BULL Magazine 2012 - Issue 4 by BULL Magazine

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HOW TO HOST THE SYDNEY FESTIVAL THE FASHION BLOG PHENOMENON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DISHARMONY IN ACADEMIA

ONCE UPON A TOME RISE OF THE BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL ISSUE 04, 2012

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The big decisions that set our national fate are tricked up by a sophisticated, expensive packaging industry to impress us. It’s the journalist’s job to tear oﬀ the packaging. PETER HARTCHER Political Editor The Sydney Morning Herald See back cover for subscription details

Subscribe, save and stay ahead smh.com.au/usyd

smh UNI PASS

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ISSUE 04 CONTENTS

BOOK BUSTERS

28 EDITORS

Bronte Lambourne Lawrence Muskitta Misa Han Pierce Hartigan Xiaoran Shi usubullmag@gmail.com

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

Hannah-Rose Yee, Andrew Batt-Rawden, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, Adam Chalmers, Loren Nilsson, Emily Swanson, Jill Grant, Flora Grant, Michael Todd, Jake Reynolds, Erin Stewart, Edwin Montoya Zorrilla, Art Benjamin, Gabriella Edelstein, Emily Swanson, John Rowley, Bianca Healey, Tom Neale, Nick Simone, Erin Stewart, Dorian Vanitas DESIGN

Carl Ahearn Anjali Belani PUBLICATIONS MANAGER

Chris Beaumont WWW.USUONLINE.COM LIKE US FACEBOOK.COM/USUBULLMAGAZINE The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of BULL Magazine was correct at the time of printing. This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union and The University of Sydney. ISSUE 04, 2012

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EMBRACE THE CHALLENGE

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS

THE QUANDARY OF QUOTAS

TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH

Shutter Up News Columns Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s On Interview Campus Chatter Youniversity Food & Booze Travel Fashion Sport Science & Tech The Arts Reviews Club Hub Stop. Puzzletime The Bull Pen

04 05 06 08 17 24 31 32 33 35 36 37 38 40 40 43 45

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BULL USUONLINE.COM WHAT’S SHUTTERON UP

MIRROR OF MORTALITY Taken in the safety mirror on the corner of Physics and Fisher Rd, the fallen leaves and the afternoon sun remind us of the temporality of our existence and that death is only a footstep away. Watch out when crossing.

SHUTTER UP

PHOTOGRAPHER: DORIAN VANITAS [CANON EOS 600D F5, 1/80]

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Send us your unique, arty or plain cool (as in, not another quad shot) campus snap to usubullmag@gmail.com. We’ll publish our faves each edition in full page glory. High-res, 300dpi jpegs only – portrait-orientation.

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ISSUE 04 NEWS

1 Last year it was bubbly fun, what do the Campus Culture directors have in store in June?

2 University Chancellor and NSW Governor Professor Marie Bashir will retire at the end of the year.

NEWS REVUE CASTS LIMBER UP Auditions for most of the University’s Revues have now drawn to a close. Hundreds of performers and stage crews of all faculties and persuasions are all set to knuckle down over the winter break to make the 2012 season the most explosive, unpredictable and controversial yet. With the bar having already been set high by the AUJS Jew Revue (Curb Your Judaism, featured in issue 3 of BULL Magazine), politicians, academics and media personalities alike must surely be trembling in their boots as the University’s brightest stars get ready to destroy them on stage in one of the Union’s oldest and proudest traditions. This year’s Revue season is packed with 10 Revues, including the stalwart faculties – Arts, Medicine, Law, Engineering, Architecture and Science; while Education and Social Work and

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Queer Revues return this year. Two newcomers for 2012 will add their own unique flavours to the Revues mix; The Conservatorium and Vet Science Revues make it ten Revues in all for this season. The big song and dance commences next semester week four. Tickets available on campus closer to the date.

CHANCELLOR MARIE BASHIR TO RETIRE In the Senate meeting of May 7, Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO announced that she would retire from her position as the University of Sydney’s Chancellor at the end of 2012. Professor Bashir took up the position in 2007, but Her Excellency has been a part of the University community from as early as 1950, when she arrived as an undergraduate in the Woman’s College to study a Bachelor of

Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. During this time, she also studied the violin in the Conservatorium of Music. She then continued to become a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in 1971. Her illustrious career in academia started as a tutor in Faculty of Medicine in 1972 and continued until she was the senior clinical professor of psychiatry in 1993. While working as a teacher, she also served as the Chairperson of the Council of The Women’s College from 1983 until 1992 and a patron to the AustraliaVietnam Medical Trust, the Australian Lebanese Foundation and the Graduate Choir of the University. She has also been strongly involved with projects in indigenous health, juvenile justice and mental health issues as the area director for mental health services in the Central Sydney Area Health Service and senior consultant psychiatrist with the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern and Kempsey. The Chancellor was also named patron of the University of Sydney Union. Previous Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown said of her, “Professor Bashir has made an enormous contribution to this University over many years since

her days as a pioneering student and academic.”

END SEMESTER IN STYLE As the excitement of the USU Elections finally dies down, thoughts turn to the dreaded exams period in mid-June. But before then, the all-important question of pre-exam partying needs an answer. Once again the FUNCH bunch ride in on mighty steeds to the rescue of us damsels under study-distress. The USU’s Campus Culture convenors will bring the End of Semester Blow Out to campus on 6 June. Details at the time of print are still under tight wraps. Rumours range from a giant slide to an actual gorilla let loose on a diet of red cordial and sherbet. Whatever happens, you can be assured the result is f-u-n, fun! Meanwhile, the Postgrads lift their weary heads from their theses and will assemble at Hermann’s Bar on Friday 8 June for an end of semester drinks session. And the Queer program coordinators have rustled up a keg to host a house party in the Queerspace the same Friday. Head on over for some beer and pizza – it’s the Friday of the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, so there’s no reason not to come along.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM COLUMNS

COLUMNS EDITORS’ NOTE BRONTE, LAWRENCE, MISA, PIERCE AND XIAORAN

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flown! How did it get so late so soon?” With rhymes like that, the real question here should be why Dr Seuss is still not yet a Poet Laureate. That man. Such insight. Such poignancy. But, seriously, where the fuck has all the time gone? It seems like only yesterday when we were frolicking in the summer sun without a care (or library fines, or closed book 70 per cent exams) in the world. Thankfully, we’re here to help at BULL Magazine. Before you descend once again into your hideout bunker for another round of textbook madness, explore with us the lofty heights of mega-successful book franchises; the eventual takeover of the world by Australian fashion bloggers; the murky waters of the Sydney Uni staff cuts; the two sides of the coin that is affirmative action; and the fantastical world of festivals. If that’s not enough, why not share a nostalgic lunchbox meal, admire street art, or go roadtrippin’ with us? Oh, and did we mention the pimped out Sydney Uni lecturers we snared? Take a peek, if you’re not already busy catching up with Henry Rollins. Fear not, friends. Winter may have officially arrived, bringing with it the doom and gloom of exams, but with BULL by your side, at least now can be the winter of our discontent. Best of luck! BULL xx

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PRESIDENT’S DESK

THE USU’S PRESIDENT GIVES YOU THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING IN THE BUSY USU OFFICES.

SIBELLA MATTHEWS By the time this issue hits the stands, five new Directors will have been elected to the USU Board. Thanks must go to Jo Morrison, Penny Crossley and the whole Election Team for all their hard work in making sure that the Election experience is a happy one. Thank you also to the voters for getting out there on the day and having a say in how your student experience is governed. But of course, my biggest thanks must go to the seven candidates who bravely put their name forward for consideration of the electorate. It’s not easy getting up in front of lecture theatres and explaining your passion for student life.You open yourself up to criticism from student media and other campaigners, and become a target for those who think it’s okay to belittle someone just because they’ve put their name out there as a candidate. It doesn’t take any courage to slander or bully someone, but it certainly takes a lot of guts to throw your hat in the ring in the hope of making the USU a better organisation. From the Student Board Directors to the Festival Directors to the Presidents of our 200 Clubs & Societies – the USU relies on students to deliver the co-curricular experience, making it a truly student-run organisation. Often these positions involve real sacrifices of time and money, whether that’s editing a publication like BULL magazine late into the night, or spending hours organising a club event when you have an assignment due the next day. These people are not driven by remuneration or an extended CV. They volunteer their time because they want to make your university a more vibrant and exciting place. On behalf of the USU, I’d like to thank those members who dedicate their time so generously to the student experience, and for being a constant source of personal inspiration.

STUDENT LEADER DIARY

EACH MONTH, WE ASK SOME OF THE STUDENTS OUT IN THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE.

AL-KARIM MADHAVJI AND SHUNING SUN 2012 HUMANITARIAN WEEK DIRECTORS For one week in May, the USU’s Humanitarian Week brings social justice, ethical thinking and humanitarian issues to the forefront of our attention with a positive and inspiring twist. Now in its fifth year, Humanitarian Week has come to a close and it is time for us to reflect on all the accomplishments we made and all we could have made around the university and in the lives of others. This year, our focus was to make a positive difference in the lives of those less fortunate through charitable events and raising awareness of humanitarian issues. This was done with the aid of the charity officer and campus clubs. Throughout the week, the Humanitarian Week Directors held a Food Bank and a Wishing Wall to help the homeless and to help children suffering from poverty and a lack of access to education. Other charitable events included Climb4Change where after giving a donation to the AIME Mentoring Program volunteers, people could enjoy the unprecedented experience of rock climbing on Eastern Avenue. It was a great way to promote health, physical activity and play; privileges no children should be deprived of. The rock wall had line of eager climbers all day, and it was unfortunate that we had to wrap up, depriving students of the chance to play.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM WHAT’S ON

WHAT’S ON TUE

WEEK 13 (JUNE)

WEEK 12 (MAY)

MON

FEMINIST SOCIETY IGM 12PM, Isabel Fidler Room, Manning

FOR THE FULL CALENDAR OF EVENTS – HEAD TO USUONLINE.COM AND CLICK THE CALENDAR. CLUBS AND SOCS – REMEMBER TO SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ON THE WEBSITE!

WED

THU

FRI

USU BOARD ELECTIONS

MUSE PRESENTS : TRIAL BY JURY AND THE SORCERER

EDSOC: SPEAKEASY CRUISE

(Wed-Sat) 7.30pm Studio B (Holme)

7PM

SUDS PRESENTS: THE LONESOME WEST

QUIDDITCH SOCIETY IGM

POSTGRAD END OF SEMESTER DRINKSA

Wed-Sat 7PM, Cellar Theatre.

5PM, Badham Room, Holme Building

FUNCH END OF SEMESTER BLOW OUT!

Hermann's Bar

QUEER FRAT PARTY 5pm, Queerspace

EXAMS

STUVAC

dress-up theme.]

EXAMS

S M A X E 25

S M A X E

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S M A X E 26

S M A X E

PHOTOSOC AND FINEARTSOC EXHIBITION

SUGS:

Wed- Sun 6PM, Toxteth Hotel, Glebe

Greek BBQ 11.30am, Chemistry try Building BBQ

S M A X E 27

S M A X E

WEEKLY SPANISH CONVERSATION GROUP

ANTI-FLAG

S M A X E

4pm, Hermann's Bar

8pm, Manning Bar

S M A X E

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ISSUE 04 WHAT’S ON

MONDAYS

EVER WEEKY

WEEK 12 MONDAY 28 MAY

FREE FILM SCREENING THERE WILL BE POPCORN! 6pm, International Student Lounge

11am, Isabel Fidler Room, Manning

POKER

SURCAS WEEKLY TRAPEZE CLASS

6-8pm, Manning Bar

TUESDAYS

SU SCIENCE SOCIETY GENERAL MEETING

3-5pm, The Ledge Climbing Gym (near Ralph's)

EVER WEEKY

TUESDAY 29 MAY

TUESDAY TV 12-3pm, Manning Bar

GENERAL MEETING OF WOSOC

ROCK YA BALLS BINGO

9-10am, Mint Cafe

5-6pm, Manning Bar

WEDNESDAY 30 MAY

HERMANN’S TRIVIA 1-2pm, Hermann’s Bar

2-4pm, Sydney Conservatorium of Music

WEEK 13 MONDAY 4 JUNE FEMINIST SOCIETY IGM 12-1pm, Isabel Fidler, Manning

SU LIBERAL CLUB 6pm - 7pm, Holme Common Room

SURCAS WEEKLY TRAPEZE CLASS 3-5pm, The Ledge Climbing Gym (near Ralph's)

SUPA FINAL WEEKLY MEETING 11am-12pm, SUPA Office

WEDNESDAYS

SUSO PRESENTS DVORAK’S CELLO CONCERTO

EVER WEEKY

FORNIGHTLY MARKETS 11am – 3pm, Eastern Ave (7 March-16 May)

FORNIGHTLY FUNCH (FUN @ LUNCH) 1pm-2pm, Eastern Ave & various locations (14 March-6 June)

THURSDAY 31 MAY

5-6pm, Manning Bar

FILM SOCIETY FREE FILM SCREENING 6pm, International Student Lounge

SUNSET JAZZ 6:30-9:30pm, Manning Bar

PROJECT 52 COMEDY

VISION GENERATION AGM

WEDNESDAY 6 JUNE

SUGS FORTNIGHTLY BBQ

SURCAS WEEKLY TRAPEZE CLASS

11.30am-2pm, Chemistry Building BBQ

KICKS CLUB IGM

SURFING SOCIETY AGM 2-4pm, Isabel Fidler, Manning

TEASOC GENERAL MEETING 3.30-5pm, Holme Reading Room

INGSOC GENERAL MEETING

7.30-10.30pm, Hermann’s Bar

4-6pm, Manning Meeting Room 1

THURSDAYS

SPANISH CONVERSATION GROUP

EVER WEEKY

ECOPSOC SGM 5pm - 7pm, Hermann's Bar

11am, Isabel Fidler, Manning

11.30am-1pm, Isabel Fidler, Manning

MANNING TRIVIA

TUESDAY 5 JUNE

3-5pm, The Ledge Climbing Gym (near Ralph's)

THURSDAY 7 JUNE CHOCSOC AGM 4 - 5:30pm, The Loggia, Level 2, Manning House

GREENS ON CAMPUS GM 5-7pm, Manning Meeting Room 1

ENGINEERING REVUE GENERAL MEETING 12-2pm, Civil Lecture Theatre One

4-6pm, Hermann’s Bar

SCUBA DIVING SOCIETY IGM

1-2pm, Manning Bar

SUPA AGM

SEAGULL THURSDAYS $2 CHIPS

5.30pm, Pharmacy Common Room

12-1pm, Holme Meeting Room

THEATRESPORTS®

3-5pm, Manning Bar

POOL COMPETITION 4-6pm, International Student Lounge

FRIDAY JUNE 1 EDSOC SEMESTER 1 SPEAKEASY CRUISE 7pm – King St Wharf

FRIDAYS

EVER WEEKY

$5 EVERYTHINGS

ANTI-FLAG 8pm, Manning Bar

4-7pm, Manning Bar

FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE 7-11pm, Hermann’s Bar

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TOP PICKS SYDNEY ROCK 'N ROLL & ALTERNATIVE MARKET GRAND RE-OPENING Sunday 3 June 2012 10:30 am - 6pm, Manning House Entry by donation The Sydney Rock 'n Roll & Alternative Market is moving to a new home – Manning House and Manning Bar, Sydney University – Over three levels. The grand re-opening takes place on Sunday June 3, 2012. The Sydney Rock ‘n’ Roll & Alternative Market is the ultimate subculture market with more than 50 amazing live music culture related stalls. Fans of rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, goth, ska, metal, punk, alt. country, swing, burlesque, roller derby and more are all catered for. The market features rock ‘n’ roll, alternative and vintage fashion for men, women and children, jewellery, accessories, record's, CD's, DVDs , books, art, collectables, food stalls, a vintage car display, a children’s activity area, live music, DJs and loads more. Market Stalls are open from 10:30am - 4.00pm. Music from 11.00am - 5.45pm.

PHOTOSOC AND FINEARTSOC PHOTO AND ART EXHIBITION 13-17 June Toxteth Hotel, Glebe The pinnacles of visual art societies PhotoSoc and FineArtSoc - will occupy the pub in the heart of Glebe with art and photography. Come down for a healthy dose of visual feast before hitting the books.

SPANISH CONVERSATION GROUP 4 -6pm, Hermann's Bar

QUIDDITCH SOCIETY IGM 5pm - 7pm, Badham Room, Holme Building

FRIDAY 8 JUNE SU MENS SOCIETY IGM

1-4pm, Manning Bar

WEEKEND WARM-UP DJS

SUNDAY 3 JUNE

2-4pm, Isabel Fidler Room, Manning

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ALTERNATIVE MARKET 10am-6pm, Manning House

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

EMBRACE THE CHALLENGE & DO IT ANDREW BATTRAWDEN CHATS TO INCOMING SYDNEY FESTIVAL DIRECTOR LIEVEN BERTELS.

