A chorus of laughs – the Sextet

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1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, capping, graduation, music

The 1962 Sextette in traditional clown costume. Back from left: Doug Cox, Alastair Stokes, Terry Wilson, Peter Chin. Front: Roger McElroy, Gus Ferguson (pianist), Ian Robertson. Photo by de Clifford Photography, courtesy of Peter Chin.

The Sextet has been entertaining audiences at Otago’s capping show with beautifully-sung and witty words for over a century. Given its tendency to come close to the line – and sometimes to cross it – with offensive subject material, it seems only appropriate that its origins were not ‘politically correct’. The capping show itself dates back to 1894, when the University of New Zealand authorities banned public graduation ceremonies after becoming fed up with riotous student behaviour at these supposedly formal occasions. That prompted students to develop their own capping carnival of dances, concerts and processions, while the official graduation ceremony, when reinstated, became a much more seemly affair.

The capping concert soon became a hit with both students and the public, offering amusing commentary on the life and personalities of the university in particular, sometimes extending to the rest of Dunedin and the wider world. Alternative lyrics set to popular tunes were one of its standbys. One of the Sextet’s most famous old boys, conductor and composer Tecwyn Evans, researched its history as an honours project in 1993. He traced its origins to the appearance of ‘Coon’s Quartette’ at the 1903 capping concert. Presumably they made themselves up in ‘blackface’, then popular but later heavily criticised for its racist stereotypes. A review of the 1905 capping concert noted that ‘a coon tableau and a cake walk by a quartet of coloured gentlemen went well’.

The 1903 quartet was followed by various 4 or 5-man combinations, with the first 6-man singing group appearing in 1912. By 1919 the Sextette (as it was known until 1966, when it became the Sextet) was a regular feature of the capping concert, famous for its cheeky words sung with angelic voices. An ODT review of the 1923 concert noted ‘their rendering of topical verses was to many the very best item of the evening. In their first appearance they made play behind great song books of ’Varsity blue. Their songs when they appeared in evening dress in the second half were particularly clever and most amusing as one after another unburdened himself of the confession of the murder of some professor or other equally undesirable person. They also successfully burlesqued the Sistine Choir, and were rewarded with the most prolonged and emphatic applause of the evening’. The tradition of appearing in clown costume for some items and in evening dress for others quickly developed, though occasionally they branched out into other outfits.

The 1948 Sextette dressed as Victorian clergy to fit in with the theme of the capping show, ‘Dunover, or Cargill Rides Again’ (in honour of the centenary of the Otago colony). Left to right: Ninian Walden, John Somerville, Linley Ellis, Brian Neill, Ritchie Gilmour, Michael Shackleton. Photo courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

The Sextet, like the capping carnival, took a break during World War II. When the concert recommenced in 1945, getting traditions going again with no experienced seniors to help proved tricky. Concert director David Cole (future dean of the Auckland medical school) noted that ‘we could only find a quartette the first year but the sextette has reigned supreme again since then’.

The 1952 Sextette, from left: Linley Ellis, Richard Bush, John ?, Keith Monagan, Michael Shackleton, Brian McMahon. Photo courtesy of Michael Shackleton.

Writer James K. Baxter, who was Burns Fellow at Otago in 1966 and 1967, was a fan of capping shows, ‘chiefly on account of their vigour and their freedom of satire, both of which the country sorely needs’. In a review in the notorious but short-lived student publication Falus, he commended the 1967 production as more sophisticated than usual, though it did mean that ‘the sheer drive of spontaneous gutsiness was not so strong’. Fortunately, the ‘casual energy of Sextet provided a counterpoint’. Their performance included a ‘Geering interlude’ – presumably a commentary on the well-known theology professor, who was tried for heresy that year – among other things. ‘The alternation of wide-open satire with straight singing broadened their presentation … I think they were indispensable’, wrote Baxter.

The 1959 Sextette in action. Back from left: Bob McKegg, Jim Cleland, Alastair Brown. Front: John Burton, Peter Chin, Meikle Skelly. Peter Foreman was the pianist. Photo courtesy of Peter Chin.

