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“I transferred to Vic because I didn’t want to drink away my education,” a second-year student, formerly of Otago University, told a Salient staffer in the law school common room last week. Though it’s doubtful that she intended it as such, in the face of a lacklustre O Week (see page 24) and the rising cost of living here in Wellington, her explanation came across as a glowing assessment of life in Dunedin. Its reputation as a student town is the stuff of legends. It’s hard to imagine the potential loss of the Big Kumara inspiring outrage in Vic’s old boys, but the Cook and ‘Gardies’ are watering holes of such cultural importance that Marc Ellis and other bleak New Zealand celebrities stepped in to prevent their closure. Then there’s the street-wide keg parties, the cheap food and drink, rent for less than $150 (or even, it’s rumoured, $100) a week—it’s almost enough to offset the freezing winters. “Dunedin is an incredible place to live as a student,” says Julia Hollingsworth, a Wellington local who gained her BA in Philosophy and Politics at Otago. “It’s wonderfully cheap—I think it may be one of the few places where you can reasonably live on $160 a week—and around one-fifth of the people who live there are students, so everyone’s balancing studying and partying. “Basically, it’s fun, cheap, easy and super-casual.” Meanwhile, students (including Hollingsworth, who is now studying towards a post-graduate diploma at Massey University) are struggling to make ends meet in Wellington. According to The Economist’s 2011 cost of living survey, New Zealand’s capital city ranks alongside London as the 17th most expensive place to live in in the world. This is most apparent in the rising cost of rent: those of us who paid around $150 per week when we started our degrees are now shelling out up to $190 for rooms of comparable size and insulation. In fact, recent figures from the Department of Building and Housing put the average rent for a room in Kelburn at $187 per week—more than students can claim in living costs from StudyLink. And though the merits of Dunedin’s student (read: binge-drinking) culture are open to debate, it’s hard to argue with an extra $50-odd per week in pocket. So can Wellington be described as a student-friendly city? “I suppose you’ve then got to work out what ‘student-friendly’ means,” says Ian McKinnon, who is both Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Chancellor of Victoria University. “Wellington values students. Whether you look at it in social or economic terms, the tertiary institutions and the people that make them up—namely, the students—are valued by and add value for the city.” As McKinnon acknowledges, students’ contribution to the local economy is significant. Statistics New Zealand’s 2006 census of the Wellington region identified 10.3% of the population as being aged between 18 and 24, a rise of 0.5% from the preceding census in 2001. Given the increasing number of school-leavers pursuing higher education, and the reduced capacity of Canterbury University, it’s safe to assume this upward trend has continued. Moreover, Victoria University employs close to 2,000 people in the Wellington region. So how is the value that students contribute to the city being returned to them? Well, not in discounted public transport. While buses are free for students and staff of Massey University in Palmerston North, tertiary students in Wellington aren’t eligible for even reduced fares, meaning a return trip to more or less any suburb costs the best part of $10. For most students, this poses just a minor irritation, for, as McKinnon points out, Wellington’s size means it’s possible to “be at the university and then at a coffee bar in the city within five minutes”, even on foot. Moreover, the issue of tertiary discounts will be up for discussion later in the year with the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s upcoming fare structure review. Changes proposed under the Regional Council’s review of bus services, which is currently underway, are more significant. As part of its bid to optimise services, it is looking to cut the vast majority of routes serving Kelburn Parade, leaving students to leg it up Mount Street to get to class. As 46% of Vic students rely on public transport as their primary mode of commuting, both the University and VUWSA are in the process of making submissions on the review. Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Daran Ponter is also interested to hear students’ perspectives. He explains that transport planners have worked on the assumption that five minutes’ walk is an acceptable distance to travel to the nearest bus stop—in this case, at the corner of The Terrace and Salamanca Road. “I’m really interested to see how students react to that, because a lot of Victoria University is more than five minutes’ walk from that bus stop,” he says. “If you were going to the music school, for example, I would have thought it would be a bit of a push.” Public transport is not so much of an issue in Dunedin, where, Hollingsworth says, “living 15 minutes from campus is living far away.” She attributes Dunedin’s status as a student-friendly city to its cheapness and its compactness, neither of which are the achievements of the Dunedin City Council. In fact, according to Hollingsworth, students’ relationship with the University and the DCC is becoming increasingly fraught, with the Council looking to extend an inner-city liquor ban to the “student-ville” suburbs. “Dunedin has a long history of students versus the University, and students versus the DCC, and each side is just as distrustful of the other.” The appointment of Harlene Hayne to Vice-Chancellor last year, Hollingsworth concedes, suggests of “possible, positive change in the air” in the tense relationship between students and the University. Critic (Otago’s answer to Salient) recently published a photoshoot of OUSA President Logan Edgar horsing around with Hayne—him in a suit, her in a varsity hoodie. Given the professional tone of our interview with him this issue (see page 26), it’s hard to imagine a similar spread showing VUWSA President Bridie Hood chewing the fat with Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh. (Pat, if you’re reading—we can make it happen. Call us.) Hayne has been taking a hands-on approach to curbing students’ wild behaviour, taking to the front line of Orientation events last month to help remove alcohol. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull acknowledges that keeping on top of such a large student body—he estimates that students form about a sixth of the city’s total population—is not without its challenges. “There’s the odd problem that turns up… the couch burnings, and the somewhat over-exuberant street parties where there’s a bit of disorder and bad behaviour,” he says, referring to the infamous Hyde Street keg parties. “I think that’s a minority, though another sizeable minority are silly enough to stand around and watch. “But they’re young,” he adds indulgently. One way in which Cull tries to instill new students with a sense of belonging to Dunedin is by providing them with vouchers for cultural and recreational services within the city. This, he says, is intended “to bring them into the community right from day one, rather than have them hiding in a ghetto not knowing what the rest of the city is doing. “It’s about giving them a sense of ownership while they’re here. As I said at the civic welcome this year, if you’re going to treat Dunedin like a sailor in a foreign port, then perhaps you want to think about finding somewhere else to live. I want them to feel like Dunedin is their home, and then they can start to think about treating it the way their home.” That this is even a priority for Cull is indicative of a different mindset down south. Though Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown frequently reiterates the important contribution of students to the city, for most, their engagement with the Wellington City Council begins and ends with her traditional welcome at Civic Square during O Week. Even President Hood concedes that she has little to do with the WCC on a day-to-day basis, as she tends to prioritise issues that affect students on a national level. That said, she says she would be “quite keen to work a lot closer with the City Council” on similar initiatives to Cull’s welcome pack for first-years. The high concentration of students (“some people have said to me that it’s the youngest demographic suburb in the world”), Cull says, means the DCC has a “duty of care” to oversee their goings-on: “You’ve got literally tens of thousands of young people, many of whom are acting out a bit because parental authority is a long way away.” The DCC works closely with Otago University, the police, OUSA, youth groups and students themselves to organise events such as the upcoming Hyde Street keg party, which Cull acknowledges has “got out of control” in the past. “There’s been too many people, broken glass,” he says. “The fear is that someone’s going to die.” More than 7,500 people (out of an invited 14,043) claim to be ‘attending’ the 24 March event on Facebook, and Cull is hopeful that it will be a great success, noting that OUSA has “done a wonderful job” in organising port-a-loos, barbeques, water stations and volunteers. “Ultimately, it’s up to the students, and particularly the residents of Hyde Street, to come up with a model that they can do year after year, where everyone has a great time.” For better or worse, it’s difficult to picture such an event being held in Wellington. Indeed, last year, now-MAWSA president Ben Thorpe’s attempt to organise a Wellington equivalent to the Hyde Street keg party in Mount Cook was thwarted by the council and police. Deputy Mayor McKinnon says students in Wellington “haven’t adopted some of the extreme behaviour of those at some of the other universities” because of the city’s “pepperpot” demography. “We all live together,” he says. “It’s not as though students’ only neighbours are other students. I think that acts as a bit of a check. You know what people are like—if they can get away with it, they’ll go a bit further, a bit further, and eventually the sofas get burnt.” Cull agrees: “The intensity and concentration of students in Dunedin probably leads to issues that wouldn’t be evident in a place where they were scattered over the whole city.” Another reason, continues McKinnon, is the city’s “vibrancy”. “This city, without any qualification, is the leader in staging events, and they’re all right on our doorstep,” he says. “There’s so much to do in Wellington, students don’t need to sit there in the middle of The Terrace and burn sofas.” (Which brings to mind Hollingsworth’s remark, “Dunedin people are good at creating their own fun.”) In addition, a number of Victoria University students have set their sights on a career in the public sector, and fears of ruining their chances of employment in future make them think twice about any youthful indiscretions. “People that are going into that sort of career path, whether they’re lawyers, economists or arts graduates, are surrounded by their future career,” says McKinnon. “The public sector’s right here, and their studies are right here, so they’re conscious of that and they don’t want to completely undermine their futures.” The difference in campus culture at the two universities suggests that Victoria is perceived as a training ground for the real world, and Otago, as an escape from it. “It’s kind of a little bit of everyone here,” says Hood. “Why else would you go to Dunedin, if not to party?” But there are advantages and disadvantages to both. For Vic students, the trade-off for a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, and the chance to pass oneself off as a young professional in the public service sector, is a high cost of living. The upshot of Otago students’ fight for their right to party is their sense of camaraderie with each other, and their relationship, however fraught, with their city council and university. It’s not that Wellington isn’t as much of a student town as Dunedin; rather, it just attracts a different kind of student.

“I transferred to Vic because I didn’t want to drink away my education,” a second-year student, formerly of Otago University, told a Salient staffer in the law school common room last week.

Though it’s doubtful that she intended it as such, in the face of a lacklustre O Week (see page 24) and the rising cost of living here in Wellington, her explanation came across as a glowing assessment of life in Dunedin. Its reputation as a student town is the stuff of legends. It’s hard to imagine the potential loss of the Big Kumara inspiring outrage in Vic’s old boys, but the Cook and ‘Gardies’ are watering holes of such cultural importance that Marc Ellis and other bleak New Zealand celebrities stepped in to prevent their closure. Then there’s the street-wide keg parties, the cheap food and drink, rent for less than $150 (or even, it’s rumoured, $100) a week—it’s almost enough to offset the freezing winters.

“Dunedin is an incredible place to live as a student,” says Julia Hollingsworth, a Wellington local who gained her BA in Philosophy and Politics at Otago. “It’s wonderfully cheap—I think it may be one of the few places where you can reasonably live on $160 a week—and around one-fifth of the people who live there are students, so everyone’s balancing studying and partying.

“Basically, it’s fun, cheap, easy and super-casual.”

Meanwhile, students (including Hollingsworth, who is now studying towards a post-graduate diploma at Massey University) are struggling to make ends meet in Wellington. According to The Economist’s 2011 cost of living survey, New Zealand’s capital city ranks alongside London as the 17th most expensive place to live in in the world. This is most apparent in the rising cost of rent: those of us who paid around $150 per week when we started our degrees are now shelling out up to $190 for rooms of comparable size and insulation.

In fact, recent figures from the Department of Building and Housing put the average rent for a room in Kelburn at $187 per week—more than students can claim in living costs from StudyLink. And though the merits of Dunedin’s student (read: binge-drinking) culture are open to debate, it’s hard to argue with an extra $50-odd per week in pocket. So can Wellington be described as a student-friendly city?

“I suppose you’ve then got to work out what ‘student-friendly’ means,” says Ian McKinnon, who is both Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Chancellor of Victoria University. “Wellington values students. Whether you look at it in social or economic terms, the tertiary institutions and the people that make them up—namely, the students—are valued by and add value for the city.”

As McKinnon acknowledges, students’ contribution to the local economy is significant. Statistics New Zealand’s 2006 census of the Wellington region identified 10.3% of the population as being aged between 18 and 24, a rise of 0.5% from the preceding census in 2001. Given the increasing number of school-leavers pursuing higher education, and the reduced capacity of Canterbury University, it’s safe to assume this upward trend has continued. Moreover, Victoria University employs close to 2,000 people in the Wellington region. So how is the value that students contribute to the city being returned to them?

Well, not in discounted public transport. While buses are free for students and staff of Massey University in Palmerston North, tertiary students in Wellington aren’t eligible for even reduced fares, meaning a return trip to more or less any suburb costs the best part of $10. For most students, this poses just a minor irritation, for, as McKinnon points out, Wellington’s size means it’s possible to “be at the university and then at a coffee bar in the city within five minutes”, even on foot. Moreover, the issue of tertiary discounts will be up for discussion later in the year with the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s upcoming fare structure review.

Changes proposed under the Regional Council’s review of bus services, which is currently underway, are more significant. As part of its bid to optimise services, it is looking to cut the vast majority of routes serving Kelburn Parade, leaving students to leg it up Mount Street to get to class. As 46% of Vic students rely on public transport as their primary mode of commuting, both the University and VUWSA are in the process of making submissions on the review.

Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Daran Ponter is also interested to hear students’ perspectives. He explains that transport planners have worked on the assumption that five minutes’ walk is an acceptable distance to travel to the nearest bus stop—in this case, at the corner of The Terrace and Salamanca Road. “I’m really interested to see how students react to that, because a lot of Victoria University is more than five minutes’ walk from that bus stop,” he says. “If you were going to the music school, for example, I would have thought it would be a bit of a push.”

Public transport is not so much of an issue in Dunedin, where, Hollingsworth says, “living 15 minutes from campus is living far away.” She attributes Dunedin’s status as a student-friendly city to its cheapness and its compactness, neither of which are the achievements of the Dunedin City Council. In fact, according to Hollingsworth, students’ relationship with the University and the DCC is becoming increasingly fraught, with the Council looking to extend an inner-city liquor ban to the “student-ville” suburbs. “Dunedin has a long history of students versus the University, and students versus the DCC, and each side is just as distrustful of the other.”

The appointment of Harlene Hayne to Vice-Chancellor last year, Hollingsworth concedes, suggests of “possible, positive change in the air” in the tense relationship between students and the University. Critic (Otago’s answer to Salient) recently published a photoshoot of OUSA President Logan Edgar horsing around with Hayne—him in a suit, her in a varsity hoodie. Given the professional tone of our interview with him this issue (see page 26), it’s hard to imagine a similar spread showing VUWSA President Bridie Hood chewing the fat with Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh. (Pat, if you’re reading—we can make it happen. Call us.)

Hayne has been taking a hands-on approach to curbing students’ wild behaviour, taking to the front line of Orientation events last month to help remove alcohol. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull acknowledges that keeping on top of such a large student body—he estimates that students form about a sixth of the city’s total population—is not without its challenges.

“There’s the odd problem that turns up… the couch burnings, and the somewhat over-exuberant street parties where there’s a bit of disorder and bad behaviour,” he says, referring to the infamous Hyde Street keg parties. “I think that’s a minority, though another sizeable minority are silly enough to stand around and watch.

“But they’re young,” he adds indulgently.

One way in which Cull tries to instill new students with a sense of belonging to Dunedin is by providing them with vouchers for cultural and recreational services within the city. This, he says, is intended “to bring them into the community right from day one, rather than have them hiding in a ghetto not knowing what the rest of the city is doing.

“It’s about giving them a sense of ownership while they’re here. As I said at the civic welcome this year, if you’re going to treat Dunedin like a sailor in a foreign port, then perhaps you want to think about finding somewhere else to live. I want them to feel like Dunedin is their home, and then they can start to think about treating it the way their home.”

That this is even a priority for Cull is indicative of a different mindset down south. Though Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown frequently reiterates the important contribution of students to the city, for most, their engagement with the Wellington City Council begins and ends with her traditional welcome at Civic Square during O Week. Even President Hood concedes that she has little to do with the WCC on a day-to-day basis, as she tends to prioritise issues that affect students on a national level. That said, she says she would be “quite keen to work a lot closer with the City Council” on similar initiatives to Cull’s welcome pack for first-years.

The high concentration of students (“some people have said to me that it’s the youngest demographic suburb in the world”), Cull says, means the DCC has a “duty of care” to oversee their goings-on: “You’ve got literally tens of thousands of young people, many of whom are acting out a bit because parental authority is a long way away.”

The DCC works closely with Otago University, the police, OUSA, youth groups and students themselves to organise events such as the upcoming Hyde Street keg party, which Cull acknowledges has “got out of control” in the past. “There’s been too many people, broken glass,” he says. “The fear is that someone’s going to die.”

More than 7,500 people (out of an invited 14,043) claim to be ‘attending’ the 24 March event on Facebook, and Cull is hopeful that it will be a great success, noting that OUSA has “done a wonderful job” in organising port-a-loos, barbeques, water stations and volunteers. “Ultimately, it’s up to the students, and particularly the residents of Hyde Street, to come up with a model that they can do year after year, where everyone has a great time.”

For better or worse, it’s difficult to picture such an event being held in Wellington. Indeed, last year, now-MAWSA president Ben Thorpe’s attempt to organise a Wellington equivalent to the Hyde Street keg party in Mount Cook was thwarted by the council and police.

Deputy Mayor McKinnon says students in Wellington “haven’t adopted some of the extreme behaviour of those at some of the other universities” because of the city’s “pepperpot” demography. “We all live together,” he says. “It’s not as though students’ only neighbours are other students. I think that acts as a bit of a check. You know what people are like—if they can get away with it, they’ll go a bit further, a bit further, and eventually the sofas get burnt.”

Cull agrees: “The intensity and concentration of students in Dunedin probably leads to issues that wouldn’t be evident in a place where they were scattered over the whole city.”

Another reason, continues McKinnon, is the city’s “vibrancy”. “This city, without any qualification, is the leader in staging events, and they’re all right on our doorstep,” he says. “There’s so much to do in Wellington, students don’t need to sit there in the middle of The Terrace and burn sofas.” (Which brings to mind Hollingsworth’s remark, “Dunedin people are good at creating their own fun.”)

In addition, a number of Victoria University students have set their sights on a career in the public sector, and fears of ruining their chances of employment in future make them think twice about any youthful indiscretions. “People that are going into that sort of career path, whether they’re lawyers, economists or arts graduates, are surrounded by their future career,” says McKinnon. “The public sector’s right here, and their studies are right here, so they’re conscious of that and they don’t want to completely undermine their futures.”

The difference in campus culture at the two universities suggests that Victoria is perceived as a training ground for the real world, and Otago, as an escape from it. “It’s kind of a little bit of everyone here,” says Hood. “Why else would you go to Dunedin, if not to party?” But there are advantages and disadvantages to both. For Vic students, the trade-off for a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, and the chance to pass oneself off as a young professional in the public service sector, is a high cost of living. The upshot of Otago students’ fight for their right to party is their sense of camaraderie with each other, and their relationship, however fraught, with their city council and university. It’s not that Wellington isn’t as much of a student town as Dunedin; rather, it just attracts a different kind of student.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also—as the pillbox hats of the 1960s, platform shoes of the 1970s and perms of the 1980s go to show—as dependent on the decade. But what’s the defining aesthetic of the 20th and 21st centuries?  According to novelist and critic Kurt Andersen, there isn’t one. In a 3,500-word cover story in Vanity Fair earlier this year (http://is.gd/JTaKvk), Andersen argues that, in recent history, “the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all—less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century”. The past, he continues, is a “foreign country”, populated with platforms and perms, “but the recent past—the ’00s, the ’90s, even a lot of the ’80s—looks almost identical to the present”.  Andersen’s article, some readers maintain, makes too sweeping an assessment to pick up on the cultural cues of today, but others agree with his assessment that, in an environment of otherwise rapid change, “people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past”. Salient chief feature writer Elle Hunt looks at whether his theory can be applied closer to home. Follow a certain route around Victoria University, and the decades pass before one’s eyes. Start at the Hunte building on top of Kelburn hill: the first of Vic’s structures, its late nineteenth-century revival, ‘collegiate Gothic’ appearance reflects its 1902 construction date. On the right is Weir House, designed in true ‘English renaissance’ style in 1931; on the left, Easterfield, which the Evening Post said “could well have been imported direct from the United States of America” upon its opening in 1958. Further up the hill is Von Zedlitz, constructed in the late 1970s; Laby in 1984; the Student Union Building extension in 1985; and Murphy in 1986. Each building reflects the aesthetics in favour at the time of its design and construction, and—bar some standardising modernisations—each looks different. So far, so in favour of writer Kurt Andersen’s argument that, in the past, “just 20 years made all the difference in serious cultural output”. You don’t need to have aced, or even sat ARCH 101 to see that Weir House looks nothing like neither that “handsome pile” Hunter nor Easterfield; you just have to have a pair of eyes. But then there’s the latest round of additions to Vic: 2010’s Alan MacDiarmid building and 2011’s Hunter Lounge. MacDiarmid resembles a bunker from outside and a departure lounge from within; the Hunter Lounge combines polish wooden floors and Scandinavian influences with discounted Castlepoints to serve as the site of the perfect student experience. The spaciousness and linear elements of both are indicative of their being designed and constructed in the present day, but what, in particular, defines their look? Now venture into the heart of Wellington’s cultural landscape: Cuba Street. You see plaid. You see facial hair. Then there’s the mainstream uniform of jeans and T-shirts—a constant for the past three decades. Martha’s Pantry, The Powder Room, Arthur’s, Emporium, Iko Iko, Havana Bar, Espressoholic and Midnight Espresso are among the Cuba Street destinations that look to the past for their interior inspiration, while photographs on the wall at Fidel’s suggest it’s much the same today as it was when it opened in the 1990s. And it’s not just architecture, interior design and fashion that seems to be stagnating. Pop into the Mighty Mighty on a Friday or Saturday night and hear bands that sound like The Modern Lovers (1970s-1980s), Pixies (1980s-1990s), or The Strokes (2000s-2010s). So what are the big, defining differences between the Wellington of 2012 and that of 2002—or even 1992? Andersen would argue that there aren’t any; that New Zealand, like the United States, has found itself in a “period of stylistic paralysis”. Moreover, the cultural landscapes of both countries haven’t just stalled: they’ve started looking back. “The future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past,” Andersen writes, pointing to the trend of “reviving and rejiggering” old television series and films instead of generating original content. (That said, glancing at a Reading Cinemas schedule, there’s nothing contemporary about Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe or a silent, black-and-white film set between 1927 and 1932, Oscar or no.) Even Mad Men, he suggests, is a hit not because of its characters or stories, but because of its “’60s-fetishising” production design and wardrobe. It’s easy to see Andersen’s point when it’s applied to a hipster rats’ nest such as Wellington, where so much of what is considered ‘cool’ is a relic from past decades. Case in point: the multitude of film cameras toted around the music festival Camp A Low Hum, in spite of their impracticality and expense. Even the reputation of the iPhone as a future-forward technology is called into question by the popularity of Hipstamatic, an app that makes uninteresting photographs look like Polaroids and therefore vaguely ‘arty’. (For the truly inane, there’s Hipstamatic Disposable, where one has to finish a ‘reel’ of 24 shots in order to view them, just as with a traditional film camera.) This predilection to live what Andersen dubs “make-believe-old-fashioned lives” becomes more bizarre when one takes into account that people are devoting more time, energy and money to matters of appearance than ever before. It’s hard to imagine the phrase ‘personal style statement’ being said with a straight face prior to the 21st century, but today, 11.7 million people are posting pictures of Chloe Sevingy and Alexander McQueen to their Pinterest ‘mood boards’. Andersen believes this pervasive desire for ‘authenticity’ is a bid to offset rapid change in other parts of society—that is, “the profound non-stop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts”. “[T]he more certain things change for real (technology, the global political economy),” writes Andersen, “the more other things (style, culture) stay the same.” But Andersen’s own “nostalgic cultural gaze” could well be clouding his perspective. As detractors of his article have pointed out, it is more than tinged with sentimentality for the land of the free’s golden years of industry. “It appears to me that Andersen wants to both maintain America’s cultural power as well as its reach,” says Dr Geoff Stahl, a lecturer in cultural and media studies at Victoria University. “The argument is one of a long string of treatises on the waning of America and its culture, a legacy which has always tied itself to consumption.” As a writer that came of age in the 1970s, it’s not surprising that Andersen laments the decline of the US of A’s innovation-driven empire, but his portrait of its current cultural landscape is painted with broad brush strokes. In a response published on Salon.com, New York Times Book Review contributor Maria Russo argues that Andersen’s “glum” piece puts too much stead in external change and ignores the more subtle and significant developments of the 21st century. Sure, she reasons, car design “might not be as brash as it was in 1957”, but in an accident, “you’re unlikely to be impaled by your steering wheel, or see your trunk burst into flames”. “In 2011, usefulness and thoughtful details, and what’s under the hood, matter more than radical transformations of style,” retorts Russo. Though Stahl found much about Andersen’s article “very compelling”, he remarks that it “suffers, in many respects, from two kinds of myopia: one geographic and one historical”: “It imagines an American barely in touch with, and only lightly touched by, the rest of the world,” he explains. “It seems rather shrill to be making claims about the end of cultural innovation from such a narrow sliver of time and space.” For this reason, Stahl says, it’s difficult to imagine how Andersen’s argument might fit into a New Zealand context, for all the apparent signifiers on Kelburn campus and along Cuba Street. He suggests that, instead, the cultural landscape closer to home is shaped by other, related forces. Stahl, who hails from Canada, has identified the fear of being derivative or unoriginal as a “central anxiety in New Zealand culture”, to which the collective response has been to “rely upon DIY culture—enterepreneurialism in another guise”. “There’s a perception that culture in New Zealand is simply a pale imitation of something from elsewhere… so the kind of anxiety pointed to in Andersen’s article is something that has always existed here,” he says. “This always seems disingenuous to me… because cultural is always mimetic in the first instance.” This point, that new cultural output is shaped by that which went before it, is glossed over in Andersen’s piece, if not ignored altogether. No-one can deny that the pace of change between 1914 and 1989 was noticeably more frantic, but Andersen appears to be oblivious to the more subtle, structural change the early decades of the 21st century are setting the stage for. The modern cultural landscape, Stahl argues, emanates “from nodes and sources, real and virtual”, rather than one particular “centre”; its aesthetic is therefore less distinct, but not less valuable. Above all, what Andersen inadequately accounts for that difference and innovation are just as subjective as beauty. Jeans might well have been the sartorial mainstay of the masses for the past three decades, but while the concept remains the same, the cut is completely different.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also—as the pillbox hats of the 1960s, platform shoes of the 1970s and perms of the 1980s go to show—as dependent on the decade. But what’s the defining aesthetic of the 20th and 21st centuries?

