Honi Soit - Week 7, Semester 1, 2012

HONISOIT

20 12

Week Seven April 26

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? Print media under pressure

Contents THIS WEEK

10 Taboo

Lifehacker: living in a caravan, and a hard night’s work in the bathroom

3

Spam

6

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return

4 Campus News

Can you Handel this much Mahler?

Asks Poppy Burnett

6 News Review

The true meaning of ANZAC Remembrance, and the gang crime holding Sydney hostage

7 Op-Shop

Fabian Di Lizia on the Pope‘s visit to Cuba

11

Profile

Michael Pezzullo, the philosophical bureaucrat, by Felix Donovan

Nick Rowbotham investigates the future of Australian newspapers

14 Culture Vulture

Avani Dias chats with Big Scary

16 Tech & Online

Christopher J. Browne reports

8 The Third Drawer

Visiting the humble local milkbar with Jackson Busse

ANZAC Day All day, Australia and New Zealand

Usually set aside for getting pissed in your mates’ backyard, you could also head along to one of the many commemorative events across Sydney, including the city parade or the sunrise or sunset services held in Martin Place.

Animal Farm 7pm, Pier 4/5 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, $25, $20 Conc., $15 Previews/Groups 4+

Twinkle, twinkle little star: exploring the world of astronomy

The SRC Anti-President returns, as does the war on Woroni

SRC Pages Super Splendour Line-up Announced!

QRReader App is free for iPhone

Planner WED

Action-Reaction

18 The Sandstone Report 19

The Back Page

Editor in Chief: Kira Spucys-Tahar

Reporters: Gareth Austin, Christopher J. Browne, Jackson Busse, Elodie Chesseman, Cindy Chong, Matt Clarke, Michael Coutts, Fabian Di Lizia, Felix Donovan, William Haines, Neha Kasbekar, Michael Leadbetter, Brad Mariano, Felicity Nelson, Nick Rowbotham, Sertan Saral, Nick Simone, Lucy Watson Contributors: Poppy Burnett, Avani Dias, John Harding-Easson, Michael Visontay, Winsome Walker Crossword: Paps

Gay characters in video games?

17

Lecture Notes

Editors: James Alexander, Hannah Bruce Bebe D’Souza, Paul Ellis, Jack Gow, Michael Koziol, Rosie Marks-Smith, James O’Doherty, Richard Withers, Connie Ye

A Changing Media Landscape

12

22 23

Illustrations: Erin Rooney Cover: Gerlos Advertising: Amanda LeMay and Rebecca Murr publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au www.src.usyd.edu.au / www.honisoit.com

Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. The editors of Honi Soit and the SRC acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Honi Soit is written, printed, and distributed on Aboriginal land. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s directors of student publications: Rafi Alam, Peta Borella, Michael de Waal, Jeremy Leith, Leo Nelson, Astha Rajvanshi and Max Schinter. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated.

The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions.

Printed by MPD, Unit E1 46-62 Maddox St. Alexandria NSW 2015.

Honi’s Guide to what’s on THU

FRI

Down the Rabbit Hole 2pm, 30 Balfour Street Chippendale, FREE

THE BEAR PACK IMPROVISE

Like Alice following the white rabbit, visitors encounter one surprise after another. A beautiful modern art experience.

Part of the Sydney Comedy Festival The Bear Pack, a.k.a Steen Raskopoulos and Carlo Ritchie, improvise a one hour non-stop rollercoaster of unscripted fun, that will also feature some of your favourite performers in the Festival.

Shades Speaker Night 6:30pm, Verge Gallery $5 ACCESS/$10 non-ACCESS

8pm, The Factory Theatre, $15

Every Breath 8pm, Upstairs Theatre, The Belvoire St Theatre, $42-$62

Opening night of George Owell’s classic novel , adapted by Netta Yashchin for the Australian Theatre for Young People. This new production brings an ecstatic, tribal energy to one of the greatest stories of the 20th Century.

The second Speaker Night by Shades features some impressive names including William Bowtell AO (Executive Director of the HIV/AIDS Project), Dannielle Buhagiar (Senior Producer at Triple J) and Amanda Lampe (National Co-convenor of Rainbow Labor). With food & drink provided.

SAT

SU N

N MO S TUE

Glebe Markets 10am - 4pm, Glebe Public School, FREE

International Study Day All Day, World Wide, FREE

Arts Revue Auditions Mon, 2pm & 3pm, Holme Reading Room

A short walk from Fisher Library, the markets are a great escape from weekend study sessions. Good for second hand cothes, dodgy electronic goods and fresh food.

The inaugural world wide event in support of students studying. The idea is to place a ban on all other events today, like parties or gallery openings, in order to prevent any distractions.

Hot Dub Time Machine 11:30pm, The Metro, $20

honi soit

You will have to do a cold reading of a sketch, a couple of improvisational games, and will be asked to perform a song.

Bonus points for doing either the ‘Pokemon Theme Song’ or Seal’s ‘Kiss From a Rose’.

DANNY BHOY - MESSENGER (PLEASE DON’T SHOOT) Mon, 8pm, Enmore Theatre, $49.50

Step on board and travel back in time to 1954, then using the unique “boogie powered” time machine, dance all way back to 2012. It’s the best music of the last sixty years served up for your dancing pleasure as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival.

2

O P i cukr

The director of the hugely successful ‘The Seagull’, Benedict Andrews, turns his hand to playwriting. This debut about a family under threat is darkly funny and sweetly eerie.

In his only Australian show of 2012, one of the world’s most sought after comedians Danny Bhoy, returns with an extended performance of his 2011 sold out hit show.

@honi_soit

Spam LETTERS

No Smoke, In the Name of Love With Fire Special Notice

Some romantic correspondence came across our desks this week.

M. Ash Law V

Api Rainima, who is in his second year of a BA and Masters of Nursing, requested we print a special notice for the fifth anniversay of his first date with his boyfriend Luke Favaloro.

“Think of it as a love song dedication but without that guy’s creamy voice or any related song,” Api wrote.

The article by Brigitte McFadden on the smoke free campus initiative (the Welfare Officers’ Report, Week Six Edition) was frankly offensive. Please allow me to take you through how I read it.

So we’ve reached five years. I can still remember our first date so clearly on ANZAC Day. After awkwardly outing ourselves to each other on Myspace and MSN (how very 2007), we met at Starbucks (ergh 2007). You in your white Adidas top and Country Road bag, me in my Dangerfield teen gear (200720072007). Like your (and now my) fondness for all things Adidas (gaygaygay), I became obsessed. 2007 feels so long ago, but I am crazy in love with you still - moreso, even!

One day, we’ll probably get married (law permitting - ahem) but for now I’ll just continue loving you and reassuring you that every cashier guy doesn’t think you’re rude. You’re not.

You’re fucking lovely.

ALL x

Liberal with the Truth?

Nikhil Krishna Mishra Arts/Engineering II Dear Honi, I commend Alex Dore for his contribution to last week’s edition. I would like to reaffirm Mr Dore’s sentiments that stacking has no place in student politics, and agree with Mr Dore that any person found guilty of stacking should be removed from the membership listing of all USU clubs and societies.

Having established this as common ground with Mr Dore, I would like to know at what point he intends to remove himself from the membership list of the Sydney University Liberal Club - his ability to mobilise socialists, laborites and members of the far left of the liberal party behind him to take control of the club was one of the most admirable and comprehensive stacks witnessed in the history of Sydney University. Unfortunately for Mr Dore, in light of the ultimatum he placed on the public record in last week’s honi, his membership of the liberal club has now been revoked.

I look forward to the upcoming emergency general meeting to elect a new President of the Sydney University Liberal Club.

God save Her Majesty.

(Eds. Alex Dore remains President of the Liberal Club)

The article firstly suggested that it is poor people (i.e. ‘socio-economically disadvantaged’ people) who are hurt by this initiative because, due to their being poor, they are too uneducated to know smoking is bad for them. So, ‘we’ need to humour these people until ‘we’ can educate them and then they’ll stop smoking.

Secondly, it’s so stressful being female that girls simply must light up to get some escape from their maligned existence. If ‘we’ don’t let these stressed out girls smoke on campus (which ‘we’ all know is a bastion of safety from all the would-be attackers on our inner city doorstep), then they will no doubt be assaulted because after a late night on campus they simply must smoke. Never mind that they will probably have to leave campus anyway in order to go home. McFadden talks about ‘agency’, I would suggest that a self-reflexive approach would have been more beneficial.

On a serious note, I know perfectly well that McFadden would not have wanted to strip anyone of their agency by suggesting that poor people are stupid (or, at the very least, uneducated) and that women are as vulnerable as society so often paints them to be.

However, that’s exactly what her article seemed to be doing. Indeed, her article is a perfect example of why it is so important to be careful with language and expression, especially when speaking on behalf of, or in defence of, others.

Smokescreen Puff-ormance Robert Turnbull Law V

Dear Mesdames and Sirs, I have never agreed with a proposition more, but disagreed with the reasons for it less, than when I read Brigitte McFadden’s article on the smoking ban.

Essentially, she says that poor people, female-identifying persons, and women are discriminated against by the smoking ban. What is most shocking is that these people do not have ‘full agency’.

First, that is an awful stereotype to say that because you are poor you are pressured into smoking. Secondly, the suggestion that stress and social identity issues drive women, and men who want to be women, to smoke is even worse: ideas are conjured in people’s heads, but they are not responsible for the actions which flow from those ideas. Really?

Thirdly, women who go outside at night. I don’t know if Miss McFadden ventures beyond her threshold between sundown and sunrise, but women, smokers or not, are present, outside, at night.

EDITORIAL The worst bit is that none of these people - the poor, women, men who want to be women, and women who go out at night - don’t have full agency.

They are adults. They take responsibility for all the other actions in their lives.

Why not smoking too? This argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is that if such people (well over half the population) don’t have full agency, the poor shouldn’t be entrusted with the right to vote, nor should women, nor should they be able to own property and advance in business. I’m pretty sure these were the arguments used against the Great Reform Act of 1832, the Second Reform Act of 1867, and the suffragettes. This is such cant.

The reason the smoking ban is bad is because it stops adults, with full agency, from doing something which does not harm anyone else.

All sexed up and nowhere to go Eric Blair Arts I Editors, Frankly, the inadequate size of Virat Nehru’s penis does not belong in Honi, and nor do distinctly flat descriptions of his also inadequate sexual performance. But crassness is not his primary crime; the total abjection of imagination and style is. Sex is fun, and fun to write about, but not when the writing oscillates between the cliched, banal, ‘It’s become so glamourised through tv shows and movies,’ and a soporific meditation on what the plural of penis is. Nabokov distilled the female awareness of the power of a blowjob into this line: ‘Knowing the magic and might of her own soft mouth.’ Orwell wrote of the anti-climax of a sexual climax, ‘And in the same moment it was finished, and I was left - to what? All my savagery, my passion, were scattered like the petals of a rose. I was left cold and languid, full of vain regrets.’ Now, I don’t expect Mr Nehru to write like the young Orwell did, or like Nabokov did in his prime, but I would like Honi to publish something about sex that was actually daring, and a little suggestive in its imagery, and more than bland in its description.

Satire for the win Robin Bland Arts III Dear Honi, I thought Rebecca Saffir’s letter last week was brilliant. A much finer work than that ‘satire’ from a few weeks previous. I thought she perfectly parodied a SUDS veteran- the self-righteousness, the complete lack of perspective and that over-inflated sense of self-importance. Just perfect. Hilarious stuff, Rebecca.

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/honisoitsydney

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

Y

ou may have noticed something a little strange in your copy of Honi Soit last week. Half of page six was torn out of every single edition and blanked out online.

After being threatened with legal action, the editors of this publication were forced to remove a certain article in order to ensure the continued survival of the reputation of the Students’ Representatives Council, publisher of Honi Soit.

It has been the traditional role of print media to act as a watchdog or ‘fourth estate’ - interrogating the truth, investigating the lies and balancing the fine line between the public right to know and a need for personal privacy.

The events of last week meant Honi Soit was unable to give you the full picture of life at the University of Sydney. Students have the right to demand accountability from their representative organisations and Honi is in the unique position to be able to offer independent analysis and a review of the events on campus. Our editorial team bears no personal grudges over the incident. We simply hope in future we will be able to execute our roles in a professional capacity without the hinderance of official pressure.

In our feature this week, we explore the hard times being experienced by other portions of the Australian print media.

Newspaper ownership is ruled by two major conglomerates in a selfregulated industry, but there are fresh prospects of a new regulation authority after the release of the Finkelstein Review. It seems timehonoured editorial practices, with political undercurrents, may be forced to change.

Honi Soit is a bastion of tradition and culture at this university, exploring all manner of issues related to the evolving student experience. This week marks the 97th anniversary of the landing on Gallipoli in 1915. ANZAC Day is a day to remember those who served and those who have died in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. The spirit of ANZAC is one of courage and sacrifice, which still resonates in 2012 due to the ongoing struggles across the globe.

Let us hope for a future where the horrible nature of war is not only acknowledged but actively fought against. It is a matter of harnessing the integrity of the human spirit.

Kira Spucys-Tahar

Love H at i t? e i t? hon isoi t20 12 @gm

a il . c

om

honi soit

3

Campus News WEEKLY NEWS

Indigenous Festival Week AIMEs high

Uplifting Redfern

Cindy Chong is fairly sure three days doesn’t make a week

Kira Spucys-Tahar follows the community push to make Redfern railway station more accessible

This week marks the end of a monthlong campaign by the group Lift Redfern to present a signed petition to the State government to make equitable access to Redfern railway station a priority.

The petition needs 10,000 or more signatures in order to be tabled for debate in New South Wales state parliament. As of last week the group had achieved just over 9,000 signatures.

Lift Redfern is a collective of various community groups affected by the lack of accessibility at the station, made up of local businesses, arts groups, resident action groups, Indigenous community groups, local political branches and representatives and other community service providers.

Over 20 years ago the government promised Redfern would be upgraded to improve facilities and make it accessible to people with disabilities.

Redfern station is a busy transport centre without access ramps, lifts or wheelchair accessible toilets. The Lift Redfern campaign was launched in response to inaction as successive government ministers have failed to provide a timeline for improvement works.

Disabilities Officer for the University of Sydney Students’ Representative

The University of Sydney Union’s Indigenous Festival Week, held on campus from April 17-19, featured a range of events to celebrate Indigenous Australian culture through music, talks, performance, art, and discussion. Despite the initial difficulty in recruiting coordinators of Indigenous background and last week’s dismal weather, the festival remained a successful collaboration among the Koori Centre, Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), the Union’s Campus Culture programme, Sydney University Law Society (SULS), and the Verge Gallery.

Council Ella Alexander believes it is crucial for Redfern station to be made accessible for everyone. “The lack of lifts and accessible ramps at Redfern Station prevents people with disabilities from participating on an equal basis in our community,” Ms Alexander said. “As the closest train station to our university, it presents a barrier to equal access to education for students with disabilities who may be forced to pay for taxis or other private transport providers.”

Carriages and Platforms Week, the beginning of the month-long signature push campaign, was launched on March 19 with Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore MP, and Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes, in attendance.

Redfern station is one of the busiest in the state providing an interchange for buses and connections for almost fifty thousand local residents, workers and students who pass through on weekdays.

Commissioner Innes noted, “Transport providers are required to make their infrastructure accessible over a 20 year period. We are halfway through that timeline, so by the end of December 2012, there must be 55 percent compliance, yet Redfern station is still not accessible”.

Do you know any outstanding students?

Nominate someone you know for the Alumni Awards, writes Michael Visontay In 2012 the University of Sydney will recognise six recently-graduated students for their achievements as part of the annual Alumni Awards Program.

These people helped change lives, gave us fresh perspectives on old problems, created new ideas, engineered solutions and broke uncharted ground in research.

The Graduate Medals recognise the achievements of undergraduate, masters by coursework, PhD, International, Indigenous and Sporting graduates.

The winners and nominees join a long list of Sydney alumni with incredible achievements who are part of the Alumni Leaders’ Network, a group who continue to inspire each other, with the support of the University.

What sort of person are we thinking about? Last year’s candidates played sport for Australia, conducted research on West Australian oil rigs, created mental maps about our relationship with the environment, volunteered to help Death Row prisoners in America and studied rainwater harvesting in India.

They also contributed to university clubs, groups and societies, playing an active role in campus cultural life.

4

honi soit

The Campus Culture ‘Funch’ (Fun At Lunch) on Wednesday combined bushfood with the talent of the Jess Beck Trio, warming hearts with their fusion of jazz and folk from their first EP ‘Hometown Dress’.

On Thursday students from AIME and SULS hosted a panel discussion forum on

Indigenous incarceration rates. Panellists included academic Tanya Mitchell, solicitor for Sydney Regional Aboriginal Corporation Legal Service Kerry Graham, and the Principal Legal Officer from the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service Jeremy Styles. The panel also provided important discussion on access to justice and constitutional recognition.

The very nature of the Indigenous Festival showed that more discussion is needed on various issues involving Indigenous peoples. Three days was not long enough to comprehend the complexity of Indigenous cultures. The festival could have been more effective in tackling the issue of autonomous Indigenous people’s involvement in organising such a festival, greater dialogue with Aboriginal elders, and what students of the University community can actually do to tackle these issues outside the festival’s three day window of discussion.

Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1888

Poppy Burnett strikes a chord with Mahler and Mozart If you have ever meandered past the wavy wooden chairs behind Wentworth on your way to Redfern on a Monday evening you may have heard the enchanted melodies of the Sydney University Symphony Orchestra.

Fondly known as SUSO (pronounced sue-so), the orchestra has recently undertaken one of its largest projects, combining with its UNSW counterpart (UNSWO) to perform Mahler’s majestic Symphony No. 1, under the baton of George Ellis, who was recently part of the film Mao’s Last Dancer. This is only the second time these two university orchestras have ever combined, with over 150 musicians on stage, a step up from SUSO’s regular 80.

Mahler’s spectacular first symphony, composed in 1888, is one of the most influential works in the orchestral repertoire, showing off the ability of an orchestra to musically capture wild mood swings. The music changes from lyrical and sweet, to brooding or violently dramatic, in the space of just a few bars. With a veritable army of brass and percussion, and a section where the eight French horns stand to play their parts, it is highly likely that you will feel the earth move under your feet during

If you know any student who might be a likely candidate, now is the time to speak up. They must have graduated or met their degree requirements in 2011.

Nominations must be received by close of business Friday May 4, 2012.

The Medals will be presented at the Alumni Awards Presentation in October.

To find out more, go to sydney.edu.au/ alumni/awards

@honi_soit

this performance. The combined concert will also feature members of SUSO and the orchestra’s patron Kathryn Selby, performing Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor KV478.

One of the largest musical societies on main campus, SUSO comprises musicians from a wide range of faculties and disciplines. It’s mostly made up of people who want to keep up their playing in a relaxed but dedicated environment, while undertaking studies in other areas.

In recent years, SUSO has been involved in a diverse assortment of concerts, from collaborations with renowned Australian pianists Kathryn Selby and Gerard Willems, to accompanying legendary Australian rock band The Church in their sold-out 30th anniversary show, ‘A Psychedelic Symphony’ at the Sydney Opera House.

The combined concert on Saturday April 28 will also feature a talk by the new Dean of the Conservatorium of Music, Dr Karl Kramer, with his insights into the work of Mahler.

SUSO will perform Mahler’s 1st Symphony with UNSWO at the Great Hall this Saturday April 28th, at 7:30pm.

Details and bookings: www.suso.org.au Photo Credit: Alex Barthel

Campus News HONILEAKS All your university gossip, rumours, allegations and revelations with Paul Ellis and Kira Spucys-Tahar

Union Board Candidates

USU Ballot 2012

John Harding-Easson.........

Sophie Stanton.....................

Tom Raue.................................

Karen Chau.............................

Hannah Morris.......................

Nick Coffman........................

Vale Sloane............................ .

The race is on. As was correctly predicted in last week’s Honi Soit, here is the list of candidates for this year’s union board election, in ballot order: John Harding-Easson. Unity (Labor Right) candidate. Executive on the

Politics Society. Purple campaign. Slogan: “Get Your John On”.

Sophie Stanton. Run by current Board Director Brigid Dixon. Campaign colour and slogan remain to be seen as she is yet to launch her online campaign.

Tom Raue. Grassroots candidate.

Run by Rafi Alam and Brigitte Garozzo.

Green t-shirts (go figure) and comic book theme. Slogan: “POW for Raue”.

Karen Chau. Backed by several key players from last year’s “Voice” SRC team, including Sam Farrell, Tim Matthews and current board director and rumoured presidential hopeful Astha Rajvanshi. Colour: Red. She too is running a comic book theme (awks.) Slogan: “K’CHAU!” Hannah Morris. Backed by former NLS member Joel Einstein, Alistair Stephenson, and current union Hon. Treasurer and USU Presidential hopeful Rhys Pogonoski. Colour: Aquamarine.

Slogan: “Get Hans On!” Nick Coffman. College and Liberal candidate. Backed by most of the centre faction of Liberal powerbrokers, including Liberal Club (SULC) President Alex Dore and fellow St Paul’s student

Henry Innis. Current Board Director Zac Thompson has also indicated his support for Mr Coffman. Colour: Yellow. Slogan: “The Coff. Looking out for the USU”

and in fact told me before the nominations closed that Coffman was ‘our’ candidate and that it would be a ‘fun campaign’,” the source told us.

Vale Sloane. Wet Lib. It seems that he is being run by current the union’s Hon. Secretary Jacqui Munro, with his campaign authorised by St Paul’s senior Ben Paull. Royal blue colour and Facebookstyle theme. Slogan: “You’ve got Vale”.

It remains to be seen if this branding will stay consistent with other names appearing in his social media campaign including, “Alpha Vale”, “Sloane Wolf” and “The Sloane Ranger”.

“I thought it was telling that Vale appeared in Manning Bar shortly after the close of nominations accompanied

by Jacqui Munro as opposed to Zac or any other Liberal. Jacqui is the partner of high-profile Wet Liberal, and friend of Vale’s, Al Cameron.”

Rumours that Vale Sloane’s campaign manager would be Sam Murray have proven to be false. Mr Murray and his supporters withdrew from Vale’s campaign weeks ago and are now understood to be supporting Nick Coffman - who is not an active member of the Liberal Party but known to be more conservative than Sloane.

“Sloane is definitely considered too left and in the wrong faction by the SULC hierarchy, and thus would never have supported him,” a Liberal Party source told Honi Soit.

“I think Henry Innis, as both a Paul’s student and high-profile SULC member, would have had a hand in making sure that SULC backed Coffman as well,

On the campaign trail

Michael Koziol boards the campaign rickshaw bus, and finds many spare seats this time around With only seven candidates vying for five positions, this year’s University of Sydney Union board election on May 30 will be one of the most closely fought in recent times.

Vale Sloane’s nomination was initially deemed invalid, as one of his nominees had only applied for a 2012 access card on the day that nominations closed, and the corresponding access number had not yet been registered against their name. But that was overturned by the Returning Officer, Penelope Crossley, on appeal.

That decision dashed any hope that a candidate might be convinced to drop out in order to avoid an election.

Ms Crossley said she was “absolutely not” placed under any pressure from the USU to declare Mr Sloane eligible. “The union is great about that,” she said.

USU President Sibella Matthews wouldn’t speculate as to why so few candidates nominated for board positions this year. While seven is not a historical low, in recent years the field has been wider and arguably more diverse.

“Every year we try to encourage as many people as possible to run,” Ms Matthews said. But she thought that no matter who was elected, “all of them are highly competent and would make great board directors”.

Former board director Courtney Tight said it was the quality, not quantity of candidates, that was important. In 2008 there were 11 names on the ballot paper, but Ms Tight says only six of those people were serious candidates.

In 2007, Tight only recalls four candidates, in which three women were elected unopposed due to the affirmative action requirement.

“It’s amazing to talk to students about the USU and what it does and what it could do, but it’s also incredibly draining,” Ms Tight said of her time on the campaign trail. “You’re basically on this weird stress high for three and a half weeks.”

Ms Matthews didn’t have specific advice for the candidates, but said that given financial negotiations with the university had concluded, they could engage in some “blue-sky thinking”

about the union’s future.

“There’s a little bit more freedom for new and creative ideas,” she said. She hopes three key themes of sustainability, relevance, and community – to be detailed in an upcoming strategic plan – will form the basis of the board’s governance after her term.

Ms Matthews confirmed, “The budget for the election is approximately $75,000, but the USU may not spend all of this – it depends on candidate numbers and voter turn-out.” Money goes towards staff and admin costs, equipment and operational costs and promotional material. “Some costs are up this year due to the fact that we decided to hold an election day at the Con and SCA on May 29,”she said.

For two of the candidates, the monthlong campaign will be in vain.

The desire to not be one of those unfortunate also-rans should motivate all candidates to work even harder.

But the small field also makes it easier for lucky, rather than deserving, candidates to be successful.

USU Updates Elections for the University of Sydney Union Student Board will be held on Wednesday May 30. In previous years, the elections featured a $5 meal voucher as an incentive to vote, but Honi understands the Board scrapped the concept earlier this year and will instead hold a barbeque for students involved in the elections. Will this lead to a downturn in voter turnout?

Another change has been the launch of online campaigning one month before elections are held. Physical promotional activities such as chalking and postering will still only be allowed two weeks out from voting day, but social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter were launched as early as last Thursday.

ODDS OF FUTURE HONI SOIT COLUMNS Action-redaction: a message from the usu $1.26 peter slipper: the world of sex $2.49 i survived: with sophie delezio $6.33 ben cousins: health and wellbeing $14.50 chris brown: love and other bruises $398.12

Words with Friends

If you could have a very mild superpower, what would it be?

WINSOME MECO III

“Being able to know exactly when an ad break is finishing and the television show is coming back on.”

DARCY INGS/LAW IV

“The power to find a seat in Fisher library.”

DAVID INGS III

“To be able to summon Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh at will.”

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

KYNAN Education II

“The power to walk into a stranger’s kitchen and know exactly where all the crockery and cutlery is.”

honi soit

5

News Review GANG CRIME

Arson at the Abercrombie

Organised crime taking Sydney hostage Richard Withers asks whether Barry O’Farrell will curb bikie crime Underbelly producers are starting to effusively lick their lips as Sydney’s gangland dramas continue to worsen.

NSW police will be dealt new powers this week, in light of the recent spate of gangland shootings in Sydney. Bikie members will be forbidden to wear gang colours at 58 venues around Kings Cross as the NSW Government has announced plans to amend the Criminal Organisations Act. The move to curb the increasingly violent undertakings of local bikie gangs comes amidst fears that the continued escalation of gang violence will start posing serious threats to civilians who could be caught in the crossfire. From setting a police van on fire in Newtown to a string of killings in Sydney’s South, the proximity and frequency of gang violence has made people nervous. Yet another tumultuous weekend of violence suggests that the existing quarrels between members of the Hells Angels and Nomad bikie gangs are far from finished.

Most suspected gang shootings have occured in Sydney’s West, with shootouts as recent as Friday spreading to Northwest areas of Ryde, Baulkham Hills and Bella-Vista.

The proposed changes to the Criminal Organisations Act will grant the NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipioni,

with the power to determine who is ‘fit’ to run tattoo parlours. The Act will soon classify parlours alongside tow truck and security patrol businesses, who are required to refuse members with connections to Sydney gangs.

Criticised by the NSW Opposition for his previous inactivity when dealing with bikie gangs, Barry O’Farrell has belatedly sprung to life with extensive new plans to correct the worrying trend of recent shootings.

In 2009, the NSW Government reacted to the public killing of Anthony Zervas, brother of Hells Angels member Peter Zervas, by introducing laws aimed at outlawing motorcycle gangs before the High Court ruled the new legislation as invalid. It appears, however, that another gang war was needed in order for legislative changes to be revisited.

Despite the furor surrounding the recent killings, Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics,

From setting a police van on fire in Newtown to a string of killings in Sydney’s South, the proximity and frequency of gang violence has made people nervous.

The NSW Premier appears to have decided that the number of shooting deaths, with 55 this year, has reached its breaking point. The figure is not a far cry from the total of 77 deaths by shooting in 2011.

Dr Don Weatherburn, has played down the significance of the spike in gun-related deaths. Dr Weatherburn argued that to suggest that Sydney is embroiled in a crisis of gun violence is somewhat shortsighted.

Mr O’Farrell is hoping that a statewide ban on gang members owning tattoo parlours will take effect as early as May this year. The Premier claimed that police were restricted by current legislation.

“In 2002, NSW Police were recording about 30 shooting incidents a month. At the end of last year they were recording about 20 incidents a month. For reasons that are unclear, the offence appears to be cyclical,” he said.

“This is about the NSW government giving the police the tools they need to tackle the shooting spree that’s affecting our city,” Mr O’Farrell told The Australian.

Only time will tell for the NSW Government with the next few weeks bound to provide new legislation with a much-needed litmus test.

James O’Doherty reports In the early hours of last Thursday morning, smoke begun billowing out of the darkened doors of the Abercrombie Hotel at Broadway.

Once home to an early iteration of Purple Sneakers, the fire has been treated as suspicious by police.

Early rumours from the media had pinned the arson on the increasing wave of gang crime spreading through the city. Whether gangs are responsible for the fire, though, remains to be seen.

Shut down in 2010, the Abercrombie had only opened again in 2011 before the newest week’s fire.

The cries of despair echoing over the Law lawns late last week, however, were ultimately unfounded, as the pub opened its doors and resumed trading in time for the weekend.

The police cordon at the Abercrombie Hotel last Thursday

ANZAC DAY

The Last Post only the beginning of ANZAC day At the going down of the sun, the horrors of war remain, writes Felix Donovan

Wilfred Owen’s death is a reminder of the tragic irony of history, and the plainest depiction of a simple truth: war is not about patriotism and glory, but the absolute failure of the human spirit.

Perhaps the greatest of the First World War poets, he was killed in a trench in France a week before the armistice took effect in November 1918. His mother received the telegram that told her that her 25-year-old son was dead just as the bells began to sound at 11am to mark the beginning of the shortlived peacetime. As a poet, he sought to correct the propaganda of British government and describe war as it actually was. In his famous final stanza of Dulce Et Decorum Est, Owen wrote that if you could see young men dying on the frontline, ‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest… The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est.’ (‘It is sweet and right/ To die for your country.’)

6

honi soit

Owen’s poetry and his death are important to revisit on Anzac Day. They remind us of the importance of commemorating war with accurate history and proper sobriety. They warn us away from chauvinism and sweeping proclamations such as ‘Our nation was founded in the blood that lies on Turkish beaches.’ Imbuing history with nationalist falsifications serves only the politically ambitious and the warmongerers. It is important to remember that dawn landing in Gallipoli as it was - an awful, costly mistake, made by a man disconnected from the war by several thousand miles and his status as an English Lord.

Just as World War I will be remembered for the awful human cost borne by Owen and his fellow soldiers, commemorating their deaths implores us to notice the presence of our soldiers around the world, still fighting and dying. The sacrifices they make today are more isolated than they’ve ever been. The idea of a ‘home front’ is a farce; we do not face the threats they face, we no longer build their munitions. We didn’t even get a tax hike for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Soldiers’ deaths are reported and then forgotten. The ability to wage a war that will not affect the lives or

even the consciousness of most voters is the greatest of moral hazards. But more than that, it means we do not thank our soldiers for fighting our wars, however foolish and ill managed those wars may be. Anzac Day is an opportunity to express gratitude.

Of course, the pain of war has never been confined to us. And while April 25, 1915 was a terrible day for Australia, it was a more terrible day for the Armenians living in Turkey.

It was the second day of a genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government that claimed somewhere between 600,000 and 1,800,000 lives. Winston Churchill wrote at the time that, “the clearance of a race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on such a scale, could well be.” The Armenian Genocide is a demonstration that the chaos and fog of war provides a cover for terrible atrocities. It is a lesson the world learnt again in the Second World War, and again in Vietnam, and again in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

In the end, Anzac Day should impress upon us, above all, the terrible nature of war, in which, as Wilfred Owen wrote, ‘death becomes absurd and life absurder.’

@honi_soit

The ANZAC memorial at Hyde park

Op-Shop I’ll make USU membership free

Expanding union membership will be costly but worthwhile, writes John Harding-Easson The University of Sydney Union (USU) has a great deal to be proud of. Created and run by students, the USU manages clubs and societies on campus, delivers O-Week, and provides the food and retail outlets we rely on. Yet the future of the union is never assured. Its survival depends upon the ideas, work and vision of students who direct it today.

Since voluntary student unionism was introduced in 2006, the USU has lost around $8.4 million every year. This war of attrition on student services across Australia led to the demise of several student unions. It is a testament to the strong student culture of Sydney that we have a strong and vibrant USU that remains independent to this day.

Despite recent claims, the union is doing well. Turnover is approximately $20 million a year, with all profits returned to students via events, discounts, and the C&S program. The onus is on the USU board of directors to map out and deliver services to provide an enriching and engaging student experience.

There are two ways of securing this future: first, by renewing the activities and events within the existing services of the USU, and second, by restructuring peoples’ access to the union through free membership. The latter is increasingly becoming the focal point of USU election campaigns and this year is no different, with a number of candidates pledging their support.

Full time students are charged $131.50 per semester under the Student Services and Amenities Fee. This is redirected by the administration into a range of student services including

the Students’ Representative Council, Sydney University Sports and Fitness, and the USU. However, students wanting USU membership are forced to pay an additional $110 per annum. Why should students have to pay twice?

Free ACCESS membership will serve the dual purpose of increasing student engagement with the USU and making the USU accountable to all students.

Whilst it provides tremendous benefits, it also carries several difficulties. It will mean the loss of $1 million in revenue from current membership fees and an additional expenditure of approximately $1.5 to 2 million on discounts for a larger membership base. Most of this $3 million can be absorbed through the Union’s existing budget and the revenue returned from more students purchasing goods and services from USU outlets. What is often ignored, though, is the fact that the USU requires the cooperation of the university’s administration to provide the extra funding necessary to make up for the short fall.

So is it worth it? Absolutely. Our Union’s future depends on the entrenchment of student involvement in its activities and operations. The first step towards this is to provide avenues for increased engagement to give every student the opportunity to discover what the Union has to offer. But it is also a long-term vision which will need dedication extending far beyond the 2012 Union Board campaign.

