OUSA’s ironic take on health and success
JAMES Heath, president of the Otago University Students’ Association, seems to enjoy irony. According to the April 12 report in the
ODT, one of his top priorities is encouraging physical health and promoting better mental health.
Those are worthy aims, but it’s hard to relate them to the event which Mr Heath was promoting — another Charity Fight Night.
Mr Heath enthused about the ‘‘massive journey’’ that some of those preparing for last year’s charity fights had made, and claimed that the emphasis, for both OUSA and himself, is on health and safety, with the wellbeing of the fighters their top priority.
Well, most of the possible contestants will probably be pretty physically fit already, and any who aren’t will be weeded out during the selection process in the first six weeks of training.
So it’s unlikely that the training will improve the physical or mental health of those taking part (superfitness isn’t necessarily healthy: for instance, it can suppress ovulation), and being punched certainly won’t.
And will any of the up to 350 members of the audience, who aren’t being urged to get fit, like the contestants, but to ‘‘get glammed up’’ for the night, improve their physical or mental health as a result of watching 26 individuals bash each other about?
Let’s be realistic about boxing, falsely called ‘‘the noble art’’: it’s highest aim is to cause brain damage. That’s most obvious when a fight is won by a knockout, or when looking at the shambling wrecks that many professional boxers become, but even apparently ineffective blows to the head cause bleeding from fine blood vessels in the brain.
The ‘‘regular medical checks’’ to which contestants will be subjected probably won’t detect any immediate damage, but the effects of repeated blows are likely to show up later.
Gladiatorial contests have a long, sad history, pandering to a bloodlust that seems to be deeply implanted in humankind.
No doubt Roman men and women also got ‘‘glammed up’’ to watch fights to the death in the Colosseum, and other amphitheatres throughout the empire, for entertainment. But civilisation depends on restraining, not encouraging, the baser aspects of humanity.
Civis is much older than Mr Heath, and it’s quite a few years since an MRI suggested that the Civis brain appeared to be normal, so it may be that Mr Heath’s thought processes are nimbler than a mere columnist’s, but Civis suspects that others, too, will have difficulty in understanding how inflicting and suffering brain damage, or watching it for entertainment, brings better physical or mental health for anyone.
Will OUSA, perhaps, promote Smokefree Aotearoa by arranging a smokeringblowing contest?
While reading about OUSA’s Charity Fight Night Civis was puzzled by Mr Heath’s words: ‘‘It’s responding to firstly what the students want. Last year it was incredibly successful.’’ No ‘‘secondly’’ is mentioned.
If there isn’t one, what’s the purpose of the word ‘‘firstly’’ in that statement?
Civis is a collector (books in particular, stamps when younger) and wonders if this suggests another, less bulky (that should please the family) field of collection: examples of the padding of sentences in a vain attempt to sound impressive.
Not the overuse of adjectives (that’s another issue) but the interpolation of unnecessary words or phrases, such as the frequent, irritating, and completely pointless (how’s that for an overdose of adjectives?) addition of ‘‘going forward’’ to references to future activities. Grrr!
While Civis is in grumpy mood, what about the Hyde Street Party
(like boxing, not a new subject), lauded this year as ‘‘successful’’? It’s good for students to dress up and enjoy time with others, and it could, presumably, be regarded as progress from previous parties that, apparently, no fires were lit and noone climbed on a roof.
But should OUSA be proud that ‘‘only’’ three of those attending were arrested (two for violence), and 17 taken to Dunedin Hospital’s Emergency Department, most for alcoholrelated problems?