Members of the Sextet were chosen for their vocal skill. Shy young first-year law student Peter Chin headed along to the audition for the large capping chorus with some friends from school in 1959. At the audition, talent-spotters suggested he should audition for the Sextet, and he was to sing with them for 3 of his 5 years at university. Becoming part of this elite group provided him with an instant introduction into student society. Chin – a future mayor of Dunedin – later became a well-known performer in local productions. The abilities of the Sextet have, naturally, varied from year to year, but there are some very famous names among the old boys, with vocal stars Roger Wilson, Martin Snell, Simon O’Neill and Jonathan Lemalu all lending their talents to the group during their university days. Although the performances have been a cappella for many years, in the past the group had a piano accompanist, and generally sang in unison rather than with the harmonies which became a feature during the 1970s.

The lyrics, also, varied in quality from year to year; sometimes the Sextet wrote the words themselves, and sometimes they received help from others. An anonymous article in a 1991 graduate publication noted that the content varied ‘from the traditional to the topical and from the harmless to the emphatically unsuitable’. Certainly the level of sexual innuendo in the lyrics grew and became more explicit, and in 2010 Rape Crisis criticised the Sextet for trivialising rape and sexual abuse in some lyrics.

Because the capping stage was open to men only until 1947, the Sextet started as an all-male group, and so it determinedly remained. In 1966 the show featured an all-female vocal group, named the Sextette, in addition to the all-male Sextet, but it proved a one-off. The ODT reported that ‘the girls do a good job, but their voices are not strong enough and most of their words are lost’. Finally, in 2001, a new female a cappella group – the Sexytet – debuted at the capping show, becoming a regular feature. The women’s group, which settled on ‘1950s housewife’ costumes, performed witty and smutty songs in beautiful harmonies, as in Sextet tradition.

The 1963 Sextette enjoying themselves backstage. Back from left – Terry Wilson, Jenny Black, Peter McKenzie, Alistair Wright. Front – Gus Ferguson (pianist), John Sayers, Peter Chin, Bob Salamonsen. Photo by Alan Stuart, courtesy of Peter Chin.

Through the years the Sextet has provided a lot of laughs to a lot of people. And, though they often put in a lot of work practising, the singers have clearly enjoyed themselves very much too (with a notable exception in 1993, when they were pelted with beer cans when performing as a warm-up act before a rugby test match at Carisbrook). Video of performances by Sextets and Sexytets of recent years can be found on Youtube – viewer discretion is definitely advised!

The 2014 Sextet. Through the years the clown hats have been lost, but more make-up added. Photo by Daniel Chew, courtesy of OUSA.

The gift of music

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1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, benefactors, music

John Blair, the Dunedin seed merchant whose generous legacy allowed the music department to get started. Image from the Cyclopedia of New Zealand: Otago & Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905), courtesy of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

Turnips and opera may seem an unlikely pairing, but at Otago the former eventually led to the latter! Turnips were one of the specialties of Dunedin seed merchants Nimmo and Blair, regular winners of prizes at agricultural and pastoral shows around Otago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. John Blair, one of the owners, was a Scotsman drawn to the colonies by the lure of gold. After some years in Victoria he arrived in Otago in 1862, attracted by the new rush to the Dunstan. When he failed to make a fortune on the goldfields, Blair settled in Dunedin, finding work with a seed merchant. Blair proved a better businessman than he was a miner. With partner Robert Nimmo he purchased his late employer’s firm in 1876, and Nimmo and Blair quickly flourished as growers and suppliers of seeds, also branching out to sell fertilisers and agricultural implements. When he died in 1913 Blair was a man of considerable means, leaving money to his family and to various charitable causes, especially those connected with religion and education in the south.

Blair had a great fondness for music and in 1925 the University Council learned from his trustees that he had bequeathed funds to pay for a music lecturer at Otago (the delay after his death was presumably to allow various life interests and annuities in his estate to be completed). With funds for a lecturer’s salary guaranteed, the university was happy to expand its academic offerings to include the study of music; it was already supporting more informal adult education classes in music appreciation through the Workers’ Educational Association.

The council advertised for a lecturer, but did not have to look far to find a perfectly qualified candidate. Victor Galway, who was organist at First Church, conductor of the Dunedin Choral Society and its orchestra, a private music teacher, and the WEA lecturer, started work as the University of Otago’s first music lecturer in 1926. Galway, then in his early thirties, had excellent academic credentials in addition to practical experience, for he was the University of Melbourne’s first doctoral graduate in music (he was born in England but migrated to Australia with his family in his teens).

