HONISOIT
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Week Three August 15
Power, Privilege, Patrón: our exclusive SYD2030 interview
How university budgeting lost us millions
Sydney University’s best creative prose and poetry
CULTURE
FEATURE
SUPPLEMENT
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Contents
This Week
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Profile: Nicholas Cowdery Kira Spucys-Tahar talks legalisation of drugs with the controversial former DPP of New South Wales
12 Dollars Down the Drain
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Campus
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Kira Spucys-Tahar reports on the ‘epicfail’ that was Snowball 2012
6 News Review
Virat Nehru scrutinises the lack of disabled access for public transport in NSW
An investigation into the dark cloud of university budgeting with Madeleine King
14 Literary Supplement
USU Literary Society present the second Honi Literary Supplement of the year
16 Tech & Online 17
Rob North on technological innovation in our classes.
Action-Reaction
Lane Sainty explores an ancient game of football and Richard Withers delves
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8 Third Drawer
22 Sandstone Report
Byrant Apolonio lists the top five people you don’t want to be bunkmates with in hostels
Lecture Notes
Quizmaster Matt Withers tests your general knowledge
Campus Security Officer, Samir, investigates the Quad Lawn Killer
Planner WED
HONISOIT.COM ARTICLES, VIDEOS, MUSIC & MORE CONTACT US AT: HONISOIT.COM/CONTACT Editor in Chief: Paul Ellis Editors: James Alexander, Hannah Bruce, Bebe D’Souza, Jack Gow, Michael Koziol, Rosie Marks-Smith, James O’Doherty, Kira Spucys-Tahar, Richard Withers, Connie Ye Reporters: Rafi Alam, Bryant Apolonio, Madeleine King, Virat Nehru, Rob North, Angus Reoch, Lane Sainty, Lucy Watson Contributors: Nicholas Fahy, Freia Emma Esta Kirkaldy, Nathan McDonnell, Woon Kwee Benjamin Lim, Mariana Podesta-Diverio, Ludwig Schmidt, Elena Z Crossword: Eric and Dom Cover: James O’Doherty Advertising: Amanda LeMay & Tina Kao publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au www.src.usyd.edu.au / www.honisoit.com
inside the minds of Adélie penguin.
7 Op-Shop
When it comes to the Olympics, the personal is always political, writes Rafi Alam
NOW ONLINE
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, Raihana Haidary, 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
Polsoc’s Annual Hedley Bull Lecture: Idealism and Realism in Australian Foreign Policy with Gareth Evans 5pm, The Foyer, Sydney Law School FREE
Launch of Volume VIII, Issue I of The Sydney Globalist 5.15pm, Law Lounge, Sydney Law School
NØCTURNE 7.30pm, Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre
FREE
Join the Politics Society for a night with Gareth Evans AC, QC speaking as one of Australia’s pre-eminent foreign policy and international security thinkers.
Includes speakers Eleanor Hall, presenter of ABC’s The World Today and ex Hong Kong Consul-General, Jocelyn Chen. Canapes provided.
A creative collaboration between Movement and Dance Society and Sydney Uni Gymnastics Club. It fuses ballet and hip hop with acrobatics. Profits go to ‘Girls from Oz’.
SUDS PRESENTS: The Glass Menagerie 7pm, The Cellar Theatre $2/3/4/5
SYD2030 VIP Charity Screening 7pm, Event Cinemas, Bondi Junction $15
A tale of the tragedies that befall ordinary people, the Wingfields navigate the complex relationships facing a broken family.
Cinema screening of popular law school webseries SYD2030,. Part proceeds go to Suicide Prevention Australia..
SAT
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Bledisloe Cup, Wallabies v All Blacks 8pm, ANZ Stadium, Conc. $45
Rozelle Markets 9am-4pm, Rozelle Public School, FREE
KNIGHTESS Mon, 7pm, Manning Bar, Entry by donation
Not since 2002 have the Wallabies won the Bledisloe Cup. Chances are that’s not going to change, but head along to support the boys anyway?
You’ve been telling yourself you’ll go for months but catching the bus to Rozelle seems like a bridge (the Anzac Bridge, to be precise) too far! Quit being lazy and buy more vintage shit than you can carry!
Celebrate a night of women in the performing arts, organised by the Women’s Collective with all proceeds donated to Lou’s Place. Featuring Rainbow Chan, Eirwen Skye, Violet Pulp, Kimberley Avison, zine giveaways and more!
Death of a Salesman 5pm, Belvoir St Theatre, $42/29+bf
University Comedy on the Edge Tues, 8pm, The Lybrary, Chippendale
Jingle Jangle 11pm, GOODGOD, $5 Perfectly-timed for you to head on over after the Bledisloe Cup and what better way to celebrate/mourn than to shake your hips to long lost dance classics.
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This is your final chance to see the critically acclaimed Australian production of Arthur Miller’s classic ‘Death of A Salesman’.
@honi_soit
$20/25/35
Our Pick
Syd Uni Disney Appreciation Society Afternoon Tea 2-4pm, Holme Reading Room ACCESS $1/$6
It’s a tea party for people who love Disney to talk about Disney, what’s not to love?
Exit by donation
See some of Sydney Uni’s up and coming stand-up comedians at this newly launched comedy night at the pub formerly known as the Shannon Hotel.
Spam EDITORIAL
LETTERS
Defending the new ‘integrated approach’ of the Koori Centre
Professor Shane Houston Deputy Vice Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services) Dear Honi, It was disappointing that the article (“Koori Centre under threat”, August 8) failed to take into account many of the facts associated with this issue. But let me outline some of them for your readers. The article is right, we do want to make sure that more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people get the chance to study at Sydney. I doubt anyone would object with that. Contrary to your article we are not ignoring student support services rather we are working to improve them, for example in access to tutorial support. I think our strategy balances these two complementary objectives well. I do agree that support services are critical and they need to be available as required but we should always avoid the sort of generalisations parts of your article show. There are more than 300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students studying across all of our faculties, more than 100 in Arts and Social Sciences and Medicine combined and a further 60 at the Koori Centre for example. Engaging faculties in the integrated approach to Aboriginal higher education improvements will support Aboriginal students in whichever discipline they choose to study. Networking improved faculty and other efforts at Sydney will lift outcomes and efficiency. This does not mean we are withdrawing current Koori Centre services, we are not closing the Koori Centre common room, its computer laboratory, the library and we are not removing student’s access to courses or teachers. I am a little saddened that your article tries to paint our current efforts as a cloak and dagger exercise. I would point out that all Aboriginal staff in the university were invited to the launch of Wingara Mura and a number of student representative organisations were also invited. The launch date of the strategy was determined by diaries not be some plot to exclude. Our strategy draws heavily on Aboriginal culture for its foundations of story and journey. It includes many initiatives to improve the way the university engages with and understands Aboriginal cultural and social distinctiveness. In conversations with the writer prior to going to press my office had indicated that I will be organising a meeting with students and yes I do have a responsibility to talk to staff first, any proposal for change affects them directly.
Tho u Q u e g ht s? st i o Co m n m e n s? hon isoi t s? t20 12@ gma
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HONISOIT
A capital idea Peter Arts/Ed III
Dear Honi, This letter pertains to Tom Raue’s criticisms of capitalism (“A not so capital idea”, August 8). His response in my opinion belies a colossal ignorance of what capitalism actually is. My first contention is with his conflation of “western imperialism” with “capitalism”. The problem here is that at no point has he actually defined what he actually means by capitalism. Imperialism is the violent extension of a state’s rule beyond its boundaries, and capitalism is a system of property rights and the right of people to trade and exchange property without coercion. No they are not the same thing. Imperialism is the complete antithesis of market ethics since land was taken by force, not by homesteading. It is worth noting too that opponents of war and western imperialism are not always exclusively from the Left but often contain among their ranks libertarians and advocates of laissezfaire capitalism, notably the sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner who was at the centre of the opposition of America’s war with Spain at the turn of the century and it’s war against the Philippine rebellion. Or Edward Atkinson, an economist influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith and John Bright and cofounder of the Anti-Imperialist League in America - or more recently Ron Paul, another advocate of capitalism who has always been critical of America’s aggressive foreign policy. My second contention is with his idea of rights. There is no such thing as a “right” to unearned wealth or the fruits of another person’s labour. His understanding that RIGHTS meaning FREE STUFF is utterly false, based on nothing but whim and can be used by anyone to justify a right to anything. “Positive rights” cannot exist because they necessarily infringe upon and come into conflict with the more important negative rights of others i.e their right to act unmolested by others. We all want a free and humane society, and the only way to do that is to reduce the size and scope of the State and unleash the markets. No economic system has proven itself more eloquently and more blatantly than the free market. One need only consider America in 19th century, India since 1991, China since the 1970s, or the famous bet made between the President of Ghana and the President of the Ivory Coast in the 1960s. While a true free market has never actually existed, where it has been allowed to operate unmolested by the State, people have always prospered. Also, it would do well for Tom to recognise that the state is for the most part responsible for the oppression inflicted upon Aboriginals. One need only ask why they are where they are today. Is it because they have been “oppressed” by the free market (the system of private property and voluntarism) as Tom boldly claims - or by State fiat - I’m talking about 19th century religious missions and government controlled centres? Who tore these people from their families?
For months now the University management has been churning out the same rhetoric about the financial necessity for the staff cuts. This week, Honi looks at allegations of corruption and mismanagement of finances by the university itself and asks whether the staff cuts really were an inevitable outcome. In other news, election season approaches. While you might not be aware of it, this next week will have a huge effect on the outcome of the elections. University politics power brokers will swarm the campus trying to sign up just about anyone to run for the Student Representative Council. The more students signed up to run under their banner, the more that will inevitably wear their campaign t-shirt on election day. It’s a crude system, not just because it turns the election into a popularity contest but because most of these students are hoodwinked into thinking that in exchange
for their support they will get elected to council. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that the vast majority will not. Hundreds ran for council last year, only 33 were elected. If someone asks you to sign up to run on their ticket, ask them where your name is going to appear on the ballot. If it is anywhere but the very top, do not expect to be elected. You are far better off creating your own ticket, ordering a couple of shirts for you and your friends and running on your own. Alternatively, you could seek out one of the smaller political groups on campus and ask to run with them. They are far more likely to give you a genuine chance of getting elected. For more information, check out this week’s SRC pages, or drop into the SRC office under Wentworth.
Paul Ellis @paulellisd
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @HONI_SOIT AND NOW ONLINE: WWW.HONISOIT.COM Bureaucrats who passed “Assimilationist” and “Protectionist” policies or businessmen selling goods and services competitively and peacefully in the market? The only forward for Aboriginal Australians is the increased health and happiness that comes from paid employment (not fake government make-work schemes), legal or common law marriage and family (not subsidized relationship and family breakdown), savings, home ownership, business, and the dignity and personal independence of private property. That is why middle class Australia has better health outcomes than Aboriginal Australia – not because they have more welfare services! I suggest he pick up a book from any free market advocate and understand the other position and stop perpetuating popular lies and falsehoods about capitalism. It’s very easy to point to a country which calls itself “capitalist” and label any evils it has committed “CAPITALIST”.
We’re proud of the Howard Cup, an annual intervarsity debating competition involving six universities from across New South Wales, and attracting over 250 students. With adjudicators including John Howard, Alexander Downer, Philip Ruddock, Miranda Devine, and Janet Albrechtsen, it’s a rare opportunity to share a beer or a bite with the nation’s most prominent political pundits. That’s not to mention our President’s Dinner next month, where we’ll be hosting a keynote address by radio host Alan Jones. Instead of complaining, maybe we’ll see the emergence of a Paul Keating Speaking Competition in the coming years? Yours in freedom.
Right of Reply
Alex Dore President, Sydney University Liberal Club Rise, rise the whinge-brigade! Dear Honi, It’s often said that no publicity is bad publicity, so imagine my delight upon reading a letter on the John Howard Debating Cup 2012 last week! In it, ALP Club President Christian Jones noted that he has “never approached a faculty” to distribute “advertising material”. Noting its complete dearth of activity, I believe it. But there was a time not so long ago, when political clubs would compete to out-shine each other. It seems that instead, we see the revival of the whingebrigade.
honisoit.com
Robert Hughes, Honi Soit, May 8, 1956.