 According to novelist and critic Kurt Andersen, there isn’t one. In a 3,500-word cover story in Vanity Fair earlier this year (http://is.gd/JTaKvk), Andersen argues that, in recent history, “the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all—less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century”. The past, he continues, is a “foreign country”, populated with platforms and perms, “but the recent past—the ’00s, the ’90s, even a lot of the ’80s—looks almost identical to the present”.

 Andersen’s article, some readers maintain, makes too sweeping an assessment to pick up on the cultural cues of today, but others agree with his assessment that, in an environment of otherwise rapid change, “people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past”. Salient chief feature writer Elle Hunt looks at whether his theory can be applied closer to home.

Follow a certain route around Victoria University, and the decades pass before one’s eyes. Start at the Hunte building on top of Kelburn hill: the first of Vic’s structures, its late nineteenth-century revival, ‘collegiate Gothic’ appearance reflects its 1902 construction date. On the right is Weir House, designed in true ‘English renaissance’ style in 1931; on the left, Easterfield, which the Evening Post said “could well have been imported direct from the United States of America” upon its opening in 1958. Further up the hill is Von Zedlitz, constructed in the late 1970s; Laby in 1984; the Student Union Building extension in 1985; and Murphy in 1986. Each building reflects the aesthetics in favour at the time of its design and construction, and—bar some standardising modernisations—each looks different.

So far, so in favour of writer Kurt Andersen’s argument that, in the past, “just 20 years made all the difference in serious cultural output”. You don’t need to have aced, or even sat ARCH 101 to see that Weir House looks nothing like neither that “handsome pile” Hunter nor Easterfield; you just have to have a pair of eyes. But then there’s the latest round of additions to Vic: 2010’s Alan MacDiarmid building and 2011’s Hunter Lounge. MacDiarmid resembles a bunker from outside and a departure lounge from within; the Hunter Lounge combines polish wooden floors and Scandinavian influences with discounted Castlepoints to serve as the site of the perfect student experience. The spaciousness and linear elements of both are indicative of their being designed and constructed in the present day, but what, in particular, defines their look?

Now venture into the heart of Wellington’s cultural landscape: Cuba Street. You see plaid. You see facial hair. Then there’s the mainstream uniform of jeans and T-shirts—a constant for the past three decades. Martha’s Pantry, The Powder Room, Arthur’s, Emporium, Iko Iko, Havana Bar, Espressoholic and Midnight Espresso are among the Cuba Street destinations that look to the past for their interior inspiration, while photographs on the wall at Fidel’s suggest it’s much the same today as it was when it opened in the 1990s. And it’s not just architecture, interior design and fashion that seems to be stagnating. Pop into the Mighty Mighty on a Friday or Saturday night and hear bands that sound like The Modern Lovers (1970s-1980s), Pixies (1980s-1990s), or The Strokes (2000s-2010s). So what are the big, defining differences between the Wellington of 2012 and that of 2002—or even 1992?

Andersen would argue that there aren’t any; that New Zealand, like the United States, has found itself in a “period of stylistic paralysis”. Moreover, the cultural landscapes of both countries haven’t just stalled: they’ve started looking back. “The future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past,” Andersen writes, pointing to the trend of “reviving and rejiggering” old television series and films instead of generating original content. (That said, glancing at a Reading Cinemas schedule, there’s nothing contemporary about Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe or a silent, black-and-white film set between 1927 and 1932, Oscar or no.) Even Mad Men, he suggests, is a hit not because of its characters or stories, but because of its “’60s-fetishising” production design and wardrobe.

It’s easy to see Andersen’s point when it’s applied to a hipster rats’ nest such as Wellington, where so much of what is considered ‘cool’ is a relic from past decades. Case in point: the multitude of film cameras toted around the music festival Camp A Low Hum, in spite of their impracticality and expense. Even the reputation of the iPhone as a future-forward technology is called into question by the popularity of Hipstamatic, an app that makes uninteresting photographs look like Polaroids and therefore vaguely ‘arty’. (For the truly inane, there’s Hipstamatic Disposable, where one has to finish a ‘reel’ of 24 shots in order to view them, just as with a traditional film camera.)

This predilection to live what Andersen dubs “make-believe-old-fashioned lives” becomes more bizarre when one takes into account that people are devoting more time, energy and money to matters of appearance than ever before. It’s hard to imagine the phrase ‘personal style statement’ being said with a straight face prior to the 21st century, but today, 11.7 million people are posting pictures of Chloe Sevingy and Alexander McQueen to their Pinterest ‘mood boards’. Andersen believes this pervasive desire for ‘authenticity’ is a bid to offset rapid change in other parts of society—that is, “the profound non-stop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts”. “[T]he more certain things change for real (technology, the global political economy),” writes Andersen, “the more other things (style, culture) stay the same.”

But Andersen’s own “nostalgic cultural gaze” could well be clouding his perspective. As detractors of his article have pointed out, it is more than tinged with sentimentality for the land of the free’s golden years of industry. “It appears to me that Andersen wants to both maintain America’s cultural power as well as its reach,” says Dr Geoff Stahl, a lecturer in cultural and media studies at Victoria University. “The argument is one of a long string of treatises on the waning of America and its culture, a legacy which has always tied itself to consumption.”

As a writer that came of age in the 1970s, it’s not surprising that Andersen laments the decline of the US of A’s innovation-driven empire, but his portrait of its current cultural landscape is painted with broad brush strokes. In a response published on Salon.com, New York Times Book Review contributor Maria Russo argues that Andersen’s “glum” piece puts too much stead in external change and ignores the more subtle and significant developments of the 21st century. Sure, she reasons, car design “might not be as brash as it was in 1957”, but in an accident, “you’re unlikely to be impaled by your steering wheel, or see your trunk burst into flames”. “In 2011, usefulness and thoughtful details, and what’s under the hood, matter more than radical transformations of style,” retorts Russo.

Though Stahl found much about Andersen’s article “very compelling”, he remarks that it “suffers, in many respects, from two kinds of myopia: one geographic and one historical”: “It imagines an American barely in touch with, and only lightly touched by, the rest of the world,” he explains. “It seems rather shrill to be making claims about the end of cultural innovation from such a narrow sliver of time and space.”

For this reason, Stahl says, it’s difficult to imagine how Andersen’s argument might fit into a New Zealand context, for all the apparent signifiers on Kelburn campus and along Cuba Street. He suggests that, instead, the cultural landscape closer to home is shaped by other, related forces. Stahl, who hails from Canada, has identified the fear of being derivative or unoriginal as a “central anxiety in New Zealand culture”, to which the collective response has been to “rely upon DIY culture—enterepreneurialism in another guise”. “There’s a perception that culture in New Zealand is simply a pale imitation of something from elsewhere… so the kind of anxiety pointed to in Andersen’s article is something that has always existed here,” he says. “This always seems disingenuous to me… because cultural is always mimetic in the first instance.”

This point, that new cultural output is shaped by that which went before it, is glossed over in Andersen’s piece, if not ignored altogether. No-one can deny that the pace of change between 1914 and 1989 was noticeably more frantic, but Andersen appears to be oblivious to the more subtle, structural change the early decades of the 21st century are setting the stage for. The modern cultural landscape, Stahl argues, emanates “from nodes and sources, real and virtual”, rather than one particular “centre”; its aesthetic is therefore less distinct, but not less valuable. Above all, what Andersen inadequately accounts for that difference and innovation are just as subjective as beauty. Jeans might well have been the sartorial mainstay of the masses for the past three decades, but while the concept remains the same, the cut is completely different.

1 month ago  View high resolution

First, a caveat: I don’t claim to be a decent human being. I am a Media Studies major. I text in all caps. Just last week, in fact, I set my hair on fire. But even in the face of these grave character flaws, I strive to be rational, a trait that is not prized enough by modern society. Fuck being earnest—earnestness is just, as P. J. O’Rourke so rightly said, stupidity sent to college. The importance of being reasonable, however, is paramount: if we can’t reach conclusions from deliberate consideration, if we can’t connect our beliefs to our reasons for belief, and our actions with our reasons for action, we are chickens without heads. Too often, issues that are shaded grey are discussed in black and white terms. The argument over Voluntary Student Membership is a key example: to articulate it as a binary of compulsory or voluntary undermines the influences on and implications of the debate. Even worse than such total statements is hand-wringing, hysterical rhetoric. The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations were quite rightly mocked for their “desperate” press release that declared that “members of the public and tertiary institutions around the country” would “tonight be appalled” that the “extreme… Bill” had not been reconsidered. I understand the intended effect of emotive language, but this verges on being insulting. The same issue arose at the tumultuous ‘We Are The University’ protest on Kelburn campus a fortnight ago. Call me heartless, but changes to the International Relations programme does not constitute “the death of tertiary education”, and saying so undermines your point, alienates potential supporters, and makes it easier for your detractors to ignore, dismiss or rebut you. Moreover, the letter addressed to Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh was, quite frankly, cringeworthy—petulant, sarcastic, and reeking of entitlement. I don’t dispute that the lack of consultation with students on changes to the University is disturbing, but snarky repetitions of “Pat” do not convey this, and that the protest’s organisers felt that this was an appropriate way of articulating these concerns—especially on behalf of other students—was acutely embarrassing. Sometimes people confuse “discussion” with “sermon”, “lecture”, or “verbal assault,” but it’s easy to engage in reasonable dialogue, and doing so fosters constructive, rewarding, authoritative debate. Just be respectful of and open to new ideas; provide proof and justification; and concede to evidence that disproves your point. Your argument is never so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it. By the same token, it is important to recognise the limitations of your opinion. Above all, you need to come to terms with the fact that all your opinions, without exception, are framed by your own experience and understanding of the world. Being a student of Victoria University, you are likely to be a white, middle-class New Zealander, aged between 17 and 25—and by that definition, you cannot be a leading authority on China’s economy or Michele Bachmann or the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not even if you hold a full online subscription to The New Yorker. It is of course vital to pay attention to international affairs, but fronting like an expert on issues that neither you nor I, by virtue of our position within the world, could ever hope to fully comprehend is misleading and presumptuous. This is why we need to initiate a return to reason. Rationality does not preclude creativity or innovation: in fact, it reinforces their foundations. As one creative type, filmmaker Lars von Trier, noted—”if one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart”, and I am deeply concerned about the world falling apart. It is so, so important that we articulate ourselves clearly and intelligently and reasonably; otherwise, we just look like dicks. And if I’m going to look like a dick, it won’t be because I’ve made a blanket or overwrought statement that highlights the flaws in my logic. It will be because I’ve set my hair on fire.

First, a caveat: I don’t claim to be a decent human being. I am a Media Studies major. I text in all caps. Just last week, in fact, I set my hair on fire.

But even in the face of these grave character flaws, I strive to be rational, a trait that is not prized enough by modern society. Fuck being earnest—earnestness is just, as P. J. O’Rourke so rightly said, stupidity sent to college. The importance of being reasonable, however, is paramount: if we can’t reach conclusions from deliberate consideration, if we can’t connect our beliefs to our reasons for belief, and our actions with our reasons for action, we are chickens without heads.

Too often, issues that are shaded grey are discussed in black and white terms. The argument over Voluntary Student Membership is a key example: to articulate it as a binary of compulsory or voluntary undermines the influences on and implications of the debate. Even worse than such total statements is hand-wringing, hysterical rhetoric. The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations were quite rightly mocked for their “desperate” press release that declared that “members of the public and tertiary institutions around the country” would “tonight be appalled” that the “extreme… Bill” had not been reconsidered. I understand the intended effect of emotive language, but this verges on being insulting.

The same issue arose at the tumultuous ‘We Are The University’ protest on Kelburn campus a fortnight ago. Call me heartless, but changes to the International Relations programme does not constitute “the death of tertiary education”, and saying so undermines your point, alienates potential supporters, and makes it easier for your detractors to ignore, dismiss or rebut you. Moreover, the letter addressed to Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh was, quite frankly, cringeworthy—petulant, sarcastic, and reeking of entitlement. I don’t dispute that the lack of consultation with students on changes to the University is disturbing, but snarky repetitions of “Pat” do not convey this, and that the protest’s organisers felt that this was an appropriate way of articulating these concerns—especially on behalf of other students—was acutely embarrassing.

Sometimes people confuse “discussion” with “sermon”, “lecture”, or “verbal assault,” but it’s easy to engage in reasonable dialogue, and doing so fosters constructive, rewarding, authoritative debate. Just be respectful of and open to new ideas; provide proof and justification; and concede to evidence that disproves your point. Your argument is never so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it.

By the same token, it is important to recognise the limitations of your opinion. Above all, you need to come to terms with the fact that all your opinions, without exception, are framed by your own experience and understanding of the world. Being a student of Victoria University, you are likely to be a white, middle-class New Zealander, aged between 17 and 25—and by that definition, you cannot be a leading authority on China’s economy or Michele Bachmann or the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not even if you hold a full online subscription to The New Yorker. It is of course vital to pay attention to international affairs, but fronting like an expert on issues that neither you nor I, by virtue of our position within the world, could ever hope to fully comprehend is misleading and presumptuous.

This is why we need to initiate a return to reason. Rationality does not preclude creativity or innovation: in fact, it reinforces their foundations. As one creative type, filmmaker Lars von Trier, noted—”if one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart”, and I am deeply concerned about the world falling apart. It is so, so important that we articulate ourselves clearly and intelligently and reasonably; otherwise, we just look like dicks. And if I’m going to look like a dick, it won’t be because I’ve made a blanket or overwrought statement that highlights the flaws in my logic. It will be because I’ve set my hair on fire.

1 month ago  View high resolution

Told from the perspective of a woman struggling to move on from her teenage son’s horrific crime, the release of the film adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s award-winning novel We Need To Talk About Kevin has reignited debate over an age-old question: nature versus nurture. Can Eva Katchadourian—successful entrepreneur, reluctant mother, who tried to warm to her first-born but couldn’t help hissing at him through gritted teeth that “Mummy was happy before little Kevin came along”—be held to blame for his subsequent massacre of his schoolmates? Or was the callous, calculating Kevin, as Eva implies, born evil? “Whether Kevin was innately twisted or was mangled by his mother’s coldness is a question with which the novel struggles, but which it ultimately fails to answer,” wrote Shriver in The Guardian. “That verdict is the reader’s job.” But it is also the law’s job. We Need To Talk About Kevin asks whether parents can be held responsible for their children’s actions; it does not explore to  what extent their failure should be taken into account in the sentencing for their crimes. This question is a thorn in the side of the law, which cannot consider an offender’s being ‘born evil’, just as it cannot ignore mitigating factors that contributed to their offending. Cruel, cold and contemptuous, Shriver’s Kevin is a character constructed to epitomise evil. But use of the term in a legal context, being subject as it is to historical, cultural and religious pressures, is unhelpful. Professor Simon Baron- Cohen of Cambridge University has instead suggested that evil be interpreted as the “erosion of empathy”, which is “scientifically tractable”: “Psychopaths such as Kevin has zero degrees of affective empathy (they don’t care about someone else’s feelings) but have excellent cognitive empathy (… able to manipulate others through deception).” Therefore, Baron-Cohen concludes, it would be “uncaring” for civilised society to not “show compassion for the killer, because his actions are the result of his neurology”. Attributing offending to biological make-up is a controversial opinion that nonetheless has basis in scientific fact. The work of German-British psychologist Hans Eysenck is taken as evidence that most personality traits are caused by properties of the brain, while closer to home, a longitudinal study of 1,037 children born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973 revealed a protein that, when combined with maltreatment in childhood, is associated with convictions for violence in adulthood. Given these findings, Kevin’s behaviour could be explained by a genetic predisposition towards a lack of empathy, control or moral sense, which seems to largely absolve Eva of responsibility for her son’s crimes. Such an argument does little to diminish the cries of parental failure from the public and media. “Modern-day mothers get stuck with virtually blanket responsibility for how their kids turn out,” wrote Shriver, an advocate of ‘childless by choice’, in The Guardian. “How we came to conceive of children as passive objects upon which adults act is beyond me.” In researching Kevin, Shriver came across studies and editorials that placed the blame for school shootings squarely on the parents, several of whom had been sued for negligence by the families of murdered children. “My own reading failed to substantiate that most shooters suffered in any exceptional sense… Nevertheless, countless sociologists have strained to explain the phenomenon in a way that turns the culprits into victims.” “I’m willing to grant a gradated diminishment of responsibility in relation to an offender’s youth,” Shriver conceded in an online Q&A session with Good Morning America. “But don’t tell me that a 15-year-old who shoots his teacher hasn’t a clue he’s doing something wrong.” Although there is no explicit reference made to parental failure, abuse or neglect under New Zealand sentencing legislation, the age of the offender is taken into account, as is “any other… mitigating factor” that the court sees fit. “Some of the issues that might reduce the sentence are not really mitigating of culpability, but are really about the personal circumstances of the offender, justifying a more lenient sentence,” says Dr Yvette Tinsley of Victoria’s Faculty of Law. “One of the factors that courts have taken into account is sexual or physical abuse suffered by the offender where there is evidence that the abuse contributed to the offending—though this may not have a big effect on the eventual sentence.” In the sentencing of 16-year-old Raurangi Marino for the rape of a five-year-old girl—a crime that captured the collective outrage of New Zealand’s people and media—Judge Phillip Cooper took into account Marino’s dysfunctional family background, which involved drugs, alcohol, gang connections, and physical and sexual abuse. Marino’s youth, upbringing, remorse and early guilty plea reduced a starting point of 18 years imprisonment by four-and-a-half years; as his three sentences for rape, grievous bodily harm and burglary can be served concurrently, he will likely be eligible for parole after serving a third of his ten-year sentence. (Marino himself has said that he does not intend to apply for parole until he has served five years.) Sensible Sentencing Trust director Garth McVicar sees this as putting Marino’s rights ahead of those of his victim. He, like Shriver, believes that offenders’ troubled youth should not be used to explain their wrongdoing. “We don’t believe we can make excuses,” he says, noting that Marino’s consumption of alcohol and marijuana in the hours prior to the rape was frequently referred to in media reports of the case. “Once you move down that line of thought, where do you stop? We’re not supportive of someone’s upbringing [being considered a mitigating factor in sentencing] because, basically, we’d be creating a rod for our own backs.” That said, McVicar believes parents need to be held accountable for their children’s crimes, noting that “in some European countries, parents are sitting in the cells with their children”. He argues that introducing similar measures in New Zealand could “spark a debate that this country needs to have.” “Ultimately, as the child walks that fine line from being a child to being an adult, parents need to be responsible up to that point.” Though minors, under New Zealand law, are not considered blameless for their crimes, the parents of underage criminals are rightly or wrongly held up to scrutiny by society and the media. Marino’s mother Lavinia Wall has told journalists that she failed “a good boy, a little naughty”: “I didn’t safeguard my children, and I didn’t apply myself to looking after them”. But other comments she made in the same interview—“They call me a bad mother and [say] I have brought up horrible children”—suggest she felt forced to respond to immense public pressure to take responsibility for her son’s crime. The law’s complicated and contentious interpretation of nature versus nurture warrants further clarification. If we are are to believe that ‘monsters’ such as Kevin are a product of their upbringing, tackling child poverty (where substance, physical, sexual and emotionally abuse is statistically more likely) should be of utmost priority for the Government. But accounting for scientific findings that an inclination towards crime is a matter of genetics suggests that changes need to be made to New Zealand’s criminal justice system. The ongoing results of Growing Up In New Zealand, a new longitudinal study of almost 7,000 babies born in the upper North Island between February 2009 and June 2010, are expected to be relevant to this end. In the meantime, Shriver raises a pertinent point—that biology and upbringing combine to create that most unpredictable of motivations, human nature: “Parents are people too, and their emotions are sometimes going to depart from script. Moreover, children are people too, which means that to give them at least partial responsibility for how they turn out, and for whether they murder their classmates, is to take them seriously as fully human.”

Told from the perspective of a woman struggling to move on from her teenage son’s horrific crime, the release of the film adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s award-winning novel We Need To Talk About Kevin has reignited debate over an age-old question: nature versus nurture. Can Eva Katchadourian—successful entrepreneur, reluctant mother, who tried to warm to her first-born but couldn’t help hissing at him through gritted teeth that “Mummy was happy before little Kevin came along”—be held to blame for his subsequent massacre of his schoolmates? Or was the callous, calculating Kevin, as Eva implies, born evil?

“Whether Kevin was innately twisted or was mangled by his mother’s coldness is a question with which the novel struggles, but which it ultimately fails to answer,” wrote Shriver in The Guardian. “That verdict is the reader’s job.”

But it is also the law’s job. We Need To Talk About Kevin asks whether parents can be held responsible for their children’s actions; it does not explore to  what extent their failure should be taken into account in the sentencing for their crimes. This question is a thorn in the side of the law, which cannot consider an offender’s being ‘born evil’, just as it cannot ignore mitigating factors that contributed to their offending.

Cruel, cold and contemptuous, Shriver’s Kevin is a character constructed to epitomise evil. But use of the term in a legal context, being subject as it is to historical, cultural and religious pressures, is unhelpful. Professor Simon Baron- Cohen of Cambridge University has instead suggested that evil be interpreted as the “erosion of empathy”, which is “scientifically tractable”: “Psychopaths such as Kevin has zero degrees of affective empathy (they don’t care about someone else’s feelings) but have excellent cognitive empathy (… able to manipulate others through deception).” Therefore, Baron-Cohen concludes, it would be “uncaring” for civilised society to not “show compassion for the killer, because his actions are the result of his neurology”.