The University of Otago’s first music lecturer, Victor Galway, photographed in 1931. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand Free Lance collection, reference PAColl-6303-32.

The music department had small beginnings, with just 12 students in its first year. Early courses on offer included harmony, counterpoint, musical appreciation and history, and – for advanced students – composition and orchestration. The actual performance of music would not become part of the curriculum until much later, though staff and students of the department took part in many musical activities outside their classes.

Otago was late getting off the ground with music – Auckland University College had a music lecturer from 1888 and Canterbury from 1891 – but its programme grew steadily. Victor Galway, who was promoted to professor in 1939, reflected in 1949 on the department’s first 25 years. There were now 185 students, including 45 studying for the specialist Bachelor of Music degree. Galway took pride in the achievements of those he had taught, particularly those who had gone on to influential positions in education: “The Professor of Music in Canterbury University College and both of the lecturers in Music there are students of mine and graduates of this University, as is also the lecturer in Music in Otago [Mary Martin, who had graduated MusB in 1930 and was appointed lecturer in 1939]. The Departments of Music in the Dunedin Technical High School, the Christchurch Technical College, the Papanui Road Technical College as well as in many other post primary schools in New Zealand are staffed by men and women trained at the University of Otago. Others of our graduates hold leading positions in the National Broadcasting Service, as Church Organists, and as performers and teachers throughout New Zealand.”

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Honor McKellar, who was a student in the department in the early 1940s. She remembers the music staff of two – Galway and Martin – being squeezed into a small office shared with the German department in the clocktower building. Among the half dozen or so other students majoring in music then were John Ritchie (who became Professor of Music at Canterbury and a noted composer) and Walter Metcalf (who studied both science and music and ended up with an academic career in chemistry). Metcalf was a good violinist who led the university orchestra, while McKellar played “about fourteenth violin.” She describes herself as “dispensable” to the orchestra – when somebody in a front row broke a string she passed her violin forward and retired from the concert!

Honor McKellar’s great talent was in singing, and Prof Galway called on her to illustrate the public lectures he often gave. He was a popular lecturer, well-known for swinging his watch chain as he walked from side to side across the stage. He was a good teacher, she recalls, and gave them a thorough technical training; she could “write a fugue backwards”. He was, though, very conservative in his musical tastes, and famously described nineteenth-century opera as “the lowest form of art”. Seventeenth-century composer Purcell was more to his taste, and in 1941 he led the Otago University Musical Society in a concert performance of the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas. Galway’s successors as Professor of Music, Peter Platt and then John Drummond, were opera enthusiasts who developed this aspect of the department’s work greatly.

The seed merchant’s legacy – still commemorated through the Blair Professorship in Music – clearly had quite an impact on Otago. As well as the lectureship, his bequest funded scholarships for many music and arts students until the 1970s, when the money was redirected into the newly-established Mozart Fellowship for composers. Other music lovers later followed his example and contributed financially to the department’s activities; most notably, a large bequest from Dunedin physician William Evans funded a travelling scholarship and lecturers in music performance. Honor McKellar returned to Otago as its first executant lecturer in 1971; performance was offered as a degree subject from 1966, but tuition was initially contracted out to external teachers.

The Department of Music has offered much to Dunedin, and the wider world, ever since it started in 1926. It’s nice that this is a reciprocal relationship, with those who enjoy music supporting its teaching. And how appropriate it is that money earned from seeds got it started and helped it flourish!

Advertisement for Nimmo & Blair from the Otago Daily Times, 9 November 1895. Image from PapersPast, courtesy of the National Library of New Zealand.

 

 

Building for the arts

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1960s, art history, classics, economics, education, English, geography, history, languages, music, philosophy, politics, religion, teacher education, theology

The new Arts Building, photographed around 1970 by Arthur Campbell. The open area at the northern end was later built in to create more teaching spaces. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

“We hope to give the people of Dunedin an arts building they can be proud of,” commented vice-chancellor Arthur Beacham in 1964. Fifty years later, that building is listed for replacement as part of the university’s 15-year building development plan. A new arts building – indeed a whole new humanities precinct – is planned, with construction scheduled to commence late in 2019. It seems timely, then, to look back to the beginnings of the original Arts Building.