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Campus WEEKLY NEWS
Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney
Want some work! Polling Booth Attendants Required
Sydney University’s Muslim society holds annual Iftar dinner
Nathan McDonnell became part of a vibrant community experience On Wednesday August 8, in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan, the Sydney University Muslim Student Association (SUMSA) held its annual Iftar dinner where Muslim students could come and break fast. It truly was an event of scale, attracting around 250 people and requiring effectively the entirety of the International Student Lounge. Things began with people excitedly gathering just before sunset. After a few minutes of prayers and a beautiful recitation of the Qur’an, the hungry hastily formed a long queue for a glorious dinner of lasagne, rice with spicy chicken, salad and potatoes as well as dates and tea. After eating at tables roaring with good humour and ecstatic chatter, people rushed back for dessert: baklava, cakes, chocolate coconut balls, Anzac biscuits and caramel slices. At one point in the dinner, there was a call for donations to go towards medical packs for Syrian doctors, raising an impressive $1,380. As the holiest month of year, when Muslims fast from dawn till dusk, Ramadan is a very special time. Abstaining from physical pleasures to instead focus the heart on spiritual pleasures is an ancient practice aimed at focusing the spiritual journey. Given the emphasis on breaking fast with others, the Iftars of Ramadan are also exceptional for building a vibrant community. It was this celebration of community that most impressed me. At a large
The SRC is looking for people to work on the polling booths for its elections this year. If you can work on Wed 19th Sept and/or Thurs 20th Sept, and attend a training at 4pm Tues 20th Sept, we want to hear from you! $30.93 per hour There may also be an opportunity to undertake additional work at the vote count Application forms are available from the SRC Front Office (Level 1 Wentworth Building). For more info, call 9660 5222 or email elections@src.usyd.edu.au. Applications close 4pm, 5th September 2011
Authorised by Paulene Graham, SRC Electoral Officer 2012. Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney: 02 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au
USU NEWS
Snowball fails to gather momentum
The USU party received a frosty reception writes Kira Spucys-Tahar The University of Sydney Union’s annual Snowball event fell flat last Thursday. The traditionally quieter counterpart to semester one’s Beachball usually attracts a smaller but still sizeable crowd, but this year the numbers could be described as dismal. According to numerous sources, the $5 entry fee was waived for all in attendance. There were around fifty people in the building at any one time, with approximately 150 people in attendance overall. One partygoer described an abundance of security guards wandering aimlessly down Manning Road trying to entertain themselves. USU Director of Operation Peter Underwood told Honi, “The $5 entry fee was only waived for those who were already in Manning Bar prior to the event starting and for those who were allowed in after 10pm. Due to the low numbers, we decided to allow those who were already in Manning to stay and to open the doors at 10pm to the public.” There was a distinct lack of promotion of the event on campus, but Mr Underwood told Honi, “there was promotion in the lead-up and on the day of the event” including Facebook advertisements, emails and a giveaway of 50
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double passes. A Facebook event went up online on Tuesday at 12.01am, less than 70 hours before the party was due to begin. The hosts were the USU Board Directors who collectively invited over 1000 people, but only 77 clicked attending. A source told Honi: “There were more people at Manning for the Grassroots on Campus drinks than there were for the Snowball event.” The downturn in numbers at Snowball reflects a trend in declining attendance at both the Snowball and Beachball events. Promotion of the events, both on and offline, has not been at the standard of other USU festivals and events. The organisers have also reduced the physical size of the events. Beachball used to be over all three levels of Manning House, but due to licensing and management concerns, the USU decided to shift the event to the top-floor bar area only. This reduced the capacity of the event, stifled much of the excitement for partygoers and limited the USU’s opportunities for booking big acts. Sources say there are structural issues within the management of the USU bars after a restructure took place following the departure of several other staff from
the USU’s employment. Mr Underwood said, “In 2009, a management restructure was implemented to improve USU operational standards. The Entertainment Manager and Bar Manager positions were made redundant and a new Venue Licensee position was created. This new position would manage both areas, with two supporting duty managers. These positions were filled in early 2010, with the duty managers taking on the responsibilities for C & S bookings and weekly entertainment.” The active and demanding nature of liaising with clubs and societies, external hire of the venues, and the running of major USU events means staff can be stretched in their current roles. Nice and Ego were one of the acts hired to play at Snowball this year. They told Honi that after chatting with past acts who played the event, they expected hundreds of people, and they were surprised to see the venue so empty. Rumour has it the event will be shelved and not return to the Union’s social calendar next year. “No decisions have yet been made about Beachball or Snowball events for next year,” Mr Underwood told Honi. If it does return, aside from seeking out bigger acts, better promotion needs to take place so students are engaged.
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university in a big city that can be so often lonely and alienating, in an Anglo culture often seemingly cold and reserved, it was extremely impressive to see the warmth and generosity of spirit offered to us by complete strangers. I met Bakhytzhan, an international student from Kazakhstan studying nanoscience, who shared his faith from the deep humility of his heart. Ziyad, a friend of mine, busily engaged in serving food and then cleaning up whilst Ahmad, an international student from Saudi Arabia, tested my Arabic skills. The SUMSA Iftar was fantastic and I highly recommend all students find an Iftar before Ramadan ends. They are held after 5pm at mosques, at some community organisations and by SUMSA here on campus each day at the Muslim prayer room (Old Teacher’s College, Room 320). You will be warmly welcomed as a friend, as I was. It will be an experience socially and spiritually fulfilling, not to mention filling!
OBITUARY The late art critic Robert Hughes (1938-2012) never graduated from the University of Sydney, but spoke fondly of his days here. “I wrote articles for Honi Soit, the student newspaper. I drew cartoons and penned extremely derivative verses. I acted, badly, in the University Revue. From time to time I condescended to attend a lecture or turn in a paper. It was the fullest year of my young life and at the end of it I found, inevitably, that I had failed Arts I.” But fate was kind to Robert Hughes. He secured a £300 commission from Penguin Books to write a history of Australian art before Time magazine tracked him down in the hedonism of 60s London with a better offer as their art critic in Manhattan. He popularly held the job for the remaining fortytwo years of his life, and produced the much-lauded TV and book series, The Shock of the New, American Visions, and the 1987 book on Australia, The Fatal Shore. Revered for his sardonic wit and contribution to 20th and 21st century art criticism, Robert Hughes died aged 74 on August 7, 2012.
- Madeleine King Robert Hughes, Honi Soit, June 21, 1956
Campus SPORT Congratulations to all members of the University of Sydney community who took part in the annual City2Surf last Sunday, August 12. The first female across the finish line was Sydney University Elite Athlete scholarship holder Lara Tamsett in an unofficial time of 46 minutes, 55 seconds. Ms Tamsett, a 4th year Media and Communications student, also won the event in 2010. This year she was fundraising for the Indigenous Marathon Project and had raised more than $1500 in the lead up to the race. Well done also to the Sydney University Law Society who had over 70 runners compete and raised almost $4000 for headspace Nation Youth Mental Health Foundation.
HONILEAKS
Lara Tamsett crosses the finish line to win her second City2Surf
All your university gossip, rumours, allegations and revelations with Paul Ellis
Credit: Mick Tsikas, smh.com.au
More information on the Honi ticket front has been uncovered. 2nd year Media/Law student Tara Waniganayaka has joined the Chalmers/Gordon-Smith ‘Indie’ ticket. It is also rumored that the Chalmers/Gordon-Smith group have taken on National Labor Students member and SRC Director of Publications Max Shintler. This news will come as a surprise to many given Gordon-Smith’s public disapproval of campus factions. Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that infamous Honi letter writer and ECOP journal editor Mason McCann has joined the Alam/ Podestá-Diverio led ticket. In other news, pre-election negotiations have broken down between leftwing powerhouses NLS and Grassroots. NLS entered talks with Grassroots about supporting their Presidential candidate, Education Officer David Pink. Dissatisfied with the fact they were offered virtually nothing in return for their support, Grassroots are now considering backing Solidarity candidate, rumoured to be EAG leader Erima Dall, in a move that could potentially cripple Pink and NLS’ Presidential ambitions.
Members of SULS before the race (L to R): Emily Hartman, Laurence Rouesnel, Julian Hui, Claire Burke, Lucinda Clarke, Alistair Stephenson Credit: Alistair Stephenson
HONI TAB
ODDS OF FUTURE SNOWBALL VENUES =========== ACER ARENA $1,400,620.00 THE MARLY $8062.14 CORRIDOR BAR $2467.99 BROOM CLOSET $8.53 shoe box $1.14
OPINION
Why Queerspace Autonomy?
The autonomy debate rages on, but the voices of those who need it most still aren’t being heard, writes Anonymous
On March 22 last year the USU held a forum on Queerspace Autonomy. The event was quite well attended, with queer and non-queer students expressing their views on the subject. The topic has again raised its divisive head, so maybe a quick canvassing of what is at stake bears restatement. The arguments against autonomy tend to proceed by suggesting that queer autonomy is “premised on the idea of sexual [and/or gender] difference” which reinforces “isolation” through an exaggeration of the significance of a queer identity (an argument made by Paul Karp in last year’s Queer Honi). Others suggest that the autonomous nature of the space is tantamount to “reverse discrimination” (this is just an annoyingly ubiquitous line of reasoning). The former position is perhaps best dispensed with by conceding the point: yes, being queer is different to not being queer. Or, at least, that is certainly how many of us are made to feel daily. The suggestion that the cause of this isolation is somehow rooted in the relations of
solidarity and care that form around marginalised communities manages to grossly invert the blame. If I feel isolated from the world, it is because of the world’s lack of accommodation of gender and sexual difference, not from my need for safety and community. Before you raise the issue of inclusivity, make the rest of the campus a space where I, and others who aren’t ablebodied, cisgender, white, fluent speakers of English can be included; make the rest of the campus safe for us. Give me a bathroom I can use without being harrassed, stared at, or questioned. Give my tutors training so they don’t presume my gender nor my sexuality in the first tutorial. Give us a Queerspace that is actually accessible so that queers with mobility impairments are able to access the space before making it available to non-queer identifying folk. I ask the question: why is the purported exclusivity of the room the site of your push for inclusivity when the rest of the world is an entirely and wilfully alienating place for so many of us?
There are many assumptions that underlie the charge of “reverse discrimination”, but perhaps the most egregious of which is the idea that autonomous spaces are unnecessary. I guess this begs the question unnecessary - for whom? Because some of us are still called ‘faggots’ and ‘dykes’. Because some of us are still beaten, and threatened, and things are still thrown at us while car tyres screech away. Because unless you have also known the specific contours of the anxiety that comes with being visibly queer in a world where four kilometres from this ostensibly tolerant institution one can be humiliated on the streets for their sexuality and/or gender presentation, then maybe you have no need of this room, and maybe also this makes it impossible for you to fully appreciate its necessity. This is not an issue to be voted on. Majority rules frequently fails those who are the most exposed, the most vulnerable, and the most structurally disadvantaged. The experience of
homophobia and queerphobia is not evenly distributed across the LGBTIQ* spectrum, and those who experience it the most are also often those given the smallest voice in these discussions, and those who have the least bargaining power. Not all of those who fall under the queer umbrella are subject to the same structures. Autonomy discussions must be framed around the needs of those who experience heterosexism and ciscentricism the most. The great thing about Sydney University is that we have three queer groups on campus. There are avenues for people who wish to hang out with both their queer and non-queer friends simultaneously; there are avenues for the new queers to be accompanied by their straight friends to non-autonomous queer events. Those who don’t need autonomy, don’t need autonomy – they can literally go anywhere else on campus. Those who do need autonomy, have just one room.
Words with Friends
What would you do to that one annoying person in your tutorials? JAMES ‘HAMMERTIME’ YONG
“The ‘Question Guy’? Throw a wrench at his face.”
EKATERINA ‘GRANNY-HATER’ GRAZHDANKINA “There was this granny always calling out during lectures. I would have loved to steal her pension away.”
PRISCILLA ‘BALLSY’ LAM “There is this guy in my gender studies tute. I want to castrate him. That’ll teach him the true meaning of gender studies!”
honisoit.com
ROB ‘I’MA GUNNA STEAL ALL YA THOUGHTS’ FALLS “Steal all his knowledge such that it was mine.”
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News Review LOCAL NEWS
Discrimination lawsuit failing to lift hopes for accessible transport
With RailCorp facing a civil lawsuit over inconsistent audible announcements on services, Virat Nehru reports on the wider problem Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes’ action against RailCorp went before the court on Monday, over the rail authority consistently failing to provide audible announcements on trains. When Honi Soit went to print, the outcome of the action was not yet determined. Mr Innes had filed more than 40 complaints over two years through the Public Interest Advocacy Centre over inconsistency of audible announcements on trains, but according to PIAC, RailCorp failed to give a satisfactory answer or take any steps to remedy the situation. PIAC, which is representing Mr Innes, claims that RailCorp has breached federal disability discrimination law by failing to provide audible announcements crucial to the vision impaired. Mr Innes went to the courts after attempts at mediation failed on Friday August 10. Mr Innes’ struggle with RailCorp has brought a much larger issue into focus – access to public transport for the disabled. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there are over four million people living with a disability in Australia. Access to public transport, particularly train stations, remains one of their daily struggles. The absence of elevators and ramps at
many stations, including Redfern, leaves many with a disability to rely on help from their fellow commuters to enter or exit the station. The transport authority for NSW has stated installing ramps and elevators at smaller stations is not cost effective, given that they do not draw that many commuters. Andrew Smith, a regular commuter of the Newcastle line train, has difficulty on his daily commute due to a bad knee and arthritic pain. “I have to regularly travel to Gosford where my GP and physiotherapist are,” the retiree said. “I decided to move to the Hawkesbury River area to enjoy the peace and quiet, [but] no-one gets off at Hawkesbury River. “There is a long staircase that leads out of the station. Between my bulky frame and my bad knee, descending that staircase is a painful experience,” he said. Mr Smith’s problem isn’t limited to the smaller stations. Even Redfern, used by hundreds of university students every day, is also not wheelchair accessible, with no lifts or ramps. Mother of two, Rachel Nguyen, who is a regular commuter between Pennant Hills and North Strathfield, believes that the question of better access affects not only the elderly and the disabled, but
also mothers with newborn kids. “My youngest girl is just about a year old. Coming from Pennant Hills is okay, but getting out of North Strathfield is another story altogether,” she said. “With Zoe in the pram, I have to wait for someone to come along and help me carry her up the stairs. I’m sick of thanking strangers. I feel almost dependent on them”.
At the time of print, the outcome of Mr Innes’ action should be known. Irrespective of whether Mr Innes is successful, thousands of commuters will continue to struggle in stations without proper disabled access. A campaign to install lifts at Redfern station is currently underway, with a parliamentary debate on the issue scheduled for August 23.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore with Graeme Innes at the Lift Redfern Campaign launch. Photo courtesy of clovermoore.com.au
textbooks
CHEAP! Don’t pay full price for textbooks... buy them at SRC books.
JOB AVAILABLE Honi Soit Newspaper Delivery Casual Apply now...
We are looking for an energetic and reliable Honi Soit Newspaper Distribution Casual Staff beginning 21 August 2012. Delivery is weekly during semester and may be flexible to your study timetable. Must have a current drivers licence and access to a medium sized car. $35/hour, 4 hours a week. Ideal job for anyone on main campus.
• We buy & sell textbooks according to demand • You can sell your books on consignment. Please phone us before bringing in your books. • We are open to USYD students & the public Search for text books online www.src.usyd.edu.au/default.php Call 02 9660 4756 to check availability and reserve a book.
