2023 Countercourse & Orientation & Handbook

Acknowledgement of Country

The University of Sydney sits on stolen Indigenous Land. Main campus as well the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council does the majority of its work on Gadigal land. This land was, is and always will be Aboriginal land. We pay our respects to elders past and present and support the voices of First Nations people demanding justice.

It is important to recognise the role of USyd in the colonisation of the surrounding area. William Wentworth, namesake of the Wentworth building, Wentworth medal and celebrated with a statue in the Great Hall was a key coloniser of the area, and paved the way for frontier violence against First Nations people. The elite nature of the University of Sydney does not remain in the past, and the University remains systematically more difficult for First Nations people to access.

As students in the SRC, we recognise this unequal system, and choose to take the side of First Nations students, staff and community members on all issues. We look to the incredible resistance against colonialism of First Nations communities in nearby Redfern and Glebe, and further afield in La Perouse. We stand with First Nations people in their struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, treaties and justice.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

EDITORIAL

SRC General Secretaries, Jasmine Donnelly & Tiger Perkins

Welcome to Sydney Uni.

To the daring few of you who read this, let us explain. We have been commissioned by your Students’ Representative Council to envision and create a radically chic handbook to help you orientate yourself within your chosen institution. Throughout the years, the Orientation Handbook has been dubbed the ‘no-bullshit guide’ to the University of Sydney. For those who read every word, you will come out enlightened, ahead of your peers in every possible way and yet you will also understand that competition is a neoliberal facade, designed to disrupt thriving student communities.

This handbook is full of useful information as well as tips on how to obscure the fact you are a first year on campus - and how to make your transition to university life a fun one! Find info on your courses, where to go out around USyd, your legal rights as a student and other basic stuff you should know but no one tells you.

The Students’ Representative Council is located down the stairs at the side of the Wentworth Building and is essentially a bunker. There is no natural light in here, meaning we have no idea what time it is as we bravely fight the evil forces who work to devalue your degree and erode student welfare. It does not have mould and you should stop by and have a chat with any of your student reps and caseworkers because it does not have mould and we would love to meet you.

This handbook also holds reports from all corners of the SRC - information about how to survive your specific faculty or school, as well as how you can get involved in activism on campus. We urge you to join a collective, it’s a great way to meet new friends with similar interests and values, as well as mitigate the Everpresent Doom Of The Future.

SRC General Secretaries,

Jasmine Donnelly & Tiger Perkins

President’s Welcome

SRC President, Lia Perkins writes from the throne

Hello! My name is Lia, I’m the President of the Students’ Representative Council in 2023. Welcome to (or welcome back to) USyd! I’m going to give you a brief introduction to the SRC, outline what the higher education system you’re a part of looks like, and address a few of the SRC’s priorities in 2023.

The SRC is the peak representative body of University of Sydney Students. We are independent of the University, but rely on their allocation of SSAF funding. We run a few important, free services for students, including a casework service, legal service and we co-run the FoodHub (alongside the USU). The SRC is also the beating heart of student activism on campus - from large Student General Meetings to support for strikes. Any student can get involved with the SRC’s collectives, run for council or nominate to be an office bearer. As the President I also sit on numerous University Committees where I can raise problems students are having with the University (such as the enormous delays on special considerations) and agitate for broader change.

Students involved in the SRC believe in fighting for a better future. The higher education system we’ve been stuck with is not working for us. Since the passage of the Job-Ready Graduates bill in 2020, University education has cost more and

been funded less. Being a student is hard - we’re facing a cost of living crisis, housing is completely unaffordable and the University system (as you will soon find) is difficult to navigate. All while the planet looms closer to ecological collapse and First Nations people are demanding sovereignty, treaties and justice as they have been doing for centuries.

I am in this role because I believe this system isn’t working and that when students come together to fight for a better world, we have a chance of winning. University education isn’t just about what you learn in the classroom. It’s what you learn everywhere else, and what you do about it that counts. So, in 2023, I implore you to think big. The SRC and its collectives will be running campaigns for First Nations Justice, to end sexual violence on campus and abolish the elite colleges of USyd, for no new fossil fuel projects and a just transition for workers, for safe, affordable and accessible student accommodation. There is so much worth fighting for, now is the time!

What is the SRC?

The SRC is the peak representative platform for students to make their voices heard on everything from academic issues, like tutorial sizes, to student welfare, as well as wider issues that students feel are relevant, including the climate crisis and a better education system.

We fight for an education system free of fees, unnecessary suffering and with quality teaching and learning. We believe in student rights on campusending sexual violence - and off campus - a safe, liveable planet for our future. We provide a free and confidential legal and casework service, lobby the university for better student and staff conditions and also publish Honi Soit - the oldest weekly, printed student newspaper in the country.

Governance

The SRC is made up of a 41-person council, an Executive Committee, that makes administrative decisions on behalf of council, and a number of student Office Bearers, who run campaigns for the benefit of students at Sydney University and in the wider community.

All students in representative positions are elected in one of two ways. In Semester 2 every year, we have an election where students run, campaign and vote for the President, Representatives of the SRC, delegates to the National Union of Students and editors of Honi Soit. The 41 Representatives make up the council, which meets the first Wednesday of every month, to hear reports, debate political questions and decide funding allocations. It is chaired by the President and is open to all undergraduate students to attend.

At the first meeting of the Council they elect the Office Bearers of the SRC, who are tasked with advocacy and activism in their respective departments. The Office Bearers are the best contact to get involved with student activism. You can find their details in the SRC website, and check out the overview of the different collectives on the next page.