Attributing offending to biological make-up is a controversial opinion that nonetheless has basis in scientific fact. The work of German-British psychologist Hans Eysenck is taken as evidence that most personality traits are caused by properties of the brain, while closer to home, a longitudinal study of 1,037 children born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973 revealed a protein that, when combined with maltreatment in childhood, is associated with convictions for violence in adulthood. Given these findings, Kevin’s behaviour could be explained by a genetic predisposition towards a lack of empathy, control or moral sense, which seems to largely absolve Eva of responsibility for her son’s crimes.

Such an argument does little to diminish the cries of parental failure from the public and media. “Modern-day mothers get stuck with virtually blanket responsibility for how their kids turn out,” wrote Shriver, an advocate of ‘childless by choice’, in The Guardian. “How we came to conceive of children as passive objects upon which adults act is beyond me.”

In researching Kevin, Shriver came across studies and editorials that placed the blame for school shootings squarely on the parents, several of whom had been sued for negligence by the families of murdered children. “My own reading failed to substantiate that most shooters suffered in any exceptional sense… Nevertheless, countless sociologists have strained to explain the phenomenon in a way that turns the culprits into victims.”

“I’m willing to grant a gradated diminishment of responsibility in relation to an offender’s youth,” Shriver conceded in an online Q&A session with Good Morning America. “But don’t tell me that a 15-year-old who shoots his teacher hasn’t a clue he’s doing something wrong.”

Although there is no explicit reference made to parental failure, abuse or neglect under New Zealand sentencing legislation, the age of the offender is taken into account, as is “any other… mitigating factor” that the court sees fit. “Some of the issues that might reduce the sentence are not really mitigating of culpability, but are really about the personal circumstances of the offender, justifying a more lenient sentence,” says Dr Yvette Tinsley of Victoria’s Faculty of Law. “One of the factors that courts have taken into account is sexual or physical abuse suffered by the offender where there is evidence that the abuse contributed to the offending—though this may not have a big effect on the eventual sentence.”

In the sentencing of 16-year-old Raurangi Marino for the rape of a five-year-old girl—a crime that captured the collective outrage of New Zealand’s people and media—Judge Phillip Cooper took into account Marino’s dysfunctional family background, which involved drugs, alcohol, gang connections, and physical and sexual abuse. Marino’s youth, upbringing, remorse and early guilty plea reduced a starting point of 18 years imprisonment by four-and-a-half years; as his three sentences for rape, grievous bodily harm and burglary can be served concurrently, he will likely be eligible for parole after serving a third of his ten-year sentence. (Marino himself has said that he does not intend to apply for parole until he has served five years.)

Sensible Sentencing Trust director Garth McVicar sees this as putting Marino’s rights ahead of those of his victim. He, like Shriver, believes that offenders’ troubled youth should not be used to explain their wrongdoing. “We don’t believe we can make excuses,” he says, noting that Marino’s consumption of alcohol and marijuana in the hours prior to the rape was frequently referred to in media reports of the case. “Once you move down that line of thought, where do you stop? We’re not supportive of someone’s upbringing [being considered a mitigating factor in sentencing] because, basically, we’d be creating a rod for our own backs.”

That said, McVicar believes parents need to be held accountable for their children’s crimes, noting that “in some European countries, parents are sitting in the cells with their children”. He argues that introducing similar measures in New Zealand could “spark a debate that this country needs to have.” “Ultimately, as the child walks that fine line from being a child to being an adult, parents need to be responsible up to that point.”

Though minors, under New Zealand law, are not considered blameless for their crimes, the parents of underage criminals are rightly or wrongly held up to scrutiny by society and the media. Marino’s mother Lavinia Wall has told journalists that she failed “a good boy, a little naughty”: “I didn’t safeguard my children, and I didn’t apply myself to looking after them”. But other comments she made in the same interview—“They call me a bad mother and [say] I have brought up horrible children”—suggest she felt forced to respond to immense public pressure to take responsibility for her son’s crime.

The law’s complicated and contentious interpretation of nature versus nurture warrants further clarification. If we are are to believe that ‘monsters’ such as Kevin are a product of their upbringing, tackling child poverty (where substance, physical, sexual and emotionally abuse is statistically more likely) should be of utmost priority for the Government. But accounting for scientific findings that an inclination towards crime is a matter of genetics suggests that changes need to be made to New Zealand’s criminal justice system.

The ongoing results of Growing Up In New Zealand, a new longitudinal study of almost 7,000 babies born in the upper North Island between February 2009 and June 2010, are expected to be relevant to this end. In the meantime, Shriver raises a pertinent point—that biology and upbringing combine to create that most unpredictable of motivations, human nature: “Parents are people too, and their emotions are sometimes going to depart from script. Moreover, children are people too, which means that to give them at least partial responsibility for how they turn out, and for whether they murder their classmates, is to take them seriously as fully human.”

1 month ago  View high resolution

“What qualifies me to be an expert on women’s reproductive health?” asks a sombre, besuited Leland Palmer in a parody posted on FunnyOrDie.com. “I’m a 59-year-old man.” The video is a nod to the fact that access to hormonal birth control—a debate that raged in the United States over half a century ago—has always been as much about politics as it has about health. It’s no less contentious an issue in 2012: election year. In February, the Republican Party attempted to overturn President Obama’s new law, introduced as part of healthcare reforms, that requires most employers or insurers to cover the cost of contraceptives. Republicans argued that this requirement violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by forcing employers to pay for employees’ contraception, even if their faith forbade its use. A narrow majority of Senate Democrats voted against the amendment, arguing that hormonal birth control is prescribed to women for health- related purposes unrelated to preventing pregnancy. Of greater concern was that the “Blunt amendment”, named for Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, would place control of women’s reproductive health decisions in the hands of their employers. But, as the FunnyOrDie.com parody wryly references, so far in the debate, such decisions have been weighed in on by everyone but women themselves. Commenting on the debate in the same month, Foster Friess—the single largest donor to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s political action committee—said, without a trace of self- awareness or humour, that “in [his] day”, “gals” held aspirin between their knees in lieu of contraception, “and it wasn’t that costly”. Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh later referred to Freiss’s comment when he called law student Sandra Fluke, who was denied the right to speak on an all- male panel on the religious implications of the issue, a “slut” and a “prostitute” on air. However, the Republican Party’s bid to encumber women’s access to birth control has gone beyond straightforward name- calling. A couple of weeks ago, former presidential candidate Rick Perry supported the passing of a law in Texas that barred Planned Parenthood from receiving funding under the state’s healthcare programme. This prompted a slew of posts on his official Facebook page (that were promptly removed) along the lines of: “Hey, Rick, when I menstruate there is sometimes coagulated purple gel in my Mooncup. I’m not 100% sure what it is, so I figured I’d ask an expert on women’s health.” It’s easy to see the source of inspiration for the FunnyOrDie.com video. What the controversy over contraceptives in the United States has highlighted is the inequality and intrinsic difference that exists between what can be crudely generalised as ‘male’ and ‘female’ dialogues within the debate. As male Republican politicians campaign for legislation that will impact on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of women’s decision-making in regards to their reproductive health, women alone know how it feels like to take charge of their own fertility—and the risks of not doing so. As Kyle Munkittrick put it in a guest blog for Discover magazine (http:// is.gd/tR2Qtc), “women are constantly bombarded with reminders that they can make babies [and]… that it can happen accidentally. Consider this: no matter what the situation, men are only required to think about safe sex right before or as it’s happening, but never in the interim… a woman is constantly being asked if she’s pregnant, might be pregnant, or is planning on getting pregnant. She… is probably on or considering some form of birth control based on the possibility that she might have sex in the future. “…The enormous problem here is that while girls are forced to contemplate STDs and pregnancy early, boys are largely unconcerned until they have sex for the first time. In many cases, it will be the girl who asks about a condom or says “I’m on the pill, it’s OK” or something else responsible.” As a 21-year-old, sexually active (though, in the interests of full disclosure, ‘active’ implies a frequency that I cannot live up to), I can attest to Munkittrick’s argument. I have been expected, just as a matter of course, to have the matter of my fertility under control by taking a hormonal contraceptive every day—most of which pass by without any opportunity for me to risk pregnancy (unless the urban legends about public toilets are true). This requires a certain level of effort on my part: making and attending the appointment at Student Health, picking up the prescription, and taking it as directed. The implicit statement seems to be that—as much as any woman can count on her sexual partner to support her in the case of an accidental pregnancy—women’s fertility is a women’s issue, even though it takes an egg and a sperm to make a fetus. As Munkittrick points out, despite the debate over it in the political sphere, contraception is a single-sex issue, and this has created a basic inequality in men and women’s attitudes towards sexual health and responsibility. At the moment, the current choices for men looking to take control of their fertility are condoms— already irreplaceable for protection from diseases such as herpes and chlamydia— and vasectomies. (Resulting in about 30 pregnancies per 100 women per year, withdrawal is not a legitimate option. Come on.) The latter is too drastic a step for the majority of men below the age of 40, while condoms have a high rate of failure compared to hormonal contraception. Conversely, there are 11 female-only contraceptive methods, many of which are readily available at Student Health and Family Planning. The development of a non-barrier birth control for men, typified by the image of a ‘male pill’, would go some way towards addressing this imbalance. “A male pill would dramatically alter some consciousnesses. Both sexes would be having discussions about preventing pregnancy as well as preventing diseases in sex-ed,” argued Munkittrick. “The burden of responsibility would be equalised early on.” The benefits of male birth control are obvious, but developing and marketing a new contraceptive is difficult. “It’s just around the corner” has become something of a catchphrase in regards to the development of a temporary, reversible contraceptive for men. The key stumbling block seems to be the rate of gamete production in the male reproductive system. Women release one egg a month, and so hormonal contraceptives need only interrupt that single event in order to be effective. Some reports suggest that men produced as many as 1,000 sperm every second, and stemming that flow poses more of a problem. More of a problem, yes, but not an insurmountable one. Options include hormonal pills and injections inspired by marijuana’s link to impotence, and a similar, but more easily reversible procedure to a vasectomy known as ‘Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance’. Most encouragingly, researchers at the University of North Carolina recently concluded (with the help of an $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that dosing the testes with ultrasound is a “promising candidate” in providing men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception. However, further study as to whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses of ultrasound is necessary before the treatment can be considered a marketable reality. “The last thing we want is a lingering damage to sperm,” commented Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, to BBC News. One 20-year-old male I spoke to—who was otherwise enthusiastic about the idea—expressed concern at the potential of “lingering damage”, admitting that he would take steps to preserve his sperm before trialling any male-only contraceptive. Though the development of and widespread access to a male-only contraceptive seems like it would liberate, it would likely only be of benefit to people in long-term, committed relationships, as it would not replace the protection against sexually-transmitted diseases provided by a condom. Moreover, some women are understandably reluctant to trust their sexual partner with matters of fertility that are of such great consequence to them themselves; though no studies have been carried out on the matter, anecdotal evidence points to some reluctance amongst women to have men take care of contraception. Somewhat ironically, this argument perpetuates the inequality and mistrust that made birth control one of the defining social issues of this primary in the first place. It implies that, though men have the authority to delegate responsibility for preventing against pregnancy and disease to women, they cannot be trusted with the task themselves. Of course, women have much more at stake. “I, for one, would love to let my body take a break after eight years of hormonal birth control and let my partner take a turn,” wrote one female commentator on Munkittrick’s article. “[But] would I really be willing to trust that the other person is being responsible and taking the pill every day?… At the end of the day, it’s my body that’s going to have a baby growing inside it, and all that entails… It’s going to take an enormous cultural shift before getting pregnant after a one-night stand affects both partners equally.” Reluctance to adopt male-only birth control will likely discourage pharmaceutical companies from funding its development, which is a shame. The debate isn’t just about safe sex and contraception; it’s also about attitudes to safe sex and contraception. Though the “enormous cultural shift” necessary to make male contraception an accepted alternative is often spoken of as being a disincentive to progress, its ultimate upshot would be improved responsibility, awareness, and understanding of birth control across the board. To put it bluntly, more equality in matters of fertility would change society’s understanding of sex, reproduction and relationships for the better—as much as it might be a bitter pill to swallow for the Republican Party.

“What qualifies me to be an expert on women’s reproductive health?” asks a sombre, besuited Leland Palmer in a parody posted on FunnyOrDie.com. “I’m a 59-year-old man.”

The video is a nod to the fact that access to hormonal birth control—a debate that raged in the United States over half a century ago—has always been as much about politics as it has about health. It’s no less contentious an issue in 2012: election year.

In February, the Republican Party attempted to overturn President Obama’s new law, introduced as part of healthcare reforms, that requires most employers or insurers to cover the cost of contraceptives. Republicans argued that this requirement violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by forcing employers to pay for employees’ contraception, even if their faith forbade its use. A narrow majority of Senate Democrats voted against the amendment, arguing that hormonal birth control is prescribed to women for health- related purposes unrelated to preventing pregnancy.

Of greater concern was that the “Blunt amendment”, named for Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, would place control of women’s reproductive health decisions in the hands of their employers. But, as the FunnyOrDie.com parody wryly references, so far in the debate, such decisions have been weighed in on by everyone but women themselves.

Commenting on the debate in the same month, Foster Friess—the single largest donor to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s political action committee—said, without a trace of self- awareness or humour, that “in [his] day”, “gals” held aspirin between their knees in lieu of contraception, “and it wasn’t that costly”. Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh later referred to Freiss’s comment when he called law student Sandra Fluke, who was denied the right to speak on an all- male panel on the religious implications of the issue, a “slut” and a “prostitute” on air.

However, the Republican Party’s bid to encumber women’s access to birth control has gone beyond straightforward name- calling. A couple of weeks ago, former presidential candidate Rick Perry supported the passing of a law in Texas that barred Planned Parenthood from receiving funding under the state’s healthcare programme. This prompted a slew of posts on his official Facebook page (that were promptly removed) along the lines of: “Hey, Rick, when I menstruate there is sometimes coagulated purple gel in my Mooncup. I’m not 100% sure what it is, so I figured I’d ask an expert on women’s health.”

It’s easy to see the source of inspiration for the FunnyOrDie.com video. What the controversy over contraceptives in the United States has highlighted is the inequality and intrinsic difference that exists between what can be crudely generalised as ‘male’ and ‘female’ dialogues within the debate. As male Republican politicians campaign for legislation that will impact on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of women’s decision-making in regards to their reproductive health, women alone know how it feels like to take charge of their own fertility—and the risks of not doing so.

As Kyle Munkittrick put it in a guest blog for Discover magazine (http:// is.gd/tR2Qtc), “women are constantly bombarded with reminders that they can make babies [and]… that it can happen accidentally. Consider this: no matter what the situation, men are only required to think about safe sex right before or as it’s happening, but never in the interim… a woman is constantly being asked if she’s pregnant, might be pregnant, or is planning on getting pregnant. She… is probably on or considering some form of birth control based on the possibility that she might have sex in the future.

“…The enormous problem here is that while girls are forced to contemplate STDs and pregnancy early, boys are largely unconcerned until they have sex for the first time. In many cases, it will be the girl who asks about a condom or says “I’m on the pill, it’s OK” or something else responsible.”

As a 21-year-old, sexually active (though, in the interests of full disclosure, ‘active’ implies a frequency that I cannot live up to), I can attest to Munkittrick’s argument. I have been expected, just as a matter of course, to have the matter of my fertility under control by taking a hormonal contraceptive every day—most of which pass by without any opportunity for me to risk pregnancy (unless the urban legends about public toilets are true). This requires a certain level of effort on my part: making and attending the appointment at Student Health, picking up the prescription, and taking it as directed. The implicit statement seems to be that—as much as any woman can count on her sexual partner to support her in the case of an accidental pregnancy—women’s fertility is a women’s issue, even though it takes an egg and a sperm to make a fetus.

As Munkittrick points out, despite the debate over it in the political sphere, contraception is a single-sex issue, and this has created a basic inequality in men and women’s attitudes towards sexual health and responsibility. At the moment, the current choices for men looking to take control of their fertility are condoms— already irreplaceable for protection from diseases such as herpes and chlamydia— and vasectomies. (Resulting in about 30 pregnancies per 100 women per year, withdrawal is not a legitimate option. Come on.) The latter is too drastic a step for the majority of men below the age of 40, while condoms have a high rate of failure compared to hormonal contraception.

Conversely, there are 11 female-only contraceptive methods, many of which are readily available at Student Health and Family Planning. The development of a non-barrier birth control for men, typified by the image of a ‘male pill’, would go some way towards addressing this imbalance. “A male pill would dramatically alter some consciousnesses. Both sexes would be having discussions about preventing pregnancy as well as preventing diseases in sex-ed,” argued Munkittrick. “The burden of responsibility would be equalised early on.”

The benefits of male birth control are obvious, but developing and marketing a new contraceptive is difficult. “It’s just around the corner” has become something of a catchphrase in regards to the development of a temporary, reversible contraceptive for men. The key stumbling block seems to be the rate of gamete production in the male reproductive system. Women release one egg a month, and so hormonal contraceptives need only interrupt that single event in order to be effective. Some reports suggest that men produced as many as 1,000 sperm every second, and stemming that flow poses more of a problem.

More of a problem, yes, but not an insurmountable one. Options include hormonal pills and injections inspired by marijuana’s link to impotence, and a similar, but more easily reversible procedure to a vasectomy known as ‘Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance’. Most encouragingly, researchers at the University of North Carolina recently concluded (with the help of an $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that dosing the testes with ultrasound is a “promising candidate” in providing men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception.

However, further study as to whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses of ultrasound is necessary before the treatment can be considered a marketable reality. “The last thing we want is a lingering damage to sperm,” commented Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, to BBC News. One 20-year-old male I spoke to—who was otherwise enthusiastic about the idea—expressed concern at the potential of “lingering damage”, admitting that he would take steps to preserve his sperm before trialling any male-only contraceptive.

Though the development of and widespread access to a male-only contraceptive seems like it would liberate, it would likely only be of benefit to people in long-term, committed relationships, as it would not replace the protection against sexually-transmitted diseases provided by a condom. Moreover, some women are understandably reluctant to trust their sexual partner with matters of fertility that are of such great consequence to them themselves; though no studies have been carried out on the matter, anecdotal evidence points to some reluctance amongst women to have men take care of contraception.

Somewhat ironically, this argument perpetuates the inequality and mistrust that made birth control one of the defining social issues of this primary in the first place. It implies that, though men have the authority to delegate responsibility for preventing against pregnancy and disease to women, they cannot be trusted with the task themselves. Of course, women have much more at stake. “I, for one, would love to let my body take a break after eight years of hormonal birth control and let my partner take a turn,” wrote one female commentator on Munkittrick’s article.

“[But] would I really be willing to trust that the other person is being responsible and taking the pill every day?… At the end of the day, it’s my body that’s going to have a baby growing inside it, and all that entails… It’s going to take an enormous cultural shift before getting pregnant after a one-night stand affects both partners equally.”

Reluctance to adopt male-only birth control will likely discourage pharmaceutical companies from funding its development, which is a shame. The debate isn’t just about safe sex and contraception; it’s also about attitudes to safe sex and contraception. Though the “enormous cultural shift” necessary to make male contraception an accepted alternative is often spoken of as being a disincentive to progress, its ultimate upshot would be improved responsibility, awareness, and understanding of birth control across the board. To put it bluntly, more equality in matters of fertility would change society’s understanding of sex, reproduction and relationships for the better—as much as it might be a bitter pill to swallow for the Republican Party.

1 month ago  View high resolution

Haimona: We’ve had film shoots here, theatre practices, craft beer tastings… We’ve used this space to do some recordings. One former flatmate used this whole lounge to do makeup for Miss Saigon. A Russian model told us that ghosts live here, and that they judge us if their flat is too messy. Ollie: We made a huge fort out of bed sheets. Some pretty unspeakable things happened in that fort. Haimona: Do we really want to promote that? Ollie: For guys that live and work together, we’ve actually hung out a decent amount of time—even though Simon comes in late from rehearsals, and [flatmate Michael] Potton’s away a lot. When we are together, we watch a shitload of movies. Haimona: In this period between university and going off into the working world, it’s kind of a relief to have our friends around us. It feels like a less jarring change. We’ve matured, but we’re still connected to the friends and lives we had before graduating—so we’ve become older and wiser, but not by much. Hence the fort.

Haimona: We’ve had film shoots here, theatre practices, craft beer tastings… We’ve used this space to do some recordings. One former flatmate used this whole lounge to do makeup for Miss Saigon. A Russian model told us that ghosts live here, and that they judge us if their flat is too messy.

Ollie: We made a huge fort out of bed sheets. Some pretty unspeakable things happened in that fort.

Haimona: Do we really want to promote that?

Ollie: For guys that live and work together, we’ve actually hung out a decent amount of time—even though Simon comes in late from rehearsals, and [flatmate Michael] Potton’s away a lot. When we are together, we watch a shitload of movies.

Haimona: In this period between university and going off into the working world, it’s kind of a relief to have our friends around us. It feels like a less jarring change. We’ve matured, but we’re still connected to the friends and lives we had before graduating—so we’ve become older and wiser, but not by much. Hence the fort.

3 months ago  View high resolution

Catherine: Before we moved in together, people warned us never to live with your best friend, but I think it’s quite a good thing to do once in your lifetime. We felt like this was going to be our bachelorette pad, and the house still has that feel to it; even though Gemma’s since got a boyfriend, he’s just one of the girls. It’s a little bit like a clubhouse—we drink a lot of beer, and we look at the sea and watch the boats go past. Breaker Bay is about 15 minutes’ drive from town, but you really do feel like you’re out in the countryside; we don’t even get cellphone reception. Gemma and I both work with a lot of people, so it’s really nice to go home to our isolated little beach house at the end of the day. We’re able to charge our batteries that way. Because it’s a bit of a mission to get here, we only get visitors who really count—we’re a destination. We wouldn’t mind some more visitors, actually, but we’ve got some very nice neighbours. There’s a really strong sense of community out here. We didn’t take part in the mid-winter swim, though. That was a little bit too intense, even for us.

Catherine: Before we moved in together, people warned us never to live with your best friend, but I think it’s quite a good thing to do once in your lifetime. We felt like this was going to be our bachelorette pad, and the house still has that feel to it; even though Gemma’s since got a boyfriend, he’s just one of the girls. It’s a little bit like a clubhouse—we drink a lot of beer, and we look at the sea and watch the boats go past.

Breaker Bay is about 15 minutes’ drive from town, but you really do feel like you’re out in the countryside; we don’t even get cellphone reception. Gemma and I both work with a lot of people, so it’s really nice to go home to our isolated little beach house at the end of the day. We’re able to charge our batteries that way.

Because it’s a bit of a mission to get here, we only get visitors who really count—we’re a destination. We wouldn’t mind some more visitors, actually, but we’ve got some very nice neighbours. There’s a really strong sense of community out here. We didn’t take part in the mid-winter swim, though. That was a little bit too intense, even for us.

3 months ago  View high resolution

It’s not often that an ad at a bus shelter leads me to second-guess my career choices, but this one did. It read “My student loan says I’m a smart person. My credit card disagrees.”
 I wondered. Does my debt to the Government, incurred for a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and English Literature, really indicate that I’m a “smart person”? Or does it just go to show that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on a piece of paper? 

Today more than ever before, the career trajectory of the middle-class New Zealander includes a stint at university. 82% of school leavers who gain NCEA Level 3 and meet university entrance requirements go on to bachelors-level study. Many will enroll for a Bachelor of Arts degree.