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NEW Location! Level 4, Wentworth Bldg (Next to the International Lounge) Hours: Mondays to Fridays 9am - 4.30pm Phone: (02) 9660 4756 Email: books@SRC.usyd.edu.au
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Please email your CV and a 100 word statement outlining your ability to do this job to jobs@src.usyd.edu.au Interviews will be held Friday 17 August 2012 For a copy of the Position Description, ask at SRC Reception, go to www.src.usyd.edu.au.or phone 02 9660 5222. Applications close 3pm 16 August 2012.
Interviews on 17 Aug Contact: 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au for position description
Op-Shop Gladiators in the ring, activists out of it
We can’t take the politics out of sport, and nor should we want to, writes Rafi Alam As anyone would figure from a quick glance at the newspapers, Australia is sick of ‘politics’. So too, it seems, is the International Olympics Committee (IOC). In the fairy-tale land of the IOC, sport can be cleaved of politics for at least a few weeks every four years. So it came to be that Damien Hooper, an Australian boxer, was forced to apologise for wearing a shirt bearing the Aboriginal flag to an Olympic boxing match. Allegedly, this was a political act. This palpable fear of politics mixing with sport is exacerbated by a peculiarly Aussie form of wilful ignorance and political indifference, mired with ‘moderation’, which ignites the media to jump on any athlete who dares to advance an intellectual point. To Australians, the idea of political expression – nay, an opinion – outside of a town hall meeting invites a sickening feeling from our ‘working families’ and ‘unbiased media’. But why is this, and why did the Australian Olympics Committee (AOC) find it necessary to penalise an Indigenous man for showing pride in his heritage? Why, when there have been far more vivid and even brutal displays of politicking in Olympics history? African nations boycotted the 1976 Montreal Games in response to the IOC’s refusal to ban New Zealand, after that country’s rugby team toured apartheid South Africa earlier in the year. The boycott was integral in bringing about the eventual end of apartheid but was deemed politically-charged. So Australia tiptoed around it, as we did much of the Western condemnation of South Africa at that time. And what of the hypocrisy of the IOC?
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Recently, they lauded the inclusion of the first female Olympian from Saudi Arabia. This was cast as a win for human rights. Not a political win, however. Politics has no place in sports, remember. The acts of Mr Hooper look significantly less offensive when compared to incidents such as the Blood in the Water match, where violence erupted in a water polo match between recently occupied Hungary and the Soviet Union in 1956. Sure, violence is always a tragedy but could an observer honestly suggest that the feelings of humiliation, anger, and hurt felt by the invaded Hungarians were invalid or could be cast aside in the spirit of ‘sportsmanship’ so easily? Right or wrong, similar situations arise between Arab and Israeli teams frequently, albeit peacefully. But alas, in Australia, we are ashamed of athletes who demonstrate conscience. Mr Hooper is one example, paralleled in contemporary memory with Cathy Freeman and her bold, inspiring decision to carry the Aboriginal flag after her victory in 2000. This was political only in the sense that the personal is political; recognition of Indigenous pride becomes political only in a country that is still unable to reconcile its own existence with the destruction of another’s. We would do well to remember Peter Norman. In 1968, he set the fastest Australian time for the 200m sprint, a record he still holds in 2012. But despite his remarkable achievements as an athlete, he is barely known to the Australian public. At the 1968 Mexico City Games, Norman wore an ‘Olympic Project for Human Rights’ badge while the two African-American athletes at the podium – Tommie Smith and John Carlos - held
their heads down and raised their fists during the American national anthem in protest of racial segregation in the United States. To put this in context, this was a time when black people were still being lynched, still being shot, and still denied a vote in some states.
The ‘Black Power salute’ at the 1968 Mexico City Games
While all the athletes were penalised, the two Americans are now understood to be national heroes for standing up for what they believe in. Likewise, another athlete at the 1968 Olympics, Czech Vera Cáslavská, turned her head away during the Soviet Union national anthem, in protest of its invasion of her homeland. She was punished, both by the IOC and the new authorities of Czechoslovakia, but was revered by her people and is now considered a hero. What happened to Peter Norman? Thrown into the dustbin of history. He was silenced, stripped of his medals,
and banned from the Olympics. He died a broken man in 2006, with only one Australian recognition of his legacy, a mural in Redfern. He was purposefully not invited to any Australian Olympics events, except one, in 2000, when the Americans invited him after hearing that the Australians had refused. Incredible. Most nations tend to recognise their heroes after the status quo disappears or is radically changed. But Australia seems to be stuck in a cesspool of its own punctilios and demureness, something the Aussie ‘mythos’ attempts to reject. Perhaps Australians are just frightened of engaging with politics, or fail to understand that politics is not a separate sphere of life, but suffuses through all of our lives, for better or for worse. Australia, especially its media, needs to understand that the very existence of the Olympics is political; that every dollar spent on it is political, and that every homeless person shoved to another side of the city is political. We need to allow our athletes to have a conscience so that we aren’t intellectually forsaken. When the Germans and the English stopped fighting war and started fighting soccer it was not a rejection of the political, it was a radical rethinking of the dominant politics of the time into one of empathy and love. When Jesse Owens won the most gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, it was an attack on the politics of Nazism and a victory for the politics of anti-racism. And when Damien Hooper wears an Aboriginal flag, it is a political attack on Australian mainstream sports culture – a culture that ignores and sometimes defends the oppression of Indigenous people, in both the present and the past.
FIGHT CLUB: the United States Studies Centre
When tossing up Arts majors, American Studies is often considered the even less-useful equivalent of a Government major. Socialists and Canadians alike question why anyone would spend so much time learning about the United States, and the mere thought of the Tea Party deters the rest. But it’s not for nothing that USSC courses were described in the 2011 Counter Course Handbook as ‘some of the best subjects that you can do at uni’. Smart, practical assessment, a contemporary approach to content, and interactive lectures are all aspects of USSC courses that make them well worth taking. “US in the World” considers the United States from a global perspective, looking at various US foreign policy struggles. The course assessment requires students to write two 1000-word opinion pieces and a 2500-word policy report. Some deplored this atypical assessment, finding it difficult to squeeze their thoughts about the rise of China into a short, snappy, argumentative op-ed. But many enjoyed the opportunity to break free from essay format and write something practical, honing skills that may actually come in useful later in life. The course also featured a steady progression of impressive guest speakers,
including the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull and the editor of the Australian Spectator, Tom Switzer. Time was allocated during each lecture for students to ask questions after the speaker had finished their written address, providing an interactive and engaging atmosphere. The content was interesting and accessible (as opposed to the impenetrably dense academic readings found in far too many subjects) and tutors really knew their shit, so to speak. If there is one criticism that people regularly level at the USSC, it is that the Centre is blindly pro-America, unwilling to criticise US political decisions (or, for that matter, capitalism). I disagree strongly. There is no doubt that those teaching the course are enthusiastic about the United States and its role in the world, but to argue that this translates into biased academic argument is incorrect and unfair. If you’re still not convinced, USSC lecturer David Smith looks more like Sideshow Bob than any other living person, but is considerably less maniacal. Lane Sainty
You’re a politically savvy government major, you’ve studied a lot of international relations, but “Politics of China” sounds a bit dull and you’re at an impasse. And there it is: sleek, seductive, modern, all those buzz words - the USSC calls you, beckoning for your patronage. But friends, do not repeat my mistake. For beyond the superficial thrill of seeing the co-founder of MTV or a New York Times columnist interviewed, the USSC’s units are likely to offer you very little. Its style of teaching trains you in little save for the art of tabloid polemics and pithy one-liners. After a while, you begin to realise that journalists like Thomas Friedman are often highly simplistic in their analysis. You realise that softball interviews with John Howard actually tell you very little about the Australia/US alliance and its relation to 9/11. And you realise the slew of Democratic strategists, speech writers, and ambassadors wheeled out simply operate within the veritable echo chamber that is Washington D.C. I don’t write this to belittle the guests I was fortunate enough to see interviewed in “US In The World”. The issue is that
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AGAIN ST
by building a course around interviews with figures who are very much from the establishment, the USSC effectively circumvents the point of all social sciences, and particularly politics: critical thinking. By conspicuously lacking any broad intellectual theme, instead encouraging you to “create your own topic”, students are not pushed out of their comfort zone. By relying upon interviews and star power, in lieu of a rigorous syllabus, a thick reader, and proper lecturing, the USSC fails to address the underlying roots and causes of how and why events happen, which is the whole reason for studying politics in the first place! The role of academia is to get beyond the headlines and develop a more sophisticated understanding of the world. If this sounds too boring or too complicated, and Barack Obama to you is just a nice guy who has been misunderstood and deserves your unquestioning devotion, then by all means, study at the USSC, swallow the blue pill and fight for Team Democrat or Team Republican. However, if you care about honest debate and intellectual stimulation, then for your own sake, take the other pill. Angus Reoch
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Third Drawer TOP FIVE
Top Five People to Avoid in Hostels By Bryant Apolonio
Now that we’re back at university proper let’s reflect on the people we met on our holiday adventures, and the ones we wished we hadn’t
From the memoirs of Kristen Stewart
The Lonely Planeteer Often hunched over a smartphone at the communal table, wiki-travelling the local night-life. The Lonely Planeteer is the AskJeeves of budget accommodation: middleaged, smug, and supplanted by Google. He will never stop giving you advice. You could tell him that you’ve already made plans but that will only make him abrading and passive-aggressive. Be warned. An excellent trivia companion because we all suck at geography. Relies almost exclusively on the Power of Heart and that explains some things.
The One Who Is Looking For A Charger It may seem like all this backpacker does is linger about your doorway. This isn’t the case. The One Who Is Looking For A Charger lingers about everyone’s doorway. Variants include: The One Who Needs An Adapter, The One Who Needs Batteries, The One Who Was Wondering If He Could Borrow Your Headphones. Please, Man, Come On.
The Crooner Crooners are a mixed bag. Sometimes they’ll be fantastic, and you’ll want to hang out with them more. They’ll take you to cool gigs in basements, and alleys, and shipping containers because they “know the band.” Then there are Crooners who aren’t so great. Bad Crooners chase everyone out of the common room because they keep singing through their nostrils and telling everyone about their dreams. Being nocturnal creatures, you will often find them baked and stumbling around your dorm at 4am in the morning.
The Fridge Bandit Whatever your feelings about the previous three on the list, I think we can all agree that the Fridge Bandit trumps them in unabashed villainy. One imagines that, when not engaged in a contract with Contiki Tours, they engage in extortion and blackmail and tying people to train tracks. The Fridge Bandit will take anything edible—condiments, alcohol, fruit, frozen meat—then feign ignorance when you catch them. “Wait, wait, this was your pizza? Oh, wow, sorry. But you should’ve written your name on it.”
The Murderer The locals will have stories about the place you’re staying at but they’re a superstitious lot—you’ve never believed in any of that stuff. And besides the rates are incredible. The manager is reticent and avoids answering any of your questions. Some nights you hear dull groans from way below and you put it to the plumbing. If you ticked all those boxes and are reading this: congrats. You were the hot one, and you were allowed to escape.
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honi soit
@honi_soit
Dear Diary, I guess it’s a good thing. All those little tweens screaming my name was so creepy. So I’m pretty glad they all hate me now. I just don’t really understand why. Rob was the perfect beard, we were such a happy ‘couple’, so why did my publicists have to create this shit and make everyone hate me? I know they said that any publicity is good publicity, I know they said that Rob and I were ‘too comfortable’ and we were slipping from the front pages… but I just don’t get why now. In a few months the last Twilight is out, and then I’ll be all over the front page. It’s not even like there’s anything they need to cover up. Dakota hasn’t answered my calls, and I’m slowly moving on. It really sucks having to fake all this straight shit. Sometimes I just want to out myself and be done with it. I mean, why hasn’t anyone gotten a clue yet? I have so many pairs of biker boots, plaid shirts, and jeans, and I’ve seen those interviews with Dakota after he Runaways… come on, everyone knows I’m an awful actor, of course those adoring glances aren’t staged! But I get it, I get it. Lesbian fangirls are worse than tweens. If I come out I have to deal with all the shit Tegan and Sara face, and Ellen Page, and she’s hardly even properly out! So, it’s in the closet I stay. It just sucks though because Rob and I were actually good friends and now we have to pretend that he hates me, and we can’t talk about girls together anymore. I haven’t had a good lay since Dakota went back to guys. And I can’t meet any girls the normal way because of the fucking gossip and paparazzi shit. I need to star in another lesbian movie. That’s the only way that spending an inordinate amount of time with a female co-star is deemed appropriate. But again, my manager thinks it’s ‘too soon’ since The Runaways. Too soon?! That shit was like two years ago! I haven’t had any decent action since then! That’s not too soon! And I just spent months cavorting around naked on film with Garrett and Sam in On the Road. And this affair shit, and Twilight! Come on, I look so straight right now! I dunno. I might try and call Dakota again… I’ll pretend like I need advice for a Twilight premiere outfit…
Culture Vulture CULTURE INTERVIEW James O’Doherty and Kira Spucys-Tahar sat at Taste and talked pretentiousness, privilege and law-students with the cast of law-school web-series SYD2030 The breakout web-series SYD2030 follows a group of law students through the drama of Law School at the University of Eastern Sydney. Life at UES, which is set in the grounds of Sydney University and the University of New South Wales, means the stress of clerkships, lots of law-firm sponsored drinking, and a very incestuous friendship group. So pretty much like Sydney Law School, then. Honi Soit caught up with the stars of the show at Sydney University’s very own hub of law-school pretentiousness, Taste, to chat about the show’s recent success, what’s coming next, and how they made a 12-part web-series on a shoestring budget. The power and privilege of the Eastern suburbs is a common theme of SYD2030. 2030 is, of course the postcode of Vaucluse; where writer/director/ star Tatjana Alexis grew up. She plays Bridget Knox, the successful law student with the lawyer father and knockout looks. She’s joined with an equally genetically-blessed cast of ‘work hard, party harder’ law students. Joining Alexis for Honi’s interview was Laura Benson - playing the abrasive Law Society president Lara Luhrmann, George Harrison - the sweet, likeable, and somewhat sleazy pants-man Leo Cassevetes, and Nick Wright - the selfconfessed “creepy, douchebag teacher,” Professor Harrison. “They’re stereotypical characters thrown into extraordinary situations,” Alexis said. “I think we all know someone who shares personality traits with the characters,” she said, although she did deny they were based on real people. There’s the abrasive, career-obsessed Lara and her handsome, entitled, overachieving boyfriend Cam (played by Abe Mitchell). Bridget, Cam’s ex, comes back to the country and now wants him back. Leo still loves Bridget, but he is squarely in the sights of Frankie (Sophie Luck) - a sweet, peppy blonde who is stuck in the middle. The young actors don’t bear much resemblance to their on-screen personalities – either in privilege or personality. While Alexis does indeed do law, and hails from the champagne and caviar set in Vaucluse, she keeps the elitism to the screen. The bubbly Laura Benson (who studied Theatre and Film at UNSW) bears little resemblance to her driven, narcissistic character. The boyish charm of George Harrison and Nick Wright is worlds away from their on-screen sleaze. Harrison had a steep learning curve to conquer; as he admits, the Greek communities of Earlwood that he calls home are not too similar to the world of SYD2030. But, he does study at Sydney University (albeit, Commerce), so he would have seen his fair share of entitled law students. None of the cast were paid for the series, which received little-to-no external funding.