Unlike most student associations, the SRC doesn’t have a non-student General Manager. We believe in

student control of student affairs– the President is the Chief Executive Officer, which means Office Bearers and staff report directly to the President and ultimately to Council. Your President has the ear of top university officials, including the ViceChancellor and sits on a number of university committees. You can be guaranteed that there is always someone speaking up for the student interest because frankly she is one.

Casework Service

The SRC Casework service is made up of experienced caseworkers who provide free, independent and confidential advice on a range of issues.

If you need help or advice, fill out the Caseworker Contact Form at bit.ly/3YxvDUf or phone 9660 5222 to make an appointment. Issues covered by the casework service include but are not limited to: academic rights and appeals; special consideration and special arrangements; HECS and fee refunds; academic misconduct and dishonesty allegations; show cause and exclusion, Centrelink issues; harassment and discrimination; and financial and tenancy issues.

Resources created by the Casework service are available at srcusyd.net.au/src-help and pages 14–15 of this handbook.

Legal Service

The SRC Legal service is a legal service staffed by solicitors and volunteers who provide free, confidential and timely legal advice in relation to a variety of legal issues that may face undergraduate students at the University of Sydney.

If you need help or advice with any of the following issues, phone 96605222 to make an appointment. Addressed by the legal service, include the following: police & court matters; traffic, transport offences and fines; immigration law and visas; employment law; consumer rights; NCAT matters.

SSAF: An Explainer

WHAT IS SSAF?

The Student Service and Amenities Fee is a fee charged to students once every semester by the university, and is used to provide non-academic services, including support services, advice and advocacy services, recreational activities and food services. This fee is charged to all students whether or not you use these services. All providers of higher education in Australia are allowed to charge SSAF, but it is up to their discretion if they do and how much they charge.

HOW MUCH DO I HAVE TO PAY?

In 2023, USyd will charge $163 in SSAF for full time study, and $122.25 for part time study, both of which will be charged in two equal installments per semester.

If you don’t pay your SSAF, sanctions can be placed on end-of-semester marks, meaning that your results will be withheld until it is paid. You can also be prevented from enrolling the next year, so it is best to pay sooner rather than later, whether directly or through the deferral program SA-HELP.

SA-HELP

SA-HELP is a loan scheme by the Australian Government to defer payment of SSAF, similar to HECS-HELP. You can apply for a SA-HELP loan via Sydney Student before the census date - best to do near the start of your enrolment and get it out of the way! Once you apply, you don’t have to apply again throughout your degree unless you change universities.

To be eligible for an SA-HELP loan, you must be an Australian citizen, or hold a permanent humanitarian visa or a New Zealand Special Category Visa and meet the residency requirements.

Important Dates

COLLECTIVES & ACTIVISM

WHAT ARE THE SRC’S COLLECTIVES?

The SRC funds and oversees a large number of collectives, typically based around social justice issues or identities. Collectives are entierly self-governed and made-up of students, often with a focus on activist campaigns for positive change on and off-campus or providing a safe space for students. Below you will be introduced to a number of the most active collectives. If you are interested in getting involved, follow the contact details below or message the USYD SRC FB page.

QUEER ACTION COLLECTIVE (QUAC)

Office Bearers: Ella Pash, Yasmine Andrews

emergency and the lack of action by our governments. Although climate denialism is no longer in vogue, greenwashing is. We want to call this out and demand real action now.

The Queer Action Collective, known commonly as QuAC, is a leftist organizing group on campus that focuses its efforts on queer rights, but as our liberation intersects with many social issues we often work in collaboration or solidarity with other collectives on campus. Last semester we focused on a mutual aid effort to provide binders and gaffs to students at no cost, supporting the NTEU in their demand for annual gender affirmation demand, and worked to build back a robust queer community as we return to campus post COVID. This coming year brings a lot of exciting opportunities as world pride comes to Sydney, as well as the federal election season, so expect to see us out on the streets fighting for our rights and our community.

This year we are excited to continue growing the collective, and plan to host both political and social events, which we will be sharing largely through our instagram page @ usydqueer as well as our facebook “USYD Queer Action Collective”, so follow us there to stay up to date throughout the semester.

ENVIRONMENT COLLECTIVE (ENVIRO)

Office Bearers: Rory Larkins, Maddie Clarke, Simon Upitis; Convenors: James Sherriff, Angus Dermody, Marcus Langdale, Rory Larkins

As activists we think that we can’t just sit back nicely and wait for things to change. As individuals we don’t have power, but as a collective we do. In 2023 we want to be a part of rebuilding a left wing culture on campus that looks to radical action for change.

Finally, we see that the environment is not a single issue, but connected to the system as a whole. Although our focus is on climate justice, we also want to draw the connections between the other inequalities in our society.

It’s never too late to get involved and we are excited to meet anyone who wants to fight for a better world. The planet is worth it!

DISABILITIES COLLECTIVE (DISCO)

Office Bearers: Khanh Tran, Jack Scanlan

The SRC Disabilities Collective, affectionately known as DisCo, was founded in 2012 and is a collective by and for students with disabilities and allies. We organise campaigns to raise the voice of the disabled student and staff community at Sydney University and beyond, partnering with other disabilities activists on campus and other universities. Beyond this, we hold fortnightly organising meetings in which snacks will be provided in a community atmosphere.

