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Editors — Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow

Contact — editor@salient.org.nz 04 463 6766

Designers — Eun Sun Jeong and Ellyse Randrup

Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington

News Editor — Brigid Quirke

Printing — Service Printers 258 Taranaki Street, Wellington

News Reporters — Alex Feinson, Alexa Zelensky, Saeran Maniparathy, Sofia Roberts, Thomas Croskery

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Salient is printed on environmentally sustainable paper, with vegetable ink, and is completely FSC approved.

Feature Writers — Mikee Sto Domingo, Jenny Nimon Chief Sub-Editor — Georgia Lockie

Typefaces — Wedge by Bruce Rotherham, Adobe Caslon Pro by Carol Twombly, Churchward Isabella

by Joseph Churchward

Distributor — Josephine Jelicich Section Editors — Cameron Gray (Games), Finn Holland and Mathew Watkins (Film), Katie Meadows (Television), Kimberley McIvor (Books), Olly Clifton and Lauren Spring (Music) Contributors — Grant Guilford, Justin Lester, Ben Leonard, Tessa Cullen, Rory Lenihan-Ikin, Nathaniel Manning, Kahu Kutia, Annetta Iakopo, Naomi Peacock, Cole Hutchinson, Georgia Steel, Dani Pickering, Tara Officer, Steffen Bertram, V-ISA, SWAT, Mauri Ora, Tessa Burgess, Lauren Spring, Jack Kerkvliet, Mathew Watkins, Louise Rutledge, Samantha Mythen, Livné Ore, Joshua James, Russ Kale, Gus Mitchell, Jay Forlong Advertising — Grace Gollan grace.gollan@vuwsa.org.nz 04 463 6982

About Us — Salient is employed by, but editorially independently from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of, syndicated, and supported by the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA).

Salient is partially funded by Victoria University students, through the student levy. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of those of VUWSA, ASPA, Service Printers, or the editorial staff.

Complaints — Please email editor@ salient.org.nz and if not satisfied with response contact VUWSA. Salient — 27 February, 2017 Volume 80, Issue 0

CONTRIBUTORS & COLOPHON

CONTENTS Editors’ Letter

8

Welcome Vice-Chancellor — Grant Guilford Mayor of Wellington — Justin Lester

9

News Language Cuts General News Interview with Andrew Little Politics

12 16 20 22

Columns VUWSA President VUWSA Exec Ngāi Tauira One Ocean VicUFO Can Do at Vic Queer Agenda Postgrad Informer V-ISA SWAT Mauri Ora The Bubble Features On the periphery of the imagined world — Mikee Sto Domingo

24 25 26 28 29 30 31

38

41 42 43 44 45 46 48 49 50 51

Reviews Television Music Games Books (back cover)

53 55 57 64

Puzzles Comic

60 61

27

Things I wish I knew in first year 36 — Laura Toailoa Ten people you meet in fresher year — Jenny Nimon

Guides Coffee Vegan Food Film and Cinema Craft Beer Quiet Bars Galleries Getting Involved Adventures Community Garden Bookshops

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Editors’ letter

Tēnā koutou tauira. Welcome to university, to Wellington, to Salient…

We’re eighty years old now but still shuffling along the corridors of this place. Think of Salient as a friendly ghoul; though more accurately we’re Peeves, likely to piss you off but somewhat endearing.

Don’t let the glamour fool you, Salient is the product of a handful of underpaid staff and a mass of invaluable yet unpaid volunteers. We’re all here to ensure that the pages arrive in your hands. Salient is also your magazine and if you want to contribute, get in touch.

University is a strange place and it takes a while to find your feet, but you will. And standing may bring an entirely new perspective; as Rory LenihanIkin, your VUWSA President, says in his column, standing may mean walking away from this place. Your path is open and walk where you may.

But be clear that the position of the university is one of privilege; it exists due to the contributions of the people, be it your parents’ tax dollars or the work of the cleaners. Privilege comes as tertiary education is no longer accessible for all New Zealanders — high fees, location, and poverty are barriers to many.

While Salient has a unique platform it also has a responsibility. It was Paulo Freire who stated that “washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” He also stated that language is never neutral.

To express our solidarity with those affected by the cuts to the School of Languages and Cultures, this week’s cover includes four Os (it is O-Week) with diacritics for each language — French, Italian, Spanish, German. The marks that distinguish them from English, the language of the administration, embody dissent.

This is our editorial position and you may disagree.

Salient is open to constructive criticism and we have channels to include voices that challenge us as editors. Debate is healthy — email your polemics to editor@salient.org.nz.

To reiterate encouragement from our 1982 editor, don’t let the bastards get you down.

— Tuioleloto Laura Toailoa and Tim Manktelow

9

Welcome

VICE-CHANCELLOR’S WELCOME

MAYOR OF WELLINGTON

Kia ora and welcome. If you are a first-year student, thank you for choosing to study at Victoria— you are joining a warm, open and diverse community of students from over 100 countries. If you are a returning student, it is great to see you again and I hope you had a good summer break.

Ranked within the top two percent of the world’s 16,000 universities, and New Zealand’s number one university for quality research, Victoria has a proud tradition of academic excellence stretching back more than 100 years.

You are now part of that tradition, and of our vision of Victoria as a world-leading capital city university and one of the great global-civic universities. Life here will present you with many opportunities and I urge you to take advantage of as many of them as you can.

Your journey of discovery as a student at Victoria will lead you to find what interests you, where your talents lie and what will inspire your future. It is a journey that will take place both inside and outside the classroom: not only through the learning we offer you at the frontiers of human knowledge but also through the people you meet, the clubs you join, the cultural life you participate in and the recreational activities you sign up for.

Your journey will also take place in this wonderful city of ours, which you will find vibrant, welcoming and a tremendous place to live and study, packed as it is with leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs, dreamers, doers and lovers of life. At Victoria we will provide you with a student experience that is second to none and will work hard to ensure you are safe, well mentored and supported in practical ways.

We want you to leave the University as resilient, capable and confident graduates whose critical thinking, creativity and highly developed communication skills have prepared you for a dynamic career and for being a globally confident citizen.

The future is yours — but first please be sure to make the very most of what Victoria can offer you now.

— Professor Grant Guilford

Kia ora everyone and welcome to Wellington!

I think it’s the best city in the world to live in.

Wellington’s the culture capital of New Zealand, with something always happening in this beautiful and vibrant city for you to get stuck into. It’s a city packed with creators, thinkers, dreamers, doers and lovers of life. It’s the place in New Zealand, and one of the few places in the world, where everything is possible.

Wellington City Council is working to make Wellington the best city it can be. With our packed events calendar, arts community and emerging laneways we hope that Wellington will inspire and challenge you like the thousands of students that have come before you.

You are joining the 30,000 tertiary students living in Wellington that contribute so much to the life and soul of this city. The students in Wellington inject life into the city by living, working and socialising here.

I chose Wellington too, and I am so glad I did. I chose to live here because of its diverse make-up, the nature that always surrounds us, and because the city is so liveable. Wellington is my home now, and I hope it will become your home too.

I want Wellington to be a place you can see yourself when you finish your studies.

Wellington needs to be a place with exciting and diverse jobs, in an environment where your career can flourish.

While you’re here in Wellington make sure to soak in everything the city has to offer.

Amble through the laneways, soak up the sun on the waterfront, and marvel at the magnificent and rugged South Coast.

We have more gale force wind days than any other city in the world, but we don’t let that stop us here. No matter the weather, Wellingtonians are always filling the streets.

It’s true — you really can’t beat Wellington on a good day!

Welcome to Wellington, and I can’t wait to share this city with you.

— Justin Lester

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12

LANGUAGE CUTS School of Languages and Cultures Restructured

Despite Victoria University promoting itself as a “globally minded” institution, the School of Languages and Cultures (SLC) is being considerably restructured from 2017.

In October last year, a Consultation Document proposing structural changes to the SLC was released.

This proposal welcomed submissions from affected parties and set out a decision panel which heard and considered submissions from staff, students, and the public, and consulted with the Vice Chancellor, before confirming a Final Outcome of Change Process document.

After consultation, the Final Outcome of Change Process confirmed the reduction of the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff of the French programme from 4.0 to 3.0; the reduction of German from 3.5 to 2.0, with 0.5 remaining on a fixed term, year-long contract which would not be renewed; the reduction of Italian from 3.0 to 2.0; the reduction of Spanish and Latin American from 5.5 to 5.0; and the reduction of school administration from 3.0 to 2.8.

Ö

The Final Outcome also introduced new Translation Studies roles, resulting in the employment of 2.0 FTE staff.

A consolidation of the School Leadership

News

Structure was also confirmed, reducing seven Programme Directors to two Directors of Undergraduate Learning and Teaching and one Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies.

Sally Hill, Head of the SLC, is confident that the restructuring will not compromise students’ learning experience.

“In terms of the courses provided, [we are] still offering all of the same things that we have offered in the past. To provide that, we have had to reorganise how we teach some of these things, while managing staff workloads.”

Salient spoke with an SLC staff member on the issue, who wished to remain anonymous. They stated that although the short-term effects of the restructuring might not affect students in 2017, it is “illogical” that the reductions would not compromise the languages programmes.

Many of those affected have suggested that the restructuring was “future proofing” that could allow for further reductions to staff and programmes.

Of the submissions made to the decision panel, a number expressed concern about the viability of programmes reduced to 2.0 FTE staff.

Nicki Wilford, the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) organiser for Victoria University, explained, “if you’ve only got two staff running a language course, the knock-on effect on teaching is that much greater when one person takes research or study leave. Courses can also be put at risk if one of the two members of staff needs to take sick leave. Only having two lecturers in a programme puts the long-term viability of a course at risk.”

The anonymous staff member stated that, once the restructuring has taken place, “theoretically, if you were to fire two [languages] staff down the line, you wouldn’t be closing a programme [...] you would just be making two people redundant, which doesn’t look as bad.”

They suggested it was “impossible” that workloads would not be increased, and Wilford cau-

13 tioned that “the existing staff [...] are bound to experience larger workloads.”

Sally Hill said, “there has been a long period in which government funding has been focused in other areas, and a decline in enrolment in languages in secondary school, which has a flow-on effect. [...] We are trying to look for ways to do things differently to meet the needs of students.”

Students and staff express feeling “shocked” by the proposal. “It came out of nowhere,” said language student Katherine Kooistra.

The anonymous staff member stated, “it’s tricky to sustain the languages as they are. A few years back we started some new initiatives to increase enrolments, but there hasn’t been enough time to see the fruits of that labour.”

Student ambassadors have been actively promoting language subjects at secondary schools, particularly in the German programme, since 2014. The anonymous staff member reflected that “there is definitely a lack of support from the university to advertise taking a language.”

The Final Outcome summarised submissions made to the Panel, and the Panel’s responses. Although “no submissions challenged the fact that enrolment trends for many languages have been on the decline,” a number of affected parties “queried the enrolment data referred to in the Consultation Document, and suggested that the percentages used did not provide a truly accurate picture.”

The Consultation Document stated, “since an enrolment highpoint in 2011 of 570 EFTS, the School has seen EFTS decline down to 405 in 2016, while staffing has remained at a similar level [...]. Enrolment data shows that the major cause of this decline is a drop in 100-level enrolments rather than retention rates.”

Wilford said, “we absolutely have seen EFTS losses. No one would dispute that. However, it’s important not to look at annual figures in isolation. We need to be looking at them over a five or so year period.” The focus on 100-level enrolment also fails to take into account students who study languages at secondary school progressing directly into 200-level studies at tertiary level.

The University has been clear that these changes intend to “strengthen the sustainability” of languages, and the decision panel stated in its proposal that submissions made were “listened [to] carefully and taken into account.”

News Amongst the submissions made was a petition organised by students to present to the decision panel, which garnered 2084 signatures.

However, when the petition was presented to Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford on campus at a Languages rally, he “didn’t even want to look at it.”

Students present suggested that he “dismissed everything we’d been doing, said we didn’t know what we were fighting, why we were fighting, we had no decent reasons or arguments in support.

And he didn’t even look at it. [...] [W]ho’s going to listen to us if the person who is supposed to be listening [...] won’t?”

Katherine Kooistra reflected, “so many people took time to sign that petition. If Grant Guilford [...] had no interest in it, it showed that our movement wasn’t going anywhere.”

In a meeting between the TEU and the Vice-Chancellor, the TEU suggested that this response was problematic. The Vice-Chancellor reflected that the the timing of the presentation was less than ideal. However, The TEU conveyed he “understood that there should have been better ways of dealing with that.”

Sally Hill expressed that the changes reflect “a hard time for the humanities,” due to “a long period in which government funding has been focussed in other [subject] areas.” A student ambassador, who spoke with Salient but chose to remain anonymous, argued that “when you’re cutting programmes, cutting lecturers, to support [other subjects], that doesn’t really seem fair at all.”

The German Embassy has expressed regret in response to the the reduction of the German programme’s FTE positions, stating “we believe this decision is not helpful to young New Zealanders intending to study Europe’s most widely spoken first language.”

Nicki Wilford also questioned the way languages have been “valued” in the restructuring process. “To show value, you don’t have people lose their jobs. None of this was about lack of performance — it was about cost-saving”.

The anonymous student ambassador reflected, “They say the University is a business. I hadn’t really considered that, until these cuts happened — and then I realised they were shafting our faculty, just to make money for their business. And that’s not fair.”

— Brigid Quirke

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16

ONGOING SAFETY ISSUES ON NOTORIOUS WALKWAY

Police are seeking a caucasian male who assaulted a woman on the Boyd Wilson Field pathway on January 20. The assailant was picked up by security cameras wearing a balaclava and grey Adidas hoodie.

The alleyway has a violent history, drawing media attention in 2014 after a spate of attacks — earning the nickname ‘Rape Alley’.

The Director of Student and Campus Living, Rainsforth Dix, stated that the university was working with the Police and Wellington City Council (WCC) to identify the offender and increase safety for students using the path.

Future plans include a new pathway from 320 The Terrace, with safety as a key design focus. On February 17, WCC announced a safety initiative targeting the walkway.

The first in a number of steps was the installation of additional cameras to be monitored by Wellington Police. Other steps will include regular maintenance of vegetation and additional lighting.

Wellington City Mayor Justin Lester said that the WCC was also looking to improve other at-risk walkways, such as Leeds Street and Egmont Street. His strategy included transforming alleyways to encourage more thoroughfare: “We’re adding lighting, we’re adding art, we’re adding life, to create an environment where more people want to be.”

On February 20, Lester allocated funding from a social grants pool to Women’s Refuge. The WCC have also previously developed the Stick With the Pack app, aiming to keep students together in town.

Buses after midnight are available from Courtenay Place on weekends. For students in halls, a safety van is available Wednesday to Saturday, trimesters one and two, to and from town.

— Sofia Roberts

News

BOULCOTT BLUES

Boulcott Hall will be closed in 2017 as corrective measures are taken following the 2016 Kaikoura earthquakes.

The 180-bed hall, one of Victoria’s 14 halls of residence, had been on a list of 80 buildings requiring assessment by the Wellington City Council.

On February 13 the university said it would not offer places at Boulcott Hall during trimester one of 2017.

The addition of the 320-bed Capital Hall last year, as well as the leasing of additional beds at 222 Willis Street, has allowed the university to reallocate affected students and to “ensure room for growth and to handle situations like this.”

The university stated that “all of the students who were expected to stay in Boulcott Hall have been reallocated to other halls apart from two residents who we are still waiting to hear from.”

