Tragic tale reminder of indelible memories
Reading about the suicide of a 12-year-old girl in 2019 (ODT 24.9.25) reminded me of two students who committed suicide when I was a school pupil in the early 1960s.
David was 13, first year at a different high school to me in Palmerston North and he told me on the country school bus that he was terrified the boys were going to throw him in the school pool as he couldn’t swim. That night he went into the garage and ended his young life.
The next year, Graeme, a cousin in Christchurch, who had working class parents, was awarded a position in a private school for first years because he was academically bright. So he went to that school and within the first few weeks went home and killed himself.
He was bullied because he was from a lower class family.
Life Matters Suicide Trust offers "safe talk training" and the importance of discussing it with students and on public education.
It is so important as so many children commit suicide in New Zealand.
As a high school teacher for many years I always raised the topic for discussion in class because those two young deaths when I was a teenager struck me indelibly.
[Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason.]
Where were you?
"The genocide must end", Jacinda Ardern declared last week. No doubt it should, no doubt her voice matters.
But Jacinda, where have you been in the last two years? While Gazans were killed by the thousands and starved, while the most heinous crimes of the last century are livestreamed to our phones? Now, a second before it will become too late, you spoke.
This declaration will not be enough to win our respect back. Omar El Akkad’s book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This sums it up: "In time, there will be nothing particularly controversial about using these words to describe the things they were created to describe (genocide) ... Once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any this was allowed to happen. But for now it’s so much safer to look away. To keep one’s head down, periodically checking the balance of polite society to see it is not too troublesome yet to state what to the conscience was never unclear."
Anti who?
Dame Jacinda Ardern has called the war in Gaza a "genocide" ahead of the ongoing UN General Assembly meeting. Of course that won’t satisfy the "hate Jacinda brigade who are determined to impugn her integrity no matter what.
Anyone who expresses sympathy for the citizens of Gaza and greater Palestine is condemned as anti-semitic. Which branch of anti-semitism would that be I fondly ask?
Wikipedia tells us "Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (Ammonites, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and Philistines) and Habesha peoples."
It is timely to remind ourselves the Israeli agenda dating back to first prime minister David ben Gurian is to replace all Palestinians with Israelites.
Value judgement
When used as criteria, personal wealth doth not a would-be local body politician necessarily make.
Meeting called to uphold student democracy
I want to provide clarity on recent commentary about my role at Otago University Students Association and the events surrounding the Boycott Divest and Sanctions Policy.
I am not the president of OUSA — I currently serve as the political representative, with a single vote on the executive.
Earlier this year, OUSA held a referendum on whether to adopt a BDS policy. The outcome was decisive, with 53.5% voting yes and 31.5% voting no.
Despite this, the executive subsequently voted to remove BDS, effectively overturning the referendum result. On principle, I called a special general meeting (SGM) to ensure the democratic decision of the student body was respected. At that SGM, 99.5% of voting students supported the Boycott Divest and Sanctions Policy.
Following this, I was asked to resign from the executive because I had called the SGM. My actions were not about undermining process, but about upholding student democracy and ensuring that the will of the wider student body was carried through.
[Jett Groshinski is a Labour candidate for the Dunedin City Council.]
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