The Environment Collective is an activist group on campus dedicated to organising for climate justice. We are students who have been politicised by the state of the climate

In one of the more exciting developments of the year, we are looking forward to the opening of the joint SRC x SUPRA x USU Disabilities Space in 2023, and a packed year of activism ahead for DisCo. We are also looking to wage campaigns surrounding USyd’s broken promise for tactile routes on campus, reversing anti-student moves to tighten up assessments thereby punishing students, the chronic lack of

support for disabled staff and so much more.

We warmly welcome new members and activists to build our community and hold to account the ableist forces that, too often, surrounds us. Join us today by messaging us on our Facebook page at: facebook.com/USYDdis

Otherwise, feel free to contact the 2023 Disabilities Officers, Khanh Tran or Jack Scanlan, on our social media profiles:

Khanh Tran: facebook.com/Dancing.foreverandever/ Jack Scanlan: facebook.com/profile. php?id=100015695238332

AUTONOMOUS COLLECTIVE AGAINST RACISM (ACAR)

Office Bearers: Rand

The Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) is a left-wing, progressive collective that organises and builds against racism, colonialism, imperialism and all forms of oppression which impact people of colour. In 2023, we will be centring our work around the 75th anniversary of the Nakba - the settler colonial invasion of the land of Palestine in 1948 and its ongoing effects on the Palestinian people. This will be done through contextualising the Palestinian struggle with local First Nations struggles: Black Deaths in Custody, Land Back, Treaty, and looking at what it means to decolonise and preserve indigenous sovereignty. ACAR will further build anti-racist campaigns as suggested by members - so get involved! ACAR is open to USyd students who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, a person of colour, or are marginalised by white supremacy. We encourage students who don’t fall under these categories to support ACAR in our various ally-friendly events that we will organise throughout the year.

EDUCATION ACTION GROUP (EAG)

Office Bearers: Ishbel Dunsmore & Yasmine Johnson

broader social issues like restrictions on the right to protest. Going into semester 1, we’ll be demanding that the university cut its insidious ties with weapons manufacturers like Thales, whom the university recently renewed a deal with. We will also continue fighting for fully-funded, free education.

Find the EAG on Facebook or Instagram to get involved with our campaigns!

Facebook: Sydney University Education Action Group Instagram: @usyd.education.action

WELFARE ACTION GROUP (WAG)

Office Bearers: Ella Haid, Felix Tonkin, Harrison Brennan, Eleanor Douglas

The Welfare Action Group (WAG) is an activist collective on campus that campaigns for economic and social justice inside and beyond the university. We organise to support the welfare of students and non-students by fighting against all forms of inequality and discrimination. We are a non-hierarchical and pluralist space open to all and we host meetings fortnightly. Through collective student action, we use open letters, protests and myriad other actions to push for substantial improvements in welfare for students and non-students alike. WAG campaigns for better student support services, adequate campus mental health and disability support, worker’s rights, affordable universal housing, quality social security systems, First Nations justice. We also fight to end sexual assault and harassment on campus, organise volunteers for the SRC mutual-aid initiative, Food Hub, and much more! Like our Facebook Page and Join the Facebook Group: USYD Welfare Action Group.

WOMEN’S COLLECTIVE (WOCO)

Office Bearers: Iggy Boyd, Alev Saracoglu

The Sydney University Education Action Group (EAG) is an activist collective dedicated to fighting for free, quality education. We campaign around a range of issues, from opposing course cuts to supporting staff strikes. In 2022, we were involved in a solidarity campaign with the staff union (NTEU) for better pay and conditions, and mobilised students to attend staff strikes. We’ve previously helped organise national fightbacks against the fee hikes and job cuts across the university sector, as well as around

Open to women and non-binary people, we gather weekly for radical feminist organising. We operate on a broad political platform including but not limited to – abolitionist feminism, abolishing the colleges in favor of affordable housing, reproductive justice, trans liberation, workers’ rights, and the fight against sexual violence. First Nations justice is central to the liberation that we are fighting for. Genocide never ended, with First Nations people here being the most incarcerated people in the world, and indigenous child removal rates having only increased after Kevin Rudd’s ‘apology’ – all part of the care to prison pipeline. We seek to overhaul the injustice system in favour of transformative justice. That starts by organising collectively, and the Women’s Collective is a great place to do just that!

FACULTY

ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Tiger Perkins

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) is the all-encompassing, creative heart of the University. It is currently home to seven schools and departments, namely the Schools of Economics; Languages and Cultures; Art, Communication & English; Humanities; Social and Political Sciences; Education and Social Work as well as the Sydney College of the Arts.

Despite recent encroachments upon the breadth of disciplines by the University as well as their cutting of hundreds of subjects within FASS, this breadth remains one of the greatest advantages of the faculty. Arts students are known for making the most of it, taking unusual electives for personal interest and often switching majors and specialisations. Given this, it’s important not to feel pressure to commit to the subjects and majors you select in your first semester. It isn’t uncommon for people to spend an extended period of time at University, choosing subjects they are passionate about (even within the School of Economics), switching where necessary, and often working and partying full-time on the side. While you do have space to take a number of elective subjects (unrelated to your degree) each year, keep in mind you generally need to complete 48 credit points (8 units) of subject specific units over three years.

In terms of face-to-face contact, Arts students are the envy of the rest of the University. Typically, subject loads consist of a two-hour lecture and a one-hour tutorial per week. This comes to about twelve hours of contact time a week for a full-time Arts student.