John Harding-Easson is a candidate in the upcoming University of Sydney Union board elections.

Once, twice, three times a cliché It takes two to tango, writes Nicholas Simone Let’s be clear: this article is neither about dancing nor numeracy. More importantly, the reason you would have already suspected that fact is due to something small, simple, and beautiful: the cliché. Beauty and cliché are words not often found to be adjectivally conjoined; rather the cliché is often avoided like the plague and treated with the same reverence as a suppository.

Many people believe that the cliché occupies a quiet, dark corner where illiteracy reigns supreme and good writing goes to die. From their intellectual pedestals, constructed from planks of HSC set-texts and clean-skin Penguin Classics, such people will typically spout diatribes of its dull unimaginative consistency and Plebeian demeanor.

Of course they would be more or less right on all counts. The cliché is the immortal never-waning nemesis of creativity: its overused expressions, exhausted sentiments, and zombied tropes provide absolutely nothing to exceed expectations. But to dwell on these characteristics would itself be an ironic cliché and would cause the tragic oversight of the construction’s importance and value.

It’s about time the cliché was given a fair shake of the proverbial sauce bottle.

The cliché’s importance lies within its predictability and widespread repetitive use. If you take once-original expressions like “that’s all she wrote” or “when in Rome”, there is no easy way in plain English to express that sentiment with the same economy of language and/or same instant recognition.

The cliché has a vital role here to aid in getting either basic or nuanced messages across efficiently and effectively.

Not only is the cliché highly practical but, once upon a time, it was itself a spark of unadulterated creative genius.

Without the cliché, great phrases like “to be or not to be” would be considered little more than a meaningless orgasm – enjoyed momentarily and then quickly forgotten. In a way, the replication and incorporation of such phrases into daily speak and written work is a homage being paid to its originator.

Whenever the novel expression of something enters a language and is popularly used, its fate is often the cliché. Replication is far easier and more efficient than invention. It is because of an expression’s creative value that it becomes ubiquitous in use and ultimately clichéd. Like all Urukai were once high elves, after being mixed with the orcishness of common usage, the cliché begins to get a bad name.

And when I say common, I mean to detach the word’s negative connotations.

Common is wrongfully undervalued and this is perhaps the foundation of the cliché’s unattractiveness. Compare dirt with gold. The latter is clearly more highly prized but which could we not live without? Uncommon is not essential but always desirable, whereas we could not function the same without things that are common. We could not function the same without clichés. They are tried and tested, good as gold, plain and simple. To me there’s no reason why we shouldn’t use them more often. We know they want to be used. But it takes two to tango.

Nicholas Simone counted 19 clichés in this article.

Strange bedfellows: the Pope in Cuba

The Catholic Church must renew itself in Latin America, writes Fabian Di Lizia In the early days, the Communist Party of Cuba - ruled by Castros since 1959 - adopted the classic Marxist catch cry that religion is the “opiate of the masses”. Pope Benedict XVI is renowned as being a bastion of conservative thought in the Church and leader of the Catholic anti-Communist cheer squad. So why did he abruptly head over to the island last month?

Much of the mainstream media focus has been on the positive effects of Benedict’s visit. The visit has coincided with the release of many Cuban religious dissidents. Moreover, religious freedom has been slowly escalating in Cuba.

visited) now have relatively significant atheist contingents and there is a relatively strong contingent of atheists emerging in Latin America at large.

Another serious challenge posed to the Church is from evangelical Protestantism. Although this tradition is more associated with the southern USA, it is emerging strongly in Latin America. Its emphasis on individual choice is making Protestantism a popular alternative for upwardly mobile Latin Americans.

So what was the Pope to do to arrest a situation becoming even direr?

On this trip, Benedict attempted to reinvigorate Catholicism in the region and develop its connection with the typically Eurocentric Church.

Some important steps were made

by Benedict to position the Church as empathetic with the attitudes of Latin Americans. In Cuba, he called for greater freedom of economic and personal expression and the release of dissidents.

Moreover, Benedict wisely positioned himself as a supporter of the Cubans by denouncing the US trade embargo. Similarly in Mexico, Benedict empathised with the struggle of civilians by fiercely denouncing the violence crippling parts of the nation.

On one hand, the Church is facing challenges from atheism and secularism.

Mexico and Cuba (the nations Benedict

Aside from these steps, Benedict failed to embrace certain actions that would have significantly advanced the cause of

However, many have failed to realise that the Church is at a quasi-crisis point in Latin America at large with the number of Catholics steadily decreasing.

Moreover, the Church is facing internal struggles such as reduced numbers of priests and dealing with sexual abuse.

the Church. In fact, Benedict’s failure to embrace certain actions was quintessential of the outlook of the Church.

In Mexico, the Church has been crippled by clerical sex abuse, particularly at the hands of the late Maciel Degollado. One victim of Degollado’s abuse, former seminarian Juan Barba, published a book on the matter and lodged a formal complaint to Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict) on his scarring experiences. Benedict notably failed to meet with those victims. The Church can no longer sweep such acts under the rug, as it has in the past; too many people have been hurt by these events, and real reconciliation needs to be achieved to bring people back in. Denial is no path to healing, neither for the victims nor the Church.

The Church’s strict conservatism also needs to be dropped in order to reconnect with Latin America. Liberation Theology has long been an essential component of Latin American Catholicism. Liberation Theology places a strong emphasis on Biblical calls for social justice and emancipation of the poor and oppressed and was championed in 1980s Latin America by figures such as Oscar Romero. The shift to the

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

Pope Benedict XVI meets Cuban president Raul Castro in Havana, March 2012.

Photo: CNS/Paul Haring

political left in Latin America has been backed strongly by stalwarts of Liberation Theology. Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador now have strong traditions of Liberation Theology and it is embedded in much of politics and society.

Liberation Theology has had its greatest political influence in Paraguay, where former Bishop Fernando Lugo formed a left-wing political movement and is now the nation’s president. The Vatican denounced Lugo and suspended him from celebrating Eucharist. Benedict needed to embrace Liberation Theology on his Latin American tour.

The Church needs to provide its people with hope for the future, particularly in the tough societies Benedict visited such as Cuba and Mexico.

Denouncing this political movement only widens the chasm between the rich centre of the Church in Rome and those in Latin America whose faith supports them through daily struggle.

honi soit

7

The Third Drawer

Talk of the Town

Jackson Busse gets caught in traffic on Parramatta Road, all to find the milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard Built upon the side of Parramatta Road, and having served milkshakes for an indeterminable amount of time, Olympia Milk Bar is fettered to the great East-West artillery of Sydney.

Described as a seedy ghetto, a slap in the face, and a scar upon Sydney, Parramatta Road remains perhaps the greatest historical emblem of what Sydney has been, and what Sydney is; recording the journey of men and women upon the ‘road leading west to the frontier’. The most apt analogy for Parramatta Road has come from a retired Ashfield mayor, who suggested it to be a ‘varicose vein’. Not only is the road bulging with ugliness, it too suffers from the insistence of retrograde flow. The road has defied the gentrification of surrounding suburbs, and is now marked by a myriad of old wedding stores, car dealerships, and run-down establishments, most of which could only have been viable some years ago.

It is in this time portal that we find the Olympia Milk Bar. The milk bar, it is rumoured, has not changed since it was first opened, though no one seems to be quite sure when that was. The front of the store is marked by crumbling paint, wooden boards covering smashed windows, and a sign marketing a modest offering of milkshakes,

tea, and coffee. The mysterious owner refuses to turn on the light, (except for a few privileged patrons); instead choosing to linger in the darkness, waiting for anybody curious enough to enter.

Upon entering the store, one invariably becomes mesmerised by its interior. The tables have never been replaced, boxes of old chocolate bars fill the walls, old posters tell of a time when Dr Schweppes still made cola, and the owner still uses a far out-dated cash register. Strict orders were given to me before visiting that I should not try talking to the man, nor try taking photos, for the owner, it is said, does not look favourably upon ‘intrusion’.

In light of these instructions, I chose to merely order a chocolate milkshake, and was unsurprised to find that the milk bar was not privy to inflation.

The milkshake was $2.80.

It is not so much the bar, but the owner himself, who has cast a spell of intrigue upon innumerate local writers, musicians, and patrons. The owner has been the subject of a two-part story; a song called ‘Dr Death’ by a local Sydney band, and a Facebook fan page.

It is of little surprise that people are entranced by this man, who sits day in day out, cooped up in a store that defies time, and modernity; looking

sullenly out upon Parramatta Road.

His eyes have probably observed best how the road has transformed. One of the few conversations a patron has had with him was about the traffic.

“There are a lot of cars out there”, said one visitor. “Too many”, the old man replied.

Is the store a refusal to partake in modernity? Is the owner hopelessly nostalgic, and only able to find value

in a time past, when the stores opposite were a theatre, roller skating arena, and cinema? One of the most popular rumours is that the man opened the store with his brother.

His brother’s last wish was that the now owner would continue to operate the store in exactly the same manner.

Nothing should be changed. Is the milk bar then a living memory of his brother?

Where aren’t they now?

Brad Mariano goes back to Episode I of Star Wars and pities the little kid with the bowl cut Child stars seem to be a natural fit for this column, and this week we’re tackling perhaps the most universally, reviled of them all – Jake Lloyd, who played Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the most disappointing thing since my UAI. Just about no movie has been dealt as much derision or criticism as the foray back to the galaxy far, far away - the famous 70 minute Mr Plinkett review from a few years ago has now made shitting on this movie practically an artform. The fact that it’s currently enjoying a re-released theatrical run in 3D has put it back in the spotlight, and by association, its actors as well. Fans felt at best, unfulfilled and at worst, betrayed by Episode I, and there’s a few points in the movie that are always looked to.

There are bigger, overarching flaws but the film’s intrinsic horribleness and the fans’ hatred are often manifested in two principle characters, Jar Jar Binks and the young Anakin Skywalker. For starters, Anakin isn’t even the worst of the two by virtue of not being racist (and on this ground, he’s also better than the greedy merchant called Shylock Watto and the shifty, corrupt oriental Nute Gunray) but that said, his character and performance suck, big time, and a successful franchise hadn’t been dealt that much irreparable damage by an obnoxious kid since Cousin

8

honi soit

Oliver moved into the Brady Bunch household (that show still has cultural currency, right?). Lloyd was nominated for two Razzies – Worst Supporting

but there’s someone else we should be blaming for that (hint: it’s the fat guy worth $3.2 billion).

But who is Jake Lloyd? Well, his career trajectory is kinda interesting.

For starters, Episode I was not his first highprofile movie role.

His mother was a Hollywood agent with evidently no concept of the ethics of conflict of interests and got Lloyd his start Grown up baby Anakin = Emile Hirsch? in the business as a Actor, and Worst Onscreen Couple kid - he had a leading role in Jingle (with Natalie Portman) and has earned All the Way, one of those dime-athe ire and irritation of fans of the dozen 90s Christmas movies that all franchise worldwide. had that strange and damaging thesis of correlating divorce and family But if we put down the hate-a-rade dysfunction with not believing in for a second, it seems a little unfair to Santa Claus. He also appeared in a few put the blame on this kid – the movie episodes of E.R., before being picked is the background story to the most out of thousands to play what should iconic and mysterious character in have been the role of a lifetime and to all pop culture, Darth Vader, and this sport one of the most unsightly bowl movie is about him as a whiney kid. haircuts in cinema history.

The story was botched and made too cheesy and while Lloyd was no great Looking back now, a grown up actor, he was given a terrible part and Lloyd has recounted how tough the lines that even Brando couldn’t have actual experience was – hours of delivered in a natural manner (“I’m a repetitive re-takes in front of greenperson and my name is Anakin” and screens as well as weeks of press and “Are you an angel?”). The Anakin promotional interviews are tough on storyline is an abomination for sure,

@honi_soit

a 9 year old kid. School became a living nightmare, with the sounds of the franchises’ catchphrases and the buzzing of lightsabers following him for years afterwards. As he entered high school, he faced severe bullying for the role and reportedly can’t even stand to watch the film nowadays. It’s become almost clichéd for Star Wars fans to say that “George Lucas ruined my childhood with Episode 1” – in Jake Lloyd’s case, it’s actually true.

So what has he done since? Well, he didn’t actually leave the franchise altogether, as is often believed. Lloyd resumed his role as Anakin for five subsequent videogames, though in voice roles only. Despite his obvious distaste for the role that has followed him, he admirably accepts it as his cross to bear and often appears at SciFi conventions to sign autographs and chat with fans, but in various interviews he comes across as pretty bitter and regretful about the whole experience.

He did quit acting altogether after the film however, but went on to film school to get involved in the more technical side of it, mostly in editing and effects work. He basically became a regular person, with no substance abuse issues or baby mama drama, which for a former child star is probably the most he could aspire to.

The Third Drawer

ROAD TEST: TPG For just $39.95 a month, you can have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, writes Elodie Cheeseman Six weeks ago, life threw me a curveball. I had just moved house, and equipping the new digs with netaccess was supposed to be a simple task. On a scale of ‘piece of cake’ to ‘taking candy from a particularly acquiescent baby’, it was supposed to rate somewhere between alphabetizing the cereal shelf and deciding where to position my desk lamp.

Not so. Apparently, moving into a nebulously addressed, semi-Glebe, semi-Forest Lodge cliff-top terrace puts one beyond the comprehension of TPG technicians. We spent hours in psychological battle with their telephone operators; racking up mobile bills, blasted by interminable loops of ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’, only to be told that we ‘weren’t on the grid’.

Apparently the house had never had a telephone line, though the tangle of telephone cables I considered wrapping around my throat at various lowpoints in these exchanges seemed to belie this assertion. It didn’t help that the customer service operators were particularly obtuse; a typical conversation going something like: Me: Can you please check if this address previously had an Internet connection?

Operator: Sorry, that’s not my job.

Me: Oh, ok. Could you please check if the house had a landline?

Operator: Sorry, that’s not my job.

Me: Can you advise us how long it might be before we can get Internet?

REAL

Operator (droll drone broken only by the distinctive crack of Hubba Bubba): Sorry, that’s not my job.

Me (frustration mounting): Well, what is your job?

Operator (expelling a long sigh and any pretension of customer concern): To take your details, do a credit history check and let you know in 10-20 working days if you’re fit to apply for our services…

Me (drawing a deep breath and fighting a vicious urge to Naomi Campbell my phone): Okay… could you please direct me to someone whose job it is to help me?

Operator: Sorry… that’s not my job.

And so one week became two, two became three…and pretty soon my Internet crash diet was looking more like a lifestyle plan. I know you must be marveling at my will and tenacity, picturing me as something of a monk at the pinnacle of technological asceticism. Allow me to temper your admiration slightly by admitting that I did use the Internet on the two days a week I’m at university. It also helped that the new house is a seven minute walk from OfficeWorks which blessedly provides free in-store internet hubs. At first I felt compelled to buy something each time I went in, but after amassing a worrying collection of receipt holders and industrial sized vats of KoolMints (enough to give the impression of seriously unbridled

LIFE

net research between (or in) class, and when I sat down to do work at home, was forced to commit rather than lose hours to adorable panda videos and hair-crimping tutorials. Admittedly I’d fiend on Facebook when I had the chance (and gosh was it gratifying to amass little red flags in the high double-digits), but overall it was incredibly liberating not to be so in tune with the mundane details of hundreds of other peoples’ lives.

Though maddening at times, it definitely behooves you to try and go internet free for a few weeks. As I’m now wont to chirrup: be set free, go net free! (I don’t really, because I value social acceptance). And if you’re unsure about your willpower? Just opt for TPG and this liberating choice will probably be made for you.

SIMULATION

Connie Ye attempts to recreate Blue Valentine with The Sims This column applies a real life problem to a Sim© family in the hope of gleaning from the alternately underwhelming and disastrous manifestations, a handful of previously obscured truths about the depth, breadth and sophistication of human experience, as faithfully rendered as game designers and pixels can ever semi-realistically render anything.

This week the double whammy topic of infidelity and divorce comes under the microscope. It is well-documented that infidelity is the number three reason for divorce, behind money and general hatred of the other person.

Well no sooner than my washed-up has-beens, the Jones’, had settled into their modest 20,000 Simoleon house, I

halitosis hang-ups) I began to slip in surreptitiously, log on, and maybe conduct a cursory examination of calculators before fleeing. I became excellent at driving people off the communal computers; encroaching slightly on their personal space, angling myself so it was only debatable whether I could read their emails/follow their Dr. Who paraphernalia bidding wars on eBay…and then smiling good-naturedly and urging them to continue when they turned around (to inculcate feelings of guilt, natch). The true test of character came when both OfficeWorks computers were put out of action, and labeled with the helpful notice: ‘Sorry, no internet. Great internet café not far from here. For location email joe@logoncafe.com’.

Indeed, there were intense downsides to living (mainly) net-free. I couldn’t consult Wikipedia, check blogs or read Internet articles on a whim. A few Facebook events passed me by. Embarrassingly, I missed the Kony video so for a good few days thought that New York’s favourite Island funpark was enforcing some seriously questionable labour practices.