 Of all the undergraduate degrees, the BA is one of the cheapest, shortest and least strenuous to complete. It is not at all competitive. It is very flexible. There are few external factors encouraging students to strive for excellence―or even anything above a pass. For these reasons, enrolling in a BA is often the knee-jerk reaction of high school students who feel obliged to go to university―either to keep up with their friends, or to resist reality in an ivory tower for a further three years. And who can blame them? In this economic climate, it’s easier than trying to get a job. 

Of course, there are those whose true calling is art history, theatre or classics―but in my experience, for every one of those passionate, driven individuals, there are more who have merely enrolled in the subjects that were their strongest at high school and hoped for the best.

 As PayPal co-founder, billionaire and scathing critic of college Peter Thiel told New York magazine, a tertiary education is being treated as insurance against the recession and the uncertain job market―even though a degree has become so par for the course that it no longer sets job applicants apart. For this reason, universities are able to increase their fees to record levels: in the United States, the total cost of higher education has inflated by 440% in just 25 years. 

The cost of study in New Zealand is also on the rise. The average student loan balance was over $16,000 in 2009―almost three times the average in 1993. ‘Just a BA’ costs around $13,000.

 But even treating a tertiary education as an advantage in the job market, a BA to one’s name provides little peace of mind. Unlike a Bachelor of Laws, Design or Commerce, it is not a vocational qualification. In many cases, it is not even a practical qualification.

 A BA is a three-year exploration of the human experience with little to no application. In an ideal world, it should embody the value and ideals of higher education, but few of us have the luxury of being able to pursue a BA free from the pressure to one day make a living from it. The cost of university is such that most students are neither willing nor able to learn for the sake of learning.

 If enrolling for a BA has become the rote reaction of the school leaver afraid that not holding a degree will disadvantage them in the job market, is this a worthwhile use of time and money? 

Perhaps, if it leads to post-graduate study, or is part of a double or conjoint degree. If not, there are other ways of spending $13,000 that might also impress potential employers―like travel, starting a business, volunteer work or learning a skill. 

A BA aims to teach one communication, research and interpersonal skills. It shows students how to become versatile, independent and critical thinkers―but there is no pressure for them to do so. Those who make the most out of their BA have identified their major as their passion. The fact that it rewards learning for the love of it means it shouldn’t be seen as the go-to degree―not if the ultimate goal is to land a job. In fact, a BA doesn’t single you out—it makes you fit in: it’s the attitude you have and the skills it develops, that set apart the “smart” people.

It’s not often that an ad at a bus shelter leads me to second-guess my career choices, but this one did. It read “My student loan says I’m a smart person. My credit card disagrees.”


I wondered. Does my debt to the Government, incurred for a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and English Literature, really indicate that I’m a “smart person”? Or does it just go to show that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on a piece of paper?



Today more than ever before, the career trajectory of the middle-class New Zealander includes a stint at university. 82% of school leavers who gain NCEA Level 3 and meet university entrance requirements go on to bachelors-level study. Many will enroll for a Bachelor of Arts degree.



Of all the undergraduate degrees, the BA is one of the cheapest, shortest and least strenuous to complete. It is not at all competitive. It is very flexible. There are few external factors encouraging students to strive for excellence―or even anything above a pass.

For these reasons, enrolling in a BA is often the knee-jerk reaction of high school students who feel obliged to go to university―either to keep up with their friends, or to resist reality in an ivory tower for a further three years. And who can blame them? In this economic climate, it’s easier than trying to get a job.



Of course, there are those whose true calling is art history, theatre or classics―but in my experience, for every one of those passionate, driven individuals, there are more who have merely enrolled in the subjects that were their strongest at high school and hoped for the best.



As PayPal co-founder, billionaire and scathing critic of college Peter Thiel told New York magazine, a tertiary education is being treated as insurance against the recession and the uncertain job market―even though a degree has become so par for the course that it no longer sets job applicants apart. For this reason, universities are able to increase their fees to record levels: in the United States, the total cost of higher education has inflated by 440% in just 25 years.



The cost of study in New Zealand is also on the rise. The average student loan balance was over $16,000 in 2009―almost three times the average in 1993. ‘Just a BA’ costs around $13,000.



But even treating a tertiary education as an advantage in the job market, a BA to one’s name provides little peace of mind. Unlike a Bachelor of Laws, Design or Commerce, it is not a vocational qualification. In many cases, it is not even a practical qualification.



A BA is a three-year exploration of the human experience with little to no application. In an ideal world, it should embody the value and ideals of higher education, but few of us have the luxury of being able to pursue a BA free from the pressure to one day make a living from it. The cost of university is such that most students are neither willing nor able to learn for the sake of learning.



If enrolling for a BA has become the rote reaction of the school leaver afraid that not holding a degree will disadvantage them in the job market, is this a worthwhile use of time and money?



Perhaps, if it leads to post-graduate study, or is part of a double or conjoint degree. If not, there are other ways of spending $13,000 that might also impress potential employers―like travel, starting a business, volunteer work or learning a skill.



A BA aims to teach one communication, research and interpersonal skills. It shows students how to become versatile, independent and critical thinkers―but there is no pressure for them to do so. Those who make the most out of their BA have identified their major as their passion. The fact that it rewards learning for the love of it means it shouldn’t be seen as the go-to degree―not if the ultimate goal is to land a job.

In fact, a BA doesn’t single you out—it makes you fit in: it’s the attitude you have and the skills it develops, that set apart the “smart” people.

3 months ago  View high resolution

“Where are you from?” That question never fails to trip me up, because the truth is—I’m not sure. I was born and raised in England to (very) English parents. I continue to speak with that accent, and I drink four or five cups of tea per day—but I haven’t been back there for almost a decade. Between the ages of nine and 13, I travelled with my family around Europe, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, spending a fortnight or so in each country we visited. In 2004, we found ourselves in New Zealand, where we’ve lived for the past six years. I’ve survived NCEA; made lasting friendships; toured the length of the country; and even been confirmed as a citizen—but I’m still not sure if I consider myself Kiwi. New Zealand is full of people like me: people who have no concrete sense of belonging to any one nation. Does this mean that there is no such thing as cultural identity? Or, alternatively, does it have such specific boundaries that it excludes more readily than it includes? Culture shock Fairooz Samy is in her second year of studying Political Science, International Relations and Media Studies. Her mother is Algerian; her father, half Turkish, half Egyptian. “I was born in Cairo; I speak Arabic, French and English; and I’m a citizen of Egypt, Algeria, New Zealand and Britain,” says Fairooz. “We immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, when I was 10, basically because my parents wanted somewhere nice for them to retire and me to grow up. “It was a little odd at first, coming from Cairo to settle in quiet suburbia, which just doesn’t exist anywhere in Egypt. Everyone was nice, down-to-earth, super casual. You don’t get that level of ‘laid back’ in other countries.” In Egypt, Fairooz had attended a British international school, “where there was this giant emphasis on the cultural differences between everyone. “In New Zealand, I was this little freak who couldn’t even say ‘yes’ the same way they did,” she remembers. “I was accepted as the token ethnic girl.” Fairooz recalls making a “conscious decision” to start speaking with a Kiwi accent when she was about 11. “Nowadays, sure, I totally identify as a New Zealander—even more so when I’m overseas, but that’s probably because there isn’t anyone there who can tell me that I’m not,” she says. “I’d be visiting family in Algeria and feel like a total tourist, starting every sentence with ‘Back home in New Zealand’, and feeling patriotic whenever we’d eat New Zealand lamb.” Despite being well established in her second home, Fairooz hesitates when I ask for her definition of a New Zealander. “I’m not sure if I’m the best person to answer that,” she confesses. “Is it all about backyard cricket, and school Kapa Haka? “Maybe it’s as simple as the TV One ads make it out to be. Maybe New Zealanders are just that: laid-back, hard-working, generous, no-nonsense people, with such a population that there’s a tangible sense of camaraderie and dependability. “Cheese on cheese, I know, but it’s giving me the warm fuzzies,” she says wryly. Needless to say, Fairooz knows the advantages of having a couple of identities to select from. “Whenever I get frustrated with some aspect of Kiwi life, I still roll my eyes and sort of thank god that I have a couple of other cultures to fall back on,” she remarks. However, this has its drawbacks. “It can get confusing, and I feel disloyal for taking such a pick-and-choose approach to who I consider myself to be,” admits Fairooz. “I can’t escape the fact that racially, I’ll always be Arabic… but ironically, I’ve never met an Arab who really thought of me as authentic—Arabic isn’t even my first language. “I’ve always felt a tad phoney.” From Fire and Ice, to the Long White Cloud Daan Kjartansson, a second-year student, was born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and an Icelandic father. He grew up in Iceland, but moved to Wellington to study at university. He is a citizen of both countries, and speaks Icelandic and English fluently. He says he had no problems adjusting to Kiwi life, and that “it just happened”, as people at his university hall were interested in finding out more about his culture. “The only problem is that I think in Icelandic, and always have to translate it into English, and I often forget the English words for something.” Although he admits that he’s “becoming more and more Kiwi every day”, Daan sees himself as an Icelander. “I still see Iceland as home, and all of my family still live there. “I’m very interested in Norse mythology, which has played a big role in Icelandic history,” he says. “And Icelanders are all about soccer, and I play a lot of soccer myself. “Icelandic music also influences me quite a lot, and I try to listen to some daily, so I don’t forget about Iceland.” Taste in music is one of the biggest differences Daan has noticed between his two cultures. Although he’s quick to point out that he can’t generalise New Zealanders, he’s noticed that most are interested in “rugby, drinking, and listening to reggae. “The music produced here is quite different—there’s a lot of reggae and dub, which is probably influenced by the sun.” Certainly, it’s hard to imagine The Black Seeds hailing from Iceland, where the climate is described as ‘sub-polar oceanic’. Best of both worlds Felix Hallwass, an Honours student, moved to New Zealand from Germany when he was six years old. He identifies strongly with both his birth country and his adopted one. “I see myself as a German Kiwi, as I know my morals and personality are a combination of what my German parents have taught me, as well as what I have experienced as part of growing up in New Zealand,” he says. Felix admits that while he considers home to be where his family live, “I’d always call Bremen my hometown, not Nelson. In sport, I’d always support Germany.” I ask Felix how his cultural identities affect him on a daily basis. “My parents, sister and I are German citizens, and speak mostly German at home, although it has slowly become an English-German hybrid. “Having two distinct cultures to identify with, I’ve been able to decide the aspects or attitudes of each culture that appeal to me, or I agree with,” he says. “The result of this is an interesting synthesis of ideas that influence how I interact with others, and this has given me a greater appreciation of diversity.” Open mind, common sense James Burtin, a second-year student of Psychology and Criminology, found himself in New Zealand in 2005. He was born in Grasse, France, to an English mother and a French father, and considers himself “a big mixture of hopefully all the good aspects of each culture”. His diverse upbringing has influenced him in several respects. “Probably the most important way is that I always try to be friendly to whoever I meet—especially if they’re new to the area, as I know how hard it can be to adjust to new places,” he says. Felix agrees. “I think my background allows me to empathise well with different people.” “Apart from an identity crisis here and there”, Fairooz says that her background has made her “curious about the world”, as well as more tolerant. “I try not to pigeonhole,” she says. “I think that’s because I always expect people to have preconceived notions about me.” This open-mindedness is a recognised characteristic of ‘third culture kids’ (TCKs): those who, as children, spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures, and now integrate elements of those into a third culture. TCKs often experience this ‘identity crisis’ that Fairooz refers to, as they’ve invariably never fully experienced one culture. Fairooz empathises with my description of third culture kids. “It’s ticking most of the boxes,” she says. “I can definitely identify with the global culture thing. “But do I feel incomplete? Not really. I wouldn’t want to socialise with just other TCKs, either. Wouldn’t they be just as mystified as I am?” “I don’t feel that I have to be friends with other TCKs exclusively, or that it’s easier to befriend them,” agrees James. “I just enjoy meeting others, as it fascinates me as to how they’ve adjusted to life in a different culture. “I think I fit into the third culture category to some extent,” he adds. “I can quite easily go from one clique to another without too much hassle.” Future plans I ask James where he sees himself in ten years’ time. “I see myself living in another country,” he says. “I yearn for new experiences. I’m not sure where, but I’d enjoy living somewhere different. “I will, of course, return to New Zealand, as out of the three places I’ve lived, it’s definitely my favourite.” Daan concurs. “I’ve got no idea what the future has to offer, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll still be in Wellington,” he says. “I can’t see me going back [to Iceland] for good in the near future, but definitely for visits. The weather’s just a lot better here.” Fairooz is more definite, when I ask her whether she intends to return to Egypt for good. “God no!” she exclaims. “My dad just got back from a month stay there, and he said it was like coming back from hell. “I’d go back for a holiday—Egypt is an amazing place to visit, but I feel as though the only way I can have any pride in my cultural heritage is if I’m not living in a daily reminder of why I left it behind in the first place. “In ten years, I have no idea where I’ll be,” she says. “Maybe in Europe, maybe still in New Zealand. It’s not such a bad place, after all.”

“Where are you from?”

That question never fails to trip me up, because the truth is—I’m not sure.

I was born and raised in England to (very) English parents. I continue to speak with that accent, and I drink four or five cups of tea per day—but I haven’t been back there for almost a decade.

Between the ages of nine and 13, I travelled with my family around Europe, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, spending a fortnight or so in each country we visited.

In 2004, we found ourselves in New Zealand, where we’ve lived for the past six years. I’ve survived NCEA; made lasting friendships; toured the length of the country; and even been confirmed as a citizen—but I’m still not sure if I consider myself Kiwi.

New Zealand is full of people like me: people who have no concrete sense of belonging to any one nation. Does this mean that there is no such thing as cultural identity? Or, alternatively, does it have such specific boundaries that it excludes more readily than it includes?

Culture shock

Fairooz Samy is in her second year of studying Political Science, International Relations and Media Studies. Her mother is Algerian; her father, half Turkish, half Egyptian.

“I was born in Cairo; I speak Arabic, French and English; and I’m a citizen of Egypt, Algeria, New Zealand and Britain,” says Fairooz.

“We immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, when I was 10, basically because my parents wanted somewhere nice for them to retire and me to grow up.

“It was a little odd at first, coming from Cairo to settle in quiet suburbia, which just doesn’t exist anywhere in Egypt. Everyone was nice, down-to-earth, super casual. You don’t get that level of ‘laid back’ in other countries.”

In Egypt, Fairooz had attended a British international school, “where there was this giant emphasis on the cultural differences between everyone.

“In New Zealand, I was this little freak who couldn’t even say ‘yes’ the same way they did,” she remembers. “I was accepted as the token ethnic girl.”

Fairooz recalls making a “conscious decision” to start speaking with a Kiwi accent when she was about 11.

“Nowadays, sure, I totally identify as a New Zealander—even more so when I’m overseas, but that’s probably because there isn’t anyone there who can tell me that I’m not,” she says.

“I’d be visiting family in Algeria and feel like a total tourist, starting every sentence with ‘Back home in New Zealand’, and feeling patriotic whenever we’d eat New Zealand lamb.”

Despite being well established in her second home, Fairooz hesitates when I ask for her definition of a New Zealander.

“I’m not sure if I’m the best person to answer that,” she confesses. “Is it all about backyard cricket, and school Kapa Haka?

“Maybe it’s as simple as the TV One ads make it out to be. Maybe New Zealanders are just that: laid-back, hard-working, generous, no-nonsense people, with such a population that there’s a tangible sense of camaraderie and dependability.

“Cheese on cheese, I know, but it’s giving me the warm fuzzies,” she says wryly.

Needless to say, Fairooz knows the advantages of having a couple of identities to select from.

“Whenever I get frustrated with some aspect of Kiwi life, I still roll my eyes and sort of thank god that I have a couple of other cultures to fall back on,” she remarks.

However, this has its drawbacks.

“It can get confusing, and I feel disloyal for taking such a pick-and-choose approach to who I consider myself to be,” admits Fairooz.

“I can’t escape the fact that racially, I’ll always be Arabic… but ironically, I’ve never met an Arab who really thought of me as authentic—Arabic isn’t even my first language.

“I’ve always felt a tad phoney.”

From Fire and Ice, to the Long White Cloud

Daan Kjartansson, a second-year student, was born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and an Icelandic father. He grew up in Iceland, but moved to Wellington to study at university. He is a citizen of both countries, and speaks Icelandic and English fluently.

He says he had no problems adjusting to Kiwi life, and that “it just happened”, as people at his university hall were interested in finding out more about his culture.

“The only problem is that I think in Icelandic, and always have to translate it into English, and I often forget the English words for something.”

Although he admits that he’s “becoming more and more Kiwi every day”, Daan sees himself as an Icelander.

“I still see Iceland as home, and all of my family still live there.

“I’m very interested in Norse mythology, which has played a big role in Icelandic history,” he says.

“And Icelanders are all about soccer, and I play a lot of soccer myself.

“Icelandic music also influences me quite a lot, and I try to listen to some daily, so I don’t forget about Iceland.”

Taste in music is one of the biggest differences Daan has noticed between his two cultures. Although he’s quick to point out that he can’t generalise New Zealanders, he’s noticed that most are interested in “rugby, drinking, and listening to reggae.

“The music produced here is quite different—there’s a lot of reggae and dub, which is probably influenced by the sun.”

Certainly, it’s hard to imagine The Black Seeds hailing from Iceland, where the climate is described as ‘sub-polar oceanic’.

Best of both worlds

Felix Hallwass, an Honours student, moved to New Zealand from Germany when he was six years old. He identifies strongly with both his birth country and his adopted one.

“I see myself as a German Kiwi, as I know my morals and personality are a combination of what my German parents have taught me, as well as what I have experienced as part of growing up in New Zealand,” he says.

Felix admits that while he considers home to be where his family live, “I’d always call Bremen my hometown, not Nelson. In sport, I’d always support Germany.”

I ask Felix how his cultural identities affect him on a daily basis.

“My parents, sister and I are German citizens, and speak mostly German at home, although it has slowly become an English-German hybrid.

“Having two distinct cultures to identify with, I’ve been able to decide the aspects or attitudes of each culture that appeal to me, or I agree with,” he says.

“The result of this is an interesting synthesis of ideas that influence how I interact with others, and this has given me a greater appreciation of diversity.”

Open mind, common sense

James Burtin, a second-year student of Psychology and Criminology, found himself in New Zealand in 2005. He was born in Grasse, France, to an English mother and a French father, and considers himself “a big mixture of hopefully all the good aspects of each culture”.

His diverse upbringing has influenced him in several respects.

“Probably the most important way is that I always try to be friendly to whoever I meet—especially if they’re new to the area, as I know how hard it can be to adjust to new places,” he says.

Felix agrees.

“I think my background allows me to empathise well with different people.”

“Apart from an identity crisis here and there”, Fairooz says that her background has made her “curious about the world”, as well as more tolerant.

“I try not to pigeonhole,” she says.

“I think that’s because I always expect people to have preconceived notions about me.”

This open-mindedness is a recognised characteristic of ‘third culture kids’ (TCKs): those who, as children, spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures, and now integrate elements of those into a third culture. TCKs often experience this ‘identity crisis’ that Fairooz refers to, as they’ve invariably never fully experienced one culture.

Fairooz empathises with my description of third culture kids.

“It’s ticking most of the boxes,” she says. “I can definitely identify with the global culture thing.

“But do I feel incomplete? Not really. I wouldn’t want to socialise with just other TCKs, either. Wouldn’t they be just as mystified as I am?”

“I don’t feel that I have to be friends with other TCKs exclusively, or that it’s easier to befriend them,” agrees James. “I just enjoy meeting others, as it fascinates me as to how they’ve adjusted to life in a different culture.

“I think I fit into the third culture category to some extent,” he adds.

“I can quite easily go from one clique to another without too much hassle.”

Future plans

I ask James where he sees himself in ten years’ time.

“I see myself living in another country,” he says. “I yearn for new experiences. I’m not sure where, but I’d enjoy living somewhere different.

“I will, of course, return to New Zealand, as out of the three places I’ve lived, it’s definitely my favourite.”

Daan concurs.

“I’ve got no idea what the future has to offer, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll still be in Wellington,” he says.

“I can’t see me going back [to Iceland] for good in the near future, but definitely for visits. The weather’s just a lot better here.”

Fairooz is more definite, when I ask her whether she intends to return to Egypt for good.

“God no!” she exclaims.

“My dad just got back from a month stay there, and he said it was like coming back from hell.

“I’d go back for a holiday—Egypt is an amazing place to visit, but I feel as though the only way I can have any pride in my cultural heritage is if I’m not living in a daily reminder of why I left it behind in the first place.

“In ten years, I have no idea where I’ll be,” she says. “Maybe in Europe, maybe still in New Zealand. It’s not such a bad place, after all.”

12 months ago  View high resolution

The tertiary education sector is in desperate need of more funding, but I hadn’t high hopes for the so-called “zero Budget”. The National Government has so far not identified students as a priority, and last year’s Budget was an exercise in treading water: I had little cause to presume more from this one.Having said that, it’s unrealistic to expect a greater contribution from the Government when its operating deficit is a record $16.7 billion. We students should feel some relief that the Government has stuck to its promise to increase revenue by “tinkering around the edges” of the current student loan scheme―especially when there are big bucks to be made from reinstating interest. The changes announced yesterday―restrictions placed on course-related costs and mature students’ borrowing―were frankly nominal. Such timid pragmatism won’t affect the vast majority of students.The issues surrounding tertiary education funding remain, however. Universities and other education providers are receiving nowhere near sufficient Government support to meet increased demand, and so they’re being forced to increase fees, cut courses and manage enrolments. If the Government fails to address this oversight once it gets on top of its deficit, higher education could become an option only for the privileged.For now, Budget 2011 has highlighted one question that affects students as much as it does the rest of society: cash now, or cash later? Even despite the decrease in the Government’s member tax credit, KiwiSaver is still the most accessible, realistic form of long-term saving for students. On the other hand, the living and course-related costs components of the student loan scheme have not been augmented to reflect inflation and the increased cost of living. This, coupled with the 1% increase to employees’ minimum contribution to KiwiSaver, will mean that most students will likely prefer to have the cash in hand. As short-sighted an approach as that might be, it’s hard to save without more support. Perhaps next year we’ll see a Budget with more purpose.

The tertiary education sector is in desperate need of more funding, but I hadn’t high hopes for the so-called “zero Budget”.

The National Government has so far not identified students as a priority, and last year’s Budget was an exercise in treading water: I had little cause to presume more from this one.

Having said that, it’s unrealistic to expect a greater contribution from the Government when its operating deficit is a record $16.7 billion.

We students should feel some relief that the Government has stuck to its promise to increase revenue by “tinkering around the edges” of the current student loan scheme―especially when there are big bucks to be made from reinstating interest.

The changes announced yesterday―restrictions placed on course-related costs and mature students’ borrowing―were frankly nominal. Such timid pragmatism won’t affect the vast majority of students.

The issues surrounding tertiary education funding remain, however.

Universities and other education providers are receiving nowhere near sufficient Government support to meet increased demand, and so they’re being forced to increase fees, cut courses and manage enrolments.

If the Government fails to address this oversight once it gets on top of its deficit, higher education could become an option only for the privileged.

For now, Budget 2011 has highlighted one question that affects students as much as it does the rest of society: cash now, or cash later?

Even despite the decrease in the Government’s member tax credit, KiwiSaver is still the most accessible, realistic form of long-term saving for students.

On the other hand, the living and course-related costs components of the student loan scheme have not been augmented to reflect inflation and the increased cost of living.

This, coupled with the 1% increase to employees’ minimum contribution to KiwiSaver, will mean that most students will likely prefer to have the cash in hand. As short-sighted an approach as that might be, it’s hard to save without more support.

Perhaps next year we’ll see a Budget with more purpose.