On top of this come assessments, usually consisting of one or two take-home essays, plus either a third, longer ‘research essay’ or an exam, as well as some marks for tutorial participation. In later years you are often able to write your own, relevant essay questions, cementing FASS as the place to be to engage in your personal interests in depth. An essay-heavy assessment program means that an Arts degree is effectively what you make it, you can work as little or as hard as you like. My top tip for essays is to begin compiling a single document of notes from all your readings across all subjects as you will often re-use the same readings across multiple subjects and essays. You learn with time that you reap what you sow.

The flexibility of an Arts degree gives you the opportunity to make the most of the ‘student life’ experiences that your relatives and friends have simultaneously ridiculed and reminisced upon if they are anything like mine. Arts students can generally be found sprawled across campus on any given day, inhabiting but rarely studying in Fisher Library, the lawns and cafés, Hermann’s bar, Camperdown Park and, of course, the various local pubs. In their free time, many engage with the political activism and services of the Student Representative Council as well as the USU’s various clubs and societies, including the Sydney Arts Students Society (SASS), who run parties, balls and events during the year.

Arts students have historically been dismissed as lazy and unemployable (among many other worse insults) but that is not the truth of my experience. Arts students tend to be people who engage deeply and critically with the world, care passionately about what they study, engage with the co-curriculars that the Uni offers, and have the most fun. Arts students are creatives, academics, teachers, learners, scientists, philosophers, revolutionaries, partiers and friends. In the time of the corporate university that is increasingly run as a business and not the institution of limitless learning it purports to and should be, you must study fearlessly that which inspires you, repudiate the boundaries others attempt to impose upon you, question everything and never stop learning.

GUIDES

SCIENCE

Alana Ramshaw

Welcome to USyd Science! At the University of Sydney, the Bachelor of Science is a flexible and dynamic, liberal studies degree, meaning you can major in anything from medical science to computer science, to history or political economy. With more than 40 science majors, programs and streams to choose from, plus a pool of shared majors from across the university and a flexible degree plan, the Bachelor of Science is really what you make of it.

First year maths is compulsory. It doesn’t matter what major you choose - your degree will see you taking core 1000 level mathematics units which you should get through in your first year and not look back. You’ll also complete core 1000 level units for your majors

and/or minors. These are entry level courses everyone is required to take before choosing your electives and units that count towards your majors and minors. Make the most of the free space you get in science by breaking up your discipline units with electives unrelated to your majors and minors.

You can also choose to combine your Bachelor of Science degree with the Bachelor of Advanced Studies (BSC Advanced). An important thing to remember is that you don’t have to be enrolled in BSC Advanced in order to take an advanced unit.

Another way to get the most out of your science degree is to get involved in campus life– science oriented groups on campus include SciSoc, the faculty society for science students, and Women in Science Society (WISSOC). You should try to build a connection with your teaching staff where you can–email your tutor with questions you have about the content or course, send them a thank you email after the semester has finished. It’ll go a long way! Have fun!

Congratulations, you’ve made it to law school! The next chapter of your life is about to begin so get ready to enjoy the adventure. I imagine law school as like a marathon (not that I’ve run one), it can be both exciting and dull, difficult and rewarding, rhythmic and bumpy. It’s also really long - but once it’s over it’s one great accomplishment. At times it’s energising and you feel like Elle Woods on top of the world, but then as you tire there will be times when the only thing keeping you from sending an apologetic dropout email is a Redbull from Fisher coffee cart.

The best survival skill I have (coming from a chronic worrier) is to not get too stressed out. Some subjects are just difficult, and even if you were used to getting straight A’s in high school, at law school it’s very normal to be rejoicing over a pass or credit. That being said, to perform well, don’t skip lectures, readings, and practice questions, but do try to write concisely

SYDNEY LAW SCHOOL

Eliza Crossley

and participate in class. In general, cut yourself some slack - you can’t become a legal mastermind overnight. While receiving a good mark can feel amazing, what will really get you through law school are good friends. A great way to find these friends is to get involved in mooting, Law Revue, or attend Sydney Uni Law Society (SULS) events. Sydney Law School won’t be exactly like Legally Blonde but hopefully you’ll still find it to be dramatic and entertaining!

FACULTY

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND PLANNING

Joseph Arabit, Vice-President, SUDA

Welcome to Architecture, Design and Planning! ADP is home to those studying Design in Architecture, Architecture and Environments, as well as the new Design (Interaction Design) in 2023.

Architecture and design is at heart a social degree - your job as a future planner, architect or creative is to respond to any issue or brief in the physical environment with humanity. We’d also like to take the trophy of ‘most social faculty’ - you’ll forge deep and rich friendships from all the time you spend in a studio together, constructing memories that make uni life great.

Let’s cut to the chase, architecture is no joke. Some think it’s the toughest uni degree because of the demands of the course. You’ll be expected to work longer hours than most other uni kids and you’ll find yourself spending your hard-earned savings on lab bookings, model materials, food and coffee (the

latter being a necessity) to survive. The iterative process and stream of weekly feedback may come as a culture shock to those unaccustomed, and you will need to accept that your work will constantly keep changing based on advice.

Likewise, you’re thrown into the deep end with CAD and BIM software, which the University expects you to learn on your own. You’ll be expected, especially in first year, to hand-make your models and draw by hand. That being said, we have an amazing materials lab called DMaF – and your inductions will give you a guide on how to work in woodwork, ceramics and much more. The Uni also has access to a wide variety of software with student licences.

