19. Hilary Beattie

35. Philip McSweeney

Badgers of Pride: Never Tell Me I’m

I Opine You Opine We All Opine

Not a Hufflepuff

36. Amber Woolf

20. Nicola Braid

Vegetarians Vs. Zombies: Why It’s

In Defence of the Arts

Time to Stop Eating Blood and Guts

21. Jade D’Hack

37. Charlotte Doyle

Why We Need to Learn to Listen

A Meta-Opinion

22. Ari Luecker

38. Sam Patchett

22

All Blacks, All Day

23. Sam Northcott

39.Ollie Ritchie

Dinocop

The Year in Sports Banter

24. Jonathon Edwards

40. Duncan McLachlan

A Lack of Hospitality

Splitting Apples

25. Mikaia Leach & Elijah Pue

41. Cameron Price

Ko Ngaaaaaai Tauira, te haruru nei!

Sorry Seems to Be the Easiest Word

26. Nick Fargher

THE OPINION ISSUE

The Dark Failed Hopeless

46. Sam McChesney

Misunderstood Continent

2015 Editorial

9

NINA POWLES

Nina is a fourth-year English student. When she isn’t reviewing books for Salient, she’s plotting to free the whales.

F R I

I

found an old family photograph in the bottom of a shoebox. My mum’s written “Canada, 1998” on the back. In it, five-year-old me is clutching my new inflatable killer-whale doll. My new killer-whale fairy wand pokes out the top of my dad’s backpack.

In the background you can see Jellybean, the mascot of MarineLand in Ontario. It’s a man in a furry killer-whale costume. He stands beneath a glittering archway decorated with dolphins swimming in spirals around the words “FRIENDSHIP COVE”. This is where the real Jellybean is kept.

At the killer-whale show, I got so excited I fell over and grazed my elbow. A nice lady gave me a plaster in the shape of a killer whale. I don’t remember much other than getting splashed heaps, but I never forgot about the black and white of the whales’ bodies. I thought whoever coloured them in was very good at staying inside the lines.

10

S H I P

When I visited MarineLand in 1998, Friendship Cove had just opened. The adult whale called “Jellybean” was likely Kandu, a male caught in Iceland in 1984, or possibly Kiska, caught in 1981 and currently MarineLand’s last performing orca. According to Zoocheck, a Canadian organisation that monitors captive animals, 26 out of 29 orcas ever held at this park have died. All those born in captivity have died, one of them at 11 days old.

Kiska is 38 now, by far the longest-living whale. Apart from one, the rest did not live to ten. There are likely far more undocumented stillborn calves. This list is not necessarily reliable, but it’s the only one. It goes like this: “Athena, F, born 8/15/08.

Missing. Presumed dead.”

It’s been 21 years since the release of Free Willy, which was about a boy befriending a captive orca and freeing him into the wild. Behind-thescenes footage of the actual whale that played Free Willy

(named Keiko) showed him swimming in circles around a tiny pool.

In 2009, a documentary called The Cove finally shed light on this industry. An American crew went undercover in Japan to film the annual Taiji dolphin hunt, in which fishermen drive dolphins into tiny coves, kill most of them, and sell a few to marine parks.

Just last year, Blackfish finally investigated the effects of captivity on whales, including captive breeding and catching them in the wild (an illegal practice now, but it’s thought to continue on a small scale in places like Russia and Japan). It focusses on the case of Tilikum, a male orca who killed his trainer in 2011 by dragging her underwater just after a show. He still performs.

Orcas are apex predators. They live in complex communities and the calf never separates from its mother. In captivity, orcas are exposed to infections that simply don’t exist for them in the wild. Male captive orcas tend to suffer dramatic “dorsal fin collapse”.

It’s particularly noticeable in Tilikum, whose dorsal fin, which would normally stand up to two metres tall, droops down pathetically, folded over like a taco. They often injure each other as the result of different pods and subspecies being clumped together in small tanks. In 1989 at SeaWorld San Diego, an Icelandic orca was attacked by another orca during a live show. The crowd was ushered out as she died.

The solution is not as simple as setting them free. Captive

orcas stand little chance of survival in the wild. Sea-pens are considered the most viable option, providing a wide-open but safe space where they can regain some of their wildness that we tried to take away.

But rehabilitating a single orca might cost an estimated $1 million a year. What if SeaWorld were the one to lead the transition?

On a Saturday morning nine months ago, I looked out the window towards the sea and saw a tall black fin cut through the white tops of waves. The fin dipped under and then there were three more, five more – some smaller, some jagged, some with notches bitten out of them. Their black bodies were shiny and enormous, curving quickly through the water. A little calf kicked up sea foam with its tail. I saw the bright white patch on its belly and around its eye. I tried to take a picture with my phone but my hands were shaking too much from laughing too hard, like my brain couldn’t quite process what it saw, and couldn’t do a thing but laugh and laugh. They were blowing spouts of spray into the air, leaving puffs of water vapour behind them like cloud-prints instead of footprints.

People are beginning to turn their backs on SeaWorld, but not quickly enough. The apex predators are still performing three shows a day throughout the summer. One of their best tricks is to swim sideways around the pool with one flipper stuck in the air, waving at the crowd. The crowd waves right back.

H E N RY CO O K E

Henry Cooke is a third-year Politics and Media student who used to have a MySpace name.

THE OPINION ISSUE

11

IMOGEN TEMM

Imogen was the Saleint Designer this year. Imogen insisted this blurb description thing be a thing for consistency but she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to write one.

12

SOPHIE BOOT

Sophie was the News Editor this year. Right now, she is eating peanut butter and listening to Drake (this is always true).

This is the Opinion issue, but this is less my opinion than it is a crowdsourced decision: I’ve been trialling various recipes for chocolate-chip cookies on the Salient office all year (they haven’t minded), and this has, just, proven to be the favourite. These cookies are a classic chocolate chip: crispy, chewy, full of dark chocolate. They’re straightforward to make, and the dough tastes pretty good eaten straight from the bowl, if you’re that way inclined.

ADAPTED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES, PARTICULARLY SMITTEN KITCHEN – WE LIKE MORE BUTTER AND CHOCOLATE 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 225 g unsalted butter, melted 1 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 cup white sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 egg 1 egg yolk 1 block dark chocolate, broken into squares (I use Whittaker’s 62 per cent – it’s easier to break when still in the foil).

1. Preheat the oven to 165 °C and line trays with baking paper.

2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, beat the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended.

3. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.

4. Mix in chocolate squares using a spatula, then spoon cookies onto trays. I find smaller cookies work best (and they cook more quickly = you get to eat them sooner), so I’d recommend less than a tablespoon of mixture per cookie. Try for one square of chocolate per cookie, in the centre at the top of the cookie: this will stop it sticking to the tray, and it looks good. The cookies will spread out, so make sure to space them out.

5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted (larger cookies will take longer). Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

6. Eat! Or bring to your co-workers.

THE OPINION ISSUE

13

C H L O E D AV I E S

Chloe edited Salient’s Creative section this year. She would like to take this opportunity to ask a reader to please edit her a version of Four Weddings and a Funeral with all the Andie MacDowell parts taken out. You can find her on Twitter @chloelrds

LISTEN TO YOUR

I was thinking about opinions recently, and I realised that the kinds of opinions I generally believe to be Good and Insightful are held by women. Which was nice because I feel like if someone had asked me when I was 16, the ‘People I Respect’ list would probably have been headlined by someone like Woody Allen (who I now realise is a massive molesting creep). This isn’t going to be some kind of Lean In fan fiction, I swear, but I think that it’s really important we listen to women more. Everyone always listens to men, and they’re always talking and making the majority of the big decisions, because women’s voices are still pushed to the side when they should be standing in the centre.

I think that men can be very successful feminist allies, and I don’t want to discourage the Male Feminist Voice but I think it should be restricted and heard only in certain circumstances: (a) Calling out their male 14

friends for being sexist knobs, and (b) To cheerlead and amplify women’s voices,* but never (c) To teach women about feminism, or showcase to everyone what a Good Male Feminist you are. (c) is the worst. Men have a limited voice in feminism because they do not experience the structural and overt discrimination that women experience on a daily basis. When you practise (c) as a man, you are crowding out the voices of women within a space that is specifically there to support and strengthen their voices.

When I was 17, I saw Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture for the first time at the Auckland Film Festival. Immediately after, I turned to my friend and said, “I think that may have changed my life.” She said, “I thought the sex scene in the pipe was a bit gross.” Now, I’m not sure if it changed my whole existence, but it did change my perspective on my worth and

capabilities as a woman.

I was so impressed that Dunham had written, directed and starred in a movie at such a young age. Yet, I never would have batted an eyelid if a man had done it, because men do stuff like this all the time.

Of course, I knew that women did do loads of interesting and fulfilling things. It’s just that men were always doing cool things, and women succeeding seemed more special, or that they’d overcome some odds. Men were (and still are) seen as the baseline.

We’re so used to having this liberal version of feminism preached at us: the ‘You Can Have It All’ feminism. Which basically translates into ‘If You Try Really Hard You Might Get All the Things That Men Get Given to Them’ feminism.

However, it’s just not achievable or desirable. Liberal feminism tends to favour only the most privileged women (meaning able-bodied, cis, white women).

Telling women that all they have to do is take a seat at the Powerful Man Table and make their voices heard isn’t good enough. The You Can Have It All variety lacks the requisite compassion and understanding of why women don’t ‘Lean In’ in the first place. It’s not only that we hold ourselves back: it’s that the system doesn’t work for us, because men designed it by and for themselves.

Which makes the way people like Dunham perform womanhood in their film and in their writing so much more interesting and relevant. The reason Dunham’s work resonates with me is because she’s not ashamed of anything typically womanly.

Of course it’s not just Lena Dunham.

There are plenty of other women who

represent the more relatable side of Being a Modern Woman. Roxane Gay’s book of essays, Bad Feminist, explores contemporary feminist debates and pop culture in a way that is moving and (often) hysterically funny. There’s also the work of Mallory Ortberg on The Toast, which is hilarious, smart and empowering, and you should definitely listen to Julie Klausner’s podcast, How Was Your Week?, and watch Broad City, if anything said here has resonated with you. And if there’s one thing I got out of my teen-years subscription to Teen Vogue, it was the knowledge that Tavi Gevinson existed.

It’s nice to see women succeeding who don’t prescribe to the kind of womanhood or feminism that demands them to be both the perfect woman and the perfect worker. The voice that these women represent, as well as the issues that they discuss, are so important. Young women need it to be made clearer to them, that in order to succeed you don’t have to adapt to fit into a system that takes only the lucky few. They need more role models who showcase the more accessible side of womanhood. Listen to more women who advocate for the kind of feminism that allows women to be themselves without transforming to fit any kind of patriarchal structure. Listen to your mum. *For example, if you use Twitter, you should be retweeting and favouriting women’s opinions/tweets on or about womanhood/ feminism. Rather than pushing your own voice to the front.l

GUS MITCHELL

studies Gus studies Biology Biology and Classics and Classics at Victoria at Victoria and is and theisresident the resident pun-master pun-master at Salient. at Salient.

This This year year he wrote he wrote Conspiracy Conspiracy Corner Corner underunder the alias the alias ‘Incognito ‘Incognito Montoya’.

Montoya’.

secret, Captain. We’re always angry.

But have you ever tried to understand where that anger comes from? It’s said that real men aren’t born, they’re made.

So what makes ‘the man’? Writer Ales Kot may have the answer, reducing it to three words.

Bleak Male Rage.

W

hen a woman is upset, we wonder what is wrong with her.

When a man is upset, we wonder what he is going to do.

Anger is ubiquitous, but expressed differently between sexes. To see everything from a ‘human’ perspective is well and good, but we need to untangle how our culture has messed up men and women independently.

This is why I believe feminism is important, and the ‘men’s-rights movement’ is… interesting. Male critics of feminism ask, “What about the men?” And I kind of think they have a point.

Don’t get me wrong: men are the problem. We commit 90 per cent of the world’s violence. We’ve started every war. We throw a fit when any woman takes a position of authority, sending death threats, incriminating nudes or worse in retaliation. That’s our

THE OPINION ISSUE

Ales Kot writes comics about war and espionage, namely ZERO, about a spy bred from birth to be a sociopathic killer, until he realises everything he learnt was a lie. These lies include: Existence is a perpetual state of war.

Every promise is a lie.

I am nothing.

Dissecting the meaning behind ZERO and the bleak male rage in an interview, Ales Kot starts where most things do: sex. As a sexually repressive society, we are told what we can and can’t do with our bodies. In the media, acts of love are concealed or made inappropriate to watch, while acts of violence are fully displayed. You can show eyes getting gouged out in gruesome detail, but you can’t show a penis entering a vagina or you get complaints. This creates shame, a disconnect between what we feel (we want sex) and what we are told to feel (sex is forbidden).

Shame leads to anger. All that aggression has to be channelled somewhere. Kot believes it is used to make men aspire to be soldiers. Anger leads to violence.

We inherit a system that associates violence with accomplishment.

We are kept immune to any emotion save anger, and shamed if we cannot live up to the soldier ideal, creating the bleak male rage.

Three words that sum up the conditioning of an entire gender.

Bleak. I am nothing. If you cannot live up to your role, you are shamed. This shame comes both before and after the fact.

Before, you have to strive to become a soldier. If you fail, you are shamed. In ZERO, the main character learns he is not a hired gun, but a disposable missile, shot at a target and then forgotten.

After becoming a soldier, you are discarded, your purpose fulfilled, any PTSD and unprocessed emotion ignored. You are told to feel nothing. You are nothing.

Male. Every promise is a lie.

When the US Army allowed women to serve alongside men in combat, the outcry rang; “Girls become women by becoming older, boys become men by accomplishing something”. The mark of becoming a woman is your first menstruation. There is no such universally recognised equivalent in men. So one is created and imposed upon us, a soldier narrative. That’s why we’re always the Chosen One, the hero with a rite of passage. ‘Man’ is a goal to be achieved. Women and feminist criticism interrupt that narrative, reduce us to boys again, and so we demand a new means to prove ourselves. But we are denied an alternative.

Rage. Existence is a perpetual state of war. Men are not allowed to be vulnerable. Emotions like love are overshadowed by a cloud of blood and conflict. It’s all

Fight Club, first-person shooters and ‘fuck you’. But conflict is only a male obsession because we are told it is ‘male’ to be obsessed with it. It is, to pardon the pun, an engendered rage. I read comics. I watch a lot of movies.

My mind is predisposed to view everything as conflict.

I am angry. There is something I am supposed to be, and I am not it. I am nothing. Or so I am told.

This is wrong, and it needs to change.

So what is the solution? Kot suggests that the answer lies in love. That there is no question answered with conflict that cannot also be answered with love.