University spokesperson Katherine Edmond said work was due to be completed by May and that there would be “no double bunking.” Her comments came in response to fears of a repeat of a 2016 incident, where the Katharine Jermyn Hall was oversubscribed and left 64 students, who had been offered single rooms, having to share rooms.

One affected student has been reallocated to Te Puni Village with no additional charge “until Boulcott was all safe to re-enter.”

She said she was given the option to go into Boulcott once it became available, but was “quite gutted to find out that I would be in a hall I didn’t actually want to be in.”

The new development also affects the Residential Advisors (RAs) assigned to live and work at Boulcott.

VUWSA President Rory Lenihan-Ikin said “it will affect them greatly in terms of their employment and living arrangements.”

The university said that it “will continue to meet its employment obligations to all staff impacted.”

The closure of Boulcott means there will be less beds than was expected after the university announced it was opening Capital Hall in June 2016. However, the university has stated that the decision not to operate Boulcott Hall this year “will not impact the private renting market.”

— Thomas Croskery

RANKINE BROWN UPDATE

The lifts in Victoria University’s Kelburn Library will be nonfunctional for the remainder of 2017, following the November 14 earthquake.

The library reopened on February 20 for the first time since the quake.

The closure created significant disruption to students who were unable to access the library collection throughout trimester three.

Despite the building being base-isolated in 2011 to reduce earthquake damage, the lifts were not, and remained rigid when the earthquake occurred. This resulted in damage.

The library will be running a resource retrieval service to assist staff and students with accessibility issues. However, this service will will not run after 8pm on weeknights, or after 3pm on weekends.

VUWSA President Rory Lenihan-Ikin said of the service, “I’d hate to think how a student would feel if they had an assignment due the next day and they weren’t able to get a book that is critical to finishing that assignment.”

“The library is arguably the most core facility of the university academically, and not having lifts is obviously pretty fundamental.”

The collection on level zero remains inaccessible, with a similar retrieval service available for patrons.

Staff who are unable to access their offices are being relocated to a section of the level one computers

17 and the previously bookable study rooms in the Hub. To accommodate these changes, student computers will be relocated to the Hub and level two — there will be no reduction in the number of computers available for students.

The library opening hours were extended at the end of last year and all campus libraries are open until midnight on weekdays and until 10pm on weekends.

— Saeran Maniparathy

News The Bill is currently in its first reading in Parliament.

— Alexa Zelensky

VUWSA President, Rory Lenihan-Ikin, stated that it’s “great that INZ is going to allow them to re-apply, but why not allow them INDIAN STUDENTS SEEK to re-apply from New Zealand rathSYMBOLIC SANCTUARY er than having to travel all the way Nine Indian students sought sanc- back to India?”

“International students are treattuary in Auckland Unitary Church after their visas were cancelled last ed as cash cows by our government. year by Immigration New Zealand Showing a small bit of compassion (INZ) following a crackdown on ap- here is the least we can do.”

Reverend Clay Nelson, of Auckplication fraud.

The students, who are only a land Unitary Church, stated that handful of the 191 issued with instead of punishing the students AMENDING Deportation Liability Notices or “we need to be looking at the whole EDUCATION Deportation Orders by INZ, faced process.”

They were “targeted as The Education (Update) Amend- deportation after their appeal was scapegoats and the problem is much ment Bill was introduced to Parlia- rejected on February 2. ment on February 8.

They had applied for visas bigger and much deeper. New ZeaThe Bill proposes a wide scope through educational agents in In- land bears culpability… we have of changes — increasing the po- dia, paying, in some cases, upward of made education a commodity and we’re making a lot of money in New tential for funding, strengthening $20,000 each for their application. the monitoring and compliance of According to their lawyer, Zealand by selling, in many cases, independent tertiary institutes, for- Alastair McClymont, the agents sub-standard education to internamalising expected behavior with said submitted fraudulent documents to tional students.”

When approached by Salient, institutes, and enhancing student INZ without the knowledge of his protection facilities. clients and were “paid a commission Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford stated that he “is not In addition, it seeks to extend the by the New Zealand school.”

Export Education Levy, penalise anThe Minister for Immigration, privy to the facts in the Indian visa yone who falsely awards credits for a Michael Woodhouse, expressed little fraud issue” and “is unable to comqualification, and allows the pooling sympathy for the students and stated ment in any useful way.”

— Tim Manktelow of assets to create a larger fund with- that they were not victims. in the existing Education Act. “They may have taken bad advice This would allow the current but they are responsible for all of the CHARGES AGAINST PEACE Education Minister to shift fund- information that is provided on a PROTESTERS DROPPED ing across the education sector as visa application.”

The majority of charges against they saw fit. The Tertiary Education Of the original nine, Shujath 15 activists, who had protested a Union (TEU) has expressed concern Ullah Baig Mirza was arrested on Defence Industry Association conthat this will lead to a shifting of the morning of February 15 after ference held at TSB Arena on Nofunding in response to market de- he spent the night away from the vember 17, 2015, have been dropped. mand, rather than need. church. He was held in police cells The activists appeared in WelThey have also criticised the for two nights and deported, with lington District Court on Monday, move to treat for-profit, independent three other students from Tauranga, February 13, charged with trespass tertiary education providers equally on February 18. and obstruction. They pleaded not with universities, wānanga, and instiIn a late show of clemency, INZ guilty. tutes of technology and polytechnics. agreed not to enforce the deportaThe 2015 protests had resulted in Sandra Grey, the TEU national tion orders against the other stu- arrests after activists had surrounded president, stated that “these changes dents before February 22 and the the TSB arena attempting to block will undermine our public educa- students have left the church. entry to the venue and disrupt the tion system, paving the way for the INZ is considering a mechanism conference by banging loudly on the transfer of large sums of money away that would allow the students to de- doors and walls. from the public tertiary education part New Zealand voluntarily and Charges were quickly dropped by sector into the pockets of private re-apply for a student visa once back Judge Ian Mill after one of the companies.” in India.

Continued>>

18 >>>>>> prosecution’s key witnesses, the owner of TSB Arena, admitted that the easement surrounding the building was public land.

At the time of print, charges against one of the individuals remain.

Supporters of the activists had peacefully protested the court hearing in a show of solidarity.

— Saeran Maniparathy

News

PADS AND TAMPONS MIGHT SOON GET CHEAPER

Dunne said improved guidelines have made him confident the Ministry is able to handle the application Pharmac is considering a proposal to process.

Dr Yu-Wei Luke Chu of Vicsubsidise sanitary products to alleviate financial and physical pressure on toria’s School of Economics and Finance has published research on those who use them.

Pharmac have not yet released the effects of medicinal cannabis their decision, as they are currently laws and believes that the devolution seeking advice on whether sanitary of the decision-making authority is items are considered as “medicine” generally a positive development.

Dr Chu also acknowledged the or “medical / therapeutic devices” in benefits of medicinal cannabis for PARDONS FOR order to approve subsidiaries.

HISTORIC HOMOSEXUAL Health Minister Jonathan Cole- pain relief, and stated that the maman has not yet commented on the jority of the research “doesn’t find CONVICTIONS Justice Minister Amy Adams an- issue. Those in favour of the subsidies any strong negative social effects” as nounced on February 9 that those argue that as menstrual cycles are a result of increased access.

Dunne has urged medical pracconvicted before the Homosexual biological, sanitary items should be titioners to be open-minded about considered “medical devices.”

They Law Reform Act 1986 will have the opportunity to apply for pardons to believe it would ease the burden for prescribing medicinal cannabis, those who cannot afford sanitary rather than deciding based on “their overturn historic convictions. wariness and in some cases downFamilies of the convicted are able products. right prejudice.”

The idea has been criticised by to apply on their behalf, and appliThe procedural change comes cants can also request a public parlia- those advocating for more envitwo years after the high-profile case ronmentally friendly options, like mentary apology if all parties agree. of Alex Renton, the first person in Legislation will be introduced mooncups, to be included.

VUWSA President Rory Leni- New Zealand to be granted an exinto the House in the coming months, with a plan to begin review- han-Ikin has stated that the move emption to use medicinal cannabis.

—Thomas Croskery would be “the right thing to do.” ing applications in 2018.

A co-President of the Victoria The Ministry of Justice has estimated that 879 people were convict- University Feminist Organisation ed of homosexual acts before 1986, said that the subsidies should be a but 80% of the convictions, like “no brainer” as “people with vagiunder-age sex offences, would still nas… have no choice” to menstruate.

Those “living in poverty are less likebe considered offences today.

While campaigners wanted a ly to have access to sanitary products blanket pardon, applications will be due to cost” and should be helped by judged on a case-by-case basis due to the government.

They also believe that this is an the current illegality of some of the issue of “body politics” and quesconvictions.

Prime Minister Bill English stat- tioned whether “we would be having ed that there will be no possibility this conversation” if menstruation for compensation to those convicted was a male natural bodily function.

—Alex Feinson before 1986.

A spokesperson from UniQ Victoria told Salient that “it was MEDICINAL CANNABIS about time” that the pardons were LAWS RELAXED offered, but that they are “very The Ministry of Health is now reconflicted” about the announce- sponsible for overseeing all prescripment as they believe that without tions of cannabis-based products, compensation, the move is after Associate Health Minister Pe“an empty gesture” and an “election ter Dunne announced prescriptions ploy.” will no longer require Ministerial —Alex Feinson approval.

19

Notices

NOTICES

A listing in our notices section is free for all VUW students, VUWSA-affiliated clubs, and not-for-profit organisations. If you would like to post a notice please email editor@salient.org.nz and include NOTICE in the subject line.

There is limited space in this section so notices will be prioritised at the discretion of the editors.

Tickets sell out first meeting — be there or be studying, your choice.

Make your life extraordinary, join the Tramping Club: Website — vuwtc.org.nz Instagram — @VUWTC

CALL FOR NOTICES

VIC CAREERS

Are you graduating soon but not sure what to do next? What if you could connect with someone who can help you explore your options, get a better TEAM VIC NETBALL Join Team Vic Netball for 2017! understanding of the world of work, Registrations are now open: https:// and help you grow your potential?

With Victoria’s Alumni as Mentors goo.gl/T06xKw. Quick facts about Team Vic (no Programme you can do just that. alternative facts here): 1) Discount- Express your interest today and be ed fees for VUW students. 2) In- paired with an experienced mentor clusive club with teams at all levels, in the workforce.

For more information, or if from premier one to social grade. 3) Great way to meet people outside of you have any questions, please visit lectures including a mix of students www.victoria.ac.nz/careers or conand alumni members #networking. tact Charlie Devenish, Alumni as 4) Committed coaches. 5) Gain Mentors Programmes Coordinator, points towards the VicPlus Award on 04 463 6510 or charlie.devenish@ Programme for students who coach vuw.ac.nz. Applications close on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. or are members of committee.

Trials will run from March 11 – 18. For more info visit our website POSTGRADUATE above, or like us on Facebook (Team STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION Vic Netball).

Don’t be an undergrad! Come to our postgrad events!

TRAMPING CLUB PGSA’s Postgraduate OrientaHave you ever dreamt of climbing to tion Session is going to be held on the clouds like Sir Edmund Hillary? February 27 at 3pm in the Memorial Want to break up the study looming Theatre, Level Two, Student Union ahead of you with adventurous dis- Building. traction and a gust of fresh air? Ever PGSA’s Initial General Meeting imagined having a party amongst will be held on March 6 at 12pm in native trees and magnificent moun- the Memorial Theatre Foyer, Level tains?

Two, Student Union Building.

Come and join one of the busiPGSA and VUWSA are holding est, largest, sexiest, and most exciting a joint event on March 7 at 12pm clubs on campus! in the Hunter Lounge. It is a lowBring yourself and fellow would- key event with free food and drinks. be wanderers to our first meeting of Come meet other postgraduate stuthe year — March 14 in KKLT303 dents and hear from the PGSA and (Level Three, Kirk Building).

VUWSA Presidents. Grab your free First tramp of the year O-Week packs so you don’t have to (March 17 – 19): $30 for a ticket (aka line up in the courtyard! food and transport), 100 people, a PhD students: Don’t forget to mildly easy stroll through beautiful attend the FGR PhD orientations country, and an epic celebration un- — these are not only helpful, but der the stars. compulsory!

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20

INTERVIEW: ANDREW LITTLE — PART ONE The Salient editors sat down with Andrew Little, leader of the opposition, to chat about recent events, Labour’s intended policies if elected, and stuff that affects students. Below are the juicy parts of first half of the 45 minute interview including commentary on Little’s nomination of Willie Jackson, plus Labour’s policies to tackle rape-culture and the housing crisis. The second part will be printed next week and an extended transcript of part one is available on the Salient website (salient.org.nz). An audio recording of the full interview is being broadcasted on Salient FM. There has been some backlash against your backing of Willie Jackson. Would you be able to explain your reasons for his nomination?

Well, he’s not the only person I’m backing. [...] the risk factor for Willie Jackson was some of his past conduct. I looked at [...] not so much his apology at the time, but his actions since [with the Manukau Urban Māori Authority], and I’m satisfied that what he does and what he stands for is totally consistent with Labour values. He might have rubbed people up the wrong way, but that’s not a reason to not let someone stand for office, he has the qualities and experience that I think stand him in good stead.

He has a reach to a part of the constituency that we don’t reach well to. We’ve got some outstanding Māori MPs, working right across the country, but in terms of urban Māori, we don’t have as strong of a connection as we could have. [...] And he will assist with that.

News

Do you think that Willie Jackson will be a valuable MP in terms of the policies he can put forward to support urban Māori, or is his appointment more about garnering votes?

Well, I make no apology for the fact that politics is about getting every vote you can. Um, that’s the life of politics. But you look at the people you’re bringing on board, I look at what he has done — other stuff he does in the community for young Māori [...] I think in terms of lifting people up and ensuring there is opportunity for young people, he absolutely lives that.

What kind of policies are Labour looking to implement to support urban Māori?

Knowing that Māori are totally, disproportionately represented in our unemployment statistics, particularly young unemployed, we have a policy [...] [to implement] working with DOC, or a local authority, or an NGO, on environmental projects. That’s really about giving those young people something to get up for in the morning; and looking at, “is there something we can do to help further?” The thing that I lie awake most about, worrying the most about, is the idea that so many young people [are unemployed] — because if they aren’t brought into doing something constructive, it gets harder and harder the longer that time goes on. [...] That’s got to be a priority, it’s a personal priority for me.

What kind of policies does Labour intend to implement to prevent or minimise the types of harm caused by rape culture brought to public attention by the Roast Busters scandal?

One of the biggest impediments to victims of sexual violence is reporting to a criminal justice system that is completely unsympathetic to them. [...] Amy Adams has started some work on this and we support the Government on measures to make the community justice system more accommodating and empathetic to victims of sexual violence. That means when you go to the police, you have properly, professionally trained police personnel interviewing victims and understand-

21 ing things from the victim’s point of view, not putting the blame back on them. [...]

We are committed to a range of changes to make the system more responsive to victims of sexual violence. One of the more disturbing reports I have read from 2009 was that of the convictions for sexual offences, [they represent] 1% of the offences actually committed. We need to make changes if we are going to get justice.

Would you be considering implementing a specialised court for survivors of sexual assault throughout New Zealand?

Our justice system is getting more sophisticated in the way it deals with special classes of crime, for example the drug and alcohol courts in Auckland, family court, youth court [...] I think it is time for us to look at a specialised sexual offences court so that it can manage those offences, the victims of it, and the defendants as a better way of ensuring justice for the victim.