Buckle yourself up for long hours, challenges and (literal) blood, sweat and tears. But also get pumped for three fantastic years. The Sydney University Designers’ Association (SUDA) is our faculty society and lines up Designer Drinks, industry events, parties and fun times throughout the year. Our advice? Keep on time with deadlines and do stuff early. Make sure to take breaks. Most importantly, Wilkinson is your second home. Hang out here, work here, and make friends here. Your bonds will carry you through. Good luck, and welcome home!

GUIDES

CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC

Alex Poirier, President, CSA

The Con is *the* place to study music performance, composition, education, and musicology in Australia, leading in opera, jazz, classical European, Chinese, contemporary, and much more. Nestled in the Royal Botanic Gardens near the Opera House, the castle of the Con was the old Governor’s stables, and now hosts the Conservatorium Faculty, High School, and Open Academy. It is the nucleus of musical culture in Sydney, led by Dean Professor Anna Reid, the slayest Dean at the University - she plays viola da gamba.

A Con degree is considered a specialist degree, meaning you’ll have a lot less flexibility in subject choice than say, an arts degree. Subjects are divided into a few groups: AHCS (analysis, history, and culture studies); music skills (harmony, aural perception,

ENGINEERING

Emily McKay

I’m not going to lie, engineering is a tough degree to study. Not only does it demand ridiculous amounts of time and work, but it also sets unrealistic deadlines and academic standards which would leave even Einstein quaking in his boots. Nevertheless, the people, culture and bragging rights make it all worth it in the end.

To summarise, engineering provides arguably the best introduction to life at university. You have a chance to engage with your peers in social, academic, and professional settings as well as develop skills in a wide range of different areas. Expect to be exposed to multiple industries, research, and topics that will leave you befuddled but utterly fascinated. One of the best things about this crazy degree is that you never feel alone. There are always people around to help. Almost every

and fundamentals); composition; music education; music technology; contemporary music practice; and performance and ensembles. Every degree has classes in all these areas - taught by the best of the best in the industry, so make the most of it whilst you can.

Your main point of contact for student culture is the Conservatorium Students’ Association (CSA), the student union formed in 1918 by AMEB theory extraordinaire Dulcie Holland, and of which I am President. It is your direct representative body to the Con staff, and organises all the social and wellbeing events on campus (such as the Con Ball). The CSA also has a few affiliated student-run ensembles, such as the Sydney Concert Orchestra, and is helping start up the new musicological and composition societies.

If you need any help with anything, please email info@usydcsa.org, or find us @usyd.csa on socials.

engineer has been in the position you are in right now and will literally drop everything to assist their fellow engineer.

However, if you find trouble getting involved, there are plenty of chances to engage with the engineering community at USyd. The most common being becoming a member of any of the active engineering societies. The largest and most prominent societies are SUEUA and SUWIE which throw weekly events ranging from small gatherings at the pub to massive, themed parties, industry nights and annual balls. Anyone and everyone is welcomed. Believe me when I say that there is never a dull moment within engineering.

Yes, the study spaces are average, and the facilities are decaying, and there are too many quizzes, and the fire alarms go off every week, and… (I think you get the point). But, not one of these negatives take away from all of the genuine friendships and unique knowledge you will gain. Remember, it’s all worth it!

Medicine and Health

Oscar Chaffey

The Faculty of Medicine and Health, or FMH was born in 2018 from the hostile merger of the School of Medical Sciences, Pharmacy, Health Sciences, Public Health, Medicine, Dentistry, and Nursing. FMH is known to its managers as a mega faculty, one of the biggest (by staff and student numbers) at the University of Sydney. There are a variety of degrees that come under the FMH, mostly degrees that lead to careers in health-related professions.

Undergraduate professional degrees (like Oral Health, Pharmacy, and Nursing are intense degrees with a look towards accreditation at the point of, or soon after, graduation. They involve clinical placements in Sydney public hospitals, community health centres and sometimes rural areas. The placement system is chaotic and often senseless. Familiarise yourself with the SONIA system when you can and plan ahead for the fact that your placement may be a significant distance away from where you live or work. Placements are also unpaid and rigorous.

Regardless of what degree you are studying, your workload will be intense and an adjustment from learning you may have done in the past. It is wise to pick up a year planner and pencil in important dates so assignments, exams and miscellaneous tasks don’t slip through the cracks. At some point, you will

USyd Business School

Liz Marsh

Welcome to the Business School! The Business School offers a diverse range of majors, and your degree will give you scope to combine these. While many students opt for majors like Finance, Accounting and Marketing, you’ll also have the chance to study topics like International Business, Business Law and Business Information Systems. Taking foundation courses early can help you locate your strengths and passions, and plan your degree accordingly.

There are four core units you must complete as a part of your commerce degree, regardless of your major: BUSS1000: Future of Business; BUSS1020: Quantitative Business Analysis; BUSS1030:

probably need to use the Special Considerations systems. Do not feel ashamed or afraid to use this system - the world we live in is sometimes unfriendly and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be a robot throughout your years here. The SRC caseworkers are able to help you navigate this system and are constantly engaged with the university to improve the system.

2021 saw the grand opening of the Susan Wakil Health Building (known to some, or maybe just me, as Susie), a pan-Allied Health building meant to foster the lofty goal of interdisciplinary cooperation and understanding. It is located a stone’s throw from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on the Camperdown side of campus and is, practically speaking, one of the nicest places to study on campus (don’t tell your arts friends)/ It also has resources like full mock hospital wards and beds to use for practical assessments. A few miscellaneous tips and aphorisms:

- Buying textbooks or notes is almost never worthwhile. There are cheap and free resources that float around on the Internet, and the library gives you access to a lot of things for free. If you must buy textbooks, secondhand is often a good way to go.