1 year ago  View high resolution

“I transferred to Vic because I didn’t want to drink away my education,” a second-year student, formerly of Otago University, told a Salient staffer in the law school common room last week. Though it’s doubtful that she intended it as such, in the face of a lacklustre O Week (see page 24) and the rising cost of living here in Wellington, her explanation came across as a glowing assessment of life in Dunedin. Its reputation as a student town is the stuff of legends. It’s hard to imagine the potential loss of the Big Kumara inspiring outrage in Vic’s old boys, but the Cook and ‘Gardies’ are watering holes of such cultural importance that Marc Ellis and other bleak New Zealand celebrities stepped in to prevent their closure. Then there’s the street-wide keg parties, the cheap food and drink, rent for less than $150 (or even, it’s rumoured, $100) a week—it’s almost enough to offset the freezing winters. “Dunedin is an incredible place to live as a student,” says Julia Hollingsworth, a Wellington local who gained her BA in Philosophy and Politics at Otago. “It’s wonderfully cheap—I think it may be one of the few places where you can reasonably live on $160 a week—and around one-fifth of the people who live there are students, so everyone’s balancing studying and partying. “Basically, it’s fun, cheap, easy and super-casual.” Meanwhile, students (including Hollingsworth, who is now studying towards a post-graduate diploma at Massey University) are struggling to make ends meet in Wellington. According to The Economist’s 2011 cost of living survey, New Zealand’s capital city ranks alongside London as the 17th most expensive place to live in in the world. This is most apparent in the rising cost of rent: those of us who paid around $150 per week when we started our degrees are now shelling out up to $190 for rooms of comparable size and insulation. In fact, recent figures from the Department of Building and Housing put the average rent for a room in Kelburn at $187 per week—more than students can claim in living costs from StudyLink. And though the merits of Dunedin’s student (read: binge-drinking) culture are open to debate, it’s hard to argue with an extra $50-odd per week in pocket. So can Wellington be described as a student-friendly city? “I suppose you’ve then got to work out what ‘student-friendly’ means,” says Ian McKinnon, who is both Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Chancellor of Victoria University. “Wellington values students. Whether you look at it in social or economic terms, the tertiary institutions and the people that make them up—namely, the students—are valued by and add value for the city.” As McKinnon acknowledges, students’ contribution to the local economy is significant. Statistics New Zealand’s 2006 census of the Wellington region identified 10.3% of the population as being aged between 18 and 24, a rise of 0.5% from the preceding census in 2001. Given the increasing number of school-leavers pursuing higher education, and the reduced capacity of Canterbury University, it’s safe to assume this upward trend has continued. Moreover, Victoria University employs close to 2,000 people in the Wellington region. So how is the value that students contribute to the city being returned to them? Well, not in discounted public transport. While buses are free for students and staff of Massey University in Palmerston North, tertiary students in Wellington aren’t eligible for even reduced fares, meaning a return trip to more or less any suburb costs the best part of $10. For most students, this poses just a minor irritation, for, as McKinnon points out, Wellington’s size means it’s possible to “be at the university and then at a coffee bar in the city within five minutes”, even on foot. Moreover, the issue of tertiary discounts will be up for discussion later in the year with the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s upcoming fare structure review. Changes proposed under the Regional Council’s review of bus services, which is currently underway, are more significant. As part of its bid to optimise services, it is looking to cut the vast majority of routes serving Kelburn Parade, leaving students to leg it up Mount Street to get to class. As 46% of Vic students rely on public transport as their primary mode of commuting, both the University and VUWSA are in the process of making submissions on the review. Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Daran Ponter is also interested to hear students’ perspectives. He explains that transport planners have worked on the assumption that five minutes’ walk is an acceptable distance to travel to the nearest bus stop—in this case, at the corner of The Terrace and Salamanca Road. “I’m really interested to see how students react to that, because a lot of Victoria University is more than five minutes’ walk from that bus stop,” he says. “If you were going to the music school, for example, I would have thought it would be a bit of a push.” Public transport is not so much of an issue in Dunedin, where, Hollingsworth says, “living 15 minutes from campus is living far away.” She attributes Dunedin’s status as a student-friendly city to its cheapness and its compactness, neither of which are the achievements of the Dunedin City Council. In fact, according to Hollingsworth, students’ relationship with the University and the DCC is becoming increasingly fraught, with the Council looking to extend an inner-city liquor ban to the “student-ville” suburbs. “Dunedin has a long history of students versus the University, and students versus the DCC, and each side is just as distrustful of the other.” The appointment of Harlene Hayne to Vice-Chancellor last year, Hollingsworth concedes, suggests of “possible, positive change in the air” in the tense relationship between students and the University. Critic (Otago’s answer to Salient) recently published a photoshoot of OUSA President Logan Edgar horsing around with Hayne—him in a suit, her in a varsity hoodie. Given the professional tone of our interview with him this issue (see page 26), it’s hard to imagine a similar spread showing VUWSA President Bridie Hood chewing the fat with Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh. (Pat, if you’re reading—we can make it happen. Call us.) Hayne has been taking a hands-on approach to curbing students’ wild behaviour, taking to the front line of Orientation events last month to help remove alcohol. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull acknowledges that keeping on top of such a large student body—he estimates that students form about a sixth of the city’s total population—is not without its challenges. “There’s the odd problem that turns up… the couch burnings, and the somewhat over-exuberant street parties where there’s a bit of disorder and bad behaviour,” he says, referring to the infamous Hyde Street keg parties. “I think that’s a minority, though another sizeable minority are silly enough to stand around and watch. “But they’re young,” he adds indulgently. One way in which Cull tries to instill new students with a sense of belonging to Dunedin is by providing them with vouchers for cultural and recreational services within the city. This, he says, is intended “to bring them into the community right from day one, rather than have them hiding in a ghetto not knowing what the rest of the city is doing. “It’s about giving them a sense of ownership while they’re here. As I said at the civic welcome this year, if you’re going to treat Dunedin like a sailor in a foreign port, then perhaps you want to think about finding somewhere else to live. I want them to feel like Dunedin is their home, and then they can start to think about treating it the way their home.” That this is even a priority for Cull is indicative of a different mindset down south. Though Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown frequently reiterates the important contribution of students to the city, for most, their engagement with the Wellington City Council begins and ends with her traditional welcome at Civic Square during O Week. Even President Hood concedes that she has little to do with the WCC on a day-to-day basis, as she tends to prioritise issues that affect students on a national level. That said, she says she would be “quite keen to work a lot closer with the City Council” on similar initiatives to Cull’s welcome pack for first-years. The high concentration of students (“some people have said to me that it’s the youngest demographic suburb in the world”), Cull says, means the DCC has a “duty of care” to oversee their goings-on: “You’ve got literally tens of thousands of young people, many of whom are acting out a bit because parental authority is a long way away.” The DCC works closely with Otago University, the police, OUSA, youth groups and students themselves to organise events such as the upcoming Hyde Street keg party, which Cull acknowledges has “got out of control” in the past. “There’s been too many people, broken glass,” he says. “The fear is that someone’s going to die.” More than 7,500 people (out of an invited 14,043) claim to be ‘attending’ the 24 March event on Facebook, and Cull is hopeful that it will be a great success, noting that OUSA has “done a wonderful job” in organising port-a-loos, barbeques, water stations and volunteers. “Ultimately, it’s up to the students, and particularly the residents of Hyde Street, to come up with a model that they can do year after year, where everyone has a great time.” For better or worse, it’s difficult to picture such an event being held in Wellington. Indeed, last year, now-MAWSA president Ben Thorpe’s attempt to organise a Wellington equivalent to the Hyde Street keg party in Mount Cook was thwarted by the council and police. Deputy Mayor McKinnon says students in Wellington “haven’t adopted some of the extreme behaviour of those at some of the other universities” because of the city’s “pepperpot” demography. “We all live together,” he says. “It’s not as though students’ only neighbours are other students. I think that acts as a bit of a check. You know what people are like—if they can get away with it, they’ll go a bit further, a bit further, and eventually the sofas get burnt.” Cull agrees: “The intensity and concentration of students in Dunedin probably leads to issues that wouldn’t be evident in a place where they were scattered over the whole city.” Another reason, continues McKinnon, is the city’s “vibrancy”. “This city, without any qualification, is the leader in staging events, and they’re all right on our doorstep,” he says. “There’s so much to do in Wellington, students don’t need to sit there in the middle of The Terrace and burn sofas.” (Which brings to mind Hollingsworth’s remark, “Dunedin people are good at creating their own fun.”) In addition, a number of Victoria University students have set their sights on a career in the public sector, and fears of ruining their chances of employment in future make them think twice about any youthful indiscretions. “People that are going into that sort of career path, whether they’re lawyers, economists or arts graduates, are surrounded by their future career,” says McKinnon. “The public sector’s right here, and their studies are right here, so they’re conscious of that and they don’t want to completely undermine their futures.” The difference in campus culture at the two universities suggests that Victoria is perceived as a training ground for the real world, and Otago, as an escape from it. “It’s kind of a little bit of everyone here,” says Hood. “Why else would you go to Dunedin, if not to party?” But there are advantages and disadvantages to both. For Vic students, the trade-off for a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, and the chance to pass oneself off as a young professional in the public service sector, is a high cost of living. The upshot of Otago students’ fight for their right to party is their sense of camaraderie with each other, and their relationship, however fraught, with their city council and university. It’s not that Wellington isn’t as much of a student town as Dunedin; rather, it just attracts a different kind of student.

“I transferred to Vic because I didn’t want to drink away my education,” a second-year student, formerly of Otago University, told a Salient staffer in the law school common room last week.

Though it’s doubtful that she intended it as such, in the face of a lacklustre O Week (see page 24) and the rising cost of living here in Wellington, her explanation came across as a glowing assessment of life in Dunedin. Its reputation as a student town is the stuff of legends. It’s hard to imagine the potential loss of the Big Kumara inspiring outrage in Vic’s old boys, but the Cook and ‘Gardies’ are watering holes of such cultural importance that Marc Ellis and other bleak New Zealand celebrities stepped in to prevent their closure. Then there’s the street-wide keg parties, the cheap food and drink, rent for less than $150 (or even, it’s rumoured, $100) a week—it’s almost enough to offset the freezing winters.

“Dunedin is an incredible place to live as a student,” says Julia Hollingsworth, a Wellington local who gained her BA in Philosophy and Politics at Otago. “It’s wonderfully cheap—I think it may be one of the few places where you can reasonably live on $160 a week—and around one-fifth of the people who live there are students, so everyone’s balancing studying and partying.

“Basically, it’s fun, cheap, easy and super-casual.”

Meanwhile, students (including Hollingsworth, who is now studying towards a post-graduate diploma at Massey University) are struggling to make ends meet in Wellington. According to The Economist’s 2011 cost of living survey, New Zealand’s capital city ranks alongside London as the 17th most expensive place to live in in the world. This is most apparent in the rising cost of rent: those of us who paid around $150 per week when we started our degrees are now shelling out up to $190 for rooms of comparable size and insulation.

In fact, recent figures from the Department of Building and Housing put the average rent for a room in Kelburn at $187 per week—more than students can claim in living costs from StudyLink. And though the merits of Dunedin’s student (read: binge-drinking) culture are open to debate, it’s hard to argue with an extra $50-odd per week in pocket. So can Wellington be described as a student-friendly city?

“I suppose you’ve then got to work out what ‘student-friendly’ means,” says Ian McKinnon, who is both Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Chancellor of Victoria University. “Wellington values students. Whether you look at it in social or economic terms, the tertiary institutions and the people that make them up—namely, the students—are valued by and add value for the city.”

As McKinnon acknowledges, students’ contribution to the local economy is significant. Statistics New Zealand’s 2006 census of the Wellington region identified 10.3% of the population as being aged between 18 and 24, a rise of 0.5% from the preceding census in 2001. Given the increasing number of school-leavers pursuing higher education, and the reduced capacity of Canterbury University, it’s safe to assume this upward trend has continued. Moreover, Victoria University employs close to 2,000 people in the Wellington region. So how is the value that students contribute to the city being returned to them?

Well, not in discounted public transport. While buses are free for students and staff of Massey University in Palmerston North, tertiary students in Wellington aren’t eligible for even reduced fares, meaning a return trip to more or less any suburb costs the best part of $10. For most students, this poses just a minor irritation, for, as McKinnon points out, Wellington’s size means it’s possible to “be at the university and then at a coffee bar in the city within five minutes”, even on foot. Moreover, the issue of tertiary discounts will be up for discussion later in the year with the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s upcoming fare structure review.

Changes proposed under the Regional Council’s review of bus services, which is currently underway, are more significant. As part of its bid to optimise services, it is looking to cut the vast majority of routes serving Kelburn Parade, leaving students to leg it up Mount Street to get to class. As 46% of Vic students rely on public transport as their primary mode of commuting, both the University and VUWSA are in the process of making submissions on the review.

Greater Wellington Regional Councillor Daran Ponter is also interested to hear students’ perspectives. He explains that transport planners have worked on the assumption that five minutes’ walk is an acceptable distance to travel to the nearest bus stop—in this case, at the corner of The Terrace and Salamanca Road. “I’m really interested to see how students react to that, because a lot of Victoria University is more than five minutes’ walk from that bus stop,” he says. “If you were going to the music school, for example, I would have thought it would be a bit of a push.”

Public transport is not so much of an issue in Dunedin, where, Hollingsworth says, “living 15 minutes from campus is living far away.” She attributes Dunedin’s status as a student-friendly city to its cheapness and its compactness, neither of which are the achievements of the Dunedin City Council. In fact, according to Hollingsworth, students’ relationship with the University and the DCC is becoming increasingly fraught, with the Council looking to extend an inner-city liquor ban to the “student-ville” suburbs. “Dunedin has a long history of students versus the University, and students versus the DCC, and each side is just as distrustful of the other.”

The appointment of Harlene Hayne to Vice-Chancellor last year, Hollingsworth concedes, suggests of “possible, positive change in the air” in the tense relationship between students and the University. Critic (Otago’s answer to Salient) recently published a photoshoot of OUSA President Logan Edgar horsing around with Hayne—him in a suit, her in a varsity hoodie. Given the professional tone of our interview with him this issue (see page 26), it’s hard to imagine a similar spread showing VUWSA President Bridie Hood chewing the fat with Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh. (Pat, if you’re reading—we can make it happen. Call us.)

Hayne has been taking a hands-on approach to curbing students’ wild behaviour, taking to the front line of Orientation events last month to help remove alcohol. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull acknowledges that keeping on top of such a large student body—he estimates that students form about a sixth of the city’s total population—is not without its challenges.

“There’s the odd problem that turns up… the couch burnings, and the somewhat over-exuberant street parties where there’s a bit of disorder and bad behaviour,” he says, referring to the infamous Hyde Street keg parties. “I think that’s a minority, though another sizeable minority are silly enough to stand around and watch.

“But they’re young,” he adds indulgently.

One way in which Cull tries to instill new students with a sense of belonging to Dunedin is by providing them with vouchers for cultural and recreational services within the city. This, he says, is intended “to bring them into the community right from day one, rather than have them hiding in a ghetto not knowing what the rest of the city is doing.

“It’s about giving them a sense of ownership while they’re here. As I said at the civic welcome this year, if you’re going to treat Dunedin like a sailor in a foreign port, then perhaps you want to think about finding somewhere else to live. I want them to feel like Dunedin is their home, and then they can start to think about treating it the way their home.”

That this is even a priority for Cull is indicative of a different mindset down south. Though Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown frequently reiterates the important contribution of students to the city, for most, their engagement with the Wellington City Council begins and ends with her traditional welcome at Civic Square during O Week. Even President Hood concedes that she has little to do with the WCC on a day-to-day basis, as she tends to prioritise issues that affect students on a national level. That said, she says she would be “quite keen to work a lot closer with the City Council” on similar initiatives to Cull’s welcome pack for first-years.

The high concentration of students (“some people have said to me that it’s the youngest demographic suburb in the world”), Cull says, means the DCC has a “duty of care” to oversee their goings-on: “You’ve got literally tens of thousands of young people, many of whom are acting out a bit because parental authority is a long way away.”

The DCC works closely with Otago University, the police, OUSA, youth groups and students themselves to organise events such as the upcoming Hyde Street keg party, which Cull acknowledges has “got out of control” in the past. “There’s been too many people, broken glass,” he says. “The fear is that someone’s going to die.”

More than 7,500 people (out of an invited 14,043) claim to be ‘attending’ the 24 March event on Facebook, and Cull is hopeful that it will be a great success, noting that OUSA has “done a wonderful job” in organising port-a-loos, barbeques, water stations and volunteers. “Ultimately, it’s up to the students, and particularly the residents of Hyde Street, to come up with a model that they can do year after year, where everyone has a great time.”

For better or worse, it’s difficult to picture such an event being held in Wellington. Indeed, last year, now-MAWSA president Ben Thorpe’s attempt to organise a Wellington equivalent to the Hyde Street keg party in Mount Cook was thwarted by the council and police.

Deputy Mayor McKinnon says students in Wellington “haven’t adopted some of the extreme behaviour of those at some of the other universities” because of the city’s “pepperpot” demography. “We all live together,” he says. “It’s not as though students’ only neighbours are other students. I think that acts as a bit of a check. You know what people are like—if they can get away with it, they’ll go a bit further, a bit further, and eventually the sofas get burnt.”

Cull agrees: “The intensity and concentration of students in Dunedin probably leads to issues that wouldn’t be evident in a place where they were scattered over the whole city.”

Another reason, continues McKinnon, is the city’s “vibrancy”. “This city, without any qualification, is the leader in staging events, and they’re all right on our doorstep,” he says. “There’s so much to do in Wellington, students don’t need to sit there in the middle of The Terrace and burn sofas.” (Which brings to mind Hollingsworth’s remark, “Dunedin people are good at creating their own fun.”)

In addition, a number of Victoria University students have set their sights on a career in the public sector, and fears of ruining their chances of employment in future make them think twice about any youthful indiscretions. “People that are going into that sort of career path, whether they’re lawyers, economists or arts graduates, are surrounded by their future career,” says McKinnon. “The public sector’s right here, and their studies are right here, so they’re conscious of that and they don’t want to completely undermine their futures.”

The difference in campus culture at the two universities suggests that Victoria is perceived as a training ground for the real world, and Otago, as an escape from it. “It’s kind of a little bit of everyone here,” says Hood. “Why else would you go to Dunedin, if not to party?” But there are advantages and disadvantages to both. For Vic students, the trade-off for a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, and the chance to pass oneself off as a young professional in the public service sector, is a high cost of living. The upshot of Otago students’ fight for their right to party is their sense of camaraderie with each other, and their relationship, however fraught, with their city council and university. It’s not that Wellington isn’t as much of a student town as Dunedin; rather, it just attracts a different kind of student.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also—as the pillbox hats of the 1960s, platform shoes of the 1970s and perms of the 1980s go to show—as dependent on the decade. But what’s the defining aesthetic of the 20th and 21st centuries?  According to novelist and critic Kurt Andersen, there isn’t one. In a 3,500-word cover story in Vanity Fair earlier this year (http://is.gd/JTaKvk), Andersen argues that, in recent history, “the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all—less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century”. The past, he continues, is a “foreign country”, populated with platforms and perms, “but the recent past—the ’00s, the ’90s, even a lot of the ’80s—looks almost identical to the present”.  Andersen’s article, some readers maintain, makes too sweeping an assessment to pick up on the cultural cues of today, but others agree with his assessment that, in an environment of otherwise rapid change, “people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past”. Salient chief feature writer Elle Hunt looks at whether his theory can be applied closer to home. Follow a certain route around Victoria University, and the decades pass before one’s eyes. Start at the Hunte building on top of Kelburn hill: the first of Vic’s structures, its late nineteenth-century revival, ‘collegiate Gothic’ appearance reflects its 1902 construction date. On the right is Weir House, designed in true ‘English renaissance’ style in 1931; on the left, Easterfield, which the Evening Post said “could well have been imported direct from the United States of America” upon its opening in 1958. Further up the hill is Von Zedlitz, constructed in the late 1970s; Laby in 1984; the Student Union Building extension in 1985; and Murphy in 1986. Each building reflects the aesthetics in favour at the time of its design and construction, and—bar some standardising modernisations—each looks different. So far, so in favour of writer Kurt Andersen’s argument that, in the past, “just 20 years made all the difference in serious cultural output”. You don’t need to have aced, or even sat ARCH 101 to see that Weir House looks nothing like neither that “handsome pile” Hunter nor Easterfield; you just have to have a pair of eyes. But then there’s the latest round of additions to Vic: 2010’s Alan MacDiarmid building and 2011’s Hunter Lounge. MacDiarmid resembles a bunker from outside and a departure lounge from within; the Hunter Lounge combines polish wooden floors and Scandinavian influences with discounted Castlepoints to serve as the site of the perfect student experience. The spaciousness and linear elements of both are indicative of their being designed and constructed in the present day, but what, in particular, defines their look? Now venture into the heart of Wellington’s cultural landscape: Cuba Street. You see plaid. You see facial hair. Then there’s the mainstream uniform of jeans and T-shirts—a constant for the past three decades. Martha’s Pantry, The Powder Room, Arthur’s, Emporium, Iko Iko, Havana Bar, Espressoholic and Midnight Espresso are among the Cuba Street destinations that look to the past for their interior inspiration, while photographs on the wall at Fidel’s suggest it’s much the same today as it was when it opened in the 1990s. And it’s not just architecture, interior design and fashion that seems to be stagnating. Pop into the Mighty Mighty on a Friday or Saturday night and hear bands that sound like The Modern Lovers (1970s-1980s), Pixies (1980s-1990s), or The Strokes (2000s-2010s). So what are the big, defining differences between the Wellington of 2012 and that of 2002—or even 1992? Andersen would argue that there aren’t any; that New Zealand, like the United States, has found itself in a “period of stylistic paralysis”. Moreover, the cultural landscapes of both countries haven’t just stalled: they’ve started looking back. “The future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past,” Andersen writes, pointing to the trend of “reviving and rejiggering” old television series and films instead of generating original content. (That said, glancing at a Reading Cinemas schedule, there’s nothing contemporary about Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe or a silent, black-and-white film set between 1927 and 1932, Oscar or no.) Even Mad Men, he suggests, is a hit not because of its characters or stories, but because of its “’60s-fetishising” production design and wardrobe. It’s easy to see Andersen’s point when it’s applied to a hipster rats’ nest such as Wellington, where so much of what is considered ‘cool’ is a relic from past decades. Case in point: the multitude of film cameras toted around the music festival Camp A Low Hum, in spite of their impracticality and expense. Even the reputation of the iPhone as a future-forward technology is called into question by the popularity of Hipstamatic, an app that makes uninteresting photographs look like Polaroids and therefore vaguely ‘arty’. (For the truly inane, there’s Hipstamatic Disposable, where one has to finish a ‘reel’ of 24 shots in order to view them, just as with a traditional film camera.) This predilection to live what Andersen dubs “make-believe-old-fashioned lives” becomes more bizarre when one takes into account that people are devoting more time, energy and money to matters of appearance than ever before. It’s hard to imagine the phrase ‘personal style statement’ being said with a straight face prior to the 21st century, but today, 11.7 million people are posting pictures of Chloe Sevingy and Alexander McQueen to their Pinterest ‘mood boards’. Andersen believes this pervasive desire for ‘authenticity’ is a bid to offset rapid change in other parts of society—that is, “the profound non-stop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts”. “[T]he more certain things change for real (technology, the global political economy),” writes Andersen, “the more other things (style, culture) stay the same.” But Andersen’s own “nostalgic cultural gaze” could well be clouding his perspective. As detractors of his article have pointed out, it is more than tinged with sentimentality for the land of the free’s golden years of industry. “It appears to me that Andersen wants to both maintain America’s cultural power as well as its reach,” says Dr Geoff Stahl, a lecturer in cultural and media studies at Victoria University. “The argument is one of a long string of treatises on the waning of America and its culture, a legacy which has always tied itself to consumption.” As a writer that came of age in the 1970s, it’s not surprising that Andersen laments the decline of the US of A’s innovation-driven empire, but his portrait of its current cultural landscape is painted with broad brush strokes. In a response published on Salon.com, New York Times Book Review contributor Maria Russo argues that Andersen’s “glum” piece puts too much stead in external change and ignores the more subtle and significant developments of the 21st century. Sure, she reasons, car design “might not be as brash as it was in 1957”, but in an accident, “you’re unlikely to be impaled by your steering wheel, or see your trunk burst into flames”. “In 2011, usefulness and thoughtful details, and what’s under the hood, matter more than radical transformations of style,” retorts Russo. Though Stahl found much about Andersen’s article “very compelling”, he remarks that it “suffers, in many respects, from two kinds of myopia: one geographic and one historical”: “It imagines an American barely in touch with, and only lightly touched by, the rest of the world,” he explains. “It seems rather shrill to be making claims about the end of cultural innovation from such a narrow sliver of time and space.” For this reason, Stahl says, it’s difficult to imagine how Andersen’s argument might fit into a New Zealand context, for all the apparent signifiers on Kelburn campus and along Cuba Street. He suggests that, instead, the cultural landscape closer to home is shaped by other, related forces. Stahl, who hails from Canada, has identified the fear of being derivative or unoriginal as a “central anxiety in New Zealand culture”, to which the collective response has been to “rely upon DIY culture—enterepreneurialism in another guise”. “There’s a perception that culture in New Zealand is simply a pale imitation of something from elsewhere… so the kind of anxiety pointed to in Andersen’s article is something that has always existed here,” he says. “This always seems disingenuous to me… because cultural is always mimetic in the first instance.” This point, that new cultural output is shaped by that which went before it, is glossed over in Andersen’s piece, if not ignored altogether. No-one can deny that the pace of change between 1914 and 1989 was noticeably more frantic, but Andersen appears to be oblivious to the more subtle, structural change the early decades of the 21st century are setting the stage for. The modern cultural landscape, Stahl argues, emanates “from nodes and sources, real and virtual”, rather than one particular “centre”; its aesthetic is therefore less distinct, but not less valuable. Above all, what Andersen inadequately accounts for that difference and innovation are just as subjective as beauty. Jeans might well have been the sartorial mainstay of the masses for the past three decades, but while the concept remains the same, the cut is completely different.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but also—as the pillbox hats of the 1960s, platform shoes of the 1970s and perms of the 1980s go to show—as dependent on the decade. But what’s the defining aesthetic of the 20th and 21st centuries?