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ISSUE 04 FEATURE

ittle else speaks of the uniquely human celebration of culture and awe as fluently as that timeless pleasuresharing pursuit: the festival. Millennia separate us from the ancient Egyptians who celebrated the annual flooding of the Nile with feasts and music, yet we are no different in our fondness for getting together and throwing one big party. Art, music, performance, and a love of spectacle and entertainment bring people together, year after year. Here at the University of Sydney, the USU throws O-Week to welcome the new tertiary year with a vibrant party atmosphere, and later in the year, the Verge Festival specifically puts creativity in the spotlight. Both events are directed by students – a huge task and responsibility, but a system keeps the festivals youthful and dynamic. Nonetheless, hosting a big-scale event spanning several days on campus at one of Australia’s, and indeed the world’s, leading universities is no small feat. Thankfully, Sydney is home to another festival which leads by example. The Sydney Festival was first held in 1977, originally put together by local and state governments to attract more people to the city centre during summer holidays. Now it’s a fully-curated internationally-famed festival; in 2012 there were 399 performances of 122 events in a variety of styles, genres and performance art forms which had 580,000 attendances. But, festivals come in all shapes and sizes. The Adelaide Fringe Festival is an open access festival with over 800 events of all performance art forms which essentially takes over the City of Churches for 24 days. The three-night Weather Festival was held in a space that could fit only 30 people and featured multidisciplinary works by a group of emerging Sydney Conservatorium artists. Meanwhile, Verge Festival here on campus hosts around 30 odd events, ranging from theatre, comedy, live music and silent discos. As you can imagine, the cash budgets run from high in the millions, right down to just a couple of hundred bucks. Belgian native, Lieven Bertels, is the Sydney Festival Director for 2013-2015, a job both immensely desirable and somewhat daunting. Bertels comes from a music

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

background, having studied a Bachelor in Musicology and a Master in Composition. He eventually steered his career into production, artistic direction and curation; this experimentation with and diversification into a plethora of media is an attribute he believes to be pivotal to putting on an outstanding festival. “I think you have to have some connection with one of the art forms you want to live for and make happen,” he explained. “Even if then you take a role as a facilitator rather than an artist yourself.” At 30, Bertels was appointed the Artistic Director of the Concertgebouw Brugge in Belgium, and prior to this, his résumé boasted affiliations with BBC Scotland, Decca Records, Brussels Film Academy RITS and Belgium’s national broadcaster, VRT. In addition to his “day jobs” before the Concertgebouw, Bertels had consistently been producing events independently, and this was crucial to his professional development. “Even as a student I was organising concerts which is one of the ways you can learn to do what I do,” he says. Shoestring budgets, not being afraid to get your hands dirty, and passion are the currency of entry-level producing. Bertels is uncertain about the exact number of events he has produced, but he is a firm believer in the old motto: quality, not quantity. He became addicted to the thrill of festival success early on, and it is that same thrill which keeps him going. “The moment I sat down in a sold-out church where the concert was about to start and you hear the first notes of music and you see the total concentration of the performers and audience you think ... we must have done something right here, because everybody seems to enjoy this.” However, just as much as festivals are

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about creating a world where as many people worlds of design, and visual arts and multimedia arts ... they’re the more interesting trips.” as possible can enjoy themselves, orchestrating A three-year tenure for a festival director a festival involves the collaboration of a wellis becoming increasingly uncommon, but this chosen team. He humbly recognises that “It’s system leaves very little time for directors to not just you as a foreign curator coming in, develop their first festival. “It’s really your being a little dictator and claiming the festival, second festival they should be looking at,” says the festival also claims you.” Above a certain Bertels. “The idea of appointing somebody for level of production, he believes that festival three years in today’s world has become a bit of directors need to “have a large network of a ... nightmare scenario, because the lead-time colleagues in the field that you can rely on, for good work now is way beyond eight months that each know their own local markets, so I or a year.” And as newly-appointed director find out about new shows often before public of the Sydney Festival, Bertels only has from announcements through colleagues”. A strong February to August this year to finalise the team is also important for sourcing new acts, for program for next year, which he laments is not example, when he is unavailable, Bertels sends enough time. “For your first festival, you will associates overseas – recently to Paris – who invariably bring things that are already on your are then able to present acts they consider backburner ... the big surprises and the big worthy of consideration. sorts of shifts, if there are any, are more likely to Rigorous research and time appear in your second festival or your third”. management skills are another But, Bertels is not shaken. Navigating the must if you want to make it in the corporate side of production, namely juggling festival business, but in this modern stakeholder expectations and artistic integrity, age, sometimes all you need is Google. has been a breeze, he says, although one “Especially for smaller acts, [research] challenge for the Sydney Festival thus far has happens over the internet these days,” he been engaging a student market. “The one confides. “Some companies will inform what issue, of course, is that we are a summer festival they think could be their ideal channels of happening in the summer holidays, so a student festivals and venues simply by reaching out to doesn’t always feel like a student in that holiday you and sending you links to little bits of video period,” he says, meaning the Festival won’t or whatever they have online.” target students as such because “they’re thinking, Bertels recently toured China with the view critical individuals [who] have their own taste.” of uncovering hidden gems of talent for the However, he is adamant about engaging with Sydney Festival, and he could not more highly the University of Sydney and other tertiary recommend thinking outside the box. Festivals institutions to maintain the youthful spirit of the are places of innovation and discovery, so don’t Festival. “We might actually be more active on be afraid to visit new and weird locations, campus in the next festival than we have been or even to check out what your before,” he hints. competition is doing – Bertels So, what does the European regularly attends larger “IT’S NOT festival veteran really think about festivals for inspiration. this celebration of our city? The JUST YOU AS A “To see what is available Sydney Festival “has the courage in the underground FOREIGN CURATOR to put up popular work together scene of a certain city, COMING IN, BEING A with more edgy work [and] ... what’s living in the most festivals in the world ... LITTLE DICTATOR AND don’t have that kind of width, so CLAIMING THE FESTIVAL, that is really exciting.” Although we could hardly THE FESTIVAL ALSO ask the new Festival Director to CLAIMS YOU.” spill the beans about all that he has planned for 2013, he does leave us some tantalising clues. (This is a man who knows how to keep you coming back for more!) He’s already signalled interest in bringing works from China to our shores, and has also expressed enthusiasm in exploring “some of the more unusual spaces that Sydney has to offer”. Like all of us students, Bertels has gone through higher education, toughed it out in those tricky preliminary years, and taken personal financial risks to develop his skills in his own way. And if there’s one thing he wants to impart to the next generation of aspiring merrymakers, it’s that the ambitious goal of “Major Arts Festival Director” is not unreachable. Bertels warns all potential festival directors that there is no defined career path, or course which leads to the top. All that needs to be done is to “embrace the challenge and do it.”

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ISSUE 04 FEATURE

DRESSED FOR

SUCCESS

HANNAH-ROSE YEE FOLLOWS SOME OF AUSTRALIA’S PREMIER FASHION BLOGGERS DOWN THE RUNWAY.

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

hen Sydney law student Margaret Zhang started her blog Shine by Three, she was a high school student looking for something new. “It was very much a middle-of-thenight impulse fuelled by a need for creative satisfaction from a mundane school routine,” says Zhang. “The blog began as a visual diary of inspiration and evolved in the direction of outfit posts and interviews.”

Zhang’s love of fashion and her appreciation of aesthetics made a fashion blogging a natural fit. “I’ve always loved beautiful things,” she admits. “I guess it was a natural progression – fashion covers such a huge range from couture to high street and I find that so exciting to explore.” With the wide-eyed perspective of youth and her unique, fiercely individual personal style, Zhang began documenting her interactions with the fashion industry quite independently. “I started without realising that there was already a small world of fashion blogging out there,” Zhang recalls. For fellow Sydney style blogger, Sara Donaldson it was a Chloe dress. She had seen it in the pages of a magazine, a sheer white tunic with hand-sewn silk flowers peppered across the bodice and was desperate to own it, but not for its astronomical price tag. So she took matters into her own hands. “I used to try to sew my own clothes,” Donaldson says. “I was completely hopeless as I couldn’t do button-holes or zippers, and I never used patterns – that’s probably where I was going wrong.” Nevertheless, Donaldson painstakingly recreated the Chloe design and with it won fashions-on-the-field awards at the races in Brisbane. “That was a big boost in confidence,” Donaldson recalls. “Noone else really got it, and I remember one of the boys made fun of what I was wearing… But hey, that’s fashion!” This early introduction into the world of style spurred Donaldson to start her blog, Harper and Harley at the end of 2008. “I was in my second-year of uni doing a marketing degree, but I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to do with my life or what direction I wanted to take,” she says. A blog seemed like a good way to connect into the wider dialogue of fashion and share her personal musings on style. She chose a name that would sum up the contrasting elements that jostled for attention within her wardrobe. “Harper and Harley are two of my style personalities,” Donaldson explains. “Harper is chic and well-groomed – simple lines and high designer style; whereas Harley is the model-off-duty, Bondi hipster, denim-wearing rebel that I also love to play.” Back then the blogging community was smaller. Much smaller. “Initially my audience was solely international because I couldn’t find any other Australian bloggers,” says Zanita Morgan of photography and style blog Zanita. “There were maybe five or six others and me.”

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Margaret Zhang’s impulse to blog took her to New York Fashion Week. Sara Donaldson swapped a sewing machine for a keyboard to satiate her love of fashion. Zanita Morgan found blogging to be an excellent outlet for her photography.

“I THINK MOST BLOGGERS UNDERSTAND THAT THEIR REACH HAS A VALUE NOW.” – SARA DONALDSON

After moving to Sydney to pursue modelling, Morgan found herself with spare time and a computer full of fashion shots. She decided to build a site where she could share her own photos of fellow models as well as her particular style. “It was a hobby,” she admits. A lot has changed between 2008 and now. Fashion bloggers are dime a dozen, but incredibly influential. Some garner unique hits per month that equal if not surpass the readership of major print magazines. They also star in ad campaigns for powerhouse brands and sit in the front row at fashion weeks the world over. “We’ve become fashion spokespeople,” Donaldson says. Gone are the days of homemade dresses for the Brisbane races. Outfit shots on the backstreets of Woollahra or Glebe have morphed seamlessly into street-style snaps on the steps of Lincoln Centre at New York Fashion Week. “I guess the business of fashion is just much more aware of the value of bloggers now,” says Morgan. “Back in the day, whenever a client contacted me I would think, ‘Wow, they’re really doing me a favour by wanting to get me involved’… I think most bloggers understand that their reach has a value now.” That value – the ability to connect directly to a target market through what is, for the most part, an intimate personal address – is enough to set dollar signs swirling in the eyes of advertisers. This has always been the appeal of the blogger;

the audience feels as though they are receiving information and opinion that comes entirely from the heart. Even so, it’s only recently that a handful of some of Australia’s most popular bloggers – including Donaldson, Morgan and Zhang – have been picked up by a professional platform (known as FELLT), aiming to connect the combined audiences of these bloggers with advertisers and brands in order to fund better content. It’s only now that these guys can even think of making a decent living and a career out of this. A year or two ago, it was almost unthinkable that a brand would invest actual money (as opposed to product and gifts or, the most prevalent, ‘mutual prestige’) in bloggers in the same manner that they would have invested in mainstream advertising. With the rise of the international celebrity blogger, like Rumi Neely of Fashion Toast and her campaign for American high-street powerhouse Forever 21, brands the world over are embracing a new set of influencers. “When I started there were very few people in Australia who understood the concept of a blogger,” Zhang agrees. “Now, every person in the industry does – whether they like it or not!” “Australia still has quite a way to go in recognising bloggers for their skill set beyond their URLs, but that comes with time, as it has in Europe and the States,” adds Zhang.

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ISSUE 04 FEATURE

PULL QUOTE “I think most bloggers understand that their reach has a value now.” – Sara Donaldson

As personalities – and photographers, stylists, brand Funkis on a pair of customised clogs that models, art directors and writers – the blogger retailed in stores across the country; and she often represents an incredible breed of has now shot campaigns and look books for self-taught Renaissance woman. Donaldson Bonds, Puma and Nike. But it was her trip to the has a day job in e-commerce and a degree American Apparel headquarters in California in marketing, Morgan’s blog is ultimately a that, to Morgan, ranks the highest. Her outfit showcase for her professional photography, shots, starring well-worn pieces from the label’s displaying test shoots with next-big-thing 80s-redux catalogue, impressed the brand models and friends, and Zhang is a multi-tasking so much that they flew her all the way to Los stylist, photographer and full-time student. “I’m Angeles to star in an advertisement campaign. not going to lie – I struggle,” Zhang admits. “It’s The American fashion industry is easy to forget that blogging is like a full-time job.” remarkably receptive to the concept of fashion Donaldson squeezes appointments with blogging. In addition to a host of well-established showrooms and events into her lunch hour and personalities across the country – from teenage before or after work, saving her precious annual Tavi Gevinson of Style Rookie to the ramblings leave hours for fashion week and photoshoots. of The Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine – they Zhang tries to fit everything she does – from have a history of welcoming foreign bloggers to styling gigs to modelling in outfit posts – around their shores. The latest in this long line is Zhang, her university schedule. Neither she nor who spent a month in the bright lights of New Donaldson think it’s the best work/life balance, York City (“everything moves so fast!”), where but they don’t want to give anything up just she worked with American brands and stylists yet. “I don’t get much downtime and I’m always and attendedNew York Fashion Week. Bear in doing five things at once,” says Donaldson, “but mind that Zhang turned 19 one week before I get amazing benefits as well as constantly the magazine you’re now holding was printed. learning about the fashion industry. If it wasn’t More than the recognition of being street-style something I loved, I wouldn’t be doing it.” papped or going backstage at brands like Pamela When it comes to blog milestones and Love and Prabal Gurung, Zhang won the gift of benefits, Morgan has had more than her fair creative rejuvenation. “It put a lot of my studies, share. In 2010 she photographed a self-portrait work and blogging in perspective,” she adds. style look book for Australian brand Toi et Moi; “I came back with a much clearer idea of the ‘Bigger Picture’.” the next year she collaborated with Swedish

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But what, exactly, is the ‘Bigger Picture’? “I have no idea! But I can get excited in the process,” says Zhang, “and it’s more about stepping stones than a huge goal.” Donaldson is similarly open-minded. “Long term? Not sure,” she says. A move to New York or London and the advent of her career in e-commerce is a definite, but when it comes to Harper and Harley, she only has one concrete aspiration; “producing great content,” Donaldson says. “Would I find this interesting or inspiring? Is this true to my style? These are the questions I constantly ask myself when I work.” Even in traditional media, four years or more at the same publication is a very long time. Keeping the content original and interesting for a set of readers who, often, have followed since the first post is a real challenge. “I’ve just got to keep living my life in an exciting way and not settle down and have babies in Perth,” Morgan says. Recently married, Morgan believes the key to enduring blog success is the desire to keep growing. “I think it’s about always wanting to improve, and I want to make sure I don’t pat myself on the back because then you stop improving. “When Karl Lagerfeld approaches me and says, ‘I was going to get Inez and Vinoodh to shoot this campaign but actually I’d like you to do it, Zanita,’ that’s when I’ll pat myself on the back.”

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速

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29/05/12 12:57 PM

ISSUE 04 INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

HENRY ROLLINS XIAORAN SHI WENT SWIMMING IN THE MAINSTREAM WITH THE SELF-PROCLAIMED ALTERNATIVE ICON. (WELL, WE KINDA PROCLAIM IT TOO.)

YOU'VE NOW BEEN TO AUSTRALIA OVER 30 TIMES. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PLACE? There is a lot to like about Australia. The part I like the most is the people. I have a great audience there and that’s my main thing in life—the shows, the audience. That’s where it all happens for me. So, it’s a great place to be let back into every two years. SOME SAY THAT TRAVEL ACTUALLY DOESN’T BROADEN THE MIND, CITING IMMANUEL KANT AND ISAAC NEWTON AS EXAMPLES OF GENIUSES WHO NEVER LEFT THEIR HOMETOWN. AS A PROLIFIC TRAVELLER, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY TO THAT? I say that knowledge minus mileage equals bullshit. YOU WENT TO UNIVERSITY FOR ONE SEMESTER BEFORE DROPPING OUT. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR UNI EXPERIENCES? I went because I thought that was the thing one does. I wasn’t going anywhere in my life, so I went there without a lot of real force behind my decision. So, I went without any real desire to be there. I got through a semester and realised that there was no way I would have the strength to get through all four years and I couldn’t afford it anyway, so I stopped going. It was not a good place for me. It’s a great thing, higher education but it’s obviously not for everyone. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE UPCOMING UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? WHO HAS YOUR VOTE? I will be voting for President Obama. I don’t think Romney is electable. That being said, you never know what those Americans will get up to next. I think it would be a disaster but it is possible that he could win. There are a lot of people who don’t like Mr Obama. YOU'VE BEEN A STRONG ADVOCATE OF A VARIETY OF CAUSES OVER THE YEARS. WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE BIGGEST THREAT FACING THE WORLD TODAY? Income inequality and the wildness of capitalism run amok. This is going to leave a lot of people dead. This and shortages in basic human needs like water.

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“I THINK YOU WILL FIND THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE LIKE THE RECORDS AND DON’T CONSIDER THEMSELVES A PART OF ANYTHING BEING PUNK. I LIKE THAT KIND OF FREEDOM.”