Labour stated in 2013 that it was committed to a gender-balanced caucus after the 2017 election. Is this still feasible?

Of 38 selections we’ve made so far, 18 are women, [...] some of them are in seats we don’t necessarily realistically expect to win [...], but some of those will be women who I’ll be supporting for winnable places on the list. Our total selection process doesn’t finish until May, and it’s a combination of completing the electorate selections and putting the list together, [...] and I’m totally confident that we will achieve our target. [...] I don’t have any qualms about using that list process to round out the full range of talent we want and need in our caucus.

In Question Time on February 14th, you grilled Bill English with the knowledge that 250 state homes have been empty as they wait to be put on the market and asked “how on earth does he justify selling state houses in the middle of a housing crisis.”

News His and National’s instinctive response [is that] the market will fix everything. The reality is that in the rental market, because of the pressure of housing, rents are getting out of control — that’s why we have the homelessness problem we do, 41,000 people [...]. The whole reason we had state housing and Housing New Zealand is so that, for people for whom the private rental market was too exorbitant, they would still be able to afford a decent house - we’ve lost sight of that. [...]

These 254 houses, you could walk in there today and [they] would be perfectly suitable and comfortable — and they are sitting there empty because the government is waiting to sell them.

And I think that’s a total abdication of the principle and philosophy of having state housing and Housing New Zealand.

The reality with house prices at the moment is that people will be renting for an extended period of time. What are you thoughts on current tenancy law and what would Labour do to improve tenants rights?

They need to change. Another part of our housing plan is renters rights [...] - we do need to look at Residential Tenancies legislation, renters do need to know that they have greater security of tenure than they do at the moment. We need to look at the European model, the German model in particular where you have [...] more scope and rights in the house, with longer tenure and the inability of the landlord to, with the flick of their fingers to kick you out. [...] So we will review that, and provide more secure tenants rights then there are at the moment.

— Brigid Quirke

22

POLITICAL ROUND-UP

Labour’s nomination of Willie Jackson Just when the opposition was looking its most coherent in recent memory, Andrew Little dropped a bombshell at Waitangi. Veteran broadcaster and controversial radio host Willie Jackson would be nominated to join the Labour Party at a high list placing.

The announcement was undoubtedly a calculated risk, but Mr Little may have underestimated just how divisive it would prove to be.

Opposition began with Christchurch East MP and Labour Party Spokesperson for Family and Sexual Violence, Poto Williams. Ms Williams wrote a lengthy Facebook post publicly criticising Mr Jackson for his previous comments on sexual violence when interviewing a young victim in the Roast Busters case.

Other Labour Party members circulated a petition calling on their leading council to reject the application. The petition supported Ms Williams’ criticism, and also noted Mr Jackson’s advocacy for charter schools, Labour’s commitment to a gender-balanced caucus, and his previous comments on Finance Spokesperson Grant Robertson’s sexuality.

The announcement also raised the ire of former Labour MPs Maryan Street, Carol Beaumont, Marian Hobbs, and Dover Samuels. Mr Samuels even went as far as committing to give up his lifetime party membership if Mr Jackson were selected.

However, Mr Jackson’s place in Labour is still far from assured. Like all prospective candidates he must go through normal party selection processes, set to begin in April.

If his selection is approved, the ramifications for this year’s election could be huge. Although Māori Party’s Te Ururoa Flavell is all but assured his Waiariki seat, Jackson’s membership in Labour could help to boost Labour’s chances in other Māori seats, especially by supporting Kelvin Davis in Te Tai Tokerau.

News Given that Winston Peters has already suggested his unwillingness to be a part of a government with the Māori Party, this could have a serious impact on possible coalition partners to form a viable government.

Last year’s shock resignation by John Key gave Labour a huge opening, which they have since capitalised on in a public agreement with the Green Party and their campaign in the Mt Albert by-election.

However, National’s recent leadership contest was a master class in party unity that Mr Jackson’s nomination has shown the Labour Party to be woefully incapable of. Despite a meeting between Mr Jackson and Ms Williams on February 8, the cracks have already begun to show.

Political responses to student deportations The fate of a group of Indian students currently facing deportation has exposed the inner workings of New Zealand’s export education industry. It has also firmly established immigration as one of the most contentious political issues of this year’s election.

International students are big business for New Zealand. The industry has quickly swelled to become our fifth biggest export category, now worth almost $3 billion. That growth looks set to continue, with estimates of up to $5 billion by 2025.

Many of the students who come to NZ are ‘recruited’ by overseas agents who work on commission from schools and training institutions based here. These agents, particularly those employed by private tertiary educators, are given little training and are notoriously hard to track down when problems occur.

The students currently facing deportation have said that they were completely unaware of the changes made to their applications by their immigration agents. They have also noted that Immigration New Zealand had a full 27 days to vet their documents before it granted them visas.

The Government’s response has been uncharacteristically hardnosed, marking a stark transition from their Key-era pragmatism and social populism. Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse repeatedly placed the blame on the students themselves while brushing off questions about the agents who submitted their documents or the schools that paid for them.

National’s stubborn adherence to the letter of the law should have been an easy win for Labour. All that was required was a little compassion and a genuine commitment to make some changes. Instead, Labour’s initial outrage felt somewhat blunted by their lack of substantive policy.

Although Andrew Little met with several of the students and called on the Minister to overturn the deportation orders, he would not to commit to industry reform. This, despite claiming that the government, education providers, and immigration agents all needed to take responsibility.

While both the Greens and New Zealand First offered a more pointed response, noting the double standard in the visa support given to American billionaire Peter Thiel, the entire episode has exposed a surprising lack of political commitment to fix an obviously flawed system.

Given the pace of growth in the industry and the risk to incoming students, addressing these problems is something that our major political parties should at least be considering.

— Ben Leonard

THE TRUMP FRONT

Hello and welcome. On January 20 the world as we know it changed forever when the ultimate duo of Barack Obama and Joe Biden ended their eight year run, not just as best buds, but also as the Prez & VP of the US. The human Fruju, also known as Donald J. Trump, officially took over as the 45th President of the United States, along with his VP, Mike “I’m allergic to fun, smiling,

23 and gay people” Pence. In his mere 38 days in office, Trump-o has: Made 210 tweets from his unofficial handle of @realDonaldTrump.

Built zero metres of the Mexican/American border wall.

Started the process of dismantling five executive actions implemented by the Obama administration.Verbally attacked approx.

79.94% of the free world, including: ol’ mate Malc (Prime Minister of ‘Straya); Nordstrom, the department store that dropped his daughtercome-heir Ivanka’s apparent fashion line; and, most notably, the “most overrated actress in Hollywood,” Meryl Streep, who has only a flimsy 20 Academy Award nominations to her name.

Yet to get a haircut.

In the recent days, the most alarming Trump appearance came when he scheduled a weekly press conference, which was officially stated to be regarding the nomination of his new Secretary of Labour. Think again fools! Trump-o cracked right into a fairly unhinged, 77-minute rant about the apparent “fakeness” of the mainstream media, who not only had the AUDACITY to openly criticise his relationship with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (they’ve recently exchanged hand-woven friendship bracelets), but who also created a lot of negative exposure on his slightly-illegal-and-very-racist Muslim travel ban. Don-don’s quote of the press conference was “No. 1: I’m the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. No. 2: Racism — [I’m] the least racist person.” Hmmmm okay, seems preeeeetty fake, but okay.

Each week, this column will be thoroughly dedicated to covering the outrageous, appalling, and frankly imbecilic actions and exploits of the new American Commander in Chief, as he attempts to tweet his way through his four-year term.

Think of this column as a fresh, hip, NZ version of the New York Times’s political section, but perhaps on a

News slightly smaller budget (read: none).

— Tessa Cullen

THE PARTY LINE

Nine Indian students are currently seeking sanctuary in Auckland Unitary Church after their appeal to Immigration New Zealand to stay in the country was denied. The students face deportation due to the Indian-based education agents, whom they used to facilitate studying in New Zealand, submitted fraudulent documents. Are these students victims, and is their deportation justified? — question asked on February 8.

Vic Labour These students have come to New Zealand for the reputation that we have for providing quality education, and the fact that things have gotten to the point where they have been forced to take sanctuary in a church is unacceptable.

There is no clear evidence that the students have done wrong. It is the agents who have done wrong, while it is the students who are being punished. The National-led government has allowed this industry to get out of control, and it is the Immigration Minister who has failed these students, and New Zealand, by not exercising any compassion or common sense in rejecting their appeals.

As said by Labour’s Spokesperson for Immigration, Iain Lees-Galloway: “The students should simply have their applications assessed on the merits with those eligible being able to stay. It’s about time we had a government that offers compassion and natural justice.”

— Mohan Nana-Ahirao

Immigration levels have been at a record high under this government because we believe that migrants fill vital skills shortages we need to grow the economy, and that they enrich our society. This openness must always be balanced against looking out for our national security. Our laws protect our immigration system from abuses and we need to let Immigration New Zealand do its job in delivering a fair outcome for these students.

We can’t know all the facts of this case but we do know that New Zealand proudly welcomes deserving immigrants who follow the right process, and Immigration New Zealand’s decision will reflect this.

— William Lewis

Greens at Vic The Indian students facing deportation have been scapegoated by the National-led government. They were victims of an immigration scam by their agents in India who provided fraudulent documents without their knowledge, which Immigration New Zealand failed to pick up on.

Rather than making the agents or tertiary institutions accountable, they are deporting the students to appear tough on immigration. Further, there have been cases where migrant students and workers have been granted amnesty under similar circumstances.

Our immigration system should be based on manaakitanga and treating people fairly, not on exploitation.

We need to stop a poorly funded, profit driven, tertiary sector reliant on luring in international students with false prospects, and regulate immigration agencies better. The Young Nats — Lower North Island deportation is unjustified, and they The National Party is very proud- should be granted justice and ally the only major political party that lowed to stay.

— Liz Gaiduch and Elliot is committed to an open economy which embraces free trade and mi- Crossan gration. We believe that New Zea- If you are a representative of a youth land’s future lies in being an open, political group and wish to participate confident, and diverse nation that in this section, please email editor@salient.org.nz. competes on the world stage.

24

Columns

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Kia ora! Nau mai haere mai ki Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui.

Phew, you made it. Whatever made up your unique journey to get here, there would have been major challenges along the way and for that you deserve to be congratulated. You are now joining a small and very privileged group of New Zealanders who have had the opportunity to study at university.

If you, like I did, came from a community where you and most of your friends had the choice of tertiary study, then take a moment to appreciate the additional barriers that many of your new fellow students faced in getting here.

Also take a moment to consider those who are not here: the missing 1000 Māori students who would make up the numbers so they weren’t under-represented in the tertiary sector, those who live in the regions where leaving family and traveling is not an option, those who have grown up poor and could never quite get on their feet; the ones you’ll probably never meet on campus.

Being a student is hard. It is also an utterly transformative and rewarding experience. Be bold and grasp opportunities — you’ll have more of these on offer than you could possibly imagine.

Also be ready to grit your teeth when the times get tough, and — I’m going say it because you won’t hear it from many others — don’t be afraid to leave if you find university isn’t right for you.

But for now, enjoy yourselves. Our team has been busy putting together an A+ O-Week line up with shows most nights this week. Keep an eye out for the Newtown Festival where we will have a student stage this Sunday and buses to take you there and back.

Also remember, you’ve just become part of a community in Wellington that extends well beyond the three campuses. This city wants to get to know you, so be a friendly bugger.

P.S. I’m your student president. Pick up Salient to see what I have to say here each week alongside other student executive members. But we want this to be a two-way conversation so please get in touch. Also make sure you join your student association in the Hub courtyard this week or at vuwsa.org.nz. Ngā mihi nui.

— Rory Lenihan-Ikin

VUWSA Kia ora koutou and welcome to a new year here at Victoria, and Wellington!

I’m Nathaniel and my job is to help you feel connected to the student community.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be clutching onto a V or coffee for dear life as I attend every event we’re running (say hi!). I’ve been at Victoria for *murmur murmur* years now so I’m pretty much acclimatised to life in our favourite little capital.

My top tips: 1. Haere Mai on Dixon Street has a wallto-wall shelf of Mi Goreng, so don’t buy boring supermarket two minute noodles.

Welcome to student life, get to know your noodle brands.

2. If you want to branch out from butter chicken and sushi, Wellington is a treasure trove of multicultural eateries and years later I’m still discovering them. Willis Street Food Market is a basic but good start for your culinary journey around the city.

3. Victoria is a big university. If you’re unsure where a class is, give yourself an extra 20 minutes. There’s no shame in consulting the campus map.

4. Get involved. There are 130+ clubs at Victoria. If nothing fits you — get some friends together and create a new club!

5. There’s always something happening, from gigs in town to street festivals. Take a break from the books and have fun!

6. Don’t spend all your weekly living costs on alcohol.

7. The Brooklyn Wind Turbine has the best view of Wellington. Mt Victor is probably second.

8. Be yourself. Moving from a provincial all-boys school to Victoria allowed me the confidence to come out in an accepting environment. There are many resources at Victoria to help you out — make the most of them!

— Nathaniel Manning (Engagement Vice President)

25

Columns

ONE OCEAN Ni sa bula Vinaka! Malo e lelei! Gud de tru olgeta! Talofa! Kia orana! Fakalofa lahi atu! Kia ora tatou!

Congratulations to all new and returning Pasifika students on their acceptance to Victoria University. Over the course of this year you may encounter various struggles in adjusting to the university life, which can be rather discouraging but this is to be expected.

Your Pasifika Students’ Council (PSC) are here to ensure that this transition within your academic lives are dealt with smoothly. We make sure that all the best services promised by VUW are available to Pasifika students. We organise events to make sure that your interests in your studies are kept in check. Your voice as a Pasifika student is important and we will represent your interests. We oversee many Pasifika cultural associations which are a great opportunity for you to take part in to develop a sense of identity and to reconnect with your own or another culture.

The PSC exists primarily to serve its members so please do not hesitate to contact us via email (pasifikavuw@outlook.com) or follow us on Facebook (Pasifika Student Council 2017), Instagram (@psc.2017), and Snapchat (psc.2017) to stay up to date on all the events happening around university. We would also love to meet you so come by the Pasifika Haos (15 Mount Street, the bottom of that steep hill by the Student Union Building) and use the study rooms and other resources made available to you.

Meet your council President: Sina Ah Sam; Secretary: Annetta Iakopo; V/Secretary: Ali Leota; Treasurer: Atireta Leupena, V/Treasurer: Lepau Feau; Academic Officer: Anaseini Nuku; V/Academic Officer: Totisa Tomane; Public Relations Officer: Zach Fonoti.

All the best for this year and we look forward to seeing you all around university.

Fa’afetai lava, Meitaki, Malo ‘aupito, Fakafetai lasi, Vinaka, Tanikiu tumas.

— Pasifika Students’ Council 2017

NGA¯ I TAUIRA

Tēnā tātou, nau mai ki tēnei tau hou. I tēnei wā, kua mutu ngā hararei, me te wā ki te noho ki te taha o tō mātou whānau. Heoi anō, kei te hoki mai tātou ngā tauira o te motu, ki te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui.

