Debatable is a column written by the Otago University Debating Society. The Debating Society welcomes new members and meets at the Business School every Tuesday at 6pm.
For
The change in season rolls by unnoticed in the depths of first-sem exam hell, but with calmer times ahead we can stop and take a look around us. Of course, the negative side of this column will bitch about the colder weather, but this is actually winter’s greatest strength. Here are a few reasons why.
The first change seen on campus is the explosion of student-couture. Cold temperatures mean rugging up in more clothes, and that just gives you more to show off with. Go nuts with layering. Hell, you can wear everything you own and slay through sheer volume. And for the less fashion-conscious among you, putting a jacket or a woolly jumper over that tee will do wonders.
Winter gives the young freshers a good hiding to sort the wheat from the chaff – anyone still out on the piss in sub-zero is sure to be from good stock. Cold also gets the arson spirit going in the student populace, harkening back to ancestral couch fire traditions. The camaraderie of crowding about a burning pile of old Critics and Domino’s boxes in the back garden goes unmatched.
On the softer side, the winter atmosphere has a unique loveliness to it. Crisp air and glittering ice crystals? Mist rolling off the hills? Leafless trees in a stark sky? Gorgeous. Perfect weather for a date. Offer them your hoodie (tried and tested seduction), or just huddle together “for body heat.” Maybe sharing a bed could keep the night chill away, too.
It’s always easier and cooler to hate on things, and there’s nothing easier to hate than The Current Thing. Currently, what we have is winter. In five months you’ll be moaning about trying to sleep in the heat. Why not romanticise the season a little?
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Dunedin July has the dreariness of autumn, but the aesthetic orange leaves are replaced with more mud, grit, and bleak faces than you can hope to crop out of your Instagram posts. There isn’t even the dignity of a blanket of fresh snow, not for us; nor are the winters mild and forgiving.
Let me paint out your days for the next two months: walk to campus before sunrise over the solid turf, endure the symphony of hacking and wheezing and sniffing through your lecture, and make the most of your two free hours of washed-out daylight by huddling around a tepid coffee on Union Lawn. Then it’s the trek back to the flat, sun already set, knowing your flatmates are all arguing over the $400 power bill, with no-one allowed to crank up the heater until a majority consensus is met.
No flats are hosting tonight, and if they were, the long icy walk across town in the dark would be enough to put you off. Your breath is hanging in the air because your shitass landlord hasn’t sent someone around to fix the window that won’t close. What choices did you make that led you here? What sins could possibly justify this miserable existence?
This might be an argument of pure pathos, but I wrote this column in the dark and it’ll be dark 14 hours from now when I start my morning. I’ll wake up tasting ash from the coal fumes rolling down from NEV. Christ, it’s bad. Make a real meal, a stew or a curry or something, and put your skin in the sun for fifteen minutes a day. You’ll live but you probably won’t be having the best time.