“We were doing it all off our own backs, with no budget,” Alexis said. But people did pitch in to help, sans payment. “I think it’s surprising that so many people, once approached, were really keen to get on board, and at least have a venue for us to film in,” the writerdirector said. No-one got paid, but for “love and food,” she said. “Parents made us lunch and dinner every time, it was really cute.” The humble birthplace of this webseries might be a world away from the
Tatjana Alexis, Laura Benson, Nick Wright, and George Harrison. Photo by Drew Rooke even just to develop a story.” “Because it’s so small and quick, you do need to watch it,” pitched in Harrison, over his schooner of Pure Blonde (it was just past midday, after all). “You say, ‘oh, it’s only another nine minutes,’ and then all of a sudden you’re
The boyish charm of George Harrison and Nick Wright is worlds away from their on-screen sleaze. high-flying world of Eastern Sydney Law, but it worked for the group, which is about to begin the festival circuit, touring the finished product. “Just last week we went to IndieGems, in Sydney,” said Alexis. “Oh, and we actually won!” she added, as an afterthought. “It was a kind of Young Achievers award,” she explained. “We won $3500 in editing equipment!” It was a moment of realisation for Laura Benson that “people other than just our friends” were watching the series. The format was chosen for a number of reasons: “I think web-series is the new short film,” Alexis said, sipping a soy cappuccino. “It’s the best way to show what a show can really do. It’s a lot easier to show your work around, to hope to get up, or
interested in the characters.” Audiences of SYD2030 are wider than you may expect from a home-grown, location-based web-series. Harrison, pulling up in-depth Google Analytics from the SYD2030 website on his iPhone, says that a lot of their audience is from overseas. “We’ve had almost 8500 views from Australia, and the next biggest market is the US, with almost 500. Over 200 views have been from the UK, and we’ve had 177 from New Zealand… so that’s not too bad,” he said with a touch of excitement. And they’ve had people from the industry appraise them for the work, telling them how they’re being watched as an example of how the web-series format could grow in the future. But they’re not quite household names just yet. Alexis (Bridget) was recognised, once. At a university party. “Someone stopped
me in the bathroom and asked for a photo,” she said sheepishly. And Harrison (Leo), was recognised at World Bar. “It was someone from Mosman,” he said. “I’ve never been there, but I guess they liked the show.” Alexis said she cast her net outside of her friendship circles when looking for her co-stars. “We tried to cast outside actors for the love-interests… a lot of our friends are actors, but if we had to do [kissing scenes] with them, that’d be weird.” But it didn’t necessarily work. Harrison, the subject of many steamy scenes with Alexis, the writer-director, plays football with his on-screen lover’s boyfriend. It just goes to show, the incestuous nature of SYD2030’s University of Eastern Sydney characters isn’t limited to the screen. But life doesn’t completely imitate art. Answering the obligatory interview question of whether on-screen romances ever bled into the real world, the cast of SYD2030 all gave an emphatic ‘no’.
GIVEAWAY Honi has two tickets to the SYD2030 Charity VIP Launch of the series this Thursday at Event Cinemas Bondi. The series will be screened in entirety on the night, along with the premiere of the final episode. A part of the proceeds of the night will go to Suicide Prevention Australia. Tickets are $15, with a red-carpet at 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start. To win, tell us your best story of law students being pretentious. The two best entries will win!
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Experiences that mean the world
www.law.unimelb.edu.au/jd
Profile
Legal Eagle Nicholas Cowdery is a distinguished legal mind. The Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales for a record sixteen-and-a-half years, Cowdery was considered a public crusader by some, public nuisance to others. In person, he is genuine, funny and passionate about the law, writes Kira Spucys-Tahar
Since leaving office in 2010, Nick Cowdery has become a vocal advocate in the push for judicial reform and the legalisation of drugs. “The government should be controlling, regulating and taxing the production and supply of drugs, just as it does now with alcohol and nicotine,” he says. “Only by taking over the market can the government effectively control it, reduce the harms that are caused by prohibition and by drugs themselves and remove, or at least substantially reduce, criminal profits derived from the market.” A young Cowdery was educated at boarding school at Sydney Grammar. “I hated boarding!” he says. “The conditions were Dickensian.” After being advised by a careers master that he should follow the legal profession, Cowdery began a degree at the University of Sydney while living at St Paul’s College. Cowdery did two years of Arts on campus before attending the Law School in Philip Street – “not what they call the ‘old law school’ today, but the ‘old, old law school’. It was a ramshackle building. We had lectures up and down Philip Street in whatever space the university could find and it was quite a challenge.” He was then offered an undergraduate position in the office of the Commonwealth Deputy Crown Solicitor to finish his university career. In 1985 he was recruited as junior counsel for the Crown in the prosecution of Justice Lionel Murphy. In 1991, when the Fitzgerald Inquiry recommended charges against Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Cowdery lead the prosecution case. There was a subsequent docu-drama called Joh’s Jury. “I was portrayed by Graeme Blundell, at that stage most famous for Alvin Purple, which was slightly risqué. They relied on transcripts of the proceedings. I was told later that Blundell had come in to the public galleries of some courts where I had been appearing to try and get some pointers on mannerisms and mode of speech, he’d been sitting in the back of the court watching me, but I had no idea.” In 1994 Cowdery was offered the role of NSW Director of Public Prosecutions. “When I was appointed DPP, within a fairly short time, Alan Jones was giving me a lot of stick on the radio about something, I have no idea what it was, and my mother rang me and she said, ‘Have you heard what that terrible Mr Jones is saying about you?’ and I said, ‘No I haven’t. Why don’t you listen to some other radio station?’ She got used to it, as did my wife and children. Sometimes people come up to me and have nice things to say and that’s very encouraging. I had one person in Elizabeth Street once come up and abuse me, but I think he was somebody I’d put in jail, so he probably had a good reason.” Cowdery had life tenure as DPP where he could only be dismissed if he was declared mad or bankrupt. But in order to be entitled to the pension, he would need to retire at the usual age of 65. The
Attorney-General refused to change the legislation and so in the month of his birthday, Cowdery was forced to give notice of his retirement. “I think it was an unfortunate way to end a career in that position. I don’t have any longings or regrets; I don’t miss being the Director of Public Prosecutions because I’ve been able to become very active doing other things in the criminal justice area. It was probably time to move on to something else anyway,” he says. “And I note that the government of that time didn’t last much longer than I did.” Cowdery is unapologetic about his performance in the job. “The important thing to remember is that it’s no part of a DPP’s job to be popular with anybody. That’s not in the duty statement. Almost every decision you make in the course of a working day is going to make somebody unhappy. It’s the nature of the job; it’s the nature of the decisions that have to be made and the impact that they have on people. “Certainly some politicians over my sixteen years, did seem to take some matters to heart, much more than they should have, particularly in the latter years in office. That’s unfortunate. My only way of dealing with that was to continue to play, to use the cricketing analogy, with a straight bat, to continue to apply the principles that apply to the job and to deal with each issue on its merits.
“The important thing to remember is that it’s no part of a DPP’s job to be popular with anybody.” “Every decision that gets to the level of Director is a difficult decision; it’s only the toughest ones that come all the way to the top. Some involve legal complexity, some are difficult because of the evidentiary difficulties, some are difficult because of the personal involvement and engagement of the people, and the emotional or psychological investment people have made in the matter.” A great challenge Cowdery faced while DPP was the prosecution of Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor Patrick Power for possession of child pornography. “That was a shattering case for the staff of the office of the DPP. For somebody of a fairly senior level, prosecuting cases of the very kind in which it turned out he had been involved, for that sort of revelation to happen is devastating for the people who have worked with somebody as a colleague. It was something we just had to deal with.” Cowdery’s list of some of his most difficult cases includes high-profile names. The decision to prosecute Geoffrey Gilham, Gordon Wood, Kelli Lane. “Ultimately the DPP has the responsibility of making those tough decisions and takes the responsibility for them.” Retirement for Nick Cowdery has not meant a retreat from contentious issues. Cowdery’s part in the Australia21 process was intended to bring the subject of drugs back on to the public agenda. “We need people to consider the issues, look around at what is happening, explore better ways of dealing with drugs – because drugs aren’t going away - and try to formulate regimes that are going to be more effective in controlling the amount of drug use in the community, in reducing the real harms.” Cowdery firmly believes Nixon’s ‘War
on Drugs’ has failed – “It was a political stunt to begin with.” “People in different situations, for different reasons, want to change their moods. It might be for relaxation; it might be for escape; it might be for excitement. There are all kinds of motives behind it. So there will always be a demand, and there always has been. And where you have a demand you have a supply.” Cowdery believes the explosion of crime in south-western Sydney is a result of turf wars between gangs involved in drug supply. “I’m quite sure that’s the motive behind it all - all the shootings that have been happening for the past year or so.” Cowdery strongly considers government regulation the best option. “I think the Portugal model is a very good starting point,” he says. “The label that attaches to it is ‘decriminalisation’ but it’s been running now for about eleven years. It is working. It is reducing drug use, not dramatically, but measurably. It is improving the lives of drug users and making them productive citizens once again. It has not resulted in a sort of ‘honeypot’ effect with people flocking in from other nearby countries. You are saving on imprisonment; you are saving on repeat criminal offending; you’re saving on losing those people from productive work and social relationships.” Cowdery outlines other possibilities for tackling the drug problem. “We could be looking at the medical use of heroin,” he says. “Another area is the medical use of cannabis. You can actually get cannabis for medical purposes in sixteen of the United States and in several countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Israel and Finland. People say cannabis has become dangerous…but if you had a controlled market, you could use only naturally grown field cannabis, which doesn’t have those additional risks, which is less harmful than tobacco.” Cowdery thinks there is no answer to amphetamines “except to legalise them and to regulate their supply. At the moment, the people who are benefiting most from the prohibition of amphetamines are the bikie gangs who manufacture and distribute the stuff.” I ask why Cowdery is such a zealous advocate for drug reform. “We are just throwing billions and billions of dollars at a problem without any prospect of it improving or being solved. That offends me,” he says.
“The medically supervised injecting centre is a great success; it’s ridiculous that there is only one in Australia.”
“Another aspect is the personal harms that are caused by people with addiction. We’ve had a lot of successes with reducing these through needle and syringe exchange programs, with methadone programs, with the work that’s been done in controlling HIV/AIDS spread, and Australia has a very high reputation in those areas, but we can do more. “The medically supervised injecting centre is a great success; it’s ridiculous that there is only one in Australia. It’s been running now for more than ten years…but it’s crazy that you have to bring your own injectable drug into the centre to make use of the facilities. You
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could be injecting anything into yourself! That’s why they have these overdoses that occur on a regular basis. It’s just crazy. The problem is politicians are very nervous about it. Politicians are stuck in this silly idea of being either ‘tough’ or ‘soft’ on the offences that have been made criminal by an act of parliament. It would be much more sensible if we could talk about being ‘smart’ on drugs and ‘smart’ on crime.” “Richard Nixon declared a war on chemical and botanical substances, which is a pretty bizarre idea in itself, [so] there’s this silly notion about winning or losing a war. Politicians don’t like anybody to say ‘you’re a loser! You have done something and you have lost’. It’s as much a question of terminology as anything else…politicians won’t move on the issue until there is support from the community for action to be taken.” Cowdery has been assisting in making the legal profession more accessible to the community through association with television shows such as Crownies. “There was a lot of collaboration between the office and the producers and scriptwriters of Crownies. Of course, Crownies is intended to be entertainment…they twist the stories so they’re more exciting than in real life.” Nick Cowdery is a straight-shooter. “Drinking wine is the guiltiest pleasure that I have, I enjoy a few glasses of wine with dinner at night,” he says. “Alcohol is my drug of choice. And I can honestly say that I have not tried any illicit drugs. Hand on heart. I tried smoking when I was very young – tobacco – and I hated it so much that I’ve never wanted to smoke anything since so that rules out cannabis. I don’t feel the need to get myself excited for a party, so that rules out ecstasy and amphetamines and all that stuff, and I’m not so overcome by life that I need to escape by using heroin, so I’ve never gone near any of that either.” Nick Cowdery is an intriguing character who never seems to stop. As well as his role as adjunct professor in the faculty of law at the University of Sydney, he also has appointments at three other universities, is involved in research projects and international consultancy work, and writes on criminal justice. “The publishers want me to write another book, but I seem to be too busy doing other things at the moment. “There is a quiet passion I suppose you might say, about keeping involved. I thought that while I still can it’s appropriate to give something back to the community and to the system of criminal justice.” You don’t think you gave enough while DPP? “I suppose I did, but I got a lot out of it for myself, a lot of professional interest and stimulation and satisfaction. Now that I have the opportunity, I’m very happy to give some of that back to people, who hopefully in the future will be able to benefit from it.”
