LARRIKIN STUDENTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1548, 1 September 1905, Page 2

LARRIKIN STUDENTS.

ALLEGED JOKES.

The trouble between some of the students of Canterbury College and the Professional Board has advanced a further stage. Before dealing with it, however, it may be well to explain that the affair is not-really euoh a scandal as the chairman of the Professorial Board has implied. In oonsequenoe of the use of that word some North Island papers appear to have gained a totally wrong impression of ths incident, and have gone so far as to distort the breaking into the girls' oottage and the abstraction therefrom of some academic gowns as an invasion of the sleeping quarters of the lady students and theft of their personal apparel. What actually occurred is condemned by the great majority of the Btudents, but at the worst it was nothing like a Beandal. The girls' cottage is a small building in whioh the lady students meet, apparently for tea and the aooompanying ohat, and in whioh they keep books and gowns, etc. It is unooeupied, for there are no Bleeping quarters for anyone at the cottage, and the abstraction of the academic gowns on the night before diploma day wbb merely a rather eorry practical joke, the point of whioh lay in the alleged fondness for wear* iog these gowns whenever possible. The tampering with the college olook on diploma day was the work of one or two of the engineering students, who, by an ingenious electrio contrivance, threw the striking apparatus of the clook out of order during the speeohes, whereby the clook, whioh has a solemn and sonorous boom when it sounds the hours, wae induced literally to go on striking an uncounted number of hours without oessation, much to the oonfusion of the speakers in the hall beneath, and to the evident amusement of the audience. It oame out at a special meetiug of the Professorial Board on Friday afternoon that the Board considered that the tampering with the elock on degree day and the entering of the girls’ cottage on the evening proceeding degree day wore more serious offences than the destruction of the table and tfie damaging of the looker doors in the students’ room.

Four students were implicated in enter* ing the cottage and nine in tampering with the olook, and eaoh was fined £1 ana ordered to pay his share in - making good the damage. The Board also resolved to take farther steps if the fines were not paid by September 1. The students responsible for the destruction of property in the students’ room were ordered to make good the damage to the satisfaction of the Board. In connection wjth the latter offence eight students, representing a number of others, appeared before the Board, but tbe oost of tbo repairing will be borne by tbe whole of those ooneerned in the destruction.

A student writes to the Press pointing out that a ssetiou of the college regulations limits the amount of a fine in cases oi unseemly or disorderly conduot to half acrown, to be doubled if the offence is repeated. There is some talk of a deputation of students waiting on the professors and drawing their attention to this point. It is also said that some of the students are talking of organising a conoert to raise the necessary funds to liquidate the liabilities of the offenders, and the suggestion has been made, apparently by some cheerfully unrepentant undergrade., that the college authorities might see their way fo grant the use of the college hall for the purpose.