Beacham made his 1964 comment as he welcomed the news that the government had granted approval for the University of Otago to obtain sketch plans for a new building to house some of the Faculty of Arts. This was a period of strong central government control over university development. The national University Grants Committee juggled requests for new buildings from the various institutions and made recommendations, which were then approved and funded by the government.

Otago arts student numbers were growing steadily, having doubled to reach nearly 1000 over a decade; they were predicted – fairly accurately as it turned out – to double again by the early 1980s. “Students are being taught in every basement, attic and old house we can bring into use,” noted Beacham. The English department was based in Cameron House, a grand old house which would later make way for Unicol; it also shared space in Lower Studholme, a neighbouring house, with the geography and education departments. Education, one of the largest university departments, also used Marama Hall, while geography had space in Mellor House. Political science and history occupied St Anne’s, yet another old house, once part of Studholme Hall’s accommodation, which would be demolished to create the Unicol site. Classics and modern languages had their home in the old professorial houses, while music, economics and philosophy were in the houses at 403, 411 and 421 Castle Street. Some classes took place in the revealingly named “arts hut”.

A new library was under construction and would open in 1965. Plans were for this to house some of the arts departments – political science, English and geography – until the library expanded to fill the whole building. The new Arts Building would supply teaching space and offices for most of the remaining arts departments. Its site, which had been set aside for a proposed building by the university council as early as 1960, expanded the campus in a new direction.

The site of the new Arts Building is marked ‘Phase I’ in this plan from the 1964 Design Report. The Student Union building is under construction at front left, while in this photo work on the library is yet to commence. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Angus Ross papers, MS-1050/014.

The new building was designed by J.O. Aimers of old Dunedin architectural firm Mason and Wales. His design report of 1964 noted that the long narrow building of six floors would allow for future developments nearby while providing well for “Staff Studies, Seminar Rooms and Research Rooms requiring good daylighting and aspect”. Larger lecture rooms would take up the ground floor space: “This avoids problems in vertical circulation.” Seminar rooms for smaller classes and tutorials were located at the centre portion of each floor, meaning staff offices were in “quiet cul-de-sacs which are desirable in a Faculty of Arts.” Those “cul-de-sacs” would not always be as quiet as the architect anticipated. Ninian Smart, a distinguished religious studies scholar who visited Otago in 1971, recalled “the former dean of arts, reprimanded by the registrar for playing cricket on the matted corridors of the new arts building” (please tell me if you know who that was!). The long corridors would prove a temptation to cricketers of later generations as well – I recall corridor cricket taking place in the history department early in the 21st century.

Building, noted the Otago Daily Times, was “dogged  by Government delays at each stage of planning,” but in 1966 the university received the good news that cabinet had approved a tender from Dunedin firm Mitchell Brothers Ltd for construction of the new building. The total cost, when equipped, would be around £550,000. Occupation was scheduled for 1969, but in September 1968 the builders made an “all-out effort” over two weeks to complete two of the larger ground floor lecture theatres so they could be used by the Dunedin Teachers College. The college’s buildings were destroyed by a large fire on 3 September 1968 and the university – then a separate institution – offered this, along with some other accommodation, as “rescue aid.”

The Minister of Education, Arthur Kinsella, formally opened the Arts Building on 5 March 1969. He noted that the building “was a particularly fine one. The planning had been done economically, and he felt it was good value for money.” These comments were presumably a reaction to the criticism of Prof Eric Herd, dean of the arts faculty, who informed him that the building was “already too small …. Surely it is less expensive in the long run to design a building which will last for 20 years instead of three.” In 1972 the government approved preliminary planning of another larger “arts-library block” – the future Hocken/Richardson Building – which would house several arts departments, allowing others to expand within the 1969 Arts Building.