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Dollars Down How financial mismanagement, shady contracts, and executive salaries led to the purging of academic staff. Report by Madeleine King.
W
hen 100 academic staff were offered controversial redundancies earlier this year, we were told it was a financial necessity. International student enrolments were down, says the Final Change Plan, and subsequent blow-outs to the budget meant change had to come. True though that may have been, it was only a contributing factor to the university’s monetary woes. Mismanagement, poor planning, alleged corruption, and general underfunding have combined to tip the ledger into the red and force the ultimate sacrifice: teachers. Now, we find ourselves at an impasse. The university argues that there is legitimate financial need for the cuts to teaching and general staff. But the path that has led it there has been more contentious. The university’s hands haven’t always been tied to a painful fiscal squeeze. But during the good times, it hadn’t been using its finances effectively. A former Director of Finance at the university spoke to Honi Soit for this article, on condition of anonymity. Oscar* says there is still money coming in, but we just aren’t using it effectively. “They’ve overcooked their revenue figures,” he says. “They’ve got to find $40 million worth of yearly interest [from the NAB loan] they’ve never had before.” It is an interest repayment, Oscar adds, that is unprecedented in the university’s history: difficult at a time of huge construction projects, ongoing maintenance problems, and declining revenue from traditionally reliable sources. Sometimes we need a reminder: the University of Sydney is first and foremost a business. It is easily forgettable thanks to the beauty of HECS, but this staid institution is a merchant of education, not a free utopia of knowledge and learning but part of the greater neoliberal trend of tertiary schooling. As they say, it is money that makes the world go ‘round, and it is just as true here as anywhere else. But the money we have is leaking from the university’s vast hold. The 2011 NSW Audit Office’s Report notes that at the end of 2010, the university could not provide information about the number of contractors it had hired, or the period of time for which they were employed.
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“We are looking at quite a number of procedural improvements to see if we can get this right,” he says. This including recommendations from ICAC. When the cuts started, the big expenditures were the first in the firing line. That means staff.
“This may result in additional costs for the university”, the report continued, without the proper alert system to signal when a contractor’s service had been extended or a certain payment threshold had been reached. For a number of years up until 2010, this lack of oversight saw Todd Demiralay in the university’s IT department allegedly secure hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of services for an IT company, Sucurro. Mr Demiralay’s wife worked as secretary and director of the company in which the couple jointly held 50 per cent of shares in trust until the time of his dismissal. As Assisting Counsel Jeremy Morris noted in legal proceedings, because there was no formal contract between Succuro and the university, “nobody could pick up on extraordinary growth in use of Succuro in dollar terms or Mr Demiralay’s connection with the company.” The case is the subject of the ongoing Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) enquiry, ‘Operation Citrus’, with the final report yet to be handed down. It comes on top of another ICAC enquiry in 2010, ‘Operation Kanda’, into a similar misuse of cleaning services. Together the two have cost the univer-
Staff costs are the university’s single biggest cost item, taking up 65 per cent of total revenue. “It’s the obvious one they attack first,” Oscar, says. But does he think there would be enough money to keep the staff had there been better financial management? “Oh, without a doubt.” “The big reasons behind the staff cuts are poor budgeting,” he says. It’s not the easiest pill to swallow for students and staff directly affected by the university’s axe. Easson, however, stands by the decision as a necessary one. “Not everyone agrees with every decision we make,” he says. “But there’s a balance that has to be reached, because there’s not quite enough
sity $1.8 million, according to the 2012 NSW Audit Office’s Report. The amount is but a drop in the ocean of the university’s financial income and expenditures. Of course, there is significant logistical and financial difficulty in keeping track of the 30,000 suppliers the university uses, and their external affiliations. But Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the university, Mark Easson, acknowledges the finance department has been remiss.
money as we’d like to run the university, so there have to be some compromises.” To what extent, though, are those compromises necessary? Students, the university’s financial shareholders, of a kind, deserve information about its financial operations. Easson believes the university is “financially healthy”, with $3.8 billion worth of assets and, according to NSW Audit Office’s Report for 2012, a surplus of $88.5 million. They took a hit during the GFC but have remained, on the
surface, stable – only experiencing shortterm losses and not enough, seemingly, to warrant dramatic reductions in staff. This blow is softened, some might say, by a host of financial imperatives: construction, maintenance, services bills, wages, and loan repayments.
Would there have been enough money to keep the staff had there been better financial management? “Oh, without a doubt.” “We try to do [as best] as we possibly can, but the issue is always that staff costs are 65 per cent of our cost structure,” Easson says. “Any sort of significant change in our cost structure does mean that you have to consider staff,” he says. “It’s a difficult process.” Easson cites the “competitive pressures” of declining international student numbers coupled with domestic students dropping down to part-time loads and taking less units of study than predicted. The result has been a massive gap between budgeted revenue income in the 2011-2015 Strategic Plan and actual revenue collected to date. According to Easson, a range of other issues have added their weight to the budgetary black hole. For better or worse, the university – through its Senate, Finance and Audit Committee, Senior Executive Group, and various associated boards – decided that improved infrastructure enhances the educational experience: “We think better facilities will make the quality of learning much better all over the campus, if the facilities are designed for collaboration,” says Easson. So we’ve seen the proliferation of new ‘learning hubs’, informal learning spaces, and computer labs – all from a capital works budget totalling $384 million. It’s an impressive amount, and with an added $500 million loan from the National Australia Bank expected at the end of the year, one wonders whether a small portion of this could have been used to alleviate the need for cuts to staff. Unfortunately, once allocated to longterm projects like the Charles Perkins Centre (estimated cost: $384 million), the Sydney Student System (a new IT
*Names changed | ** Figures according to the 2012 NSW Auditor Office’s Report | *** Roles acco
n
The Drain
system – estimated cost: $56.5million), and backlogged maintenance (estimated cost: $370 million)**, the money – accumulated from surplus, loans and philanthropic or government grants – cannot be diverted. While the university can receive up to $500 million from the federal government annually (in 2011, close to $700 million**), Easson says that is on condition of operating efficiently. With its financial hands tied by the lack of surplus profits from an annual $1.6 billion revenue, the university won’t meet its mandates as a capital-generating business without trimming somewhere. Yet behind the operational efficiency lies a vast network of committees, departments, boards, and executives through which decisions must be passed. The Vice-Chancellor retains the authority to approve university financial and infrastructure policy, but decisions such as approving budgets, allocating money, and approving capital expenditure go through the Senate or its Finance and Audit Committee (FAC)***. Bogged down by the political machinations of each institution and consultation requirements, the process becomes much slower. “It makes it harder for you to react and to drive policies,” says Oscar. This lack of strong mandate from the centre has allowed other problems to crop up such as the accrual of excessive amounts of leave for staff. It has forced the university to keep cordoning off funds into emergency accounts in case it has to make a large number of leave payments at one given time. Rather than having a ‘pay as you go’ system, the current ‘fully-funded’ style means money sits in waiting, tied up until staff either take their leave or end employment. Behemoths of capital works like the Charles Perkins Centre and the Sydney Student System are also soaking up money, blowing out beyond their planned budgets. Easson says the Student System is correctly budgeted now, but it’s been a while coming. It wasn’t until last year that they were able to update the forecast from $49 million to $56.5 million, with the realisation that much more would have to be spent in actually training the staff in the system’s back end. Oscar, however, says that in the early
stages of budgeting, the cost could have been as low as $10 million. Easson admits the $500 million loan for the Charles Perkins Centre will accrue a massive $25 million in yearly interest repayments. While short of the figure Oscar cited, it is nevertheless a significant portion to be claimed from annual surpluses. The loan may need to be dipped into as early as this year, when funds from government grants run out.
cellor “was a strong advocate for once it was thought of as an idea”. Ultimately Easson believes the staff cuts needed to be made because the university is now in the best position to predict the future. “We’re probably more sophisticated than we’ve ever been in terms of forecasting where we’re heading, and part of the decisions being made this year is because we know exactly what the effect will be in two years time,” he says.
Staff wages make up 65 per cent of total expenditure: in the Vice-Chancellor’s case, $911,575 in 2011, including a performance bonus of $167,432. Staff wages make up 65 per cent of total expenditure, but this includes the largest wages of all: that of Dr Michael Spence and other executives. In the Vice-Chancellor’s case, $911,575 in 2011, including a performance bonus of $167,432 (the second highest vice-chan-
“It’s about being proactive and planning so that there’s no surprises.” Yet it was the lack of foresight three years ago that saw the university’s finance team underestimate the revenue they would gain from students by $35.8 million, forcing them to make dramatic
According to the university’s Updated Final Change Plan (available online, and recommended for further official answers to many of the issues that the staff cuts have raised) as of May 2012: 32 staff had agreed to accept offers of voluntary redundancy; 35 staff had agreed to accept offers of teaching-focused roles; and five staff had agreed to enter into preretirement contracts or other alternative arrangements such as part-time employment. Overall, the number of those who had taken redundancies decreased from the initial prediction of 100 teachers to 35. It is unclear whether this was due to the pressure from staff and student protests, or staff taking their cases to Fair Work Australia, or a successful consultative process, or a combination of all three.
cellor salary in the country). Easson was coy when questioned directly about whether cuts to executive salaries were considered in lieu of staff cuts, saying it was a matter for the HR department. He did note, however, that executives have generously agreed not to take pay rises this year as a ‘contribution’, something he says the Vice-Chan-
les according to the 2011 University of Sydney Delegationsof Authority – Administrative Functions
decisions that would pull the budget back into the black. This included enforcing the proposed 7.5 per cent reduction in overall staff costs in the 2011-2015 Strategic Plan. Students and teachers alike have deplored the criteria imposed on staff to determine their academic viability and candidacy for redundancy.
There is an argument that pragmatism and reason won out in the end: if staff hadn’t met the ‘three publications in three years’ standard, submissions could be made to demonstrate significant ongoing work, research awaiting publication, higher teaching loads, or other factors that may have impacted on their ability to meet the required output. Extensive consultation processes were also provided for the affected staff in their faculties. This standard is justified, according to Simon McCoy, from the university’s human resources department, by staff contracts. Academics are paid to spend 40 per cent (or the equivalent of 19 weeks of full-time employment) on research, and the University of Sydney is “researchintensive,” he says. McCoy stresses that they haven’t wielded the axe indiscriminately. “The university has not imposed a retrospective contractual obligation, but has used research output as the primary basis for determining which positions could be made redundant.” Moreover, teaching contributions were also taken into account, allowing for 64 staff to be offered teaching-focused roles. And those skyscraper executive salaries? Contractually a no-go zone, according to McCoy, for all staff, no matter what their level. While the white flag remains furled for the same time being, we’ve reached a point where we cannot ignore the fact the university is running out of money. We have to find it somewhere. At the same time, there is undeniably a lot of unhappiness among staff and students about the decisions that have been made. Whatever the university says, it’s contentious whether the cuts did not, as some say, detrimentally affect the quality of teaching and learning. Ultimately, for all education’s increasingly neoliberal leanings, it remains low on the list of attractive investments – for both private and government entities. It will be some time - if ever - before the two competing forces of universal education and free market capitalism find an easy common ground.
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Literary Supplement Freia Emma Esta Kirkaldy Rabbits Are Born Blind In the late winter’s light they go down, Hand in shy hand, the furtive lovers While crepuscular rabbits emerge from their burrows in the sand dunes, And some of their young hop restlessly out onto the path, Beyond their verdant shield of spinifex and pigsface Exposing themselves Too guileless to understand their vulnerability Rabbits are born blind On the sand the young girl slips off her little shoes, And feels the sand wiggling between her toes, And feels Joy, Looking at him And feels Crushed, Meditating on love subjugated While she fingers her simple gold cross But as they bathe in the curious golden light of the splendid sun, Which has cast strange colours on the beach Turning the ocean deep turquoise And the horizon the colour and consistency of A sandstorm on the edge of creation, She feels Free. And Blessed Little pink tufts of clouds float by As he takes her into his arms, And moves her in unmetered dance An untaught, graceless, graceful waltz And spinning her, shapes tinkling laughter Two golden figures entwined Sinless On the precipice of colossal sin With honeyed words he plays love to her With lust he lays her down. And bathed in golden sunlight still, They feel like holy pilgrims; Spotless Even as they fall Later she feels the rising tide lapping at her feet And sees it has taken one of her little shoes, And feels the chill fill her; The sun has gone away, And the beach is cast in shadows. There is less sweetness now
And regret rushes into her, Carving a burrow in her chest, Where it sits and Creates repentance of their stolen moment. They part. After nine new moons have dissolved in the sky, she returns Holding the squalling newborn child of her peccancy Which she has swaddled in cloth and her regret. She walks down the same sand dunes, down the same path cut through spinifex and pigsface, Hoping to see that same curious golden sunlight, But It is too late As the splendid sun has almost fallen below the horizon, And the beach is already cast in blue shadow. A fatherless child; a child of the father Her secret love; her hidden shame Her colossal sin On the sand She steps out of her shoes, And walks knee-deep into the inky water As icy hands claw at her long skirts, Weighing her down. On holy mission, She dunks the child thrice in baptism Washing the blood of birth from his crown One, two, three And then- calm, crazed, She lowers him a fourth time And holds him there. When he brays no longer, And trusts no longer, and breathes no longer, She kisses his crown And lets him go And prays for his return to the kingdom; For the sun to turn backward And rise again Bathing mother and child in splendid gold once more. Later, She sees the bushy blanket of spinifex and pigsface disturbed once more, By another blind rabbit, stumbling forth.