- Don’t think that your degree is apolitical and don’t insulate yourself from the rest of campus life. Involve yourself in the SRC’s advocacy and activism through the collectives, and make sure that you don’t limit yourself socially - make the most of uni!

- Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Seriously!

Accounting, Business and Society; BUSS2000: Leading and Influencing in Business.

The Business School provides a range of extra resources that can help you throughout your degree: Peer-Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) - Optional and free learning program facilitated by students, your peers who have recently excelled in certain units of study. It’s designed to provide a friendly environment where you are encouraged to ask questions and clarify your understanding for core units; Careers and Employability Office (CEO) - Offers a range of services, including a resume review, formatting services and guidance on career planning and professional skills. They also give students the chance to connect with prominent graduate recruiters and corporate partners in their programs; Maths in Business - A free program available to all students that holds workshops in intermediate level maths and Excel, both key skills for aspiring business students wankers

CLUBS & SOCIETIES

The 2023 ins and outs of USyd’s clubs and societies....

INS: CLASSICS

DJ Society– a campus favourite. Regular gigs are held throughout the semester, and helps DJs put their foot in the door so they can DJ at live events both on and off campus.

DJ Society

Active since 2012, University of Sydney Roller Derby League is a non-competitive skating society open to members of all skill levels. Two programs are run every sem, past events include the Dirty Derby Ball, a Halloween skate and costume contest, and a free roller disco!

Roller Derby League Society

Lawn Bowls Society

Unoffically established in 2019, Lawn Bowls Society is for those with a shared interest for sunny weekend afternoons with a lawn bowl and drink in hand. Their association with the Alfred Hotel means discounted food and drink too!

INS: TREND PREDICTIONS

SockSoc

A society of and for sock enthusiasts.

HOT NEW BOMBSHELL:

Sydney Uni Casual Cricket Club (SUCCC)

Non competitive cricket games and casual viewings of Australian Cricket– every year we plan to attend the Ashes Pink Test as a club!

Jazz Society

A place for those with an affinity for playing jazz music, want to improve their skills as a musician, or simply indulge themselves into the glamour of the 20s.

OUTS: CANCEL CORNER

Conservative Club Freedom Club

Liberal Club

Media and Communications Society

American Graduate Society

Special Considerations

Hello! On behalf of the casework team I’d like to say a big hello to all of you. We are professional staff who give free and confidential advice that is independent of the University. We can answer almost any question about anything that is affecting your ability to successfully study. This might include academic appeals, special consideration (too unwell to complete an assessment), DC (need to withdraw after the census date), academic honesty, Centrelink payments, and accommodation issues. Feel free to contact us via our Caseworker Contact Form at bit.ly/3YxvDUf, or call to book an appointment on 9660 5222.

Spec Cons and Simple Extensions - Too sick, injured or affected by a misadventure?

Simple Extensions

If you need more time for an assessment because of illness, injury, or misadventure, you may be able to extend your assessment due date an extra five calendar days. This process changed in 2022 and should be explained by each of your tutors and lecturers at the start of the year. Previously, approval for a two-day extension was required from your tutor or unit coordinator, whereas now the approval is automated when accompanied by a student

documentation to support your claim, e.g., a Professional Practitioner’s Certificate; police report; death notice; etc. While a Statutory or Student Declaration might support your other documents, it may not be considered sufficient as a document on its own.

Talk to an SRC Caseworker about your options. If you are seeking special consideration for an exam that you have attempted, your PPC should indicate that you became unwell during the exam.

If you have a long term (more than four weeks) or pre-existing medical condition, you can apply for disability support. Disability Services can create an academic plan to successfully complete your degree with reasonable adjustments, so contact them as

For help with special consideration applications contact an SRC Caseworker via the Caseworker

Academic Honesty

What Is Academic Dishonesty And Plagiarism?

Academic dishonesty includes plagiarism, recycling your own work and using someone else’s work. Plagiarism can arise if you use words from a source without including quotation marks or using someone else’s ideas without correct referencing. The Uni’s Learning Hub can teach you how to correctly reference your assignments. It is also considered academically dishonest to use another student’s work, or reuse work that you have previously submitted for assessment.

It is ok to discuss your assignment with another student, but the structure and contents must be your own. Collaboration is encouraged, but when talking to other students, do not give them your assignment or look at theirs. Don’t take notes or discuss specific questions– talk about your assignments as if the tutor were listening. If you are in a group chat where students share answers for assignments, it is a wise idea to leave that group chat. It is unlikely that group chat would be seen as legitimate collaboration.

Misconduct is where there is a serious breach of academic integrity. This includes using a tutoring company or website (e.g., Chegg, GitHub, CourseHero) to look at practice questions, upload your lecture notes, or ask questions about your assignment. This is considered contract cheating where the likely penalty is a suspension from the Uni for a semester or two. If you are a member or subscriber to a tutoring company (classes) or website, consider leaving to avoid any misunde standings in the future. At the very least tell your subject coordinator what you use these resources for and ask them if they have a more reliable alternative.

Online proctored exams might lead to a misconduct allegation if you access Canvas or other notes, deliberately or accidentally, during the exam. To avoid accusations, log out of Canvas from every device before your exam. Turn off your phone, iPad, or other computer devices as well.