YOUR CAREER IS VAST AND FORMIDABLE, BUT YOU'LL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED FOR REDEFINING HARDCORE PUNK. WHY DID YOU QUIT MUSIC, AND WILL YOU EVER GO BACK? I stopped doing music when I thought I couldn’t do any more with it besides emulate what I had done before. I see these people hanging out in their own pasts for a living and want no part of that. Talk about depressing. It’s not for me to judge anyone but it’s not for me. So, I decided to go elsewhere with my energies and I am doing lots of other things. I don’t miss it all that much as I am very busy with all these other things. IS PUNK STILL AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR LIFE? I like the music. I never thought of myself as any part of any movement or group. It’s really not where my mind goes, to groups and regulated militias. I have always felt on the outside of things all my life, punk rock is a good thing but you don’t have to be ‘in it’ to dig it. There has never been a scene I wanted to be a part of. That reminds me of all the cool people who didn’t like me in school. WHO AND WHAT INSPIRE YOU? Who: President Obama, Ian MacKaye, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Nelson Mandela. What: The present, the future, my imagination, potential, possibility. WHAT IS YOUR WRITING PROCESS FOR YOUR SPOKEN WORD SHOWS? I don’t write anything out. I make some notes and memorise stats, but past that, I just tell it. YOU WERE MANAGER OF A HÄAGEN-DAZS IN 1981. WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING FOR 'THE MAN'? Steve was a great boss and still comes to my shows thirty years later. I loved that job and I still think of it sometimes.

5/29/12 12:56 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

Y R A D E TH QUAN AS F O

T O QU

BRONTË LAMBOURNE SAYS SISTERS CAN DO IT FOR THEMSELVES.

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5/29/12 12:57 PM

ISSUE 04 FEATURE

n 2007, four men and three women put themselves forward as candidates for the University of Sydney Union Student Board election. If you’re a university veteran and had the opportunity to grace the polling booths that year, you would have noticed only four candidates on the ballot paper, and in the oftinscrutable fine print, that three women had been elected unopposed.

With only four men left in the race, the campaign was admittedly low-key, but the wider University population, the electorate that Union Board Directors stand to represent, conceivably had no idea who these women were. No idea of what merits or achievements they held, what experience they could bring to the table, their values, political ideology or policy ideas. The only fact they knew: they were women. Beyond any question of the preservation of democracy, this is surely a great disservice to the women Affirmative Action (AA) tries to protect. “I think the most unfortunate part of the process was that I couldn't campaign, in that way I often did not feel like a legitimate board member.” says Alice Dixon, one of the women who ran for Board that year. “A number of people questioned or challenged my position on Board.” The issue is, when a woman is chosen for a position based on her gender, it doesn’t affirm her individual value and it certainly doesn’t let other men who have lost out feel that females have a more legitimate claim, instead women’s worth is cast under the ignominious shadow of quotas. In fact, election night can become a deeply awkward affair. In every instance where AA has been implemented, the subject has been surrounded by controversy, rumour-mongerings and in many cases, resentment – all outcomes that can only hamper the woman’s ability to do her job. In reaction to the 2007 election, one blogger announced that “AA has failed women in this instance by rendering their laudable achievements less important than biological happenstance.” Nevertheless, many - including Dixon believe that this is the unfortunate but necessary price that must be paid to ensure gender parity. “AA is about making people aware of the often unconscious thought processes which lead them to nominate a man over a woman,” she says. In light of the dominance of males within the Union, Dixon argues, “quotas in this instance are successful in instigating culture change.” The historical overrepresentation of men in the Union has been a prime concern of AA supporters. With a large percentage of the

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ACCORDING TO THE REGULATIONS University of Sydney Union Constitutions10.2 (c): “Five Directors shall be elected during years ending in an even number and six Directors shall be elected during years ending in an odd number provided that in any year ending in an even number, two, and in any year ending in an odd number, three such elected Directors shall be women.”

has topped the race, or even come second, and there’s a fairly coherent explanation. No-one wants to waste their vote on someone who’s going to get in anyway. One former board director admitted she almost didn’t vote for herself because she knew she was going to get the spot and might as well vote for her male friend. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant number of voters torn between a male and female candidate will now almost certainly vote for the male – seems a bit antithetical doesn’t it? If we are going to create a field where women are competing only amongst themselves we might as well separate the Union back into its former gendered counterparts. That being said, there are clearly appalling problems that exist with regards to the treatment of female campaigners. Katy shares an egregious example of this in her personal experience of campaigning, “I still think it was one of the most difficult and confronting things I have done,” she says, “I had my chalk stolen and my chalking HOW TO BUILD A GLASS CEILING defaced with things like ‘Katy loves cock’, ‘Katy Traditionally, we think of gender policies as is a communist’ and my slogan: ‘The Union: It's attempts to overcome some form of sociallyin your hands’ changed to ‘Tits in your hands’”. ingrained, deliberate or unconscious preference Dixon also sees these practices as a sign for entrusting responsibility to males over of endemic sexism that needs to be redressed. females. In your typical ‘white-old-male-stuck“I think that there needs to be more general in-the-1950s’ case, corrective strategies target a awareness among candidates of a continuing specific and apparent prejudice. But university sexist culture that continues in political politics isn’t comparable to the majority of campaigning,” she suggests. “Candidates need instances where AA is used – half the voting to take more personal responsibility for the population are themselves female, often young actions of their campaigners.” and were never exposed to an era of glamorized There is no doubt that both regulations and sexism. awareness surrounding the responsibilities and But even if you don’t buy this analysis and actions of campaigners needs to be enhanced. think university students are fairly complicit in the ills of society, the stats would prove otherwise. By offering AA as a solution to the problem of derogatory and sexist campaigning, we risk In 2000 when only four women ran from a missing the target entirely. Not only can these pool of twenty candidates, they polled first and practices continue to proliferate under a policy second. Again in 2001 with five women against nine men, women pulled out on top ranking first of AA, but without directly identifying the real and third, and in 2005 (the year Fernandez ran), attitudes of sexual harassment that we’re talking about, it can give the impression that women the only two women in the race came first and just can’t compete with boisterous males. second. In fact, the only thing AA has done is to undermine this trend. Since 2006, no woman Board comprising of men in the decade prior to AA, there’s a strong imperative to ensure that women’s issues are adequately represented. Katy Fernandez, past Union Board President and Director, spoke in favour of AA at the 2006 Union Annual General Meeting. She cites the low number of women demonstrating an interest to run and the historically low representation of female Board Directors as concerns that stimulated the motion. Recently, students have pointed to the composition of the current UTS board – a board that consists of seven male student directors – as evidence of the disastrous alternative to AA. When dealing with a university population that is relatively enlightened, intelligent and socially-progressive, we have to question why such statistics arise. Do women face a campaigning disadvantage, or does the inequality stem from barriers that deny women the desire and ability to run in the first place?

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BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

THE INCENTIVES GAME: RAISING NOMINATIONS BY LOWERING GENDER EXPECTATIONS So, if women aren’t directly discriminated against in the polling booth, despite any obstacles of campaigning, the problem appears to lie in the number of women choosing to put themselves forward. Fernandez refuses to believe that “a lack of female nominations equals a lack of interested female candidates of capacity”. In this case, why don’t more women put themselves forward? And that’s the milliondollar question. “I think there are a number of factors surrounding a decision to run,” Fernandez says. “This includes self-confidence, academic standing and personal priorities, access to resources, factional support or the support of a large community base. It is not simply about seeking to have great women interested but also enabled to run.” In other words, it’s complex. The intimidation of running against party hacks is often proffered as a reason for deterring women, but why this would apply only to women and not men suggests it’s grounded in a sexist argument. By conceding this logic, we entrench the notion that women aren’t as confident or assertive as men, which regardless of any truthfulness, is deeply condescending. Yet if we can see anything from the data it’s that the proportion of female nominees has definitely increased. Last year a record six women out of ten candidates ran in the election (yes, that’s still only 60 per cent). So if AA does encourage more women to run, is that good enough? Perhaps not, because Band-Aid solutions always make for dangerous politics. If we take a closer look at the inducement, it’s not a pretty message: we are trying to empower women by reinforcing the mentality that they should only run for the job now because it’s easier, because they don’t have

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“Affirmative Action has failed women in this instance by rendering their laudable achievements less important than biological happenstance.”

to bank on their own talents, skills or experience. It contradicts its own aims by relying on the premise that the woman wouldn’t have been elected on her own. James Fox, current President of the UTS Union Board, expresses a similar worry. “My concern is that AA often masks the causes of disadvantage,” says Fox. “I recall being at Sydney University and one of the Directors said to me she would not have run if it wasn’t for AA. The greater problem in my view is what makes her feel that way and how do we correct the cause of that.” There’s a danger in shutting out opposition to Affirmative Action as merely a right-wing opinion. It’s not about reverse discrimination, democracy or meritocracy. Regardless of whether it produces results, the fundamental ethos that AA relies upon is a condescending one, under which women are meek, timid and lack confidence. If the retaliatory mantra to any AA criticism is “don’t tell women how to be women” I say, right back at you.

ELECTION RESULTS SINCE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IMPLEMENTED

YEAR

NO. OF NO. OF CANDIDATES WOMEN

POLLING POSITION OF WOMEN

2007

Elected unopposed

2008

3rd & 5th

2009

4th, 6th & 10th

2010

3rd & 4th

2011

3rd, 4th & 6th

5/29/12 12:57 PM

ISSUE 04 FEATURE

TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH, E H T S I T A H T

QUESTION ER) W S N A O T S T N A (THAT NO-ONE W

ADAM CHALMERS ON-SMITH AND KI NG NAMES. ELEANOR GORDAC TA D RS AN ARE LOSING TE HE

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n February 20 of this year, the University of Sydney announced it would sack 100 academics. It was time, Michael Spence told us, for some “serious belttightening”. The University warned its staff it was going to count up their publications and weed out those who were ‘not pulling their weight’. It sounded as if the University was suffering an academic crisis. But what was the real root of the problem? Have the administrators of the University fixed it, or made matters worse?

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MAKING THE CUT Below is the list of exemption criteria.

1 2

Instead of producing three works in four years, the staff member has produced one or two substantial works.

The staff member has made significant progress towards a substantial work or has appropriate works pending publication or has a publication record that is properly regarded as being the equivalent to more than three ERA-rated publications.

3 4

The staff member has had career breaks such as parental leave or sick leave; disability or illness.

The staff member has been performing ‘above load’ teaching or administrative duties allocated by the faculty.

5 6

The staff member’s length of service in the position.

The staff member is undertaking teaching and postgraduate supervision work that their school must provide in 2013 and which could not be provided through other means.

he financial quagmire necessitating the cuts was this: The University, in its 2011-2015 projections, predicted that 2011 income from student fees would be $828 million. That prediction was out by $35.8 million – a gap the University had to finance somehow. The NSW Auditor-General then identified several urgent repairs to be completed in 2012, with a price tag of $37 million. The University was staring into a budgetary black hole. The University’s 2010 surplus of $113.7 million couldn’t patch things over, because roughly $79 million of funds were given to the University on strict conditions. Capital Grants are given to the University by the government to finance particular buildings, while Research Grants must finance approved research projects. The University cannot take government funds and use them to finance something the Government didn’t agree to. Some philanthropic bequests have similar strings attached. What remained was not enough to cover repairs as well as salaries. Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Stephen Garton explains the intricacies of the University’s budget. “[It is a] myth that Sydney is a rich University with a surplus in 2011 of $113 million,” says Professor Garton. “This was not profit to be used at our discretion, but funds that had to be spent on specific purposes. We could not prop up salaries with it. In all, we were left with only $35 million which was discretionary, and which we have to spend on maintaining and repairing our buildings.” “Just meeting our minimum occupational health and safety obligations takes that much, and failing to do that would be to abdicate our institutional responsibilities to both staff and students, not to mention our legal responsibilities,” he says. To decide who should go, the administration established a criterion to identify staff deemed to be ‘not pulling their weight’. Every academic staff member had to have published four times in three years. This was not a requirement that had been expressed before. The 700 or so who failed this test were marked ‘for consideration’. The process then moved to the faculty level. Faculty Assessment Boards were formed, and given criteria to use to whittle down the pool of under-publishers to a final ‘to-besacked’ group. According to Professor Garton, the criteria are supposed “to make sure that no-one was identified for redundancy who had good reasons – from the burden of additional teaching or administrative load to serious personal circumstances – for not having published enough”. Those who didn’t meet these exemption criteria were offered voluntary redundancy, pre-retirement contracts, teaching-focused roles or part-time work. According to the University’s Draft Change Plan, “Involuntary redundancy will be utilised only as a last resort.” Then came bedlam. Editorials appeared in major newspapers, petitions circulated, student protests overwhelmed Arts Dean Duncan Ivison’s office. Three people were arrested outside a University Senate meeting in what Stephen Matchett in The Australian called “as close to a student riot as Sydney has seen for years.” Though behind the surprising, attention-grabbing scenes are the people themselves who have or will be bidding farewell to the institution. Paul* is a well-established senior academic. He holds two degrees from Oxbridge and receives consistent commendations for his publications. Another, Dr Adrian Heathcote, was made redundant on 7 April despite his consistently high rankings as a teacher. Their concerns were clear. A major objection was that Deans could not use ‘quality of teaching’ to excuse academics for

falling short of the publishing minimum. When appointed as Vice-Chancellor in 2008, Michael Spence told the Sydney Morning Herald that he wished to turn Sydney University into a “highend research institution” that would attract the best researchers, from Australia and overseas. There were fears, at least among students, that this strategic decision would de-prioritise teaching and devalue good teachers. Paul says the message to remaining academics is clear. “What is likely to determine whether you still have a job in the future will be the number of your publications. Therefore, cut corners in your teaching, in the individual attention that you give to students, in the quality of your administrative work, even in your research itself.” The University, he feels, “can expect the more labour-intensive teaching-andlearning practices to fade in popularity under the new regime, despite their benefit to students.” Universities are educational institutions. The University of Sydney charges tens of thousands of dollars for an education. For many high-achieving school-leavers, Sydney is a clear preference – a preference Sydney cultivates with targeted marketing and personal letters. As a prestigious Group of Eight University, you’d expect Sydney to have the best teachers their faculties can find, for the most talented students across the country. But the exemption criteria doesn’t include quality of teaching. It includes substantial research, illness, even length of service, but quality of teaching is not considered a reason to keep an academic at the University.

*name changed

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ISSUE 04 FEATURE

This was not an oversight. Professor Garton told Lateline that “We have to meet a budget target. We’re not asking: ‘who is a good teacher or who is bad teacher?’” Garton elaborates, “as we have no objective measure of teaching performance, as students do not evaluate individual teachers, a measure involving teaching was not feasible.” If it’s true that the University is unable to find a measure to rate good and bad teaching, that’s a scary prospect. At the end of every semester, students complete surveys rating teachers and courses, providing comprehensive feedback and evaluation on each academic’s performance. If these evaluations aren’t designed to improve teaching or teachers, it’s a wonder why the University bothers. It’s no coincidence that some of the best teachers found themselves on the staff cuts list. Prioritising teaching compromises the time left for research. One of the only academics prepared to put his name to his comments, Dr Adrian Heathcote is a senior academic in the Philosophy department who has not escaped redundancy. Dr Heathcote has achieved consistent ratings of 90 per cent in student feedback surveys over his 20 years of teaching. He has put a priority on teaching and supporting students, but the institution that once recognised his value with the Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts Faculty seems now to measure his worth only in terms of research. Even staff who have escaped redundancy worry about the message this sends to remaining academics. They are concerned that ignoring quality of teaching when deciding who to keep will lead to a drop in the University’s educational standards. All of the academics we spoke to identified teaching well as their favourite part of their time at Sydney University. “Where teaching is successful, it is a dynamic process, in which we are all trying to push forward together,” says Paul. “I enjoy the busy interactions of the successful tutorial, in which students have become interested enough to forget their shyness, and understandings are constructed out of shared resources.” Dr Heathcote agrees, saying that teaching offers a chance to make a

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Both lecturers thought the University was pressuring them to ignore teaching in favour of research. difference to the next generation of bright minds. “We have a special privilege at the University of Sydney.You’re teaching the brightest people in the world, people who’d be at Harvard or Oxford if they’d been born overseas,” he says. “You can talk and teach at the level that the big ideas really have to be taught at.You can really make an impact on the future, because you might inspire someone, and make them think of something that’s going to make a difference.” But both lecturers thought the University was pressuring them to ignore teaching in favour of research. As Paul says, “some academic staff will take the risk of maintaining the quality of their teaching no matter what. And, if their research output suffers in consequence, they can expect to be sacked.” Some may think this matters less to postgraduate students. Postgraduates need high-quality researchers to work alongside more than they need great lecturers. But postgraduates require supervisors, and the best supervisors tend to spend extra time with their students that could’ve been spent writing research papers. This means many postgraduates will lose their supervisors – or already have. Timothy Scriven, treasurer of the Postgraduate Association, found himself in this predicament. “A number of research students will have their degrees disrupted by the loss of supervisors,” says Scriven. “Some will be forced to downgrade, or in a few cases scrap their degree entirely, with no compensation for time and money already invested.” Teaching aside, another criticism was about ‘number of publications’ as a reasonable measure of an academic’s worth. Measuring an academic’s research performance is a noble aim, Professor Garton explains. “A researchintensive University like ours is entirely justified in expecting its academic staff… to produce research publications.” But does a simple count achieve it? Professor Garton says “[It is a] myth is that these cuts are ‘arbitrary and retrospective’, based solely on a measure of research output ... Research output was simply the first, and most clearly metrics-based, input into the process.” Paul however is concerned about the way the count measures quantity of output, not quality. Works have to be peer-reviewed and published. They don’t have

to advance scholarship on the matter “I would not have [chosen] targets for so-called ‘voluntary redundancy’ on the basis of the number of their publications,” he says, “because that might entail losing ‘some of [the University’s] best minds’, if I may quote the Provost. Einstein’s two brilliant articles might have been worth 20 of Joe Bloggs’s run-of-the mill pot-boilers, for example.” A final objection has clung to the narrative like a limpet; the measure was imposed retrospectively. At the time academics signed their contracts, there was no expectation that they publish four times in three years. It is, in this regard, not unlike being fired from a 9 to 5 job for not staying until 6. Another academic - we’ll refer to as ‘Michael’ - feels particularly jaded by this aspect of the process. “I am a hard-working man,” he says. “I do my job conscientiously and I do my best to surpass expectations of me. I cannot express the sense of betrayal I felt when I found that my performance had been monitored by a metric I did not know existed. The University is at pains to tell us that these job cuts are ‘redundancies’ and not ‘performance management in disguise’. But I think Dr Spence’s words speak for themselves. He said that this group of academics are ‘not pulling their weight’. We may well have a debate about how to measure research output, but the fact is the test is being applied to a time period over which I have no control.” The whole sorry affair has been a case study in how not to manage change. A blunder in forecasting so large that it requires you to cut some of your best assets is a disaster. If the University can be a little disappointed in the performance of academics who have not published sufficiently, it must have lost all confidence in those who were responsible for those forecasts. Finally, however important research is to the University’s needs, to maintain its prestige and revenue, it must remain attractive to students who pay to learn. It cannot afford to devalue the student experience. If the University finds it so difficult to tell the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher, perhaps the students can help.