Nicholas Fahy Good Friend of Mine
The Pearldrop Lake
Recently, I spoke to a good friend of mine; We talked so briefly but said all that needed to be said That it’s a shame no one will ever hear All the wonderful things which remain in my head. It was not that we spoke of some spectacular revelation Instead it was something so much more complex than that, We simply mused on the sorrowful nature of life And reminisced on all the good times now gone by; It did not make us sad to know of The loss of innocence we’d both undergone, For over the last few years we’ve had to face All those terrible things that went wrong.
By the Pearldrop Lake I sit at times And think of many things, But of these things I think and dream They all lead back to Spring. For she, Bright Spring, My Love Does bring; These endless sunny days, Where flowers bloom In endless hues And seconds Are everlasting.
*** In this play, it seems, I resign my part And I can pinpoint the very moment in which All changed for me within my heart And was different of that which cannot be seen. I told him I knew of this particular point At which we were changed so tragically, And it only upset him for a moment or two, But he knew, and I, that it was for eternity.
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As I gaze upon the Peardrop Lake Spring blossoms on this isle: I witness how my world is born From My Love’s precious smile.
@honi_soit
Time Diluted Time diluted, wrath incurred, Drawn together within one curve, One remembered, two forgone, A memory never lasting long, Tearstained eyes, young and bright, Only once within my life, Rare enjoyment, passion lost, Life is lived but at what cost?
Literary Supplement Ludwig Schmidt ‘Pink Socks’ It wasn’t haunted, it was just dying, And realising it you gain a life near your home.
With friends with whom one develops a language from an early age, Vocal, sure, but physical, humorous, stylistic, even situational. Essential sensibilities.
And it all seems to relate to your pink socks, but How indefinably difficult! The girl on the bicycle reminds you this is not instinct’s failure, Nor is it language’s. It is partly your life’s, and partly how much you gave into your life (Before you knew not to, god damn it).
With them pink socks are enough to tattoo. Socks That always tempt you towards other pink socks. But there, it will only be… well… your hair perhaps, which Draws you to a further refined field, where You will have only a fraction of the language.
The park is not your friend, though it is not unfriendly, Simply because parks are old, and you are young, And your life with it will only ever be brief – till November. Take what you, as a short-lived thing, can take from it But give up the desire that the park will take something from you. Nothing will, except maybe one day.
Homeward encounters a black cat who will not quite cross his path, Stays in front, And on approach, Goes under a fence and into the shadow. He will talk to you from the shadow, But will not come out of the shadow. He behaves exactly as he needs to, In accordance with his nature. He is kind, but so very much A black cat.
But of course you’re in love, and the lit doorways all remind you of it. So over the back gate, and a quick prayer To the Buddha who is not very good at his job, But he is very committed to it… Is that an honest, or disrespectful way to speak to a Buddha? It’s hard to know, when dealing with a god.
A girl zigzags her way down the road on a bicycle, and With her comes lilies and dew. Yet the words which would have passed your lips, If there had been anybody there to talk to - are “She’s tearing it up”. You are happy there is nobody. Into Darlington. Pipes. Forty fence posts with no wire between them, Then two with, Then another forty without, and A building which sings, as if rain was hitting its corrugated roof, while none was.
Mariana Podesta-Diverio Punctual I don’t doubt any doubts about takers. Quake the mission permanently struck against resounding mirrored walls. tick tock all deserving of like standards although the constellations change the mind is universal surrounded by like signs dwelling thus asking – should I partake? levels sometimes require being stooped to. wilkinson axis rush to meet the T at summit street, post-ascent sweat moistens already damp smalls of backs; backpacks, skipjack tuna can discarded in side compartment presently unoccupied by water bottle (held in hand) sole strap burdened with weight of jacket unused books unread but being underprepared, instead? options seem meagre when presented in breakfast rush. handy, comes in, the backpack’s plush.
No kiss now, not even a drink, But I will leave no sigh to speak for you, or for our story. A logarithm exists, sure, but must be created, Not discovered but a calculus created. Slim chance, but the more you surrender the more you can purchase. The currency is one hundred communications for each realisation, And it’s all built of love.
Woon Kwee Benjamin Lim ‘Purpose’ Teacher tells story of great purpose. No doubt, a great purpose. For story to tell story, there is no other purpose except for the narrative to unfold into itself, extending its reach from fiction to friction. Dimwitted Agatha stares with mouth agape: listening with some other willing organ, gone wet with entry. Drool collecting by the ends of her mouth. This one has promise – more important than purpose. No time for regret, pull up your schoolgirl skirt. It was never meant to last. This never happened.
Elena Z XXII And by the starlight, hand me A volume that slips the mind Entrench me in pages that Draw in the blood, and appease The mind Hand me the chapters that gently Caress time, and without mind, Promises to be made Between me and mine And the character dances solely In the meadow, of the solitary spring Sweeping new life, in manners long And sordidly missed Pull back the shade with this Lit companion, that draws Beneath my feet
Submissions collated by the Sydney University Literary Society. They can be found at usuliterarysociety.wordpress. com, and hold regular literary evenings at The Rose Hotel.
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honi soit
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TECH NEWS
Tech & Online
How social media is changing the university learning experience
Rob North reports on innovative uses of social media at Sydney University and conducts an interview, over Twitter, with Dr Richard Stanton rienced in academia, with one tweeting “lovin’ your methods!” Another said “It’s defs given me a greater purpose to tweet & see firsthand how useful it can be to network/branch out.” For Dr Stantons’ media relations students there’s an obvious benefit – it’s improving their media literacy, and helping them to become more familiar with a platform which is becoming increasingly important to all aspects of the media landscape. But Dr Stanton added that the immediacy that Twitter provides makes it a valuable resource to any lecturer, regardless of the disciplinary field. He also added, after another follower’s question, “Depending upon the application there are a bunch (of other social networks) that would work well, such as #pinterest, in the academic environment.” Needless to say, social media has fundamentally changed the way we think about communication. It should come as no surprise that social media’s communicative value is being appreciated by a number of educators and students alike, and is reshaping the ways in which students are learning. Last semester, students of ‘Introduction to Sociology 1’ found themselves engaging with social media as an integral part of their coursework. In keeping his students abreast of 21st century society, unit coordinator and lecturer Dr Salvatore Barbones produced YouTube videos to keep students aware of lecture themes, required reading and assessment tasks. Rather than pumping out the standard academic essays, Dr Barbones’ first year sociology students created and shared their own videos over YouTube and promoted them over Twitter and other social Rob North interviews Dr Stanton over Twitter. Search #honitalks networks. for all tweets
Educators are always looking for new ways to reach their students, and University of Sydney lecturer, Dr Richard Stanton, is hoping to do so 140 characters at a time. The Web 2.0-savvy lecturer is using Twitter as the main form of out-of-lecture communication in his undergraduate media relations course, providing his students with relevant links and information conveniently organised under a hashtag. While in previous years Dr Stanton has used Twitter alongside more traditional modes of communication, he said that the Blackboard Learning System is too static in his experience. Last week we interviewed Dr Stanton (@silvermullet) via Twitter, with readers using the hashtag #honitalks to ask questions and comment. “I started using it 2 connect students to issues & ideas. It gradually became the preferred communicative instrument” he tweeted. And although there is some apprehension on the part of Dr Stanton’s media students, with one follower tweeting “it’s a little forced at the moment but hoping it becomes more natural”, most are finding it a refreshing bridge across the teacher student divide commonly expe-
Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney
Notice of 2012 Students’ Representative Council Annual Election
while discussing an assessment on the Facebook group page. Students were warned in their lectures by the unit coordinator, as well as on the Facebook page by a Sydney University Law Society representative. While in this case no-one was formally accused of collusion, many students continue to use Facebook to discuss ideas and coursework in a similar manner. For better or worse, university lecturers and students are taking advantage of social media platforms. The benefits are clear – immediacy and Other students easily joined the interview with Dr Stanton persistence - but as with all things in life, it’s a case of over Twitter measuring up the potential These days everyone is jumping online risks versus rewards. and connecting with their fellow students via Facebook. From engineering to Rob North is on Twitter architecture, degree and subject specific @RobertGNorth Facebook groups are perhaps the best See more tweets from the way to engage with fellow students and share information. But an incident earlier interview by searching for #honitalks. this year involving first year Juris Doctor students should serve as a cautionary tale to all students using social networks such Kn ow as Facebook. It was suggested that the of any students verged on the edge of collusion ot h e
r i n n ov a t i ve u ses of s o c ial me dia at U n i ve r s i t y? Send t hroug h tips honiso to it201 2@gm ail. com
Dr Barbones’ mini lecture YouTube video
Nominations for the Students’ Representative Council Annual Elections for the year 2012 close at 4.30pm Wednesday 24th August 2012. Polling will be held on the 19th and 20th of September 2012. Pre-polling will also take place outside the SRC Offices Level 1 Wentworth Building on Tuesday 18th of September 2012 from 10 am - 3pm. All students who are duly enrolled for attendance at lectures are eligible to vote. Members of the student body who have paid their nomination fee to Council are eligible to nominate and be nominated, except National Union of Students national office bearers. Fulltime officebearers of the SRC may also nominate as NUS delegates.
Nomination forms can be downloaded from the SRC website: www.src.usyd.edu.au, or picked up from SRC Front Office (Level 1, Wentworth Building).
Nominations are called for the following elections/positions and open 1st August 2012 at 8pm:
Nominations which have not been delivered either to the locked box in the SRC front office or to the post office box shown above and submitted online by the close of nominations will not be accepted regardless of when they were posted.
(a) The election of the Representatives to the 85th SRC (33 positions) (b) The election of the President of the 85th SRC (c) The election of the Editor(s) of Honi Soit for the 85th SRC (d) The election of National Union of Students delegates for the 85th SRC (7 positions)
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#honitech
Nominations must also be lodged online along with your policy statement and Curriculum Vitae (optional), by close of nominations at: www.src.usyd.edu.au. For more information, call 9660 5222. Signed nomination forms and a printed copy of your online nomination must be received no later than 4.30pm on Wednesday 22nd August, either in the locked box at the SRC Front Office (Level 1 Wentworth), or at the following address: PO Box 794, Broadway NSW 2007.
The Regulations of the SRC relating to elections are available on-line at www.src.usyd.edu.au or from the SRC Front Office (level 1, Wentworth Building). Authorised by Paulene Graham, SRC Electoral Officer 2012. Students’ Representative Council, The University of Sydney Phone: 02 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au
Action-Reaction FREAKS OF NATURE
Adélie Penguins
Students’ Representative Council, The University of Sydney
Richard Withers still has mixed emotions
What is it even thinking? The Adélie Penguin, its utter madness is masked by a cute, expressionless face. Source: Penguin Cam
In 1910, Englishman George Murray Levick embarked on a fateful expedition to Antarctica. What he found upon arrival was so disturbing that he would record his notes in Greek, ensuring only a select few of his intellectual companions would share in his horror. Levick had come across the perplexingly innocent-looking, but mysteriously sadistic Adélie Penguin. His observations leading to the stark conclusion that “There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins.” It’s the uncannily childlike nature of these penguins that has led to an unending bow of strange tales from Antarctica. A lack of sexual experience is unlikely to have ever had such a devastating impact. Male Adélie Penguins have learnt the hard way, commonly attempting to mate with deceased, frozen females and
young chicks as they explore their own sexuality. But it’s not only the raging necrophilia, physical abuse of chicks and paedophilic tendencies that has turned heads and potentially destroyed minds. When they’re not thieving from each other’s meticulously formed rock nests, Adélie Penguins will often gather in crowds along terraces of ice hanging over water fronts. Teetering on the brink, the Adélie Penguins will push one of their number over, and as Levick recounted: “all would crane their necks over the edge, and only when they saw the pioneer safe in the water, the rest followed.” It took one hundred years for Levick’s findings to surface; we can only assume that these penguins have taken Antarctica by now and are heading for us.
If you wish to vote in the 2012 SRC elections but are unable to vote EITHER on polling days Wednesday 19th or Thursday 20th September at any of the advertised locations, OR on pre-polling day (on main campus) Tuesday 18th September, then you may apply for a postal vote.
Please note: postal vote applications MUST BE RECEIVED AND IN OUR PO BOX by Friday 24th of August at 4.30pm or they will not be considered. No exceptions. Probably just discussing plans for eating the youngling. Source: The Telegraph
You may use a photocopy of this form. Name of applicant:
Royal Shrovetide Football
Student Card Number:
Lane Sainty discovers a sport for the masses
If there is anything a small town loves, it is having a claim to fame, no matter how tenuous the connection. For instance, Cootamundra reminds anyone who will listen that Donald Bradman was born there, and Ardlethan dubiously claims to be ‘the home of the kelpie’. However, few Australian towns carry a claim to fame as bizarre as that of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England, which plays host to the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match. The match occurs on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, pitting the Up’ards, or people born north of Henmore Brook, against the Down’ards, born south of the river. An inexplicably central role is played by the Royal Green Man Hotel as the venue for the official pre-match luncheon. Clearly, these two aspects alone make the game an unofficial contender for the most English thing ever. The match begins at 2pm in a car park in central Ashbourne, when the ball is thrown into the waiting scrum, usually consisting of hundreds of people. (Fun fact: The person chosen to turn up the ball has twice been royalty, with Prince Charles taking on the task in 2003.) The
POSTAL VOTING
Fill in this form and send it to: Electoral Officer Sydney University Students’ Representative Council PO Box 794, Broadway NSW 2007.