 According to novelist and critic Kurt Andersen, there isn’t one. In a 3,500-word cover story in Vanity Fair earlier this year (http://is.gd/JTaKvk), Andersen argues that, in recent history, “the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all—less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century”. The past, he continues, is a “foreign country”, populated with platforms and perms, “but the recent past—the ’00s, the ’90s, even a lot of the ’80s—looks almost identical to the present”.

 Andersen’s article, some readers maintain, makes too sweeping an assessment to pick up on the cultural cues of today, but others agree with his assessment that, in an environment of otherwise rapid change, “people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past”. Salient chief feature writer Elle Hunt looks at whether his theory can be applied closer to home.

Follow a certain route around Victoria University, and the decades pass before one’s eyes. Start at the Hunte building on top of Kelburn hill: the first of Vic’s structures, its late nineteenth-century revival, ‘collegiate Gothic’ appearance reflects its 1902 construction date. On the right is Weir House, designed in true ‘English renaissance’ style in 1931; on the left, Easterfield, which the Evening Post said “could well have been imported direct from the United States of America” upon its opening in 1958. Further up the hill is Von Zedlitz, constructed in the late 1970s; Laby in 1984; the Student Union Building extension in 1985; and Murphy in 1986. Each building reflects the aesthetics in favour at the time of its design and construction, and—bar some standardising modernisations—each looks different.

So far, so in favour of writer Kurt Andersen’s argument that, in the past, “just 20 years made all the difference in serious cultural output”. You don’t need to have aced, or even sat ARCH 101 to see that Weir House looks nothing like neither that “handsome pile” Hunter nor Easterfield; you just have to have a pair of eyes. But then there’s the latest round of additions to Vic: 2010’s Alan MacDiarmid building and 2011’s Hunter Lounge. MacDiarmid resembles a bunker from outside and a departure lounge from within; the Hunter Lounge combines polish wooden floors and Scandinavian influences with discounted Castlepoints to serve as the site of the perfect student experience. The spaciousness and linear elements of both are indicative of their being designed and constructed in the present day, but what, in particular, defines their look?

Now venture into the heart of Wellington’s cultural landscape: Cuba Street. You see plaid. You see facial hair. Then there’s the mainstream uniform of jeans and T-shirts—a constant for the past three decades. Martha’s Pantry, The Powder Room, Arthur’s, Emporium, Iko Iko, Havana Bar, Espressoholic and Midnight Espresso are among the Cuba Street destinations that look to the past for their interior inspiration, while photographs on the wall at Fidel’s suggest it’s much the same today as it was when it opened in the 1990s. And it’s not just architecture, interior design and fashion that seems to be stagnating. Pop into the Mighty Mighty on a Friday or Saturday night and hear bands that sound like The Modern Lovers (1970s-1980s), Pixies (1980s-1990s), or The Strokes (2000s-2010s). So what are the big, defining differences between the Wellington of 2012 and that of 2002—or even 1992?

Andersen would argue that there aren’t any; that New Zealand, like the United States, has found itself in a “period of stylistic paralysis”. Moreover, the cultural landscapes of both countries haven’t just stalled: they’ve started looking back. “The future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past,” Andersen writes, pointing to the trend of “reviving and rejiggering” old television series and films instead of generating original content. (That said, glancing at a Reading Cinemas schedule, there’s nothing contemporary about Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe or a silent, black-and-white film set between 1927 and 1932, Oscar or no.) Even Mad Men, he suggests, is a hit not because of its characters or stories, but because of its “’60s-fetishising” production design and wardrobe.

It’s easy to see Andersen’s point when it’s applied to a hipster rats’ nest such as Wellington, where so much of what is considered ‘cool’ is a relic from past decades. Case in point: the multitude of film cameras toted around the music festival Camp A Low Hum, in spite of their impracticality and expense. Even the reputation of the iPhone as a future-forward technology is called into question by the popularity of Hipstamatic, an app that makes uninteresting photographs look like Polaroids and therefore vaguely ‘arty’. (For the truly inane, there’s Hipstamatic Disposable, where one has to finish a ‘reel’ of 24 shots in order to view them, just as with a traditional film camera.)

This predilection to live what Andersen dubs “make-believe-old-fashioned lives” becomes more bizarre when one takes into account that people are devoting more time, energy and money to matters of appearance than ever before. It’s hard to imagine the phrase ‘personal style statement’ being said with a straight face prior to the 21st century, but today, 11.7 million people are posting pictures of Chloe Sevingy and Alexander McQueen to their Pinterest ‘mood boards’. Andersen believes this pervasive desire for ‘authenticity’ is a bid to offset rapid change in other parts of society—that is, “the profound non-stop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts”. “[T]he more certain things change for real (technology, the global political economy),” writes Andersen, “the more other things (style, culture) stay the same.”

But Andersen’s own “nostalgic cultural gaze” could well be clouding his perspective. As detractors of his article have pointed out, it is more than tinged with sentimentality for the land of the free’s golden years of industry. “It appears to me that Andersen wants to both maintain America’s cultural power as well as its reach,” says Dr Geoff Stahl, a lecturer in cultural and media studies at Victoria University. “The argument is one of a long string of treatises on the waning of America and its culture, a legacy which has always tied itself to consumption.”

As a writer that came of age in the 1970s, it’s not surprising that Andersen laments the decline of the US of A’s innovation-driven empire, but his portrait of its current cultural landscape is painted with broad brush strokes. In a response published on Salon.com, New York Times Book Review contributor Maria Russo argues that Andersen’s “glum” piece puts too much stead in external change and ignores the more subtle and significant developments of the 21st century. Sure, she reasons, car design “might not be as brash as it was in 1957”, but in an accident, “you’re unlikely to be impaled by your steering wheel, or see your trunk burst into flames”. “In 2011, usefulness and thoughtful details, and what’s under the hood, matter more than radical transformations of style,” retorts Russo.

Though Stahl found much about Andersen’s article “very compelling”, he remarks that it “suffers, in many respects, from two kinds of myopia: one geographic and one historical”: “It imagines an American barely in touch with, and only lightly touched by, the rest of the world,” he explains. “It seems rather shrill to be making claims about the end of cultural innovation from such a narrow sliver of time and space.”

For this reason, Stahl says, it’s difficult to imagine how Andersen’s argument might fit into a New Zealand context, for all the apparent signifiers on Kelburn campus and along Cuba Street. He suggests that, instead, the cultural landscape closer to home is shaped by other, related forces. Stahl, who hails from Canada, has identified the fear of being derivative or unoriginal as a “central anxiety in New Zealand culture”, to which the collective response has been to “rely upon DIY culture—enterepreneurialism in another guise”. “There’s a perception that culture in New Zealand is simply a pale imitation of something from elsewhere… so the kind of anxiety pointed to in Andersen’s article is something that has always existed here,” he says. “This always seems disingenuous to me… because cultural is always mimetic in the first instance.”

This point, that new cultural output is shaped by that which went before it, is glossed over in Andersen’s piece, if not ignored altogether. No-one can deny that the pace of change between 1914 and 1989 was noticeably more frantic, but Andersen appears to be oblivious to the more subtle, structural change the early decades of the 21st century are setting the stage for. The modern cultural landscape, Stahl argues, emanates “from nodes and sources, real and virtual”, rather than one particular “centre”; its aesthetic is therefore less distinct, but not less valuable. Above all, what Andersen inadequately accounts for that difference and innovation are just as subjective as beauty. Jeans might well have been the sartorial mainstay of the masses for the past three decades, but while the concept remains the same, the cut is completely different.

First, a caveat: I don’t claim to be a decent human being. I am a Media Studies major. I text in all caps. Just last week, in fact, I set my hair on fire. But even in the face of these grave character flaws, I strive to be rational, a trait that is not prized enough by modern society. Fuck being earnest—earnestness is just, as P. J. O’Rourke so rightly said, stupidity sent to college. The importance of being reasonable, however, is paramount: if we can’t reach conclusions from deliberate consideration, if we can’t connect our beliefs to our reasons for belief, and our actions with our reasons for action, we are chickens without heads. Too often, issues that are shaded grey are discussed in black and white terms. The argument over Voluntary Student Membership is a key example: to articulate it as a binary of compulsory or voluntary undermines the influences on and implications of the debate. Even worse than such total statements is hand-wringing, hysterical rhetoric. The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations were quite rightly mocked for their “desperate” press release that declared that “members of the public and tertiary institutions around the country” would “tonight be appalled” that the “extreme… Bill” had not been reconsidered. I understand the intended effect of emotive language, but this verges on being insulting. The same issue arose at the tumultuous ‘We Are The University’ protest on Kelburn campus a fortnight ago. Call me heartless, but changes to the International Relations programme does not constitute “the death of tertiary education”, and saying so undermines your point, alienates potential supporters, and makes it easier for your detractors to ignore, dismiss or rebut you. Moreover, the letter addressed to Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh was, quite frankly, cringeworthy—petulant, sarcastic, and reeking of entitlement. I don’t dispute that the lack of consultation with students on changes to the University is disturbing, but snarky repetitions of “Pat” do not convey this, and that the protest’s organisers felt that this was an appropriate way of articulating these concerns—especially on behalf of other students—was acutely embarrassing. Sometimes people confuse “discussion” with “sermon”, “lecture”, or “verbal assault,” but it’s easy to engage in reasonable dialogue, and doing so fosters constructive, rewarding, authoritative debate. Just be respectful of and open to new ideas; provide proof and justification; and concede to evidence that disproves your point. Your argument is never so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it. By the same token, it is important to recognise the limitations of your opinion. Above all, you need to come to terms with the fact that all your opinions, without exception, are framed by your own experience and understanding of the world. Being a student of Victoria University, you are likely to be a white, middle-class New Zealander, aged between 17 and 25—and by that definition, you cannot be a leading authority on China’s economy or Michele Bachmann or the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not even if you hold a full online subscription to The New Yorker. It is of course vital to pay attention to international affairs, but fronting like an expert on issues that neither you nor I, by virtue of our position within the world, could ever hope to fully comprehend is misleading and presumptuous. This is why we need to initiate a return to reason. Rationality does not preclude creativity or innovation: in fact, it reinforces their foundations. As one creative type, filmmaker Lars von Trier, noted—”if one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart”, and I am deeply concerned about the world falling apart. It is so, so important that we articulate ourselves clearly and intelligently and reasonably; otherwise, we just look like dicks. And if I’m going to look like a dick, it won’t be because I’ve made a blanket or overwrought statement that highlights the flaws in my logic. It will be because I’ve set my hair on fire.

First, a caveat: I don’t claim to be a decent human being. I am a Media Studies major. I text in all caps. Just last week, in fact, I set my hair on fire.

But even in the face of these grave character flaws, I strive to be rational, a trait that is not prized enough by modern society. Fuck being earnest—earnestness is just, as P. J. O’Rourke so rightly said, stupidity sent to college. The importance of being reasonable, however, is paramount: if we can’t reach conclusions from deliberate consideration, if we can’t connect our beliefs to our reasons for belief, and our actions with our reasons for action, we are chickens without heads.

Too often, issues that are shaded grey are discussed in black and white terms. The argument over Voluntary Student Membership is a key example: to articulate it as a binary of compulsory or voluntary undermines the influences on and implications of the debate. Even worse than such total statements is hand-wringing, hysterical rhetoric. The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations were quite rightly mocked for their “desperate” press release that declared that “members of the public and tertiary institutions around the country” would “tonight be appalled” that the “extreme… Bill” had not been reconsidered. I understand the intended effect of emotive language, but this verges on being insulting.

The same issue arose at the tumultuous ‘We Are The University’ protest on Kelburn campus a fortnight ago. Call me heartless, but changes to the International Relations programme does not constitute “the death of tertiary education”, and saying so undermines your point, alienates potential supporters, and makes it easier for your detractors to ignore, dismiss or rebut you. Moreover, the letter addressed to Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh was, quite frankly, cringeworthy—petulant, sarcastic, and reeking of entitlement. I don’t dispute that the lack of consultation with students on changes to the University is disturbing, but snarky repetitions of “Pat” do not convey this, and that the protest’s organisers felt that this was an appropriate way of articulating these concerns—especially on behalf of other students—was acutely embarrassing.

Sometimes people confuse “discussion” with “sermon”, “lecture”, or “verbal assault,” but it’s easy to engage in reasonable dialogue, and doing so fosters constructive, rewarding, authoritative debate. Just be respectful of and open to new ideas; provide proof and justification; and concede to evidence that disproves your point. Your argument is never so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it.

By the same token, it is important to recognise the limitations of your opinion. Above all, you need to come to terms with the fact that all your opinions, without exception, are framed by your own experience and understanding of the world. Being a student of Victoria University, you are likely to be a white, middle-class New Zealander, aged between 17 and 25—and by that definition, you cannot be a leading authority on China’s economy or Michele Bachmann or the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not even if you hold a full online subscription to The New Yorker. It is of course vital to pay attention to international affairs, but fronting like an expert on issues that neither you nor I, by virtue of our position within the world, could ever hope to fully comprehend is misleading and presumptuous.

This is why we need to initiate a return to reason. Rationality does not preclude creativity or innovation: in fact, it reinforces their foundations. As one creative type, filmmaker Lars von Trier, noted—”if one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart”, and I am deeply concerned about the world falling apart. It is so, so important that we articulate ourselves clearly and intelligently and reasonably; otherwise, we just look like dicks. And if I’m going to look like a dick, it won’t be because I’ve made a blanket or overwrought statement that highlights the flaws in my logic. It will be because I’ve set my hair on fire.

Told from the perspective of a woman struggling to move on from her teenage son’s horrific crime, the release of the film adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s award-winning novel We Need To Talk About Kevin has reignited debate over an age-old question: nature versus nurture. Can Eva Katchadourian—successful entrepreneur, reluctant mother, who tried to warm to her first-born but couldn’t help hissing at him through gritted teeth that “Mummy was happy before little Kevin came along”—be held to blame for his subsequent massacre of his schoolmates? Or was the callous, calculating Kevin, as Eva implies, born evil? “Whether Kevin was innately twisted or was mangled by his mother’s coldness is a question with which the novel struggles, but which it ultimately fails to answer,” wrote Shriver in The Guardian. “That verdict is the reader’s job.” But it is also the law’s job. We Need To Talk About Kevin asks whether parents can be held responsible for their children’s actions; it does not explore to  what extent their failure should be taken into account in the sentencing for their crimes. This question is a thorn in the side of the law, which cannot consider an offender’s being ‘born evil’, just as it cannot ignore mitigating factors that contributed to their offending. Cruel, cold and contemptuous, Shriver’s Kevin is a character constructed to epitomise evil. But use of the term in a legal context, being subject as it is to historical, cultural and religious pressures, is unhelpful. Professor Simon Baron- Cohen of Cambridge University has instead suggested that evil be interpreted as the “erosion of empathy”, which is “scientifically tractable”: “Psychopaths such as Kevin has zero degrees of affective empathy (they don’t care about someone else’s feelings) but have excellent cognitive empathy (… able to manipulate others through deception).” Therefore, Baron-Cohen concludes, it would be “uncaring” for civilised society to not “show compassion for the killer, because his actions are the result of his neurology”. Attributing offending to biological make-up is a controversial opinion that nonetheless has basis in scientific fact. The work of German-British psychologist Hans Eysenck is taken as evidence that most personality traits are caused by properties of the brain, while closer to home, a longitudinal study of 1,037 children born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973 revealed a protein that, when combined with maltreatment in childhood, is associated with convictions for violence in adulthood. Given these findings, Kevin’s behaviour could be explained by a genetic predisposition towards a lack of empathy, control or moral sense, which seems to largely absolve Eva of responsibility for her son’s crimes. Such an argument does little to diminish the cries of parental failure from the public and media. “Modern-day mothers get stuck with virtually blanket responsibility for how their kids turn out,” wrote Shriver, an advocate of ‘childless by choice’, in The Guardian. “How we came to conceive of children as passive objects upon which adults act is beyond me.” In researching Kevin, Shriver came across studies and editorials that placed the blame for school shootings squarely on the parents, several of whom had been sued for negligence by the families of murdered children. “My own reading failed to substantiate that most shooters suffered in any exceptional sense… Nevertheless, countless sociologists have strained to explain the phenomenon in a way that turns the culprits into victims.” “I’m willing to grant a gradated diminishment of responsibility in relation to an offender’s youth,” Shriver conceded in an online Q&A session with Good Morning America. “But don’t tell me that a 15-year-old who shoots his teacher hasn’t a clue he’s doing something wrong.” Although there is no explicit reference made to parental failure, abuse or neglect under New Zealand sentencing legislation, the age of the offender is taken into account, as is “any other… mitigating factor” that the court sees fit. “Some of the issues that might reduce the sentence are not really mitigating of culpability, but are really about the personal circumstances of the offender, justifying a more lenient sentence,” says Dr Yvette Tinsley of Victoria’s Faculty of Law. “One of the factors that courts have taken into account is sexual or physical abuse suffered by the offender where there is evidence that the abuse contributed to the offending—though this may not have a big effect on the eventual sentence.” In the sentencing of 16-year-old Raurangi Marino for the rape of a five-year-old girl—a crime that captured the collective outrage of New Zealand’s people and media—Judge Phillip Cooper took into account Marino’s dysfunctional family background, which involved drugs, alcohol, gang connections, and physical and sexual abuse. Marino’s youth, upbringing, remorse and early guilty plea reduced a starting point of 18 years imprisonment by four-and-a-half years; as his three sentences for rape, grievous bodily harm and burglary can be served concurrently, he will likely be eligible for parole after serving a third of his ten-year sentence. (Marino himself has said that he does not intend to apply for parole until he has served five years.) Sensible Sentencing Trust director Garth McVicar sees this as putting Marino’s rights ahead of those of his victim. He, like Shriver, believes that offenders’ troubled youth should not be used to explain their wrongdoing. “We don’t believe we can make excuses,” he says, noting that Marino’s consumption of alcohol and marijuana in the hours prior to the rape was frequently referred to in media reports of the case. “Once you move down that line of thought, where do you stop? We’re not supportive of someone’s upbringing [being considered a mitigating factor in sentencing] because, basically, we’d be creating a rod for our own backs.” That said, McVicar believes parents need to be held accountable for their children’s crimes, noting that “in some European countries, parents are sitting in the cells with their children”. He argues that introducing similar measures in New Zealand could “spark a debate that this country needs to have.” “Ultimately, as the child walks that fine line from being a child to being an adult, parents need to be responsible up to that point.” Though minors, under New Zealand law, are not considered blameless for their crimes, the parents of underage criminals are rightly or wrongly held up to scrutiny by society and the media. Marino’s mother Lavinia Wall has told journalists that she failed “a good boy, a little naughty”: “I didn’t safeguard my children, and I didn’t apply myself to looking after them”. But other comments she made in the same interview—“They call me a bad mother and [say] I have brought up horrible children”—suggest she felt forced to respond to immense public pressure to take responsibility for her son’s crime. The law’s complicated and contentious interpretation of nature versus nurture warrants further clarification. If we are are to believe that ‘monsters’ such as Kevin are a product of their upbringing, tackling child poverty (where substance, physical, sexual and emotionally abuse is statistically more likely) should be of utmost priority for the Government. But accounting for scientific findings that an inclination towards crime is a matter of genetics suggests that changes need to be made to New Zealand’s criminal justice system. The ongoing results of Growing Up In New Zealand, a new longitudinal study of almost 7,000 babies born in the upper North Island between February 2009 and June 2010, are expected to be relevant to this end. In the meantime, Shriver raises a pertinent point—that biology and upbringing combine to create that most unpredictable of motivations, human nature: “Parents are people too, and their emotions are sometimes going to depart from script. Moreover, children are people too, which means that to give them at least partial responsibility for how they turn out, and for whether they murder their classmates, is to take them seriously as fully human.”

Told from the perspective of a woman struggling to move on from her teenage son’s horrific crime, the release of the film adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s award-winning novel We Need To Talk About Kevin has reignited debate over an age-old question: nature versus nurture. Can Eva Katchadourian—successful entrepreneur, reluctant mother, who tried to warm to her first-born but couldn’t help hissing at him through gritted teeth that “Mummy was happy before little Kevin came along”—be held to blame for his subsequent massacre of his schoolmates? Or was the callous, calculating Kevin, as Eva implies, born evil?

“Whether Kevin was innately twisted or was mangled by his mother’s coldness is a question with which the novel struggles, but which it ultimately fails to answer,” wrote Shriver in The Guardian. “That verdict is the reader’s job.”

But it is also the law’s job. We Need To Talk About Kevin asks whether parents can be held responsible for their children’s actions; it does not explore to  what extent their failure should be taken into account in the sentencing for their crimes. This question is a thorn in the side of the law, which cannot consider an offender’s being ‘born evil’, just as it cannot ignore mitigating factors that contributed to their offending.

Cruel, cold and contemptuous, Shriver’s Kevin is a character constructed to epitomise evil. But use of the term in a legal context, being subject as it is to historical, cultural and religious pressures, is unhelpful. Professor Simon Baron- Cohen of Cambridge University has instead suggested that evil be interpreted as the “erosion of empathy”, which is “scientifically tractable”: “Psychopaths such as Kevin has zero degrees of affective empathy (they don’t care about someone else’s feelings) but have excellent cognitive empathy (… able to manipulate others through deception).” Therefore, Baron-Cohen concludes, it would be “uncaring” for civilised society to not “show compassion for the killer, because his actions are the result of his neurology”.