People sometimes refer to the Arts Building as the Burns Building, as its larger teaching areas are known as the Burns lecture theatres. I was asked recently if these are named after Reverend Thomas Burns, the spiritual leader of the Otago colony and first chancellor of the university, or his nephew Robbie Burns, the poet. I haven’t managed to find the answer yet, but either – or both! – would be appropriate for a building which is now home to the Department of English and the Robert Burns Fellow as well as the Department of Theology and Religion. Others who call the Arts Building home at present are the Departments of Politics, Classics, Languages and Cultures, History and Art History, and the administrative staff of the Division of Humanities.

Like all parts of the university, the Arts Building has seen many interesting people come and go through its history. Though few of its current occupants seem to regret its planned future replacement, it does hold many memories. Do you have any to share?

Student life in 1934

Tags

1930s, books, clothing, film, food, home science, music, recreation, sports, Studholme

Margaret Foster-Barham on the 1926 Triumph 500cc motorbike she rode from Nelson to Otago. Image courtesy of Judy Hogg.

“At present I am full of ‘pep’ with lots of good resolutions for work, health, exercise, thoughts & deeds.” So begins the 1934 diary of Margaret Foster-Barham as she commenced her final year of study for the three-year Diploma in Home Science at Otago. Margaret lived at Lower Studholme, the original Studholme building (where Unicol is today). As a senior resident she now had the luxury of a room to herself, though she had mixed feelings about that. “It’s rather a pity all the old wives are so far away. However perhaps it will be better not to see too much of them. Their talk upon dress & men becomes a little irksome.”

The freshers’ welcome, held at Upper Studholme, was an enjoyable event. Margaret was impressed with the supper and recorded the menu “as it might be a suggestion for some other time.” The students indulged in oyster and salmon patties with green peas, Parker House rolls, sandwiches, peach ice cream, coffee, salted almonds and other nuts. The Dean of Home Science, the impressive American Ann Strong, then gave a talk about her recent trip, showing “photos on a moving camera.” Strong had also brought back from her trip “a fascinating new gong” for Studholme, “on which different calls can be played.” Margaret found the Dean “most inspiring”, as she “expresses ideals in just the manner I would put things if I could.”

Margaret found her workload pretty heavy at times. As part of the practical element of her home science course she took her turn, paired with another student, at housekeeping at Studholme, which included a stint of cooking dinner over Easter. Later in the year she “nearly bust with pride” when she got 80% in nutrition. Then there was dressmaking. The students all made a “body,” a basic pattern to fit their own measurements, to be used as a basis for other patterns. Margaret’s diary reveals that body image is not a new problem. “I have been working at the old body,” she wrote in March. “She is looking quite nice, though is alarmingly big. It’s rather a good thing we can’t see ourselves as others see us!!” Her sewing projects included a green woollen dress and a peach velvet dress. A green silk dress was “not too successful. Brassiere kept slipping & also straps. Very maternal effect!”

But Margaret’s life was not all work; she socialised regularly with friends, both male and female. She particularly enjoyed the “pictures”, which she attended frequently. Favourites she saw in 1934 included Bitter Sweet, starring Anna Neagle, and The Song of Songs, which Margaret found “very beautiful … in excellent taste.” It starred Marlene Dietrich: “I love her voice & figure.” Wednesday nights at the musical society were another regular highlight: “It is great fun. We are doing a very jolly ballad of Gustav Holst, called King Estmere.” There was also time for a little light reading. One favourite was “a jolly little book”: The Small Dark Man by Irish writer Maurice Walsh. It was “light & well written” and Margaret noted it would  be “rather a nice book to give for a present.”

Margaret Foster-Barham. Photograph courtesy of Judy Hogg.

Margaret also enjoyed more energetic pursuits, such as tennis, though she noted that her “tennis needs much improvement.” An outing with her friend Tony to watch motorbike racing was “exciting in patches but for the most part boring & cold.” Motorbikes were, however, an important influence in Margaret’s life. She rode her Triumph from her family home in Nelson to university, and later to her teaching job at a Canterbury school. On one occasion she fell off in the gravel at Oaro just south of Kaikoura. Local farmer Owen Stanford rescued her from the ditch and, as daughter Judy explains, Margaret showed her gratitude by marrying him!

