Archive
Editorial: This Is Who You Should Vote for in the OUSA Elections
Posted 2:02pm Friday 14th September 2018 by Joel MacManus
Editorial: Firstly, welcome to the Drugs Issue, our biggest issue of the year. The print run this week is 6,000 copies, that’s up from just over 3,000 at the start of the year, so a massive thank you to all you wonderful people for being bored enough to pick up a Critic. It’s Read more...
Tickets Are Dead and Critic Is Claiming Full Credit
Posted 4:06pm Thursday 13th September 2018 by Charlie O’Mannin
OPINION: Not a single ticket is running for this year’s OUSA election. Critic has won its long war on OUSA election tickets and are in the process of killing all our horses, saying goodbye to the trenches and boarding the steamer for home. In the past three years, a total of 30 OUSA Read more...
Josh Smythe Allowed to Run for Re-Election After Absurdly Tense Meeting
Posted 7:40am Monday 10th September 2018 by Charlie O’Mannin
Josh Smythe, OUSA Re-Creation Officer, almost lost the ability to run for re-election in an EXTREMELY STRESSFUL emergency general meeting of the Exec after he got his application form in two hours after the deadline. Josh thought that the cutoff for applications was 4pm Read more...
Analysis: Laura Cairns and James Heath Are the Best OUSA Presidential Candidates in Years
Posted 11:26pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Joel MacManus
This is weird. No one saw this coming. Out of nowhere, the annual OUSA CV-padding elections have actually produced a really, really fucking good presidential race. And best of all, there’re no fucking tickets, so we can actually have a contest of ideas instead of just a bunch of cliques in Read more...
Campus Watch vs. Alt Right Feud Enters Second Week
Posted 11:21pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Joel MacManus
University Proctor Dave Scott is investigating allegations of Campus Watch harassment, after a student posted a video of his interaction with officers online. Malcolm Moncreif-Spittle, an alt-right activist, had been putting up posters promoting a far-right Youtuber. The previous week, as Read more...
Te Roopū Māori Proposing to Leave OUSA
Posted 11:07pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Charlie O’Mannin
Te Roopū Māori (TRM), the Otago University Maori Students’ Association, is looking to leave OUSA and get funding from the University independently. The decision follows OUSA receiving criticism last year for cutting Te Roopū’s funding as part of across the board Read more...
I Got Blazed and Went to the Anti-Fluoride Lecture: a Review
Posted 10:29pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Alex MacKygee
Last Tuesday, Saint David Lecture Theatre played host to a talk titled ‘Fluoride Is a Neurotoxin that Reduces Children’s IQ’. Personally, my IQ and dental health were both (probably) fine growing up in a fluoridated area, and I never noticed a drop in either until I started Read more...
When is a Studio Room not a Studio Room?
Posted 10:28pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Esme Hall
It’s that time of year when it looks like most of the good flats have already been signed and those people in your hall you agreed to flat with in O-Week might not actually be your best friends for life. You might be considering throwing in the towel and moving to St Kilda, or just into a Read more...
Local Good Cunts Save Students From a Shit Flat
Posted 10:26pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Sinead Gill
We’ve all approached a grotty flat for a viewing and, in a wave of flat-seeking desperation, thought, it might not be that shit. To save students from themselves, the four tenants of an old corner-store flat came up with the ultimate idea: leaving notes. Not just subtle post-it notes Read more...
Students for Environmental Action Given $5,000
Posted 10:17pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Thea Bailie-Bellew
The Students for Environmental Action (SEA) club has been bequeathed $5,000 from the Estate of Kenneth David Mason, a gift that aimed to ensure a continued interest in nature and ecological preservation among university students. An avid lover of the outdoors, Kenneth Mason was an honorary member Read more...
Law Students Slam Law Camp Review
Posted 10:02pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Esme Hall
The Society of Otago University Law Students (SOULS) have got more than 200 people to submit their experiences of Law Camps in protest after a draft review of Law Camps was released that only drew on interviews with five former attendees. A review of Law Camp was commissioned from Dunedin Read more...
Who Is Watching Campus Watch?
Posted 9:58pm Thursday 6th September 2018 by Joel MacManus
EDITORIAL: A couple of years ago, I lived on Hyde Street. There was a flat on the street that was apparently connected to the Mongrel Mob. There were a bunch of high school cunts that would always show up on Saturdays looking for a fight. There were drunk randoms constantly trying to crash Read more...
The Otago Uni Students Running an Art Exhibition for 125 Years of Women’s Suffrage
Posted 11:32pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Esme Hall
Two Otago Art History students have organised an ambitious two-week art show accompanied by a publication and events to commemorate 125 years of women’s suffrage. The show centres on intersectional feminism, which event organisers, sisters Kari and Lydie Schmidt see as a “natural Read more...
Opinion: The OUSA Squash Courts Have Become a Money Pit
Posted 11:31pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Sinead Gill
OUSA is allowing the Squash Club and its 86 Facebook group members to make $bank$ on something that all students pay for. Since the only people that look at the OUSA budget are the Executive, Critic, and total nerds, it is likely that you don’t know that your student services fee goes Read more...
Shit-Show Chateau up for Sale
Posted 11:30pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Esme Hall
Offshore owners appear to have given up on the ‘Shit-Show Chateau’ at 47 London Street, despite a high-profile renovation attempt by students in 2013. The five bedroom, solar-panelled flat, that Harcourts euphemistically dubbed a “prime development opportunity,” is up for Read more...
WWII Mortar Shell Found Under Leith Bridge
Posted 11:29pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Sinead Gill
The Police and New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) were recently called over a bomb found in the Leith, and it wasn’t the first one this year. The old mortar shell was unearthed during excavation for the construction of a new bridge near the Burns building. It had been chilling just one metre Read more...
The DCC Spent 73 Times More Money on Ed Sheeran than Kendrick Lamar
Posted 11:27pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Joel MacManus
The DCC spent just $3,181 on promotion and events for Kendrick Lamar’s Dunedin concert, compared to $221,000 for Ed Sheeran’s three concerts, according to details released to Critic under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA – it sounds gross if you Read more...
Opinion: Why It Sucks that the Art History Department Is Getting Cut
Posted 11:16pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Esme Hall
I am where I am today because of art. My father is an art gallery curator and my mother is a jeweller and after-school art teacher. People’s desires to see art, learn about art, wear art and encourage their children to make art have supported my family throughout my life. My parents encouraged Read more...
Student Drag Competition Returns After Hiatus
Posted 11:13pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Charlie O’Mannin
The Great Southern Drag Off, a student-run drag show and competition, will be returning after a long hiatus. The 2018 event, Tucked and Loaded, will be run at Stilettos, in conjunction with Dunedin Pride and Sacrilege Productions, an alternative performance group, on the 14th of September. Critic Read more...
Alt-Right Activist Claims “Harassment” from Campus Watch
Posted 11:12pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Joel MacManus
Otago student Malcolm Moncrief-Spittle is claiming “harassment” from Campus Watch after officers removed a poster he put on a public noticeboard in the Richardson Building. Moncrief-Spittle had put up a number of posters promoting Far-Right activist Lauren Southern’s videos. A Read more...