But there were also noticeable benefits. I began to read the paper again, watch the news (and yes, breakfast TV – that Mel is such a wholesome delight!). I became incredibly productive with my time; I’d do all my inter-

introduce Felicity ‘Heartbreaker’ Jones and her husband Alan ‘Couch Potato’ Jones to their neighbour, single dad and hunk Leighton Sekemoto.

Felicity wastes no time in her ‘Friendly Introduction’ to Leighton.

One great aspect of this SimUtopia is that age discrimination is not a thing, the same way rifling through a strangers’ fridge the first time you meet them or putting your baby down in the middle of the road and walking away to water your irises is also not a thing.

So instead of going down the welltrodden road of “Get to Know”, “Compliment” and “Tell Dramatic Story”, Felicity the Elder (no shit, she looks about eighty) nosedives straight into asking if ‘Young Adult’ Leighton is single. The result?

“Leighton thinks Felicity is being amusing”.

There’s always the temptation to revert to (actual) cheats when playing The Sims, and I certainly courted the idea, because under normal Sim passage of time and circumstances, it takes (surprisingly) a really

fucking long time to get anywhere remotely close to “WooHoo”.

The textbook hookup requires that you have to first spend at least a few hours becoming Friends, then you must take that vital step of “Confess Attraction” before you can really try and “Make Out” or “Invite to Cuddle on Bed”. But I guess the long hard journey makes the reward even more worthwhile because SimSex is apparently amazing. Roses start to fall from the sky and angels play harps during the shenanigans under the sheets. It’s the programmers’ way of telling us: we have no idea what sex actually looks like.

But back to the Jones. When Felicity finally “Confesses” to Alan about her whirlwind round-the-clock Japanese romance, the maturity shows.

Aside from the trail of pop-up broken hearts and angry red minus signs we’re blessed with the immediate option of “Forgive”, that is, if Alan doesn’t first go for the more understandable option of “Kick Out”.

The anthropological lesson learnt?

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

Sims are for the most part conservative and chaste creatures. They have to exert considerable effort to get on each others’ beds, an unenlightening fact in itself. On the one hand, official divorce is laughably easy and pain-free to execute; you simply fuck off and leave your ex-partner to deal with the empty house, the useless maid and creepy gardener. However in a reluctant appreciation of just how brutally truthful and nuanced rela-Sim-ships are as a mirror of reality, we are left to conclude that divorce is an excellent process to kick someone out just so you can get the house, car and assets all to yourself.

Blue Valentine, unfortunately, it is not.

honi soit

9

Taboo LIFEHACKER

THE BODY

“It’s like I’m camping all the time”

Lucy Watson meets Vincent, a student with a home on four wheels

Most students live with their parents, on campus, or in a share house with friends or partners. Some, like Vincent, live in caravans.

Vincent and his yard-mate Jackson live in two caravans (Vincent’s is called “Sweet Dreams”, Jackson’s “Cheap Thrills”) in the backyard of a veritable inner-west mansion. When I first heard about Vincent’s abode, my first thoughts were about the power balance between him and the house whose yard housed his home. I wondered how the bills worked, if he could use the kitchen and bathroom as he pleased, or whether his caravan was entirely self-sufficient, and he just paid for the utilities he used.

As it turns out, his caravan is just “a room that happens to be in a backyard”. With another friend living in the renovated shed, and six in the house itself, making use of the abnormal sized yard was the only way the friends could afford such a prime location. With that practicality aside, I could only see good things about Vincent’s situation.

“It’s like I’m camping all the time,” Vincent said of his home. “I live heaps of my life outside, so it’s really good...

I like being outdoors.” Living in the caravan is perfectly suited to Vincent’s

DIY attitude. He got the caravan from a cheap second hand dealer, and it was an “intense process” to make it liveable.

He had to fix the leaky roof, the broken windows, get a tarp and door mat to make it more homey, and trim back the tree the van lives under.

Where there once was a fridge, there are now a chest of drawers, the former sink is the laundry basket, the table and chairs Vincent sits at to study have storage space underneath, and where there was once two small single beds, Vincent constructed a queen base, and created a bed “cave” in that end of the van. Vincent has built and decorated the van to suit his lifestyle. Living there has given him the freedom to renovate, with none of the responsibilities that come with owning a house. It’s his own space, but he can pick it up and move it if he wants to ever vacate the inner-west.

The best thing? “Probably privacy.

Like, I have never heard any of my housemates having sex, ever, and everyone else has.” Fair enough.

And the worst? “The spiders. I am pathologically afraid of spiders.” Pretty shit phobia for someone living in a backyard. But hey, you can’t choose your neighbours.

Against fad diets and Chinese fish stew William Haines gets some runs on the board Due to increasingly large quantities of preservatives in our wheat products, we live in an age of almost perpetual mild constipation. After two years of college food the looming problem of having to compete with ultra-toned Hong Kong hipsters in the spading game motivated me to try a new approach to weight loss.

I accepted some advice from my mother (an on again off again fad dieter as most baby boomers are) and decided to clean out my bowels while losing a bit of weight.

The method? An ultra cool ascetic diet from the 70’s promoted by non other than George Harrison. It required eating nothing but one type of apple for two days, then nothing but one type of cheese for two days, then nothing but roast chicken for two days. Then two days off, then do it again. The appeal was that you can drink as much of whatever you like while doing it, it only lasts for two weeks, and it had the word ‘army’ in its name.

After my apple days my bowels were certainly cleansed – insofar as I was hosing gas propelled apple puree hourly. So thankful was I for the cheese that I ate revolting quantities of it in my first day, leading to one of the strangest faecal experiences of my life.

Come about 10pm I spent an hour and a half on the toilet but eventually managed to push out what can only be described as an enormous clod of musket balls (in both shape and density), along with a bit of much needed lubricating blood.

At this point I did some research on my mother’s wonder diet, and found that there wasn’t a nutritionist alive today who didn’t classify it as extremely dangerous. The Swiss Army certainly

Last night was...

I

t was Halloween. Semester was basically over, summer more than upon us, and I was horny.

We’d been drinking all day at a backyard BBQ for my friend’s birthday. The wheelbarrow was full of ice and goon bags, paddling pools were dotted all around the backyard, the flowers were in full bloom, it was perfect. Except for that blue-ball feeling that had been plaguing me for, like, a week.

After the BBQ, we had plans to hit up the city. Yesssss, I thought. Some people fuck their friends. Sometimes I do, but today I wasn’t feeling it.

I needed someone new to scratch the itch, satisfy the urge... or, more accurately, push (read: rub) my button until the pain went away.

After missing the train, and stopping at every busker so a friend

10

honi soit

EERIE

could force them to play ‘Bounce’ by Calvin Harris, we finally got to our intended destination, and ... it was empty. But we couldn’t go anywhere else because the birthday girl was adamant about partying there.

I bought a few more drinks and managed to dance away the pain for a while, until I felt a tap on my shoulder. A woman, the only other woman in the place, was standing there.

She looked about ten or more years older than me, but she was super sassy. She grabbed my hand, bought me a drink, and led me over to a table. We were chatting about the sort of stuff you normally would pre-sex: names (I forget hers), jobs (I forget hers), interests (did she have any? I don’t know), when my friends decided to “help” my cause, by

standing next to us and making out, fiercely.

Oddly, it worked. She stood up and took my hand again. I started to make for the exit, but she led me in the opposite direction. Toward the toilets. My, this was a classy affair.

We didn’t even make it to a cubicle.

She shoved me up against the basin, and magically her hand was already in my pants. I had one hand in her bra, one hand up her skirt.

Like a good wine, I’m sure sexual prowess matures with age. She really knew her way around, and I was horny. These factors combined meant I was done in about 15 minutes. I finished her off, washed my hands, and looked back at her while I adjusted my clothes.

I did up the buttons on my white shirt. She did up the buttons on her

@honi_soit

never used it. Unable to stop for reflection however, I found myself on a plane to Xian.

Realising that I was in desperately in need of sleep I took a Valium and prepared for sleep, slightly anxious about the noises my stomach was issuing.

On the verge of deep, dreamless, drug induced sleep I was forced to pass two fat Mongolian men to the aisle, and then straight to the bathroom; where I succeeded in the lifelong ambition of filling the toilet to the point that my butt cheeks were submerged.

Returning to my seat I realised that if I submitted to the Valium I would end up shitting myself in my sleep, but resistance was beyond me. So I enlisted the help of two Ritalin, and they did succeed in making going to the toilet every fifteen minutes for eight hours a rather ecstatic experience.

Off the plane and straight to the girl I had been waiting to see for two months. All going peachily, and then … the Ritalin wore off, the Valium took over, I fell asleep, and the diarrhoea got the best of me.

The moral: when it comes to health benefits, trendy diets from the 70’s have none. None at all. But if you’re after a Beatles-esque experience of self-flagellation and physical torment, yet want to be able to get drunk while finding Nirvana, then it’s the diet for you.

Weird as it may sound, I am honestly considering giving it another go, just to see if I can endure it more gracefully this time.

William Haines isn’t on Twitter but you can probably find him in a toilet cubicle somewhere.

white shirt. I readjusted my plaid pants. She readjusted her plaid skirt.

I fixed my blonde hair. She fixed her blonde hair.

Are you kidding me?! I just fucked my future self against the dirty wash basin of some empty club.

The post-sex reality came crashing in as I swiftly made for the bar.

“You look familiar...”

Profile

The World According to Michael Pezzullo

“

One of Australia’s most seasoned bureaucrats and military experts talks to Felix Donovan

M

ichael Pezzullo is a bureaucrat to an extent that transcends profession and becomes philosophy.

He wrote his University of Sydney history honours thesis on the NSW urban conservation efforts in the 1930s, he says working in the labyrinth of Canberra’s government offices can be ‘intoxicating’, and speaks fondly of the days when there existed a “stronger tradition of public servants”. He graduated straight into the Department of Defence, only leaving to work across the road in the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and at Customs House. Yet, for all of that, he rather enigmatically counsels that anyone seeking a life as a political advisor should take more than a moment to reconsider.

“

While Pezzullo never worked with the ‘black dog’ Keating, often battling on many days, he evidently shared the sense of disillusionment with parliamentary life.

”

Pezzullo studied at the University of Sydney just after Tony Abbott’s presidency of the SRC and just before Joe Hockey’s slightly less belligerent tenure. It hardly comes as a surprise, then, that Pezzullo showed little interest in student politics, and still regards it as an exercise for ambitious party apparatchiks. Despite that, he remembers the University “very fondly”, crediting the history department in particular for its excellence in intellectual inquiry. It was in the nondescript rooms below the Quadrangle that he found his passion for military history and strategy. And after his first career preference as a history professor fell through, he figured the Department of Defence might be a place to continue nurturing those interests.

Becoming the military affairs advisor to Gareth Evans from 1993-96, and then Deputy Chief of Staff to Kim Beazley until 2001, Pezzullo’s place in Canberra became more entrenched.

For each of those Labor giants, he is gushing in praise. However, he could see that political advising was “constricting my range of experiences and perspectives” and that the reality of political life in which “each day is three or four media days” was abhorrent. Don Watson, former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s speechwriter and advisor, wrote that gratification in political life was similar to the satisfaction of eating a jellybean – fleeting, always temporary. And while Pezzullo never worked as Watson did with the ‘black dog’ Keating, often battling on many days, he evidently shared the sense of disillusionment with parliamentary life on the frontline.

That being said, he refused to leave Canberra. Instead he moved back to the Department of Defence, and was soon appointed head of the Iraq Detainee Fact-Finding Team. Established soon after Seymour Hersh’s devastating report of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was published, Pezzullo was asked to probe whether Australians had been actively involved or somehow complicit in that abuse. The Australian Defence Force maintained a practice of transferring detainees to the Americans, who had openly rejected their obligation to treat those prisoners with humanity.

When asked about the violations of the Geneva Conventions that occurred in Abu Ghraib, Pezzullo’s reaction was not one of visceral disgust, or to pour vitriol on those in the American government and military who were responsible for those inhumanities.

Rather, he talked about the unique “theatre of operations” that existed in Iraqi “terrain”, and contended there may exist a ‘grey area’ of law as to whether the prisoners actually came under the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

White Paper identified a series of important shifts in the world, most pertinently, “the beginning of the end of the so-called unipolar moment.” The Rudd government and Pezzullo saw a multipolar order emerging in Asia, and recommended a series of changes to deal with that challenge: upgrading maritime capabilities, preserving our strong alliance with the US, and refocusing from the Middle East to the Pacific.

The emphasis on hard power, the ‘diplomacy of force’, in the White Paper belies the government’s understanding that self-reliance is going to become existentially important in a decade or so, as that shift towards a multipolar order demands Australia respond to burgeoning threats in what could be a sans America Asia-Pacific region.

It is also demonstrative of Australia’s interests in a “ruled-based global order”, according to Pezzullo, which requires coercion to maintain, as when Australia assisted the intervention in Libya last year.

Pezzullo has been tipped as a future Secretary of the Department of Defence.

Make no mistake, he understands military strategy almost intuitively, is a tough-minded bureaucrat, and is assuredly on a shortlist of candidates for that role in a drawer of both the Prime Minister’s and the Opposition Leader’s desks. But for now, he toils away in an unenviable position at Customs House as Chief Operating Officer of

Pezzullo has been tipped as a future Secretary of the Department of Defence. Make no mistake, he understands military strategy almost intuitively and is a tough-minded bureaucrat.

”

the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service.

The day I went to see him, 120 asylum seekers were refusing to disembark in West Java, and there was a standoff between the Australian and Indonesian governments. Pezzullo was preparing to brief the Cabinet and press on the standoff. The sense that he’d like to have been briefing on something else – the battle of Stalingrad, the prospect of India balancing against China in the Indian Ocean, what Australian submarines mean for the security of the Pacific Islands – was inescapable. It may not be long before he is.

He chuckles at the suggestion, as any good bureaucrat must. And Pezzullo is one of the best.

Felix Donovan is on Twitter: @FelixDonovan1

It was Canberra talking, rationalising away the terrible things that happened in the cells of the Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of our closest ally, with the help of the Australian military lawyer George O’Kane, who was recently accused by the ABC of blocking Red Cross access to those prisoners. But it was also a glimpse into the way Michael Pezzullo often sees the world: as a military strategist and historian, with sympathy for the soldier.

Following the election of the Rudd government in 2007, Pezzullo was asked to be the principal author of the new Defence White Paper. The White Paper is a document that the government of the day publishes every decade or so to outline Australia’s foreign policy and defence strategy – identifying its interests in the world, threats to them, and how the government will seek to protect them. The 2009 Defence

Photo courtesy of Department of Defence

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

honi soit

11

Sydney | April 2012

Late Edition

The Hard Times

It’s a tough time for print media. With the rivers of gold long dried up, digital in a state of flux, and the news cycle more complex than ever, now our newspapers face the threat of further regulation.

Nick Rowbotham looks to the future after Finkelstein.

“Never has the barrier to media entry been lower. Yet it recommends an obligatory right of reply. One wonders if this will apply to the Ku Klux Klan and al-Qa’ida or only to approved responders, and who gets to decide?”

T

his was The Australian newspaper editorialising last month in response to the release of the report on the Australian media by Ray Finkelstein QC. It wasn’t surprising that the report should elicit such a response from the newspaper, and indeed, other papers jumped on board too. The Australian Financial Review proffered the front page splash: “Labor plan to control the media”. As the University of Sydney’s Professor Rodney Tiffen, who worked on the inquiry, observed: “the volume of vitriol is in inverse proportion to the amount of evidence.” But The Australian’s editorial in particular, amongst a chorus of hysterical commentary, was incredibly revealing, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it exemplified the indignation of the paper - and News Limited in general – under the perception that the inquiry had, from the outset, been a politically motivated attack with the company as its target. Secondly, there was the beautiful irony of such fantastical editorial coverage of a media review, which sought to tackle issues of fairness and accuracy in the print media.

And thirdly, on a somewhat related

12

note, such remarks drew attention to the extraordinary difficulty of reporting the nuances of a 470-page report in a fair and concise way.

There has been an enormous amount of commentary concerning media issues in the last few months; with regard to the Finkelstein Inquiry, Gina Reinhart’s stock raid on Fairfax, and now accusations - the result of a four-year investigation by the Financial Review - against News Corporation pertaining to the promotion of piracy. And yet, there have been almost no attempts to understand these topical events within the context of a broader discussion of the news media in this country.

The commissioning of the Finkelstein Inquiry was triggered by a number of factors. Foremost was the News of the World phone hacking scandal in the UK, which brought News Corporation’s British tabloid operations into serious disrepute. Though there was no evidence that Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers had engaged in any illegal activity, the ethical questions raised by the UK scandal and the subsequent (and ongoing) Leveson Inquiry have certainly reverberated throughout Murdoch’s empire. In Australia in particular, where Murdoch’s News Limited controls nearly 70 per cent of the newspaper market, the phone hacking scandal reignited discussion about the news media with regard to ethics, and issues of bias, competition and regulation.

This in turn gave voice to those, mainly academics and the political left, who had long expressed concern about the nature of the Australian media landscape. Former Greens leader Bob Brown seized the opportunity and branded News Limited’s papers “the hate media”, while Communications Minister Stephen Conroy accused “some organs in the Murdoch press” of “clearly running a campaign against this government”.