Women, you don’t have to sympathise, but please empathise. Men must be told that there is more than one way to be. If you want them to change, tell them in a language they understand. To my mind, the bleak male rage sums it up perfectly.

Men, identify where the external narrative matches our internal narrative, and correct accordingly. Locate the tumour, then cut it out. I’m just a diagnostician. Now send yourself to surgery. Don’t believe the lies you are told.

Existence is the manifestation of love.

Make every promise wholeheartedly.

You are something.

15

P E N N Y G A U LT

Nearing the end of her BA/LLB, Penny is in the midst of an existential crisis. The one thing that is for sure is her Myers– Briggs personality type.

SHUT UP,

SHUT UP

We live in a society where extroverted personalities dominate.

Our leaders are those who speak the most and the loudest, not necessarily those who think the most and the hardest. We prefer to fill the void with noise than sit and quietly ponder. Retail staff are told it’s good sales technique to chat to customers – to ask mundane questions about how your day is going, whether it’s still sunny outside, and what you’re up to tonight. But they don’t really care, and I don’t really want to talk about it. Just fuck off and let me shop in peace.

I am a Quiet Person. I like being a Quiet Person. It’s peaceful. I like to think a lot, in my head. I’d rather say nothing than express a half-developed idea. I practise what I’m going to say out loud in my head before I actually say it. Perhaps this is the result of having an English teacher for a mother who can’t help but correct your sentences or asks why you’ve chosen to use a particular word.

Sometimes this means that the conversation has already moved on before I’ve said anything, and I end up saying nothing. I’m okay with that. Karl Marx was a Quiet Person. So was Isaac Newton. So is Mark Zuckerberg, Jay-Z and Ashley Olsen. It’s not a bad club to be in.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking it was. Throughout my teenage years, Cosmo magazine was intent on teaching me to be more outgoing, among other things.

16

To my great dismay, I’m yet to see an article entitled ‘Why Loud People Should Shut Up’. Instead, the dominant discourses are those which either tell Quiet People to be louder, or give us lists of reasons convincing us that it’s okay to be a Quiet Person – as if we need convincing. Don’t worry, we’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it.

For those familiar with the Myers–Briggs personality test, I’m an INTJ (Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging). My primary focus is internal: I exist in a world of ideas and plans. As an INTJ, I value intelligence, knowledge and competence. I actually can’t think of anything worse than incompetence – something courier companies have come to learn the hard way. JUST DO YOUR JOB. An INTJ personality is useful for a writer. In fact, writing is the perfect form of expression for a Quiet Person, because it allows time to reflect and restructure ideas before having to communicate them. You also can’t be interrupted by a Loud Person who feels the need to talk and be the centre of attention all the time.

The worst thing about being a Quiet Person is having to interact with a Loud Person for the first time. Of course, it gets better the

more you get to know someone and they gradually come to realise you’re not a mute and do have things to say and are funny on occasion. Loud People tell me I’m “so quiet!”, and that I don’t talk much. Loud People like to state the obvious, for the sake of stating something, because there must be noise all the time. They tell me I’m shy. Loud People are often wrong, because they assert their opinions as facts. Quiet People don’t like to tell them so because it’s too confrontational. There’s actually quite a difference between shy and quiet. Shy is uncomfortable in social situations. Quiet is just, well, quiet. Despite the constant chastisement, Loud People seem to enjoy the company of Quiet People. Quiet People are good at listening, they’re observant, they’re approachable, they exude calm.

They listen to a Loud Person’s problems without interrupting for a very long time and then offer a sentence of good advice at the end.

A common misconception about Quiet People is that we can never be Loud People. We can. But only when we think it’s necessary, and when we’re sure

of what we want to say.

Questions like “What’s your favourite food?” or “What one law would you change, if you could?” cause us heart palpitations because they require an immediate answer to a question that would ordinarily require much deliberation. Instead, we tend to have back-up answers to yell in response to quickfire questions. Pizza has been my ‘favourite’ food for the past 15 years because, well, I’ve eaten a lot of food in my life and how could I possibly choose a favourite??

Quiet People don’t want or ‘need’ help. Pressuring us into karaoke won’t rescue us from a silent prison. And ‘encouraging’ us with a nudge to ‘say something’ only invites more awkwardness because we haven’t had time to think yet. And you might not like what we have to say. INTJs are pretty judgmental. If you can’t say anything nice... l

STFU

CUPIE HOODWINK

Cupie is Salient’s resident love and sexetera columnist for 2014. She likes piña coladas, long walks on the beach, and big titties.

SEX, BABY To date, I have written over 20,000 words this year about sex, love, and everything in between.

I’ve googled my way to being a sexpert on the consequences of putting an egg in your vagina, banged while eating a burger in the name of research, and conquered Peak Overshare in an effort to kick slut-shaming to the curb. And sure, while outing myself as a rampant masturbator might have made things awkward for my flatmates for a week or so, it was worth it for the one reader who hit me up on Ask.fm to tell me she’d no longer think of herself as a slut. Because even though my friends are used to – and probably sick of – hearing about sex, there’s a whole lot of people out there who don’t have this freedom, not just to feel comfortable talking about their sexual desires, but to even have them in the first place.

Sex can be fantastic and incredible and uplifting and liberating, but it can also be terrible and traumatic and disheartening and oppressive, because, as a society, we place far too much stock in what is Normal, and do all we can to stamp out what is Not. Which is silly, really, because what we like to do with our bodies and THE OPINION ISSUE

have done to them has absolutely nothing to do with what society at large has decided we should. Why not put the focus on sex being safe and consensual, rather than getting all het up about details that are actually just a matter of personal preference? Rather than being shocked by what people like to put where, and with whom, be shocked that they didn’t use a condom.

Regardless of your gender, sexuality, how you like to do it, or whether you even like to do it at all, this is important for all of us, because it makes life better for all of us. It’s about being happy with what tickles your own fancy – whether it be sex all the time, or none at all – and accepting that others will want to have their fancies tickled in different ways. It’s the freedom to like missionary with the lights on, and not be considered ‘boring’; it’s the freedom to like being whipped while wearing nipple clamps, and not be considered ‘depraved’.

Living in Wellington, we’re pretty fortunate when it comes to people being open-minded about sex and sexuality. When I realised I might like girls as well as boys,

the overwhelming reaction from people I have thus far mustered the courage to tell was: “Cool!

So anyway, what else is new with you?” That’s fantastic, and I’m overwhelmingly grateful, but I want to live in a world where this is everyone’s experience, or better yet, a world where no one has to come out at all, because we don’t assume our sons and daughters will grow up to be heterosexual – or even men and women – but instead hope only that they will be happy and healthy people.

It’s too easy to get complacent and think that things are great because they’re great for us. If the number of people contacting an anonymous columnist for advice about their sex lives is anything to go by, there are still far too many people who don’t feel comfortable or safe asking these questions of their friends, or having these conversations with their sexual partners. Things are changing, but they’re going to change a whole lot faster if we keep having uncomfortable conversations, keep trying to educate others, and keep striving to make things better – for all of us.

We are each the authors of our

own echo chambers, whether it be our social-media timelines or the people we choose to hang out with. And while it can be really nice to just mute the dude from the other side of the world who’s proudly tweeting about how much he’s got laid since coming out as a feminist, that doesn’t make him go away. That doesn’t change his attitude, or behaviours. That doesn’t help him to understand the harm his views might be causing, and it doesn’t help those around him who can’t just turn his voice off.

Congratulating ourselves for being progressive and liberal and open-minded and great while simultaneously writing off others for being small-minded and ignorant doesn’t actually change anything. Sure, there are some incorrigible shits out there, but a lot of the time, harmful views are borne of ignorance rather than malice. Taking the time to explain to someone the impact their words might have could make all the difference to the lives of those who don’t feel safe or comfortable doing so. If we’re going to change, it’s only going to happen through education. If we’re going to make things better, it has to be together.

17

J AY N E M U L L I G A N

Jayne finished studying last year, went to Asia, and grew a veggie patch. She has since been live-love-laughing life to the fullest, and can make a mean chili.

FINDING FAUXADULTHOOD ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE CONFUSION AND CHALLENGES OF THE POSTGRADUATE DILEMMA

To the students wrapping up their final year of study, who don’t know what next year holds for them, and are trying to draw every last drop out the last weeks of student-hood: You are about to enter one of the hardest transition periods of your life. I want you to know what to expect, because as transitions go, this one is fucking weird. And no one tells you so.

The student life we all live and love consists of very real challenges: with essays and assignments, readings and tutorials, parties and hangovers

to time-manage the hell out of.

But ultimately, there is a purpose: we’re on a conveyor belt, and we know where we’re going. We will shake the Chancellor’s hand at the end of this, and get a dope piece of paper that tells us, with authority, that we earned this (and paid for it); but primarily, that we are Able.

You are safe at university: studying is a noble pastime. But if you’re anything like me, and a lot of other postgraduates, you will find the transition from student to faux-adult to be full of surprising changes that no one prepared you for. I don’t pretend to be the fountain of knowledge when it comes to postgraduate affectation disorder, or postgrad depression, or whatever pseudoscientific term we pin to this phenomenon. Because shit: I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do, and in the meantime, I work in a bookshop (which I love; hi, Vic Books!).

Regardless, this phenomenon needs to be talked about more, to forewarn us. No one told me how terrifying being plunged into the deep void of The Real Life would be. No one told me how widely the changes could reach.

No one told me that I would feel directionless, and overwhelmed

by possibility. No one told me that generating money, developing a career, as well as creating a life and future you were excited about can all be mutually exclusive, each with a capacity for failure. No one warned me that on a bus ride home from a temp job, out of the blue, I would be struck with a panic attack.

The surface was fractured; and beneath bubbled a deeper and darker sea of anxiety than ever existed while I was a student.

At the end of my degree, I remember standing on my best friend’s bed, passionately admonishing the university institution for the havoc it had wrecked upon my psyche. “I hate being defined by my grades!” I professed, to her sympathetic nods. I needed to not be studying. After an affair with Southeast Asia, the true weight of reality hit; Real Life was ready and waiting. Having wanted to be free from university, I found that I craved the structure, and the self-affirming purposedriven nature of being a student.

Without grades, I had no idea how I was doing at Life; to me, the absence of successes equalled failure. I found myself desperate, asking my boyfriend as he ate dinner, “How good is the burrito?

Could you rate it out of 10?

Would you say it was better or worse than the other burritos you’ve eaten?”

I resented the psychologically destroying process that applying for jobs put me through.

As I rewrote CVs and cover

letters, time and time again, I felt reduced to a sheet of paper. I started to despise the language that surrounded all job descriptions. Surely there is only a finite number of ways to say you’d be a good employee.

The words ‘passionate’, ‘flexible’, ‘skilled communicator’, ‘enduser-focussed], ‘multitasker’, all become words to describe something other than myself. The rejection that job applications relentlessly delivered was disheartening, and the post-BA directionlessness confusing.

No one told me how drastically my sense of ‘self’ would change: if the job rejections don’t reduce your self-esteem, then having to create a quippy one-liner which captures the gravity and banality of things to appease family friends and acquaintances who leadingly ask “What are you up to now?” will destroy you eventually. My particular fave (which you are welcome to use, and is a tried and true crowd-pleaser) was: “Just trying to be an Adult, you know how it is.” This must be matched with an expression, which plays out your ineptitude at such a task, and your affable nature.

Because in these moments, you realise that somewhere along the road, you fused your sense of self with your role as a student. And that you now have no idea how to talk about ‘what you’ve been up to’, because, for the most part, you’ve been living a scrambling crisis; trying to find your footing on a floating world of failure and fallacy. And perhaps we’re all just figuring shit out. l

NO ONE WARNED ME THAT ON A BUS RIDE HOME FROM A TEMP JOB, OUT OF THE BLUE, I WOULD BE STRUCK WITH A PANIC ATTACK. THE SURFACE WAS FRACTURED; AND BENEATH BUBBLED A DEEPER AND DARKER SEA OF ANXIETY THAN EVER EXISTED WHILE I WAS A STUDENT. 81

H I L A R Y B E AT T I E

Hilary Grace Beattie is an anagram of “great, hairy celibate”.

BADGERS OF PRIDE:

NEVER TELL ME I’M NOT A HUFFLEPUFF

and unafraid of toil.” Hard work is important; hard workers are “most worthy of admission.” But to get into Hufflepuff, you also The Sorting Hat opens its had to be neglected by Slytherin mouth, and weeks and months and Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. and YEARS of great chat If you didn’t have a defining follow. “Karen, you are such a strong character trait that one of Slytherin!” “As if, Karen! I am them would prize, ah well, you totally a Gryffindor. I’m basically could just be diligent and cheerful Hermione Granger.” “Then again, in the face of your mediocrity.

Karen, you’re pretty smart. You Whenever we watched the could be a Ravenclaw.” You know Sorting, every now and then the what I mean. You’ve heard it hat yelled “HUFFLEPUFF!” and before. You are Karen. (We are all we didn’t care because we were Karen.) too busy wondering who the new Identification of your own little Gryffindors and Slytherins character traits is tricky. Moreover, would be. This was almost it’s hard to say “I’m brave” or subliminal; we’d heard it before “I’m smart” or “I’m destined we even got on the bloody train. for greatness” without sounding Hagrid tells Harry “everyone says like an arsehole. And of course Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers,” you want to be all three, don’t and Harry says: “I bet I’m in you – who’s to say whether that’s Hufflepuff.” Collective shudder. what you’re actually like? This I always wanted to be in was initially my problem with Gryffindor, which I figure is people trying to sort themselves pretty standard. Principally for into Hogwarts houses. “Nobody the gossip. Imagine sitting in the knows themselves! You flatter common room taking bets with your friends because you know your mates over who Hermione they want to be thought of one would go for! (Those odds! I can’t way or another!” Then I realised even.) Gryffindor also had great something much worse was afoot. parties. But I was a shy kid, and NO ONE EVER BLOODY Gryffindors weren’t shy. I thought WANTED TO BE IN I was a Slytherin for a while, HUFFLEPUFF. but then I realised I had We were told that mistaken ambition for Hufflepuff is where you a propensity to be an go if you are just and arsehole sometimes. loyal: “those patient These are not the same Hufflepuffs are true, thing (sometimes Y HILARE R HE

THE OPINION ISSUE

they overlap: see Kevin Rudd/Uncle Scar). It wasn’t enough that I really enjoyed saying the word “snaaaaaaake”.

I just wasn’t particularly resourceful.

Ravenclaw seemed like a good-enough fit, because I liked learning and was marginally quick-witted. Other people thought I was smart, and maintaining that perception was important to me. Older men were my preferred audience – Professor Flitwick seemed chill: he and I could have had a laugh. The common room probably had some great books. But then being a Ravenclaw just got too stressful.

Having to be the smart one.

Hanging out with intellectuals all the time. Talking smart all the time. Being challenged. Having to defend your position impeccably.