5/29/12 12:57 PM

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CAMPUS CHATTER To the sexy nerd enquiring about the maximum number of books you can borrow from the library,

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TO ARTS FACULTY, I can’t do my assignment – cough, cough – I’m sick. Sicko

TO MICHAEL, Pleases stop talking. Manning Bar

TO SICKO, Boo, you whore. Arts Faculty

TO THE GUY WHO STOLE MY SEAT AT THE LAWBRY, Thank you so much for stealing my seat. I was going to study for my exam TOMORROW AT 9AM but that’s ok, now I can spend my afternoon watching Game of Thrones instead. I hope you enjoy my seat, even though you’re an Engineering student and have NO BUSINESS being at the Lawbry. Passive Aggressive

TO THE HIPSTER GUY WITH A ‘RECYCLING IS COOL’ BAG, Want to ditch ECON2012 and share Vegesoc lunch on Manning lawns? Chick Pea

TO GEELONG GRAMMAR GIRL, One does not simply sue one’s way into Sydney Law School. Boromir

TO ANONYMOUS, Manning Bar, 5.15pm. I was rolling a cigarette with pages from my INGS reader when you yelled, “oh em gee, you can’t smoke here, this is a smoke-free campus!” Was it just me or did your fire-up light up my cigarette? Meet me on Manning trivia night? I will be wearing a ‘Smoking Kills’ t-shirt. Blow me

VOX POPS QUESTION WHAT IS YOUR EXAM RITUAL?

DAN BARABAS

NEROLI AUSTIN

ANSHU WIJEYERATNE

“I have to shave every day during Stuvac.”

“I listen to Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Immigrant Song’ before walking into the exam.”

“I have to use the same pen I used in the last exam. I also have to wear either an orange or blue shirt.”

INTERNATIONAL & GLOBAL STUDIES

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LAW/ECONOMICS

LAW/INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

5/29/12 12:57 PM

ISSUE 04 CAMPUS CHATTER

PLEASE, HAVE A COW GOT BEEF WITH SOMETHING? SPILL YOUR GUTS IN 400 WORDS OR LESS TO USUBULLMAG@ GMAIL.COM

LOREN NILSSON REMEMBERS WHEN SHE WAS YOUR AGE AND PLUTO WAS A PLANET. Thanks a bunch, Mike Brown. Who is Mike Brown? He is an astronomer, Pluto-hater and all around arse clam. Brown claimed this illustrious title in 2006 when he and his team sucked all the fun out of the solar system in one fell swoop: he kicked Pluto out of the planet club. Everybody loves Pluto. Anyone who ever memorised the solar system as a kid would remember the glory with which you exclaimed the name of the final planet.You shrieked ‘Pluto!’ triumphantly as you walked over and took your place at the winners of life table, the knowledgeable little shit that you are. Now all that glory is gone; sullied is the name of Pluto.

Pluto was always the planet picked last for sport teams at school (beefcake Jupiter was an obvious first choice) and he was also the planet that nobody wanted to do group work with, being so small and cold and blue. And let’s not forget, Pluto is the planet that the sun wanted to be as far away from as possible. Poor little guy. This is why Pluto always won a very special place in my heart. So why, Mike Brown, must you bully our friend, Pluto? According to you, he is not a planet… but what is a planet then? To the astronomical union a planet must have the following three characteristics: a planet must orbit around the sun, be nearly round in shape and be so large as ‘to clear the neighbourhood around its orbit’. This last benchmark Pluto didn’t meet, and it is because of this that poor Pluto was demoted.

Since Almost Famous, the doe-eyed wonder that is Zooey Deschanel has been working her geek-chic magic on unsuspecting filmgoers the world over, providing Katy Perry with a doppelgänger and hipsters everywhere their very own fixie-riding pin-up. But why do we love her? Well, how many Hollywood “it girls” are down to earth enough to openly embrace the tag of adorkable? Having starred alongside such A-listers as Jim Carrey and Joseph GordonLevitt, Deschanel has proved that she can hold her own against the biggies with little more than a Smiths lyric and a coy smile. Frankly, if she were a president she’d be Baberaham Lincoln. When she’s not busy stealing hearts on the silver screen, Deschanel spends her time being one dance number away from a triple threat, penning songs and showing off her angelic pipes as part of the indie folk duo She & Him. For those of you who worried that she’d be crushed under the weight of her own hype, take a squiz at her show New Girl and get ready to fall in love all over again.

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Before you, Dr. Brown, Pluto was that cool, far away planet that nobody really knew anything about. Now he is that far away, dwarf planet with three moons, an orbit that occasionally intersects with Neptune’s and the second-largest body of mass in the Kuiper belt. How romantic. I preferred it when he was just everyone’s special planet friend Pluto. So we salute you, Pluto – the little planet that could’ve had it all.

AGAINST

FOR EMILY SWANSON SAYS ZOOEY’S NO FLOOZY.

LOCKING HORNS DISPUTED: ZOOEY DESCHANEL A.K.A. “NEW GIRL”

JILL GRANT SAYS IT’S TIME TO DROP THE ACT. Will the real Zooey Deschanel please stand up? She is a 32-year-old woman and the shtick is getting tiresome. Zooey has built her career around that awkward geek chic persona that hipsters everywhere have attempted to emulate. Consider: what is so awkward and geeky about a Hollywood star with a bangin’ bod and huge, round eyes like pools of crystalline water from the depths of the Swiss Alps? Part of what makes her the individual she is, is her taste in music; namely, a love for The Smiths. Like myself, and 2,461,670 others who like The Smiths on Facebook. A trip through Deschanel’s cinematic oeuvre is a real ‘seen one, seen ‘em all’ experience. The only thing that makes the two films Yes Man and 500 Days of Summer special are her co-stars. I question whether Deschanel didn’t just stumble from set to set, and mumble the same quirky script in that ‘sexy baby’ style of hers. I think a more fruitful exercise would be to examine the merits of Zooey’s older sister, the talented Bones Deschanel – she is all about law enforcement and street smarts and she has nothing to hide.

5/29/12 12:58 PM

ACCESS BENEFITS THESE HOLIDAYS

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29/05/12 12:57 PM

EVENTS & ENTERTAINMENT 3 Weeds Hotel Free Hotel Membership $44 Value Big Fun 15% discount for club and society and private bookings CEO Karaoke 10% discount Luna Park Sydney Access Members get 20% off the regular price of an Unlimited Rides Pass (up to 4 people per card) M9 Laser Skirmish 20% off full priced bowling or laser skirmish games for card holder and up to 3 guests. SHIP INN 15% off food and drinks Soho Fridays - free entry all night and $5 jagerbombs, Saturday - free entry before 11pm, USU Clubs & Societies offers Strike $7 Bowling and $5 Strike Laser Skirmish, valid Mon to Thurs all day The Nag’s Head Hotel $10 bar food at all times, 5% off bar food and bottle shop, $11 Jugs of Tooheys New The Paragon 15% off food and drinks The Village 15% Discount Village Roadshow Leisure - Intencity Broadway One free game, Buy 1 super session receive another one free The World Bar $5 House beers, $5 Vodkas, $5 discount on Teapot cocktails ™

THEATRE/MOVIES Belvoir St Theatre $25 for Downstairs, $29 for Upstairs Dendy Cinemas $11.50 Movie Tickets, plus ACCESS Combo: Large Popcorn and Coke for just $7.50! 3D $14.50 plus $1 for reusable glasses Seymour Centre 15% off drinks at the Seymour Bar

RECREATION & TRAVEL Captain Cook Cruises 25% discount on adult ticket Sydney Harbour Sightseeing and Dining Cruises, Free Cruise on your birthday Colourful Trips 15% off day trips and tours in Sydney and Australia Jin Wu Koon First lesson Free plus a 20% discount for Thai Kickboxing and Kung Fu classes thereafter Kingpin Bowling 20% off full priced bowling or laser skirmish games for card holder and up to 3 guests Mojo Surf 15% Off equipment, transport, coaching and accommodation

Rhythmboat Cruises 20% off normal RRP prices of lunch and dinner cruises Seido Juku Karate Discounted membership offers and 2 free classes Free uniform, belt and badges when you join Skydive the Beach - Sydney and Central Coast $30 off tandem skydives STA Travel Various discounts off travel packages Sydney Buddhist Centre Additional $20 off student concession rates for introductory meditation courses and retreats Thunder Jet Boat Adults @ Kids prices (25% off) USIT Australia 15% discount on Teach in China or Thailand programmes. YHA 2 years for 1 membership yLead Receive a $200 discount off New Zealand and a $500 discount off Tanzania

FASHION, HEALTH & BEAUTY Ablaze Beauty 20% off services Monday to Friday, 10% off services on Saturday, 10% off products Ambo Ars 30% off hair services including cutting, colouring, hair straightening, hair extensions (offer excluding Saturday) Attik 15% off items Detail for Men Initial Haircut 50% off and haircuts thereafter are 20% off Jay Jays Broadway 10% Off excluding sale items McDonald’s Stanmore 10% off your purchase up to $20 Oscar Oscar Salons Enjoy 25% Off all major hairdressing services on speciﬁc days OzSale $10 Voucher Provocator 25% off storewide Stellino 10% off at all times, excluding sale items, 15% off on pre-detremined shopping days/nights The Costume Shop 15% off Costume Hire Urban Eyewear 20% off complete spectacles and sunglasses and 20% off contact lenses when you purchase 6 months supply

FOOD & BEVERAGE A La Turko Broadway 10% off food and drink purchases Bambino Torino Pizza 10% off everything, Plus Tuesday and

www.accessbenefits.com.au www.usuonline.com

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Wednesday All You Can Eat Pizza & Pasta Offer, Plus with all large pizza pick ups recive a free garlic bread valued at $4 Boost Juice Newtown 15% off any purchase Cellarmasters Get $50 off your ﬁrst web order and 5% on subsequent orders Eagle Boys Newtown Large Pizzas from only $7.95 each all year round SAVE 30% Himalayn Char Grill 15% off Food (lunch and dinner) Hoochie Mamma café 10% off everything Ice + Slice 20% discount on all food and beverage items with exception of scoops of gelato, $4.50 for all Beers and Glass of House Wine LYNN Shanghai Cuisine 20% off the total food bill from the A-la-carte menu, Monday - Thursday $12.50 Quick Lunch Combo Nonya Malaysian 10% off the total price of the food bill provided a drink is purchased with every meal. Oporto’s Broadway 10% Off all items at Oporto Broadway, $1 Potato Poppers and a sauce! Pie Tin Newtown 15% off all food purchases Sabbaba Newtown 15% discount on all products purchased in-store Saucepan Café & Restaurant 15% off meals on the menu excluding daily specials Sumo Salad 10% Off all salads The Coffee School 15% off all Coffee School’s coffee and bar skill/cocktail classes Package deals available for RSA and RCG courses Uni Thai 15% off all meals, $7.50 lunch special available all day Well Connected (Wellco Cafe and Wine Bar) Regular sized coffee for free with any meal purchase over $10

GOODS & SERVICES Alan Rigg Repairs Guitars 15% offf all services Alfred’s Laundrette and Dry Cleaning 15% off all services Blackwattle Pottery 10% Off Blue Dog Posters Get 15% discount when you buy 2 or more posters. Breville Factory 10% discount off all items including sale items Broadway Dry Cleaners and Laundrette 15% off all services excluding bag wash

Central Coast Proofreading Editing Service 15% off Services Civic Video Newtown $3.75 new Releases, $1.75 Weeklies Comtext 15% off most textbooks, $2.50 delivery or free pick up Europcar Special negotiated rates Excel Driving - Michael McVickers $60 lessons, purchase a 5 pack for $300, your 6th lesson is FREE, no additional cost for weekend or evening lessons. Save $30 on ‘Licence Test’ lessons Inner City Cycles 15% off parts and accessories, 12.5% off bicycles L Trent 10% Off Driving Lessons when you mention your Access Card when booking over the phone Luggage Bazaar EXTRA 10% Off including sale items. Newtown Nutrition 25% off cost of initial consultation, 15% off cost of follow up consultation Phonecard.com.au 10% Off Phone cards Renta Centre 1 months free rental on any 6 month contract Sax & Woodwind 20% off the RRP accessories Simply Gifts 15% off gifts online Storage King 10% off Storage Rack Rate and 20% Off Boxes & Packing Materials Sydney Talent Company 15% off Professional Acting Agency Representation, Tickets to Sydney Playhouse Productions and Professional Drama Classes Telstra Newtown For all new Post Paid or Pre Paid Connections: 15% off any accesory in the store, 25% off “Special Bundled Accessory Package” Tilly’s Art Store 15% off all products (excluding printing, printer consumables and sale items) Time Out Sydney $1 for 4 issues + free bar guide (valued at $4.95) + free delivery Zanui 15% off full priced products excluding electrical Zookal 15% off textbook purchases Offers subject to change. Terms and conditions may apply see accessbeneﬁts.com.au for details & On Campus Beneﬁts

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29/05/12 12:57 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

BOOK BUSTERS MISA HAN NEVER GRADUATED FROM THE HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY.

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29/05/12 1:29 PM

ISSUE 04 FEATURE

asneem Choudhury, an Engineering student at Sydney University, remembers the day when the last Harry Potter movie came out. For him, the conclusion of the series “signalled the end of an era.” This is not an extreme case of Potterdom. When the new books came out, schools issued Educational Decrees banning the number one distraction in classrooms. When the movies came out, you dressed up, went to midnight screenings and watched them again the following day. For Generation Potter, readers now in their late teens and twenties who literally grew up with Harry, the conclusion of the series was truly the end of an era. Or so we thought. Cue the next generation

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of young adult novels that have in their own ways recreated the Harry Potter super-fandom experience: Twilight series, A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), The Hunger Games, Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood) and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, to name a few. Although these novels explore vastly different themes, they’ve each used the same trusted formula that elevated Harry Potter to blockbuster status to create their own fervent army of dedicated fans. These aren’t simply novels but franchises. A brand of multiple books constructing a parallel fantasy universe that span across a series, feature on the big screen, and inspire a thriving web of online communities. Bookworms have traditionally been nerds, and fantasy has always held a place in a nerd’s heart. The popularity of high fantasy novels is nothing new. Kids growing up in the postwar era had the eight Narnia books and the three Lord of the Rings books to read, plus The Hobbit. The success of franchised series is longestablished too; just before Harry Potter 90s kids were obsessed with Goosebumps and Sweet Valley High books and their less commercially successful television spinoffs. What is unprecedented, however, is the spillover of the young adult fantasy series into the all-age mainstream. Gone are the days when

sci-fi books were kept well hidden under the mattresses of Dungeons and Dragon types. As ‘geek chic’ became an actual thing and nerds came out of the closet, so too did the young adult fantasy series. The numbers tell the story. The current top 10 bestsellers on The Book Depository, with the exception of one standalone book, consists entirely of the instalments from the Fifty Shades and Hunger Games series. Out of the Kindle Million Club (the 11 authors who have sold over one million Kindle e-books), four write for a young adult audience, including Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games), Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse), Steig Larsson (Girl with Dragon Tattoo) and George Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire). The bestseller shelf at your local bookstore is unlikely to be any different. For members of the Harry Potter Book Club, the on-screen adaptations almost always accompany or even precede the reading experience. They’re not some shoddy remakes with costumes from Hot Dollar Shops and fuzzy green edges – they’re multimillion-dollar productions by film and television powerhouses which are increasingly faithful to the original text, thanks to the production technologies and the industry pandering to a loyal pre-existing fan-base.

