TRUST NOMINEE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1943, Page 2

TRUST NOMINEE

ON WAIRARAPA COLLEGE BOARD MR A. O. JONES REAPPOINTED. ASSEMBLY HALL QUESTION DISCUSSED. Strong exception to the Trust discussing “the immorality of Mastertonians” was taken by Mr E. G. Eton at last night’s meeting of the Masterton Trust Lands Trust, when the matter of appointing a nominee on the Wairarapa College Board of Governors was under consideration. The sitting member, Mr A. Owen Jones, was unanimously reappointed. Mr Eton said that Mr Jones had done good work during his term of office, and moved that he again be appointed the Trust representative on the College Board. In seconding the motion, Mr C. E. Grey said it would amount to a motion of no-confidence if the Trust did not appoint Mr Jones again. It gave him pleasure to second the motion. Giving an account of his stewardship as Trust nominee on the College Board during his last term of office, Mr Jones said that he had voted against the College Hall being used by outside organisations for good, sound reasons. As president of the College Parents’ Association he knew that it would lose a considerable amount of finance as a result of the motion that was carried by the board. It was not a matter of £ s d, but was a matter of something that money could not buy. Mr Jones proceeded to refer in the strongest terms to the misuse to which the grounds had been put, although the dances held in the hall had been admirably run. Mr Eton: “We are satisfied with Mr Jones as our representative. The matter he is referring to is one for the College authorities, not us.” Mr J. Macfarlane Laing. “It is a matter for us.” The chairman, Mi' H. P. Hugo, ruled the discussion in order. “You have no business allowing a discussion on the immorality of Mastertonians,” observed Mr Eton, addressing the chair. Mr Hugo: “What I rule carries here.” Mr Laing said that the matter was one for the Trust, particularly so as there had been correspondence in the Press over the Trust being represented on the board.' It was to Mr Jones’s credit that he was making a voluntary explanation. Continuing, Mr Jones said that the letting of the Assembly Hall was a big question. The West School committee had been shut out, but had an application been made for an afternoon gathering and not an evening one it might have been favourably considered by the board. As it was, the West School had been given the use of the College classrooms and grounds when the West School building was being rebuilt. Mr Jones said he had asked a Masterton school teacher what he thought of the West School application, and he had replied that it was a lot of rot. The children today were being given everything, and had nothing to look forward to.

At that stage of the meeting Mr Eton entered an emphatic protest, and after a lively interlude the Trust dropped the matter and proceeded with the other business.