Imagine if you were having an off day and you had to answer a fucking riddle between the fridge and your bed! NO NO NO NO. Definitely don’t belong here.

Man, I thought, it would be great if there were a house that valued people even if they weren’t set for greatness, or daring and willing to take risks, or particularly intelligent. For just caring about being good to the people around them. And – wait for it – THERE IS ONE AND IT’S BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME. The Hufflepuffs are probably all sitting in the common room being supportive of each other (either that or cacking themselves laughing about how ‘badger’ is slang for vagina). Down as a

clown for that.

How we think about Hufflepuffs reflects the way we want ourselves to have some glossy quality that all of society can celebrate: you’re either indispensable or dispensable; you’re worth very little until you’re worth a lot.

We like celebrating other people and we want it to be easy. And if they have some sexy quality, it is easy. Hufflepuff values – justice, hard work, patience, loyalty – are important, and it’s not hard for us to agree on that at the outset.

But we can also get distracted and compromise or relegate them, which we kind of do when we look first for ambition or intelligence or bravery and lump everyone else together as ‘the rest’. It’s not that Gryffindors or Ravenclaws or Slytherins don’t care about justice or loyalty.

It’s more that you put bravery to the point of foolhardiness, cleverness and all-consuming ambition together and you get Rogernomics.

I told some of my friends I was going public as a Hufflepuff: coming out of the common room, as it were. Some said, “Think about how well you did in fifth-form German! You’re a Ravenclaw!” Some said, “Get off the grass, you’re a Muggle.” Some said, “Are you writing an opinion for Salient instead of that 40 per cent essay you are already late handing in?” To all I say, QUIET: I’ve already put the hat on and am concentrating on thinking very loudly “Hufflepuff, please put me in Hufflepuff.” l

19

NICOLA BRAID

Nicola is a History student who spends her days battling with terminal Anglophilia and mismatching adjectives in the vain hope of becoming literary.

IN DEFENCE OF THE ARTS

AW SHIT SHOULD HAVE DONE A B.A!!

“SO WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH YOUR DEGREE? WILL YOU BECOME A HISTORIAN? OR WORK IN A LIBRARY? THAT’S WHAT YOU DO IF YOU STUDY HISTORY, RIGHT?”

These questions are continually catapulted at me during family gatherings and parties.

There is nothing so demeaning as the cruel font of a ‘Where are you going with your BA?’ poster, or the labelling of my four-and-a-bit years of grinding work as “bugger-all” and a “soft degree”; or simply “useless”. I’ve finished school.

I’ve finished my BA. Hell, I’ve even finished my Honours, and yet I am continually asked to predict my own future while simultaneously being told that it’ll probably be a bit shit.

Now, before you chalk this rant up to my inferiority complex (see last week’s Salient), I don’t think my stance is completely unfounded. Why do people say “Oh, I only did a BA”, or “I’m doing a BA on the side of my Law/ Commerce degree”? Why isn’t 20

it the other way around? Why am I constantly told I’m not going to get a job? (You don’t even know me, man.) What other indication of value am I supposed to take when my school is constantly losing out to Science on the projected payscale graphs?

Yes, l acknowledge that I do not have my clerkship at Bell Gully secured, nor am I starting my headhunted job at PwC (and I don’t say this in a demeaning way: some of my best friends are Com/Law students), but I refuse to be belittled by the fact that I don’t have the letters BSc/BCom/ LLB by my name. I knew after finishing the ill-fitting posthigh-school panic that was my experience in first-year Law, when I felt compelled to tell everyone that “I’d passed and I CHOSE not to do it”, that I was pandering to a misguided value system in the University.

Indeed, the notion that my work ethic, academic ability, drive, passion and intelligence is defined by the subjects I chose at Victoria is utter bullshit.

A ‘useless degree’ is only useless if you let it be. This socalled ‘useless degree’ produced some of the most powerful people in the world, whether you agree with their politics or not. You can thank those fuddyduddy Humanities academics

for the likes of US President Barack Obama, former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, British PM David Cameron and his Deputy Nick Clegg, or UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. You can give a nod to English Literature departments all over the world for the likes of Stephen Fry, Barbara Walters and Steven Spielberg. You can thank History for John F Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Winston Churchill and Joe Biden.

Whether we like it or not, our education is part of our identity, and its what we’re betting on for our futures.

I think its time we start recognising that diversity is helpful and all subjects have something to offer. Yes, I may have been watching a little too much Ken Robinson, but I feel there’s something deeply wrong with a person being stigmatised for being passionate about a subject that is dubbed impractical or ‘too niche’. The Humanities teach us how to appreciate the murky grey areas in life, and in art; they shouldn’t be undervalued under the unwavering iron hand that is the university hierarchy.

Humanities subjects allow people to truly experience art, whether it was the use of light in Monet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, Surrealist French

cinema, or the very darkest moments of human history.

We get to explore, learn, and develop too. A department should not be seen as unworthy because it’s popular. If you enjoy a subject, maybe you even find it easy, this does not necessarily assign it to the depths of intellectual inferiority.

I think the fact that anyone is passionate about their degree, whatever that may be, should not preclude them of respect.

What’s more worrying, I think, is the masochistic drive we as university students seem to have for choosing courses we think we should. Whether it’s toiling away at researching for LAWS297 or attempting to dissect the nuances of post-structuralist thought in HIST419, you have the right to be proud of yourself. To exert a fiery passion for your essays and talk about how important what you’re studying is.

Having said all this, I’m aware that I’m talking from the disembodied ivory towers of university. But if I was to start a discussion about elitism in general, I’d need a lot more than 800 words and we simply don’t have time for that. Because you know what? I take things like class, gender, race, age and ideology into consideration, thanks to my ‘useless’ degree.l

LISTEN I JA D E D ’ H AC K

Jade d’Hack writes Salient’s political column. Jade enjoys androgyneity, the inevitability of proletarian revolution, and Scrabble.

WHY WE NEED TO LEARN TO

think libraries should terrify those of us who wade about in politics. A library collates the stories of all our great fuck-ups and displays them next to thousands of truths we don’t have time to learn.

A library is a snigger: Think we did bad last time? Well how’re you gonna do any better when there is still so much you do not know?

This muddied water drowns, but we manage to hold our gaze above the surface. Politics can kill you or take away your livelihood, but somehow we manage to stumble brave with our opinions.

Maybe this is just human arrogance, though there is a kinder explanation. There’s safety in being small. Politics accumulates millions of thoughts and that gives us hope, not because we can’t do much damage but because maybe that accumulation tends towards the truth. Maybe when we share stories we develop a common understanding stronger than individual ignorance. If our confidence is to be more than arrogance, we have to learn to listen.

In third-form Social Studies, I was taught that there are two types of statements. There are facts and there are opinions.

A fact is a Truth, with all that capital-T truthiness it commands.

An opinion is just an opinion: impenetrable, impermeable, just existing there unbothered.

This was a stupid thing to teach THE OPINION ISSUE

13-year-old Jade. Facts, we never know for sure; opinions, never so unfazed by the shifting face of reality. The 13-year-old’s constant defence – that’s just my opinion tho – is laziness. But while our vocabulary has changed, we still insist that the ideologies of others are unchangeable.

The idea that ideology is rational self-interest deserves some blame. For some reason this is associated with the Libertarian Right, but when the Left goes on about self-perpetuating power structures they’re making the same point. When we believe that our politics are bought by he who treats us best, we see no point in listening to others. It’s healthy, being aware that we tend to support policy which betters us. Be aware of your biases; check that privilege. But to abandon politics to fatalism denies it complexity. At least in a narrow economic sense, people often vote against their self-interest – see affluent Aro Valley Greens, see the conservative working class. Politics is expression of tribal identity, and tribalism allows us empathy.

Besides, policies are often much too complex for narrow analysis of power, and that which empowers can still hurt – see masculinity and being a man, see income inequality

and social sickness. We convince ourselves that our interests are ethical because we think ethics matters. That leaves us the opportunity to hear that they’re not.

I know it’s cliché blaming the internet, but humans need our ration of social discourse. Once, we were forced to take from those who surrounded us, no matter their beliefs. But we’re lazy, and it’s easier to talk when we won’t be challenged. The internet allows us to avoid critical self-reflection.

Those who’ve moved from the provinces to Wellington will know the feeling. In small towns, you have to listen to everyone; in cities, you’re given a bubble. The internet is this on a planetary scale. It’s easy to talk only to the like-minded, but it’s not healthy. We need to start talking to the randoms who surround us.

But that’s difficult. Ideological bubbles develop their own language. Feminists talk about intersectional agency, conservatives talk about the fragility of the social fabric, libertarians talk super-economic rents. We develop shorthand for the discussions we’re used to, making our conversations inaccessible to those unaccustomed. We talk past each other, not knowing when we disagree and when we don’t. We ask different questions and find ourselves shocked when we hear

different answers.

There is a solution, but it’s hard.

It’s hard listening to numpties tell us we’re wrong. But even harder is really smart people telling us we’re wrong. Find good thinkers who pinpoint exactly the part of your social theory which is vulnerable: I promise you, they exist. If you’re right-wing, read Naomi Klein; if you’re left-wing, read Tyler Cowen. If you’re pro-war, read Chomsky; if you’re anti-war, read Hitchens. If you’re a liberal, read Douthat; if you’re a conservative, read Tumblr. Being told you are wrong by intelligent people hurts.

But eventually it will make you stronger.

We don’t need to read Foucault or Hayek to know society is complicated. For politics to work, we have to combine our stories with the stories of others. If we ever do find social progress, it won’t be in this echoey cavern.

It’ll be out there, out where you can ask a question and not know how you will be answered.

Wading through the political mud is terrifying when we can’t know what our boots might kick.

Our brightest illumination is that offered by others, people who can point exactly where we might be stepping wrong. They’re telling us, I promise, but we need to learn to listen. l

HONESTLY MATE FUCK YOU. NAH FUCK YOU AYE HAHA!!!! ahaha burn!! fucking shame lol ha.

21

NA A R IMLEUN EA CK MEER

Ari hasn’t written a blurb like everyone else. She is 22 (I’m assuming). Blurb by Imogen Temm.

YOU ARE TWENTY-TWO

and you’ve scraped your knee carrying the recycling bin back down the stairs to its place on the stoop outside your back door. You’ve scraped your knee and even though the twenty-two to your name is still fresh and sparkling from its addition last week, two weeks ago maybe, you feel about five years old again.

You muse in the shower, shaving around the scrape, that there must have been a moment when it became socially unacceptable to get these sorts of things on your knee but you fall short of finding the moment. You cannot fix the hour or the spot or the words which laid the foundation of inappropriate bruised knees, it was too long ago; you were in the middle of grown-up before you knew that you had begun.

You are twenty-two and The Lion King is still one of your favourite movies; you still laugh uproariously at Pumbaa and Timon’s jokes and cry when Mufasa dies because the tears in 22

Simba’s eyes when he realises his father is dead and it’s all his fault are too real. You can’t help putting yourself, a lion in name a lion in nature, in his place and you know when your father dies when you’re unable to stave off the tripping tick-tock of time, you will cry just as much as Simba and maybe be hurt a little more.

After all, Simba is an animated fictional creature outside of time and space and you are temporal, your father more so and you hate to remember that. For all of his roaring and bravery and often overwhelming presence in your life, he wears glasses and caught pneumonia and now has to use an inhaler to breathe on particularly cold days and you worry whether he has ever slept enough in his too busy life.

You are twenty-two and your Marketing tutor is exceptionally pretty. She is tiny – that’s the first thing you noticed, tiny tiny tiny – with a waist that is suited for modelling and even in four-inch heels she doesn’t have a hope of getting the peanut butter off the top shelf (which she might not eat anyway, mind, with a waist

like that) and surely she doesn’t dream of catching up to your clumsy heights. Her clothes are always fashion-forward and you despise, you loathe, you detest them, her pants that are an awkward cut, her crop tops that remind you of your muffin top, her skirts that are see-through, her tops of various unappealing textures and even more than you hate her wardrobe you hate how inadequate and dumpy she makes you feel.

You are twenty-two and have decided to grow up and let go of your unreasonable hatred of your tutor. This has not gone according to plan, but you are an adult now (the scrape is fading) and have determined to keep working at it until something gives. Preferably your inadequacy.

You are twenty-two and still haven’t figured out your life and that doesn’t seem nearly as terrible as it did when you were fifteen and horrified that it was slipping through your fingers like dry sand, or the tears that leak out when your father yells at you, or the happiness given through affirmation by others. It will work out, it has to, because this is your life: this is not a movie or a stage play, this is not the rehearsal or someone’s sob story, this is your life and you work hard. You will be fine.

You are twenty-two and have found life is going immeasurably faster than you expected it

was at eight when you started writing because your teacher forced the class into twenty silent-as-the-grave minutes of creative writing and it went on long enough for you find poetry in writing about how the light would come in the windows.

Now life is flashing by at an alarming pace and the year’s gone by without stopping impossibly fast like pigs flying and slowing down the tick-tock of the clock and zombies and actually getting an A in that damn class.

You are twenty-two and have decided it’s alright not to pay attention in a lecture because time is short. You are twenty-two and have also decided if you’re not going to go to your lectures then you need to go to the library to study because time is short and it’s getting harder to get a career. You are twenty-two and have decided that life’s not all that bad when you really think about it: the challenge is to really think about it and not let surface issues – “it’s raining”, “I’m hungry”, “the world is in crisis”, “National was voted in again” – take over.

You are twenty-two and have decided you like your scraped knee because it means you are still having adventures. l

SAM NORTHCOTT

Sam is the man behind Dinocop

THE OPINION ISSUE

23

J O N AT H O N E D WA R D S

Jonathon Edwards has two first names for a full name. Kinda like Cher (the singer) but double.

A LACK OF HOSPITALITY A

s the uni year finishes, many students will need to work near-full-time hours to survive during the StudyLink drought. For this, the Wellington hospitality scene is a popular choice. There are usually many positions available in a wide range of different bars, restaurants and cafés, but all come with specific problems. People who work in corporate restaurants are often mistaken for sheepdogs by their clientele, and the staff in bars on Courtenay Place have to witness dance floors filled with regret night after night. However, there seem to be types of staff mistreatment that are common across all types of hospitality.

There are many horror stories that have come from people who have worked in restaurant kitchens, especially regarding head chefs. This is a work environment that creates a very unique kind of stress, but the way that it is taken out on other staff members would not be tolerated in most other professions. While it is obviously not true of all head chefs, it seems to be a systematic feature that working in these environments either attracts or creates a certain type of person. This is the type of person that in heated moments will fling insults or cutlery across the room. More than once, I have heard myself and others being told to ‘just deal with it’ when complaining about treatment by head chefs, and that it’s an inevitable part of restaurant culture. Because the head chef is in a position of power, it is much easier for management to point the blame at staff lower down the chain for taking things to heart. After that, it’s up to staff to smile politely while 24

holding in bitterness, working wonders for their mental health.