SPORT
The match commences after a rendition of the Shrovetide Anthem. Source: Zimbio
SRC Elections 2012 Postal Voting Application Form
two teams then battle to ‘goal’ the ball by tapping it three times against one of two mill stones, which are located approximately three miles apart. The game ends either when the ball is goaled after 5pm (if the ball is goaled before this time, a new match will begin) or when 10pm is reached. Other than a few self-explanatory directives such as the prohibition of murder and manslaughter, there are alarmingly few laws governing the game. The ball must not be carried in a motorised vehicle or hidden in a coat or bag and play must not infringe on private property, memorial grounds, or churches. Many may deride this tradition as useless, ridiculous or plain confusing, but Royal Shrovetide Football has been played for a very long time. Records show that the match has been played ever year bar two since 1891, with records prior to this being destroyed in an 1890 fire. This means that it was played throughout both World Wars, surely an indicator of just how enjoyable and important this strange game is. Furthermore, the match attracts many tourists to Ashbourne each year, a good thing, considering there appears to be little other reason to visit the town. Clearly, some towns deserve their claim to fame.
Faculty/Year: Phone Number: (
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Email: Mobile: I hereby apply for a postal vote for the 2012 SRC elections. I declare that I am unable to attend a polling booth on any of the polling days, OR on any of the pre-polling days, for the following reason: (please be specific. Vague or facetious reasons will not be accepted. the electoral officer must under section 20(a) of the election Regulation consider that the stated reason justifies the issuing of a postal vote.)
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For more information contact Paulene Graham, Electoral Officer 02 9660 5222
Authorised by Paulene Graham, SRC Electoral Officer 2012. Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Phone: 02 9660 5222 www.src.usyd.edu.au
Even those who stay indoors like to get involved. Source: Zimbio
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Lecture Notes THE QUIZ
SUDOKU
I’m not being rude, but I poke my tongue out at you all day.
1. Which American hip-hop artist is known for always wearing a metal mask in public since adopting a comic book alter-ego in 1998? 2. In what year was the first modern Olympic games held? 3. Who starred alongside Dustin Hoffman in 1988’s Rainman? 4. Who was Plato’s famed protégée? 5. What drug did novelist Aldous Huxley demand to be issued while on his deathbed?
TEASER TARGET
6. Which European country features a red and yellow sun on its flag? 7. What is the full name of the charismatic dwarf played by Peter Dinklage in HBO’s acclaimed series Game of Thrones? 8. What is the largest animal that ever lived?
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9. This week, Republican candidate Mitt Romney announced his running partner for the upcoming US elections. What is their name?
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10. The Manson Family was responsible for the murder of which Hollywood director’s wife?
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11. Which Camus novel – an existential classic - opens with the line “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”
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Make as many words out of the letters above, always including the letter in the centre. 12 = My grandma did better than this.
12. In which country is the world’s largest particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider – located?
33 = My dog did better than this. 65 = I didn’t do better than this.
13. Slovenia is bordered by how many countries? 14. What is the name of the British situational comedy featuring David Mitchell and Robert Webb? 15. In which country other than Australia are kangaroos found? 16. What is the most recently added Olympic event, having been introduced in 2008 Beijing Olympics? 17. Which British statesman, later assassinated by the IRA, oversaw the succession of India in 1947? 18. The Rum Diary is based on a novel by the same name, written by which author? 19. Following the death of lead singer Ian Curtis, post-punk outfit Joy Division ditched their name and reformed as what band? 20. Mike Tyson once threatened to do what to Lennox Lewis’s unborn children?
KenKen tips: 1. Numbers can not repeat in any row or column.
Answers below
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 1. Swinging both ways, I embraced family swimwear (6) 40. Maiden deed in careless heads of Samsung device (8) 10. Robert Downey Jr’s nemesis the starring role? (4,3) 11. Headless gang with a fish go fishing (7) 12. What goes before for the stars (5) 13. Bankrupt at home dissolving agent (9) 14. Verbally disparage the make believe and feel disenchanted (14) 18. Exploration operation - one arsenic scan (14) 22. MAD MASTER IS MAD (9) 24. See 5-down 26. Laugh out loud with fish being idle (7) 27. Lumped affirmation with curly afro evenly (7) 28. HATS OFF ENGLISH COUNTY (8) 29. See 2-down
Eric & Dom
DOWN 1. SOUND MEASURE MARK (8) 2, 29-across. SOUNDS LIKE BLINKY BILL PEELED A FRUIT AT OLD CITY (5,6) 3. Botched ALP hymn like a goddess of nature (7) 5, 24-across. Lump the first man should not have eaten (4’1,5) 6. Goanna left mixer for African native (7) 7. Where three planes meet and crash dire north (9) 8. I think of what Rene said before, thus 2+2 = 4 (6) 9. Caribbean worker finds detailed lizard (8) 15. Watch Nintendo console brews and grain clearances (4,5) 16. Convert mini site to question ownership (2,2,4) 17. Half-dead Spanish racqueteer a procrastinator (8) 19. Blokes I messed with found stone pillar (7) 20, 21-down. Panda lust able to rock London band Once More (7,6) 21. See 20-down 23. Go and mix deity of grain and fish (5) 25. Many soft lump (5) Brain Teaser: Shoe
Answers The Quiz: 1. MF Doom 2. 1896 3. Tom Cruise 4. Aristotle 5. LSD 6. Macedonia 7. Tyrion Lannister 8. The Blue Whale 9. Paul Ryan 10. Roman Polanski 11. The Stranger 12. Switzerland 13. Four: Italy, Croatia, Austria and Hungary 14. Peep Show 15. Papua New Guinea 16. BMX Racing 17. Lord Mountbatten 18. Hunter S. Thompson 19. New Order 20. Eat them
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honi soit
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SRC Help
Do you need financial assistance to complete your studies? If so, we might be able to help. Zonta International is a global organisation of women in business and the professions working together to advance the status of women through service and advocacy. Currently, there are more than 30,000 members in 70 countries. Zonta makes a difference by advancing the status of women internationally, nationally and locally. The Zonta Club of Northern Beaches Inc. is a Division of Zonta International and provides women with some funding so that they can complete tertiary level studies. To be eligible, you need to reside on the northern beaches of Sydney, have successfully completed 12 months of your current course, and provide evidence of financial difficulty. We can help with course costs such as textbooks, computer equipment, fieldwork
excursions etc. You can apply any time – there is no closing date. Your completed application form plus two references is considered by the Status of Women Committee and the Board of the Zonta Club of Northern Beaches and we will contact you to let you know of the outcome. The process usually takes about a month. If you’d like more information contact Lorraine Smith lorraine.smith@sydney.edu.au You can access more details and the application form here: http://www.zontadistrict24.org/clubs/area1-sydney-east-north/northern-beaches
The Students’ Representative Council (SRC) Legal Service has a solicitor on Darlington campus to provide free legal advice, representation in court and a referral service to undergraduate students at Sydney University. Knowing the law can be tough without getting some help first. If you would like legal advice, representation in court or simply need to know who to talk to, the SRC Legal Service can provide help free of charge. The SRC Legal Service solicitor can assist you with a wide range of legal issues such as:
• Family law (advice only) • Criminal law • Traffic offences • Insurance law • Domestic violence • Employment law • Credit & debt • Consumer complaints • Victims compensation • Discrimination and harassment • Tenancy law • Administrative law (government etc) • Immigration advice (one session only) • University complaints • Other general complaints Note: The solicitor cannot advise on immigration law but can refer you to migration agents and community centres.
For Family Law and Property Relationships Act matters we can refer you to solicitors who charge at a fair rate.
Appointments Phone the SRC Office to make an appointment 9660 5222 Drop-in sessions Tuesdays & Thursdays 1pm-3pm (no need for an appointment) Location Level 1, Wentworth Building (under the footbridge on City Road) Darlington Campus NEED a Justice of the Peace? Here is a list of JP’s on campus: http://www.usyd.edu.au/staff/directories/jps.shtml If you are a postgraduate student
please contact SUPRA www.supra.usyd.edu.au or phone 02 9351 3715 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 The SRC’s operational costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.
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Ask Abe Dear Abe, I am currently staying with my girlfriend in her parents’ house. Her parents are really lovely, but I think it is causing a strain in all of our relationships. I moved out of my house because things were really awful there. Do you know if there is cheap housing available through the university? Strained
Dear Strained, I am sorry to hear that things are awful in your home. If it is because of physical, emotional or sexual violence you may be eligible for Youth Allowance (Unreasonable To Live At Home). Hopefully that will help with your finances. The University does have some low rent beds available but not very many. 40 are administered through the housing unit and another 40 are through STUCCO, the student housing co-operative. In terms of emergency or temporary housing while you’re trying to get somewhere permanent to stay you can talk to SRC Help for some ideas. This way you can preserve your relationship with your girlfriend and her parents. Abe
Abe is the SRC’s welfare dog. 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.
POSITION VACANT
HONI SOIT Distribution Casual Staff See www.src.usyd.edu.au for job details. Applications close 3pm 16 August. Interviews on Friday 17 August. $35/hour, 4 hours per week. Own vehicle required. Send your CV and a 100 word statement outlining your ability to do the job to jobs@src.usyd.edu.au
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SRC Reports President’s Report: Wireless
president@src.usyd.edu.au
Phoebe Drake reports on the university’s less than adequate wireless service
Where’s Wireless? Finding wireless on campus can be, at the best of times, exceedingly difficult. From black holes, to slow internet, it is clear there is much work to be done to improve the quality of wireless service delivered to students and staff. Consequently, the SRC is working with the University’s IT department to ensure upgrades are provided in the areas where students need it most. Over the last month, the SRC has run a survey around issues with wireless on campus, receiving over 300 responses so far. The responses gathered will help guide the list of prioritised areas for wireless upgrades. Importantly, funding will be put aside for satellite campuses to ensure they also receive needed upgrades. Interestingly, upgrading wireless is not as easy as it seems. With congestion issues prevalent in locations like Carslaw, and the requirements associated with heritage buildings, such as the Quadrangle, some small obstacles remain.
So what will the prioritised list for upgrades look like? Respondents to the SRC’s ‘Where’s Wireless’ survey, noted extensive issues with Fisher Library, the Quadrangle, Carslaw, Mereweather, Bosch and Holme. It should be noted here that both Fisher and the Pharmacy Building are already being looked at for upgrades, and students should expect to see improvements by November. Respondents also noted additional areas lacking efficient wireless, including Engineering, the Chemistry Building and Eastern Avenue. Where’s Wireless also asked what specific issues were experienced when connecting to wireless on campus. The following table identifies specific problems experienced by students on campus:
Specific issue
%
Cannot access wireless Cannot access wireless in some parts The internet is always slow The internet is occasionally slow
74.7 60.4
Cannot download
50.6 31.0 17.1
But why is quality wireless so important? In an age of increasing and improving technology, wireless on campus gives students flexibility with where, and when, they study. As the University works towards building
a virtual community across campus, wireless is an essential part of this. Moreover, technology in general is an integral part of the learning experience, and is an area where Sydney University must not lag. In an age where students work, have multiple commitments and also classes that clash, ensuring both flexible study spaces and learning opportunities is incredibly important. This means making sure students have access to 24 hour study spaces, and that all lectures are provided online. This is not to say that technology should replace the traditional learning experience of tutorials and lecturesindeed, continuing to advocate for smaller class sizes is something the SRC is committed to. However, ensuring that students have the option of accessing their course reader, and lectures online can facilitate the learning experience and relieve stress placed on students. Occasionally, I’m questioned over my stance on lecture recordings and asked if this will simply result in fewer students attending classes. The simple fact is that if a student wants to be in class, they will be there, unless there is some other commitment (such as work) that prevents them from going. There will always be a small percentage of every class that does not attend lectures, but this is no reason to punish other students who need their lecture recorded to ensure they can both study, and learn. Moreover, for students living with a disability and international students, lecture recordings provide an
General Secretary’s Report
opportunity to revise for assessments and exams. And despite what is so often said, the time most students download lecture recordings is 10pm on a Sunday night, which is testimony to the fact that students need their lectures recorded so they can revise. At the moment, the SRC is working to update the flexible learning policy of the university to reflect the need for online learning sources, such as lecture recordings. If you have any questions or comments on this, please feel free to get in touch.
The Woolley building suffers notoriously from poor wireless connections
general.secretary@src.usyd.edu.au
Tim Matthews urges students to have a red hot go tion, but one (and perhaps the most hands-on) way that you contribute is to run in the upcoming SRC elections. As you will no doubt see elsewhere in Honi, nominations are closing soon for a range of positions. Before all the craziness of another campus election begins (brace yourself, winter is coming, etc.), I thought I would take this opportunity to explain what is actually happening:
Election of the SRC President
In the past, I have used my report in Honi to tell you different things that I love about our SRC. I am constantly astounded by the passion, commitment, and insight of your student representatives and the work that they do. That students have such an extensive capacity to critique, challenge, and change different elements of university and public policy is remarkable. In many senses, though, the SRC’s voice is only as good as the number of students willing to contribute to it. There are so many ways to make a contribu-
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The SRC’s President is involved in all aspects of the organisation. Internally, they work with all the staff and other office bearers to coordinate SRC programs and activities. They also have a significant role in external relations, meeting frequently with the university, government, and speaking to the media. Just have a flick through Phoebe’s reports from last semester to see the wide gamut of activities she is engaged with.
Election of the SRC Council The SRC is ultimately governed by a council of 33 students. Meeting monthly, the council is a forum for debate and discussion on all manner of policy. The council also elects and holds accountable all the office bearers (such as yours
truly), who present reports each month on their activities. Council meetings are open to everyone, and you don’t have to be a representative to attend.
Election of Representatives to the National Union of Students The National Union of Students is the peak representative body for tertiary students across the country. The Sydney University Students Representative Council is affiliated with NUS, and thus elects delegates to attend its National Conference held in December. At the conference, delegates will discuss and vote on policy, and elect the NUS national executive for 2013.