Attributing offending to biological make-up is a controversial opinion that nonetheless has basis in scientific fact. The work of German-British psychologist Hans Eysenck is taken as evidence that most personality traits are caused by properties of the brain, while closer to home, a longitudinal study of 1,037 children born in Dunedin in 1972 and 1973 revealed a protein that, when combined with maltreatment in childhood, is associated with convictions for violence in adulthood. Given these findings, Kevin’s behaviour could be explained by a genetic predisposition towards a lack of empathy, control or moral sense, which seems to largely absolve Eva of responsibility for her son’s crimes.

Such an argument does little to diminish the cries of parental failure from the public and media. “Modern-day mothers get stuck with virtually blanket responsibility for how their kids turn out,” wrote Shriver, an advocate of ‘childless by choice’, in The Guardian. “How we came to conceive of children as passive objects upon which adults act is beyond me.”

In researching Kevin, Shriver came across studies and editorials that placed the blame for school shootings squarely on the parents, several of whom had been sued for negligence by the families of murdered children. “My own reading failed to substantiate that most shooters suffered in any exceptional sense… Nevertheless, countless sociologists have strained to explain the phenomenon in a way that turns the culprits into victims.”

“I’m willing to grant a gradated diminishment of responsibility in relation to an offender’s youth,” Shriver conceded in an online Q&A session with Good Morning America. “But don’t tell me that a 15-year-old who shoots his teacher hasn’t a clue he’s doing something wrong.”

Although there is no explicit reference made to parental failure, abuse or neglect under New Zealand sentencing legislation, the age of the offender is taken into account, as is “any other… mitigating factor” that the court sees fit. “Some of the issues that might reduce the sentence are not really mitigating of culpability, but are really about the personal circumstances of the offender, justifying a more lenient sentence,” says Dr Yvette Tinsley of Victoria’s Faculty of Law. “One of the factors that courts have taken into account is sexual or physical abuse suffered by the offender where there is evidence that the abuse contributed to the offending—though this may not have a big effect on the eventual sentence.”

In the sentencing of 16-year-old Raurangi Marino for the rape of a five-year-old girl—a crime that captured the collective outrage of New Zealand’s people and media—Judge Phillip Cooper took into account Marino’s dysfunctional family background, which involved drugs, alcohol, gang connections, and physical and sexual abuse. Marino’s youth, upbringing, remorse and early guilty plea reduced a starting point of 18 years imprisonment by four-and-a-half years; as his three sentences for rape, grievous bodily harm and burglary can be served concurrently, he will likely be eligible for parole after serving a third of his ten-year sentence. (Marino himself has said that he does not intend to apply for parole until he has served five years.)

Sensible Sentencing Trust director Garth McVicar sees this as putting Marino’s rights ahead of those of his victim. He, like Shriver, believes that offenders’ troubled youth should not be used to explain their wrongdoing. “We don’t believe we can make excuses,” he says, noting that Marino’s consumption of alcohol and marijuana in the hours prior to the rape was frequently referred to in media reports of the case. “Once you move down that line of thought, where do you stop? We’re not supportive of someone’s upbringing [being considered a mitigating factor in sentencing] because, basically, we’d be creating a rod for our own backs.”

That said, McVicar believes parents need to be held accountable for their children’s crimes, noting that “in some European countries, parents are sitting in the cells with their children”. He argues that introducing similar measures in New Zealand could “spark a debate that this country needs to have.” “Ultimately, as the child walks that fine line from being a child to being an adult, parents need to be responsible up to that point.”

Though minors, under New Zealand law, are not considered blameless for their crimes, the parents of underage criminals are rightly or wrongly held up to scrutiny by society and the media. Marino’s mother Lavinia Wall has told journalists that she failed “a good boy, a little naughty”: “I didn’t safeguard my children, and I didn’t apply myself to looking after them”. But other comments she made in the same interview—“They call me a bad mother and [say] I have brought up horrible children”—suggest she felt forced to respond to immense public pressure to take responsibility for her son’s crime.

The law’s complicated and contentious interpretation of nature versus nurture warrants further clarification. If we are are to believe that ‘monsters’ such as Kevin are a product of their upbringing, tackling child poverty (where substance, physical, sexual and emotionally abuse is statistically more likely) should be of utmost priority for the Government. But accounting for scientific findings that an inclination towards crime is a matter of genetics suggests that changes need to be made to New Zealand’s criminal justice system.

The ongoing results of Growing Up In New Zealand, a new longitudinal study of almost 7,000 babies born in the upper North Island between February 2009 and June 2010, are expected to be relevant to this end. In the meantime, Shriver raises a pertinent point—that biology and upbringing combine to create that most unpredictable of motivations, human nature: “Parents are people too, and their emotions are sometimes going to depart from script. Moreover, children are people too, which means that to give them at least partial responsibility for how they turn out, and for whether they murder their classmates, is to take them seriously as fully human.”

“What qualifies me to be an expert on women’s reproductive health?” asks a sombre, besuited Leland Palmer in a parody posted on FunnyOrDie.com. “I’m a 59-year-old man.” The video is a nod to the fact that access to hormonal birth control—a debate that raged in the United States over half a century ago—has always been as much about politics as it has about health. It’s no less contentious an issue in 2012: election year. In February, the Republican Party attempted to overturn President Obama’s new law, introduced as part of healthcare reforms, that requires most employers or insurers to cover the cost of contraceptives. Republicans argued that this requirement violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by forcing employers to pay for employees’ contraception, even if their faith forbade its use. A narrow majority of Senate Democrats voted against the amendment, arguing that hormonal birth control is prescribed to women for health- related purposes unrelated to preventing pregnancy. Of greater concern was that the “Blunt amendment”, named for Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, would place control of women’s reproductive health decisions in the hands of their employers. But, as the FunnyOrDie.com parody wryly references, so far in the debate, such decisions have been weighed in on by everyone but women themselves. Commenting on the debate in the same month, Foster Friess—the single largest donor to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s political action committee—said, without a trace of self- awareness or humour, that “in [his] day”, “gals” held aspirin between their knees in lieu of contraception, “and it wasn’t that costly”. Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh later referred to Freiss’s comment when he called law student Sandra Fluke, who was denied the right to speak on an all- male panel on the religious implications of the issue, a “slut” and a “prostitute” on air. However, the Republican Party’s bid to encumber women’s access to birth control has gone beyond straightforward name- calling. A couple of weeks ago, former presidential candidate Rick Perry supported the passing of a law in Texas that barred Planned Parenthood from receiving funding under the state’s healthcare programme. This prompted a slew of posts on his official Facebook page (that were promptly removed) along the lines of: “Hey, Rick, when I menstruate there is sometimes coagulated purple gel in my Mooncup. I’m not 100% sure what it is, so I figured I’d ask an expert on women’s health.” It’s easy to see the source of inspiration for the FunnyOrDie.com video. What the controversy over contraceptives in the United States has highlighted is the inequality and intrinsic difference that exists between what can be crudely generalised as ‘male’ and ‘female’ dialogues within the debate. As male Republican politicians campaign for legislation that will impact on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of women’s decision-making in regards to their reproductive health, women alone know how it feels like to take charge of their own fertility—and the risks of not doing so. As Kyle Munkittrick put it in a guest blog for Discover magazine (http:// is.gd/tR2Qtc), “women are constantly bombarded with reminders that they can make babies [and]… that it can happen accidentally. Consider this: no matter what the situation, men are only required to think about safe sex right before or as it’s happening, but never in the interim… a woman is constantly being asked if she’s pregnant, might be pregnant, or is planning on getting pregnant. She… is probably on or considering some form of birth control based on the possibility that she might have sex in the future. “…The enormous problem here is that while girls are forced to contemplate STDs and pregnancy early, boys are largely unconcerned until they have sex for the first time. In many cases, it will be the girl who asks about a condom or says “I’m on the pill, it’s OK” or something else responsible.” As a 21-year-old, sexually active (though, in the interests of full disclosure, ‘active’ implies a frequency that I cannot live up to), I can attest to Munkittrick’s argument. I have been expected, just as a matter of course, to have the matter of my fertility under control by taking a hormonal contraceptive every day—most of which pass by without any opportunity for me to risk pregnancy (unless the urban legends about public toilets are true). This requires a certain level of effort on my part: making and attending the appointment at Student Health, picking up the prescription, and taking it as directed. The implicit statement seems to be that—as much as any woman can count on her sexual partner to support her in the case of an accidental pregnancy—women’s fertility is a women’s issue, even though it takes an egg and a sperm to make a fetus. As Munkittrick points out, despite the debate over it in the political sphere, contraception is a single-sex issue, and this has created a basic inequality in men and women’s attitudes towards sexual health and responsibility. At the moment, the current choices for men looking to take control of their fertility are condoms— already irreplaceable for protection from diseases such as herpes and chlamydia— and vasectomies. (Resulting in about 30 pregnancies per 100 women per year, withdrawal is not a legitimate option. Come on.) The latter is too drastic a step for the majority of men below the age of 40, while condoms have a high rate of failure compared to hormonal contraception. Conversely, there are 11 female-only contraceptive methods, many of which are readily available at Student Health and Family Planning. The development of a non-barrier birth control for men, typified by the image of a ‘male pill’, would go some way towards addressing this imbalance. “A male pill would dramatically alter some consciousnesses. Both sexes would be having discussions about preventing pregnancy as well as preventing diseases in sex-ed,” argued Munkittrick. “The burden of responsibility would be equalised early on.” The benefits of male birth control are obvious, but developing and marketing a new contraceptive is difficult. “It’s just around the corner” has become something of a catchphrase in regards to the development of a temporary, reversible contraceptive for men. The key stumbling block seems to be the rate of gamete production in the male reproductive system. Women release one egg a month, and so hormonal contraceptives need only interrupt that single event in order to be effective. Some reports suggest that men produced as many as 1,000 sperm every second, and stemming that flow poses more of a problem. More of a problem, yes, but not an insurmountable one. Options include hormonal pills and injections inspired by marijuana’s link to impotence, and a similar, but more easily reversible procedure to a vasectomy known as ‘Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance’. Most encouragingly, researchers at the University of North Carolina recently concluded (with the help of an $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that dosing the testes with ultrasound is a “promising candidate” in providing men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception. However, further study as to whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses of ultrasound is necessary before the treatment can be considered a marketable reality. “The last thing we want is a lingering damage to sperm,” commented Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, to BBC News. One 20-year-old male I spoke to—who was otherwise enthusiastic about the idea—expressed concern at the potential of “lingering damage”, admitting that he would take steps to preserve his sperm before trialling any male-only contraceptive. Though the development of and widespread access to a male-only contraceptive seems like it would liberate, it would likely only be of benefit to people in long-term, committed relationships, as it would not replace the protection against sexually-transmitted diseases provided by a condom. Moreover, some women are understandably reluctant to trust their sexual partner with matters of fertility that are of such great consequence to them themselves; though no studies have been carried out on the matter, anecdotal evidence points to some reluctance amongst women to have men take care of contraception. Somewhat ironically, this argument perpetuates the inequality and mistrust that made birth control one of the defining social issues of this primary in the first place. It implies that, though men have the authority to delegate responsibility for preventing against pregnancy and disease to women, they cannot be trusted with the task themselves. Of course, women have much more at stake. “I, for one, would love to let my body take a break after eight years of hormonal birth control and let my partner take a turn,” wrote one female commentator on Munkittrick’s article. “[But] would I really be willing to trust that the other person is being responsible and taking the pill every day?… At the end of the day, it’s my body that’s going to have a baby growing inside it, and all that entails… It’s going to take an enormous cultural shift before getting pregnant after a one-night stand affects both partners equally.” Reluctance to adopt male-only birth control will likely discourage pharmaceutical companies from funding its development, which is a shame. The debate isn’t just about safe sex and contraception; it’s also about attitudes to safe sex and contraception. Though the “enormous cultural shift” necessary to make male contraception an accepted alternative is often spoken of as being a disincentive to progress, its ultimate upshot would be improved responsibility, awareness, and understanding of birth control across the board. To put it bluntly, more equality in matters of fertility would change society’s understanding of sex, reproduction and relationships for the better—as much as it might be a bitter pill to swallow for the Republican Party.

“What qualifies me to be an expert on women’s reproductive health?” asks a sombre, besuited Leland Palmer in a parody posted on FunnyOrDie.com. “I’m a 59-year-old man.”

The video is a nod to the fact that access to hormonal birth control—a debate that raged in the United States over half a century ago—has always been as much about politics as it has about health. It’s no less contentious an issue in 2012: election year.

In February, the Republican Party attempted to overturn President Obama’s new law, introduced as part of healthcare reforms, that requires most employers or insurers to cover the cost of contraceptives. Republicans argued that this requirement violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by forcing employers to pay for employees’ contraception, even if their faith forbade its use. A narrow majority of Senate Democrats voted against the amendment, arguing that hormonal birth control is prescribed to women for health- related purposes unrelated to preventing pregnancy.

Of greater concern was that the “Blunt amendment”, named for Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, would place control of women’s reproductive health decisions in the hands of their employers. But, as the FunnyOrDie.com parody wryly references, so far in the debate, such decisions have been weighed in on by everyone but women themselves.

Commenting on the debate in the same month, Foster Friess—the single largest donor to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s political action committee—said, without a trace of self- awareness or humour, that “in [his] day”, “gals” held aspirin between their knees in lieu of contraception, “and it wasn’t that costly”. Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh later referred to Freiss’s comment when he called law student Sandra Fluke, who was denied the right to speak on an all- male panel on the religious implications of the issue, a “slut” and a “prostitute” on air.

However, the Republican Party’s bid to encumber women’s access to birth control has gone beyond straightforward name- calling. A couple of weeks ago, former presidential candidate Rick Perry supported the passing of a law in Texas that barred Planned Parenthood from receiving funding under the state’s healthcare programme. This prompted a slew of posts on his official Facebook page (that were promptly removed) along the lines of: “Hey, Rick, when I menstruate there is sometimes coagulated purple gel in my Mooncup. I’m not 100% sure what it is, so I figured I’d ask an expert on women’s health.”

It’s easy to see the source of inspiration for the FunnyOrDie.com video. What the controversy over contraceptives in the United States has highlighted is the inequality and intrinsic difference that exists between what can be crudely generalised as ‘male’ and ‘female’ dialogues within the debate. As male Republican politicians campaign for legislation that will impact on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of women’s decision-making in regards to their reproductive health, women alone know how it feels like to take charge of their own fertility—and the risks of not doing so.

As Kyle Munkittrick put it in a guest blog for Discover magazine (http:// is.gd/tR2Qtc), “women are constantly bombarded with reminders that they can make babies [and]… that it can happen accidentally. Consider this: no matter what the situation, men are only required to think about safe sex right before or as it’s happening, but never in the interim… a woman is constantly being asked if she’s pregnant, might be pregnant, or is planning on getting pregnant. She… is probably on or considering some form of birth control based on the possibility that she might have sex in the future.

“…The enormous problem here is that while girls are forced to contemplate STDs and pregnancy early, boys are largely unconcerned until they have sex for the first time. In many cases, it will be the girl who asks about a condom or says “I’m on the pill, it’s OK” or something else responsible.”

As a 21-year-old, sexually active (though, in the interests of full disclosure, ‘active’ implies a frequency that I cannot live up to), I can attest to Munkittrick’s argument. I have been expected, just as a matter of course, to have the matter of my fertility under control by taking a hormonal contraceptive every day—most of which pass by without any opportunity for me to risk pregnancy (unless the urban legends about public toilets are true). This requires a certain level of effort on my part: making and attending the appointment at Student Health, picking up the prescription, and taking it as directed. The implicit statement seems to be that—as much as any woman can count on her sexual partner to support her in the case of an accidental pregnancy—women’s fertility is a women’s issue, even though it takes an egg and a sperm to make a fetus.

As Munkittrick points out, despite the debate over it in the political sphere, contraception is a single-sex issue, and this has created a basic inequality in men and women’s attitudes towards sexual health and responsibility. At the moment, the current choices for men looking to take control of their fertility are condoms— already irreplaceable for protection from diseases such as herpes and chlamydia— and vasectomies. (Resulting in about 30 pregnancies per 100 women per year, withdrawal is not a legitimate option. Come on.) The latter is too drastic a step for the majority of men below the age of 40, while condoms have a high rate of failure compared to hormonal contraception.

Conversely, there are 11 female-only contraceptive methods, many of which are readily available at Student Health and Family Planning. The development of a non-barrier birth control for men, typified by the image of a ‘male pill’, would go some way towards addressing this imbalance. “A male pill would dramatically alter some consciousnesses. Both sexes would be having discussions about preventing pregnancy as well as preventing diseases in sex-ed,” argued Munkittrick. “The burden of responsibility would be equalised early on.”

The benefits of male birth control are obvious, but developing and marketing a new contraceptive is difficult. “It’s just around the corner” has become something of a catchphrase in regards to the development of a temporary, reversible contraceptive for men. The key stumbling block seems to be the rate of gamete production in the male reproductive system. Women release one egg a month, and so hormonal contraceptives need only interrupt that single event in order to be effective. Some reports suggest that men produced as many as 1,000 sperm every second, and stemming that flow poses more of a problem.

More of a problem, yes, but not an insurmountable one. Options include hormonal pills and injections inspired by marijuana’s link to impotence, and a similar, but more easily reversible procedure to a vasectomy known as ‘Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance’. Most encouragingly, researchers at the University of North Carolina recently concluded (with the help of an $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) that dosing the testes with ultrasound is a “promising candidate” in providing men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception.

However, further study as to whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses of ultrasound is necessary before the treatment can be considered a marketable reality. “The last thing we want is a lingering damage to sperm,” commented Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, to BBC News. One 20-year-old male I spoke to—who was otherwise enthusiastic about the idea—expressed concern at the potential of “lingering damage”, admitting that he would take steps to preserve his sperm before trialling any male-only contraceptive.

Though the development of and widespread access to a male-only contraceptive seems like it would liberate, it would likely only be of benefit to people in long-term, committed relationships, as it would not replace the protection against sexually-transmitted diseases provided by a condom. Moreover, some women are understandably reluctant to trust their sexual partner with matters of fertility that are of such great consequence to them themselves; though no studies have been carried out on the matter, anecdotal evidence points to some reluctance amongst women to have men take care of contraception.

Somewhat ironically, this argument perpetuates the inequality and mistrust that made birth control one of the defining social issues of this primary in the first place. It implies that, though men have the authority to delegate responsibility for preventing against pregnancy and disease to women, they cannot be trusted with the task themselves. Of course, women have much more at stake. “I, for one, would love to let my body take a break after eight years of hormonal birth control and let my partner take a turn,” wrote one female commentator on Munkittrick’s article.

“[But] would I really be willing to trust that the other person is being responsible and taking the pill every day?… At the end of the day, it’s my body that’s going to have a baby growing inside it, and all that entails… It’s going to take an enormous cultural shift before getting pregnant after a one-night stand affects both partners equally.”

Reluctance to adopt male-only birth control will likely discourage pharmaceutical companies from funding its development, which is a shame. The debate isn’t just about safe sex and contraception; it’s also about attitudes to safe sex and contraception. Though the “enormous cultural shift” necessary to make male contraception an accepted alternative is often spoken of as being a disincentive to progress, its ultimate upshot would be improved responsibility, awareness, and understanding of birth control across the board. To put it bluntly, more equality in matters of fertility would change society’s understanding of sex, reproduction and relationships for the better—as much as it might be a bitter pill to swallow for the Republican Party.

Haimona: We’ve had film shoots here, theatre practices, craft beer tastings… We’ve used this space to do some recordings. One former flatmate used this whole lounge to do makeup for Miss Saigon. A Russian model told us that ghosts live here, and that they judge us if their flat is too messy. Ollie: We made a huge fort out of bed sheets. Some pretty unspeakable things happened in that fort. Haimona: Do we really want to promote that? Ollie: For guys that live and work together, we’ve actually hung out a decent amount of time—even though Simon comes in late from rehearsals, and [flatmate Michael] Potton’s away a lot. When we are together, we watch a shitload of movies. Haimona: In this period between university and going off into the working world, it’s kind of a relief to have our friends around us. It feels like a less jarring change. We’ve matured, but we’re still connected to the friends and lives we had before graduating—so we’ve become older and wiser, but not by much. Hence the fort.

Haimona: We’ve had film shoots here, theatre practices, craft beer tastings… We’ve used this space to do some recordings. One former flatmate used this whole lounge to do makeup for Miss Saigon. A Russian model told us that ghosts live here, and that they judge us if their flat is too messy.

Ollie: We made a huge fort out of bed sheets. Some pretty unspeakable things happened in that fort.

Haimona: Do we really want to promote that?

Ollie: For guys that live and work together, we’ve actually hung out a decent amount of time—even though Simon comes in late from rehearsals, and [flatmate Michael] Potton’s away a lot. When we are together, we watch a shitload of movies.

Haimona: In this period between university and going off into the working world, it’s kind of a relief to have our friends around us. It feels like a less jarring change. We’ve matured, but we’re still connected to the friends and lives we had before graduating—so we’ve become older and wiser, but not by much. Hence the fort.

Catherine: Before we moved in together, people warned us never to live with your best friend, but I think it’s quite a good thing to do once in your lifetime. We felt like this was going to be our bachelorette pad, and the house still has that feel to it; even though Gemma’s since got a boyfriend, he’s just one of the girls. It’s a little bit like a clubhouse—we drink a lot of beer, and we look at the sea and watch the boats go past. Breaker Bay is about 15 minutes’ drive from town, but you really do feel like you’re out in the countryside; we don’t even get cellphone reception. Gemma and I both work with a lot of people, so it’s really nice to go home to our isolated little beach house at the end of the day. We’re able to charge our batteries that way. Because it’s a bit of a mission to get here, we only get visitors who really count—we’re a destination. We wouldn’t mind some more visitors, actually, but we’ve got some very nice neighbours. There’s a really strong sense of community out here. We didn’t take part in the mid-winter swim, though. That was a little bit too intense, even for us.

Catherine: Before we moved in together, people warned us never to live with your best friend, but I think it’s quite a good thing to do once in your lifetime. We felt like this was going to be our bachelorette pad, and the house still has that feel to it; even though Gemma’s since got a boyfriend, he’s just one of the girls. It’s a little bit like a clubhouse—we drink a lot of beer, and we look at the sea and watch the boats go past.

Breaker Bay is about 15 minutes’ drive from town, but you really do feel like you’re out in the countryside; we don’t even get cellphone reception. Gemma and I both work with a lot of people, so it’s really nice to go home to our isolated little beach house at the end of the day. We’re able to charge our batteries that way.

Because it’s a bit of a mission to get here, we only get visitors who really count—we’re a destination. We wouldn’t mind some more visitors, actually, but we’ve got some very nice neighbours. There’s a really strong sense of community out here. We didn’t take part in the mid-winter swim, though. That was a little bit too intense, even for us.

It’s not often that an ad at a bus shelter leads me to second-guess my career choices, but this one did. It read “My student loan says I’m a smart person. My credit card disagrees.”
 I wondered. Does my debt to the Government, incurred for a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and English Literature, really indicate that I’m a “smart person”? Or does it just go to show that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on a piece of paper? 

Today more than ever before, the career trajectory of the middle-class New Zealander includes a stint at university. 82% of school leavers who gain NCEA Level 3 and meet university entrance requirements go on to bachelors-level study. Many will enroll for a Bachelor of Arts degree.

 Of all the undergraduate degrees, the BA is one of the cheapest, shortest and least strenuous to complete. It is not at all competitive. It is very flexible. There are few external factors encouraging students to strive for excellence―or even anything above a pass. For these reasons, enrolling in a BA is often the knee-jerk reaction of high school students who feel obliged to go to university―either to keep up with their friends, or to resist reality in an ivory tower for a further three years. And who can blame them? In this economic climate, it’s easier than trying to get a job. 

Of course, there are those whose true calling is art history, theatre or classics―but in my experience, for every one of those passionate, driven individuals, there are more who have merely enrolled in the subjects that were their strongest at high school and hoped for the best.