To further weaken morale, staff are not paid fairly. For those working in hospitality in New Zealand, the Living Wage only exists in fantasy. There are fables of people in Melbourne getting more than $20 an hour, but it is all unfathomable when thinking of the $15 chunks slowly rolling in. Duty managers hold a lot of responsibility, risking various fines if they step slightly wrong, but even they rarely reach that magic number. To make ends meet, hospitality workers need to work long hours, which, for those working in restaurants, can include the infamous ‘split shift’. This is where you end up working every waking hour of a day, broken up by a break of a few hours where there isn’t enough time to actually go away and do anything productive. Working like this can only make a person tired and deflated, but it wouldn’t have to be that way if wages were higher. Without staff, a café is just a sack of coffee beans existing in a void, so if a business is making profit, it seems that the first place it should go is to them.

To go with this lack of pay is a lack of trust. There is

often one person who ruins a workplace for everyone by stealing, after which everyone is always a suspect. It is a common feature in hospitality, especially in the case of bars, for cameras to be equipped that are pointed at staff rather than customers. Zoomed in on tills, it is my experience that these are watched even when nothing has yet gone missing.

I have heard this defended by management using the ‘If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’ mantra, which, if not a direct quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four, definitely represents its vibe. This is coupled with a bureaucracy of having to go through a higher power to do almost anything, under the assumption that staff will jump on any tiny opportunity to screw over their employees. In reality, most staff don’t steal, especially if they are well treated. Even if they are not trusted, employees will rarely resort to theft, but it can only be expected that they will have loss of respect towards management.

I understand that businesses need to look after their assets, but it can sometimes be forgotten what the most important asset really is.

All of

this can create resentment in employees. The mentality of staff not caring about the businesses they work for isn’t because of selfishness; it’s because they are too often taken for granted.

Mistreatment leads to stress and distrust, but also to mistakes, because of course you are more likely to drop a tray when you feel worthless or frustrated.

Again, I have to point out that there will be workplaces where these problems don’t exist; but there are so many where they do, which means that these issues are entrenched. These are also only the types of mistreatment I have witnessed personally, but I know from talking to others that there are huge problems with sexual harassment and other types of abuse in hospitality. Although employees shouldn’t have to, the best short-term solution is for issues to be brought up with a trusted manager. It is unfortunate when it takes those who are mistreated to stand up for themselves, but for an industry devoted to hospitality, it is all too common that the staff feel unwelcomed. l

HELP.

M I K A I A L E AC H A N D E L I JA H P U E

Mikaia Leach and Elijah Pue are the Co-Presidents of Ngāi Tauira, the Māori Students’ Association, this year.

E

E eke ana tātou ngā tauira Māori i ngā poutama mātauranga, kotahi anake te whainga paetae arā kia eke panuku, eke Tangaroa!

E kore au e ngaro he kākano i ruia mai Rangiātea. He herenga tangata, he herenga whakapapa, he herenga wairua ki tō Māoritanga! Ko tātou o Ngāi Tauira, e whai ana i ngā tapuwae a peperekōu mā.

Waihoki, ko ētahi o a mātau whainga he poipoi, he akiaki, he whakatenatena i te hunga tauira Māori o Te Whare Wānanga o Te Ūpoko o Te Ika a Māui kia tīkarohia te marama. Mā te whakawhanaungatanga me te whakapiri atu ki a rātou, ka noho a Ngāi Tauira hei whānau rua mā rātou i te whare wānanga.

I tēnei tau tonu he nui ngā piki me ngā heke i runga i ta tātou nei haerenga. Ahakoa ngā ngaru nui, ngā ngaru pukepuke e hoe tonu ana te waka o Ngāi Tauira me te mea hoki e pae ana ki uta. Ko ngā takunetanga o te tau nei ko ngā momo kēmu patapātai, kapa haka, te Hui whakapūmau , Te wiki o te reo Māori hoki. Ko tētahi o ngā tino whakatutukitanga i tēnei tau ko Te Ao marama, me mihi ka tika ki a Te Pō me ngā kaimahi hoki i āta whai THE OPINION ISSUE

wā kia eke taua pukapuka ki ngā taumata tiketike. Nā konā, kua uru atu ki nga kōwhiringa whāiti o Ngā Tohu reo Māori.

Waihoki e whakapau kaha ana a Ngāi Tauira i roto i ngā mahi hākinakina te netipōro me te poitūkohu ia wiki. Ā, i tū hoki te whakataetae hākinakina tuatahi i waenganui ngā tauira nō Te Moana nui a Kiwa me Ngāi Tauira. Te mutunga kē mai o te pai o taua huihuinga, i runga i te kaupapa o te whanaungatanga.

Ko te haerenga matua o te tau nei ko Te Huinga Tauira ki Te Papaioea i raro i te manaakitanga o Manawatahi. I ea te kaupapa o te huinga tauira, he huinga tangata i runga i te whakaaro tahi o te angitu a ngā tauira Māori puta noa i te motu. Ka hoki mai te waka o Ngāi Tauira ki Pōneke, nā whai anō ngā huihuinga i te whare wānanga. Ko ngā kaupapa i whakarewa ko te akiaki i te reo Māori i te whare wānanga, ahakoa te taumata ko te mea nui ki a puta te reo kia rere. Kua tata tae atu ki te mutunga o te tau, ahakoa ngā tini āhuatanga okea ururoatia! Nā konā rukuhia ngā puna katoa o te ao. Mā te mōhio ka tuohu koe ki ngā maunga teitei, kei te kapu o ōu ringa te ao, nō reira KAPOHIA! Every day I go into the Ngāi Tauira Common Room, it’s

packed – every day. When I first started with NT (three years ago), our office was a ghost town – no kidding – there was never anyone in there. It comes down to what Ngāi Tauira provides to students that matters to them, and that is a platform to connect and socialise with other students on this journey that is the pursuit of excellence through tertiary education. It’s awesome, and for this I must thank all tauira out there who vested interest in us.

Some will remember the numerous social events that our Events Extraordinaire and his team organised this year. The quiz night (sadly, my team did not make the cut) was awesome.

A great turnout and a cool opportunity for us to all unite as a whānau. Our Kapa Haka extraordinaire(s), Hinemihiata and Kimiorangi, who started up the roopū. I remember one time I walked into the old NT Office and it was absolutely packed with kaihaka. Overwhelming, to say the least. Hinemihiata also doubled as the Sports Officer, entered NT into many (not-so-) social sporting leagues, some of which we were humbled to take out, and also remotely organised the inaugural Battle of the Tribes with our Pasifika cousins. Te Pō, our Media Officer from waaaay back, produced a category-finalist publication, Te Ao Mārama, and also wrote in Salient every week (hōhā, she reckons, but the stuff

she comes up with is gold!). Hine, our VP, did an amazing job on Academic Board and Committee, and, through her constant lobbying at this level, gained NT an official seat on Academic Board. Rueben: it was short and sweet, but I always appreciated your input in everything that NT would do. Your screeds of experience bought a point of difference to the group. Jules and Teaonui – although not always there ā-tinana, I knew that when you were there you would always pitch in and help where and when needed – and sometimes bring your mates along to make quorum at our meetings. Taylor and Anthony – the brother/sister – you two are the most hardworking people I know. I hope you will continue to share this passion with NT in the future.

Geneveine and Mikaia, the two that always had my back.

Gen organised an awesome Te Huinga Tauira, stepped up when she needed to, and was always the thinker behind everything (often keeping me on my toes).

It was such an honour to work in a Co-Presidency role with Mikaia. She is a person who does all the groundwork for everything – she’s knows what she needs to do and how to get there, and who to bring along with her. What it comes down to is that all that we do is for our tauira.

That’s what we’re about, that’s right and that’s us! l 25

N I C K FA R G H E R

Nick is a third-year Law, International Relations and French student, and Salient’s Chief Sub-Editor. He’s also an upper-middle-class white kid from Wellington who has no business purporting to speak for an entire continent he’s never even visited.

MISUNDERSTOOD CONTINENT W hat comes immediately to mind when you hear the word ‘Africa’? Be honest. For most of us, I imagine it would be words like ‘poverty’, ‘famine’ or ‘war’; potbellied little children looking at the camera with flies buzzing around; maybe even big cool animals like lions and elephants and stuff, ’cos, y’know, The Lion King, right?

Well, you’re wrong about Africa.

It’s not your fault, though. These images are the product of centuries of ignorance and oppression.

There has been a consistent and remarkably persistent narrative created of Africa which says that it is ‘the Dark Continent’ full of savage, uncivilised people. Under this narrative, it’s easy to see how such atrocities as the slave trade or the Belgian King Leopold’s tyrannical reign over the Congo Free State, which saw tens of millions of Africans sold and up to ten million Congolese killed respectively, could be ‘justified’.

And these images are reinforced when we turn on the news here in New Zealand, and the only time we ever hear about Africa is when ‘pirates’ have seized another ship off the coast of Somalia, or Islamist terror group Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria.

From earlier colonial times, when European map-makers decorated Africa’s unexplored interior on their maps with “elephants for want of towns”, not much has 26

changed. Even well educated, intelligent people I know and love have a blind spot when it comes to Africa. Whenever I mention possibly travelling somewhere in Africa one day, my mother gets all worked up because it’s “dangerous”. And a few months ago, the lovely editors of this very magazine wrote an article about inequality, and rehashed the old “starving African children” cliché as a shorthand for ‘real’ poverty, ignoring the fact that there are more malnourished children in India alone than in all of Africa.

Of course, there is some element of truth to all of these stereotypes – some parts of Africa are dangerous, and some parts of Africa do have starving children – but by reducing the experiences of over one billion people in over 50 completely different countries to a single story of misery, we are doing them, and ourselves, a massive disservice.

BUT AFRICA IS FULL OF POVERTY, FAMINE AND WAR, ISN’T IT?

Africa isn’t as poor as you might think. While centuries of colonialism and oppression put African countries at a major disadvantage economically, they are starting to catch up. Of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world in the last decade, six are in Africa. In the 1980s, drought, civil war and poor governance led to hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians starving to death. Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s worldwide

television extravaganza, implored us all to send money to help. 30 years later, and Ethiopia is being hailed as an “African lion”, GDP having almost doubled in the last six years. Construction is booming in Addis Ababa, the capital. But Western stereotypes haven’t caught up with the reality.

And yes, there are ongoing civil wars in parts of Africa: South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Islamist insurgencies in northern Nigeria and northern Mali come to mind. Many wars in Africa since independence were caused in the first place by reckless European border-drawing which shoved hostile ethnic groups into the same states. But there are wars going on everywhere else, too, even in ‘peaceful’ Europe: civil war in eastern Ukraine, and wars in Syria, Iraq and Gaza in the Middle East.

BUT DOESN’T AFRICA HAVE EBOLA???

No. Three tiny West African countries are currently battling an Ebola epidemic – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. At least 3500 people have died since the outbreak started. It is a serious problem, but it’s worth remembering that these three countries comprise less than two per cent of Africa’s population and total land area. The other 98.5 per cent of Africa is doing just fine, thank you very much (at least as far as Ebola is concerned).

EVEN IF NOT ALL AFRICANS

ARE SUFFERING, THOSE WHO DO STILL NEED ‘SAVING’ THOUGH, RIGHT?

Aid can certainly be a part of the solution to the problems that do exist, but it won’t solve everything, and is often counterproductive.

Despite their best intentions, a family in Khandallah sending $1 a day to help a cute little boy in Malawi go to school won’t change much. Nor will the hopelessly misguided #Kony2012 brigade.

Many well-intentioned attempts to help do the opposite, and end up perpetuating the same old stereotypes about helpless Africans needing a white saviour. Things which could help, along with well-targeted aid? Real global action on climate change (Ha! We can dream.), as the Sahara desert continues to spread south and droughts intensify. Continuing to develop strong trade and investment ties with China; maybe even ending selfish agricultural subsidies in the developed world, opening up markets for African exports.

SO, WHAT NOW?

This article has been a bit all over the place. If there’s one thing you take from it, I hope it is a realisation that there’s so much more to Africa than the shit you see on the news. From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Africans are ordinary people going about their lives like the rest of us, trying to get by.

Don’t patronise 1.1 billion people by dismissing them all as poor and miserable. They’re not. l

RUTH CORKILL

Ruth Corkill is studying towards her Master’s in Physics at Victoria University of Wellington. Her work has recently appeared or is upcoming in New Welsh Review, Poetry24, Tuesday Poem, The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, The Dominion Post, Hue & Cry, The Listener, Jaam, and Landfall.

T H E

P DOX

I can’t read an analogue clock; I don’t know my left and right, my times tables or the order of the months in the year. I lose track when counting, I can’t spell ‘fire’, ‘because’, ‘clever’ or almost anything with a DOUBLE CONSONANT (turns out I can’t spell ‘double’ or ‘consonant’ either; thank Les Earnest for spell check) but I am in my final year of my Master’s in Physics and my writing life is going PRETTY well. I am, as they say, a highfunctioning dyslexic.

Mine is a happy story. I was THE OPINION ISSUE

born to parents with resources and know-how (my mother is a clinical psychologist who works in child development), at a time when people were beginning to realise that dyslexia is associated with strengths of higher cognitive and linguistic functioning, reasoning, conceptual abilities, and problem-solving. I was diagnosed early and was able to learn techniques for DISGUISING or combatting my specific DIFFICULTIES. However, the truth is that outside of my little Eden, dyslexia goes undiagnosed, misunderstood and ostracised.

‘Dyslexia’ is a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence. It is a specific learning disability. Unfortunately, the specific skills that it affects are the same skills that we use to assess intelligence and learning in young children i.e. spelling, reading, arithmetic, following instructions, remembering sequences or nursery rhymes, recognising groups of words that rhyme or share common sounds, copying things down, and so on.

(I still can’t do long division. I can’t even take seven from ten to get three unless I stop and squint for a moment. I never would have passed an exam at university without my calculator, which, by the way, I use more slowly than other people because I can’t learn where the different buttons are.)

These difficulties are the result of ‘processing BREAKdowns’ which in LAYMAN’S terms means that the way your brain is wired won’t allow you to perform a task using the simple methods that a ‘normal’ brain would. You find yourself stuck with no idea how to process the information that everyone around you is merrily ploughing through. To me,

WHEN I’m working on a physics

question that requires algebra, REASONING and integrating information and I suddenly hit the bit where I need to find 4 squared (it’s 16, by the way) or 12/3 (it’s 4), it’s as though my brain suddenly shuts down.

Why is that any different from anyone else? We all have things that we are useless at, right? But the particular barb of something like dyslexia is the huge discrepancy between how well a student performs a specific task (please read this section aloud to the class) and their overall intellectual capabilities.