Election of Editors of Honi Soit If you are reading this, you obviously have some idea about what Honi Soit is all about. If you fancy yourself a budding Murdoch, the undergraduate students at this uni will be electing ten student editors to write the only weekly student newspaper in the country!
@honi_soit
Get the message yet?
SRC Reports Womens Officer’s Report: KNIGHTESS
womens.officers@src.usyd.edu.au
Kate O’Brien celebrates women in the arts with upcoming performance KNIGHTESS
KNIGHTESS is a Performance Night showcasing women and their amazing talents. Kicking off at 6PM on Monday 20th August at Manning Bar, the night will be jam-packed with entertaining fun! The evening will be comprised of a spectacular variety of all-women performers including spoken word by Caitlin Still, as well as wonderful musicians such as Eirwen Skye, Rainbow Chan, Kimberley Aviso, Violet Pulp and many more! There will even be a zine stall! KNIGHTESS will be fundraising for Lou’s Place, a daytime drop-in centre for women located in the heart of Kings Cross. Lou’s is well-established and does plenty of fantastic work within Sydney’s community. It is a great opportunity to support an important resource for women while also recognising the often undervalued and unrecognised contribu-
tion women make to the performing arts. So, come along and celebrate women in performing arts for a great cause! Entry is by donation, all are welcomed – encouraged, in fact – to attend! There will be free chips and drinks provided by Manning Bar to the first 50 ACCESS card holders who turn up on the night! It promises to be a night full of magical women, music, spoken word poetry, glitter and tiny kittens, some zines and cheap drinks! Make sure you swing by to check out the talent, have a drink with some friends and enjoy the night knowing you are making a difference! Bring your friends, dancing shoes and generosity; it is set to be an awesome night!
Featured act: Rainbow Chan
Education Officer’s Report: Graduate Losers?
education.officers@src.usyd.edu.au
David Pink fights the free market justifications for cutting university funding
‘Graduate Winners’: Why An Abbott Government Means An End To Education As We All Know It Need another reason not to vote Liberal next election? Abbott’s intellectual bedfellow, the Grattan Institute, has released its long-awaited higher education agenda, which looks likely to be implemented by a first-term Liberal government. ‘Graduate Winners’ recommends, among other things, the immediate halving of per-student funding to universities, with a ‘phased’ cut of $7 billion by next Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney
Notice of 2012 Students’ Representative Council Annual Election
decade (i.e. a complete cut in subsidies for ‘non-priority’ degrees like commerce, arts and law). This, the institute assures us, “would not be a cut to university funding,” because “universities would be allowed to increase their student charges to cover any loss.” There we have it: the free-market boffins plan to move further than Howard ever did and deregulate tuition fees. They have given up pretending that this has anything to do with providing incentives for quality degrees or giving students ‘choice’. If recent experiments with deregulation in the U.K. are anything to go off,
it won’t be long before every university in Australia sells all of their degrees at the absolute maximum rate (to cover the immediate $3 billion shortfall in funding, universities will need to start charging $100,000 for a basic degree). The Grattan Institute has a pretty clear message to students: it doesn’t matter how much you have to pay for your degree, because you’ll do it anyway as long as we let you pay it back later. In some sense, they’re right. Students will always want to be educated, but of course common sense and reality reject the idea that it’s reasonable to place another $3 billion of crippling HECS debt on students.
We’re talking a move to the American system: where high school graduates face a choice between minimum wage employment in Wal-Mart, or getting an education and spending the rest of their lives paying off their student loans. Education is a right, not a privilege – that means we all deserve free, fair and funded education with equity of access to students, no matter their background. Our parents got it, and so did the authors of this report. I’m not going to pretend that the governments of Gillard and Rudd, or Hawke and Keating, did much for education, but seriously - we need to do everything we can to stop Abbott.
Nominations for the Students’ Representative Council Annual Elections for the year 2012 close at 4.30pm Wednesday 22nd August 2012. Polling will be held on the 19th and 20th of September 2012. Pre-polling will also take place outside the SRC Offices Level 1 Wentworth Building on Tuesday 18th of September 2012 from 10 am - 3pm. All students who are duly enrolled for attendance at lectures are eligible to vote. Members of the student body who have paid their nomination fee to Council are eligible to nominate and be nominated, except National Union of Students national office bearers. Fulltime officebearers of the SRC may also nominate as NUS delegates.
Nomination forms can be downloaded from the SRC website: www.src.usyd.edu.au, or picked up from SRC Front Office (Level 1, Wentworth Building).
Nominations are called for the following elections/positions and open 1st August 2012 at 8pm:
Nominations which have not been delivered either to the locked box in the SRC front office or to the post office box shown above and submitted online by the close of nominations will not be accepted regardless of when they were posted.
(a) The election of the Representatives to the 85th SRC (33 positions) (b) The election of the President of the 85th SRC (c) The election of the Editor(s) of Honi Soit for the 85th SRC (d) The election of National Union of Students delegates for the 85th SRC (7 positions)
honisoit.com
Nominations must also be lodged online along with your policy statement and Curriculum Vitae (optional), by close of nominations at: www.src.usyd.edu.au. For more information, call 9660 5222. Signed nomination forms and a printed copy of your online nomination must be received no later than 4.30pm on Wednesday 22nd August, either in the locked box at the SRC Front Office (Level 1 Wentworth), or at the following address: PO Box 794, Broadway NSW 2007.
The Regulations of the SRC relating to elections are available on-line at www.src.usyd.edu.au or from the SRC Front Office (level 1, Wentworth Building). Authorised by Paulene Graham, SRC Electoral Officer 2012. Students’ Representative Council, The University of Sydney Phone: 02 9660 5222 | www.src.usyd.edu.au
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The Sandstone Report Another Day, Another Drink with Dr Rupert Thorogood
Time, what a fickle thing it is. What did Shakespeare say of it? “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives”. Indeed. Time, I am afraid to say, has not been kind to me of late. Try though I may to avoid catching my own gaze in the bathroom mirror, it corners me, traps me with the shock and awe of my ruined skin, once porcelain, now crumpled and blotched, with a ruby red
patchwork sprawling across my button nose. My hair, long grey, now thins and recedes, and a certain roundness has gathered in the mid-section, pressing against my stained shirt. O, ‘tis a monstrous sight. Time, it adds up and it counts down. Minutes tick away and deadlines inch closer. Normally they can be waved away with an innocent plea to the Dean or the
“Foundations of pharmacy… Foundations of pharmacy…”, the words played over and over in my mind like the CD player in the cruiser (golf-buggy – Eds.) that’s stuck on repeat. “Foundations of pharmacy” – it was code for something, I was sure of it. I just didn’t know what. Yet. I’d tried to find a secret code, but no dice. Either there was no code or my nemesis had managed to outsmart three whole pages of “secret code breaker” Google search results. That’s when it hit me: it was an anagram! In preparation for my call-up to Interpol, I research crime-fighting techniques in my spare time (play Minesweeper at the Campus Security office – Eds.). As part of my research I’d recently
watched a documentary called The Da Vinci Code, by renowned criminologist Professor Daniel Brown. Detective Chief Inspector Brown explained that all high-level criminals leave lexical calling cards to goad law-enforcement officers. “Anachronism puffy ado to… Dichotomous fray fan pan… Functionary spoof ham ad…” no matter how I re-arranged the letters I couldn’t get them to make sense. “Handicraftsman o you fop… Conformation ashy fad up… Profound of hasty maniac.” There it was. It’d been right in front of my eyes the whole time! The suspected criminal, or as I’d taken to calling him – the ‘The Quad Lawn Killer’, had made a hasty escape last week, he was certainly a maniac and it was going to take a pro (me) to found… to foun-, to… to find, him. This changed everything. I knew I had to act fast – it wouldn’t be long before he struck again. I grabbed my nightstick (lead-pipe – Eds.) and I was off into the night (early afternoon – Eds.)! The rain lashed at my face as I made
publisher: extra research needed, a last minute field study, yada yada yada. I once bought myself a six month extension by claiming a research assistant had botched the data collection. Little did they suspect that I had actually knocked my laptop off the balcony in a drunken stumble: the only thing the assistant botched was my blowjob. I did not receive one. This time, however, I have no goodwill left to exploit. If I am not published in one of the Spring journals, I will be stripped of my PhD students, fired from the university, and hung out to dry. And while that would mercifully mean no more Belinda, it would also entail no Olivia... And without her livening my heart I am but a sunken reservoir of whiskey and regret. Time, it’s a thief. It lurks in the hallways and in these drawers, in the photos of forgotten friends and, most literally, on the clock on the wall. Its seconds rush past with an audible click, each one jabbing me with the skewer of hopelessness. My contextual comparison of Ibsen and
my way down Eastern Avenue, the wind freezing my bones despite the hi-vis jacket wrapped tightly around me. As soon as I reached the Quad, I could tell something was not right. “The scene of the crime”, I thought to myself as I made my way through the throng of students milling about waiting for class, “surely even a hardened criminal like the Quad Lawn Killer wouldn’t be so stupid as to return”. That’s when I saw him. He was standing with some friends under the jacaranda tree, doing an awfully good job of looking innocent. But I knew otherwise.
Welcome to the Big Smoke with Mitch Higgins
Well I’ll tell you what, Mum and Dad tried their best with the trip to Barraba, but nothing, not even the Barraba Bunnings, could’ve prepared me for the bright lights and loud noises of the big smoke! On my property, out Bundarra way, our nearest neighbour, Reg, is more
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than a bloody cooee away. Just to get to the road, let alone to town, takes an hour, so you lot, with your 24 hour convenience stores and your paved roads have got it pretty damn good if you ask me. That said, I just don’t know how youse tolerate living in your terrace houses, stacked on top of one another like bloody sardines! The place I’m renting, along with a bunch of top young blokes who speak really good English for foreigners, is so squished you don’t have room to swing a dead cat! Pretty excited to have finally moved though! Dad wanted me to stay on the farm and keep doing uni via distance ed but I explained to him that in this 21st Century you’ve gotta move with the Internet and log on to the times. That said, it’s been a pretty steep learning curve – I’ve never been able to just turn something on without starting the generator up first! I could
O’Neill remains an incoherent mess, like myself after a hefty serving of vermouth. Time. The clock’s sneering judgment is inescapable. It makes me angry. Its hands want to strangle me but I shan’t let it. I tear it off the wall and smash it to the ground. Aha! In pieces it shatters, joining the shards of last night’s bottle of red, which I must have kicked off the desk in my stupor. Safe, safe now from the wretched clock. Only the computer screen taunts me now, its cruel blankness a reminder of my once-prodigious output, an ability not destroyed - no, sir, not destroyed, you cur - but merely missing, lost, misplaced, subsided, depressed. But there is no blank page a shot of Dutch courage cannot remedy! I will discharge my duties and then I will discharge in Olivia: for, once my name returns to the dazzling lights of peer-reviewed quarterlies, what young damsel could resist my advances!? Ah yes, Rupert! A plan. You’ve hatched it. And it cannot fail. Wassail.
You don’t think in moments like this, your training just kicks in. So before I even knew what was happening, I was cutting a swathe through his henchmen (bludgeoning students indiscriminately – Eds.) to try and catch the perp. I drew closer to my target only to have him turn and escape once again. Damn! As the red mist slowly started to lift, the screaming began. I looked down at the injured, bloodied bodies lying around me and the gravity of the situation started to sink in. The Quad Lawn Killer had struck again, injuring countless innocents in his evil attempts to mess up the lawns, and I hadn’t been able to stop him. I’d been right there and he’d gotten away. He won’t be so lucky next time.
Seen s u s p a ny t h i n a ny i c i o u s? g thin S g at e e n C o nt a a w w w c t S a m ll ? i r at .hon isoit .c o m
store, says, not everyone in Sydney is get used to this ‘grid’ electricity, and this gay, foreign or Presbyterian. On top of ‘running’ water, you cityslickers have that, I haven’t seen a single Sydney-sider got. I do miss some stuff about back with horns, wings or X-ray vision so I home though. Strike me pink if I don’t guess not everything you’re taught at wake up every morning wishing it was school is true! the gentle calls of two lovestruck honeyeaters getting me out of bed and not the drunken brawling of those two homeless blokes that live in our back-alley. Still, can’t complain, the air might taste like a Hilux’s exhaust and you can’t see the stars for shit, but Sydney’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. I’m actually thinking of writing a letter to the editor of the Bundarra Tribune – a mate of mine that I went to school with until he dropped out in year 9 – telling everyone that despite what Talk about bloody luxury, you cityslickers don’t Vera, who runs the general know how good you’ve got it!
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The Back Page FROM THE VAULT: CARTOONS BY ROBERT HUGHES
It is not known when the first mobile was made. According to the researchers of Dr. Pappenhacker of Yale University, however, the first example was made in the Upper Euphrates Valley in a garden. The extreme naturalism of the specimen is worthy of note.
The mobile first emerged in modern society as a sport form . . .
The first known example of the political use of the mobile occurred in the time of DAMOCLES (q.v.). This form of political coercion is rare, although occurring occasionally in modern society.
. . . and soon emerged into the central focus of 20th century culture . . .
. . . and to cultural advancement . . .
It was not long before the mobile acquired religious significance.
. . . lending its aid in turn to Medicine . . .
. . . and finally developed into utmost refinement.
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Honi Soit Opinion competition 2012
limbo
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The Honi Soit Opinion Competition is back for the last time ever (using the Mayan calendar). It’s your chance to win $1500! Entries will be between 700 and 800 words on the theme of ‘LIMBO’. Judged by Joe Hildebrand, entries should be between 700-800 words, and the winners will get cash prizes and their works published in Honi Soit. Deadline: Midnight, Wednesday 26 September 2012, emailed to opinion@src.usyd.edu.au. Include: Full name, year, degree, faculty, student ID number, email address and phone number
The Opinion Competition is made possible by the generous donations of one of the University’s most supportive alumni.