In 1934 there were only 1237 students at the University of Otago, including 79 studying home science. Just 319 – a quarter – of Otago students were women. The campus was clearly a very different place from today, but some things don’t change. Students still struggle to balance work and play, celebrate when they get good marks, enjoy socialising and movies and music, have adventures getting from A to B, and analyse the quality of residential college food. My heartfelt thanks to Judy Hogg for sharing her mother’s charming diary and allowing us a peek into one woman’s experience of life at Otago eighty years ago!

 

Naming flats

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1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, flatting, music, orientation

The Mouse House, photographed in 1991. Image courtesy of Sarah Gallagher.

From the “Bach” of the 1930s to “Gran’s Place” of the 2010s, Otago students have developed quite a tradition of naming their flats. For the past ten years or so, Sarah Gallagher has been recording and researching this phenomenon, and has a book about it planned. Sarah, who is a librarian at the Health Sciences Library in her other life, runs a blog, a facebook page and a twitter account about the Dunedin Flat Names Project, and you can read much more about it there.

Sarah says that the naming of flats, though not peculiar to Dunedin, doesn’t occur on such a large scale anywhere else in New Zealand. Perhaps it is a self-perpetuating phenomenon! Some names have persisted for decades, while others come and go and their origins have been lost.

The Bach, at 208 Leith Street, was established by a group of bachelor divinity students in the 1930s. Flatting was rare in that period, and students from out of town who couldn’t afford to live in a residential college generally lived in some sort of boarding situation, often a cheap room provided by a local landlady. The Bach provided a home to some university students alongside men studying at the Presbyterian Theological Hall, Knox College. It was a well organised community, but it was pretty crowded, with a dozen or so people squashed in three to a bedroom. It had a name plate, and also a crest and Greek motto, which translates to “because of poverty”.

As flatting became more common in the 1950s and 1960s, new flat names appeared on the scene. As remains the case today, some of these reflected the standard of the accommodation or the lifestyle of the residents. The Shambles was a well-known 1950s and 1960s party flat on the corner of St David and Great King Streets, where Scribes Bookshop is today. Among the many named flats of the 1970s were the Hobbit’s Hovel, the Slagg Heep (158 Dundas Street) and the Spanish Slum (16-18 London Street). In the 1990s Sarah herself lived in the Mouse House (888 Cumberland Street), a rundown flat so named because of all its vermin. The Shit House Chateau (47 London Street) was voted the worst flat in Dunedin in the students’ association’s 2012 awards. In an innovative project, the Chateau (as the Otago Daily Times politely names it), was rented by a group of students belonging to environmental group Generation Zero in 2013. Their goal was to tidy up the house and turn it into a healthy home as an inspiration to both landlords and students.

The DSIR in 2000. Image courtesy of Sarah Gallagher.

The Pink Flat, after its door was repainted in 2004. Image courtesy of Sarah Gallagher.

Of course, not all Dunedin student flats are rundown dives and there are many modern or renovated places on the rental market. But it is the older “character” buildings that tend to attract names. Many include subtle, or not so subtle, sexual references, such as the Cock and Swallow, while some refer to drinking exploits, such as the DSIR (Department of Student Inebriation Research). Others are more cultural or esoteric in origin. Pink Flat The Door at 3 Clyde Street, named in 1988 by a group of students including broadcaster Wallace Chapman, was a “freedom flat” inspired by Skinner’s philosophy of a free society. The door design refers to Pink Floyd’s classic album The Wall. Some names reflect the history of the building. From the late 1990s comes Bruce’s Beenjamin’ Butchery, located at 15 Ethel Benjamin Place and clearly visible from State Highway 1. The house used to be a butcher’s shop, and Bruce was the landlord. Others reflect the identity of the flatmates. The house at 40 Dundas Street, once upon a time known as the Greasy Beaver Lodge, has recently become the Embassy, complete with Samoan flag.

The Greasy Beaver Lodge in 2000. Image courtesy of Sarah Gallagher.

Ironically, one of today’s most famous Otago flats has no name. In 2006 a group of friends from Unicol moved into a flat at 660 Castle Street and became known as “the boys from 660”. When the band they formed made its first recording and needed a name, they selected Six60. The band has since gone on to great success, and recently returned to Otago to perform at 2014 orientation, attracting what is claimed as the biggest crowd in O-week history.

