Students kidding around

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1930s, 1960s, dentistry, Knox, pranks

An uninvited guest at the official opening of the Dental School, 4 March 1961. Minister of Education Blair Tennent is speaking, with University Chancellor Hubert Ryburn seated at left. Photograph courtesy of Peter Innes (originally published in the ODT, 6 March 1961).

When Blair Tennent, Minister of Education, visited Dunedin to open the new Dental School building in 1961, he probably wasn’t especially surprised to receive a lively welcome from local students. Tennent was once an Otago student himself – he graduated in dentistry in 1922 – and a recent ten years on the council of Massey Agricultural College had no doubt kept him aware of student hi-jinks.

A group of about 150 students dressed as Arabs prostrated themselves on the ground before the ministerial car as it attempted to drive through the Octagon. They then carried a laughing Tennent shoulder high on a litter to the Dental School. The procession was led by a goat, which normally resided in a student flat. As the New Zealand Dental Journal wrote, its “well timed bleats later punctuated the formal addresses in a highly amusing manner.”

High spirits could perhaps be forgiven, for it was a great relief to dental staff and students to have new accommodation. The Dental School opened in 1907 in what is now the Staff Club, but moved to what is now the Marples Building (Zoology) in 1926. By the 1940s this was becoming cramped and John Walsh, Dean of Dentistry, began campaigning for a new building. After numerous delays due to competing demands for government funding, shortages of labour and materials, and changes of government, construction finally got underway in 1956. Problems with the foundations led to further delays, prompting use of a prefab school building to relieve congestion temporarily.

The building – renamed the Walsh Building in 2001 in honour of the former dean – has since undergone various renovations and extensions. It was designed in the Government Architect’s office by Ian Reynolds, supervised by Gordon Wilson, and is now recognised as an outstanding example of modernist architecture. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust registered it as a Category 1 historic building in 2005.

Tennent was not the first VIP visitor to the university to be greeted by livestock. In a famous 1934 incident at Knox College, Lord Bledisloe, then Governor General, encountered a pen of pigs just outside the grand front entrance. Bledisloe, known to be a pig fancier, took this in good part, inspecting the pigs and noting they were very good ones. Later, as the master led Lord and Lady Bledisloe downstairs from the college tower, the official party encountered another ‘Lord and Lady Bledisloe’ – two students dressed up for the occasion – coming up the stairs. A resident recalled that “the two Bledisloe pairs bowed at one another and passed on … I heard that old Bledisloe could hardly hold his laughter.”

Do you know of any other pranks involving distinguished visitors to Otago?

Getting away from it all

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1940s, 1950s, medicine, physical education, recreation, student health

Building Trotter’s Gorge Hut, 1951. From Philip Smithells papers, MS-1001/218, S13-559b, Hocken Collections, University of Otago

If you’ve ever stayed at the university’s Trotter’s Gorge Hut, you can be grateful to two pioneering Otago staff of the 1940s and 50s, Philip Smithells and Archie Douglas. Douglas, who graduated in medicine in 1932, returned to Otago in 1944 as a lecturer in the Department of Bacteriology and Public Health (later split into the microbiology and preventive medicine departments). Archie Douglas and Sir Charles Hercus, who was Professor of Public Health and Dean of the Medical School, set up the Student Health Service soon afterwards, partly as a tool to teach medical students about community and preventive medicine. The service, also open to teachers’ college students, was the first of its kind in the Australasian universities. It worked from the Department of Preventive Medicine until 1962, when it moved into new premises at 46 Union Street, and Douglas was director until his retirement in 1964.

Meanwhile, Philip Smithells arrived in Dunedin in 1947 as first director of the School of Physical Education. Smithells came from England to New Zealand in 1939 as superintendent of physical education for the Department of Education in Wellington. At Otago he developed from scratch a respected course in physical education, with a broad emphasis which included body mechanics, dance, recreation, sport and education alongside the basic health sciences. His belief that physical education was important to everybody, regardless of ability, was demonstrated in the remedial clinics offered by the school to children with physical impairments.

Smithells and Douglas were both advocates of outdoor recreation and loved getting out into the country. The exact details are unclear, but Douglas was, according to Smithells, “one of the instigators” of the Trotter’s Gorge Hut, which was built in 1951. He “hoped many students would spend weekends at this beautiful place as a change from town and life in halls of residence.” This was preventive medicine at its best. Of course the hut also provided a most convenient venue for the outdoor education component of the physical education course. The papers of Philip Smithells, held in the Hocken Collections, include many photographs of students enjoying a range of activities in Trotter’s Gorge, from rifle-shooting, archery, gymnastics and hiking to cooking outdoors. Also included is this great shot of the construction of the hut. It was mostly built by physical education students and staff, with a few helpers from other faculties. Please let me know if you can identify any of the people in the photograph!

Smithells wrote in 1967 that the hut had “never been used as much as was originally hoped.” However, it still stands in its beautiful location, ready to welcome students and other visitors for a minimal fee. With no electricity and no vehicle access Trotter’s Gorge Hut really does offer an opportunity to escape urban life!