The reason that this matters in an academic setting is that specific LEARNING difficulties can prevent someone from PERFORMING well in an assessment designed to assess higher-level thinking. I took the AUSTRALIAN Maths Competition tests every year at high school. The questions supposedly increase in difficulty as you go along, but, although my overall score was always high, I would get most of the questions in the first two sections wrong.

Basic arithmetic is a bitch.

DYSLEXIC students have to endure being repeatedly misrepresented by their test results because they are assessed in ways that disadvantage them.

That’s why it can be so hurtful when other students challenge the assistance that some dyslexic students are given, such as reader/writers, extra time, or calculators, which are provided

by Disability Services at Vic to those who need them to get through exams. The idea is that there is no reason why not being able to read a question quickly should prevent you from getting a degree in Computer Sciences if you understand computer science.

Before you neuro-normal chaps drop a comment like “I could

have got an A too if I’d had an extra half-hour”, consider whether you would like a processing breakdown to go with that half hour.

Beautiful things are happening these days in neurodiversity.

There are organisations like the Yale Centre for Dyslexia & Creativity, whose mission is “to uncover and illuminate the strengths of those with dyslexia, disseminate information, practical advice, and the latest innovations from scientific research, and transform the lives of children and adults with dyslexia”. The UK’s Government Communications Headquarters employs 120 neuro-diverse intelligence officers who are relied on for their “dispassionate, logical and analytical” approaches. More than 100 of those are dyslexic and dyspraxic. But it was only in April 2007, after much hard work by the DYSLEXIA Foundation of New Zealand, that the New Zealand Government finally recognised dyslexia. Before then, the education system didn’t even recognise that DYSLEXIA was a thing, let alone take steps to accommodate dyslexics.

The point is, dyslexia shouldn’t be defined in terms of what it stops you from doing easily; rather, dyslexics need to be recognised as a group of people whose brains work differently.

To FINISH, here is a quick list of famous dyslexics to convince you that society has something to gain by exploiting our intellectual queerness: Lewis Carroll, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, John Lennon, Don Mullan, Pablo Picasso, Louis Rosenberg, Jules Verne, Lee Kuan Yew, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Galileo Galilee.

BY THE WAY, THE WORDS IN BOLD ARE THE ONES I SPELT INCORRECTLY AS I WROTE. l 27

ANONYMOUS

Anonymous is a student double-majoring in Mathematics and Philosophy. He wishes to give himself and others a way to defend themselves against illegitimate power that stems from our institutions; namely the corporations, state, media and university.

ST AI NS

n this opinion piece, I would like to make a simple ethical argument.

The argument is that those with privilege have a moral responsibility to undermine illegitimate authority. I do not mean those privileged in the

28

business and state sector, who, I might be expected to argue, should try to undermine their own authority. It would be a moral thing for them to do so, but given the history of those two institutions we shouldn’t expect it.

There are people who have smaller privileges, such as having the opportunity to write honestly to thousands of students. That is the privilege that Salient has. When I speak of illegitimate authority, I mean those who are responsible for New Zealand’s biggest political change in the last 30 years. The change towards neoliberal policy.

What is ‘neoliberalism’?

Neoliberalism is the policy of stagnating real wages, persistent unemployment, an atomised workforce, turning social-purposedriven assets into short-term profit-purpose-driven assets, the introduction of student fees, socialising costs while privatising profit through bailouts and state subsidies. Increasing prison, military and ‘intelligence’ spending, while cutting social spending. The three biggest political parties unanimously support neoliberalism, with the Left being slightly less supportive than the Right. Neoliberalism, in a sense, is a war on the population.

One side of that war wishes to impose a certain human nature in the population.

That human nature consists of not caring about

other people, being passive, obedient, and not being able to even have the thought that you should have some sort of say in the political decisions that matter.

If we trace back the causes of neoliberalism, it is not hard to find out where it came from. Trace it back 200 years, and it is what was called ‘classical liberalism’.

Which, after being perverted into an ideology, came to espouse the belief that a human’s value is that which they can bargain for on the marketplace. But let’s just go back about 40 years, when that value system was repackaged and hence called ‘neoliberalism’. The policies of neoliberalism were designed and implemented by American elites. In American academia, economists trained at prestigious universities became the priests of neoliberalism, by using economic models to justify the system that America was about to impose on the Third World. Some of the economists were trained at MIT or Chicago University, and went back to run the economies of Latin American countries. In all of the countries which followed the advice of these economists, the economy became a complete disaster. This is why political scientists call the 1980s ‘The Lost Decade’, since there was little-tono economic growth for the Third World during this period.

In New Zealand, neoliberalism was introduced in 1984. But not because it was imposed. Professor Jane Kelsey in The New Zealand Experiment documented the implementation of neoliberalism, which was something our country’s arrogant and deluded leaders took up voluntarily, dismissing the overwhelming opposition to them by the general population which reached its peak during the 1990s with a depression. In our own universities, economists took to teaching the economic models

that support neoliberalism.

Well, since the ’80s, things haven’t got much better. There has been some reversion, but not much. In some cases, it has gotten worse. In academia, there has been overwhelming passivity and obedience towards these changes.

Most economists have become a major threat to the population by taking up the teaching of these economic theorems. This has come from rejecting the moral principle I argue for: that privileged people should undermine illegitimate authority.

And instead of undermining authority, most of academia has been obedient towards it, whether they justify it or do nothing about it.

One critic, economist and Professor Steve Keen argues (while referring to the dominant school of thought in economics) that, “if change is to come, it will be from the young, who have not yet been indoctrinated into a neoclassical way of thinking.”

We who are young must challenge the authority of those who want us to obey. And I believe Salient has a great responsibility to do this, since they have the power to write for thousands of students.

Salient could start by removing some of the news which shouldn’t really be called news but infotainment.

There are plenty of cases of illegitimate authority around here that we can question. For example, the student fees which have been rising have no good justification behind them, certainly not the one given by the Vice-Chancellor.

Student fees are simply there to increase obedience. They indoctrinate students such that they have to work more, and when people work more they have less time to think about fighting the human nature that businesses want to instil in us. l

HUDSON MILLS

Hudson is a Psychology/Anthropology major with an acute awareness of the prestige that his BA will hold when he enters the workforce next year. He has prepared himself for a series of painful rejections, and is now resigned to a life characterised by crippling debt and the consistent abuse of drugs and alcohol.

HOORAY FOR HYPOCRISY!

y insisting that people act in accordance with their conception of morality and rationality (“Practice what you preach!”), we corrupt our facility for rational thought with our capacity for irrational behaviour. These two operate on different levels, and to demand a correspondence between them is to demand that our rationality does not extend beyond that represented by our behaviour.

Consider your failure to provide change to beggars. Having refused to perform this act of kindness, you are not entitled to proclaim the selfishness that such a refusal entails. This strange cultural rule is child to a flawed premise: that one’s behaviour corresponds to one’s rational conception of the world. This is of course entirely untrue, and the source of much frustration as we continue to act against our ‘better judgment’. I need hardly provide examples, but since we’re here, the diagnosis of a phobia requires a recognition by the subject that his fears are irrational and problematic. In other words, the arachnophobic man knows that the danger posed by spiders is not nearly so great as to warrant the level of anxiety which spiders provoke within him.

THE OPINION ISSUE

The problem which people seem to have with statements such as this one (about the selfishness of hoarding money) is that the speaker seems to be evaluating themselves using a different criteria to the one they are using when evaluating others.

This conception follows from the aforementioned premise (that we act rationally), because to admonish selfishness would, for the rational person, mean not practicing selfishness, and certainly not the specific selfish behaviour with which they have taken issue. Hence, when someone describes our behaviour as selfish, we infer from this that they believe themselves to be unselfish. Having witnessed them performing the behaviour they are reproaching, we become uncomfortable and even angry with the glaring inequity of their judgement. Hence our dislike for such statements and the people who make them.

Obviously, this sentiment is valid – the conclusion (that the speaker is arrogant, deluded and unjust) following logically from the premise – but the premise itself is problematic. Having established this (recall that you are not guided completely by your best judgment), let’s reconsider the statement without assuming

that the speaker’s actions are consistent with his views.

Upon doing so, we experience and evaluate the statement in isolation from the person who made it. Few would debate, in this case, that the act in question is a selfish act. We may refuse this assessment by denying the speaker’s right to make it, but its truth is not diminished by the character or status of that person.

If it is, then we live in a world where our personal version of reality is constructed by accepting and rejecting propositions on the basis of entitlement, rather than by subjecting them to the rational faculties of our mind. This is no hypothetical thought experiment, though. It is the strange world that we inhabit everyday.

However are we to reconcile the absurdity of this practice with its astounding prevalence?

Why would we do such a thing, if it makes no sense and deprives us of an honest existence? The answer, in short form, is precisely because of this deprivation; an honest existence would be really demanding...

Now for the long answer. To alleviate the mystery surrounding a behaviour, we need only describe two basic components: the means and the motivation (because if we want to, and we can, then we will).

Consider the way it rewards us by allowing us to fend off assessments of our moral character that might force us to adopt a lifestyle which is less self-serving, or, alternatively, to accept our inherent selfishness.

By selecting our truth – so to speak – we are able to have both: a self-serving existence and a selfserving self-image, in which we are not self-serving (some would term this a ‘win’). Also necessary is a

culture that permits this behaviour, for to perform it in absence of the aforementioned premise would not be permissible. Given this cultural impetus and its rewarding nature, the PWYP defence is not difficult to understand. By means of these factors, we seem to have wrested back some of the power which truth holds over us.

Happy days, right? Well, no.

Imagine the following scenario.

A billionaire (let’s call him Nick Hanauer) exclaims that he has far more money than he deserves or needs. The news station hosting the interview (let’s call it Fox) refuses even to engage with the quite valid ethical and economical argument which Nick is presenting. Instead, they point out the dissonance between his immense wealth and his conviction that he ought not to have it. But what if Nick’s right? Do we really expect him to abandon his wealth voluntarily?

Do we require that he do so just to prove he’s authentic?

Shouldn’t we celebrate his bravery; even his hypocrisy? If these are the people whom we most want to change, then it is surely their allegiance that we ought to value most. l

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RUTH BARNARD

Ruth is a Media Studies and Culture and Context Design student. If she had to be anyone else, she would be Ratty from Wind in the Willows.

AND FRAGMENTS OF MEN think we need to start our own little rebellion in the midst of our seemingly normal everyday lives. I propose a Mad Makers Movement; this movement is about taking action as individuals to splash a bit of excitement into the day and sprinkle our evenings with imagination. It’s important to make, cook, fix, draw, reinvent and write things as much as we can so that we can see ourselves in things we have made other than in things we buy and consume.

Interestingly, a much older movement, the Arts and Crafts movement, was a reaction against the First Industrial Revolution (1760–1840). The arts-and-crafts types disliked (among other things) the way in which production had become a

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monotonous task for the industrial worker, devoid of any feeling or pride in the things being produced. John Ruskin, a general artsy, writer, socialist type of the 19th century, inspired much of the Arts and Crafts movement.

In The Stones of Venice (1853), he explains (very poetically) that the production process drains the maker of any sort of connection to the design and even to oneself: “[i]t is not, truly speaking the labor that is divided but the men – divided into

mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life.” Although clearly not as drastic, I think that in some sense, we can often all finish our day’s work feeling like fragments of men, and may feel a bit machinelike ourselves, constantly typing out essays on the computer, freely giving our time to social networks and draining away our energy into faceless industries online or at work. So I think it’s time we acted against this in a creative way: although different from the Arts and Crafts movement in many ways, the Mad Makers Movement acknowledges that being able to create something for yourself is much better than becoming a fragment of a man.

The charm of our consumerist world is that it feeds us but keeps us hungry, so how do we get a feeling of fulfilment? How can we make ourselves happier people?

Well, of course, as the founder of the Mad Makers Movement, my resounding response is: “MAKE!” Whether it’s mad or normal, pink or blue, silly or serious; even if it comes out wonky or burnt! You don’t even have to set aside time in your day for it; you could just take a bit more care in something you already do, like that dinner you always cook. You could re-create it a little, make the couscous into a volcano with all the spicy bean lava spilling out the top (yes, I have done this, and yes, it was awesome); you could even just make your bed in a slightly different way, or even throw the covers off and make a fort.

As you come to the end of reading this, you may already be noticing the texture of the page, the way the corners fold so easily; what if you were to make a paper plane later or now? This Mad Makers Movement is so much more than craft and art: it’s about imagination and creation, creating anything you desire (even a movement).

Manifest your emotions, desire, humour and passion in something you can hold, read or sing.

Without these things, life would be pretty dull, so, to help you get started, I’ve made a fun list of ideas below to get you even more excited. Go forth and create! l

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Make a yoghurt-, muesliand fruit-layered glass of awesomeness for breakfast (decorate the top however you see fit.)

Collect treasures throughout the day with the aim of making something with them when you get home (even if it’s ridiculous... that’s your day in an object!)

Rearrange your room in a new funky way; organise the objects according to height, colour or whatever you wish.

Write a letter, to your grandma, granddad, parents, children, grandchildren, friends, cat, fish. Write it on a paper bag, on a tag; add pictures, stamps or doodles.

Sew a useful little bag to put things in: a pencil case, a glasses case (use a design as simple or as complex as you want!)

Fix and even reinvent those old socks, those drawers or your lampshade.

PAINT!! Or, if you don’t like brushes, make stamps from potatoes, or use your fingers! Paint that masterpiece, flower pot or box!

Draw a picture of what a mad maker of the Mad Makers Movement would look like. (When you’re done, it doubles as a self-portrait!)

TIA PUNJA

Tia is a second-year international student; her most important qualities are being able to channel Beyoncé and drink Sav like it’s water.

H

ABOUT PEOPLE

ow many people have you said hello to today? Not many, right? That’s because we are the most closedoff generation that has come along. Apart from the total fleeting of our social skills and access to more information about everything ever, we are just a bunch of judgy arseholes.

I say “judgy” because damn, we require a lot to deem someone worthy of our attention. They have to fit the criteria we have in our head that deems them interesting enough to approach, talk to, like. What is this criteria, you ask? It is the idea that we have gotten into our minds, through a multitude of resources e.g. the damn interweb, which forms a picture of the people we would ideally surround ourselves with.

Sounds complicated, but you and I both do it every single day.

How? I bet someone walked past you this week and you thought to yourself “Got a THE OPINION ISSUE

hairbrush?” or “Ugly shoes” or “I see an Art History book: we will not get along”, or something along those lines. Nevertheless, we are a bunch of judgy bitches.

Expecting certain things based on what we see and the little we know – because, let’s be honest, it is little, in the big scheme of things – and not really truly knowing what we will actually get.

