PROTEST A T DEGREES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31111, 14 July 1966, Page 15

PROTEST A T DEGREES

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright/ LONDON, July 13. Australia’s former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, will faee a protest frODl sections of what is fast becoming Britain’s most “in” university when he receives an honorary doctorate in law at the University of Sussex, Brighton, today. A special committee of faculty and students wanted the ceremony—at which Mr Har-

old Wilson will also be honoured—to be postponed because of Australia's participation in the Vietnam war. When that move failed they resolved to wear white armbands at the ceremony. Sussex University, only four years old, is so popular among Britain’s bright young men and women that it now gets 20 applications for every available place. It has brick-and-concrete buildings designed by the leading architect. Sir Basil Spence, and its eye fo public-

ity is the despair and envy of dons in the more sedate, older universities. The twin daughters of the president of the Board of Trade, Mr Douglas Jay, recently graduated from Sussex. Students can take flats after their first year and the ratio of men to women was deliberately set at one to one. Today’s ceremony will also mark the installation as chancellor of Lord Shawcross, who will then confer the degrees on Mr Wilson and Sir Robert Menzies.