The big tent protest

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1980s, 1990s, 2000s, protests

Photograph courtesy of Lyall McLean

Who might stage a highly visible protest on campus? The Dean and senior staff of the Faculty of Commerce don’t seem the most likely candidates, but that is just what happened in 1986. The faculty needed a large venue for course approval at the beginning of the year, but their booking for a suitable space was cancelled, bringing frustration over a lack of suitable accommodation to a head. In a highly practical protest, Michael Fay, the Dean, hired a large marquee for the lawn next to the Arts Building. Lyall McLean, Chair of the Department of Accounting and Finance, undertook the decoration, using helium balloons and a large banner labelling the tent the “new commerce building.” McLean, who succeeded Fay as Dean the following year, recalls that “it was good fun the first day but it rained the next and the lawn in front of the Arts Building became quite muddy.”

By  1986 the Commerce Faculty had been campaigning for a new building for over twenty  years. Commerce had slow beginnings at Otago. Although economics was taught  from the university’s outset, it was part of the Faculty of Arts until 1989. Teaching of other commerce subjects began in 1912 but remained for many years a part-time enterprise (for both students and staff). Full-time teaching began in the 1960s and student numbers increased rapidly over the following decades. Staff outgrew one of the old professorial houses (Black House) and moved in 1963 to the Zoology/Commerce Building (formerly the Dental School). They soon outgrew that space as well, and moved back to Black House and an additional five houses in Castle Street in 1970. Ten years later, the faculty moved into the eastern end of the library building, but soon had additional staff and facilities  spread around the campus, including parts of the Archway Building and various  buildings in Union Place, Albany Street and Castle Street. Student growth was  particularly strong in the 1980s: while just over 700 students enrolled in the  Faculty of Commerce in 1979, the number had doubled just six years later, in  1985, and almost doubled again by 1990.

Getting approval for an expensive new building was never easy, especially when decisions about capital projects were made on a national basis by the University Grants Committee. Once funding and operating costs were devolved to individual universities in 1989, the Commerce Division was finally able to convince the Otago authorities of the desperate need for a new building to house its expanding enterprise. Some, perhaps, recalled that 1986 tent. In 1989 planning for a new building began, construction commenced in 1990, some departments moved into their new premises at the end of 1991 and work was complete by the end of 1992.

Unfortunately, the choice of a tent to represent the new building proved somewhat prophetic. A major design feature of the building – a large central atrium with a partial glass cover – immediately became a major problem. Wind and rain entered the atrium through the gaps in the roof at rates far beyond the architects’ expectations. The supposedly non-slip atrium floor tiles did not meet expectations either, leading to numerous minor accidents and a more serious one in 1996 where a student broke their jaw. In 1997 the atrium’s glass cover was extended. Although this was a big improvement, the building remained somewhat vulnerable to the elements; further modifications took place in subsequent years. Not all the problems were due to design flaws: in 2004 earthquakes caused the atrium structure to move, leading to yet more repairs. Still, during a major downpour in 2005 water poured into the atrium and caused major damage to the adjacent computer room and teaching spaces.

The Commerce Building has many great features and was an enormous improvement on the facilities previously endured by commerce staff and students. I can’t help thinking, though, that the big tent was tempting fate!

Fashion for the great outdoors

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1920s, clothing, consumer and applied sciences, food science, home science, human nutrition, recreation

Image from the records of the Association of the Home Science Alumnae of New Zealand, MS-1516/074, S13-559a, Hocken Collections, University of Otago.

The lovely Alison Finigan, head of alumni relations, once suggested that this blog includes photos from the decades that fashion forgot – so how could I resist putting up this wonderful image! The three women are, from left to right, Neige Todhunter, Winifred Stenhouse and M. Wilkinson. They were all home science students, enjoying a weekend of outdoor recreation in Karitane in 1927. Clothing was one of the subjects in the home science faculty, with a stage one course in garment construction and a stage two course in dress. The dress course, according to the University Calendar, investigated the “historic, artistic, economic and social aspects of dress as applied to the University girl’s wardrobe.” It seems highly likely that these women made, and perhaps also designed, their outfits.

The University of Otago School of Home Science opened in 1911. As the national “special school” it attracted students – all women for its first decades – from throughout New Zealand. Students could complete a three-year diploma or a four-year degree. In addition to clothing, subjects of study in the 1920s included chemistry; applied chemistry (food, household chemistry, laundry); physics; biology; physiology; nutrition and dietetics; bacteriology, sanitary science and hygiene; house planning, home administration and mothercraft; household and social economics; education; and foods (technology, housekeeping and experimental cookery). “Home science” later evolved into “consumer and applied sciences,” incorporating various other applied science subjects. Several of the original constituent specialist subjects of home science have survived into the 21st century: human nutrition and food science are now major departments in their own right within the Sciences Division, while design and clothing and textile sciences are now part of the applied sciences department.

Qualifications from the School of Home Science could take women of the 1920s a long way. Neige Todhunter, whose unusual name (French for snow) derived from her birth during a Christchurch snow storm, was a particularly distinguished graduate. After graduating with Otago’s first master’s degree in home science in 1928 she headed to the USA for further study, completing a PhD at Columbia University in 1933 with a thesis on Vitamin A. She taught in Washington State for a while and then for many years at the University of Alabama, where she established a human nutrition laboratory and became Dean of the School of Home Economics. After ‘retirement’ she had a long association with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she pursued an interest in the history of nutrition. Throughout her career she was involved in various high-level advisory committees on nutrition, as well as professional organisations. Some of her historical publications sound intriguing: I’d like to read her article “Dietetics in the Shakespearean plays”, which reflected her love of literature!

A long obituary of Todhunter, who died in 1991, makes no mention of her dress style. I wonder if the Otago undergraduate course on the “artistic” aspect of dress had any long-lasting impact?