29/05/12 1:30 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM FEATURE

“These aren’t simply novels but franchises, with multiple books constructing a parallel fantasy universe that span across a series.”

This has an impact on the way Generation revitalised interest in reading amongst kids. Potter experiences a text. When Sydney “They would finish Harry Potter and then University student Anshu Wijeyeratne read the proceed to read something else because they had first book of A Song of Ice and Fire after watching experienced the magic of reading,” he says. HBO’s Game of Thrones, he noticed more than However, this means that Generation Potter few differences between the book and the tends to go on a fantasy binge, reading the same small-screen adaptation, primarily driven by or similar series with familiar and characters considerations of practicality and dramatic effect. and narratives over and over. Charlaine Harris is “Certain characters are omitted and others due to release the twelfth Sookie Stackhouse book have their roles blended. Certain characters are this month and Stephanie Myers is apparently killed off for dramatic effect when in fact they considering a new book called Midnight Sun, are not killed,” Anshu says. which would retell the first book of Twilight The differences can also have an impact on series from Edward’s point of view. All of which the way the reader interprets the themes, Anshu begs the question: is our book diet unbalanced? says. “The Stark kids – they are all younger in The saturation of bookshelves with fantasy the books. I guess the producers don’t want and sci-fi books may not be a bad thing, after 14-15-year-olds running around fighting battles, all. The once-popular chick-lit (and its male or girls in their early teens being wedded and counterpart, dick-lit) authors like Helen Fielding bedded to forge alliances,” he says. (Bridget Jones’ Diary), Lauren Weisberger (The “But part of the harshness of the books is the DevilWears Prada) and Nick Hornby (High fact that people are being asked to do so much Fidelity) wrote thinly-disguised autobiographies so young.” in which the characters whinged endlessly But seeing your favourite book brought about their careers and romantic prospects. The alive on the screen can add to the experience fantasy novels, on the other hand, take it upon of reading the book as well. “You see the castles themselves to reconstruct a unique universe in which the characters necessarily take on a and the geography – the harshness of Winterfell crusade against established evils, inviting readers and how that can shape the characters who to explore contemporary issues at a more come from these places,” Anshu says. structural level, whether it be racism, Western Watching books on screen also challenge imperialism, feminism or gay rights. the readers’ preconceptions. When it was Sydney University student Edwin Montoya announced that the African-American actress Zorrilla says that the rise of fantasy books Willow Smith would play the character Rue and the screen adaptations go hand in hand. in The Hunger Games, some readers couldn’t contain their confusion and anger. Unsavoury “There are so many more films based on books tweets such as: ’Why is Rue a little black girl? nowadays and fantasy translates well onto the big screen, so the two feed off each other,” he says. #sticktothebookDUDE‘ and ’Awkward moment Meanwhile, student James Farquharson says when Rue is some black girl and not the little that the audience’s demand for better and more blonde innocent girl you picture‘ flooded the sophisticated television is driving the screen #hungergames hashtag. The blockbuster adaptation of novels. “We’re no longer happy experience these novels create means that a to watch reruns of Two and a Half Men. The teenager living in North Sydney can experience audience is more sophisticated than ever and a book the same way as a film producer in they want the details and complex characters California – for better or worse. The diversity with moral ambiguities,” James says. of interpretation only adds to the richness of Generation Potter isn’t afraid to penetrate the texts. the veil between authorship and readership. A According to Tasmeen, the Potter series

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popular series often inspire fan-fiction and fanart, created by amateur fans for whom reading their popular series simply isn’t enough. Of course, Potter fans did not invent modern fanfiction; its origins can be traced to the famously hardcore Trekkies. As far back as the 60s, Star Trek fanatics published fanzines and distributed them at sci-fi conventions or via post. However, it was Harry Potter that timed its run with the internet’s growth and influenced fan-fiction as we now know it. Witness the endless readercreated stories published on websites such as Fanfiction.net as well as individual fansites and forums, by hardcore and causal fans alike. For those who snub their noses at fan-fiction as super-nerdy and weird, it’s worth noting that fan-fictions can grow into successful novels in their own right. The Fifty Shades trilogy was originally developed from a Twilight fan-fiction called Master of the Universe. The series is written by an author-reader, ’Snowqueen’s Icedragon‘, who was presumably frustrated at Edward and Bella’s sweetly gazing into each other’s eyes, and wrote about hot vampire-human fornication involving handcuffs and safewords. Despite some critics dismissing the series as ’mommy’s porn’, it is currently NewYork Times’ Number One bestselling paperback and e-book, with more than three million copies sold to date. But our refusal to leave these familiar fantasy worlds may be about to change. Just last month, J K Rowling announced that she is due to release a new book for older audiences called The CasualVacancy on 27 September this year. According to the publisher, the book is about a little town of Pagford, an ’English idyll‘, which implodes into a war when a man dies leaving an empty seat in the parish council. For a long time, wizards, vampires, kings and goblins have jumped from the pages and inhabited our hearts and minds. Next thing you know, we could be reading books about local mayors, rubbish collectors and church bake sales instead – you never know.

29/05/12 12:57 PM

ISSUE 04 YOUNIVERSITY

YOUNIVERSITY

Marriage 101 FLORA GRANT CATCHES THE BOUQUET.

etting married at university was not always unusual. In 1974, the average age of marriage in Australia was around 23 for grooms and 21 for brides. By 2010, this had risen to 31and 29 respectively, largely driven by increasing numbers of women pursuing higher education and professional careers.

M You’re Doing It Right.

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As more choose not to marry, or at the very least to put it off until much later, tying the knot while you’re still studying challenges the modern mantra on matrimony – date around, don’t rush. However, a small but significant number of students make this counter-cultural move each year, significantly altering their experience of university as they juggle a lifelong commitment with weekly readings, group assignments and exams. For some, it seems curious that students pursuing higher education, presumably with hopes of securing better career options, make such a life-changing decision before even graduating. Married students consistently receive surprised and inquisitive reactions when it’s revealed they have tied the knot. Most ask why, how they know they’re ready and if they feel like they’re ‘missing out’. Bec was wedded in February this year and particularly enjoys bringing up her marital status in the perennially awkward gettingto-know-you part of tutorials. “People are usually very surprised,” she says. “Their facial expressions can be pretty priceless.” Meanwhile, Daniel, who married Tash in April, says he found that as a man, people were much less excited about the prospect of his engagement than they did for his fiancée. “Try before you buy, bro,” seemed to come up a lot. For many – if not most – married students here, faith is a significant factor in the decision to wed while still studying. These students didn’t want to move in together or sleep together before marriage, but still wanted to progress their relationships and perceive holy matrimony as a natural next step. Tegan, 20, married Ben, 22, in 2011 after dating for four years. Religion is central to their relationship, having run the local church youth group together. She strongly disputes the common assumption that a young Christian’s decision to marry is heavily influenced by sex. “Obviously our faith was a huge part of it,” she says, “but not in the sense that most people seem to think that young Christians only get

uhamed Mehmedbasic [Arts (MECO)/Law IV] first auditioned for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Emerging Artist program on the double bass in 2010. Since then, he has been performing as a member of ACO2, a group of younger musicians led by both ACO musicians and guest artists, who tour around predominantly regional Australia.

As a member of ACO2, Muhamed has had several opportunities to play with the ACO itself, and was fortunate enough to take part in an entire subscription season last year, playing all the major concert halls around the country. “It was an unbelievable privilege to find myself right in the middle of the ACO’s intense sound, and to contribute what I could.” Muhamed has also been able

married so they can sleep together. “It does play a part, but not a huge one; it was more important that we realised that we were so much stronger together than apart.” These students all manage a busy life. They juggle study, working to finance their homes, church, a social life and committed relationships. Daniel, however, sees getting married at university as a positive. “A big advantage is the flexibility of uni – getting married if we were both working full time would be tough,” he says.

“Sex does play a part, but not a huge one; it was more important that we realised that we were so much stronger together than apart.”

There are possible financial benefits too. A double-income allows wedded full-time students to live a little more comfortably out of home, plus it also ticks off a criterion of independence for Youth Allowance, providing some extra cash. Besides the cost of the wedding, Tegan says that being married means she and her husband spend more modestly because they work together. “We work out budgets together and are accountable to one another, so our money tends to be spent with less frivolity than it might have when we were single.” Overall, these married students feel that being married doesn’t drastically affect their day-to-day experience. “We still go out, we still spend time with our friends, we still do things that other uni students are doing,” says Bec. “We just do it all together.”

to perform with other professional ensembles including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Ballet. It’s not easy keeping all these balls in the air at once. “Tours tend to fall within semester, and I’ll miss about three weeks of classes,” he says. “I’ve had to finish assessments on tour before and would prefer not to have to repeat that… though it

has to be said, some country towns do offer little by way of distraction.” “I’ve thrown myself pretty heavily into music at the moment because it can’t really picked up professionally later on. If none of that comes about, I suppose I’ll see how I do with law, and perhaps even begin studying it properly.” Muhamed Mehmedbasic, you sir are doing it right.

5/29/12 12:58 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM FOOD & BOOZE

TIPS Don't dress salads in advance, carry a container of dressing separately. And don't pre-cut fruits or vegetables that will brown or dry out, pack them whole and include a paring knife – the trick is in Tupperware. Pack smart so that the contents of your lunch don't get squashed or leak. Even if you use a Thermos, don't include items that need to be served very hot or very cold.

FOOD & BOOZE

Think about how the components of the meal work together over time: Very few dishes taste better when they're soggy, so ditch the sliced tomato.

Thinking Outside the (Lunch) Box MICHAEL TODD EXPLAINS HOW TO ENSURE YOUR LUNCH PACKS A PUNCH.

here is a dark corner in our minds recalling the days when we lugged brightly-coloured plastic lunchboxes to school, filled with our daily nutrition... Once you left your house, you had to live with whatever was inside, because few could afford the alternative luxuries of the canteen. A continual source of envy, your own lunch never looked as good as your neighbour's. Maybe the following scenario rings a bell: Your lunchbox: Soggy jam or vegemite sandwich (squashed) Apple (bruised) Healthy muesli bar (no choc chips) Yoghurt (plain) What the other kid had: Picture perfect chicken and lettuce bread roll Pristine juicy orange slices Chocolate-coated muesli bar Packet of chips Today, no self respecting uni student would risk their street-cred by bringing a packed lunch each day. Some do so in secret, warily sneaking a sandwich from their bag in a quiet moment and never committing the cardinal sin of bringing a giant plastic lunchbox. Buying food on campus is also a great way to meet up with friends and having yours already packed can feel like a hindrance to social interaction. So what can be done to bring the lunchbox

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back into the game as a respectable option for budget-conscious yet self-conscious students? The fail-safe tactic is to make everyone else drool. If you want to maintain the trendy, cultured reputation you’ve worked so hard for, go international. In Japan, lunch boxes are an art form; consider making some sushi at home – it’s actually not too difficult and a batch will set you up for a few days. For simpler palates there is of course the time-tested sandwich. Classic combinations include beef and horseradish, ham and mustard, chicken and avocado, turkey and cranberry sauce, pork and stuffing, smoked salmon and cream cheese… But remember: the secret is in the bread. Don’t fall for the expedience of Wonder White; try fresh rolls, Turkish bread or even bagels. For the lazy, go for an effortless tuna salad: lettuce, tin of tuna, small can of sweet corn and some cherry tomatoes. If you’re lucky enough to enjoy large home-cooked dinners, leftovers are perennial winners of any time-cost analysis. Never forget to go online for help and inspiration because variety is the spice of life – especially with food. Buying lunch every day on campus will set you back between $5 and $10 each day, possibly more. A pre-packed lunch can cut it down to around $2 a day with careful planning, and that adds up. So stop spending money on food when you could be spending it on beers! That said, the best motivation for bringing a packed lunch to uni is the sense of pride and achievement in your culinary creations. With Masterchef back on the air there should be no shortage of inspiration to finally unearth those gastronomic gifts.

RECIPE LUNCH BOX SPECIALS Try these easy intros into the underrated world of packed-lunches.

THE RETRO LUNCH • Fill a thermos with tomato soup. • Wrap up a cheese panini or grilled cheese sandwich (thinly sliced country white bread; half Gruyère, half Fontina; a smear of whole grain mustard). • Add a Granny Smith apple and a spoon.

MEDITERRANEAN FLAIR • A wrap or slipper of pita. • A punnet of hummos. • A small tin of sardines in a jalapeno Tobascoinspired tomato sauce. • Onion, tomato, cucumber, olives doused in a saucy vinaigrette dressing. • A packet of dry roasted peanuts. • A piece of fruit.

SPICING UP YOUR SALAD • Pack a plastic bag of mixed greens. • Add separate containers of toasted walnuts and crumbled blue or goat cheese. • A little jar of vinaigrette (oil, vinegar, a bit of mustard, salt and pepper). • Add a whole pear and a cutting knife.

5/29/12 12:58 PM

ISSUE 04 TRAVEL

TRAVEL

COUNTRY AUSTRALIA

Road Trippin' IT’S 800KM TO BYRON; HE’S GOT A FULL TANK OF GAS, HALF A PACK OF CIGARETTES, AND JAKE REYNOLDS IS WEARING SUNGLASSES. HIT IT.

o, you got lucky and scored a ticket to Splendour, Falls, Pyramid Rock, or whatever other camping music festival it is upon which you’ve pinned all hopes of cultural fulfilment. You’ve borrowed a tent, ingeniously hidden your stash of preferred intoxicant(s) and packed your favourite Pikachu onesie/ Marge Simpson outfit (fuck knows why) in your bag with all your swag.You think you’ve got it all worked out. But do you? Think twice because there are always things you should pack that you might not have done already. These might include: • Spare tent pegs (because knobs steal ‘em) • Warm clothes, and a raincoat • A towel or two • Toiletry bag, including sunscreen • Mosquito coils (to stop your tent from filling with mosquitoes and smelling like a mouldy anus) • Torch (consider, as dorky as it sounds, investing in a head-torch) • Batteries • Splitter for your iPod, so you can run two sets of speakers/earphones off it simultaneously (genius) • Toilet paper, just in case • Table and chairs for the campsite (not to be underestimated) • Padlock for the tent • Car-powered air mattress pump (*the shit*) • Car phone charger • Jump leads (if not you, then someone near you will drain their car battery charging phones/playing music)

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The cold bricks in your esky will probably stop being cold after about 24 hours, so buy food that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. As a guide, if it’s not in the supermarket fridge you should be sweet. [BULL recommends fruit, especially apples, bananas and mandarins; bread and Nutella; Up ‘n’ Go; noodle snacks and muesli bars.]

If you’re planning on listening to a lot of music, you’ll be spending a lot less time at your campsite than you think, especially if you’re not camping at the festival site. Chances are you won’t even be bothered to come back for dinner unless you’re on a serious budget. Over three days, one of those massive 15L water containers should go pretty well between three people. Also, there ought to be free drinking water refill stations at the campsite and in the festival. Assuming now you’re in a position to hit the road, here are a few basic road trip tips: • McDonald’s toilets are the bomb, and are spread at good intervals along your route for regular breaks/artery clogging sessions

• That said, avoid Nambucca Maccas at all costs. Seriously. • XXX Mints are the king of mints, and will stop your car-buddies’ breath from making you stage an accident just to get away from them. • A combination of festival and non-festival artists on the driving playlist will get you excited but ensure you’re not sick of the headliners by the time you arrive. Bring out some primary school/early high school classics.You know the ones I mean. • If you don’t know the ones I mean, I mean The Mark, Tom and Travis Show by Blink-182, and whatever it is girls were listening to at the time. If there’s one thing to be learned, it’s that it’s all the small things which make a road trip one to rave about to the grandkids, or to the internet. So, don’t just stand there. Back that bad boy out of the driveway and burn some rubber, flubber. The festival awaits.

5/29/12 12:58 PM

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29/05/12 12:58 PM

ISSUE 04 FASHION

THREE ACADEMICS TEACH XIAORAN SHI A THING OR TWO ABOUT STYLE.

Get Smart

ur mothers always told us to never judge a book by its cover, but sometimes, a cover can serve as a tasteful appetiser to the banquet that awaits us between the pages. In the case of our lecturers, who are already such rich, intellectual resources, it almost seems a waste not to mine their reservoirs of knowledge about that uniquely human endeavour of getting dressed. Such a simple task extends beyond merely disguising our ungodly shame and into the realm of identity, image culture, and gender politics. So, whether clothes differentiate you from the crowd, make you feel at ease in your own skin, or are just another utilitarian formality, they undeniably have a story to tell. And who better to tell it than the storytellers behind the lectern themselves? Feast your eyes on these wore stories.