 As PayPal co-founder, billionaire and scathing critic of college Peter Thiel told New York magazine, a tertiary education is being treated as insurance against the recession and the uncertain job market―even though a degree has become so par for the course that it no longer sets job applicants apart. For this reason, universities are able to increase their fees to record levels: in the United States, the total cost of higher education has inflated by 440% in just 25 years. 

The cost of study in New Zealand is also on the rise. The average student loan balance was over $16,000 in 2009―almost three times the average in 1993. ‘Just a BA’ costs around $13,000.

 But even treating a tertiary education as an advantage in the job market, a BA to one’s name provides little peace of mind. Unlike a Bachelor of Laws, Design or Commerce, it is not a vocational qualification. In many cases, it is not even a practical qualification.

 A BA is a three-year exploration of the human experience with little to no application. In an ideal world, it should embody the value and ideals of higher education, but few of us have the luxury of being able to pursue a BA free from the pressure to one day make a living from it. The cost of university is such that most students are neither willing nor able to learn for the sake of learning.

 If enrolling for a BA has become the rote reaction of the school leaver afraid that not holding a degree will disadvantage them in the job market, is this a worthwhile use of time and money? 

Perhaps, if it leads to post-graduate study, or is part of a double or conjoint degree. If not, there are other ways of spending $13,000 that might also impress potential employers―like travel, starting a business, volunteer work or learning a skill. 

A BA aims to teach one communication, research and interpersonal skills. It shows students how to become versatile, independent and critical thinkers―but there is no pressure for them to do so. Those who make the most out of their BA have identified their major as their passion. The fact that it rewards learning for the love of it means it shouldn’t be seen as the go-to degree―not if the ultimate goal is to land a job. In fact, a BA doesn’t single you out—it makes you fit in: it’s the attitude you have and the skills it develops, that set apart the “smart” people.

It’s not often that an ad at a bus shelter leads me to second-guess my career choices, but this one did. It read “My student loan says I’m a smart person. My credit card disagrees.”


I wondered. Does my debt to the Government, incurred for a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and English Literature, really indicate that I’m a “smart person”? Or does it just go to show that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on a piece of paper?



Today more than ever before, the career trajectory of the middle-class New Zealander includes a stint at university. 82% of school leavers who gain NCEA Level 3 and meet university entrance requirements go on to bachelors-level study. Many will enroll for a Bachelor of Arts degree.



Of all the undergraduate degrees, the BA is one of the cheapest, shortest and least strenuous to complete. It is not at all competitive. It is very flexible. There are few external factors encouraging students to strive for excellence―or even anything above a pass.

For these reasons, enrolling in a BA is often the knee-jerk reaction of high school students who feel obliged to go to university―either to keep up with their friends, or to resist reality in an ivory tower for a further three years. And who can blame them? In this economic climate, it’s easier than trying to get a job.



Of course, there are those whose true calling is art history, theatre or classics―but in my experience, for every one of those passionate, driven individuals, there are more who have merely enrolled in the subjects that were their strongest at high school and hoped for the best.



As PayPal co-founder, billionaire and scathing critic of college Peter Thiel told New York magazine, a tertiary education is being treated as insurance against the recession and the uncertain job market―even though a degree has become so par for the course that it no longer sets job applicants apart. For this reason, universities are able to increase their fees to record levels: in the United States, the total cost of higher education has inflated by 440% in just 25 years.



The cost of study in New Zealand is also on the rise. The average student loan balance was over $16,000 in 2009―almost three times the average in 1993. ‘Just a BA’ costs around $13,000.



But even treating a tertiary education as an advantage in the job market, a BA to one’s name provides little peace of mind. Unlike a Bachelor of Laws, Design or Commerce, it is not a vocational qualification. In many cases, it is not even a practical qualification.



A BA is a three-year exploration of the human experience with little to no application. In an ideal world, it should embody the value and ideals of higher education, but few of us have the luxury of being able to pursue a BA free from the pressure to one day make a living from it. The cost of university is such that most students are neither willing nor able to learn for the sake of learning.



If enrolling for a BA has become the rote reaction of the school leaver afraid that not holding a degree will disadvantage them in the job market, is this a worthwhile use of time and money?



Perhaps, if it leads to post-graduate study, or is part of a double or conjoint degree. If not, there are other ways of spending $13,000 that might also impress potential employers―like travel, starting a business, volunteer work or learning a skill.



A BA aims to teach one communication, research and interpersonal skills. It shows students how to become versatile, independent and critical thinkers―but there is no pressure for them to do so. Those who make the most out of their BA have identified their major as their passion. The fact that it rewards learning for the love of it means it shouldn’t be seen as the go-to degree―not if the ultimate goal is to land a job.

In fact, a BA doesn’t single you out—it makes you fit in: it’s the attitude you have and the skills it develops, that set apart the “smart” people.

“Where are you from?” That question never fails to trip me up, because the truth is—I’m not sure. I was born and raised in England to (very) English parents. I continue to speak with that accent, and I drink four or five cups of tea per day—but I haven’t been back there for almost a decade. Between the ages of nine and 13, I travelled with my family around Europe, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, spending a fortnight or so in each country we visited. In 2004, we found ourselves in New Zealand, where we’ve lived for the past six years. I’ve survived NCEA; made lasting friendships; toured the length of the country; and even been confirmed as a citizen—but I’m still not sure if I consider myself Kiwi. New Zealand is full of people like me: people who have no concrete sense of belonging to any one nation. Does this mean that there is no such thing as cultural identity? Or, alternatively, does it have such specific boundaries that it excludes more readily than it includes? Culture shock Fairooz Samy is in her second year of studying Political Science, International Relations and Media Studies. Her mother is Algerian; her father, half Turkish, half Egyptian. “I was born in Cairo; I speak Arabic, French and English; and I’m a citizen of Egypt, Algeria, New Zealand and Britain,” says Fairooz. “We immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, when I was 10, basically because my parents wanted somewhere nice for them to retire and me to grow up. “It was a little odd at first, coming from Cairo to settle in quiet suburbia, which just doesn’t exist anywhere in Egypt. Everyone was nice, down-to-earth, super casual. You don’t get that level of ‘laid back’ in other countries.” In Egypt, Fairooz had attended a British international school, “where there was this giant emphasis on the cultural differences between everyone. “In New Zealand, I was this little freak who couldn’t even say ‘yes’ the same way they did,” she remembers. “I was accepted as the token ethnic girl.” Fairooz recalls making a “conscious decision” to start speaking with a Kiwi accent when she was about 11. “Nowadays, sure, I totally identify as a New Zealander—even more so when I’m overseas, but that’s probably because there isn’t anyone there who can tell me that I’m not,” she says. “I’d be visiting family in Algeria and feel like a total tourist, starting every sentence with ‘Back home in New Zealand’, and feeling patriotic whenever we’d eat New Zealand lamb.” Despite being well established in her second home, Fairooz hesitates when I ask for her definition of a New Zealander. “I’m not sure if I’m the best person to answer that,” she confesses. “Is it all about backyard cricket, and school Kapa Haka? “Maybe it’s as simple as the TV One ads make it out to be. Maybe New Zealanders are just that: laid-back, hard-working, generous, no-nonsense people, with such a population that there’s a tangible sense of camaraderie and dependability. “Cheese on cheese, I know, but it’s giving me the warm fuzzies,” she says wryly. Needless to say, Fairooz knows the advantages of having a couple of identities to select from. “Whenever I get frustrated with some aspect of Kiwi life, I still roll my eyes and sort of thank god that I have a couple of other cultures to fall back on,” she remarks. However, this has its drawbacks. “It can get confusing, and I feel disloyal for taking such a pick-and-choose approach to who I consider myself to be,” admits Fairooz. “I can’t escape the fact that racially, I’ll always be Arabic… but ironically, I’ve never met an Arab who really thought of me as authentic—Arabic isn’t even my first language. “I’ve always felt a tad phoney.” From Fire and Ice, to the Long White Cloud Daan Kjartansson, a second-year student, was born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and an Icelandic father. He grew up in Iceland, but moved to Wellington to study at university. He is a citizen of both countries, and speaks Icelandic and English fluently. He says he had no problems adjusting to Kiwi life, and that “it just happened”, as people at his university hall were interested in finding out more about his culture. “The only problem is that I think in Icelandic, and always have to translate it into English, and I often forget the English words for something.” Although he admits that he’s “becoming more and more Kiwi every day”, Daan sees himself as an Icelander. “I still see Iceland as home, and all of my family still live there. “I’m very interested in Norse mythology, which has played a big role in Icelandic history,” he says. “And Icelanders are all about soccer, and I play a lot of soccer myself. “Icelandic music also influences me quite a lot, and I try to listen to some daily, so I don’t forget about Iceland.” Taste in music is one of the biggest differences Daan has noticed between his two cultures. Although he’s quick to point out that he can’t generalise New Zealanders, he’s noticed that most are interested in “rugby, drinking, and listening to reggae. “The music produced here is quite different—there’s a lot of reggae and dub, which is probably influenced by the sun.” Certainly, it’s hard to imagine The Black Seeds hailing from Iceland, where the climate is described as ‘sub-polar oceanic’. Best of both worlds Felix Hallwass, an Honours student, moved to New Zealand from Germany when he was six years old. He identifies strongly with both his birth country and his adopted one. “I see myself as a German Kiwi, as I know my morals and personality are a combination of what my German parents have taught me, as well as what I have experienced as part of growing up in New Zealand,” he says. Felix admits that while he considers home to be where his family live, “I’d always call Bremen my hometown, not Nelson. In sport, I’d always support Germany.” I ask Felix how his cultural identities affect him on a daily basis. “My parents, sister and I are German citizens, and speak mostly German at home, although it has slowly become an English-German hybrid. “Having two distinct cultures to identify with, I’ve been able to decide the aspects or attitudes of each culture that appeal to me, or I agree with,” he says. “The result of this is an interesting synthesis of ideas that influence how I interact with others, and this has given me a greater appreciation of diversity.” Open mind, common sense James Burtin, a second-year student of Psychology and Criminology, found himself in New Zealand in 2005. He was born in Grasse, France, to an English mother and a French father, and considers himself “a big mixture of hopefully all the good aspects of each culture”. His diverse upbringing has influenced him in several respects. “Probably the most important way is that I always try to be friendly to whoever I meet—especially if they’re new to the area, as I know how hard it can be to adjust to new places,” he says. Felix agrees. “I think my background allows me to empathise well with different people.” “Apart from an identity crisis here and there”, Fairooz says that her background has made her “curious about the world”, as well as more tolerant. “I try not to pigeonhole,” she says. “I think that’s because I always expect people to have preconceived notions about me.” This open-mindedness is a recognised characteristic of ‘third culture kids’ (TCKs): those who, as children, spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures, and now integrate elements of those into a third culture. TCKs often experience this ‘identity crisis’ that Fairooz refers to, as they’ve invariably never fully experienced one culture. Fairooz empathises with my description of third culture kids. “It’s ticking most of the boxes,” she says. “I can definitely identify with the global culture thing. “But do I feel incomplete? Not really. I wouldn’t want to socialise with just other TCKs, either. Wouldn’t they be just as mystified as I am?” “I don’t feel that I have to be friends with other TCKs exclusively, or that it’s easier to befriend them,” agrees James. “I just enjoy meeting others, as it fascinates me as to how they’ve adjusted to life in a different culture. “I think I fit into the third culture category to some extent,” he adds. “I can quite easily go from one clique to another without too much hassle.” Future plans I ask James where he sees himself in ten years’ time. “I see myself living in another country,” he says. “I yearn for new experiences. I’m not sure where, but I’d enjoy living somewhere different. “I will, of course, return to New Zealand, as out of the three places I’ve lived, it’s definitely my favourite.” Daan concurs. “I’ve got no idea what the future has to offer, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll still be in Wellington,” he says. “I can’t see me going back [to Iceland] for good in the near future, but definitely for visits. The weather’s just a lot better here.” Fairooz is more definite, when I ask her whether she intends to return to Egypt for good. “God no!” she exclaims. “My dad just got back from a month stay there, and he said it was like coming back from hell. “I’d go back for a holiday—Egypt is an amazing place to visit, but I feel as though the only way I can have any pride in my cultural heritage is if I’m not living in a daily reminder of why I left it behind in the first place. “In ten years, I have no idea where I’ll be,” she says. “Maybe in Europe, maybe still in New Zealand. It’s not such a bad place, after all.”

“Where are you from?”

That question never fails to trip me up, because the truth is—I’m not sure.

I was born and raised in England to (very) English parents. I continue to speak with that accent, and I drink four or five cups of tea per day—but I haven’t been back there for almost a decade.

Between the ages of nine and 13, I travelled with my family around Europe, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, spending a fortnight or so in each country we visited.

In 2004, we found ourselves in New Zealand, where we’ve lived for the past six years. I’ve survived NCEA; made lasting friendships; toured the length of the country; and even been confirmed as a citizen—but I’m still not sure if I consider myself Kiwi.

New Zealand is full of people like me: people who have no concrete sense of belonging to any one nation. Does this mean that there is no such thing as cultural identity? Or, alternatively, does it have such specific boundaries that it excludes more readily than it includes?

Culture shock

Fairooz Samy is in her second year of studying Political Science, International Relations and Media Studies. Her mother is Algerian; her father, half Turkish, half Egyptian.

“I was born in Cairo; I speak Arabic, French and English; and I’m a citizen of Egypt, Algeria, New Zealand and Britain,” says Fairooz.

“We immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, when I was 10, basically because my parents wanted somewhere nice for them to retire and me to grow up.

“It was a little odd at first, coming from Cairo to settle in quiet suburbia, which just doesn’t exist anywhere in Egypt. Everyone was nice, down-to-earth, super casual. You don’t get that level of ‘laid back’ in other countries.”

In Egypt, Fairooz had attended a British international school, “where there was this giant emphasis on the cultural differences between everyone.

“In New Zealand, I was this little freak who couldn’t even say ‘yes’ the same way they did,” she remembers. “I was accepted as the token ethnic girl.”

Fairooz recalls making a “conscious decision” to start speaking with a Kiwi accent when she was about 11.

“Nowadays, sure, I totally identify as a New Zealander—even more so when I’m overseas, but that’s probably because there isn’t anyone there who can tell me that I’m not,” she says.

“I’d be visiting family in Algeria and feel like a total tourist, starting every sentence with ‘Back home in New Zealand’, and feeling patriotic whenever we’d eat New Zealand lamb.”

Despite being well established in her second home, Fairooz hesitates when I ask for her definition of a New Zealander.

“I’m not sure if I’m the best person to answer that,” she confesses. “Is it all about backyard cricket, and school Kapa Haka?

“Maybe it’s as simple as the TV One ads make it out to be. Maybe New Zealanders are just that: laid-back, hard-working, generous, no-nonsense people, with such a population that there’s a tangible sense of camaraderie and dependability.

“Cheese on cheese, I know, but it’s giving me the warm fuzzies,” she says wryly.

Needless to say, Fairooz knows the advantages of having a couple of identities to select from.

“Whenever I get frustrated with some aspect of Kiwi life, I still roll my eyes and sort of thank god that I have a couple of other cultures to fall back on,” she remarks.

However, this has its drawbacks.

“It can get confusing, and I feel disloyal for taking such a pick-and-choose approach to who I consider myself to be,” admits Fairooz.

“I can’t escape the fact that racially, I’ll always be Arabic… but ironically, I’ve never met an Arab who really thought of me as authentic—Arabic isn’t even my first language.

“I’ve always felt a tad phoney.”

From Fire and Ice, to the Long White Cloud

Daan Kjartansson, a second-year student, was born in New Zealand to a Kiwi mother and an Icelandic father. He grew up in Iceland, but moved to Wellington to study at university. He is a citizen of both countries, and speaks Icelandic and English fluently.

He says he had no problems adjusting to Kiwi life, and that “it just happened”, as people at his university hall were interested in finding out more about his culture.

“The only problem is that I think in Icelandic, and always have to translate it into English, and I often forget the English words for something.”

Although he admits that he’s “becoming more and more Kiwi every day”, Daan sees himself as an Icelander.

“I still see Iceland as home, and all of my family still live there.

“I’m very interested in Norse mythology, which has played a big role in Icelandic history,” he says.

“And Icelanders are all about soccer, and I play a lot of soccer myself.

“Icelandic music also influences me quite a lot, and I try to listen to some daily, so I don’t forget about Iceland.”

Taste in music is one of the biggest differences Daan has noticed between his two cultures. Although he’s quick to point out that he can’t generalise New Zealanders, he’s noticed that most are interested in “rugby, drinking, and listening to reggae.

“The music produced here is quite different—there’s a lot of reggae and dub, which is probably influenced by the sun.”

Certainly, it’s hard to imagine The Black Seeds hailing from Iceland, where the climate is described as ‘sub-polar oceanic’.

Best of both worlds

Felix Hallwass, an Honours student, moved to New Zealand from Germany when he was six years old. He identifies strongly with both his birth country and his adopted one.

“I see myself as a German Kiwi, as I know my morals and personality are a combination of what my German parents have taught me, as well as what I have experienced as part of growing up in New Zealand,” he says.

Felix admits that while he considers home to be where his family live, “I’d always call Bremen my hometown, not Nelson. In sport, I’d always support Germany.”

I ask Felix how his cultural identities affect him on a daily basis.

“My parents, sister and I are German citizens, and speak mostly German at home, although it has slowly become an English-German hybrid.

“Having two distinct cultures to identify with, I’ve been able to decide the aspects or attitudes of each culture that appeal to me, or I agree with,” he says.

“The result of this is an interesting synthesis of ideas that influence how I interact with others, and this has given me a greater appreciation of diversity.”

Open mind, common sense

James Burtin, a second-year student of Psychology and Criminology, found himself in New Zealand in 2005. He was born in Grasse, France, to an English mother and a French father, and considers himself “a big mixture of hopefully all the good aspects of each culture”.

His diverse upbringing has influenced him in several respects.

“Probably the most important way is that I always try to be friendly to whoever I meet—especially if they’re new to the area, as I know how hard it can be to adjust to new places,” he says.

Felix agrees.

“I think my background allows me to empathise well with different people.”

“Apart from an identity crisis here and there”, Fairooz says that her background has made her “curious about the world”, as well as more tolerant.

“I try not to pigeonhole,” she says.

“I think that’s because I always expect people to have preconceived notions about me.”

This open-mindedness is a recognised characteristic of ‘third culture kids’ (TCKs): those who, as children, spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures, and now integrate elements of those into a third culture. TCKs often experience this ‘identity crisis’ that Fairooz refers to, as they’ve invariably never fully experienced one culture.

Fairooz empathises with my description of third culture kids.

“It’s ticking most of the boxes,” she says. “I can definitely identify with the global culture thing.

“But do I feel incomplete? Not really. I wouldn’t want to socialise with just other TCKs, either. Wouldn’t they be just as mystified as I am?”

“I don’t feel that I have to be friends with other TCKs exclusively, or that it’s easier to befriend them,” agrees James. “I just enjoy meeting others, as it fascinates me as to how they’ve adjusted to life in a different culture.

“I think I fit into the third culture category to some extent,” he adds.

“I can quite easily go from one clique to another without too much hassle.”

Future plans

I ask James where he sees himself in ten years’ time.

“I see myself living in another country,” he says. “I yearn for new experiences. I’m not sure where, but I’d enjoy living somewhere different.

“I will, of course, return to New Zealand, as out of the three places I’ve lived, it’s definitely my favourite.”

Daan concurs.

“I’ve got no idea what the future has to offer, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll still be in Wellington,” he says.

“I can’t see me going back [to Iceland] for good in the near future, but definitely for visits. The weather’s just a lot better here.”

Fairooz is more definite, when I ask her whether she intends to return to Egypt for good.

“God no!” she exclaims.

“My dad just got back from a month stay there, and he said it was like coming back from hell.

“I’d go back for a holiday—Egypt is an amazing place to visit, but I feel as though the only way I can have any pride in my cultural heritage is if I’m not living in a daily reminder of why I left it behind in the first place.

“In ten years, I have no idea where I’ll be,” she says. “Maybe in Europe, maybe still in New Zealand. It’s not such a bad place, after all.”

The tertiary education sector is in desperate need of more funding, but I hadn’t high hopes for the so-called “zero Budget”. The National Government has so far not identified students as a priority, and last year’s Budget was an exercise in treading water: I had little cause to presume more from this one.Having said that, it’s unrealistic to expect a greater contribution from the Government when its operating deficit is a record $16.7 billion. We students should feel some relief that the Government has stuck to its promise to increase revenue by “tinkering around the edges” of the current student loan scheme―especially when there are big bucks to be made from reinstating interest. The changes announced yesterday―restrictions placed on course-related costs and mature students’ borrowing―were frankly nominal. Such timid pragmatism won’t affect the vast majority of students.The issues surrounding tertiary education funding remain, however. Universities and other education providers are receiving nowhere near sufficient Government support to meet increased demand, and so they’re being forced to increase fees, cut courses and manage enrolments. If the Government fails to address this oversight once it gets on top of its deficit, higher education could become an option only for the privileged.For now, Budget 2011 has highlighted one question that affects students as much as it does the rest of society: cash now, or cash later? Even despite the decrease in the Government’s member tax credit, KiwiSaver is still the most accessible, realistic form of long-term saving for students. On the other hand, the living and course-related costs components of the student loan scheme have not been augmented to reflect inflation and the increased cost of living. This, coupled with the 1% increase to employees’ minimum contribution to KiwiSaver, will mean that most students will likely prefer to have the cash in hand. As short-sighted an approach as that might be, it’s hard to save without more support. Perhaps next year we’ll see a Budget with more purpose.

The tertiary education sector is in desperate need of more funding, but I hadn’t high hopes for the so-called “zero Budget”.

The National Government has so far not identified students as a priority, and last year’s Budget was an exercise in treading water: I had little cause to presume more from this one.

Having said that, it’s unrealistic to expect a greater contribution from the Government when its operating deficit is a record $16.7 billion.

We students should feel some relief that the Government has stuck to its promise to increase revenue by “tinkering around the edges” of the current student loan scheme―especially when there are big bucks to be made from reinstating interest.

The changes announced yesterday―restrictions placed on course-related costs and mature students’ borrowing―were frankly nominal. Such timid pragmatism won’t affect the vast majority of students.

The issues surrounding tertiary education funding remain, however.

Universities and other education providers are receiving nowhere near sufficient Government support to meet increased demand, and so they’re being forced to increase fees, cut courses and manage enrolments.

If the Government fails to address this oversight once it gets on top of its deficit, higher education could become an option only for the privileged.

For now, Budget 2011 has highlighted one question that affects students as much as it does the rest of society: cash now, or cash later?

Even despite the decrease in the Government’s member tax credit, KiwiSaver is still the most accessible, realistic form of long-term saving for students.

On the other hand, the living and course-related costs components of the student loan scheme have not been augmented to reflect inflation and the increased cost of living.

This, coupled with the 1% increase to employees’ minimum contribution to KiwiSaver, will mean that most students will likely prefer to have the cash in hand. As short-sighted an approach as that might be, it’s hard to save without more support.

Perhaps next year we’ll see a Budget with more purpose.

About:

Elle Hunt is a Dorset-born, Nelson-raised freelance writer and student who is now based in Wellington. Her work has appeared in publications such as Sunday magazine, The Sunday Star-Times, The Dominion Post and Wellington's regional FishHead magazine, and in 2010, she was named Junior Magazine Feature Writer of the Year at the Canon Media Awards. In 2011, she was co-editor of Salient, Victoria University of Wellington's weekly magazine, which was awarded Best Publication at the Aotearoa Student Press Association awards.

In July, Elle will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Media Studies, and begin work at The Sunday Star-Times as part of Fairfax's internship scheme.

Contact her on contact@ellehunt.net


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