If you have any questions or if you receive an allegation of academic dishonesty or academic misconduct, contact an SRC caseworker via the Caseworker Contact Form – bit.ly/3YxvDUf.

The University of Sydney loves to imbue simple administrative matters into a hero’s-journey level of labour, throwing an assortment of tedious tasks at students largely unrelated to their learning. This brief guide will assist you with these trials, without any of the jargon-laden rubbish you’ll find on the university website.

USYD DIGITAL SURVIVAL KIT

Harrison Brennan

Known for being consistently buggy and continually under maintenance, Sydney Student is the hub for all administrative matters regarding your degree. You will use this website to enrol, select your units of study each semester, manage your HECS or any other finances related to your degree, and may use this portal to apply for course transfers among a slew of other matters. Sydney Student is particularly important if you are considering dropping a unit. Under the Job-Ready Graduate Package passed by the Liberals in 2020, university policy now states that if you drop a unit after the set census date you will incur a financial and academic penalty, having to pay for the unit and receiving a DF (discontinue fail) on your academic transcript. You have two weeks from the start of the semester to switch or pick up a unit, and you have until March 31st to drop a unit without penalty.

To modify your units of study go to Sydney Student ˃ My Studies ˃ Units of Study ˃ Change Units of Study.

Arguably the most important resource you will need to access during your time here at the University of Sydney are the degree handbooks. Recently absorbed into the horrendously designed university website, the degree handbooks display all the units available (or unavailable) for study in the current year. These handbooks also indicate any mandatory units that you must take, or the marks you must attain to continue studying or complete your chosen course. I highly suggest bookmarking this page and returning back to it throughout the year, ensuring you are on track to complete your degree, fulfilling any and all requirements.

To access the handbooks: sydney.edu.au/handbooks/home. html#handbook2023links

The bible of your studies, Canvas is where you will access most, if not, all of your learning materials. Unit information and scheduling, teaching contact details, announcements from teaching staff, recorded lectures, weekly readings, assessments, and assessment hand-in portals, Canvas will be your most used website and application at USYD. I would recommend installing Canvas on your phone as it makes keeping track of assignments and notifications from staff far easier. You’ll be surprised at how much screen time a week you’ll spend on the app - tutors can see this too, however, and you may receive an automated reminder if you don’t log into canvas in the first week!

Timetabling is typically boring, but with Allocate+, it’s infuriating. After enrolling you will need to use allocate+ to curate your ideal university timetable. Here you will number the preferred time slot within which you wish to undertake your lab, lecture or tutorial. Take note that this is only a list of your preferences, it does not guarantee that you will end up being placed in your desired time slots. I recommend filling out your preferences to half or full completion. The percentages in the left column indicate the popularity of the time slot for that unit based on other student preferences. This means that if you preference timeslots with a lower percentage, you are more likely to be placed in that class. Allocate+ is where your final timetable will be made accessible. Allocate+ can also be used to change classes during the first few weeks of semester if space allows. Editor’s note: one great function is the ability to ‘like’ a class even when it is full, which places you on a waiting list and you will automatically be placed in the class when a space opens up - much more effective than the old system of checking every twenty minutes!

Jasmine Donnelly

First Year’s Checklist:

Log into Sydney Student

Select your units of study

Apply for a concession opal card (unforch domestic students only)

Work out your timetable on Allocate+

Get your photo ID approved and pick up at the Student Centre

Locate your textbooks/readings (try Gleebooks or Sappho Books for second-hand options or StudentVIP for cheap online versions). Most readings should already be free via canvas

Keep a copy of your Unikey, USU number and student ID in your notes

Log into Canvas and your university Outlook email

Ensure all your subjects are listed on Canvas

Log into campus wifi on all devices to ensure it works

Learn the major buildings and landmarks on campus

Remember the SRC can help with a lot of admin issues you might face, as can the Student Centre. Both are located in the Wentworth Building.

Eastern Avenue

USYD BY

If someone asks to “meet at Fisher”, just wait on the benches out front. Fisher rooftop terrace, after being shut for 30 years is reopening this year! Be sure to check out the amazing view of the campus and cityscape. Also, L3 is the ground floor.

The main street of the Camperdown campus. It is long, connects to City Road, and has buildings on either side.

Easily the most recognisable building on campus. There are the laws out the front and also four grassy rectangles inside.

Behold the 95 year old War Memorial Carillon. One of the University’s oldest and greatest treasures, played on graduation and sometimes takes student requests! There are free Carillon recitals every Sunday afternoon at 2pm. The best place to listen is in the southwest part of the quadrangle.

When people agree to meet at “Manning”, it’s generally assumed to be the bar area upstairs. “Out the front of Manning” refers to being next to the newsagent on Manning Road.

The Quad Clocktower

Manning Bar

Fisher Library

DAY

For Coffee

Fisher Coffee Cart

Located right outside Fisher, easy access to prep for those long study nights.

Ralph’s Cafe

Heralded by some as having the best coffee on campus! Located on the ground floor of SUSF– expect a loud and busy environment, and a lot of college kids.

Laneway

Located in the Wentworth building opposite the student centre, good place to sit down, well-priced.

For Lunch

Courtyard Cafe

Can be found in the Holme Building. Expect mediocre pizza but great pasta. Relaxed environment, a popular lunch spot for arts students.