DR ADRIAN HEATHCOTE

TANYA MITCHELL

Shirt: I bought this in Canberra 20 years ago, and I’m still wearing it today. All my shirts basically look like this. Jacket: Vintage American horsehide jacket which I bought online. They don’t make leather jackets like this anymore. Most of them are now made from inferior cowhide or worse, pigskin. Jeans: They’re Pure Blue Japan brand jeans I found on the Internet. The denim has a special weave created by using an old-fashioned loom which is meant to imitate Levi’s denim circa 1937. What’s your philosophy on fashion? There’s this churn of fashion when you’re young which says ‘I’m still on this treadmill. I’m still looking, working to attract.’ But, after a while, you find clothes which are simply you. They provide continuity and a sense of identity which are important things as you get older. I just want to be, I don’t want to be a stranger in my own clothes.

Blouse: $7 from Vinnies on King Street. Earrings: They’re from an eye-opening trip to Ghana. Bangle: It’s from India where I’ve been twice now. It’s a lifechanging place. Nail Polish: The green matched the corset I wore to my wedding recently. How would you describe your style? I don’t go for a particular look, but I would have to say bohemian chic. I love wearing colourful things, so op shops are good places to shop in for me. If this is your outfit for work, what’s your outfit for play? It depends on context. If I’m going to a gig in Marrickville, I like to be a little dressier. I’m quite a sporty person, so I also like to just dress for comfort every now and then.

DEPT OF PHILOSOPHY

SYDNEY LAW SCHOOL

DR DAVID SMITH

DEPT OF GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS / U.S. STUDIES CENTRE Shirt: It’s a discount Nordstrom shirt from a Last Chance in Phoenix, AZ, where I’ve bought about three-quarters of my wardrobe. Blazer: I bought this at Tarocash in Sydney because there are about three weeks of blazer weather in Michigan [where I completed my PhD]. Shoes: Florsheim. Hair: I’m not trying to make a statement. I just haven’t cut it since 1998 when I left school. Social scientists talk about ‘path dependence’ which describes how the longer something stays one way, the more likely it is to stay that way, and well, I can’t imagine myself any other way. What do you think about student style? It’s quite impressive here compared to Michigan. For males, the standard uniform was a t-shirt slept in for five days, and for females, leggings and ugg boots. That’s perhaps because in US college towns, there’s a lack of interaction with the outside world.

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29/05/12 12:58 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM SPORT

SPORT Be A Sport EDWIN MONTOYA ZORRILLA DODGES BALLS TO THE FACE AND GETS UP TO SPEED WITH TWO OF THE WORLD’S NEWEST SPORTS (OR ARE THEY…?).

he London Olympics will be the first postwar Olympics in which fewer sports will be contested than the previous instalment. Softball and Baseball have been axed from the Games, joining the likes of Orienteering and, believe it or not, Bridge, on the list of extinct sports recognised by the International Olympic Committee but no longer practiced at the Olympics The word ‘sport’ is highly ambiguous. Among recognised sports, the movement has been from the raw and adversarial to the stylistic and refined. Take for example two emerging ‘activities’, Parkour and Bossaball, and the vastly different philosophies they espouse. According to the Australian Parkour Association (APA), Parkour is ‘a philosophy and training method for movement through any environment at speed. The concept is to overcome all physical and mental obstacles in your path by using your body and mind to run, climb, jump and vault.’ It’s how every primary school kid dreams of getting around after watching a Jackie Chan movie, or that guy who gets chased around by James Bond at the start of Casino Royale.

Traceurs, as Parkour practitioners call It is played much like freestyle volleyball, except themselves, reject the notion of Parkour as a on a trampoline. Two teams of five pass the ball competitive sport. They value self-development to each other over a maximum of eight touches most highly, and believe that adding the before they must hit the ball to the other side standards of other competitors and the demands of the court. The capoiera element is as much of observers would go against that philosophy. musical as it is physical, bossa nova and samba Instead, the regular traceur dreams of one day beats drive the pace of the game, and games are using his skills to escape a pursuing assailant like overseen by ‘samba referees’, essentially a DJ/ a ninja, or rescuing a damsel in distress from a impartial arbiter/MC with a funny voice. burning building. Watching it for the first time, you could Training gives the traceur a much greater easily imagine it emerged from our society’s spatial and aesthetic awareness in the most banal ultimate cradle of creativity – the rich, stoned everyday environments. Though traceurs try frat kid. But for some strange reason, the longer to leave their environment as they find it, they you watch, the more uncannily natural the very quickly realise that the impressions they combination of movements appear, although leave upon locals, as much as the occasional its slow pace perhaps comes at the detriment of footmarks, are inevitable. As such competitive exchange. It’s like a lava lamp. great effort is spent to ensure Earlier this year, Laurence Hendry, a the ethics of their practice fourth-year student with an entrepreneurial are conveyed in their eye, got in touch with Sydney University "THE REGULAR interactions with Sport and Fitness and the Dutch TRACEUR DREAMS observers. proprietors of Bossaball, along with a OF ONE DAY USING Early in the range of potential sponsors, with the HIS SKILLS TO ESCAPE A first semester of last PURSUING ASSAILANT LIKE aim of bringing the game to Sydney. year, the Faculty of A NINJA, OR RESCUING A Unfortunately, Hendry’s efforts Business invited the DAMSEL IN DISTRESS were cut short after the proprietors APA to set up scaffold FROM A BURNING refused to even do a feasibility study BUILDING." on the law lawns and of the proposal. They also insisted demonstrate their flair to on a licensing fee, suggesting plans to passing students. However, grow the sport as a franchise. For better its ambiguous character outside or worse, this is in keeping with an emerging the paradigm of competitive or trend, where innovators seek to monopolise artistic sport makes it difficult for niches with patents. Although this might not Parkour to occupy a clear place in stifle innovation, it certainly restricts the mind of those exposed to it. distribution, and is a far cry from Bossaball, loosely translated as the origins of beach volleyball as a ‘flairball’, on the other hand, was cheap, family-friendly sport on the conceived of as a business and beaches of Hawaii. markets itself aggressively as Sport, activity, game, business or a sport. Its creators describe whatever, those seeking something it as a mix of volleyball, different should certainly check football, out these emerging pastimes. capoiera, and You never know – it may gymnastics. double up as training for the 2024 Olympics. Or save you in the event of a ninja attack. Who knows.

phy iloso t, ph r o p s our: Park

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kills? inja s n y z ra ad c or m

5/29/12 12:59 PM

ISSUE 04 SCIENCE & TECH

The Gender Games ERIN STEWART DISPELS THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE IN GAMING.

‘PS2, because your girlfriend bores you shitless’ reads a 2007 Indian Sony advertisement. It was hardly a case of clever marketing, but just another bare reminder of how gaming is traditionally a man’s world.

"So, girls play games, and not necessarily the kinds of games you’d expect girls to play, like The Sims or Singstar... We’re talking about games where people die gory deaths."

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Girl gamer clan Frag Dolls are among the many out to bust the myth that only males play games.

The stereotypical image of a gamer is probably a teenage boy, alone in a room lit solely by his computer monitor. He plays games instead of sleeping, or socialising. He lives games. But that stereotype is starting to fall apart as research increasingly reveals that there are far more girls with joysticks than you’d think. Players usually take a default male perspective and avatar in games because it is assumed that most players are men. However in 2009 a Nielsen survey in the huge US market showed that 45 per cent of all active gamers (people who game for over an hour per week on any type of console) were women. Recent research here in Australia confirms the rise of female gamers; a 2011 Bond University report indicates the proportion of female gamers is around 47 per cent, up from 38 per cent seven years ago. So, girls play games, and not necessarily the kinds of games you’d expect girls to play, like The Sims or Singstar. We’re talking about games where people die gory deaths and girls do the killing. Stealth games, first-person shooters, hack and slashers – the hardcore stuff. And they don’t want sparkly, pink controllers either. Gaming blogger, Whitney Butts, says her experiences playing online games such as World ofWarcraft as a female lead to interesting interactions with other players. “Time after time, I get told that I’m not a girl and I don’t exist,” she says. “It’s happened to me so much that I’m beginning to think it’s true.” The ‘no girls allowed’ clubhouse attitude of the online gamespace leads Butts to hide her gender in communications with other gamers. She doesn’t mention she is fem ale and doesn’t display a picture of herself, so everyone assumes she’s a dude. No wonder people think girl gamers are invisible. But just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The male-dominated culture of gaming

SCIENCE & TECH is heavily reinforced at an institutional level. The advertising of games is highly gendered, as exemplified by Sony’s widely-panned campaign. Game companies actively ignore women in their marketing campaigns, which perpetuates the myth that girls don’t game. And while most gaming magazines have a couple of female reviewers on staff, they are often stuck reviewing ‘girly games’. It seems the gaming public trust a female reviewer’s thoughts on Hello Kitty’s Roller Rescue, but not Halo. However, female gamers are increasingly choosing to step out of the shadows. Online community, Girl Gamer, is one of many collectives out to dispel the myth that girls don’t game, and it provides an active social network for girls to talk about gaming. It’s not all talk either. One female gaming group, the Frag Dolls, compete in a number of competitions throughout the year, often beating the boys at their own game. They have won and placed in several serious competitions in the US and are strong advocates for female gamers, stating on their website: “We strive to break down the stereotypes formed about females who play video games, which cause many girl gamers to hide from social gaming.” “We want to see as many women in the gaming industry as actresses in the film industry, and just by showing girls that we are here in the public eye playing, writing, and sharing it shows them that it is possible.”

5/29/12 12:59 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM SECTION THE ARTSHEADING

War on the Streets WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES WHEN ADVERTISERS AND GRAFFITI ARTISTS FIGHT FOR OUR ATTENTION, ASKS ERIN STEWART.

aren of Alphington is one of many grumpy readers of the Herald Sun who despises graffiti. She says: ‘vandals are pests who use public property just to write their name on it, leaving the tax payers to clean it up.’ She explains that she doesn’t find the graffiti to be aesthetically pleasing and she is annoyed that people are using the space of her community for their own ends. Like Karen, street artists are similarly annoyed. They feel that public space has been taken over – without consent – by advertisers. Seminal UK street artist, Banksy writes that on the streets, “people are taking the piss out of you everyday… They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small…They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you… They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission.” “Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use.You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head,” Banksy writes. An overnight, undercover

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war on the streets is being waged between advertisers and vandals. Curiously, graffiti artists see themselves as ‘reclaiming’ public space from private companies. Local councils and ordinary letter-to-the-editor writing types meanwhile seem oblivious to what’s going on.

HOW TO RECLAIM THE STREETS There are many examples of street artists fighting advertising through vandalism. Across inner-city Sydney, artists have taken to putting stickers over advertisements and shop fronts. The label ‘bullshit’ is one of the more prolific means, but there are many other methods in play. Sometimes the only resources vandals use to take back the streets is a Sharpie and a bit of wit. Scottish artist Robert Montgomery has forged his own trademark of vandalism, plastering over advertisements under the cover of darkness to replace the messages and images with

poetry. The poetry is ironic, anticonsumerist, and reflects on the meaning of beauty. Internationally, there is a feminist movement to write, paint and paste over advertising deemed sexist. A popular facebook fan page, A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World, held a worldwide event last year to encourage women to deface advertising in a bid to empower women and take back the streets as a place where they can feel confident.

ADVERTISERS STRIKE BACK Despite the large sums budgeted towards cleaning up graffiti, the battle local governments wage on vandalism is woeful in its efficacy. There are always more buildings to repaint, statues to clean, trees to replant, signs to fix. The ‘problem’ never goes away and is expensive to boot. The advertisers are a much more formidable foe to the street artist. Aside from lawsuits and claims that vandalism impinges on their intellectual property rights, advertisers have also come up with a creative counter-strike. ‘Guerrilla advertising’ is a clever new technique some ad agencies use to make their billboards look like street art. Some advertisers have even started to ‘poach’ street artists and pay large sums of money for them to help design campaigns. Roland Brückner, a well-known street artist in Germany is dismayed, to say the least. “As a result of the crass competition with advertising, there

are fewer and fewer spaces available for real artists,” he says.

A MORAL VICTOR? Lauren Rosewarne of the University of Melbourne’s Centre of Public Policy says that both street art and public advertising can be understood as ‘visual terror’ and ‘forms of street harassment’. Graffiti works to make ordinary people intimidated. As vandalism is a crime, the pedestrian and the commuter realise that their public space is being used for illegal activities – sometimes defiance for the sake of defiance. Graffiti is a public reminder and symbol of the reality of crime. But advertising can also harass us. It pressures us to buy things, it objectifies bodies, and it introduces commercialisation in what would ideally be a context of community. There is no victor here. Both the advertisers and the vandals want to take control over space that isn’t theirs by throwing money about, or engaging in petty crime. But if public space is ripe for the taking through legitimate public enterprise, surely the power to answer back is worth preserving.

THE ARTS 29/05/12 1:55 PM

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5/29/12 12:59 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM REVIEWS

REVIEWS GIG PRINCE SYDNEY SUPER DOME

CD BLUNDERBUSS JACK WHITE

CD ELECTRA HEART MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS

TV GIRLS HBO

The thing about Prince is, the crazier he is, the better his music becomes. His first show in Australia for 10 years was epitomised by his totally outlandish behaviour. Appearing in a gold sequined suit set the tone for the entire show: funky, free and totally insane. Prince could have made doves cry with his standout performance of ‘Little Red Corvette’. Prancing around on a stage shaped as his own symbol, writhing on the floor, moaning and screaming – and at one point, getting dangerously close to a piano leg – Prince was making love to the audience. And the audience responded in kind: at every high-pitched squeal the crowd went wild. In fact, the whole show could have said a lot about Prince’s performance in the bedroom: riles you up then leaves you hanging, goes slow and then really fast, disappears into the dark for 10 minutes before returning for a twominute number. Despite a letdown of an encore, the show was truly phenomenal. The band showed nothing but the highest calibre of musicianship, and Prince still has the vocal range and moves of a howling monkey. They may call him ‘Prince’, but he’s certainly the king of showmanship. .

Though hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, an effortlesslytalented musician fuelled by his failed marriage comes damned close. Very much the musical equivalent of a Chiko roll, Jack White is a complex riddle wrapped inside an enigma and despite your initial scepticism, you’ll probably find it delicious. Bursting at the seams with quirks and eccentricities, White has been delivering his own take on modern rock for the past decade and his first solo outing is no exception. Like flashes of his past, Blunderbuss kicks off the proceedings with a Raconteursesque ‘Missing Pieces’ before the raucous affair that is ‘Sixteen Saltines’ quickly picks up from where the last White Stripes effort left off. From here, it’s an ode to White’s musical heroes of a bygone era, with hints of Dusty Springfield and Neil Young making themselves heard in amongst the man’s own bizarre mix of punk rock-meetsfolk. While you may never have ‘dug’ what White’s been dishing out over the years, his solo debut is a testament to his musical prowess and a telling example that lets us know that his time in the sun ain’t over yet.

GABRIELLA EDELSTEIN

EMILY SWANSON

So far 2012 has been quite thin on the ground in terms of solid pop releases, but Marina Diamandis has single-handedly put things to the rights with her captivating sophomore LP, Electra Heart. This is an album worth investing in for the puns alone – Marina draws upon self-crafted American stereotypes, including the ‘Teen Idle’ (see what she did there?) and the ‘Su-Barbie-A’ (and there?). The album’s conceptual basis could be clearer - in the lead-up to Electra Heart’s release, Marina’s harped on about Greek tragedy, the disintegration of the American dream, feminism and more – but the proof is in the pudding. Diamandis worked with ‘shitty American pop’ (her words) aficionado Dr Luke and other producers, to deliver the new album that is as sonically commercial as it is lyrically leftof-centre. Marina’s lyrics switch between hard-as-nails defiance and emotional vulnerability. Similarly, she flirts with the pseudo-dance dominating pop recently, but also takes influence from rock and balladry. Though she may be a walking contradiction, Marina is a fascinating melange of intellect, cultural awareness and commercialism.Your standard Arts student, really!

In a post-Bridesmaids world, what boundaries are yet to be transgressed by female comedians? This answer may be in the new offering by Judd Apatow and lady wunderkind Lena Dunham, whose series Girls is airing its first season. It has been lauded, applauded and criticised. And its critics criticised. And these critiques criticised right back. And this is before the first episode had even aired. The show tracks four privileged twentysomethings living the hard life in Brooklyn, on their parents’ credit cards. The substance of the attacks are based primarily on the insular, entitled, overwhelmingly white world that the girls inhabit, whilst spending a great deal of their time eating cupcakes in bathrooms, complaining about how hard their lives are. Call it the ‘Lana Del Ray phenomenon’ when a product is embraced, applauded, attacked, backlashed, then un-lashed in lightning-fast succession before its release. Call it a sign of our times; a propensity to jump on the judgement bandwagon, driven by the hyperactive cycles of internetdriven taste-making. But the buzz belies the fact that is; the writing’s satirical, self aware self-indulgence has struck a chord with the postmillennial ‘adults’ who have tuned in.

*****

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JOHN ROWLEY

BIANCA HEALEY

*****

5/29/12 12:59 PM

ISSUE 04 REVIEWS

COMEDY

Welcome to the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Existence James Colley

CLASSIC COUNTDOWN Kevin Bacon Films XIAORAN SHI SOMETHING SOMETHING

THE RIVER WILD The poster for this film is

downright confusing, evoking a mindboggling kaleidoscope of Viking war epic, cheesy sci-fi mindfuck, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The reality is just as bizarre as partnersin-crime, Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly, lead us on a thrilling treasure hunt across the Wild Wild Whitewater Rapids. Praised for its cinematography and panned for virtually everything else, we simply couldn’t get past the cringe-worthy Ayn Rand references.