In the academic sphere, latent concerns about the power of the Murdoch press were perhaps most publicly expressed

by Robert Manne in his Quarterly Essay examining the influence of The Australian in shaping the Australian political discourse. The makeup of the parliament after the 2010 election also meant that the Greens had significant sway in staking their demands - of which a media inquiry was one - and so, in September last year, the government announced an inquiry into “print media regulation... and the operation of the Press Council.”

The aspect which generated the most discussion was, of course, the central proposal of the review; a new statutory body called the News Media Council which would replace the Press Council and regulate “news and current affairs” content across all platforms. The Press Council is the self-regulatory body of the Australian print media, and is entirely and voluntarily funded by the industry.

It has no legal power to compel even corrections or retractions, and in recent years both Fairfax and News Limited have withdrawn some of their funding.

Earlier this month, Seven West Media withdrew entirely.

Finkelstein’s recommendation for statutory regulation is a radical one, but

honi soit

@honi_soit

the outrage in the commentariat was ironically directed at a relatively minor aspect of his model, namely the ability to enforce a correction, retraction or right of reply. In many ways, this underscored that the review was fraught from the start. It was purportedly commissioned to address issues of media ethics and regulation, but were these ever the real problems? Finkelstein could hardly ignore the fact that Australia’s print media industry is the most concentrated of any in the Western world; Fairfax and News Limited together own 91 per cent of the market.

The question of whether competition and diversity, rather than regulation, should be the focus of the media inquiry was limited by Finkelstein’s terms of reference, which explicitly directed it to focus on regulation. This was partly a politically motivated move, as the government did not want to endorse a review which might have led to stronger recommendations regarding the structure of the news industry, perhaps even ways in which it could be broken up to reduce concentration. But it was also a result of Finkelstein’s review coinciding with the so-called ‘Convergence Review’ - yet to be released in its final form - which is to specifically address issues of regulation and competition, particularly with regards to the emergence of new, digital platforms.

Sydney | April 2012

UK Sunday newspaper, News of the World, was shut down after revelations of phone hacking

“

Not regulating the print media is an important democratic principle, but it is a principle built on the premise that competition and diversity will lead to self-regulation.

”

The Finkelstein inquiry’s terms of reference encompassed regulation and codes of practice, but not corporate ownership

“

The newspaper market is almost entirely owned by two publishers, and the main syndication agency, Australian Associated Press, is 90 per cent owned by these same two publishers.

”

Late Edition

Dr Peter Chen, a media scholar at the University of Sydney, believes the Finkelstein review needed to address media concentration. According to Dr Chen, the review arose “out of a section of the left wing of the political class in Australia that is unhappy with the increasing dominance of News Corporation. The general tenor of the review leads to recommendations that aren’t as strong as those on the left would like to see. It’s not going to suit anyone’s particular interests.” Dr Chen also affirms the view that competition, rather than ethics and regulation, is the core problem with the Australian media.

“For a long time, the diagnosis has been a lack of competition,” he says.

Interestingly, Dr Chen also makes the point that the radical aspect of the Finkelstein review is not necessarily its recommendation for statutory regulation, but rather, its overreach in proposing the establishment of an entity - the News Media Council - that would regulate all news media; radio, television, print, and online. “Finkelstein is interested in creating a class of content called ‘news content’”, says Dr Chen, which he argues would give rise to all sorts of legislative and legal difficulties in defining exactly what would and would not fall into this new regulatory category.

The aversion of the print media to regulation has been traditionally grounded in the principle that a strong and independent press is essential to a healthy democracy. Indeed most of the critical responses to Finkelstein’s statutory body have invoked this principle.

But equally, it can be argued that the extraordinary concentration of Australia’s print media renders it less effective at fulfilling its role as a check on executive power. Not regulating the print media is an important democratic principle, but it is a principle built on the premise that competition and diversity will lead to self-regulation. Given the duopoly enjoyed by Fairfax and News Limited, there has clearly been a market failure in this respect.

Today Tonight and who does not read the Herald Sun.” Mr Gawenda may have a point, but he commits the fallacy of assuming that there is therefore no demand for more public-interest, issue-based journalism. He also misses the point that people consume the news that is available to them, which may or may not be of a high quality.

Finkelstein notes: “While market failure or a social goal establishes a necessary condition for intervention, it is not a sufficient condition for action.”

The somewhat reluctant conclusion of the review is the need for a new statutory regulator, but his urgency to assure it would have no more powers than the current Press Council - beyond the ability to enforce a right of reply or correction - is telling. It is emblematic of the widespread acknowledgement of a problem regarding media ownership and competition, but the extreme reticence to do anything about it. Indeed, there are doubts as to whether anything can feasibly be done at all. Such a question is even more pertinent within the context of the recent debate surrounding ‘vested interests’ in politics, particularly Gina Reinhart’s acquisition of a 13 per cent share in Fairfax.

In many ways, it seems that the horse has bolted with regard to media ownership in Australia; that as a result of a series of historical factors, Australia’s print media has grown steadily to be more concentrated. Dr Chen suggests that part of the reason for this is the ability of Australian newspapers to syndicate both internationally and locally, which has dampened competition by reducing the need to generate new content. It is often suggested that anyone is free to establish a newspaper if they so choose. But when the newspaper market is almost entirely owned by two publishers, and the main

syndication agency, Australian Associated Press, is 90 per cent owned by these same two publishers, barriers to entry in the industry are significant, despite what The Australian might contend.

And whilst the internet may have provided a new channel to compete with print media, it still exists in isolation and cannot entirely be considered a competitor. Of the top 12 news sites visited

by Australians in 2011, eight were in fact owned by either Fairfax or News Limited, suggesting a similar dominance in the online market. And as a Centre for Policy Development brief found last year:“Newspapers are still the dominant source of ‘new news’ and play a disproportionate role in driving the overall news cycle”, highlighting the influence they exert beyond their circulation.

All of this seems to lead to the conclusion that concentrated media ownership is a problem to the extent that newspapers are a commercially viable enterprise.

If the newspaper is soon to be killed off by a combination of online content and new technologies, then there may be little cause for concern. One of the main barriers to entry in the print media industry is the large fixed costs associated with starting up a newspaper, but these would cease to exist if print news were delivered in a digital fashion.

But currently the news industry exists in a state of limbo; circulations are falling steadily, and yet there has not been a wholehearted embrace of digitally delivered news, despite the emergence of smart phones and tablets. It may well be then, that a further technological quantum leap is required to revolutionise and reinvigorate the news media.

Only time will tell.

Nick Rowbotham is on Twitter: @nickrowbotham

The other issue that arises out of concentrated media ownership relates to the more general notion of consumer choice.

Is there a demand for a wider range of news and current affairs journalism? The Finkelstein Review seemed to be concerned primarily with so-called ‘quality journalism’, leading some commentators, such as former Age editor Michael Gawenda, to condemn the Review’s “elitism” and claim that its “voice” is that of someone “who does not watch

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

honi soit

13

Culture Vulture

BIG

MUSIC PROFILE

REVIEWS: THEATRE

Every breath

The indie-lean: Tom Iansek and Jo Syme of Big Scary

We did catch a cool band called Cold Showers one day and got to see a lot of Australian bands … who were all really cool.

HS: Your debut album, Vacations, was completely independently released on your own label Pieater Records right?

SCARY Avani Dias chats with with Jo Syme, the female half of Big Scary, and stumbles upon a treasure trove of fun facts: what it was like to play SXSW, their lives before Big Scary, and just where ‘Bad Friends’ came from.

Chilling instrumentals, cathartic lyrics and egg shakers ... lots of egg shakers.

It’s these things that make garage pop duo, Big Scary, so enthralling. Their debut album Vacation has had six months to woo its audiences in Australia and around the world; its reception has been remarkable. Their sound has matured in the past six years to allow for an atmospherically compelling vibe both on record and live on stage.

HS: So you’re touring in the US right now ... what was it like playing a momentous festival like SXSW? JS: I don’t think you can imagine what SXSW is like until you go. There is just SO much happening; it’s overwhelming and exciting. For most bands I don’t think it really changes their career... the CEO of Rough Trade isn’t going to stumble across your show and sign you up for millions of dollars - everyone’s too busy watching Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg, L’il Wayne and Kaiser Chiefs play. But to actually have been part of the festival was something.

We didn’t really get to stick around and watch the bands on the same lineup much, though, because we had to rush off to other gigs of our own...

JS: Yeah we got tired of saying “independent” after every release, so we just created our own label as a name to put things out on. We’ve been trying to get set up so we can hopefully offer support to new bands we love. We’ve been lucky enough to assemble an incredible team around us … but we’ve had to learn pretty quickly as we go. It’s definitely more rewarding to watch things slowly grow yet maintain control.

HS: I do agree the “indie” thing is getting a little exhausting. ‘Bad Friends’ has to be my favourite track on the album... Tell me what it’s about.

JS: I feel guilty every time I hear that song. We had played a gig in Hobart and the next day Tom was due to play live at one of his best friend’s weddings ... I just totally got the time of the flight wrong and we missed our flight, so Tom missed the wedding. It was a sickening feeling when we realised, we just had to sit in the near empty airport and take a later flight. So basically WE are the bad friends.

HS: I got the impression you HAD bad friends. I’m glad I asked. This is a strange question to ask, but what would be the best song of your album to have sex to?

JS: DEFINITELY Child in a Tree.

There are two versions of this song, and the one that made it on the album was created after we’d been watching these hilarious “yacht rock” YouTube videos.

It’s so smooth.

HS: I’ll keep that in mind! So as a band, what made you two decide it would be a good idea to make music together?

JS: It took a long time for us to feel like a band I think. For almost the first

two years we were only playing very occasionally, we both went travelling for a long time and we were both in other bands and considered this the “side project”. We didn’t want to push a million gigs onto our friends and family ...

But then when we started getting some attention and momentum we realised that there was something working, and more and more we started focusing on Big Scary. I think we both share a desire to keep learning and making challenging yet accessible music. We just don’t want to be stagnant which makes us work harder together.

HS: Speaking of families how are both of your parents dealing with you guys being in a band? Do they like your work?

JS: Our parents are really supportive.

It’s pretty cute. They come to as many gigs as they can.

Whenever some new T-Shirt or album goes on our online store my mum orders like twenty so she can give them out to family members. We’ve always rehearsed for free in my parents’ living room and we leave it in such a mess! So we’re really lucky that they’re proud and don’t pressure us to get real jobs at all.

HS: Seeing as I am writing this for the uni paper, did you study?

JS: We both studied. We both have an arts degree. I really enjoyed learning the subject matter, although unfortunately I’ve forgotten most of it! Tom did a Diploma in sound engineering and that has been so great for the band – it means that in the studio Tom can speak the language of any of the engineers and get closer to the sound he has in his head. And now, he’s producing our next album.

HS: Lastly, what can we expect next from Big Scary?

JS: Well we’ve got our national tour when we get home and then we’re straight into the Groovin’ The Moo tour.

We’re also working on our next album.

We don’t know when that’ll be out because we want to take our time, digest it and have fun learning how to make it ourselves.

TICKET GIVEAWAY Want to win a double pass to see Big Scary this Friday night at Oxford Arts Factory? Send in a photo of some graffiti you’ve seen at uni and our favourite will win! Email honisoit2012@gmail, post it on our Facebook page or tweet @honi_soit #honipics

We all need more sex and gore, writes Winsome Walker

Eloise Mignon as Claire in Every Breath

These days, any Australian theatre production which does not contain nudity, gun shots or reflective surfaces seems utterly disappointing. Thanks to the provocative works of Simon Stone, Benedict Andrews and Sam Strong, I expect to see my money’s worth of flesh and blood when I attend the theatre.

Belvoir’s production Every Breath, written and directed by wunderkind Benedict Andrews, is the latest main stage offering which pushes the proverbial envelope and offers plenty of pink bits.

Told through a series of fragmented flashes, Every Breath depicts a family’s mesmerising attraction to Chris (Shelly Lauman), a security guard who watches over their home. Chris patrols the boundary of the family’s lavish property each night, watching and waiting for some unknown threat. The family’s plates are filled with caviar and their conversations rich with cerebral musings, but something inexplicable is missing from their life. It is Chris who fills this void.

Olivia (Eloise Mignon), the curious and cunning sixteen year old daughter seduces Chris, as does her mother Lydia (Angie Milliken), and her teenage twin Oliver. Even the father Leo (John Wood, sporting a fabulous mop of shoulder length grey hair) has a crack at Chris.

Each actor treads a fine line between power and powerlessness, constructing brave and nuanced performances.

What emerges is a series of eerie, disturbing flashes, segmented by blinding strobe lighting, as each family member’s life becomes entwined with Chris’s. The moveable set – a black tiled floor lifted to the ceiling via chains – is raised and tilted above the stage, mirroring the off-kilter balance of their world.

Wicked humour underscores the grotesque action of the play, and could be extracted to even greater effect, particularly when Chris ‘lays with’ all four family members in rapid succession beneath the undulating roof.

Every Breath feels remarkably like an adaptation of a classic text,in the same vein as Thyestes, The Seagull and Baal.

But in fact, this is an original work, the first written by Andrews since his school university days. While the dense, multilayered meanings embedded within the production may warrant a second viewing, one thing is clear – there is no shortage of writhing nudity or in-yourface action on the Australian stage.

14

honi soit

@honi_soit

Culture Vulture REVIEWS: TV

PREVIEWS: COMEDY

OUR PICKS FOR THE SYDNEY COMEDY FESTIVAL with Neha Kasbekar

The Walking Dead

Sertan Saral wants to eat your bains

“It’s not enough to survive.

One must be worthy of survival.” - Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica “If we can’t live together we’re going to die alone.” - Jack Shephard, Lost Rick Grimes is no Bill Adama. Nor is he Jack Shephard. He simply doesn’t measure up. Like Rick, Jack and Bill are leaders of a disparate group of survivors, but unlike Rick, we at least had a sense of where they were coming from: Shephard’s got severe daddy issues and Adama’s constantly navigating the uneasy middle ground between his decades of military training and his love for the people under his command. Rick Grimes? What’s his deal? He’s obviously the leader of his group. And he’s a family man. And he used to be a pretty good sheriff’s deputy, I guess. (I actually don’t know because the one time I saw him act like a sheriff’s deputy, in the show’s pilot, he got shot in the chest.) Beyond that, we have little to gauge him by.

The reason I’m comparing The Walking Dead with these two shows is that although their settings and premises are wildly different, they share common themes of survival. When you strip away our loved ones and our possessions, basically everything that attached us to the world before, how can we utilise what little we have left to survive and move on? Where such questions and themes hung on top of everything in Lost and Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead deals with them in lazy fashion, preferring to delegate all of the

heavy lifting to the show’s zombie action rather than to its cast of forgettable characters. This, despite the fact that its budget and serialised format would better accommodate a zombie show with interesting people in it.

When Dale, supposedly the group’s moral compass, says to Shane, “This world, what it is now, this is where you belong,” the sentiment rings hollow because the “world” as it used to be is a nebulous thing which the show’s writers never bothered to show us. You can’t talk about the “world” before without giving the audience an anchor to that world. Battlestar Galactica did this by actually spending some time with its main players before humanity was all but wiped out. Lost did this with flashbacks. Before crashing on that island, the characters in that show left a lot unresolved back home and much of their journey became about whether they could let go of these conflicts, grudges and so on, and move on. When Rick makes a speech, there is no subtext; he’s simply doing it because he’s the leader and that’s the expectation. When Jack makes a speech, you know it’s because he’s constantly trying (and often failing) to prove to himself that he’s a better man than his alcoholic father.

The Walking Dead is the only show of its kind out there: a serialised genre show with a high budget about a zombie apocalypse. I attribute its success to this. But if there was another, competing show out there with the same elements (budget, zombies, serialised) but with far more likable, consistent and fully-formed characters, The Walking Dead would just be dead.

As Australian comedy scenes go, Sydney has long played the bridesmaid to Melbourne’s flamboyant bride. However, Sydneysiders need feel shame no longer with the rise of the Sydney Comedy Festival. It may only be in its eighth year but boasts a diverse selection of acts and a genuine fringe sensibility.

The Festival runs from April 24 to May 12, with prices mostly in the $15-$40 range.

Musical Comedians Musical comedians are generally low-energy given the difficulty of slapstick while playing and/or carrying unwieldy instruments, but compensate for this fact with verbal acrobatics and a savant-like facility for ferreting out absurd ideas. Check out superb Irish keyboardist and self-styled exponent of VLEMWY (Very Low-Energy Musical Whimsy); David O’Doherty, the stalwarts of the local comedy scene Axis of Awesome; Smart Casual, an inventive, if inconsistent, Aussie half-brother duo on guitar and beard respectively (musical instruments, apparently); and DeAnne Smith, whose ‘lady-that-occasionally-plays-ukelele’ shtick would ping a 7 on the Deschanel scale of quirk if it weren’t for Smith’s dark wit.

Physical Comedians I’m playing fast and loose with the concept of a physical comedian here, since only one of my picks, the Pajama Men (two men dressed in pyjamas and doing appropriately silly, rapid-fire character-driven skits), act out their comedy rather than verbally deliver routines like conventional stand-up comics. Still, it would be impossible to rule out the physical elements to some of the higher-energy comedians like Ross Noble, renowned for his largely-improvised, surrealist shows, and Glenn Wool, who belies his folksy, shambolic demeanour with some thoughtful social commentary.