Kia ora everyone! To all our tauira starting their first year, welcome. To all those returning, welcome back. This is the new executive for Ngāi Tauira, your Māori Students’ Association, signing in for a new year of events, study sessions, and fresh hot banter. Ngāi Tauira sat down to plan out Orientation and the rest of 2017. Here’s a few things to look forward to: Pōhiri and Kai: On February 28, the place to be is the Pōhiri at Te Herenga Waka Marae. Bring your whānau, and meet your new whānau. There will be kai, and a chance to meet other students from around Aotearoa. Assemble at the waharoa across the road from Vic Books on Kelburn Campus at 10am.

Study Wānanga: Held throughout the year. If you study well with others, these are opportunities to motivate yourself to finish off your assignments with others who are in the same waka.

Whānau Events: Throughout the year we will be hosting whānau events to meet and bond with other Māori students at university. In the past we have had paintball, bowling, bubble soccer, and He Mātārere (Ngāi Tauira Ball). Keep an eye out!

Ngā Hākinakina: If you think you have the athletic prowess of your great tīpuna, get in touch with Shaq Milner, Nohorua Parata, or anyone else on the executive.

We have teams entered in competitions at the Recreation Centre weekly.

Make sure to like Ngāi Tauira Facebook page, follow us on Instagram (@ngaitauira_vuw), and add us on Snapchat (ngai_tauira) to stay up to date.

Ngā mihi whānau.

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VICUFO

CAN DO AT VIC

Kia ora little freshers and welcome to Victoria!

On behalf of the wider feminist community here at the university we would like to extend an invitation into the exciting world of equal rights.

The Victoria University Feminist Organisation (or VICUFO, as we like to call ourselves) is the representative group run by VUWSA who campaign for all those marginalised genders out there.

Alongside UniQ, Can Do, and V-ISA (your other representative groups), VICUFO works hard to ensure that the voices of the underdogs are heard and listened to. These four groups are Victoria’s version of superheroes, fighting the bad guys on the daily while the townsfolk continue their day to day lives.

Okay, apologies, that got weird real quick.

So what do we actually do?

Well, VICUFO tries to ensure that Victoria University is as open and diverse as it can be. We advocate for safe spaces on campus so everyone can feel looked after. Our own Women’s Space is located behind the Hunter Lounge on Kelburn campus where you can chill out, have some kai, maybe get some study in, and just generally wallow in the awesomeness of that feminist life.

We host movie nights and discussion panels which focus on the struggles of women, mana wahine, and non-binary genders. We collaborate with Thursdays in Black, Wellington Rape Crisis, and other campaigns to continue the education of those who may be less aware of what feminism is. And every year in trimester two we hold our world famous (really) Women’s Week — a week long extravaganza of events, laughter, love, no sleep, and, of course, feminism.

All in all, we work to try and let the wider student community (you guys) know there is no fear in the word feminism, that feminists can come in all shapes and sizes, and that burning your bras is completely optional. Find us on Facebook (facebook.com/VICUFO) to keep up to date with our happenings!

Lots of love and yours in feminism, — Naomi Peacock and Cole Hutchinson (Co-Presidents)

Can Do at Vic is the representative group for students with disabilities at Victoria University. While Disability Services provides academic and structural support, Can Do hold social events and awareness campaigns to create connections between students. We promote inclusion and accessibility throughout the university and are open to disabled and non-disabled students alike.

Around one in five New Zealanders have a disability. Not all are visible, not all are commonly known about, and not all are considered ‘impairments’, especially by the disabled individual. Many disabilities are caused by how society is organised with structural disadvantages put in place, for example not having lifts in a building or not providing digital course materials. Disabled does not mean unable; although there are some things people with disabilities can’t do (just as there are things able bodied people can’t do). There are many ways to make society accessible for people with different needs.

Sometimes disabled people can have assumptions made about them and what they can’t do. However in the world of increasing technological advances it is easier than ever to accommodate everyone, and Can Do, along with Disability Services, wants to work towards creating a more inclusive university.

In the first few weeks of the first trimester we’ll be holding a social event (maybe a pizza lunch) and our IGM where we’ll be updating our Executive Committee for 2017. We’ll also have a stall in Clubs Week so feel free to come and chat; we’re more than happy to answer any questions you may have!

We encourage people of different backgrounds, different abilities, and of different study paths to get involved with Can Do. Even people with the same disability can have vastly different experiences and there is much we can learn from one another.

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THE QUEER AGENDA

POSTGRAD INFORMER

Tēnā koutou katoa!

Welcome to Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. We’re UniQ, your resident suppliers of queer* support, advocacy, and social services here at Victoria. We work for you to provide regular events, spaces, and services so that you can feel safe and supported during your time at university.

During trimester we run weekly, fortnightly, and monthly events: —Our weekly lunch is UniQ’s bread and butter, where we come together for board games or a structured discussion. Friday, March 17, 1-3pm in SU218.

—Our fortnightly event, Gender Club, is dedicated to gender identities which fall under the queer umbrella. Tuesday, March 21, 12-2pm in SU218.

—Every month we provide snacks and screen a queer film. One rule: happy endings only! Our first one will be on Friday, March 10, 6pm in CO119.

We’re hard at work setting up great events for Orientation 2017 — check our column next week or join us at VUWSA’s welcome picnic on March 3 for the details. We take great pride in our inclusivity and we’d love to see you!

We provide support for our queer whānau.

If you have an issue in your hall, with a lecturer, administrator, classmate, tutor, or anyone else you feel has treated you unfairly, UniQ can help with advocacy services. We’re here to help — even if it’s just to listen.

Find us on Facebook (facebook.com/uniq. victoria.9) and get on our mailing list (sign up at Clubs Week) to keep up to date on everything we have going on.

Feel free to flick us a message on Facebook or email us at uniqvictoria@gmail.com if you have any questions. Here’s to a good year!

Welcome to 2017 and all that the Postgraduate Students’ Association has to offer! To those of you who are starting your journeys, good luck. To those partway through, strive on. To those almost finished — congratulations!

If you’re new to New Zealand or Wellington, this is unfortunately what we call summer.

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day, but we don’t have very many of them. For those of you back at university after the summer holidays, we hope you’re well rested and ready for the new trimester.

We’re the organisation for our postgraduate students doing honours or above. Our key goal is to connect Victoria’s postgraduate community. We do this through representation, promoting excellence (we have a ton of opportunities throughout the year from the annual three minute thesis competition, to academic conference grants and research excellence awards), and creating a sense of community (come to our quiz nights and BBQs to see what it’s all about!). Check out Salient’s notices for upcoming events!

Don’t forget to sign up as a PGSA member and reap the benefits of free membership, including information on upcoming social and academic events, scholarships, and conferences.

As a member, there are heaps of volunteering and representation opportunities on offer. These look great on your CV and can count towards points for VicPlus or VicInternational.

There is also the option of joining the executive. We’re a high energy group that want to do right by our students. Come to the IGM, see what we’re all about, and, if you want, stand for election. Email our Executive Assistant Sue Kelly — sue.kelly@vuw.ac.nz — for more information.

That’s it from us. Peace out.

— Tara Officer and Steffen Bertram

* UniQ uses the term ‘queer’ as an umbrella term to describe many variations of sexual attraction and sex / gender identity, including (but not limited to) intersex, transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, asexual, pansexual, fa’afafine, takatāpui, lesbian, bisexual, and gay.

— UniQ

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V-ISA A warm welcome to Victoria University of Wellington! VUWSA-International Students’ Association (V-ISA for short, and no we do not issue visas) is the representative group of all international students at Victoria.

V-ISA has two main areas of focus: The first is to speak on issues affecting international students at Victoria University.

In 2016, V-ISA actively advocated against the international student fees hike as well as on the inaccessibility and unavailability of scholarships for international students at VUW. After months of conducting research and campaigns, last September V-ISA presented an oral submission on these issues to the University Council. As a result, the university has recognised V-ISA as the representative of all international students and will work with V-ISA in regards to international student issues.

Secondly, V-ISA provides various social events to foster a community spirit amongst international students and to better integrate them into the Wellington community.

Through events such as the Amazing Race, international students are provided with unique opportunities for exploring Wellington by having to interact with locals to familiarise themselves with the city and have fun while doing so. In September, we have International Week to celebrate the diverse cultures of international students studying at Victoria.

While V-ISA is targeted at international students, we welcome all students who have an interest in international student issues or who would simply like to make friends with students from various parts of the world.

If you have any questions, problems, ideas, or concerns, don’t hesitate to send an email to vuwvisa@gmail.com. Also like our Facebook page and follow us on Instagram, @vuwvisa, for regular updates. Have a great O-Week everyone!

— V-ISA Executive

STUDENT WELLBEING The Student Wellbeing Awareness Team (SWAT) is a team who are passionate about wellbeing! We are student-led but are supported by the team at Student Counselling.

SWAT meets weekly at Mauri Ora where we hang out and chat about the key wellbeing issues on campus. We brainstorm initiatives and campaigns that we roll out on campus to improve the wellbeing of our fellow students.

There is always coffee and tea at our meetings and often we have homemade baking.

Meetings are open for anyone. SWAT gives students the ability to speak up about their wellbeing and empower themselves. We offer a space for students to share how they stay healthy while studying.

SWAT offers different opportunities for our volunteers from leadership experience, social skills, public speaking, work experience, and writing for Salient. An added bonus is that the time students spend attending meetings and volunteering goes towards your VicPlus Award.

If you are after work experience then SWAT is great for your CV! SWAT aims to increase the resilience, health, and life / study balance of our students. We are here to reduce negative behaviours, stress, and discrimination of students. We aim to foster a culture of care at our university for people of all genders, sexualities, abilities, ages, and races. We encourage diversity and collaboration between staff and students.

If you’d like to be involved with SWAT flick us an email at vicstudentwellbeing@gmail.com.

A SWAT member will get in contact to arrange a time to meet up for a coffee and have a chat about what it means to be a volunteer and how you can be involved. You can also check out our Facebook page, SWAT VUW, to keep up to date about our campaigns, meeting times, and wellbeing on campus.

— SWAT

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MAURI ORA ESSENTIALS FOR GOOD HEALTH Mauri Ora is the Māori term for wellbeing, encompassing a holistic view of health — mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual.

Mauri Ora, at Kelburn Campus, is where Student Counselling, Student Health, and the physiotherapy clinic are located. Te Taunaki is the ‘sister’ service at Pipitea.

Student Health endeavours to provide competent, compassionate, confidential, and timely healthcare in an environment of responsibility and respect. We are here for you.

Student Counselling supports students to succeed academically, socially, and personally.

Seek help as early as possible; we listen thoughtfully and share our responses with you.

We observe confidentiality, the only exceptions being when we have concerns about your safety or the safety of others. Parents, tutors, friends, or flatmates are not entitled to know you attend counselling. We are sensitive to cultural values, religious beliefs, gender issues, and disabilities.

If you’ve just arrived, or have been here for years, your health is of utmost importance.

Here are important parts of your health to safeguard: • Living in close quarters can expose you to contagious diseases and viruses can spread rapidly. Rarer infections such as meningococcal are more prevalent where many people live together. Crowded flats and halls are a risk factor.

• If you’re thinking about having sex, preventing infection or pregnancy may be top of the list, but it is equally important to ensure it is a happy, fulfilling, and consensual experience.

• Alcohol, smoking, and drugs — it’s your choice but when/if you decide to partake, make sure you know the risks.

• Being away from home, study and financial pressures, and relationship ups-and-downs, can all impact your happiness. Build lots of positive activities into your life — social as well as physical — and learn how to gauge your stress levels. If you’re not coping, or feeling sad more than is normal, ask for help.

Here are the top things we recommend you think about doing: • Enrol with Mauri Ora. Appointments are free for most students and fees may apply for students who choose not to enrol. Most international students will have insurance that covers the majority of the cost. Appointments can be booked by phoning reception. If you have an urgent health concern, walk-in appointments are available on the day but are prioritised for those in greatest need.

• Flu injections are available every year from mid-March and are free for all students.

Vaccines to protect against meningococcal are not usually free but we recommend you think about getting one. Make an appointment to discuss this, or any other vaccination questions you may have.

• Gardasil is a safe and highly effective vaccine that protects against genital and throat cancers, as well as genital warts. Gardasil is free up until your 27th birthday for people of all genders.

• If you’re sexually active, use condoms. If you don’t, get regular checks for sexually transmitted diseases. Swabs for infection can be done without a doctor examining you and you can usually take the swabs yourself. Two weeks after possible exposure is the optimum time to get tested. There are free, confidential HIV testing clinics on campus too.

• Our staff can advise on contraceptive options — most are free, or carry a small prescription charge. Emergency contraception can be accessed via a nurse appointment.

• The counselling service runs a diverse range of free well-being groups to help you manage issues such as anxiety, exam stress, poor sleep, and depression. For an individual counselling appointment, call and talk to reception.

Contact Mauri Ora, Level One, Student Union Building, Kelburn Campus 04 463 5310 or 04 463 5308 Te Taunaki, Mezzanine Floor, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus 04 463 7474 Email counselling-service@vuw.ac.nz or student-health@vuw.ac.nz.

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What are you going to do this year to make it the best yet? Perhaps one thing is being more courageous about stepping out and connecting with new people.

The Bubble is a space at Victoria which is dedicated to connection: connection with others, connection to services, and reconnection to yourself. We offer free peer support, tea, coffee, milo, fruit, and phone charging for all students.

There’s a whole bunch of games, mindful colouring, giant jenga, and beanbags as well.

Pull up a chair at a table with us and / or some other students. We’re the exact opposite of Mean Girls — you can sit with us.

It’s a super chill space. Feel free to rock on in and do your own thing. We will come and check in with you but if you’ve got your headphones in we’ll take the hint and leave you to nap or enjoy your tea. Our Bubble Leaders know the student services inside out, so if you’re feeling stuck, come chat to us and we’ll point you in the right direction — be it study, relationship, or money issues. We’re students ourselves so we know how you feel.

This space is a study free zone. It’s pretty much the only space at university where you shouldn’t feel that pressure to be working. There’s a kitchenette with hot water, two microwaves, and a sink. The space is ideal for you to take a lunch break. Even if nothing is bothering you but you just want someone to give you a friendly smile and a chat about the weather, we’re pro at that too. Our leaders are Anne, Daniel, Fiona, Kauri, Liv, and Tessa (me). Come and say hello!

The Bubble is located on Level Two of the Student Union Building (underneath the Hunter Lounge).

It is staffed Monday to Friday, 11am-2pm.

— Tessa Burgess (Senior Bubble Leader)

Features:

THE BUBBLE COLUMN

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ON THE PERIPHERY OF THE IMAGINED WORLD

Downtown Wellington. Commercial negatives photographed by K E Niven and Co. Courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library. 1/2-223768-F.

Written by Mikee Sto Domingo

For the local, Wellington is a city of few surprises. At 500 feet, a larger, more formidable metropolis, like the sprawling small print of terms and conditions, enfeebles any sense of total comprehension. In contrast, the familiar Wellington harbour lined by a city and cradled by hills is as immediately explicable and loaded with the significance of a single figure.

From the eye of a gliding gull, the outline of Wellington spanning from Wadestown to Miramar is roughly the shape of a jagged 3. In sign language, the sign for Wellington is to hold up three fingers, your index, middle, and ring finger to form a W and to motion it twice. Three is the number of dimensions perceivable to human perception, though this constraint does not exist as rigidly in the imagination.