MURDER IN THE FIRST Inspired by the life of hard-boiled bank robber, Henri Young, this film re-imagines him as a juvenile delinquent (Kevin Bacon) driven to homicide by the inhumane practice of solitary confinement after stealing a fiver to provide for his sister. Nothing says Oscar nomination quite like ‘destitute orphans’, and this film had two. Sadly, that still failed to win them any awards, but it remains a chilling examination of the injustices of the American penal system.

ear not, comedians and comedians to be. The system works. Learn your ropes, work your way up through the Sydney comedy scene and you may eventually find yourself playing with the big boys and girls at the Sydney International Comedy Festival. Well... in a small room at the Sydney International Comedy Festival, but hey, you’ll still be there, right? And you will be funny. Mucho funny. The Sydney International Comedy Festival was a fitting setting for Sydney Uni veteran James Colley’s first solo festival show, Welcome to the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Existence. The show, as the title alludes to, contained his advice to his actual niece and goddaughter Maddy, now 17 months old. Delivered as a series of letters to be opened by her as she reaches each new stage of her life, Colley shares some of his more excellent stories and observations on gettin’ it done. God help her if she ever listens to him. In a refreshing contrast to a lot of the material put out there by Colley’s contemporaries, Welcome to theWorld isn’t just a platform for venting anger, latent violent tendencies and/or sexual frustrations. It’s a surprisingly considered look at growing up and how to be a good person, albeit a weird one; and albeit with a few good sex/rage gags thrown in for good measure. Parts of the set were probably a little al dente for a non-festival crowd, but hey, that’s their bad for going to a comedy festival show. Colley at times also seemed a little overexcited by his own jokes - or maybe just at the fact that the audience actually found them funny. But such enthusiasm is a good sign even if is jars the performance after all, it was his first big show. Give him time, the bitterness will come. All in all, a great start. The fundamentals are there.

ART BENJAMIN

*****

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APOLLO 13 One of Ron Howard’s last

blockbuster masterpieces before he decided to commit career suicide with The DaVinci Code, Apollo 13 has stood the test of time to become the ultimate cinematic thesis on failed moon landings. Seriously though, this film takes a measured look at mortality, albeit through Hollywood’s eyes, making it a close contender for first place, if only in homage to Kevin Bacon, who gave the world “Houston, we have a problem” as astronaut Jack Swigert.

THE WOODSMAN Kevin Bacon tackles the role

of a child sex offender struggling to re-enter society after doing hard time, and doesn’t land flat on his face. The disparity between the price he must pay for his misdeeds and the freedom he feels he has earned builds with a certain sense of horror over the course of the film. This directorial debut by Nicole Kassell goes beyond telling a story, or proving definitively that Mos Def cannot act. It forces us to confront the transgressive nature inherent in all of us.

FOOTLOOSE “A seriously confused film”

according to Roger Ebert, it carried a dystopian message delivered with Disney-esque alacrity. After unleashing upon society a Kenny Loggins number one hit, and impossibly high expectations for senior prom, Footloose has truly carved a niche in the proud tradition of high school musicals from Glee to High School Musical. It suffices to say that Kevin Bacon’s face in this film was the face that launched a thousand teenaged crushes.

5/29/12 12:59 PM

BULL USUONLINE.COM CAUGHT ON CAMPUS TARZAN’S ENTRY WAS TYPICALLY ROPEY

THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR CLIMBING

WRONG BUTTON

HELLO DOWN THERE, ANT PEOPLE!

HUMANITARIAN WEEK 7 – 11 MAY

aising awareness for social justice and humanitarianism doesn’t always have to be guilt-trips and doom and gloom. It can be fun and inspiring – just as demonstrated by USU’s Humanitarian Week in May. Directors Al-Karim Madhavji and Shuning Sun set up a fantastic five-day festival with comedy, trivia, talks, bake sales, rock climbing(!), an amazing race and a groovy wrap-up party.

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

CAUGHT ON CAMPUS PHOTOS BY CRISIA MIROIU

BOW TO YOUR CUPCAKE OVERLORDS V FOR VEGAN!

I WISH THIS JACKET WAS A CAPE

LOLZ

OFFICIAL CUPCAKE SPOKESPERSON

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YOU THERE!

29/05/12 12:58 PM

ISSUE 04 CLUB HUB

CLUB HUB

GLOBE-TROTTING GERMAN KLUB Home to Oktoberfest celebrations, beer steins and lederhosen - you can’t go wrong with German Klub. The Society’s aim is to promote awareness of the language and culture of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, develop a network for students of Germanic Studies, and help students improve language skills. Aside from beer keg races and yodelling contests (ok, maybe not), they also run conversation groups and film screenings. Join to practise your German stay to experience the rich Germanic culture – All members of the student population are willkommen!

AUSTRALIA-CHINA YOUTH ASSOCIATION

Vive le FrenchSoc! LET THEM EAT CAKE! TOM NEALE JOINS THE FESTIVITIES OF SYDNEY UNIVERSITY’S FRENCH SOCIETY.

o you wake up every day with thoughts of Molière? Do you feel the external world is a philosophical construct, slightly backward and très en retard? Do you like ‘baying for the blood of the bourgeois’ while eating wine and cheese? Then French Society (FrenchSoc) is for you! FrenchSoc is one of the many multicultural societies on campus, catering for all of those who need to fulfil their Franco urges for a good arthouse film or practise their conversational French and tête à tête. The great thing about FrenchSoc, however, is that it’s not just for pretentious non-conformist hipsters, reconstructed French Marxists or Period Drama Society members with ‘born to rule’ syndrome. FrenchSoc is full of genuinely nice and intelligent people who speak various levels of French and sometimes none at all.You’ll get along at any of the Society’s great events. The Wine and Cheese Day is a highlight of the FrenchSoc calendar. From the lush grass of the sunken lawns of Manning, the French Executive serve cheese, crepes and wine to the masses. In 2011 the event proved a hit, with amateur participants striking up conversation in the Frenglish of their limited Year 9 and

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10 language education while the more fluent amongst them tried their best to understand. Conversation wandered towards what was then the upcoming Presidential elections, with even supporters of Sarkozy claiming, il est terminé. History proved their clairvoyance right. FrenchSoc also host regular foreign film screenings for those seeking a respite from the hackneyed blockbusters of Broadway Hoyts. Gathered in an Education Building classroom, attendees cast away all stereotypes of the insolent French by engaging in lively and involved discussions of post-film analysis. In 2012, FrenchSoc has many more exciting events including: regular conversation classes, a Eurovision Party with other language and culture societies and yet more Wine and Cheese Nights. So put on your Beret, share some and wine and cheese and ‘bay for bourgeois blood’ with FrenchSoc.

The ACYA is an apolitical association for Australian students interested in China and for Chinese students interested in Australia, bridging the gap between local and international students. It runs a number of educational and career-related events with a specific China–Australia focus. For example lectures and debates by academics on China-related topics, as well as talks and workshops that aim to provide students with information about jobs and possible careers in Chinese or China-related Australian industries. They also run a number of social events and a language exchange program with the Chinese Studies Department.

UNITED NATIONS SOCIETY The UN Society aims to promote awareness of the ideals, objectives and current activities of the United Nations. They are a forum to discuss UN-related issues, a place to engage in humanitarian, political, social, security and environmental issues and of course provide a vibrant and friendly social sphere. The Society participates in a number of simulation UN conferences throughout the year as well as outreach events. If you value being a world citizen, this society is the place for you.

5/29/12 1:02 PM

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lcohol. The staple beverage of the uni student. The oldest beverage produced by humans. The cause of accidental babies everywhere.

We’ve all befriended the odd goon sack in our day. We’ve all hugged a toilet or two – staring in surprise at the texture of your own partially-digested food. We’ve all unknowingly called up a friend to enquire about a lost phone (‘...you mean the one you’re calling me from?’). We’ve all, on occasion, been unable to find our hands (right?).Yet despite the hangovers, the embarrassing moments and the poorly thought-out toilet graffiti, we continue to consume what is literally a poison. If we know that alcohol is bad for us, then why do we drink it? This question bore interesting responses when bandied about Sydney Uni’s very own Hermann’s Bar. So after spinning the investigative bottle and bottling the incoherent spin, it seems that an end has come without a conclusion. I guess some say that the glass is half empty, some say it’s half full and alcoholics ask ‘are you gonna drink that?’

Medicine NICK SIMONE GETS PLASTERED! ADVOCATES RESPONSIBLE DRINKING.

“REALITY IS JUST AN ILLUSION CAUSED BY A LACK OF ALCOHOL.”

“I’M NOT AS THINK AS YOU DRUNK I AM...”

“IF WE STOP DRINKING, THEN THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON.”

Alcohol is most people’s first choice of social lubricant and can turn even the most boring person into Patrick Swayze. It’s overtaken the cosmetic industry in the business of making ugly people look better, and who could argue with a civil service like that? There’s a kick to the crotch of evolutionism.

Hermann’s Bar does suffer the handicap of being positioned dangerously close to the Engineering buildings and it is a wellknown fact that many of their students are studying under the influence.

One of the more inventive answers. The Taliban are well-known advocates of abstinence, vowing to distance themselves and their subjects from alcohol.Yet on the other side of the religious house you have Jesus turning water into wine at parties, which, according to the Hermann’s Bar staff, puts Corey Delaney to shame.

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Who’ss for a dip? dip? But ther theree is a dark side Year of jo Ye job b Who’ pain to hi pa hitt banks, ba bank s, sh shop opss Ga Gareth are h Hutc Hutche ens ens ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

AUSTR AU RALIA is on the cusp RA cusp of a white w hite collar a reec eces cessio ession with with inin ssider iiders rs wa warning ng th hat thousands hat usand ds of jo obs bs are re at a rrisk s in i the he finance se secto tor, or, aft after iit em merged erged yesterday te that tth ha AN NZ planned ed to cut 7 700 jobs. jobs. But the th H Heralld has has established e the jjob cu the cuts willl total to tot o as many as 1000 by th 1000 the end end d off this thi year, wh which whic will ll be m more ore than th the ban b ankk shed d at thee height of the global glo oball fin financial n cris risis. i They Th eyy come c ad day ay after the RoyRoyRo al Bank Bankk of Scottlan laan nd d announced ounc d plaans to close plan se its its investment stm ment ban bank anking ng bu b busineess, ss, lea le dingg to o the llos oss off m more mo tthan han an 200 jobss in Au Aust ustralia lia. Econ Eco nomists hav avee warne warned d AusAu trrali tral raliaa iss vulnera v ablee to a recession ecessio ess this year ar with a wh wholes oles lesale lee fundfu ingg sq queez in queeze n Europe E Eu urope raising sing deb d ebt bt cos costs for baan anks ks su such as ANZ. ANZ NZ Experts erts havee warned ned thousousands off jobs job ob willl ll b be llos ost from rom the in ndu ustrr y tthis year yeear as banks ank nk sccramble cram mb ble to aad djust djust st to an era of lo ow w cre redit gro re owth th and nd higher gher fu unding ngg costs. This is comes on on top t of cuts of 21 jo 2150 215 obs be obs betw b ween een en March 2009 2 and las and last a Se ast Septembe ember mber in ANZ’s Aus ustralia alian lia d diviision. ision. ion. ‘‘We have rru un a policy un licy o off ssheddin dding jobs jo obs th hrough hro gh h attritio ttri on sin s nce ce October llaastt year,’’ ar,’’ an a ex execu cut utive ve said. saaid. ‘‘T ‘Tem mps havee not ot been rehired d once once n the heir he i cont on ntract ractt has expired expired. xpired ed Sec econdm condm dments havee been stop dm stopped. We have outsource ped. outso o utsourced two whole floors off o wh operat oper pera ration ions staff af fro rom a [Melb bourne] urne] ne] off office ice to Maanila nila [in in tthee Phi Philipp ilippines]. nes]. If I

700 2100

ANZ jobs to go this y yearr

Australian jobs cut by A ANZ in past two years

200

Local jobs lost in Bank Bank o of Scotland nd closure you ou count all those jobs jobs sincee October, ctober, along with wha what at will be announced in n the next w week eek . . . ee wee will lose more staff than an we did d as a result of the th GF GFC.’’ C C.’’ Thee national se secretar y of the secret th Finance Services ices Union, L Leon Leo Carter, rter, criticised th thee bank fo for shedding dding ng jobs when it h haad record cord ord profitabili profitability profitability. profitabi ‘‘Yett again i the he first time anythin anythingg gets get tough ough gh in finance fina the only o trick in in their eirr locker is to t put jobs job bss on the line,’’ ine,’’ ine, e,’’ he said said. ‘‘It It continues to be a highly highlyy profitable rofitable ofitable fitable organ org organisation that is making aking king multibillionmultibilli multibill dollarr pro profits. its. They have an o obligation ation to t keep everybody employ e ed.’’ ed.’’ d Thee Financial Service Serv s MinisMinis ter, Bill Shorten, said: ‘‘W ‘‘Wee haven’t aven’t been briefed bri specifically cificall fic on any decision decisions of the ANZ Z in term of jobs.We regard regar any job b losses osses as unfortunate unfortun .’’ Experts erts say banks w will be for-

ced d to cut staff number numb s for or th the next few years to protectt profit ofit margins. ns. The high leve lev ls ls of consumption mption and lending lendin they len ey enen joyed oyed ed in recent years yea will not not continue. nt ntin Att the he start of 2007 Australia’s banks, excluding ANZ Asia, Asia, em employed 155,000. ployed , Four years later thatt figure had grown to 178,000 that people, an increase of 23,000 23,000. In n ANZ alone, the numbe numberr of o employees in the grou group’s global operations increased by 12,000 since September 2008, 20 from 36,900 to 48,900 48,900. But Bu ut ANZ’s Australian Austra division s has sshed hed more than 2100 jobs in the past past two years – fro from m 19,922 19, to 17,768 17 7,768 – as it sends more jjobs job to offshore. offshore of ffshore. The he job losses could ex exacerbate acerbate cconditions ditions in Austral Austra ia – already eady vulnerable ulnerable lnerable to recessi re on. n. The Th chief hief economist nomist at JP Morgan, Morgan, Stephen St Walters, said: Australia h has not undergone ndergone adjustment adjustmentss observed observ elsewhere lsewhere ewhere here ... it rem remains vulnervulne vulnerable lee to shock shocks. Economists Ec conomists also say we might conomists expect ect ct a further shake shake-out -out out in the retail industry, which which employ employs 1.2 .2 million people, following following the jobs losses last year jobs year. The he Grattan Institute Insti e’s ’s S Saull Eslakee said: ‘‘II wouldn’t woul n’tt b would be at all surprised prised if 2012 20 was a yyearr in which somee of the al almostinevitable nevitablee consequen con ces es forr employment oyment ent in retailing o off the deterioration erioration on in retail tradin trading conditions onditions over the next next couple co of years ears came to a head.’’ head. he ’’

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Tertiary advisory days: your five-page guide to starting university

Economic cond conditions ns are preve preventing nting children childre learning to swim, sw m, writes Nick Ralsto Ralston. LIFESAVERS have a simple simple l explanation for the spate spate of near drownings and a record number of rescues scues in n recent rec weeks. eks ek ‘‘There ‘Theree was pretty p poor weathweath err leading l ading into Christ Chri ma mas and I think hink that everyone was wa w s fr frothing th att the bit to get out to the the beach,’’ beach said d Dean Storey, the th lifesaving lifesaving fesaving manager of Surf Life fe Saving NSW. NSW ‘‘Then Then the sun cam came out. At thee same ame time we w had th the big swell . . . and it all al came together to o create a couple of we w week ekss of

carnage.’’ The soluti olut on to the th problem is not as simpl simp simple. e. Water Wate safety afety groups group are conc concerned erned that pool closures and entry entr y costs aare denying young childre c n the chance ance to learn earn to swim. While le an estimated 1.2 1 million ion children en have h pri pr vate lessons, experts perts conserv conse conservatively atively veely prep dict that at each year at a least least ast 50,000 children hildren dren nationwid nationwide ggraduate raduate aduaate from fr om high school without bein being able to swim 50 metre able metres. In NSW W classes are offe of red ed

through an Education D Depart epartment, two-week intensive intensive program ram in scho schools for stu students dents d t iin years two to six. s six The he progra program – the mos most affordable ffordable le in the stat state st e – is offered to o 100,000 students student bu butt is nott compulsory. compulsory ompulsory. The he peak industry body AUSTAUS SWIM WIM M said in recent years yea ye rss issu issues es off cost had ad made some pa parents rents re reluctant nt to send their children chil for lesso lessons. The chief hief executive, G Gordon ordon ord Mallett, llett, said: aid ‘‘If there is no o local loca pool, ol, despite spite any efforts ts the Department artment me of Education m may make, it starts to get more re diffidiff cult. ult. Then you’ve got tthe he cost of

entry to t existing pool po poo s, which h is a barrier rrier er to some socioso s economic onom om groups, ps, and thee increa inc i sing ingg cost co o off bus transport. transport ‘‘The he Department artment of E Ed duca ucacation ion tries to mini minimise m thee cost co but there are some limitations limitations ta tatio on n that. It’s jjust a sign of our ur economic omic ic times at the mome mom nt. People le are being pi pinch pinched ed a bit. bit.’’ bit On n the plus side, sid Surf Life side Life fe SavSa ing is enjoying a boom m in the number ber of young people p becom becoming ng involved volved in the th vol volunteer unteer teer re rescue organisation. organisatio organisation rganisation. This is year it has 30 30,000 3 000 nipper nippers i ipper on itss books and th the num number ber h has ha been rising annually for for the pa pas past four our years years. year

