As a former student I welcome the announcement that Otumoetai College is to be rebuilt. That it quite literally stinks, is damp, rotting, and dangerous is a disgrace to our community. It should have been fixed a long time ago.

Sufficient funds have also been provided to recreate the school entrance, allowing better access.

I would like to suggest we create an entrance suitable to the educational aspirations of the school and our community – to build something durable that speaks to those aspirations and which will remain as a constant symbol of those aspirations as the institution behind it evolves to meet the changing needs of its community.

Traditionally, that is done by building a substantial gatehouse or portcullis, built to impose and usually emblazoned with the school motto, which in this instance is ‘Doctrina Vitam Illuminet' ...'let learning enlighten life'.

I have always felt that motto, intended to inspire the creation of good citizens and decent humans, is a worthy aspiration and is one that should receive greater prominence. To emblazon it in stone above the entrance to the school will ensure that all future generations of students and teachers will know it, absorb its message and hopefully be inspired by it.

D Tank, Matua (Abridged).