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Imagination’s place in Wellington is foundational. Built at the bottom of an island between Australia and Antarctica, it is the southernmost capital of the world; a drifting trace built from utopian yearning and forged in the quiet anxiety of isolation. Unlike bigger, more audacious capitals, it is by virtue of its remoteness that Wellington cannot act as an island unto itself. London too is a seaport on a small, detached island. Yet London has the improbable fortune of having been the principal urban hub of Europe; a booming site of commerce and culture, it became one of the epicentres of the Industrial Revolution and modernism at a time when neither of these things yet seemed so malevolent. Because of this, London can sometimes pretend as though it were the centre towards which the world turns to know itself by comparison. Wellington, sitting on land that floated forgotten for thousands of years at the bottom of the globe, is compelled to look outward, to imagine what is beyond, lest it forget the world in return.

Before the harbour became Wellington, it was called Te Upokoo-te-ika-a-Māui, and then Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Later it became Port Nicholson or Pōneke. To the philistinism of the settler, the first names were but wild fancies — oral tradition untethered to the certainty of historical record. Speech may have the authority of presence, but history is conjured from absence. Te Upoko-o-te-ika-a-Māui floats out in the realm of myth where they say that the eye of Te Ika fossilized into a windswept harbour while a faraway bird wept and wept. Te Whanganui-a-Tara inhabits the domain of legend where in circa 950 AD Chief Tara was sent forth like Noah’s dove to scan the slender green body of the Taniwha. He arrived and declared the harbour fertile with possibility. There is no way to know precisely.

Port Nicholson, conversely, is etched into the plain papers of history upon which one can verify that the New Zealand Company purchased, with some irksome difficulty, the harbour from Te Āti Awa chief Te Wharepouri in 1839. In 1840 Port Nicholson was named Wellington after the noble Duke, Arthur Wellesley, an avid supporter of colonisation. This is a tale of Chinese whispers in which ink creates truth and paper holds memory. After these erasures, the landscape was altered — streams were redirected or built over, the function of the soil, the water, and the trees changed, and Māori were out-populated in this place that was no longer Te Whanganui-a-Tara but Brittania, Port Nicholson, Wellington. Nomenclature is a tool so insidious that it can reshape the world without bloodshed.

The lonely city now stands undecided between ocean and forest, a design where escape out to sea or into the forest is an ever imminent possibility. The first British plans for the city’s layout were a fantasy, designed to capture the attention of would-be settlers whose longings were roused by the neatly pictured divisions of public and private land oriented by a focus on community and nestled alongside a man-made river (unsoiled not like the Thames) with space still for farms. This initial concept assumed that the

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On the periphery of the imagined world

land upon which the city would be built would be amenable to what was fantasised (it would not be). The second plan was more anarchic, adapting to the unyielding terrain and responding to demands for more private land — a reaction counter to the initially envisioned society-centric utopia. In this second map, utopian imagining is fractured by a need to survive. Settlers wished to focus on their pressing individual or private needs first, and as a consequence the communal dream was consigned to the sidelines. Looking through the changing plans of Wellington from 1840 to 1912, settler utopia appears as a faraway shore which the tide is always approaching towards and then receding away from, adapting to the changing dreams of the population.

Wellington imagines the world and reconstructs it everywhere. The influence of Indian communities that began migrating to New Zealand in greater numbers in the 1900s has flavoured the evenings. The pungent creaminess of Southern India and the arid, sharpness of the North warm the throat when wind and rain have left a chill on the lips. An afternoon stroll down the main streets quickly reveals a taste for Japanese cuisine, a penchant which easily transposes itself onto a sea-based capital. Wellington connects to an imagined Japan through seafood. The attachment to fish is sensuously associated by the rolling tongue to a crisp, almost austere, rawness; a tactile experience which joins up in the mind to an inherited love of the natural and the clean.

The city was always supposed to contrast with the pollution of Industrialised Europe and this dream of the fresh and the organic informs the aesthetic of Wellington businesses. Burger joints using the “freshest homegrown” ingredients are found in all vaguely hip corners, evoking the trendiness of New York or Newtown, between 1908-10.1888-1972: Photographs of New Zealand photographed by Sydney Charles Smith. Courtesy of Alexander New Jersey and pacifying it Turnbull Library. 1/1-019663-G. with an ironical, furtive selfawareness. At lunch break, there is a café door flung open at every ten steps, a legacy of the 1950s after a boom in immigration and interest in American culture flooded the city’s coffeehouses with artists and political dissenters.

To this day, Wellington cafés are teeming with creatives and champagnerevolutionaries who sit in places that whisper of France, of Colombia, of lands of Milk and Honey. Wellington desires to be everywhere in the world, to seek newness and to create it from material found at home.

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Walter Benjamin says that every epoch dreams its successor; Wellington’s successor is a facsimile. The capital struggles aesthetically with the combined forces of its natural environment and the stifling confines of European and American influence. Its earliest structures are mostly wooden, as is the case with the Nairn Street Cottage. The cottage is in the Georgian Style, an import from the Wallis family’s homeland in Britain. William Wallis selected the location of his family home with the intention of having easy access to a nearby stream of clean water as a safety measure against the possibility of earthquakes.

To this day, Wellington’s buildings labour under the premonition of their own destruction, and it is partially for this reason that skyscrapers are rare — a scarcity which imposes a humble stature unbefitting a capital.

Wellington City. Courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library. 1/2-003900-F It was with the introduction of concrete in the 1890s that the urban centre began to take on a slightly statelier appearance as Wellington was at last able to mimic the fashionable Victorian styles of Europe. Old St. Paul’s Gothic-Revival style was adapted to Wellington’s environment and resources, using timber for the interior and concrete for the façade in order to emulate stone. Painted white and starkly artificial, Old St. Paul’s exterior has the effect of a modest impersonation of something rather more impressive. The pre-war period saw the rise of the trending French Art Deco, while the post-war period produced glassy structures courtesy of the American Modernist movement. In 1988, the search for a distinctive architectural style found some home grown talent to produce it in the form of Te Papa. The museum’s design draws inspiration from the histories of Māori and early settlers, using liberal amounts of a material not native to either — reinforced steel — a necessity brought about by earthquake danger. In 2007 it was voted by Dominion Post readers to be New Zealand’s ugliest building, proving that tall poppy syndrome extends its spite to architecture. Indeed, as a country and as a city there is an anxiety surrounding bold acts of aesthetic innovation with regards to national identity. Attempts to capture the unique character of New Zealand are, as a rule, accompanied by contempt and scepticism towards the authenticity of the representation. Wellington yearns to establish itself as part of the world’s narrative without being reduced to mimicry but is regularly hindered by a rejection of that which does not replicate or adapt the creativity of others.

A picture of the city would be incomplete without some mention of its people; unable to wholly capture an entire population in nuance, let us settle for caricature. Central Wellington is, geographically and in character,

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the core point of New Zealand, acting as a compromise between the rough countryside found in the South and the more modern North. Despite a middling cosmopolitanism and a general liberal-mindedness, many of Wellington’s inhabitants dress somewhat conservatively during the day.

Unlike Aucklanders, Wellingtonians do not exemplify the glitz of the tanned jocks and pseudo-baisable girls of your nightmarish high school years, rather they are typified by a kind of outsider-hood. There is something stygian about their fashion sense which is urban as well as rustic, compulsively nostalgic, and always lacking in colour. Wellington’s wind and rain enforce a code of modesty. Bare legs and arms are a rare sight, and when they do surface, anytime except those brief summer days in January to March, they are treated with the blushing ridicule and titillation of a winking taboo.

Most Wellingtonians are cushy city-folk with soft hands and watered down accents, however they combine this with a certain roughness which is loosely suggestive of rural New Zealand. Among the trendy, the masculine of the species is typically ectomorphic, cerebral, dressed a little survivalist Mac Demarco crossed with circa 2000 Julian Casablancas if he were a fisherman or a lumberjack. The feminine is often fresh-faced or only casually made-up, they maintain some of that free ‘n’ easy attitude of the country gal. Bright and whimsical with a Taurean earthiness, the feminine currently models a curated slovenliness à la Grimes, or a bohemian eclecticism. The people of Wellington are caught between conflicting ideas of what New Zealand is, weaving for themselves an identity particular to the capital which is modest but not dowdy, nostalgic but not old fashioned. They house in their minds both the future, which is the city of trendiness and clean convenience, and the past, which is relegated to the natural, the countryside of dirt and hard labour. Holding these concepts, they look upon the unstable picture of the present, drink their craft beer, and sigh.

Beyond the games of dress-up and make-believe, does Wellington see itself ? The city unites an abundance of histories and cultures under the simplicity of its own concept. The word ‘Wellington’ summons images of food, art, people, and places which are inextricable from their relationship to each other, their pasts and futures now fused. To forget that the city is at the end of the earth is the only error. To forget this would mean to cease needing to imagine, and it is in the act of envisioning elsewhere, spatial or temporal, that Wellington is at its clearest; a familiar harbour at the periphery of an imagined world.

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Things I Wish I Knew In First Year

elps you tually h hope ac e that I t a dvic dulgen i self-in

Dear first year, fresher, freshman, fresh off the boat, It’s hard to gain perspective when you’re in the middle of something overwhelming and unfamiliar, which starting university certainly can be (shout-out to those who are just chilling). You’ll learn, in your own time, how to step into your own confidence and how to be okay with your inner contradictions and the contradictions in others (ongoing life process). You’ll learn your own study rhythm that will get you through your degree(s). You might find lifelong friends, as well as those who just show fake love, straight up to your face.

1.

my sem

Here is

:

Written by Laura Toailoa

If you feel clueless about where your classes are, worry that you won’t make friends, or find the amount of reading required daunting — welcome to the club. We’re called students and we meet every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday along Courtenay Place. You’re not alone in your struggle.

Even though it feels that way when everyone else is so good at looking like they have their shit together. You will be lost for a while. You will struggle to make friends. There will be many uncomfortable moments.

But take comfort, however much you can, in knowing you’re not the only one. We’re in all in this together (and it shows when we stand, hand in hand, make our dreams come truuuuuue).

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

— Mary Schmich

The sushi at Maki Mono gets cheap after around 4:30—it goes quickly when this happens. May the odds be ever in your favour.

5.

We can tell that you’re a first year. Spotting you in a crowd and laughing at your wide-eyed excitement and confusion reminds us of how far we’ve come (uh, it’s not just me right).

The truth is, third year (and above) students are shit scared about what they’re going to do when they leave here. Some are contemplating doing further studies because the world outside university scares them. So when they laugh at you, laugh right back at them.

4.

Laura Toailoa

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all tutorials are awkward — even up until third year. Tutors will prepare discussion points that no one contributes to. There will be ice-breakers you’ll think you’re better than. Then you’ll have that annoying kid that dominates the class with their self-importance and irrelevant tangents. The way to fight this is to voice your very relevant discussion points. Tutors cater to students’ needs; if no one speaks up they don’t have much to work with. So you have to speak up. Say something that will require the tutor to reply. Say something that might open the discussion to other nervous class members who also find that kid annoying. You’re paying to be here (shout-out to international students paying a thousand times more) so use that 50 minutes and speak up! If you’ve been raised in a culture that discourages speaking freely, this can be a painful thing to overcome. It will feel disrespectful and wrong. I encourage you — if nowhere else in your life, uni is a good place to find your voice. Or use the one you know you’ve always had. I found mine here, you might too. So remember, use your words.

3.

The Kirk Computer Labs (level two, Kirk building) are open 24/7 for those dreaded (hopefully only occasional) all-nighters. You need your ID card to get in (and out!). During the day, these labs may be booked for classes. Check the timetable outside the door to see if it’s in use.

Or just walk in and have a room of students, plus tutor, turn and stare at you while you awkwardly back out.

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37 Things I Wish I Knew In First Year

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TEN PEOPLE YOU MEET IN FRESHER YEAR — A CYNIC’S GUIDE Your first year at university can be daunting when you don’t know what to expect.

The extensive number of people enrolled makes it near impossible for cliques to form, but it won’t stop you from encountering a few select personalities. To help you navigate your first couple of weeks, I have compiled a list of the top ten people you can expect to meet during your freshman year — compliments of your favourite cynic.

1. The First-Week Friend: O-Week can be intimidating so it’s perfectly natural to want to stick with the first person to come up and say hello.

But don’t be fooled; that chirpy demeanor will rapidly start to grate when you realise that their repertoire of dinner conversation spans all the way from their ginger tabby-cat, JoJo, to that one time they almost got hit by a car. You will wish they had been hit.

2. That Kid Who Peaked in High School: You’ll recognise this person from the year ten football trophies they use as paperweights for all of their unopened text books. If that isn’t enough of a give away, don’t worry! They will, without fail, inform you of their prefect role, their NCEA Level One endorsement, and the service award they were nominated for by a teacher in year twelve. This will occur weekly.

3. The Broody Poet: This individual oozes melancholy and creative genius. You can find them in their bedroom writing poetry and depressing songs, and on the rare occasion that they venture out for a meal they will be engage in deep philosophical discussions about life and, more importantly, death. They will have a Tumblr account and a penchant for alternative bands that “you haven’t heard of.”

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Jenny Nimon

Ten People You Meet In Fresher Year — A Cynic's Guide 4. The Wannabe Peter Jackson: A true Victoria archetype, you can find them milling around the Student Union building in packs, discussing the chiaroscuro lighting in Citizen Kane. There is one in every hall of residence, and if you are an English major then today is your lucky day!

At some point, The Wannabe Peter Jackson will offer to transform your working novel into an awardwinning blockbuster. They might even turn your lacklustre narratology essay into a documentary!

5. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Mum: In ten years time, she’ll probably change her name to Karen and adopt a classic jaw-length bob.

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Mum is the girl on your floor with BandAids at the ready; she also knows how to get the red wine out of your carpet before the RA sees. While her urge to coddle others may grow annoying, you will find her invaluable on a hungover Sunday.

6. The Fuckboy: While I’m sure you have encountered more than one of these phenomenons in the past, university is a great opportunity to get reacquainted. Hostels are a breeding ground for testosterone, where Fuckboys will meet and inspire each other’s Fuckboy-ishness.

The 2:00am “u up?” text is a rite of passage for most, so don’t feel discouraged if you fall for it once.

7. The Fuckgirl: The Fuckboy’s less televised friend, The Fuckgirl, is surprisingly just as common.

She frequents town for the hookups alone and has approximately seventeen Tinder matches on the go at any given time. She probably

doesn’t want anything serious, and she won’t go “all the way” outside of a relationship. Boys, she’s really not asking for much, so just give her the attention she craves. Or don’t. Maybe try to find someone who doesn’t want to toy with you out of boredom.

8. The Reinvention: The opportunity for a fresh start at university is a tempting one, and there are some people that get a little too sucked in. These people generally had a rough time in high school and try to compensate by acting excessively nice or, on the flip-side, by trying to make themselves look like a badass emotionless player. At some point their true self will resurface and, honestly, it’s 50/50 as to which persona is the better one.

9. The Floor Ghost: Do you remember the bad tempered Grey Lady (sorry, *Helena*) from Ravenclaw Tower? Yeah, well she is better socialised than this individual.

This is the person on your floor that you know the name of from their door label, but whose face you have never actually seen. Are they in there studying? Brewing meth? Or maybe they are just at their boyfriend’s flat.

It is impossible to know.

10. The Living Guilt Trip: You are sure your parents pay this person to guilt you into studying. The Living Guilt Trip is in the library before you are even out of bed. When you are binging on a Netflix show, they are working out at the gym. When you are playing Cards Against Humanity, they are flicking through their colour coded flashcards. This person will make you feel severely inadequate, but can be a great tutor if you share a paper.