Observational Comedians and Story-Tellers Daniel Kitson is the comedian’s comedian, and with good reason: he aims for something more than disposable jokes cobbled together. He spins together satisfying narratives that are heavy on clever turns of phrase, and leave you quietly buoyant about life. Simon Amstell’s stand-up is a complete departure from the snarky celebrity putdowns that made him famous as host of UK panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

He’s no less sharp now, but has graduated to harder comic targets, with shows that tend towards the introspective and bleakly honest. If you’re averse to inward-looking comedy and would much rather some wry social observation, former heavy metal legend, Steve Hughes, is your man. USYD’s own Michael Hing, co-runner of Project 52, is well worth checking out (strengths: nerdily affable, solid story-telling rhythms, good mix of personal and political bits).

Offence-Mongers vs. the Impossibly Good-Natured Crassness isn’t for everyone, and hack comedians can use it to paper over a lack of genuinely funny material. If you’re looking for raunchy comedy with a little creativity in playing with the stock raunch premises (genitals, sex, outcomes of sex, etc.), try the archly funny Rhys Nicholson or brazen Nikki Britton. For sheer warmth and likability though, my money’s on Matt Okine and Felicity Ward, who’d get a chuckle out of even the more churlish of your two grandmas.

REVIEWS: MUSIC

One Direction, Up All Night

This album got a lot better after Matthew Clarke lost his hearing when One Direction came to Martin Place Until last week I had never heard of One Direction, but then of course they came to Sydney and the entire city lost its shit. Despite the fact that boy bands became extinct in the late 90s, the debut album from the former X-Factor contestants, Up All Night, is currently sitting at peak position on the ARIA album charts, and will probably be there for a while.

The album itself is a mixed bag. A good boy band song has to pack a punch – it should have a pounding hook, dramatic production, and ideally should include a killer call and response section a la ‘Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)’. But Up All Night isn’t really a boy band album – it’s more a collection of mid-tempo high school love songs.

While at times these can be mindnumbingly repetitive, they can also be insanely catchy. For instance, while most of the album is made up of inoffensive soft-rock, every now and then the boys break out into a year-six disco style dance track. The first few seconds of ‘Everything About You’ sounds like it’s leading into unbearable club techno, but then glides into gloriously cheesy Eurodance. By far the best song on the album is the seventh track, ‘Tell Me a Lie’ (co-written by none other than fellow talent show alumni, Kelly Clarkson) which features an uber funky guitar lick and one of Clarkson’s patented powerhouse-pop choruses.

These are the songs where things seem to work best – when they crank up the electric guitar, forget about the

barbershop harmonies, and smash out a fist-pumping pop anthem.

The lyrics are predictably sugary (I’m only thinking ‘bout this girl I’m seeing / I hope she’ll wanna kiss me back) but every now and then something weird creeps in, e.g. ‘If I look inside your brain / I would find lots of things.’

Similarly, the messages behind some of these songs are kind of bizarre, as in the lead single ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ which can best be summarised as ‘you think you’re ugly, and that’s why I think you’re not ugly.’ But you know, small matters.

it’s probably not that memorable. One Direction seems to me like 2012’s version of the Jonas Brothers: huge for about ten minutes, and then gone forever. In the meantime though, get used to hearing them on the radio – I think they’re kind of popular.

As far as bubblegum pop goes, Up All Night is a pretty solid offering. Its only problem is that

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

honi soit

15

STARTUP PROFILE

Tech & Fashion: the Aussie tech entrepreneur making waves in the USA

James Alexander catches up with Ryan Junee to talk startups, tech culture on campus and what it takes to create a successful company Ryan Junee is a serial entrepreneur who has made a living creating innovative products.

Graduating with a degree in Finance and Computer Engineering from the University of Sydney in 2002, Ryan Junee: Ryan has been involved Wants to help with startups and prodmentor Sydney uct development ever entrepreneurs since he left University.

Every time you use YouTube you’re using part of a product from Ryan’s first successful startup, famously acquired by Google in 2008. Yet, Ryan is unknown to many students at the university. James Alexander caught up with Ryan as he launches his next product in New York.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a fashion technology startup called Inporia. We just launched a mobile fashion app at New York Fashion Week named Kaleidoscope (currently available on Android and on iPhone). I’m splitting my time these days between Silicon Valley and New York.

How did you start your first company, Omnisio, and did you have the idea while at Sydney University?

We started Omnisio originally with the goal of building a platform for putting educational content online. I didn’t have the idea while I was at Sydney University, but rather while I was at Stanford.

I definitely had a bunch of other ideas while I was at Sydney University but didn’t end up pursuing them because I wanted to apply to grad school and move to the United States.

Tell us about the Google acquisition of your first startup in 2008?

How did that feel?

Our Google acquisition was certainly unplanned, and it came as a surprise that they were interested in acquiring us so quickly, less than 12 months after starting the company. We had a series of meetings with them where it was clear they liked what we had built and liked the team, and so the discussions pretty quickly turned towards acquisition

Out of your peers at the University of Sydney, were any of them involved in startups?

A few of my peers at Sydney University have since moved over here to Silicon Valley and started companies. I joke with one of my friends that he followed

me over here because he has followed a pretty similar career path. I’ve also met Aussies here in the alley that turned out to have gone to Sydney University around the same time I did, although I didn’t know them at the time. So there was certainly a small group of entrepreneurial minded people at Sydney University at the time, we just weren’t so public about it I guess.

Did anyone teach and/or promote tech startups as a career path for entrepreneurial students?

Tech startups certainly weren’t promoted widely as a career path. It was probably only one of my lecturers, Matt Barrie, who talked a lot about tech startups since he was starting one himself. In fact I joined him as the first employee after I graduated.

Will you move back to Sydney in the future to mentor local startups?

I love mentoring and offering advice to passionate entrepreneurs, and try to do my part to help build the startup scene in Sydney through initiatives like StartMate, and guest lecturing at an entrepreneurship class at Sydney University.

I can’t say for sure yet when I will move back to Sydney. I plan to be in the US for the near future growing Inporia, and will probably start or invest in a bunch

more companies after that - whether that’s in the US, Australia, or somewhere else in the world I’m not sure yet.

For students currently with their own startups, what one piece of advice would you give them?

The best piece of advice I have is ‘just do it’. Honestly, you will learn so much more by building a product and putting it out there, and getting feedback Kaleidoscope by ‘Inporia’: from real users, Ryan’s new fashion app than you will be sitting in your room and wondering what might happen. It’s so cheap to build and launch a software or web startups these days there’s really no excuse not to! This is why students with technical degrees have such a huge advantage - they actually have the ability to build the first version themselves rather than having to go and find or pay someone else to do it.

This reporter is on Twitter: @shortino29

GAME CULTURE

‘Gay-mer’: Where are the gay characters in video games?

Christopher J Browne investigates why LGBT characters should feature in modern day video games

Gay Character: Lieutenant Steve Cortez in Mass Effect 3 laments the loss of his husband throughout the game story

like Nintendo censored LGBT characters such as Birdo from Super Mario Bros 2 (1988), who was originally depicted in the game’s instruction manual as considering itself to be female and wanting to be called “Birdetta”. Many games were similarly censored to remove or modify LGBT characters when games were imported from Asia into western markets.

Such censorship is no longer as common, however some classification boards such as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board exhibit heterosexism in their classification schemes; expressions of LGBT identity often fall under higher ratings such as M (Mature), whereas similar expressions of heterosexual identity do not.

‘Gay-mers’ reaction

I turned to the Internet (yes, the entire Internet) to ask how gamers felt about portrayals of LGBT characters in games. Many LGBT gamers (some amusBirdo: Originally depicted ingly choosing as wanting to be female to self-identify as ‘gaymers’) felt underrepresented, left with a desire to see LGBT protagonists and characters that were more than Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender stereotypes or token inclusions. Perhaps (LGBT) characters have featured in video the most well-known examples of LGBT games since the 1980s, however their characters in recent years are in role-playdepictions have evolved due to changing ing games such as Dragon Age, Skyrim, classification schemes and perceived sociand Mass Effect. In all of these games, reetal expectations. Early game developers lationships are available with companions After a narrow escape from the Reaper invasion of Earth I inspect my now familiar ship, the Normandy. Much of the crew has changed since I was last on board and I introduce myself to my new shuttle pilot, Lieutenant Steve Cortez.

After a briefing on ship logistics I ask Cortez about his family back home. Cortez tells me about the loss of his parents when he was young and the more recent loss of his husband during a Collectors attack — it is at this point that I temporarily lose my immersion in Mass Effect 3. Did Cortez just say husband?

16

honi soit

within the game as optional side-quests that are not crucial to the main storyline.

In all of these examples same-sex relationships are available to players, and this is no doubt a positive move on the part of the developers. However these inclusions are not beyond criticism. In many cases, the characters are completely pansexual — sexually attracted to all gender identities and sexes — and are available to the player whether they are male or female. While somewhat progressive and inclusive, portraying characters in this way risks focusing too much on sexual attraction rather than romance. A sideeffect of this is that LGBT characters are not portrayed as stereotypical — feminine males for example — but this is more a function of poor writing than any attempt to actually be cognisant of LGBT issues.

This is typical of many gamers’ attitudes to LGBT characters in games — as long as any romance is well-written and relevant to the plot, most would not have an issue with LGBT protagonists.

Issues with LGBT characters For those who did have issues with LGBT characters, the primary concern was an inability to relate to the player character. This seems an unfair criticism, given that LGBT players sit through countless games featuring heterosexual love interests and hyper-sexualised female characters.

Game development however is expensive and time consuming, and developers are often reticent to do anything but pander to their perceived market — heterosexual adolescent males.

#honitech

The case for diversity While this is just good business, the perception is wrong. When Will Wright first approached Maxis to create The Sims, he encountered resistance on the grounds that it was a ‘girl’s game’, and that girls don’t play video games. The Sims is now the top-selling PC game of all time, and up to 60 per cent of players are female. The Entertainment Software Association in the US reports that the average age of a gamer is now 37, and that 42 per cent of all gamers are women. In fact, adult women are 37 per cent of all gamers, and boys aged less than 17 are only 13 per cent. These demographics suggest that perhaps the world is ready for some more diversity in our games.

Not all believe the characterisation of Cortez was positive and it has received some negative responses from gamers who believe he was completely defined by his sexuality. I disagree. While the romance writing in Mass Effect 3 leaves a lot to be desired, Cortez is a character that just happens to be gay, rather than a character defined by his sexuality, or included to be tokenistic. Cortez spends much of his time talking about his lost partner, but this is not done in order to push his sexuality into our faces — Cortez lost a lover, and he exists to give a human face to the ordeal that the galaxy is facing. It doesn’t matter whether you are gay or straight, human or Turian, this is something that anyone can relate to. The fact that he is gay is immaterial, and so it should be.

Action-Reaction SCIENCE FEATURE

Listening to the stars

Felicity Nelson gets attuned to the Universe incoming waves onto a central detector above and in the centre of the dish (like the retina), which in turn transmits the data to a radio receiver (optic nerve).

Scientists at the other end (the brain in this analogy) get a tangle of different signals that they then have to tease out to identify different sources of vibrations.

It’s strange to think that the silent night sky actually holds a symphony of sounds. If you listen carefully enough, stars tens of millions of light years away will whisper the secrets of the universe into your ear. Unfortunately, you need a very special kind of ear called a radio telescope to distinguish these very quiet voices from the cacophony of vibrations here on Earth.

A radio telescope is exactly like an eye. Except it’s huge; the largest one in the world is 350m across. It has a dish that acts like a lens by focusing the

Scientists can only really understand what’s going on in the universe by listening to it in this way. All the wackiest inhabitants of our universe including black holes, quasars, pulsars and supernovas have been discovered and described using radio telescopes. These entities are so far away that the radio waves they emit take literally billions of years to reach Earth. What our telescopes are really detecting is the beginning of time, a universe in its infancy. Humanity’s knowledge about the origins and fate of our universe rests on theses large ears trained at the sky.

Aliens, if they are out there, will be heard by our telescopes. SETI has been on the watch for little green men for over thirty years. UC Berkley’s SETI@home project has been outsourcing telescope data to volunteer’s computers for over ten years. It is still possible to join this search by downloading a screensaver from their website which processes pieces of data from their telescopes when you aren’t using your computer.

dust rings around newly-formed suns 15 billion light years away this new technology is expected to answer many questions about the nature of the universe.

The universe is beautiful, wonderful and articulate. I can not think of anything more inspiring than humanity’s ability to look up at the sky and know much more of what’s there than, quite possibly, anything else in the universe.

A new multi-nationally funded project to spread a large number of connected telescopes over a 3km area in either Western Australia or South America is on its way. This square kilometre array to be completed in 2024 will be fifty times as sensitive as current technologies. It is estimated that the computing power of 100 billion PCs will be needed to process all the data collected. Even the weakest television transmissions from a solar system millions of light years away will be picked up. By focusing on the

SPORT

Fighting the perils of fitness

Michael Coutts encourages you to stay on the couch a heart attack. Morisini was a Anyone with a basic professional footballer in Italy knowledge of health who collapsed on pitch just weeks and wellbeing knows ago, and was later pronounced that regular physical dead in hospital. Nor is his tale activity is good for an isolated incident: footballers you. Society is obsessed Marc-Viven Foe and Miklos Feher with ‘being fit,’ and for professional athletes, have died from heart attacks the desire to have well while under the age of 30, and developed cardiovasonly last month Fabrice Muamcular functions is even ba, a 23-year-old professional stronger. Athletes are footballer in England, collapsed Pictured: Bolton Wandercompelled to begin ers player, Fabrice Muamba, on pitch after suffering a cardiac treating their bodies as collapsed and was dead for 45 minutes before being arrest. a temple from an resuscitated Actually stop and consider increasingly young age the magnitude of this. Professional if they have any chance of making a sportspersons, people who dedicated living out of their passion. their lives to attaining the peak physiFor those who think there is nothing cal condition possible, died from heart wrong with this, ask Piermario Moriattacks. This bizarre fact belies an even sini’s family what they think. Morisini more stunning reality – professional would tell you himself, but he can’t – at athletes are actually more prone to heart the age of just 25, he passed away from

attacks than individuals who engage in regular, but not extensive, endurance based aerobic activity. This applies especially when those athletes have begun training from a young age.

The reason for this relates to the way their body develops. ‘Athlete’s Heart Syndrome’ (AHS) occurs when the human heart is enlarged, and the resting pulse lowered, due to exercise. It is a perfectly benign, and even desirable syndrome to have. Where AHS becomes problematic is when it develops into hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a disease that causes a portion of the heart to thicken so greatly that the heart malfunctions.

Armed with greater information about the nature and extent of HCM, countries have intensified their efforts to protect young athletes. The introduction of routine screening for all pro-

fessional sportspersons in the Veneto region of Italy has reportedly reduced the incidence of HCM by 89 per cent.

Whilst a positive step, regulations must not stop there. Greater restrictions on the numbers of hours children may dedicate to sports training are required, especially in sports with a heavy aerobic focus, such as cycling, football, swimming and athletics.

More so than anything else, young people must be made aware of the risks of pushing their bodies too far, too soon. Although the lifestyle of a professional athlete may seem worth the risk of HCM, a life is only valuable if you are able to enjoy it. Life may seem too short to worry about HCM, but it could be even shorter if you don’t.

Michael Coutts is on Twitter: @MD_coutts

Hipsters in lycra

Melbourne is famous for its trackstands, gear ratios and no brakes, writes James O’Doherty The meet was important for Meyer, as it was probably his last championship before leaving the track for the big bucks of professional road cycling.

Earlier this month, the latest chapter in track cycling’s fiercest rivalry was played out at Melbourne’s Hisense Arena. The 2012 UCI Track World Championships set the stage for the Aussies to hold their own against a champion British team, in the last international event before the London Olympics. The Aussies were led by our golden girl, sprinter Anna Meares and Madison champ Cameron Meyer.

Australia ended the event on top, with 15 medals – six gold, six silver and three bronze. It was an impressive showing from a young team, including the ‘boy band’ of our team sprinters. The average age of the three men is just 21, in a sport where careers extend well into the 30s.

The Brits – led by four-time Olympic champion, ten-time world champion, and all-out cycling god, sprinter Sir Chris Hoy – ended the week in second, with 13 medals: six gold, four silver and three bronze.

The Australian Cyclones have put themselves in good stead for the

London Games, after wins in the men’s individual pursuit and men’s points race, and an upset win in the men’s team sprint. Anna Meares took out two titles (500m time trial and the keirin), but not before roughing up her rival, Briton Victoria Pendleton, in the individual sprint. There was no love lost between the two, and it’s clear the rivalry will continue on revitalised in London.

With the track the flagship for Australian cycling, funding has been funneled into the discipline over recent years. Cycling Australia’s commitment definitely shows, with the Aussies edging out the well-funded Brits in Melbourne.

The upset of the meet came from inside the British team itself.

Sir Chris Hoy – knighted for his

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

‘contribution to the Commonwealth’ in track sprinting – was ousted by the younger, leaner, Jason Kenny. Hoy ended up third in his primary race, the individual sprint, with Kenny taking out second. Whether this will affect Hoy’s selection chances for London remains unseen. The question also remains whether a young Australian sprint team will be able to best the British powerhouses, and whether the all-rounders can edge out the Brits without the guiding presence of Meyer leading up to the Olympics. The Pendleton-Meares is also heating up, with the pair now trading titles as well as barbs.