For some reason that really escapes me, people think that putting other people in these files in their head, largely based on where they come from, would help them make an accurate judgment about them. I always thought that it was about how someone was brought up or what kind of books they read or music they like to listen to. Not where they come from. I’m from a Pacific Island, and naturally, people tell me my English is outstanding, even though it’s the only language I know. Now that’s judgy. Read more. Or at least watch more movies.

But you, my fellow judgers, are not all to blame. What you read, what you watch, what your parents and friends tell you... It all influences the way you think. And yes, this may be going a little deeper into things, but this is actually the source of our personalities, our character almost, and what we endeavour and seek to endeavour when we decide to think for ourselves adds on to what we have learnt.

And following on from that, what we know dictates what we do and what we want to do. You like what you like because you have made your mind up to like that. And it could be everything or it could be one thing. But that is how you see yourself down your well-written path in your own extraordinary mind. Or so you think.

Can you imagine the number of missed opportunities at friendships or a relationship or amazing sex or a business venture that have walked on by just

because you have turned your head in the other direction, doing this because you were approached by the universe with an unfamiliar situation or with an unfamiliar person to your sense of normality? That’s a lot of sex you could’ve had. Or a lot of conversations that could’ve enlightened you on the many things you didn’t know about.

Shocking, right, realising you didn’t know it all after all?

And with every new person I meet, good or bad, liked or detested, I learned something about me and the world every time. Every single time. Being it the way they talk or what they talk about or how they like their coffee in the morning or how much they are willing to spend on shoes... it all matters.

In the big scheme of things, it may not. But in your marvellous screwed-up mind, it will. Think of it how you will, but your mind has the ability to take pointless information and use it ten years from now so intelligently and unconsciously that it may astound you what formulates. Because great ideas and opinions and ways of life are never a single subject taught to you at university: it is the collections of tiny things that accumulate over a range of totally irrelevant wavelengths and people and places.

So open up, judgy folk, for your next big adventure, idea or one-night stand could be behind you in line at the café, and you will not be the dick this time that does not strike up conversation because you are so damn interesting on your own.

A simple “Hello” or “Your arse is spectacular”, and watch the walls of your fully shaded mind open up to whatever it is that comes.

Or, put simply: don’t pussy out.

And maybe that’s the curse, thinking we know it all. l 31

S O N YA C L A R K E

Sonya Clark was the President of VUWSA this year.

SONYA SAID S

ome days you probably thought you’d never get here, but the calendar says it is Week 12, and with that, the final Salient of the year. My tenure as President is coming to an end.

I remember the day I started. I’d finally got back into civilisation after spending New Year’s on an isolated island. We’d been in the ferry terminal only a few minutes when 2013 Prez Rory handed me a phone and a giant set of keys as he ran off to catch his taxi. That was it: I had officially become Prez. No matter how much I thought I understood the challenges I would face as President, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for it like being thrown into the deep end.

I never anticipated the extent people would recognise me in public – meeting someone, only for them to mention that their friend had recognised me at the movies last night when I’d bought popcorn and coke. It was always the time I’d snuck down to Aro St Patel’s in my trackpants that a student would appear by the milk asking about VUWSA. But those were the best times.

They have been a constant reminder to me of the privilege of this role, and the craziness of what it means to represent over 20,000 people, all here at Victoria studying different things for different reasons. You’ll never please all of the people all of the 32

time, my dad would constantly tell me, you can only do your best.

I first came to Vic because I loved Wellington. It remains my belief that Wellington and Victoria must work to be more connected, to make Wellington a truly student-friendly city. We’re not Dunedin, and we shouldn’t try to be, but there’s a lot we can learn from a city which prides itself on its students. We’re not there yet.

One of the hardest things you learn at VUWSA is that the biggest things will take more than a year. Whether it’s adapting to Voluntary Student Membership, or making Wellington better for its students, you do what you can and then pass the mantle.

We started our work with the city two years ago with the Fairer Fares campaign – advocating for a public-transport system that recognises the contribution students bring to the Wellington region. When Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford started in March, he jumped on board with VUWSA’s vision of a student-friendly Wellington.

2015 President Rick Zwaan has been an absolutely critical leader on Fairer Fares and the broader project. With good leadership, I know that this project will continue to flourish.

A huge thanks must go to everyone at VUWSA and Victoria who’s been a part of our work this year to make Victoria

a better place. A NZ election, a new Victoria Strategic Plan, and heaps of work at VUWSA to focus the organisation going forward in Voluntary Student Membership. To the VUWSA Executive – Rāwinia, Rick, Declan, Caroline, Toby, Steph, Alasdair, Maddy and Jordan – you have all worked incredibly hard and given me a fresh perspective when I’ve definitely needed it. The VUWSA staff and volunteers have all given so much in what has been a year of transition. Thanks to the team at Publications Committee, Salient and the VBC, who have demonstrated huge commitment to ensuring student media adapts and changes to continue being strong.

There are so many students to thank. Ngāi Tauira, the Pasifika Students’ Council, the PGSA, the International Students’ Rep Group, the VUWSA Clubs Council. That’s not to mention over a thousand VUWSA Class Reps, Faculty Delegates and student representatives who’ve attended countless meetings and committees to ensure the student voice is strong at Victoria.

Victoria University has many incredible staff who deserve acknowledgement.

There are disagreements, but I am proud of the constructive

working relationship VUWSA has built with the University.

Chancellor Ian McKinnon and the University Council, and Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford and the SLT team are ready to engage on the big issues facing the University. Thanks to Pam Thorburn, Jenny Bentley, Rainsforth Dix, Maria Cobden and Stephanie Hunter, who we work with often, and who we can have honest conversations with. The Academic Office past and present – David Crabbe, Martin Boswell, Jenny Christie, Kevin Gould, Winnie Laban, and Leanne Ivil and all of the Academic Committee and Associate Deans deserve a huge mention for their commitment to academic quality and equity, and to fair and consistent University policy. Karen Davis and all of the incredible Student Services staff must be thanked also.

Finally, I would like to thank John Dennison, Gerard Hoffman, Yvonne Oldfield, Dave Guerin and Kate McRoberts, who have been very supportive of me personally this year. Thanks to my wonderful flatmates – Aaron and Jerome for being the gin and tonic and game of 500 at the end of some very long weeks.

Finally, Taylor, for enduring two years of endless talk of the VUWSA variety – I couldn’t have done it without you. l

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PHILIP MCSWEENEY

F. T. P R O C T E R

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COPPERS BECOME CROPPERS: A PHILOSOPHICAL DEFENSE OF KILLING DA POLICE

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ur boys in blue are supposed to keep us safe from harm. Protect us from those who aren’t upstanding moral citizens like ourselves. They’re supposed to be the first line in administering justice. For many people, they’re perceived as such.

So a defence of committing homicide against them might seem radical or disgusting. I – and philosophy – disagree.

The utilitarian philosophy means that we should act in the interests of maximum utility for the whole of our society. It offers an answer to that age-old question of whether you’d pull a lever to kill one person instead of four: of course you would, if four people’s lives could be saved.

If you like this idea, you’re not alone. Famous utilitarians include Peter Singer, Bertrand Russell and Dumbledore. So let’s look at what would happen if you killed a cop in terms of social utility.

For a start, there’s a possibility you’d be saving someone’s life later down the line. Even excluding this possibility, however, let us consider the Aristotelian definition of what ‘living’ entails.

Living is the mere act of being alive. Living is existing. He draws a distinction between this and ‘flourishing’, which is living a life worth living: a wholesome, productive and fulfilling life.

Cops have to arrest people.

That’s their 34

jobs. Many of them relish it. The assumption among us well-off folk, that crime happens and then the cop appears on the scene to find the perpetrator afterwards, is ass-over-tits. What really happens is cops can construct a crime, decide if your behaviour breaches an arbitrary law, and fuck you up on it because they can.

These arrests and convictions bring psychological trauma. You can be accused of taking drugs and placed in the same institute as a mass murderer. But aside from that, by arresting people for innocuous things, cops are ruining people’s lives. Study after study shows that conviction, incarceration and the prosecution process results in a diminished quality of life afterwards, and even becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Suppose that cops make 100 arrests a year. Maybe eight of the people are straight-up innocent. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe a charitable 60 deserve their arrest. Of the 40 left, say that ten are left fucked up because of what the police are responsible for doing to them.

If we assign a value of 1 to a cop’s life and apply .25 to the lives of the victims they ruin (which is being very generous indeed), the ratio becomes 1:2.5 every year.

This means that the benefit of killing a cop does greater good to the community than if the cop survives long enough to get a cosy retirement fund. Then, if a person

goes on to kill again because of their incarceration and treatment by police, that’s another life you can add.

There is also the philosophical premise that we are all equal.

This is clearly not one the police believe. They target Māori, brown and black people. They are belittling to the queer community, and will even assault them. The trans* community and sexworking community live in fear of them. They regularly side with rapists over their victims, letting many go free after blaming the victim for not taking appropriate measures. They slut-shame.

Too often, they rape someone themselves, and leave them with no one to turn to because of the inordinate amount of power they have and because: who would white, upper-class society believe?

They are allowed to do this because they have the power. But power belongs in the hands of the community at large, not a specific individual or person. So what do the police give to the community?

‘Protection’. What harmful things do they do to it? See above.

On a level of pure utility in the community, it would be best if coppers become croppers. The trauma they are responsible for inflicted on our most needy is disgusting. It’s time to light that Molotov.

*NOTE* THE AUTHOR DOES NOT CONDONE THE KILLING OF POLICEMEN AT ALL. THEY CONDONE COMPREHENSIVE AND RADICAL STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN THE POLICE FORCE.

I OPINE YOU OPINE WE ALL OPINE T

his week, like the week before that and the week before that and so on, a bunch of things happened that you’ve likely formed a position on. Tittle-tattle going around about a new season of Twin Peaks, long thought an apocryphal pipe-dream, was proved correct. J-Law, AKA my personal hero, has gone public about her reaction to her nudes being leaked. A bunch of impotent fucks/’good lads’ down in Dunedin are sharing nude pictures of girlfriends, exgirlfriends or paramours on a private Facebook group. Ebola has reached the US-of-A, although whether it’s going

Philip McSweeney bribed his way into becoming Salient’s resident feature-writer for 2k14. His life motto is “Check you priv or get a shiv”, and he still coasts on that one time he completed Minesweeper in two seconds. Follow him @neverdenudesz or peruse his music collection on rateyourmusic/~neverdenudesz.

to wreak havoc like it’s doing in Africa is another question. ISIS still exists, Islamophobes still exist. Ben Affleck surprises us all by deigning to offer his insight into the situation.

Having opinions on these things come easily. Writing about them is only slightly harder. You take an opinion you have and back it up with fact, you consider other opinions and trounce it with other facts. Congratulations: you’ve got contrived yourself an argument. Throw in a couple of apt adjectives, a sprinkling of words other people might have to google, and you’ve got yourself an article. Here are some some examples of ‘opinions’ I have, some of which are relayed in the form of an argument.

Duck is the best meatstuff I have ever ingested. It should be more commercially available. It has the tender consistency of lamb, the delectable fat of pork, the health properties of chicken. It can be cooked according to preference, like steak and salmon. It’s versatile enough to be complemented by spring rolls,

rice, noodles, salad or roast vegetables. It tastes exquisite.

Don’t get me wrong, I think ducks are gorgeous specimens too – shit, duck was my first word – but if it hasn’t made contact with your taste buds, you haven’t had all the Anatidae beasts have to offer.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower movie >>>>>>> The Book

F U C K I S R A E L. Fuck people who conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Fuck antiSemites who use anti-Zionism as a way of justifying their grossness.

Law students should be prohibited from taking pride in expressing opinions on injustice. Debaters should not be allowed to publicly express opinions. Debating gives a guise of objective weight to arguments formulated under a prescribed sort of language, reduces important issues to an intellectual exercise. Everything is measured in how well it adheres to certain codes and usages of language, of course, but debaters are just so fucking pompous about it.

Gilmore Girls is the definitive television show. Oh, don’t you raise your DVD boxsets of The Wire at me, or regale me with tales about disporting yourself in front of an aged TV playing The Sopranos; these two shows, sometimes alongside Sex and the City, are regarded as standard-bearers of the ‘golden age’ of television. Gilmore Girls, meanwhile, is relegated to

‘guilty pleasure’ or ‘watchable but flawed’ obliteration. This is shit. The dialogue is razorsharp, the characterisations wonderful, family dynamics perfectly rendered and then deconstructed until all you have is a tangible kind of love that can’t be addressed in witty bons mots or piquant little sallies, only felt.

Pop-culture references abound.

Not one forced.

Criticisms about it being ‘overthe-top’ miss the fundamental premise of the show, which is that it is meant to seem hurried and giddily unrestrained. All the cylinders run to provide a means for catharsis; the poignant moments, and there are at least one an episode, are even (bitter) sweeter for the MDMA-direction that precedes and follows them.

Claims that it petered out in a disastrous final season should not preclude it from a canonical standing. Also: it’s as comfortable as the embrace of a family member you haven’t seen in ages.

Wherever you go it will follow indeed.

Here’s the thing, though: opinions might be ubiquitous, but they’re also invaluable.

Through exchanging them, we can change perceptions.

If we dissent, we can analyse why they’re different and bolster our own or even change our minds. This is how we make things get better. Writing, in your own words, is crucial to this. I don’t think my farts sound

like Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ because I can write okay, but I do know that it provides an outlet for discussion under a voice that is uniquely your own, or at least a compenetration of all your influences. Writing develops you. It helps when times are shit.

And it lets you know you’re not alone, or that if you are, you have yourself. You’re not shouting into a void: write for yourself or for a friend, but go forth and write.

Put your ingenuity to fine use.

As I reach the end of my tenure as Salient’s feature-writer/rogue vagabond, I have no idea if I’ll ever write for an audience, or for money, again. Jobs in the field are notoriously hard to stumble upon, and, for the sake of financial solvency, I’ll probably sell my soul to MFAT or similar.

I’ll develop a paunch, drink only in the weekends, buy a pet. But I will always – always – write.

S/O to all the editors I’ve had who told me I could do it; thank you for Elle and Uther, back in 2011, who told me I couldn’t.* Finally: thank you for being my readership this year. It’s been an honour and a privilege. Go get ’em, champs. Breeze ’em out. <3

*THIS IS NOT INTENDED FACETIOUSLY.

AMBER WOOLF

Amber also cares about other issues, but never offer her onion rings at a party and never suggest a trip to the zoo. At the moment, Amber just wishes it was summer, and dreams of time-travel to 1920s America.

Vegetarians vs. Zombies:

WHY IT’S TIME TO STOP EATING BLOOD AND GUTS

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o most, consuming less meat makes plain sense. Everyone knows how animals in New Zealand are treated. “Of course, I understand why,” they say, taking another bite of chicken sandwich.

“I just love meat too much.”

