slice of life

From the pages of the South China Morning Post this week in 1969

In a move that probably contributed to the poor standards of English today, the University of Hong Kong did away with the requirement of a pass in the Use of English Examination for admission.

However, all candidates wishing to enter the university were still required to take the examination immediately before entry.

Individual faculties then determined their own minimum requirements as far as the Use of English Examination was concerned.

Some 3,000 students were to sit for the entrance examination for the university between April and May. They were competing for just 725 places.

The Canadian government hardened its 'open door' immigration policy as a result of students riots at normally quiet Sir George Williams University in Montreal and the bombing of the city's stock exchange.

The police claimed non-Canadians were involved in both cases.

The destruction of C$2 million worth of computer equipment at the university shocked the nation, although there had been student disturbances elsewhere in Canada.

At the beginning of February, a group of militant students staged a two-week siege, alleging that a professor had taken a racist attitude towards certain black scholars.

Sifting through the 90 militants arrested, the police found 28 were not students, and 48 were from outside Canada.

In Italy, police, workers and students clashed in several cities as widespread demonstrations against the government's university reform project disrupted campuses.

The most violent clashes were in Bologna, where students and workers joined forces. In the fighting that broke out, one police officer suffered head wounds and other people were badly bruised.

Similar demonstration took place in Palermo, Sicily, Messina, Ancona and Milan and Rome.

Melody Wu, a 15-year-old student at St Paul's Co-educational College, achieved a double distinction when she was awarded the prestigious Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music scholarship and took first place in the piano solos: Chopin waltzes competition at the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival.

Melody was the second in her family to be awarded the music scholarship, which covered tuition for three years.

The #1,200 award was announced at the Music Festival by Dennis Parker, chairman of the Schools Music Association.

Melody's sister, Enloc, won the same scholarship in 1963 and Melody hoped to join her in London.

Although the daughters of well-known Happy Valley music teachers Moses and Constance Wu, the girls were given tuition by Betty Drown, a Kowloon teacher.

Golda Meir, 70, former Israeli foreign minister, accepted the Labour Party nomination as candidate for prime minister after an overwhelming vote of 287 votes backing her nomination in the party's central committee.

No votes were cast against her, but there were 45 abstentions.

The decision virtually ensured Mrs Meir's appointment as head of the government to succeed Levi Eshkol, who had died the previous week. The first woman to hold cabinet rank in Israel was poised to become its first woman prime minister.

Unidentified gunmen broke through a funeral cortege in the Philippines, snatched one of the pallbearers and shot him dead.

They then fled, leaving behind stunned mourners and other funeral participants at the cemetery in Ilocos Sur province.

A row about a school for Japanese children in Johannesburg's exclusive Saxonwold suburb flared up between residents and the city council.

Japanese in South Africa were exempted from residents' laws governing other non-whites.

Property owners said they were not objecting on racial grounds, but that it would lower the area's tone, which had no shops, no boarding houses nor other private undertakings.

'We just don't want undertakings of this kind in our suburb,' one resident said.