‘‘W nippe ip cu cuing whe when the he ni n Bond o Jim W No Nor o doin doing o 850 5 a AB was ra wa wante ggain a she ha ‘‘W she lo sh c confid confi she w she

summer The world of the box-set addict

Dy yla an Welch Wel SUVA VA, FIJI ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

TH THE T HE Fij Fijian Fijian rreeeggime ime of V Voreqe reqe ‘‘Fran ank’’ k’’’’ Bainim maram maram mar ra a has recruite cr ruited ed on one ne of W Washing ashing ash ton’s mos most notoriou notor no riou ous lobb lobbyist byistt fi b firms – that tha ha been has beeen raide b id d byy the he FBI and rep re epresen pressen sents reprressiv ssiv ive regimes imes in i the Middle the Middl i e Easst an and Afr and Af ica – to t help he p manage manage itts reputa reputa utation ion and an lobby llob obby fo oreign eign jo ournal nalists. sts. And diploma And iplomaati ticc ssource ourc s beb liieve ieve th he firm, Qorvis he vis Commu Communications n ica ns, mayy b be behind th the de decision deci on by C Co ommodore odore BainiBainima marama m tto o liftt th thee widely conco deemned pu demned pub ublicc emergen mergen ergency cy reguegu

Frank rank Bainimaram Bainimarama ... advice. vice. lations, ations, only to enshrine enshrine them in a permanent manent law law. The company is rep represented te in n Suva uva by a fresh-face fresh-fac d former mer business usiness journalist, journalis Seth Thomas Pietras, who has been been in the

country coun ntry on and off sinc sin e OctoOcto ber.. A contract publis published hed by the th US Justice Department under unde the Foreign g Agents g Registration Act ct reveals eveals that in Oct October ober the o Fijian Attorney-General, Attorney-Gene Attorne ral,, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, ed-Khaiyum sign signed a deed with Qorvis wo worth $US40,000 a month for a year. In ret return, Qorvis vis has agreed to t provide provid vid ‘‘public ublic relations relatio at services vices i relatrela ing to o business and investment i estm inv stment to the government ment of Fi F ji’’. ji’’’. But it appears to th the Herald Herald, which spent the week in Suva uva being lobbied by Mr Pietras, Pietras, that his ambit is far greater greater than spin. grea Itt is likely Mr Pietra Pietras, described ibed

as Qorvis’s chief speechwriter, speechwriter, chwrit helped elped draft Commodor Commodoree Baini Bainimarama’s ma’s recent speec speeches, hes, in including ding his New Year’s Day adad dress ss announcing nnounc th lifting of the emergency ergency regulations. regulations. Several everal countries w with an ini terest erestt in i Fiji express expres ed d a belief to th the he Herald Herald that, given iven en tthe timing, Qorvis orvis might have pla played d a ro role o in n Commodore Bainimar B am ama’s ma’s decision ecision ision to lift the emergency rgen regula regulatio ulations. ions. A diplomatic plom source sou also exe pressed d concern that tha the the kkind kind of role played by such lob lobbyists byistss in the Middle East and Afr Africa ica was being imported to the Pacific. Pacific. ac

News Review Fiji’s s future of uncertainty

Mrr Pietras, etras, an ex executi executive vvee vicev president of Qorvis’s Qorvis’ Qo geopolitica geopolitical olitical solutions tions section, is at lea least the second d Qorvis employ employe employeee to o travel to o Fiji, Fij iji, after Tina Jeon, an Olym Olympic i archer and Qorvis sspinner. pin pinner In early November Ms Je Jeon on posted ted on Twitter a pho photo to of herh self and Commodore Bainini marama ama aboard a boat in Fiji with the caption: ‘‘No better ette place to write ite a press rrelease’’. elease’’. ase’’

Last ast st year, d during the A Arab rab Sprin Spring, pring, ng, Mr Pietras w was Qorvis’s rvis’ spokesman kesman when its i rol rolee in n defending ng Middle East regimes rregimes was the he subject ect of o debate. ‘‘Our Our clients are faci fa facing ng som some challenges enges now,’’ Mr P Pietras ietras to told The New Yo York Times. Times. ‘‘But our o long-term ong-term -term goals go to brid dge ge the difd ferences ces between our cclients lients and an the he United States haven’t haven’t changed. hanged. d We W stand d by b th hem.’’ em.’’’ In 2004 when Qorvis was wa raided ided by the FBI as par partt of an investigation stigation into whether whether ther an advertising campaign it helpe helped run broke federal law by by not d disclosing sing Saudi funding. funding.

At the time, Qorvis was wa w th the beneficiary eneficiary of a six-m six-month onth con contract ract with the Saudis worth rt al almost almos $US15 US15 million to help improve ro its reputation eputation tation after the terrorist er rist attacks ks of Sept Septembe 1 September 11, 1 2001. 2001 01 Last st year an Egyptian ste steel tycoon ycoon on with ties to the th Mubarak Mubara regime me retained Qo Qorvi Qorv Qor s to o manage manag man his is public ublic relations relation d during uringg a trial tr regarding egar g claims of wi widespread desprea despread p corruption. orruption. on. He was eve e ntuall ntually ntu ll sentenced entenced to 10 years years in in jail. ja The companyy has also rrepreresented ented the man widely kknown nown as a ‘‘Africa’s Africa’s worst dictator’’, dictator’’, tor’’, Equatorial rial Guinea’s Teodor Teodoro o Obiang Nguema ema Mbasogo. Mbasogo

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First published 1831 No. 54,364 $1.50 (inc GST)

TRAFFIC across the city would be slowed to 40km/h as part of City of Sydney plans. Terry Lee-Williams, a transport strategy manager at the City of Sydney, told the NSW Parliament’s joint standing committee on road safety that the council would like a “blanket” 40km/h speed limit across the city in “predominantly residential areas”. He said 20 per cent of the existing city speed zones were 40km/h. ‘‘Once we do the CBD, that would take it up to about 35 per cent and we would progressively like to roll that through. I say progressively because it is a cost issue,’’ Mr Lee-Williams told the committee late last year. The costs include hundreds of thousands of dollars in studies ‘‘and hoops we must jump through for the RMS [Roads and Maritime Services]’’. The NSW Labor MP Walt Secord, who is a Staysafe committee member, said he disagreed with the council plan to introduce the 40km/h speed zone across the city, saying it would further congest traffic. ‘‘Recently at a Staysafe parliamentary hearing, the staff from Sydney City Council were advocating changing the entire city to 40 kilometres,’’ he said. ‘‘While I understand they have safety concerns, I fear that it could slow city traffic to a snail’s pace.

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IN GOOD COMPANY

On merit ... clockwise, from top left: Baroness Thatcher, Prince Charles, Sir Tom Stoppard, David Hockney and Sir David Attenborough. who was also appointed to the order yesterday, will join luminaries including the former British prime minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, the naturalist Sir David Attenborough and Prince Charles.

The Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, said she warmly congratulated Mr Howard on receiving such a distinguished award. ‘‘This is a rare and singular honour for his service to Australia,’’ she said. The Order, founded by King

Edward VII in 1902, carries no title but is considered an extremely high mark of honour and a personal gift from the Queen. According to the Royal Family’s website, it is to be given ‘‘to such persons, subjects of Our Crown,

as may have rendered exceptionally meritorious services in Our Crown Services or towards the advancement of the Arts, Learning, Literature, and Science or such other exceptional service as We are fit to recognise’’. Although writers and artists have traditionally dominated the field, politicians appointed to the order have included Sir Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Baroness Thatcher. Mr Howard becomes the ninth Australian appointed, following in the footsteps of the philosopher Samuel Alexander, the intellectual Gilbert Murray, scientists Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Howard Florey and Robert McCredie May, former chief justice of Australia Sir Owen Dixon, artist Sir Sidney Nolan and soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. Mr Howard is expected to receive his Order of Merit – an eight-pointed cross bearing the imperial crown to be worn around the neck – at a ceremony later this year.

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Dirty business ... litter lines the foreshore at Iron Cove. Photo: Jon Reid programs like this not continue in some form. It would certainly be very detrimental. We have millions of people living in that Research indicated it was likely that since the end of the

drought more rain has meant more litter washed into waterways, he said. Most of the man-made refuse consists of food and drink packaging dropped on streets and swept into the harbour through stormwater drains, a NSW Maritime spokeswoman said. While the fall was partly caused by Maritime’s environmental service losing its flagship vessel for more than six months as a replacement was built, it also followed a decision in December 2010 to stop using detainees provided by the Department of Corrective Ser-

vices for the foreshore clean-up, she said. Minimal risk detainees began working with government waterways cleaners 17 years ago and the program has contributed between 12 and 28 per cent of the volume of waste collected every year up to 2008-09, official figures show. However, the program was suspended when the Department of Corrective Services began to phase out its periodic detention program last October, according to NSW Maritime. The Herald understands that staff were unwilling to work with

higher-risk detainees receiving intensive correction orders, which have replaced periodic detention. The detainees’ assistance was hailed as a success in previous years, as NSW Maritime crews worked to remove boating hazards and rubbish from Sydney Harbour and the navigable waters of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers over a combined foreshore length of 270 kilometres. Four minimal risk detainees worked three times a week with government staff to clear debris in areas inaccessible to boats,

NEWS, PAGE 7

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AS IF obligated to compete with the evening’s entertainment, 22 Test cricketers of Australia and India romped through three bright and breezy sessions. The batsmen clubbed the ball to all corners when they weren’t losing their wickets. The bowlers served up bouncers, wides, late outswingers and unplayable in-duckers, with the occasional nagging length ball for variety. Fieldsmen fell asleep if the ball hadn’t come to them in an over. What is this new thing, and how can it be stretched to five days? Perhaps each team needs three innings in a Test. Perhaps there is no problem. Test matches have a natural duration of 31⁄2 days, and we should celebrate the plebeian uprising of the bowler. While M.S. Dhoni and R. Ashwin were together, putting on 54 in 81 balls for India’s seventh wicket, an anxious Australian voice in the Churchill Stand muttered, ‘‘They’re digging in now – we need a wicket, Hilfy!’’

and factions in a speech to the national conference. Mr Rudd said the party had failed to take any significant steps to rein in the power of factions and union bosses. ‘‘While some claim we have moved forward on party reform, the truth is we have barely moved at all,’’ Mr Rudd said. ‘‘The stark alternative remains: either more power to the factional powerbrokers or more power to the 35,000 members of the Australian Labor Party.’’ An internal review by the former premiers Steve Bracks and

Resurgent Punter holds key to series If the opening day was all about Sachin Tendulkar, the central character leading i t t d i Ri k P ti

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Killer given passport, licence and freedom Saffron Howden and Alicia Wood

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TRENT JENNINGS packed his passport, driver’s licence and, unsupervised, took off in a stolen car from a prison psychiatric hospital. As authorities scrambled yesterday to shift the blame for the bungle that allowed the killer to walk free on Friday and outsmart police hours later, the nationwide hunt for him continued. Jennings, 26, stabbed a man to death eight years ago during a casual sexual encounter. He was granted day leave rights from Morisset Hospital, near Newcastle, only a month before he absconded from custody and allegedly arranged over the internet to meet a man, 50, at his home in Sydney’s Zetland. Last Thursday, Jennings, pictured, tied the man up with his consent then stole some of his belongings, in-

First Tuesday

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul appeared to be running neck and neck in Iowa before tomorrow’s first vote on the candidates vying for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, with Rick Santorum mounting a late charge. Contenders have been blitzing shopping malls, public meetings and local media. 씰 World — Page 8

Classic stoush

Chloe Hosking won a thrilling first race of the Bay Classic and promptly called Union Cycliste Internationale boss Pat McQuaid ‘‘a dick’’ for failing to implement a minimum wage for women. Third placed Rochelle Gilmore also called for change. 씰 SportsDay — Page 32

Harbour rubbish pile on the rise after prison drain gangs get the brush-off

me Minister has discall by the Labor elder e to slash the power of thin the ALP. lard defended the facunion influences that ponsible for the desf Kevin Rudd’s leader10. wke, a former prime and boss of the ACTU, n interview with the blication The Australicial Review that while ove’’ was the trade uni-

Road toll falls

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The 2011 road toll was the second lowest since 1944, according to provisional figures from the NSW Centre for Road Safety. Last year, 376 people were killed on NSW roads, down from 405 the previous year. The toll has dropped from 524 over the past 10 years.

Exceptionally meritorious services ... Mr Howard at home in Wollstonecraft yesterday. ‘‘It’s a compliment to Australia,’’ he said of his award. Photo: Quentin Jones Kelly Burke

Debra Jopson

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씰 Paul Sheehan, Opinion — Page 11

NOT since Sir Robert Menzies has the monarchy bestowed such approbation on an Australian politician. John Howard’s decade-long prime ministership and his dogged adherence to a constitutional monarchy have earned him admission to an exclusive club with a capped membership of just 24 after Buckingham Palace announced yesterday he had been appointed a member of the Order of Merit. Only Menzies’ Knight of the Order of the Thistle, to which the Liberal Party founder was invested in 1963, carries more kudos. ‘‘I’m very honoured,’’ Mr Howard told the Herald from his home in Wollstonecraft. ‘‘It’s a compliment to Australia and a recognition, among other things, of the respect the Queen has for this country. I’m very grateful for it.’’ Mr Howard, along with the British artist David Hockney,

2011 a year in weather

Gillard Wickets tumble as Test cricket hits fast-forward button rebukes Hawke on unions

The most miserable summer in Sydney in 50 years. The coldest autumn nationally in more than 50 years. Record flooding in Victoria. A Christmas Day in Melbourne with hailstones the size of eggs. Massive floods and cyclone Yasi in Queensland. What’s it all mean?

ROAD RULES

through the reduction of speed limits, as is international best practice. On any given working day, there are 600,000 pedestrians in the city centre and 85,000 vehicles. The slower the vehicle, the less risk of severe trauma to the pedestrian.’’ A spokeswoman for Roads and Maritime Services said it had “received a copy of the concept proposal for a speed zone reduction from the City of Sydney on Christmas Eve and is reviewing it early this year”. The former Labor premier Kristina Keneally and the City of Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, agreed to a plan to slow traffic within the city centre to 40km/h by early 2011 in a memorandum of understanding dated September 13, 2010, when Mr Secord worked as chief-ofstaff for Ms Keneally. A spokesman for the NSW Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, said the minister had not yet seen the City of Sydney proposal. Mr Lee-Williams told the Staysafe committee in late Novem-

INSIDE Bowser blues

NSW drivers could face more petrol price rises when the government bans regular unleaded fuel, pushing up demand for ethanol-blended and premium unleaded, the industry has warned. From July, petrol stations will no longer be allowed to sell regular unleaded in a bid to promote renewable biofuels.

씰 Pedestrians in the city centre: 600,000 씰 Vehicles in city centre: 85,000 씰 International safety speed: 30km/h 씰 City of Sydney safety speed: 40km/h

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SPORTSDAY

Howard honoured, for Queen and country

Anna Patty ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

SYDN LIVER PEN PENR WOLL GOSF NEWC CANB ARMI DUBB COFFS

summer

There’s action aplenty as the five-day game takes its lead from Twenty20, writes Malcolm Knox.

The son also rises

Monday January 2, 2012

Call to cut city speed limits to 40km/h STATE POLITICS

Co Com om me in me in spinner: spinner: Fiji Fiji pays pays Washingt Washington on lobbyist lobbyistss for image image makeov makeover er

STARTS PAGE 12

THE TENDULKAR DYNASTY DY YNASTY

FESTIVAL OF THE COUCH

Sun, sand and fun ... Tabitha Tabitha Palmer, 6, centre, centre, plays with Liv Kn Knight, 7, and Harry Hamilfo H rd, 5, at North Bondi. The The girls are in the under-7 -7 nip nippers. Photo: Da

When children’s shows become naughty

such as mangrove swamps, the NSW Maritime spokeswoman said. The agency expects to restart the program using volunteers provided by a non-government organisation in the first quarter of next year, another spokesman said. Mr McLean said volunteers were difficult to attract. He warned that the loss of extra assistance with garbage collection coincides with the NSW government setting a target in its new state plan of achieving the lowest litter count per capita in Australia by 2016.

SYDNEY CITY sunny 18°-26° LIVERPOOL sunny 15°-31° PENRITH sunny 16°-33° WOLLONGONG sunny 18°-26° GOSFORD sunny 15°-28° NEWCASTLE sunny 18°-26° CANBERRA partly cloudy 15°-35° ARMIDALE mostly sunny 10°-27° DUBBO sunny 17°-35° COFFS HARBOUR partly cloudy 16°-26° DETAILS PAGE 18 ISSN 0312-6315

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