The Fight to Save Gender and Cultural Studies

The Fight to Save Gender & Cultural Studies

By Maddie Clark

Sydney University wants to cut our courses. Last year, under a new management proposal called “FUTURE FASS” it was leaked that the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences would undergo major changes. While management and the Dean at the time, Annamarie Jagose, attempted to sell the cuts as beneficial, students and staff knew better.

With the new restructures up to 250 undergraduate subjects and over 240 postgraduate courses would no longer be taught. Department autonomy would also be jeopardized as schools would be merged under different management umbrellas.

This would severely impact Gender and Cultural Studies. Gender and Cultural Studies stands apart in FASS as a unique department. Queer and gender diverse students find a home in GCS where their experiences are theorised and understood.

As Third-year GCS student Misbah Ansari said at a rally on the issue, “GCS has always been interdisciplinary, focussing on the personal as the political, identity, and with several units questioning the conventional academic structure. We need this Department’s integrity now more than ever.”

The cuts to GCS and to FASS in general make even less sense in relation to the finances of the uni. FASS itself was projected to make a surplus of $135 million in 2021 and while other universities have lost income due to COVID, Sydney Uni has seen its enrolments and profits skyrocket. university sector since 2020 and countless courses and departments have been decimated.

These cuts are devastating but they are not something new. They represent an escalation of a decades-long trend to transform universities into the U.S. style corporate model. In this project the government and university management are united.

Government funding over the last decade has been $10billion less than what was projected in 2010. With the introduction of Dan Tehan’s Jobready Graduates Package, costs were shifted onto students as degrees were tripled in cost.

Although universities condemned being left out of JobKeeper, they have been only too happy with the overall shift. COVID in particular has given them the perfect scapegoat to make the cuts they have wanted to make for years.

As students and activists it is our responsibility to fight. Last year, over 250 students gathered in a historic Student General Meeting to vote on a motion condemning the cuts. This was just one action in a slew of protests and activism that was organised to defend FASS.

These actions must continue into 2022.

As 2022 USyd Women’s Officer and GSC student Monica said, “Although the university seems to be in control of our education, the reality is that its staff and students make it run. We are the university and through activism, industrial action and solidarity we can win.”