Welcome to the world of the vegetarian. Alternatively, you love all animals – the good, the bad, and the tasty – but don’t know how to change. October is World Vegetarian Month and a good time to discuss why vegetarianism is a choice you should make now, rather than later.

New Zealand’s first-ever national debate against factory farming in September revealed what we already know: the simple transition to a vegetarian lifestyle is the best way to reduce harm for both animals and the environment. So why is giving meat up so hard? Is it so embedded in our culture that we can continue to blissfully ignore farming practices in New Zealand that are ten years behind those in the UK and Europe?

Farmed animals suffer depression and boredom, and, because of these conditions, more so than the average human being. Put simply, farming in New Zealand means animals are treated as production units, not living beings. Furthermore, the water and land used by animal farming could produce enough calories to end world poverty. It’s not exactly rocket science.

Admittedly, New Zealanders are born and raised around traditions of hunting. Raised in rural Marlborough, I had the privilege of seeing a friend joyfully puncture

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the bladder of a skinned cow, pigs left in a clean stream to keep them ‘fresh’, and dragging lambs around school for pets day. Not to mention the heartbreak when my friend realised she would never see her prizewinning lamb ‘Polly’ again. Polly returned a few weeks later, between bread and butter.

For those raised buying your luncheon from the supermarket in wrapped plastic, you’re the lucky ones. The romantic storybook farm of free roaming animals and lush countryside is simply not a reality, as ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ would lead you to believe. Animals in New Zealand live terrifying lives, from caged hens to the 18,000 dairy cows who live in cubicles for 24 hours a day, eight months of the year.

Overseas, animal-rights activists and nations acting for sustainability are not “lovin’ it”. Italy has already ousted McDonald’s as an insult to the food industry, and their locally owned businesses thrive because of it. Thanks to Instagram, the health market and gym culture, fast food is a dying fashion. The Americanisation of our food is being replaced by ‘superfood’ culture: think marinated gojiberry chia parfait and saltedcaramel black-bean brownies.

Anyone who remembers the McDonald’s birthday parties may realise taking your children to McDonald’s or Burger King isn’t all that fashionable anymore.

Vegetarianism is a sustainable, modern and simple choice which saves lives.

If you’re not ready to endure your Subway sandwich with no meat, at least give vegetarian

cooking a go at home. Here in Wellington, we have multiple inexpensive vegetable markets. Most breads are vegetarian. Pasta, pulses and lentils, spices, even staples like Weet-Bix and chocolate, are cruelty-free. Globalisation means we do not thrive only on boiled potatoes, and even your Countdown can deliver exotic Asian, South American and Indian ingredients directly to your doorstep. Hare Krishna on campus is heaven on a plate, and the attractive staff of Midnight Espresso craft beautiful vegan cakes. It’s simple to replace animals with simple, inexpensive products, and you will never look back at your bacon and eggs (or pig and placenta, if we’re being honest).

This is 2014, not the Middle Ages, and we simply have better, more sustainable foods than other living beings. It is our responsibility to treat animals as equals. Granted, there are more taxing issues in today’s world than what’s for lunch. As gender equality and gay rights finally triumph, it takes two full seconds of your day to choose avocado over tuna. No, you will not die from protein deficiency or anaemia.

Being vegetarian is not unusual anymore and, as

sustainability facts prove, one day could be your only option. Not only will you live longer, but a decline in the farming industry leaves time and money for other things. More national film funding, a luxurious student lifestyle, respect for all animals, and a cleaner rural New Zealand are all within our means. Ten years in the future, and the meatlovers pizza will be an extinct memory of your childhood; something your children study for their ‘Animal Rights’ module in history class.

You’ve read this far into the article, so congratulations: your reward is the best student deal on the planet. Why not trade your chicken for chickpeas, lower your grocery bill and save the world at the same time? Alternatively, you’re an animal farmer and karma is coming for you; have you ever seen the New Zealand film Black Sheep? l

C H A R L O T T E D OY L E

Charlotte is in her penultimate year of university, has a lot of hand gestures, and fills up coffee cards too quickly.

A META-OPINION

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have decided to virtuously strive for being opinionless. Wiping the slate clean because after embarking on extensive rants recently about the dogmatism of others, I’ve concluded that opinionated people are insufferable.

They talk too loudly at dinner parties, have an infuriating success rate at interrupting, or simply don’t acknowledge your existence because you’re not pretentious enough to qualify. They religiously publish blog posts deeming John Key to be the worst thing that ever happened to this country or that you’re ignorant to the cause for not having analysed the theories of a particular feminist academic, like Emma Watson (who doesn’t hate men enough, apparently). All accompanied with a strong sense of entitlement to those three difficult words: ‘freedom of expression’.

To be described as ‘opinionated’ is simply a polite way of saying you are annoyingly self-important and need to get over yourself. But upon reflection… if you have no opinion at all, then you

have no personality, i.e. to nod along blankly with everyone else is somehow also socially unacceptable. “I just wanna meet a girl who isn’t shit-chat,” muses a friend of mine. How to win: avoid being arrogantly opinionated, but have enough of a well-informed, non-threatening viewpoint that is respectfully expressed in order to be interesting. “Having opinions is what makes you, you,” spouts a self-help site, “speak your mind”. Add your own pithy insight, founded on credible (and impressively intellectual) evidence and you prove you have a working brain, apparently. One proopinion blog ambitiously entices readers in with the catchphrase “let’s revolutionise your life”, because to be opinionated is to have drive, ambition and goals.

Expressing strong opinions is also plainly attractive. People want to know if they’ve met their intellectual match. If you don’t like it, then you’re simply intimidated by the sass. Respect.

People who withhold their opinions do so out of fear, it is claimed (presuming they have opinions to start with). What if you’re ignorant and other people

FOR A LONG TIME, I WOULD ALSO ABSTAIN FROM CONTRIBUTING TO ARGUMENTS INVOLVING ECONOMICS DUE TO A VERY HEIGHTENED AWARENESS THAT I HAD TO SUBTLY GOOGLE ‘DIVIDEND’ FOR THE COUNTLESS TIME UNDER THE TABLE. THE OPINION ISSUE

prove you wrong? What if the delivery falls flat? I often stumble awkwardly through sentences, so, if not feeling articulate, tend to say nothing (but then I worry about being boring, a paralysing conundrum). For a long time, I would also abstain from contributing to arguments involving economics due to a very heightened awareness that I had to subtly google ‘dividend’ for the countless time under the table. That all changed after a politics paper in which I had to write an essay about economic voting, and now I don’t hold back, boosted by grasping a general difference between macro- and micro-… something. Feeling informed fosters confidence and flourishes into profound opinions that we enjoy imparting upon others so they experience the same enlightenment.

There are some who aren’t afforded the same luxury to generously spread their personal opinion. Two journalists who commendably deal with the expectation of objectivity from the media, for example, are Paul Henry who described David Cunliffe as a “stupid, stupid man” on his late-night show, and Mike Hosking who tells everyone that those who advocate for more taxes want to “chop the tall poppies”.

Vice suggests that the historically unprecedented election result we just experienced is predominantly attributed to the right-wing slants of the mainstream media. Or take even our formal education. In Year 5, a teacher told my class that people who were homeless don’t want help because it’s a lifestyle choice. Being nine and unable to

see her as a normal human being yet, we believed her. Having a forum to express opinion is power.

A wikiHow explaining ‘How to deal with opinionated people’ advises readers to be opinionated back. That could work. By being in charge of film reviews this year, I’ve been able to indulge in voicing certain viewpoints, often ones not entirely in tune with what I personally believe but think people should think about. The stimulation of discussion is vitally important. Offering up alternative opinions using objective language is possibly the best tactic to deal with bigoted people who refuse to engage in such discussions.

Especially if you manage to figure out exactly why they are being obnoxious.

There are those, however, who persistently play ‘devil’s advocate’ on absolutely everything, purely for their personal kick in winding you up. They’re just exhausting and manipulative. I don’t have an answer for that one. But offering up an opinion at least stimulates discussion, and in what other era could we anonymously set up a reddit account and be free to say exactly what we want in the heat of the moment with few consequences?

This is all, however, I guess, just my own personal, biased, confused opinion… informed purely by, what I think, are acute observations of the world around me. Please disagree. Yet as Dr Seuss points out: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind”. l 37

S A M PAT C H E T T

Sam is a former rugby great, earning three caps for the Nelson College Third XV and being mistakenly named in the Second XV.

ALL BLACKS, ALL DAY “THE GAP IS CLOSING.” “THE DOMINANCE IS DWINDLING.” “THE WORLD IS CLOSING IN.” If you’re an All Blacks follower, these are phrases you’ve probably heard over the past week following the Men in Black’s heartbreaking 25–27 loss to South Africa on 4 October. However, such talk of New Zealand losing their stranglehold on international rugby is absolute gibberish.

Don’t get me wrong, South Africa are good. Real good. Any occasion the All Blacks meet our much-respected South African counterparts always will be (and always has been) an epic occasion, and the Boks’ dramatic win in front of a packed Ellis Park was a fitting reflection of rugby’s greatest rivalry.

But suggestions the result gives other sides a mental edge over the All Blacks ahead of next year’s World Cup are misleading to say the least.

Today’s version of the All Blacks could very well be the best ever. Their win rate since 2010 is unbelievably good – they’ve only lost five test matches in the past four years. They specialise in winning. I absolutely hate seeing the All Blacks lose – I want to see them obliterate their opposition every time they take the field. And I guarantee the All Blacks hate losing ten times more. While some pseudo All Blacks fans claim they enjoy seeing 38

the All Blacks losing every now and then because it “makes the game more interesting”, I believe New Zealanders fail to recognise just how badly sports fans across the world would kill to see their respective sides possess the All Blacks’ relentless winning culture.

It’s a culture developed through a more-than-a-hundred-year legacy, and one that is encapsulated in the current side.

The mix of depth, talent, experience, X-factor and ticker the current team possesses creates a deadly cocktail that instils both fear and belief-defying motivation into any international side.

Albeit an overused cliché, it all starts up front. The All Blacks’ tight five makes most other packs look soft (especially Australia’s).

Locks Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock are simply outstanding, the most physically-imposing and skilful second-rowers in the world. Their defensive capacity, lineout dominance, ability to catch and pass, and tireless work ethic provide the motor for those around them.

The front row is just as solid.

While Tony Woodcock and Keven Mealamu are nearing the horizon of their long and illustrious careers, the likes of the Franks brothers, Wyatt Crockett and Dane Coles have a very useful blend of experience and scrumming ability while still having a few years left in them.

With some great loosies emerging on the international scene such as Duane Vermeulen,

Michael Hooper and Chris Robshaw, the All Blacks have some pretty handy guys of their own in the back row. Jerome Kaino is a colossus with ball in hand and in defence, while Liam Messam has always been a reliable and consistent backup. Kieran Read, meanwhile, has such a big physical presence as well as being unbelievably mobile and possessing a great skill set.

would not be anywhere near the side they are today without him.

It’s not just McCaw’s incredible ability to produce 80-minute, world-class performances at the highest level week after week that earns New Zealand’s adoration: it’s his humble, loyal and grounded approach to the black jersey that consolidates him as New Zealand’s greatest man and most trusted leader. Never has McCaw been in

MCCAW IS THE GLUE THAT HOLDS HIS SIDE TOGETHER. THE OIL THAT KEEPS THE RUTHLESS ALL BLACKS MACHINE IN OPERATION. The depth in the inside backs is mind-boggling. A third-string All Blacks halfback/first-five combo would still outplay the jokers the Wallabies keep playing in the nine and ten jerseys. My personal preference is Daniel Carter playing outside Aaron Smith, although Tawera Kerr-Barlow, TJ Perenara, Aaron Cruden and Beauden Barrett are all world-class.

In the centres, you have Ma’a Nonu, Malakai Fekitoa, Conrad Smith and a guy called Sonny Bill Williams. Not a bad talent pool.

While there has been contention about who slots into the back three, I believe Israel Dagg is still the best number-15 in the world, with the elusive Ben Smith and Julian “The Bus” Savea on the wings.

I’ve made a notable omission.

Someone who’s been the best player in the world for the past ten years. Richie McCaw. He’s an absolute legend – the All Blacks

the headlines for even the most minor of controversies (despite the odd breakdown infringement).

Never has McCaw put himself above the black jersey. The bloke played half the 2011 World Cup with several broken bones in his foot, keeping his injuries secret so the medical staff wouldn’t prevent him from playing. Coach-atthe-time Sir Graham Henry said McCaw could hardly walk, and believes the All Blacks wouldn’t have won the final without him.

McCaw is the glue that holds his side together. The oil that keeps the ruthless All Blacks machine in operation. While the All Blacks are still by far the world’s premier rugby side, winning a World Cup in Europe this time next year is one hell of a tough ask. All Blacks are deserved favourites, but McCaw is essential. Just as in 2011, the All Blacks’ task will be made a lot easier with his presence.l

OLLIE RITCHIE

When Ollie Ritchie isn’t writing incredibly biased columns that only favour his beloved Canterbury, then he’s usually watching sport, news, or drinking beer.

THE YEAR IN SPORTS BANTER

WELL, WHAT A YEAR 2014 HAS BEEN FOR SPORT. AND IT’S ONLY OCTOBER, SO THERE IS PLENTY STILL TO COME! RUGBY

Okay, we are New Zealanders, so let’s start with the year in rugby, which has just had a minor hiccup after the All Blacks suffered their first loss of the season falling 27–25 to South Africa. That aside, though, they have had a nearperfect season so far. They swept aside England 3–0 in the series in June, retained the Bledisloe in style at Eden Park with a demolition of Australia, and have won their third-straight Rugby Championship.

SBW comes back into the fold for the end-of-year tour, which will be almost as exciting as the All Blacks playing the USA in Chicago.

In terms of Super Rugby, the Crusaders were the best of the New Zealand teams as they marched into the playoffs for the 13th-straight time and, with it, a chance to claim their eighth Super Rugby title. Now here it is. They were robbed. Absolutely robbed.

Referee Craig Joubert penalised Captain Fantastic Richie McCaw in the dying minutes of the game to give Bernard Foley the chance to win it for the Waratahs. And win it he did. A heartbreaking end to another amazing season for my beloved Crusaders, but panic not: THE OPINION ISSUE

they will be back next season.

ALL BLACK OF THE YEAR (TO DATE): Brodie Retallick SUPER RUGBY PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Colin Slade BEST FIND: Malakai Fekitoa

RUGBY LEAGUE

What we witnessed in last Sunday’s Grand Final was an event of epic proportions. The best Grand Final for some years, and the most deserving premiers!

South Sydney brought everything to this game; however, the final score certainly didn’t reflect the knife-edge that this game was played on. And that was the story of the NRL in 2014. So many close games, particularly in the playoffs; the Warriors missed the playoffs again; NSW won Origin (finally); and the Dally M Medal was shared for the first time in its history.