Written by Jenny Nimon

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COFFEE LAMASON BREW BAR

Corner of Lombard and Bond Street, Wellington Central Lamason Brew Bar has been at the forefront of alternative coffee brewing, broadening Wellingtonians’ horizons past the standard flat white, since opening in 2011. While offering high quality espresso and V60, the star of the Lamason show is their siphon coffee — the siphon method allows Lamason to showcase a wide variety of flavour profiles, from sweet, fruity Ethiopian to rich, chocolatey South American beans. If you want a coffee ~experience~, Lamason is the place to go.

— $4.00 black / $4.50 white

CUSTOMS

39 Ghuznee Street, Te Aro Customs was founded in 2010, with the vision of ushering ~third wave~ coffee into the Wellington café scene. With a recently revamped space, their window bench is potentially the best place in Wellington to sit and read over a coffee. Customs serves Supreme espresso alongside high quality filter coffees from a variety of regions. They also have iced filter coffee on offer, for whenever summer decides to turn up in Wellington. Customs boasts a revolving menu of single origin beans which they can grind for you to take home (making the store smell like freshly ground coffee 24/7). They provide delicious toast options every day, and locally made Little Dough Co. doughnuts Thursday to Sunday.

— $4.00 black / $4.50 white

BLACK COFFEE

133 Riddiford Street, Newtown Black Coffee is a coffee shop, art gallery, and music store in Newtown, with revolving exhibitions featuring local artists. Their coffee menu is extensive, featuring bottomless filter and chemex alongside espresso options such as a Flat Mike (a double shot of espresso with steamed cream) and a Shot in the Dark (a double shot of espresso over a cup of filter). A great study spot, they also have a selection of sweet treats and a daily toasted sandwich and coffee deal for $11.00.

— $3.70 black / $4.20 white

RAGLAN ROAST

40 Abel Smith Street, Te Aro With three stores across Wellington, Raglan boasts (probably) the cheapest espresso coffee in the city, and it works out even cheaper if you get your name down in their loyalty book.

They have house-made gelato and sorbet at their Chaffers store, plus bags of coffee to take home. Their Abel Smith Street store is an excellent use of spare change if you’re heading down to design school and, if you’re splashing out, they’ve got a range of sweet treats in cabinets across all stores as well.

— $2.50 black / $3.00 white

PEOPLES

12 Constable Street, Newtown Peoples Coffee is available at a number of Wellington cafés, but their flagship Newtown store is (arguably) their finest offering.

Serving both espresso and filter coffee, Peoples is 100% certified fairtrade and organic. Its relationship with cooperative suppliers in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia highlight their dedication to direct and fairly traded coffee. Super cool ceramics from Wairarapa-based artist Lisa Donaldson, 12/12 lemon cake, and great people-watching opportunities make the Peoples experience worth the trip to Newtown.

— $4.00 black / $4.50 white

—Brigid Quirke

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C’EST LA VEGAN: THE SIX BEST PLACES TO GET A PLANTBASED BITE IN WELLINGTON If you’ve chosen to lead a plant-based lifestyle you’ll know the struggle of trying to find a decent vegan cheese, constantly being asked where you get your protein from, and finding decent places to eat that cater to your needs. We’re here to help on the latter point, with a helpful but by no means exhaustive list of some of the most deliciously cruelty-free eats in the capital.

* * Boquita 23 Kent Terrace, Mount Victoria Boquita has an entirely vegan kitchen. This taco joint from the owners of Miramar’s La Boca Loca serves up a delicious rotating menu of tacos, cauliflower ceviche, salads, and guacamole, with treats provided by Sweet Release on Willis Street. With its trendy industrial location on Kent Terrace, it’s the perfect place to stop in for a bite after your cheap Tuesday movie at the Embassy. * Southern Cross 39 Abel Smith Street, Te Aro A well-established Wellington favourite for events (outdoor movie nights in the courtyard), classes (life drawing on the third Monday of every month), live music, and quality craft beer, Southern Cross also does not disappoint when it comes to vegan fare. They provide an extensive menu with clearly marked vegan options and are very helpful with any food allergies. Their cabinet is always stacked with a bevy of sweet vegan delights. There’s a friendly, communitybased feel to the place and their range of weekly events, from discussions on socialism to improvisational jazz gigs, is always worth having a gander at.

Siem Reap 99 Dixon Street, Te Aro If you’re craving a good Cambodian feast, brimming with fresh produce, herbs, nuts, and zingy sauces, look no further than Siem Reap.

They have their own separate vegan menu and they can even make a couple of their entrees vegan. Their cozy interior is dotted with Cambodian art and photographs, and they have a delicious drinks menu plus the option to BYO. If you can handle a bit of a chili kick, I’d highly recommend the ‘Siem Reap Spicy’. * The Botanist 219 Onepu Road, Lyall Bay If you fancy a trip out to Lyall Bay (worth it for the sheer amount of dogs on the beach alone), then I advise you hightail it to The Botanist — Wellington’s latest entirely vegetarian eatery. It’s so brand-spanking-new that I haven’t even been able to make it out there yet, but fear not as I have heard a raft of exuberantly positive reviews.

Boasting enough plant-based options to send any vegan into an indecisive panic, a sublime location next to Wellington’s most favoured surf beach, and the street cred of being opened by the same people that own ferociously popular rooftop and tapas bar Basque, The Botanist is a café not to be slept on. * Planet Spice 128 Riddiford Street, Newtown In the heart of Wellington’s hippest (read: rapidly gentrifying) neighbourhood lies Planet Spice, which, in my opinion, is the jewel in the crown of our Indian restaurants. Loaded with a range of tantalizingly tasty and fresh vegan curries and breads, incredibly friendly staff, and the option for takeaways, Planet Spice certainly provides the goods. What’s more, they’re licensed for BYO, making it the best place to have a munch and a couple of quiets with your best pals before heading across to see some great local or international acts at gig venue Moon. *Honorable mention goes to Victoria University’s Krishna Foods, with stalls at Kelburn and Pipitea campuses. They dutifully provide curry, salad, and dessert plates for only $5 to us cash-strapped students.

— Lauren Spring

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FILM AND CINEMA The following is a schemata / brochure / wannabe Lonely Planet guide to the cinematic landscape of Wellington, something which in the last two years I have become all too familiar with, having spent many valuable essay hours in small (and large) dark rooms surrounded by strangers. We’d all be at a loss without our city’s wonderful theatres given the average Wellington winter is approximately eight months.

Blockbusters As far as blockbusters go, you can do no better than the prestigious Embassy theatre. Best picture, best sound, gorgeous building, and great downstairs bar that no one can afford to buy drinks from. Not all CGI blockbusters are trash, as I can confirm from seeing the latest two Star Wars films and Mad Max: Fury Road there. They screen many classics (Blade Runner, Rocky Horror, a tonne of Kubrick) and a decent number of smaller films. Be warned, the prices will hurt your wallet more than most, but getting Cinebuzz is free, and the benefits are sweet.

Indie / Festival We’re spoilt when it comes to independent theatres that showcase a wide variety of content.

Starting on Cuba Street, there is Lighthouse Cinema, a classy joint that shows a tonne of rarities and B-sides. The crowd there tends to be old white people queuing for the latest Meryl Streep film, but that can be forgiven providing the nattering stops at the door. With $11.50 tickets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, indulgence is more financially feasible.

If you’re feeling like a bit of a climb, there is the Penthouse Cinema in Brooklyn which offers much the same range of films as Lighthouse, and $10 Tuesdays — always appreciated. One screen is much bigger, and one’s much smaller (I saw Room in a room of about 20 seats), and there’s a quality art-house vibe.

Lastly is the Paramount Theatre. I honestly have yet to make heads or tails of this place, as they offer a very obscure range. Expect to find most of the biggest blockbusters, but also many obscure foreign language films, the usual festival fare, and occasionally gems such as The Neon Demon (which I didn’t think was going to make it to New Zealand). It may not be the nicest theatre technically, but it is charming and eclectic. Most importantly, they screen The Room (Tommy Wisseau’s 2003 disaster-piece) on the first Friday night of every month — unmissable.

Horror Sorry, you’re shit outta luck son. With Reading Cinemas on Courtenay Place closed due to earthquake damage there is not a lot of horror to be found in Wellington. To be honest, Reading was a pretty average theatre, but had the advantage of being a franchise with ten screens.

As an alternative, hit up AroVideo in Aro Valley. They have anything you could possibly ever desire — horror or otherwise. The staff are genius. Going there is an experience in and of itself for a film nerd. Last Halloween I acquired Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was cliche, but also a bloody good time.

— Finn Holland

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Your Personal Invitation to the World of Craft Beer

Craft beer is the closest thing Wellington has to a regional dish. Encapsulating the values of independence, innovation, and elitism, the craft beer scene fulfills a vital part in the capital’s urban nightlife. Craft beer is perceived as approximately $200,000 more expensive than DoBros and creating an unapproachable hive of pretentious Aro Valleyites. However, craft beer in Wellington is a market that celebrates small business and innovation.

The popularity of craft beer in New Zealand emerged out of a duopoly where Lion and DB Breweries owned all breweries. If there’s anything Victoria’s socialist clubs will tell you it’s that corporate control must be resisted, and that’s exactly what initial craft brewers did. This niche allowed individuals to compete with big businesses. Sidenote: If someone drinking a Panhead

makes fun of you for what you’re drinking, you can respond by explaining that Panhead is owned by Lion and subsequently isn’t real Craft Beer. Trust me, you’ll be the coolest kid at the party.

T F A R C BEER

People often liken the taste of craft beer to a puddle left on the floor from a bag of rubbish.

Taste is subjective, and it may take time to adjust to the flavour (like blue cheese, or bourbon!).

One beer that has a particular place in my heart is the porter. Where many beers are enriched with powerful and fruity hops, porters are a much smoother ride designed to warm you on a cold night. I recommend Mike’s Vanilla Coffee Porter.

You can find a beer like this at most supermarkets; I’d recommend New World’s selection.

For many, entering the craft beer scene is a scary prospect. At a bar, you’re expected to know exactly what type of drink you want and immediately order. This is not the case in the craft beer scene. Most craft beer bars will pour you a small taster of any beer; this is usually free of charge and many bartenders encourage it to start conversation. It’s a great way to try different tastes without ordering a full pint.

Like any demographic, there’s always a few who paint an exclusive picture of the scene. But for every condescending tool looking down at your for what you’re drinking, there’s another five prepared to ignore you and drink their beer in peace.

— Jack Kerkvliet

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Guides If you’re anything like me in that you don’t like crowds or loud music, let alone large packs of youthful drunkards sucking down their first ever packet of JPS Reds, wearing awkwardly pointed and slightly oversized ‘town shoes’ or anklebreakingly tall heels, you might very well appreciate the capital’s quieter nightlife.

Golding’s Free Dive — 14 Leeds Street, Te Aro A real hideaway for newcomers, Golding’s is a beer snob’s wet dream. With music always at a reasonable level, no smoking area, and bottomless filter coffee, this place boasts a few huge bonuses in my book. The taps change weekly and can usually cover your bases for all beer and cider needs. Not really a place for cocktails or wine as they can Quiet Bar’s be pretty basic. As for food, they have an arrangement with Pizza Pomodoro next door and can hook you up some tasty slices for fairly cheap.

CGR Merchant Co. — 44 Courtenay Place, Te Aro Probably the best cocktail place on this list. Fairly pricy but it’s quiet, small, and has a lot of charm and style. Bonus points for being a few feet above Courtenay Place so you can witness the carnage from your h i p s t e r ivory tower without harassment.

Their hand brewed rum and gin blends are worth coming for on their own (salted caramel rum and a side of ice cream is the best closer to any evening). Their gin and rum mixes have everything and you can order pretty much every cocktail on the menu with the cheapest base alcohol to save a bit of coin too. Food is limited but it’s above a kebab place is you get really desperate.

Five Boroughs — 4 Roxburgh Street, Mount Victoria Best sandwiches and milkshakes in the city hands down. Five Boroughs is set up like a New York diner with a good atmosphere and even better food. Not too busy and the service is usually pretty good, the staff don’t mind too much if you bend their ear for a bit which is always nice. They play a decent amount of classic hip-hop with baseball and gridiron on the big screens which adds to the whole experience. Great place for dinner before hitting a movie at the Embassy or walking up Mount Victoria.

— Mathew Watkins

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WHERE’S THE ART IN THIS CITY? — A GUIDE TO GALLERIES IN WELLINGTON

Wellington is a city of three Cs: Coffee, Culture, and Crappy weather.

Whether you’re trying to escape the wind, looking for somewhere impressive to take a date (openings are known to have free wine...), or genuinely interested in engaging with the art scene, galleries are a good place to start. Chances are you’ll find artwork that confronts, challenges, and surprises. So, if you’re unsure what’s going on, ask the person behind the desk. Not only is it their job to help, but they’ll appreciate you showing an interest.

— Louise Rutledge

Adam Art Gallery Victoria University of Wellington, Gate 3, Kelburn Parade If you are studying at Victoria (I’m looking at all art history students in particular) and based at the Kelburn campus, there is no excuse not to visit the Adam.

Designed by Ian Athfield, the building alone is worth checking out.

Beyond the architectural statement, the gallery houses a programme of well-researched, thoughtful, and critical exhibitions.

Bartley and Company Art 56A Ghuznee Street, Te Aro Directed by Alison Bartley, the gallery is currently exhibiting the work of leading New Zealand photographer Ann Shelton. The series, Jane Says, focuses on the plants, herbs, and flowers used historically to control fertility. An exhibition of new works by Kerry Ann Lee (zine maker, designer, and artist extraordinaire) titled In Praise of Weird Wonders opens Wednesday, March 1, at 5:30pm.

City Gallery Wellington 101 Wakefield Street (Civic Square) Established in 1980, City Gallery was the first significant noncollecting, exhibition-based, public gallery in New Zealand. Exhibiting some of the biggest and best shows in town, expect a mix of New Zealand and international art.

Enjoy 147 Cuba Street, Te Aro Enjoy Public Art Gallery is Wellington’s longest running independent contemporary art space. As a non-commercial gallery, Enjoy doesn’t sell anything. Instead it supports emerging and experimental art in all its forms. Exhibitions change monthly and run alongside a programme of publications and events, so it’s worth visiting often. Just don’t expect to see work framed and on the walls.

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The Dowse 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt Although it’s in the Hutt, The Dowse (and nearby op-shops) are worth going out of town to visit. Dark Objects, curated by Faith Wilson, opens on March 4 and is set to be a great show, questioning how immediacy, indigeneity, sovereignty, and queerness can be held in alluring yet unknown objects.

Play_station 8 Egmont Street, Te Aro Founded by a group of recent graduates, Play_station is another newly minted studio and artist-run gallery. The upcoming programme is set to feature works across the main space and in the Yellow Room, from painting and photography to sculpture and installation. Head downstairs to see what’s happening.

Hamish McKay 1st Floor, 39 Ghuznee Street, Te Aro Although the gallery is only open two days a week, Hamish McKay is worth the visit. The gallery has been running for over 20 years and exhibits some of the best contemporary New Zealand and Australian art.

Precinct 35b 35 Ghuznee Street, Te Aro While the front of the store is taken over by design and homewares, last year the back room started hosting a new series of exhibitions by local artists, many who are recent graduates. Grab a coffee, admire the ceramics, and take a look at the beautiful things.