James O’Doherty is on Twitter: @jmodoh

honi soit

17

The Sandstone Report The Anti-President’s Report

G

reetings, subjects.

There has been much speculation as to what happened to a certain page of this here publication, Honi Soit, last week.

A few of you have suggested that in fact I, your benevolent anti-President, had something to do with the disappearance.

They would be right. After breaking into the SRC I stayed long into the night, guillotining, ripping and more generally shredding from existence that putrid page.

Unfortunately, the higher powers at play in my beloved Liberal Party have intervened. It is with great reluctance that I reveal the information disclosed in last weeks ‘Honileaks’. I don’t have the space to type it up in full, so a summary will have to suffice.

Recently my faction of the Young Liberals, the (Hahn’s) Super Dry Libs, refused funding from the Tony Abbott pro-life fund, an allocation of money set aside for conservative student groups

to ensure their organizations are maintained. The reason we declined the funding was because we are, like all good Liberal groups should be, actually rolling in it. This isn’t the case for all of us though. The wet-libs, the just dry libs and Katter’s Student Patriots Party are all truly struggling to stay afloat. Unlike us, they didn’t embark upon a sexy albeit soulless club re-branding that has reaped huge rewards. Nonetheless, I thought it would look a little selfish if we were to claim from Tony’s fund and then at the end of the year reveal the TWO BILLION DOLLAR profit we’re set to make (Thanks, mining boom).

a short note at the bottom of the email excerpt; that I would, if the survival of our faction depended upon it, consider supporting gay-marriage legislation.

What the email failed to say was that I was extremely exhausted and possibly suffering from food-poisoning when I wrote that part. I would never, ever consider supporting gay-marriage.

‘Til next time your loyal anti-President, John Leigh

ow that the abomination that was the 2012 Global Atheist Convention is over and Richard Dawkins and his Darwinist ilk – may they burn in Hell – have finally departed, I can put down my picket and resume God’s business: running the largest society at Sydney Uni, Christians on Campus.

D

The moment I found out Honi were trying to publish an email I sent to other club executives about our decision to decline the funding, I knew I had to intervene. You see, I wasn’t trying to quell the fact that my faction had been deceiving the entire university and actively trying to censor Honi, I am proud of that behaviour. What I actually was trying to prevent the public from seeing was

After Bible studies on Monday we reconvened for our weekly spiritual debate. For this week’s topic we asked our three teams – what’s that you say, three teams in one debate? Isn’t that a little unorthodox? No, as it turns out, we modelled it on the Holy Trinity you little so-and-so, besides if it is a little ‘unorthodox’ then that just sets us further apart from those Orthodox heathens which is A-Okay with me. As I was saying, we asked our three teams to debate the question: “Is God good, great or super?” After a few hours of vigorous theological discussion it was decided that

because God created all men equal we were all right! Yay!

Well it’s almost that time of year again when we, at CoC, take over this once proudly secular institution in a blaze of self-righteous glory and chalk dust to insist that we’d all be better off if we stopped listening to those witch doctors they call ‘scientists’ and praised the one, true God. And I tell you what, it’s been a hell of a weekend, forgive the casual blasphemy, as we’ve been chalking the length and breadth of Eastern Ave like it’s nobody’s business – well except for the Big Guy and all you pagan heretics that we’ll be inconveniencing. I mean my hands are red raw and my feet are killing me; it feels like I’ve got the stigmata!

Ahhhhh, just joshing with you JC! Who sacrificed himself for our sins? YOU did!

Boo-ya!

After the resounding success of last year’s ‘Is This Life?’ campaign, this year

ear Oxycodone, you better man the fuck up. You’re talking to two guidance counsellors and you’re complaining? Bitches pay outta their bluenoses for that kind of therapy. Just because you’ve spent your entire life bouncing between shrinks and pharmacy counters doesn’t mean that now whenever someone tells you to “Come in, have a seat” you have to sit on your hands and cry for the next half hour. Tissues got issues.

Just to make my position clear.

we’ve decided to try and alienate our predominantly atheist student population once again by making them call into question their unfulfilling godless life choices. It came to me in a vision: I was standing on the Sunken Lawns, offering free sausages in return for the eternal love of Jesus Christ, wondering, as I often do, why everyone would smile politely whilst receiving of the sausage of God only to run off cackling: “They fell for it! They fell for it again!” Then it came to me: it is not enough to ask the infidel to see the fallacies in their own life because, as the Good Lord said, “they know not what they do” - rather we must show them the light. Which is why I am proud to announce our new campaign: “This is Life?”

Our slogan shall be simple and direct: “Abstinence, Subservience, Ignorance.

This is life?”

A dark day for honi

There is cause for alarm today amid the ongoing war between Honi Soit and its ANU equivalent, Woroni.

Reports out of Canberra indicate that Honi editor Michael Koziol, who disappeared last weekend, has defected to the (financially) well-endowed Woroni editorial team.

Long maligned as “the only gay in the village” in the Honi office, Mr Koziol was spotted cavorting with known ANU homosexualist Zid Mancenido. The extent of their liaisons is not presently known, but editor-in-chief Kira SpucysTahar speculated Koziol may have engaged in “sexual espionage”.

18

honi soit

“Well, he certainly won’t be welcome back here,” she said. “This is an act of high treason.”

But rival news outlet Bull has cast doubt on the defection thesis, somehow defying the laws of time to point out his multiple by-lines on pages four and five of today’s Honi Soit.

“It seems to us that Mr Koziol is playing the double agent,” said Bull editor Pierce Hartigan, before returning to the saccharine feature article on rainbow-colored pandas he was preparing for next month’s edition.

Mr Koziol could not be contacted for comment, although it is possible this was just due to Vodafone’s shithouse coverage in Canberra.

I’m a trust fund baby. My parents are unavailable in every sense. I feel like I’m talking to two guidance counsellors, never people who love me. Will I ever regain a sense of family, or should I just be content that they’ll always bail me out of problems that don’t require emotional investment?

Yours, Addicted to Oxycodone

The Lord Lives On Campus: “Glory, glory, hallelujah!”

N

Dear Virginia Woof,

Your mother is emotionally unavailable because she got knocked up in the middle of her burgeoning career, decided against an abortion under pressure from her Catholic family, organised a nanny two trimesters before you popped out and as soon as you learnt to say “refrigerator mother”, shipped you off to boarding school in Wales for the next eighteen years. Your father is emotionally unavailable cos that’s how he rolls.

That, and when he was ten his father went on a boar hunting expedition and never returned. So that’s why he never talks about his hometown Dimbulah, and that’s why uncle Jimmy never eats pork. And you thought he was Jewish.

What you need to do, Oxycodone, is take that huge wad of cash your parents have conveniently stashed up your arse and unblock the gush of potential called upward-mobility-of-self-esteem-viabuyingtheshitoutofeverything. Consider yourself an inversely fucked-up Batman, a capitalist wet dream where Harrods is your Gotham and Eftpos your Batmobile. Go crazy on dat shit.

WA

Meanwhile, the Honi editorial team will soldier on, maintaining the war effort despite the loss of arguably their most musicallychallenged editor.

“We’ll miss the incisive, litigationinciting journalism,” said Ms SpucysTahar. “We won’t miss the Mariah Carey-karaoke or the endless One Direction.”

@honi_soit

Betrayal thy name is Koziol.

RH

ON

I

SRC Help

Ask Abe

Your Assessment and Appeal Rights at Uni As a University of Sydney student you have many assessment rights.

Policies entitle all students to full information about course goals and requirements and this information must be given to you before the end of the first week of a course.

Information you are entitled to includes: • • • •

•

• • •

• • • • • • • •

assessment criteria attendance and class requirements weighting – breakdown and calculation of assessment marks explanation of policies regarding ‘legitimate co-operation, plagiarism and cheating’, special consideration and academic appeals procedures early and clear statement of sanctions and penalties that may bring your mark down, and fair application of these penalties balanced and relevant assessment tasks fair and consistent assessment with appropriate workloads and deadlines written consultation before the halfway point of the unit if assessment requirements need to change changes must not disadvantage students adequate arrangements to cater for disabilities and other requirements access to staff out of class time at reasonable hours fair and relevant marking procedures anonymous posting of results (or arguably deidentified at least) timely return of assessments helpful feedback access to exams up to four months after the result

• •

the right to appeal up to three months after an academic decision enough time for remedial learning when there is reassessment

Hi Abe,

Appeals - University Procedures If you believe a mark or University decision is wrong and you want to appeal you must lodge an appeal within 15 working days.

The first step is to talk to the person who made the decision – often your lecturer.

See if you can go through the assessment and discuss your performance with them.

Make sure you know how the mark was worked out – including any scaling or marks deducted or changed for reasons not directly related to that particular assessment. Your questions and concerns may be resolved at this stage, helping you understand how you can improve in the future. Alternatively, you may feel the matter is still unresolved and wish to continue with your appeal.

1. Make your appeal in writing and make sure it is easy for other people to understand 2. Listen to or read staff comments and reasons for a decision closely. Keep these in mind when you write your appeal letter.

3. Base an appeal on a process matter rather than an academic judgement.

4. Know your desired outcome 5. Familiarise yourself with the relevant policies 6. Know who you are appealing to 7. Lecturer/Unit of study Coordinator; someone higher in the appeal chain within the Faculty; and then the University Student Appeals Body

(Academic decisions only, and only where there has been a breach of process); You must be given reasons for each person’s decision.

8. If you cannot resolve appeals internally, you may be able to approach external bodies eg. NSW Ombudsman, the Anti-Discrimination Board etc.

9. Administrative decisions made outside of the Faculty have appeals to different people. Speak to the SRC for advice.

Your Appeal Rights According to University policy, appeals should be dealt with: • in a timely manner • with confidence • impartially and not disadvantage you in the future • procedural fairness • free access to all documents concerning your appeal For help drafting your appeal talk to an SRC caseworker.

help@src.usyd.edu.au Phone: 9660 5222

For undergraduate Sydney Uni Students

FREE

FREE legal advice, representation in court and a referral service to undergraduate students at The University of Sydney.

We have a solicitor who speaks Cantonese, Mandarin & Japanese

• • • • • • • •

NEED a Justice of the Peace?

Our solicitor will certify documents & witness statutory declarations Appointments Phone 02 9660 5222 Drop-in sessions (no appointment needed) Tuesdays & Thursdays 1pm-3pm Location Level 1 (basement) Wentworth Building, City Road, Darlington

Immigration Advice Tenancy law Credit & debt Discrimination & harassment Traffic offences Criminal law Employment law Credit and debt

• • • • • • •

Administration (gov) law Victims compensation Consumer complaints Domestric violence Insurance law University complaints and more ... please ask us

Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Level 1 Wentworth Building, Uni of Sydney 02 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au | ACN 146 653 143

法律諮詢 法律アドバイス

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

I had an absolutely shocking time last semester and failed every subject I attempted. I have previously had an excellent record, but had a lot of family problems last semester. Is there any way that I can have last semester wiped off my record so my bad marks don’t spoil my record?

DS

Dear DS, If you had a serious illness or misadventure (your family problems may be described as this) that was out of your control, became worse after deadline for DNF and seriously affected your ability to study, you can apply to have those fails or absent fails changed to DNF (Discontinue not to count as fail) grades. You will need to be able to explain how your illness or misadventure affected your study. Naturally you will need documentation from a doctor or counsellor, a community leader or someone else who knows about the issues your family have been dealing with. Remember that this is not just a method to “clean up” your transcript, but rather for students who have not had a genuine opportunity to demonstrate their competency in the subject.

You may also consider talking to an SRC caseworker about having your HECS/fees refunded. The deadline for applying for a fee refund if you are a local students is 12 months, but it’s so easy to forget that you’d be better off dealing with that straight away too.

Fee refunds for international students are not as straight forward as they are for local students so come and have a chat to SRC HELP. Abe

Abe is the SRC’s welfare dog.

This column offers students the opportunity to ask questions on anything. This can be as personal as a question on a Centrelink payment or as general as a question on the state of the world. If you would like to ask Abe a question send an email to help@src.usyd.edu.au.

Abe gathers his answers from experts in a number of areas.

Coupled with his own expertise on dealing with people, living on a low income and being a dog, Abe’s answers can provide you excellent insight.

honi soit

19

SRC Reports SRC President’s Report

Phoebe Drake is sitting on top of the world

Whilst the university, last year, ticked the box of student consultation, concerns were raised over the process of developing a survey that conveyed so little to students.

It is important to note that the legislation states that consultation must include:

Honours Are you bored in class or have nothing to do? Alternatively, are you looking to avoid an essay through procrastination? PLEASE take the time to fill in our survey on honours. As I mentioned last week, the university is starting a discussion around the future of honours and the SRC is keen to get as many students talking on this issue as possible. Your input will be collated and taken to the Academic Board where senior academics and those from decision making committees within the university will hear what you think. So, it’s really important that you have a say. Go to the link below to answer our short survey! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ CVSRDJZ

Student Services and Amenities Fee With the details of the funding agreement all but signed off on, it’s now time for the university and student organisations to start a discussion on the process of allocating the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) for 2013 and beyond.

It is well and truly fair to say that aspects of this process can be improved, with student consultation being an ideal starting point.

a.) Publishing identified priorities for proposed fee expenditure and allowing opportunities to comment on those priorities by students and student associations and organisations; and b.) Meeting with democratically elected student representatives and representatives from major student organisations to consider the priorities for use of fee revenue.

And, whilst this is a basic reflection of the process that has occurred over the last six months, I do believe there is a great deal of room for improvement.

Moreover, it starts with student consultation. Consequently, I am really keen to see another survey take place.

‘But I will be pushing for this survey to be drafted by the student organisations in collaboration with each other to achieve one survey that asks the questions students can respond to (instead of lifting elements of the legislation without translation into tangible benefits).

The timeline that has been agreed to by all parties will see student consultation commence in June. Following that, the Student Consultative Committee (on which all the student organisations sit) will meet to look at the responses and add contributions to the University’s proposed priorities.

Ideally, as many students as possible would participate in the rounds of consultation, so if you have an idea as to where you would like your money to be directed, this will be your opportunity.

Fund Our Future Over the next couple of weeks, the SRC will be running the NUS Fund Our Future campaign, which calls on the government to increase the base funding given to universities.

Basically, if you haven’t heard of NUS before, it is the peak representative body for students in Australia and it works to achieve change at both a local and national level. It serves a dual purpose through running campaigns at campuses around Australia (which is a great opportunity for education activists to get involved!) and it also lobbies for legislative change. Some of the recent wins include ensuring that students on Youth Allowance receive the start up scholarship and ensuring that the SSAF legislation includes a commitment to consultation with democratically elected student organisations.

Consequently the Fund Our Future campaign focuses on the problem facing the higher education sector where uni-

versities continue to expand yet funding does not increase. As a result, our class sizes have continued to expand and the standard of teaching and learning heavily impacted.

Members of the SRC will be coming to talk to you about this issue and ask you to participate in our photo petition. Our national office bearing team will be lobbying the government to see an increase of 10 per cent in base funding. Your photos will join thousands of other photos from across Australia to demonstrate to the government that students do care about the standard of their education and that we aren’t going to sit back and settle for something less than we deserve.

If you want to get involved in the campaign, or find out how to participate, email me at: president@src.usyd.edu.au Phoebe Drake is the SRC President

Care about the future of honours at Sydney Uni? Have your say www.surveymonkey.com/s/CVSRDJZ

For more information about the SRC visit: www.src.usyd.edu.au

20

honi soit

@honi_soit

SRC Reports General Secretary’s Report

Starships were meant to fly, writes Tim Matthews Hello again! I know that this is a busy time of year for everyone, being caught between doing assignments and procrastinating from doing assignments.

Whether you’re reading Honi to avoid that awful essay, or in celebration of your essay- less freedom – great choice!

This is also a busy time of year in the SRC. You’ve heard us talk ad infinitum about the process of negotiations with the University over our allocation of the Student Services and Amenities Fee – well, now has come the time for us to put our money where our… money… is… and finalise the SRC’s budget for 2012. (I know. Almost half way through Semester 1 – we told you negotiations took a while!)

inspirational and creative individuals to office bearing positions within the SRC. Each of those departments (such as Education, Women’s, Queer and Enviro) were asked to submit a budget request form – which they all did. A lot of our office bearers engaged in extensive consultations in order to finalise their budget submissions – particularly those who represent collectives of students who are keen to run campaigns.

I thought I would take this opportunity to fill you in on the process of how we spend your money to improve your services on campus, and your educational experience.

The campaign suggestions this year were incredible – from working for better services for disabled students on campus, to international student transport concession programs, better sexual health services and clothes swaps, to campaigns against staff cuts, course costs and harassment of LGBTIQidentifying students. In total, the budget requests were more than $60,000 – and the budget submissions alone were over 100 pages!

Last year, the SRC’s Councillors elected a bunch of hugely talented,

Then, it’s the role of the General Secretary (yours truly) to balance all of

these requests with the other expenses of the SRC. We employ a large number of permanent staff members, we have quite large costs in terms of IT infrastructure, and then we pay for a whole lot of printing and advertising (like the newspaper you’re holding). We also make significant financial contributions to the National Union of Students (the peak representative body for tertiary students). Our budget for this year will total around $1.5million.