For the Warriors, they have some serious

improving to do. It has started already, with an overhaul of the coaching staff currently taking place, and the signature of some stars being heavily chased. I do have a good feeling about the Warriors chances in 2015, though, and I would be surprised if they weren’t serious playoff contenders. For now, though, let’s sit back and reminisce on what was an epic season, topped off by the greatest of Grand Finals.

LeBron heading back home to Cleveland, everyone is talking up the Cavs’ prospects of claiming next year’s NBA title. They won’t.

That will come down to the Spurs and someone else again, with San Antonio making virtually no changes to their star-studded roster. With tip-off to the next NBA season only days away, the excitement is certainly already building.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR:

I could sit here for hours breaking down every different sport, but Duncan and Cam will yell at me.

And no one wants that.

Other sporting highlights this year include Brendon McCullum notching up New Zealand’s first triple-century at the Basin Reserve earlier in the year. What a moment in New Zealand cricket that was. To go along with that, Corey Anderson broke the world record for the fastest-ever One Day hundred, smashing a century off just 36 balls. It’s been a good year for New Zealand Cricket so far, and as the South Africans come to our shores towards the end of the month, let’s hope that can continue.

Rory McIlroy took the golfing world by storm this year, pocketing millions of dollars in prize money and taking out most of the tournaments around the world, including the US Open and the PGA Championship.

With Ryder Cup victory with team Europe to go alongside his other wins, 2014 has certainly been Rory’s year so far.

Johnathan Thurston BIGGEST LOSS TO THE GAME: Sam Burgess BIGGEST PRICK: James

Graham

BASKETBALL

Now, while basketball isn’t the biggest sport in New Zealand, it sure gets a lot of attention. This mainly comes from America’s NBA, a competition that Kiwis seem to go nuts for. Now, with the inclusion of Steven Adams in one of the competition’s frontrunners, OKC, there has been even more reason to get excited. Adams proved to be an instant star in the NBA, and this got everybody talking.

He is quickly proving to be one of the finds of last year’s NBA Draft, averaging over three points and four rebounds per game, and his Kiwi charm is making him a very likeable figure throughout the NBA. Outside of Steven Adams, the NBA dished up another nail-biting playoffs series; however, the Finals were anything but. Tim Duncan and the Spurs dished an almighty hiding to LeBron and the Heat, taking the series in five games. Now with

OTHER SPORTS

WELL, THAT BRINGS TO A CLOSE YOUR SPORTS SECTION FOR THE 2014 SALIENT. 39

D U N C A N M C L AC H L A N

Duncan was one of the co-editors of Salient this year and now is like Woah what am I going to do with myself? Would appreciate life advice.

all quite painful if I hadn’t given birth to five kids.

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WHAT FOLLOWS CONCERNS MY MUM. THIS IS NOT TO DIMINISH THE EXPERIENCES OF THOSE WHO EITHER (A) DON’T HAVE A MUM OR (B) HAVE A BAD MUM(S) OR (C) HAVE BAD EXPERIENCES WITH THEIR MUM(S). I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY MUM. THAT’S ALL, I SWEAR. Have you ever looked closely at the joins of her fingers?

Specifically at the connection between her metacarpals and proximal phalanges. Two or three of them have these little bumps, protruding. Mum mentioned it was arthritis. Can you see that little scar, only really a blemish, in that gap between her nose and her left eye? She has just got a cancerous mole removed.

Back to her hands. She bought gloves recently for doing the dishes. They live below the sink.

Her hands have been drying out and developing cracks on the cuticles. Hence the gloves. But she is always in such a rush. The gloves stay under the sink. She can split an apple in half with her hands. She prepares and stirs soup with her hands. We are a family of seven. That’s a lot of soup.

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Mum’s an opera singer. Before I was around and when I was very little, she used to sing in concert halls in Europe. I once got to bring her flowers afterwards.

Now she produces operas and puts them on in her garden. She spoke to Kim Hill on the Saturday Morning programme about them.

Someone emailed in to say that she remembered Mum. She had heard Mum’s voice every evening as Mum sang while peeling spuds in my grandparents’ lodge, the Waihau Bay Lodge in Waihau Bay, Rotorua.

The other day Mum was talking to me about her toothache. She says she should have gone to the doctor last week but had not and now it was the weekend and she couldn’t go ’til Monday. It was in a crevice right at the back. And then she says Yes I guess I would have found this

Mum reads a lot. She likes quite lyrical writing. Mum introduced me to Ian McEwan, Janet Frame and Virginia Woolf. She says Yes Duncan I think what is most amazing about Virginia Woolf is that she is able to capture the way people actually think.

Sometimes I have unhelpful thoughts. Mum holds me with her hands. It will be okay. We all have Bad Patches. This is an Important Learning Experience. My Mum, like most of us, lapses into clichés when consoling. This helps.

Clichés communicate feelings that we actually have. Too often, I think, we hide from our emotions behind irony just because they have been thought of or written before. They are not corny or sentimental. Instead, as one of my favourite writers George Saunders said, emotions are as real as rocks or armies or airplanes. My Mum helped teach me this.

Here’s an e.g. I am crying. I am dwelling, clutching my emotions and letting unhelpful thoughts eat me up, despite knowing that I need to channel the positive Truth: Those are isolated incidents.

There is no link between them.

Don’t try play cartographer for an underlying theory of your life.

But I am not channelling. I am all in my self. I go to Mum. Her hands are ready to hold me but also understand that sometimes

I do not want physical proximity.

They are chopping onions for a soup we will eat in a few days’ time.

Don’t cry. Just try and shed it. You are doing amazing things with yourself. We all have Bad Patches.

This is an Important Learning Experience. You just can’t think about those things. She is repetitive.

Mum’s read this book, which her friend wrote. The book says stand in front of the mirror once every night and strike a strong pose and tell yourself over and over on repeat You are a superwoman You are a superwoman You are a superwoman. She says it helps because sometimes it can all get a bit much managing kids and feelings and operas and meals.

I haven’t quite figured it out but when I was younger I went through a phase of being a bit embarrassed of Mum. Perhaps part of it was because she was my Mum but also so many other things to so many other people as well. She was a superwoman and my supermum.

As a kid, that can quickly render cheeks red.

Mum has this particular habit of turning private conversations into public speeches. “What I think you have forgotten…” you will often hear her say, with her eyes darting and a dormant smile, slowly raising her voice so the room at large can hear her. I thought this would be a good opportunity to return the favour. She gestures a lot with her hands. l

CAMERON PRICE

Cam’s often wrong, but he loves a good, open debate. Send an email to cameronprice92@gmail.com to let him know what he’s wrong about this time.

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IN 1989, MY MOTHER GAVE BIRTH TO MY BIG SISTER. A SHORT WHILE LATER, SHE FELL PREGNANT AGAIN. MY MUM AND MY DAD FELT THAT THEY WEREN’T READY TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER PREGNANCY SO SOON, SO MUM TERMINATED IT. IN 1992, MUM AND DAD DID FEEL THAT THEY WERE READY, AND SO I WAS BORN. I OWE MY LIFE TO THE FACT THAT MY MOTHER HAD THE CHOICE TO HAVE AN ABORTION. During production for our ‘Free Speech’ issue, our ads manager Tim sent through the ad plan, as he always does on a Monday.

Included in that plan was a halfpage advertisement from Right to Life, an organisation that is anti-abortion. He asked if we were happy to print it. “Happy” is certainly not the emotion we felt, but we decided that yes, we would print it.

Partly it was because we didn’t want Tim to lose income (he works on commission). Partly because Salient had printed similar ads in the past. Partly because VUWSA have no clear advertising guidelines. Partly because we thought it would be fine if we added a disclaimer which stated that we didn’t agree with the ad.

But mostly because we thought, fuck it. This is the free-speech issue. If we’re ever going to run an ad with a controversial opinion, it’s in this issue.

The magazine came out. We received complaints about the ad. We met with the Women’s Group and decided that we would THE OPINION ISSUE

publish an apology and print a pro-choice advertisement in the following week’s magazine.

The apology came out. It received three times as many complaints as the original ad did.

I am sorry for printing that apology.

I am pro-choice. I believe that abortion should be removed from the Crimes Act. I believe pregnant people are the only ones who have the requisite knowledge to decide whether it is best for them and their potential child to bring the pregnancy to term, and I support whichever option they choose.

But I can’t ignore the fact that a large section of society believes that a fetus is a living human being, and by extension that abortion is tantamount to murder.

And although I’d like to, I can’t write them all off as religious nutjobs or stupid sexists or Conservative Party voters.

Friends of mine hold those views.

Intelligent philosophers and

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thinkers have grappled with the issue for millennia. If there is a clear answer in the debate, I’m yet to hear it.

But that doesn’t matter, because my point isn’t whether abortion is objectively okay or not. My point is that arguments for and against shouldn’t be silenced. On sensitive and debatable and important issues like abortion, they should be encouraged.

Earlier in the year, we ran a number of ads encouraging students to join the NZ Defence Force. An elderly mature student came into the VUWSA offices to ask us to stop running them.

Some of his best friends had died at war and he thought it was an offensive ad to print.

But to stop those ads from running would have been an insult to all people in the armed forces, and to their proud family members. To some extent, we all owe our lives to soldiers who put

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their lives on the line to protect our freedom. In the end, we continued to print the ads.

I think there is a danger in censoring things because they might cause offence. Because offence is so subjective, and it goes both ways. What is ‘so obviously true’ today is so often wrong tomorrow. If this was the 1950s, we would be censoring the pro-abortion side of the debate. That scares me.

Most importantly though, I think that to put controls on speech is to put controls on ideas. If anti-abortion views are never allowed to be printed, how do we find out about them?

How do we know who holds them?

Some ideas are ugly, but we should put more faith in people to listen to all sides of the argument and make up their own minds about it.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. But that should never mean I shouldn’t be allowed to voice my opinion. l

IN 1964, MY (WHITE, PRIVILEGED, 17-YEAR-OLD) GRANDMOTHER FELL PREGNANT TO MY (MĀORI, WORKING-CLASS, 18-YEAR-OLD) GRANDFATHER. OUT OF WEDLOCK. SHE WAS FORBIDDEN TO MARRY AND RAISE A CHILD WITH A ‘NATIVE’. SHE DIDN’T HAVE THE CHOICE TO ABORT. SO SHE GAVE BIRTH TO MY MUM, WHO WAS THEN WHĀNGAI-ED (ADOPTED) OUT. I OWE MY LIFE TO THE FACT THAT MY GRANDMOTHER DIDN’T HAVE THE CHOICE TO HAVE AN ABORTION. 41

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A p p l i ca t i o n s a r e n o w o p e n f o r t h e f o l l o w i n g p o s i t i o n s : Designer: Lay out the magazine each week, and make Salient sexy with your mad photography, illustration and graphicdesign skills. Mac knowledge and Adobe CS familiarity are essential. 37.5 hours per week.

Feature Writer: Sprinkle your brilliance over the magazine with regular mid-length and long-form features. Insight, top writing skills, and a commitment to telling stories in fresh and exciting new ways are essential.

Up to three positions available.

News Editor: Source, curate and edit the magazine’s news. A varied role that includes mentoring News Interns, back-stopping the Editor and producing high-quality, in-depth reporting. Up to two positions available.

Web Editor: Upload Salient’s online content every week, and work with the Editor to upgrade Salient’s website and develop the magazine’s online strategy. WordPress knowledge is essential and image-editing skills are highly desirable.

Chief Sub-Editor: Do you enjoy passionate debates over the merits of the Oxford comma? Do you constantly correct your friends’ incorrect pronouns? If so, we have the job for you, loser! The Chief Sub-Editor gets paid to read and correct all of Salient’s content each week – it doesn’t get much better than this!

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THE OPINION ISSUE

Every Wednesday all our menu cocktials are on special!

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NOW STOCKING THE WORLD’S FINEST

Hi. My name is Sam, and I’m not a Vic student.

In its infinite wisdom, the Publications Committee has handed me the reigns of Salient for 2015.

Among those who know me, there have been three flavours of response: “Huh?”; “LOL”; and references to that scene in Mean Girls where someone shouts “She doesn’t even go here”. So I guess I have a lot of proving-myself to do, although I have, at least, finally gotten around to watching Mean Girls (meh).

I’m a Christchurch-born and Otago-educated washed-up hack. This being the case, I can only assume I was hired to increase Salient’s quotient of bad sheep puns, and to end every sentence with the word ‘cunt’. So that’s what I’ll be doing, cunt. And I’d like you to join me at this wonderful maaaagazine.

As a relative stranger to your labyrinthine university, I’m going to need all the help I can get, lest I end up peppering Salient with crashingly misplaced references to “Scarfies on the piss” or getting stranded in some obscure overgrown pathway and gradually expiring, dehydrated, windswept and alone.

That’s where you come in. I need a posse.

The members of this posse should be committed to high-quality journalism, and should recognise and relish the freedom that student media offers.

They should be eager to improve their skills.

They should be ready to work collaboratively

on ambitious stories, and to constantly push me to do better. They should be available for regular BYOs. This posse can appeal to the lowest common denominator in its sleep, and is ready for something more.

I’ll be hiring paid staff for Salient 2015 in the coming weeks, and will be looking for volunteers over summer. Next year, Salient will be stepping up its online and audiovisual presence, and we’re looking to create some new roles and expand existing ones – watch this space. For more details on the positions available, see page 40.

The kind of people I’m after include: • People who really liked Voltaire’s Bastards by John Ralston Saul, but think it could have done with more jokes about poo; • People who find student politics fascinating in a Benny Hill kind of way; • People who buy lots of books which they may or may not read; • People who have a pop-culture reference for every occasion; • People who can explain why the words ‘Cambridge philosophy professor’ should have set off alarm bells from day one; • People who enjoy stunning harbour views.

If this sounds like you, email me at salienteditor@ gmail.com. If it doesn’t, email me anyway, because I’m probably just full of shit.

Yo u rs ,

Sa m

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NAME NAME

studies Biology and Classics at Victoria and is the resident pun-master at Salient. This year he wrote Conspiracy Corner under the alias â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Incognito Montoyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

contributors editors: Duncan McLachlan & Cameron Price d e s i g n e r : I m o g e n Te m m news editor: Sophie Boot c r e at i v e e d i t o r : C h l o e Dav i e s c h i e f s u b - e d i t o r : N i c k Fa r g h e r distributor: Joe Morris f e at u r e w r i t e r : P h i l i p M c S w e e n e y ( c h i e f ) , P e n n y G a u lt , w e b e d i t o r : D e x t e r E d wa r d s n e w s i n t e r n s : S i m o n D e n n i s , S t e p h Tr e n g r o v e

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contributor of the week I m o g e n Te m m Advertising Manager Tim Wilson sales@vuwsa.org.nz (04) 463 6982

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