Sarah’s project is clearly shedding new light on the fascinating cultural history of Otago student life. Have you got any stories of named flats to share, either with her or here?

Experts on the radio

Tags

1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 2010s, biochemistry, chemistry, history, home science, law, mathematics, media, music, physics, politics, public health, radio, university extension, zoology

University of Otago staff are in demand to provide expert comment via the media on a very wide range of topics, and these days they can be accessed in a wide range of formats, from the traditional newspapers, magazines, radio and television to more recent technologies such as blogs and other social media. The university also makes many of its public lectures available via its own channel on iTunesU. Robert Patman, Bryce Edwards and Brian Roper of the Department of Politics appear regularly in the media as political pundits, and Edwards’s blog is a key source for those with an interest in current events. Mark Henaghan and Andrew Geddis from the Faculty of Law also appear frequently in the media.

In the ever-evolving media environment, radio remains one of the most popular means of disseminating some of the scholarship coming out of Otago. Just this morning, my colleague John Stenhouse of the Department of History and Art History spoke about a recent publication revising traditional assessments of one of New Zealand’s early governors, Robert Fitzroy, on Radio New Zealand National; his co-author Hamish Spencer of the Department of Zoology spoke about Fitzroy with Kathryn Ryan on the same station a few days ago. Among the other Otago staff interviewed at some length on Radio New Zealand National in the past month are Graeme Downes and Ian Chapman from the Department of Music (on Lorde’s current hit song), Philippa Howden-Chapman, Professor of Public Health in Wellington (on warrants of fitness for rental housing), Colin Gavaghan of the Faculty of Law (on the patenting of tools for gene selection), Peter Dearden of the Department of Biochemistry (on diet and longevity) and Dave Warren from the Department of Chemistry (on science ‘magic’ shows).

Robert Jack, Professor of Physics and radio pioneer. Photograph courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-220116-F.

It seems only fitting that Otago staff should appear often on the radio, because Robert Jack, Professor of Physics from 1914 to 1948, was the pioneer of radio broadcasting in this country. In 1921, assisted by other staff from the Department of Physics, Jack broadcast New Zealand’s first radio programme, just a year or two after the world’s first radio stations went on air in the USA and Holland. Like many Otago staff both past and present, Jack was skilled at popularising his scholarship in the form of public lectures – the radio offered a new opportunity to reach out beyond the walls of academia. This was clearly the goal of his colleague Robert Bell, Professor of Mathematics from 1919 to 1948, in his 1940 broadcast on 4YA Dunedin, “The human side of mathematics”. As the Listener commented, figures may at first seem dull, but Bell “knows very well how to make them interesting”. The cartoon of the clichéd “hoary old beaver” of a mathematician bore little resemblance to Bell, a dapper Scotsman renowned for his clear thinking and his warm nature.

A cartoon which accompanied the listing for Professor Bell’s radio talk, from the Listener, 9 August 1940. Reproduced with the permission of the New Zealand Listener.

Perhaps the most influential radio programmes to originate from the University of Otago were those presented by the Extension Service of the School of Home Science. The service commenced in 1929 to provide outreach into the community, particularly the rural community, through tutors and a consultation service for the public. I’m not sure when their regular radio broadcasts began or ended, but a 1958 survey of an Otago town (possibly Oamaru) by Judith King of the Department of Adult Education revealed that a quarter of the women surveyed were “constant listeners” to the weekly home science talks on the YA network (intriguingly, King dismissed this as “only 25 per cent”). Most of these programmes focussed on nutrition and foods, but a few surviving scripts in the archives of the Department of Clothing and Textiles reveal that home science staff also gave radio talks on various other topics, such as creating a wardrobe. By the 1960s the Extension Service was also producing cookery programmes for commercial radio stations.

These days we can listen to radio programmes at our leisure by podcast or via the internet, as evidenced by the links in this post to recent broadcasts. Radio was once a much more ephemeral medium, but it could still have lasting significance. In her 1958 survey, King encountered a woman who, each week when the home science radio talk was due, “sat down with pencil and paper to record the ideas and recipes.”

Have radio programmes and interviews with Otago staff had an impact on your life? Were there any particularly engaging radio speakers from the university? Do you remember listening to the home science radio talks? I’d love to hear more about Otago’s radio connections!