The 2012 budget is the most expansive SRC budget since the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism. We will this year employ more caseworkers, spend more on representation and advocacy, and start up more new services than in previous years – and that is something of which we are very proud.

All students have a stake in how this money is spent. Do you think we should invest more money in welfare campaigns? Campaigns for international students? Are there new projects or ideas

that you think we should be spending that money on? Your feedback is appreciated and welcome. If you would like to see or discuss the budget, feel free to email me – or even better come to the next council meeting where it will be discussed and debated.

Tim Matthews is the SRC General Secretary

Vice President’s Report Tom Raue wants that one thing

Many students I talk to either don’t know what the SRC does, or think it’s an outright waste of money. Why don’t people care about the SRC?

The SRC claims to represent all undergraduate students at the university but this is blatantly false. Our elections tend to have about 15 per cent voter turnout, compared to over 50 per cent in the U.S. Voter engagement is a sign of a healthy democracy, so statistics like this are condemning.

Most material that promotes the SRC is targeted at people those who are already in the fold. We have an email list, we give reports at meetings and collectives, and so on. I’m willing to bet that the most avid readers of the SRC pages in Honi Soit are members of the SRC. We need to do more than preach to the choir.

Members of the SRC overwhelmingly hail from the faculties of arts or law.

Partially this because politically minded students tend towards arts subjects. It is also because arts students have more spare time than their counterparts in engineering or medicine.

The usual approach in the SRC is to shrug our shoulders and say it sucks, and then continue to ignore the issue. We cannot afford to do this, because if we can’t engage students from all faculties and backgrounds, we should be calling ourselves the Arts Representative Society.

To rectify this problem we should be running campaigns to target the students the SRC traditionally fails to engage, like engineers and science students. We cannot wait for these students to come to us, because they don’t have the time or inclination.

The lack of cross-faculty engagement is not just an image problem. At present the SRC only deals with small sections of the student population. We are failing to achieve our very purpose and cannot claim to be a legitimate representative body. Far from being an inevitable but

minor annoyance, this is the central problem with the SRC. There are people in the SRC from faculties like engineering, but they are fighting a war on two fronts. On the one side, they have to fight an SRC which focuses on issues they see as irrelevant, and on the other side they have to try and convince their constituents that the SRC is an institution worth keeping.

We should put serious money into campaigns for alienated faculties and students. We need a dedicated program of barbeques, information sessions, show bags, collaboration with faculty societies, and anything else we can think of to build the SRC into a more robust and representative body. The SRC needs to be transparent, accessible and helpful for every student, not just student politicians.

SUPRA Education Officer Report Timothy Scriven heard you were a wild one At Jane Foss Russell, Manning & Fisher, on Tuesday and Wednesday May 1 and 2, the Student Representative Council, Education Action Group, and SUPRA will be taking a ballot of staff and students on the staff cuts. Everyone is entitled to vote but you must bring along a current student or staff card. This vote gives you a chance to bring to university management a pointed question, whose interests do they represent, if not the stated interests of staff & students? We want you, and all your class mates to take another stand against the proposed cuts to 360 staff jobs and course cuts

VOTE NO on May 1 and 2.

Of course there will always be those who argue that mother and father know best. That the cuts had to happen despite our wishes, as if we were naughty children- and that the referendum thus proves nothing. I think that students and staff know better than anyone what their needs are. When, for example, creative writing lecturers who specialized in publishing novels were put on the chopping block for not publishing in academic journals, this reflected the ignorance of a far removed and centralized upper management who simply did not factor these things in.

We live in this university, and we are (mostly) intelligent adults, we know how this place works, and we will have our voices heard.

The referendum draws attention to the refusal of the university to acknowledge

the democratic voice of students and staff. The fair-trade referendum carried out in 2010, in which 6000 students voted, and voted for coffee that did not exploit global south farmers, city workers, or pollute the rivers or soil.

This referendum, although not binding on the management, continues to cause headaches for the USU because, in failing to substantially respect the result, it created a crisis of legitimacy for itself.

This VOTE NO referendum on May 1 and 2 has to be seen as situated within a broader campaign- a campaign of mass direct action, of which an autonomously organized vote is only one form.

Immediately this campaign aims to stop the staff cuts, and we will be continuing with a march down Parramatta Road on Monday the 8th to continue a program of direct action to defend our staff. The question implicit within the referendum

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

though is do you trust ordinary students and staff to participate jointly in the running of this university and in the making of decisions, or do you favour a centralized bureaucracy accountable to no one in particular? Do you accept the premise of democracy which the referendum contains, or do you reject it?

Come cast a vote, and VOTE NO! it takes five minutes. But take a step beyond that, bring your friends, bring your class, bring your colleagues, tell everyone you know and jointly cast a vote for fair work and a fair education, then rally the week later. Invite your friends and spread the word.

If you’re interested in participating in campaigning for the referendum, or just want more information, contact David and Sam at education.officers@src.usyd. edu.au

honi soit

21

Lecture Notes THE QUIZ 1. What famous novel begins: “Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonour her”?

2. The Falklands War involving the United Kingdom and Argentina occurred during what decade?

3. A fear of children is also known as what phobia?

4. Which two famous artists sung the duet, ‘The Girl is Mine?

5. Which of the following numbers is a prime number?

A) 87 B) 117 C) 107 6. Who is the author of Brave New World?

7. ‘Fe’ is the abbreviation for which element?

8. How many modern-day countries start with the letter ‘Y’?

9. Which two football teams will meet in the final of this year’s English FA Cup? 10. What do Sam Mendes’s film Revolutionary Road, Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up and Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street all have in common?

11. What is the world’s largest marsupial?

12. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is more commonly known as what disease?

13. What is the capital of Serbia?

14. What company first manufactured CD’s?

15. Georgious Panayatiou is the real name of what musical artist?

16. “I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner”, is the final line from what film?

17. Who is the Greek God of wine, parties and drunkenness?

18. Who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the United States following his death on April 12, 1945?

19. In what country would you find the Kilimanjaro mountain range?

20. Who won the 2011 AFL Grand Final?

Answers below

SUDOKU What won’t break if you throw it off the highest building in the world, but will break if you place it in the ocean?

TEASER

TARGET P

R

O

I

P

U

T O R

KENKEN

Make as many words out of the letters above, always including the letter in the centre.

7 = It’s hard one eh.

10 = Yeah ok sure that’s pretty good.

15 = I wish I was this good at life.

KenKen tips: 1. Numbers can not repeat in any row or column.

2. The puzzle is split into boxes called “cages”.

3. In the upper left-hand corner of each cage is a target number and a mathematical sign indicating how the numerals within a particular cage interact to produce the target number.

CROSSWORD

ACROSS

DOWN

1. Scattered mescaline soul is all over the place (13)

2. Essentially, it is corrupt, unlethal sin (2,1,8)

10. Tool goes the distance? (7)

3. 100/100, dead pets, abstractions (8)

11. Probe is doing it wrong (3,4)

4. Foolishly err, clean plunderer (8)

12. Une is recounted and engaged (2,3)

5. Building on a chime following the year of our lord (6)

13. One ambiguous period (3) 14. Uneven Grammy unto scope (5) 16. One who makes interpolations is losing interest (8) 17. South Australia in instant messaging receives Amon Tobin’s latest album (4) 20. Barely able to go with a walking stick, I hear (4) 21. No fellow for company (4,4) 24. Re-lit backer does rooves, tiles, etc.

(5)

6. In returning hostage gag, never captivate (6) 7. Vessel, you are nearly headless! (3) 8. Initially, all sinners creep into spore sacs (4) 9, 23. A place of holes and frogs, where, unfortunately, Moe oft eats both (6,2,3,3) 15. Adapted scenic movie to judge badly (11) 16. Moving lack of movement (8)

25. Tickets sold in your house? (1.1.1.)

18. Moon hilt; rolled rock (8)

26. Chairman rapper (5)

19. Give rise to hereditary unit speed (8)

28. Protests and things… (7)

22. Partly create half-chewed nativity scene (6)

30. Piled up, run down (2,1,4) 31. Even a rude, rich whiz is a slacker!

(13)

23. (see 9-dn) 27. Glimpse of web-agent, perhaps (4) 29. A month is one not to be happy with, perhaps (3.)

Paps

Answers The Quiz: 1. The Godfather 2. 198’s 3. Pedophobia 4. Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson 5. C- 107 6. Aldous Huxley 7. Iron 8. One – Yemen 9. Chelsea and Liverpool 10. All three films feature the partners of the director (at the time of filming), being Kate Winslet, Leslie Mann and Helena Bonham Carter 11. The Red Kangaroo 12. Mad Cow disease 13. Belgrade 14. Philips 15. George Michael 16. Silence of the Lambs 17. Dionysus 18. President Harry S. Truman 19. Tanzania 20. Geelong Cats Brain Teaser: Tissue Paper

22

honi soit

@honi_soit

The Back Page Classifieds

BROKEN starship. I thought these were meant to fly?

VIRGINITY. I really need this back, it’s a required material for my degree.

Contact: Stu Hoe

Contact: Doug, Engineering IV

FOR SALE WANTED 4,000 ripped out pages of the same segment from a student newspaper last week. Full of salacious gossip about student politics and nuclear missile launch codes! Going to highest bidder (currently Kim Jong-un) Contact: Honi Soit KIDNEY stones! I’m literally pissing them away! This is a deal that’s hard to pass.

TESTOSTERONE. I really don’t need this stuff; in fact it’s becoming a great hinderance to me. Girls just don’t like any of this hair or muscles it’s giving me, so if you can find something to use it for, it’s yours. Plus Scooter said he’d castrate me if my voice breaks…

Contact: J. Beiber BUDGIES, rare ones from South America – they’re green, yellow and they hate abortion. You don’t want to know how I got these into the country.

Contact: T. Abbott BEATS by Chris Brown. Forget Dre’s inferior headphones, these are the all new must-have RnB necessity. At least one successful test run of them.

TRIGGER-HAPPY young recruits who love guns, crime and violent recriminations. Must be able work in The Cross.

Contact: NSW Police Force TRIGGER-HAPPY young recruits who love guns, crime and violent recriminations. Must be able to work in The Cross.

Contact: Bikies THAT One Thing.

Contact: Harry, Louis, Liam or Zayn.

But not Niall, he’s shit.

YOUNGER male adviser who WILL accept my sexual advances. Must have 24/7 mobile access and no links to the Liberal/National Party. Cock-teases need not apply.

Contact: P. Slipper ANY other Toto songs, if there are any.

Need some inspiration!

Contact: J. Derulo LOST HIGHWAY. Contact: Dick Laurent

MYSTERIOUS desert island where seven attractive people are stranded.

Hilarity ensues!

Contact: Gilligan FOUND GOD. Responded to calls of “Rex” and his favourite snack. Thank Dog he’s ok!

ALF. He finally returned, albeit in pog form.

MEANINGFUL and concise tutorial contribution from mature age student.

Oh wait no, it was just a burp.

ADULT SERVICES HELLO, YES THIS IS DOG. Call 1800 DOG DOG for canine phone chat, only $3.95/min CALL 1800 ADULTS for all matters concerning those of the adult persuasion. Taxes, crises, unmanageable work/ family balance. The hot stuff the kids don’t know about yet XXX

WORK WANTED CRIME fighting capabilities, husky voice. The Avengers didn’t return my calls. Their loss, right? I’m sure that guy with a fucking bow and arrow will be useful when the time comes. Jesus Christ, honestly.

Contact: B. Wayne I’D make a great USU Board director – I’m attractive, backed by factional hacks who’ve never met me and have a snappy slogan. That’s all I need for the job right?

Contact: D. Bag SOMETHING strange in your neighbourhood? Namely, apparitions of dead rappers with digitially enhanced abs?

Ghost Busters on call 24/7. Who you gonna call? Oh wait, we already said who we - never mind.

DEATHS Dick Laurent.

Peter Slipper’s federal career, 22, it will be mourned by T. Abbott and his new lover adviser J. Ashby Robin Gibb, 62, he will be mourned by – wait what? Fuck!

INDISCREET texting.

Contact: P. Slipper

SCHOLARSHIPS OFFICE The Scholarships Office administers scholarships for students at the University of Sydney. There are over 700 scholarship schemes on offer and each year the University of Sydney gives out over $65 million in scholarships.

We invite you to take your time and have a look at what’s on offer. You can apply for as many scholarships as you want and it's worth checking our latest updates each month for new and open scholarships.

The Harold Holt Swimming Scholarship For undergraduate students who are currently enrolled full time at the University of Sydney. Must demonstrate a good academic record and currently represent the University at a national level in either synchronised swimming or surf life saving. Students studying political science will be most positively viewed.

Value: $4,500.00 Closing date: 17 December 2012.

The Whitlam Prize for Advanced Economics The Whitlam Institute is pleased to announce a new prize to the best honours thesis in the Economics Faculty. Students who demonstrate an ability to combine visionary thought with fiscal responsibility will be preferenced.

Value: 100% of Australia’s GDP

The University of Sydney Nonspecific Scholarship

Closing date: 30 May 2012.

The G. W. Bush Adult Literacy, Geography & Linguistics Study Scholarship The President Bush foundation in companion with the US Studies Centre, is pleased to award this new scholarship for students that can demonstrate extracurricular interest in teaching adult literacy. Students applying should be those studying primary education, and/or pathological psychology.

Value: $500,000 Closing date: 30 May 2012.

The University of Sydney General Purpose Scholarship For undergraduate students who are currently enrolled full time at the University of Sydney. Should but not necessarily demonstrate a good academic record with a minimum of a credit average. Scholarship may be used for any purpose.

Value: $50,000 Closing date: Yesterday.

For any female undergraduate students who are currently enrolled full time in psychology at the University of Sydney. Applicant must also be a Nepalese citizen of Thai extraction. A working knowledge of the Russian language is also required and preference will be given to those students with wooden left legs who can burp the Indonesian national anthem.

Value: $2.20 Closing date: 30 May 2012.

For more information contact Michael Leadbetter Scholarships Office T 1300 362 006 (for the cost of a local call) T +61 2 8627 8450 F +61 2 8627 8485 E ohgodi’msopoor.scholarships@sydney.edu.au sydney.edu.au/handouts

facebook.com/honisoitsydney

honi soit

23

Students’ Representative Council The University of Sydney

C R S i n U y Sydne

ni u t a s t h ig r r u o g n i Protect

!

R E 660 5222 9 B r o M p o E h s k C Boo OME A M C Office, SR

BEC

ll, SR

SRC sta k e e W O t rson a

Join in pe

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS Support & Advocacy

• Centrelink • Academic Appeals • Discontinuing/Withdrawing • Show Cause • Exclusion • Tenancy • Fee Refunds • Harassment & Discrimination • International Students • Plagiarism & misconduct

Free Legal Advice

• Referrals • Discrimination & Equal Opportunity • Employment law • Minor criminal matters/traffic offences/ fines • Victims of violence • Debts

The SRC’s operational costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.

SRC Books - Buy your textbooks cheap!

• Buy & sell your textbooks • Search for books online SRC website Wentworth Level 4 (next to the International Lounge)

Emergency Loans

$50 emergency loans for students in need

Student Publications

• Honi Soit weekly newspaper www.src.usyd.edu.au/honisoit • International Students Handbook • Orientation Handbook • Counter Course Handbook • Growing Strong - Women’s Handbook

Student Rights & Representation

SRC Representatives are directly elected by students each year to stand up for students’ rights on campus and in the wider community.

Find the SRC at...

Level 1 Wentworth Building (under City Rd footbridge) Ph: 02 9660 5222 www.src.usyd.edu.au If you are at another campus, email: help@src.usyd.edu.au

www.src.usyd.edu.au

DOW

SRC

N STA

Wentworth building

IRS

Student Central

Students’ Representative Council The University of Sydney BECOME A MEMBER! Join in person at O-Week SRC stall, SRC Office or SRC Bookshop phone 02 9660 5222

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS Support & Advocacy

SRC Books - Buy your textbooks cheap!

• Centrelink • Academic Appeals • Discontinuing/Withdrawing • Show Cause • Exclusion • Tenancy • Fee Refunds • Harassment & Discrimination • International Students • Plagiarism & misconduct

Free Legal Advice

• Buy & sell your textbooks • Search for books online SRC website Wentworth Level 4 (next to the International Lounge)

Emergency Loans

$50 emergency loans for students in need

Student Publications

• Referrals • Discrimination & Equal Opportunity • Employment law • Minor criminal matters/traffic offences/ fines • Victims of violence • Debts

ASK US ABOUT

The SRC’s operational costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.

E C I O V R U YO C R S R U O Y

• Honi Soit weekly newspaper www.src.usyd.edu.au/honisoit • International Students Handbook • Orientation Handbook • Counter Course Handbook • Growing Strong - Women’s Handbook

Student Rights & Representation

SRC Representatives are directly elected by students each year to stand up for students’ rights on campus and in the wider community.

Find the SRC at...

Level 1 Wentworth Building (under City Rd footbridge) Ph: 02 9660 5222 www.src.usyd.edu.au If you are at another campus, email: help@src.usyd.edu.au

www.src.usyd.edu.au

DOW

SRC

N STA

Wentworth building

IRS

Student Central