MEANWHILE 35 Victoria Street, Wellington Central The newly founded MEANWHILE is a studio and artist-run initiative facilitated Jordana Bragg, Jesse Bowling, and Callum Devlin. While they are moving from their Victoria Street location at the end of the month, their website will continue to exhibit works while they finalise the new premises.

Peter McLeavey Gallery 147 Cuba Street, Te Aro Founded in 1966, the Peter McLeavey Gallery moved to the Cuba Street in 1968 and has remained there ever since. Beginning with exhibitions by the historical heavyweights Toss Woollaston and Colin McCahon, the gallery continues to exhibit paintings and photography by leading artists.

Robert Heald Gallery 209 Left Bank, Cuba Mall, Te Aro Tucked down the end of the alleyway, the Robert Heald Gallery is newer to the dealer gallery circuit.

Established in 2010, the gallery’s characteristically minimal and carefully considered exhibitions are a sharp respite from Left Bank’s chaos. Check out the new work by artist Sonya Lacey on this month.

Toi Poneke 61-69 Abel Smith Street, Te Aro Funded by the City Council, Toi Poneke is a creative space for artists, arts businesses, and arts organisations to meet, work, rehearse, and exhibit. The gallery exhibits work by solo artists, groups and curators (emerging and established) and has the longest opening hours of any gallery in town.

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So you’re signing up for a bajillion things at Clubs Week, and are eventually going to settle for one or two which suit your interests and, more importantly, your timetable. Congrats! But there is a lot more on offer at Victoria, including leadership opportunities and international cooperation for those of you with worldly aspirations.

M e n t o r i n g If you’ve done well in a course (and enjoyed it!), then you can volunteer as a mentor for Te Pūtahi Atawhai and empower Māori and Pasifika students studying Humanities, Business, and Commerce. For Science, Architecture, or Design students, join Te Rōpū Āwhina whanau instead. Mentors provide academic guidance to students for an hour each week. You don’t have to be Māori or Pasifika to be a mentor!

N o t e - t a k i n g If you can’t spare too much time, you can volunteer as a note-taker for the Disability Services team. Fill out the application form online; you’ll be contacted if someone in your class requires lecture notes. The training you receive will also improve your own notetaking abilities, a definite plus!

Peer Assisted Study Support As a poor student, it’s nice to be paid for your work. The PASS leadership role involves facilitating weekly study sessions. Apply for the position via CareerHub before each Trimester.

Conversation leader or language learning partner Keen to befriend international students? You can sign up online, or go to the Language Learning Centre on Level 0 of the Von Zedlitz building, to become a conversation leader. You can also be paired up with a student to guide around the city during orientation, or join the International Buddy Programme.

Victoria International Leadership Programme VILP facilitates seminars and experiential

activities aimed at global themes and international cooperation. You can participate for points, plus take advantage of the $1000 grant that can be put towards an exchange should you complete the programme.

Victoria Plus Programme This is a programme that develops leadership, social responsibility, and employability skills. It will go on your academic transcript and is a great way to be involved when not studying or working. Sign up on CareerHub to get regular emails about volunteer opportunities and seminars.

R e p r e s e n t a t i o n For the more academically inclined there are class representative roles open every trimester in every course, as well as University Council member roles, faculty delegates, and group executives. Your lecturers will notify you when these become available. Some will require you to say a short speech, others have a bit more work involved.

E x t r a m u r a l You can volunteer for the SPCA, the Free Store, St Vincent’s op shops, soup kitchens, the refugee centre, and more. They usually require commitment, but there are seasonal events such as the CubaDupa Festival or Growing Trees for Graduates which request help for a day or two. Summer is the best for events such as the Fringe Festival and the Performance Arcade, and assisting or interning is a way to get involved in the vibrant arts community in Wellington.

—Livné Ore

GETTING INVOLVED: A SUPPLEMENTARY GUIDE

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WALKS AND BEACHES: Having survived my fresher year, I look back and remember what kept me sane. I spent most of my days writing essays and attempting to get through 400,000 pages of law readings, so I looked for any excuse to venture outside of the library and onto the streets of Wellington. Rain or shine, I was always up for turning an average day into an extraordinary adventure.

Here are four top adventure spots: Mt Victoria

30 minutes to one hour + The easiest starting point is at the end of Majoribanks Street. Numerous grassy pathways sneak through tall pines and will lead you up. At the top there is a great vista across the city — see if you can spot your hall / new abode / friend left behind studying in the library. The chatter of tourists also admiring the view and the chirping of Wellington’s extraordinary native birds will keep you company.

Paekakariki Escarpment Track

Three to five hours + Take the train to Paekakariki ($10.50) and signs will lead you to this beauty of a ten kilometre track. Coastal bush, kohekohe forests, swing bridges, and views divine are what you’ll find.

As you walk uphill there will be glimpses of magnificent views that taunt you to keep going.

Wild lupins and sweet peas line the the pathway.

On a sunny day the track is marvellous; on an overcast rainy day the track is moody and remarkable. Home can be via train or bus caught from track end at Pukerua Bay.

Otari Valley and link to Skyline

Two to five hours + Catch the number 14 bus from your nearest stop to Gloucester Street at Wilton Road, the main entrance of Otari-Wilton’s Bush. You will be greeted by a mass of thriving native forest, just

20 minutes from the city. Check out the map and decide your activity — from picnic areas, 800 year old Kauri trees, waterfalls, views.

If you pick the views option, heads up! You’ll eventurally break through the treeline and clouds to the grassy Skyline tops where on a good day you won’t be blown over. Continuing along the yellow markers you can walk another ten kilometres through to Johnsonville. Catch the train back to give your weary feet a rest. The Skyline walk is epic even on a bad day — thick misty clouds and a buffeting wind envelope you.

Eastbourne / Days Bay / Pencarrow Lighthouse

A day Check the weather the day before and pack a picnic lunch. When the clear morning arrives, grab your best friend and head to Wagamama on the waterfront, where you’ll find a ticket office for the ferry. A little more expensive (but oh so worth it), buy a return ticket to Days Bay for $18.00 with student ID. Hop on the ferry, glide across the harbour, and feel the sun’s warmth kiss your cheeks.

At Days Bay, head out to Eastbourne and walk along the promenade. Eventually you will get to the beginning of the 14km track to Pencarrow Lighthouse. The final part is a small incline up to the historic lighthouse, where the harbour entrance opens up. Take a moment to sit back and truly realize just how remarkable the world is. Depending on who you’re with, steal a kiss on the way back down as you climb over the stile on the fence. ~ Dare to live out everyday of your extraordinary ordinary life as if it’s your last. Dare to make adventures.

—Samantha Mythen

MAKING YOUR OWN ADVENTURES

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BUT WAIT! VUWSA Welfare Vice President Anya Maule has been working tirelessly to get our own community garden up and running on the Student Union deck outside of the VUWSA office. Pop in and ask for Anya if you are keen to get involved and follow the progress on Facebook: Kelburn Student Community Garden Project.

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As fun as it is being stacked liked sardines in your new hall of residence, you too might be bemoaning the lack of outdoor space for cultivating a small It wasn’t garden. until second year that I discovered the wonderful world of community gardens in Wellington.

If you are this way inclined, and your friends are struggling to find you Although amidst the forest of indoor plants in each of these gardens your room, I’d highly recommend have their own community checking them out. As well as of regulars, they always being a way to satisfy your welcome a visitor. Check out green thumb and get some the list of gardens around Pōneke delicious organic fruit and on the Wellington City Council’s vegetables cranking in your website here: wellington.govt. diet, they are a nice way of nz/services/community-andescaping the campus madness culture/community-gardens/ by temporarily immersing contacts yourself in a little green oasis dotted somewhere around the city.

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BOOKSHOPS

57 Willis Street, Wellington Central

204 Left Bank, Cuba Mall, Te Aro

Pegasus Books is located in the Left Bank mall, just off Cuba Street, where the Friday Night Markets are (would also recommend visiting them). I can unequivocally say that Pegasus Books is my favourite bookstore in Wellington, not just for their wide range of books — everything from gay witchcraft, medieval, Jewish interest, plays, romance, and poetry — but also for their modest prices. Their website, pegasusbooksnz.com, also has a great search function. Don’t let the floor to ceiling book shelves intimidate you; take your time and enjoy one of Wellington’s best second-hand bookstores. Perhaps one of the flaws of Pegasus is its insurmountable presence — it would take many, many days to look at all of their items.

UNITY BOOKS

Unity Books is, in their own words, “New Zealand’s leading independent bookshop,” and indeed is in a field above most other bookstores in Wellington. Unity Books is the place to find all the books you could possibly want. From recipe, travel, queer, women, anthropology, fiction, New Zealand fiction, poetry, history, philosophy, political science — they have it all. The only potential drawback I could mention about Unity Books is the price. Whilst supporting local bookstores is something we should all do, perhaps, for the avid first year reader, Unity Books is more a place to treat yourself.

106 Manners Street, Te Aro

PEGASUS BOOKS

Guides

ARTY BEES BOOKS

Kelburn and Pipitea Campus

You’re a first year. You’ve just moved to Wellington. You need a bookstore to hide from your hall peers, to hide from your study, to hide from your general responsibilities.

Joshua James (@teJoshuaJames) looks through some of the best bookstores in Wellington.

17 College Street, Te Aro

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Arty Bees Books is found on Manners St next to what used to be Shot Shack (RIP). Arty Bees has been a Wellington institution since 1988, and supports local community events and organisations including the International Film Festival. When I first moved to Wellington Arty Bees was my favourite bookstore. Since then, the collection has downsized and seems to be missing its mojo. No longer does it have a substantial queer or women’s section (my favourites), however there are still plenty of graphic novels, history texts, and general fiction. Plus all the Mills and Boon.

~Honourable Mentions~ VICBOOKS

Solid choice: on campus, great range of books, you get a 10% discount if you’re a student or staff member, and VicBooks is owned by VUWSA, so buying from there supports local student democracy. Can that get any better?

EKOR BOOKSHOP AND CAFÉ

I’ve never been to Ekor (every time I have endeavoured to I have been too hungover).

However I have only ever heard good things about this bookstore and café, and it is high on my to-do list. I’ll keep you all updated.

-Dishonourable MentionsChain bookstores. Paying low-wages, limited selection, and sending all their money overseas...

— Joshua James

52

REVIEWS

53

Television

TELEVISION Saturday Night Live In Trump’s America Written by Katie Meadows On November 7, 2015, Donald Trump hosted the iconic American skit show Saturday Night Live (SNL) for his second time. Exactly one year and one day after, on November 8, 2016, Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States — a shock result for an election that seemed in the bag for his opponent until the very last minute. Throughout his campaign and, indeed, his entire career, Trump has enjoyed his position as a divisive ‘popular’ figure. Sure, he was hated by most of the liberal world but we could say “fuck off ” and actually make him do that by simply turning off the television or exiting his Twitter profile. Now one of the most powerful positions in the western world is held by a reality television star, and not even one of the good ones.

How did we go from 2011’s “Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump” to 2017’s Donald Trump Roast of America’s Civil Rights and Constitution?

Lorne Michaels created SNL in 1975 and since then it has been an enduring staple of American television and culture. Currently in its 42nd season, it’s hard to find an SNL alumni who hasn’t gone on to feature heavily in mainstream American comedy. The show has birthed many careers since its inception, including Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and Jimmy Fallon. There was no way SNL could ever function without inclusion of the country’s current political climate but in order to maintain success it had to make sure not to make camp with either the Democrats or Republicans. Showrunner Michaels has stated that it’s easier to make fun of Republicans than Democrats while remaining bipartisan, but it’s become clear that this has created tension in recent years. When Donald Trump was announced as host for the November ‘15 episode there was immediate backlash — claims of humanising a man who had no intention of relating to anyone on a human level himself.

The episode was awkward and stilted and it was apparent Trump had demanded limitations on the jokes. After the episode, cast members gave

interviews recapping their experience filming with him. Cast member Pete Davidson, in particular, has been extremely vocal in describing Trump’s lack of humour and understanding of the culture of SNL. Davidson has also expressed personal displeasure in having to work with a man he saw as an unrelenting bigot.

Despite holding power over an entire nation, Trump has made it clear from his Twitter rants (from his @realDonaldTrump account — the account he prefers to use as it has more followers than @POTUS) that he cannot tear himself away from his television come 11:30pm, Saturday night. In particular, he loathes Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him — a smug, ignorant, racist, power-hungry maniac — and to everyone but Trump this rings true. His current White House Chief Strategist and personal assistant is simply portrayed as the Grim Reaper. Since Trump’s election almost every single host has addressed the now President of the United States personally: Aziz Ansari begged for acceptance of people of colour within America, while Kristen Stewart mocked Trump for his previous obsession with her relationship with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.

At this point SNL finds itself in a strange position; it seems crass to make light of a man who for all intents and purposes is a neo-Nazi and who intends to create a modern civil war in America, but it seems absolutely delightful that a comedy skit show has the full attention of the President of the United States. Trump is a man with an ego so fragile the humour doesn’t even have to be intelligent, it just has to piss him off.

With a cast that has become increasingly more diverse since its inception, and with the frankness that comes with hosting comedians, it’s only a matter of time before the show itself becomes controversial — but with a President whose skin is so thin it’s increasingly easy to push his buttons. As long as SNL continues, and as long as Trump maintains his position before his eventual impeachment (fingers crossed), the hosts and cast members will hopefully continue to antagonise him and humour us through admittedly one of the darkest moments of modern day politics.

55

LANEWAY VOCALS

Auckland’s seventh Laneway festival took place, at the start of February, up the road from its traditional Silo Park venue. The move to Albert Park, a more open and shadier space, was welcomed by the many pasty, indoorsy types who frequent the festival. A few scheduling and technical difficulties were largely overlooked and the performers seemed pleased to be there and able to play on some particularly idyllic stages.

Olly Clifton, Salient’s music editor, managed to get a chance to talk to some of our favourite local and international acts:

WHITE LUNG

White Lung are a Canadian punk-rock band that formed in Vancouver in 2006. Olly chats with vocalist Mish Way-Barber and guitarist Kenneth William.

Salient: Your record Paradise came out in 2016 but it was recorded the year before. How was the recording?

Mish: We recorded in LA at the end of 2015.

Kenneth: With a guy named Lars at his studio. He produced the HEALTH record and he’s working on one with Alice Glass right now I think.

Music

Salient: Your new record has often been called indie-punk rather than noise-punk; what brought on the change in your sound?

Mish: I just think that was a difference in production.

Kenneth: Yeah, but I also listen to a lot of music that comes out all the time and I’ve heard five years worth of stuff that didn’t exist in the time since we made the first record. Obviously some things are going to change. Every time you do a record you use up ten ideas, so you’ve got to get new ones.

Salient: You guys have been together for about ten years now?

Mish: Technically Anne-Marie and I started the band ten years ago but we didn’t do anything for the first four. It was four girls, we fought, I went and lived in the Netherlands for a year, we made one seven inch. When [Kenneth] joined we actually made a full length record and we started touring. It doesn’t count until you start touring.

Salient: How does the songwriting process work now you’re scattered around?

Mish: We all do our own parts. I write all the melodies and lyrics, Kenny writes all the guitar and the bass, and Anne-Marie plays the drums.

When it comes to do a record Kenny will throw us parts that we’ll hear, him and Anne-Marie will work together, and then they’ll show me what they’re working on because I live in a different city. But mostly everything is done in the studio because that’s the time that we’re together and can actually work.

THE VEILS

The Veils are an indie-alternative band that formed in Auckland in 2001 and are now based in London. Olly sat down with lead singer and songwriter Finn Andrews.

Salient: So you’re based in London, is this where the latest record Total Depravity was put together?

Finn: The latest one was done all over the place because of working with EL-P [Run The Jewels]. They were on tour a lot so we’d go out and meet them wherever they were. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

56

Music

Continued >>>>>>We did some of it in Portugal and some of it in New York and Los Angeles.

Salient: Sonically this record is quite a bit different — more electronic and noise-poppy.

Was EL-P involved in bringing that about?

Finn: Yeah it was a mixture of him, and I think because we had a few years of writing it.

We had our own little studio I was going into everyday and just sort of fucking around really.

Salient: Have you got your own setup at home?

Finn: We’re always moving around so this was the first time we had a dedicated space to go into everyday, and all the gear was there so I could write songs from a different angle. I’d begin with weird loops, mutilated sort of sounds rather than the more traditional beginning of a piano. It began in a different way so it went down a different direction. I was learning more about production and it was quite nice not to be tied to the piano as I usually am.

Salient: The drums sounds are pretty crazy, were they all done on loops?

Finn: A lot of the time we’d play them live and then we’d fuck with the drums afterwards — stretch them and distort them.

Salient: I’ve also heard you’ve been working with David Lynch and that the track “In the Nightfall” was recorded at his house. How did this come about?

Finn: That was through his producer/engineer Dean Hurley who has worked with him for years.

He was the one that invited us up to David’s house and we did a song there, and then got asked to be involved with Twin Peaks — sadly we’re not allowed to talk about until it comes out.

TYCHO

Tycho is the ambient music project of Scott Hansen, who is originally from San Francisco and involved in design and photography. Olly sat down with Scott and talked about his project.

Salient: I heard you got into music through computers and computer science.

Scott: I studied computer science but I never finished. I was a visual artist and then I started messing around with computers and using photoshop. I then realised you could use them to make music.

Salient: It was just you on the original albums right, and now you’ve got a band that came in on Dive [2011]?

Scott: Yeah Dive was limited, I worked with Zac Brennan who plays guitar and bass on a few songs, and then we got a drummer for the live show. It wasn’t until Awake [2014] when we all worked together.

Salient: How would you compare working solo to working with your band?

Scott: What I liked about the process of making Dive was just spending a lot of time alone really drilling down on the details of everything. That’s what Epoch [2016] was for me.

I wanted to go back and do that again. I spend four months really mapping out what the record might look like and then everybody else comes in, it’s a nice two-tiered approach.

Salient: How does recording work for you?

Have you got a home studio or do you tend to get out?

Scott: We spent time in Tahoe and then we went to Stinson Beach to a studio there and we recorded some drums in Brooklyn. I like to get outside when I’m working with the band.

Salient: I’ve heard you’re really interested in post-rock too and see elements of that coming into your music, did you grow up playing guitar or other instruments?

Scott: No, I never touched a musical instrument until I was like twenty and it was a drum machine. I learned guitar later but I love guitar rock. Rush, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater — all that old stuff. I was into heavy metal in high school. Those things have found their way back into the music and that was always kind of the goal.

An extended transcript is available on the Salient website — salient.org.nz. Recordings of the interviews will be played on Salient FM — salient. org.nz/fm/ — over the coming week.

— Olly Clifton

57

Games

SWITCHED ON+ SWITCHED ON> SWITCHED ON< SWITCHED ON+ +++SWITCHED ON Welcome newbs! This year is set to be a pretty exciting time to be a gamer, and I am once again at the helm to sort the surprisingly awesome from the painfully average. I’ve been writing about games for a few years now, with one of my key messages throughout that time being “games are for everyone.” I don’t discriminate here, but I do want you to share my joy in this hobby and if that means calling out bullshit, then so be it.

Nintendo are certainly a company that expresses similar goals, though these days they are more likely to generate bullshit. When they get it right, their games are capable of inducing players into a state of childlike glee that will stay with them throughout the experience. They are responsible for so many innovations that the entire gaming industry probably would have died had the NES not been a success thirty years ago. When they get it wrong, however, they seem incredibly out-of-touch with the gaming community and even with common sense, often innovating just for the sake of it — just look at the state of the Wii U and the forced scarcity of the NES Mini this past Christmas.

In spite of that, and with the future of the company at stake, they might just have something to get back in the good graces of gamers. Rumoured for many months, the Nintendo Switch is just a few weeks from launching, and while it may not have exactly lit a fire underneath the gaming public, there is still an air of hope surrounding it.

If you’ve been living under a rock for a while, the Switch is a hybrid console, able to play games both on your TV and in a portable tablet mode.

The bundled Joy-Con controllers are detachable and can be used in a multitude of ways, including individually for multiplayer titles. It will be fully online capable, including online multiplayer with a new subscription service similar to Xbox Live and PS Plus launching later this year, plus integrating with various social media services for sharing features similar to the PS4’s Share button. While it likely won’t be as powerful as its competitors, it does appear to hold its own, especially against smartphones and tablets. The

biggest factor in a console’s success, however, is the games and while the Switch has only ten games lined up for launch day that list includes The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — pretty much guaranteeing some success.

This seems to be an attempt by Nintendo to retain its reputation for hardware innovation while at the same time potentially widening its customer base. We saw this with the Wii ten years ago and it could potentially happen again, though perhaps not on the same scale.

But smart devices didn’t exist ten years ago, and they’ve taken up so much of the casual market that Nintendo aggressively targeted that mobile is now the biggest sector in the industry. Maybe by having a device that is essentially a tablet, Nintendo are investing their future in the mobile market, complete with games on iOS and Android, which is something I thought would never happen.

The small launch line-up of titles is also not indicative of the effort Nintendo has put in to bring back third-party developers, a notable failing of the Wii U. We may well see more, and more triple-A releases, on the Switch but they won’t sell systems, so Nintendo can also not afford to let their standards for first party titles slip. Their efforts to court independent studios is also quite impressive.

I really want the Switch to be successful. If it is, it may not necessarily change everything, but people will certainly be happy to fork over the cash for it. If it isn’t, it may well be the end of one of the biggest names in the industry.

— Cameron Gray

SKYN PRESENTS

Speed Dating

HOSTED BY COMEDIAN ALICE BRINE Tuesday 7th March • 7pm • Free Entry • The Hunter Lounge

Afternoon Live WEDNESDAY 15TH MARCH/11:00AM - 2:00PM

PIPITEA CAMPUS DJS AND STALLS

60

Puzzles

CROSSWORD: ‘O-WEEK SOUNDS’

ACROSS

SUDOKU

DOWN

Sudoku difficulty: Hard

TARGET Make as many words of three letters or more as you can.

Each word must contain the letter in the central square.

Target goals: Good: 8 words Great: 10 words Impressive: 13 words

1. Debbie Harry’s 1981 debut solo album (6) 4. Board game with 100 tiles (8) 10. Undivided (3) 11. Band who had a 1998 hit with ‘Iris’ (3,3,4) 12. Anticipating (8) 15. Moves on all fours (6) 18. 1973 Rolling Stones track about a police shooting (3,3,3,3,3) 23. Lethal (6) 26. Running next to (8) 30. 1973 Jimi Hendrix hit with the subtitle ‘Slight Return’ (6,5) 31. ___-Manuel Miranda (Puerto Rican composer) (3) 32. 2016 film which features the destruction of Jedha (5,3) 33. Title by which Blur’s ‘Song 2’ is better known, because it’s the only bit that anybody remembers (3-3) 1. Drink whose mascot destroys masonry while shouting “Oh yeah!” (4-3) 2. Herb often used in Italian food (7) 3. Should have, with ‘to’ (5) 5. Explorer who died in Hawaii (4) 6. European snake (5) 7. Underneath (5) 8. Makes more comfortable (5) 9. Penny or farthing (4) 13. Tusk material (5) 14. Set on the periodic table (5) 15. Tree on the flag of Lebanon (5) 16. Word that precedes “in a galaxy far, far away” (3) 17. August star sign (3) 19. Need to repay (3) 20. One who might coach school sports (3) 21. Name in songs by Tom Jones and the Plain White Ts (and, oh great, that’s stuck in my head forever) (7) 22. Site of Walt Disney World (7) 23. Home of some famous white cliffs (5) 24. Beside (5) 25. ‘Every Which Way But ____’ (Clint Eastwood film) (5) 27. It’s home to more than four billion people (4) 28. Video’s counterpart (5) 29. Read quickly (4)

61

Comic

orientation tour Mar 10 - Wellington San Fran Bath House (w/ Melodownz and ILLBAZ)

QUIZ NIGHT H0STED BY C0MEDIAN C0HEN H0LL0WAY (AS SEEN IN EAGLE VS. SHARK, B0Y & HUNT F0R THE WILDERPE0PLE)

THURSDAY 9TH MARCH 7PM FREE ENTRY THE HUNTER L0UNGE

VUWSA + VICTORIA PRESENTS: NEWTOWN AVE STAGE

SUN MAR 5

[11AM - 8PM]

[7PM - LATE]

TINIE TEMPAH

KELBURN PARK

WELCOME FESTIVAL

FRI MAR 3

WELCOME FIRST YEARS! [11AM - 2PM]

[7PM - LATE]

KID INK

VUWSA STALL [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

THUR MAR 2

[SHOW 1: 6:30PM / SHOW 2: 8:30PM]

NEWTOWN FESTIVAL

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

PASIFIKA ORIENTATION COMBINED EVENT [3PM] AM102 & AM104

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS ORIENTATION [12PM] LEVEL 2, THE HUB

COMEDY SHOW WITH GUY WILLIAMS

MAORI ORIENTATION COMBINED EVENT [12PM] TE HERENGA WAKA MARAE

VUWSA STALL [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

WED MAR 1

DRAX PROJECT + SWEET MIX KIDS

TOGA PARTY [7-10:30PM]

VUWSA STALL [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

VUWSA STALL [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

MEOW

TUE FEB 28

[7PM - LATE]

HERMITUDE

MATURE STUDENTS ORIENTATION [9PM] HUNTER LECTURE THEATRE 323

[9PM - LATE] FT. SOULECTION CURATED BY MADCAP

RED BULL SOUND SELECT WELLINGTON

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS ORIENTATION [12PM] LEVEL 2 - THE HUB

TOPSHOP LAMPTON QUAY

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

SAN FRAN

[7:30PM]

THE PIXIES

QUIZ NIGHT

[7PM] HOSTED BY COMEDIAN COHEN HOLLOWAY

POPUP LUNCH [12PM] THE BUBBLE

VALHALLA

AFTERNOON LIVE - TE ARO FEAT. DJ GUSSIE AND AW B [11AM-2PM] TOLD GOVT. BUILDING GRASS

AFTERNOON LIVE - PIPITEA FEAT. ALEXA CASINO AND H&F [11AM-2PM] OLD GOVT. BUILDING GRASS

KAMANDI + JAGA [10PM]

MADCAP AND FOSTERCARE PRESENT

[12PM  4PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

PASIFIK SOUNZ FEAT. SWISS, BOUTIQUE, TRUCE LEE AND CONWAY JEUNE

[9PM] FRESH BEATS ON CUBA ST

SUMMER THEIVES

CAMPUS EXPO - THE GREAT VUWSA GARAGE SALE [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

CAMPUS EXPO [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

TOP SHOP STUDENT NIGHT [6PM - 9PM]

CAMPUS EXPO [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

HOSTED BY COMEDIAN ALICE BRINE

TE HERENGA WAKA MARAE

TSB ARENA

THE HUNTER LOUNGE

POST-GRAD STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION COMIBINED EVENT [11AM-2PM] THE HUNTER LOUNGE

FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT WWW.VUWSA.ORG.NZ

THUR MAR 16

WED MAR 15

POST O-WEEK

SAT MAR 11

FRI MAR 10

THUR MAR 9

WED MAR 8

CAMPUS EXPO [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

TUE MAR 7 SPEED DATING [7PM - LATE]

CAMPUS EXPO [11AM-2PM] TIM BEAGLEHOLE COURTYARD

MON MAR 6

O-WEEK PUZZLES SUBHEADING

MON FEB 27

NSO WEEK

FRI FEB 24

PRE O-WEEK

PRESENTS:

63

*BOOK REVIEW* Mimicry 2 I’m torn. I like classical books — I would list some names, but I also like to be liked, not discarded into irrelevance by the exhibition of insufferable pretentiousness. The opposite of a classic is an amateur collection of mixed-form creative works. Or, at least, they’re not the same.

So, having read Mimicry 2, said collection “of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comedy, music, art, photography and design by young New Zealand artists,” I will try hard to be insufferably evenhanded in my review.

Every piece in this journal made me feel / think things. Therefore, I first conclude: this is art. This is not some rushed high school nonsense. Each piece was thoughtfully crafted and evocative, because they were personal — like the events of Jaws: The Revenge… “this time it’s personal”… you get it. Here’s the proof: Claudia Jardine’s poetic recollection of the time she was informed “your cervix is iron.” Or Mia Gaudin’s admission, remembered vividly in the beautiful Canadian wild, that her mother cried.

Or Matafanua Tamatoa’s “brown hands working big machines,” and it’s sad and it’s family and it’s simple.

But the key point is that, despite the risks inherent in a journal like this — the selfconscious over-writing; the adjectives as far as the bright, clear, sea-green eye can see; the insanely popular use of Second Person (stop it… looking at you, hipsters); the free form structure that you can’t be sure is knowingly breaking the rules, or not knowing the rules to begin with; the inevitable inconclusiveness of liberal writing — I still saw moments of pure, perfect talent that gave it all meaning. Like Mikee Sto Domingo’s line: “For a moment, as she tucked a lock of her burgundy hair behind an ear to reveal the round slope of her jaw, I felt that she was pretty.” Now, I’m just an amateur reviewer, too. But that line caught hold of something. To everybody: write, and continue to write. And read this collection, if you have time on top of the seventeen textbooks you have to read by next week for a class whose summary online you didn’t “fully get.”

— Kimberley McIvor

Welcome to Night Vale — Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor In the arid American Southwest lies a small town, easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there — Night Vale. It is a quaint place that provides everything you might expect from small town life. Its citizens are friendly, the library boasts a great reading programme, the pawn shop always has its doors open, and they have recently added a dog park. It’s almost, perhaps, too perfect to stomach.

Against this backdrop, Fink and Cranor tell their intermingling stories: the heart-warming tale of a mother with a turbulent teenager who wants to meet his father for the first time, and the routine of a shopkeeper who wishes her life would amount to something for once but struggles to move forward from the tender age of nineteen. Welcome to Night Vale, in short, is an ordinary novel about ordinary lives, at every moment evoking the commonplace world in which we live, day after day after day. After day.

When a new man enters town, you won’t think twice and as the fates of the two women are brought together by his arrival, nothing could be more normal. After all, he is only an ordinary man, they two of the most average women you shall ever read about, and the town the simplest, most unpretentious, location any author could imagine as the setting for their novel. You’ll fly through the unassuming pages, covered with words that you’ve read a thousand times before.

In fact, you might as well find another novel to read and not subject yourself to the content that fills the space between these derivative covers. There’s nothing exciting to see here, after all. There are endless other interesting novels out there, as well written as this one might be.

However if you do insist on reading Welcome to Night Vale, or even searching the desert to find this ordinary little town, you’ll be glad to know that Night Vale’s alien abduction rates are low this year, and that the government is definitely not watching you.

We promise.

— Jay Forlong

There will be a reading of Mimicry 2 on Friday, March 17, at 12.30pm at VicBooks.