Wentworth Building Food Court

Find a variety of cuisines– standouts are Unibros, Jewel of India and Subway upstairs. (Editor’s note - “I never feel worse in life than when my Subway is finished”)

Taste Baguette

Located in the middle of Eastern Avenue, need I say more?

For Something Yummy to Sip On

Parma Cucina + Bar

Level 2, Jane Foss Russell Building,

ShareTea

Located in Manning Bar, down the steps to the right.

Oakberry Acai

Technically not a yummy drink, but can be found in Manning House next to ShareTea.

USYD BY

Welcome to the nightlife in and around USyd!

As expressed through @beam_me_up_softboi posts...

Situated in the Wentworth building, Hermann’s is the place to be during Welcome Week. It’s actually nice if you sit outside and avoid the interior design. With a large patch of grass and some open-air tables, it’s a perfect spot for an after class, well-priced 2.5L beer tower.

A historic classic of Sydney University - a rare overlap of college students, engineering students and student politicians. Drinks are fairly cheap with $15 student deals on Furphy and Cider as we write this - but it does stink.

The Royal but if it were nice and not stinky– old school, nice courtyard, good pizza + pool. Always plays decent music and a schooner of Rose Lager hits the spot, though food is very expensive for a student budget.

Hermann’s Bar

The Royal

The Rose

The Lansdowne

Has been an icon of Chippendale since 1925, known best for its cheap and regular gigs! Live music is the star of the show here, conveniently placed right opposite Victoria Park. Very cool smoking area too…

Flodge

Located on the Camperdown side of campus, St Alfred’s Hotel is a bar most frequented by college students. If you’re a sport-at-the-pub type, check out their massive TV that shows UFC and other major events every night! Affectionately known by college students as ‘The Gross’.

St Alfred’s Hotel

FOODHUB

The Students' Representative Council runs Foodhub with the University of Sydney Union to provide students with basic necessities (like bread and milk) while they complete their studies at the University of Sydney.

According to a survey conducted in October 2022 more than half of students who live out of home to study aren’t able to access youth allowance. Additionally, 110,000 students are attempting to live on a mere $26 a day. Foodhub is open to students of the University of Sydney to address this devastating oversight by the government.

Foodhub exists in the gap where there should be proper assistance for students. Our ethos is this: students cannot properly participate in tertiary education if they are struggling to make ends meet.

Foodhub is a short term initiative committed to addressing the cost of living crisis students are facing.

Are you an aspiring writer or journalist?

H O N I S O I T Write for

In the first edition of Honi Soit, published in May 1929, a group of University of Sydney students wrote that they were publishing “to strip the veneer, to open the cupboard on our skeletons, and those of other people, to tell the truth without fear or favour, and to assist our readers in their search for the Touchstone of philosophy — happiness — these are our aims.” Some ninetyfour years later, Honi Soit still seeks to embody these ideals.

It is from these foundations that Honi Soit developed as USyd’s student newspaper. Published in print — distributed for free on stands around campus — and available online, Honi centres the views, experiences and opinions of students like you. Run for students and by students, Honi platforms radical left-wing voices, providing reporters a space to question the narratives spun by University management and those in power.

This radical student voice operates as a counter-narrative to mainstream media, allowing students to critically engage with the world around them. In an increasingly commercialised media landscape, student journalism serves an essential role. To explore stories that are otherwise overlooked.

The paper is organised by a team of ten editors, who work with reporters to create each edition. The SRC publishes these editions weekly, appearing on stands every Tuesday afternoon. Special editions are published by the SRC’s collectives throughout the year. Honi provides reporters with a wide variety of writing opportunities, including news reporting, analysis, culture, opinion, perspective, creative writing and reviews. As the only remaining weekly student newspaper in Australia, joining the Honi Soit community provides an opportunity to join a long legacy of high-quality student journalism. Honi is a place to develop your journalistic skills, start a conversation, and most importantly, speak up about what matters to you.

If you have any questions or are interested in writing for Honi Soit, please email editors@honisoit.com or complete our contributor callout form.

SASH SUPPORT

The 2021 National Student Saftey Survey confirmed what many students already knew: sexual harrassment and assault are unfortunately common experiences among university students. The NSSS reported that, as of 2021, 4.5% of Australian university students have been sexually assaulted in a University context, with 27.3% of assaults occuring in university accomodation or residences.

If you experience sexual assault or harrassment, there are resources available to you should you decide that coming forward is the best option for you.

RPA Hospital Sexual Assault Clinic

Daytime Phone: 9515 9040 After Hours Phone: 9515 6111

A variety of medical and other services including unlimited free counselling services, forensics kits and STI testing.

NSW Sexual Violence Helpline

Phone: 1800 424 017

Provides professional trauma specialist counsellors, information, referrals and vicarious trauma support via telephone and online.

Rainbow Sexual, Domestic and Family Violence Helpline

Phone: 1800 497 212

Available to anyone in Australia from the LGBTQIA+ community who has experienced sexual, domestic or family violence. Provides professional trauma counselling, information, referral to other services, and round-the-clock telephone support.

Women and Girls’ Emergency Centre (WAGEC)

Intake Phone: 9319 4088 Address: 36-38 George St, Redfern 2016

Crisis accommodation centre for women, children and families at risk of homelessness or in unsafe situations. Also provides referrals to suitable services on a case-by-case basis.

SRC Caseworkers

Phone: 9660 5222, Caseworker Contact Form: bit.ly/3YxvDUf

The SRC Caseworkers can assist you in finding support services and guiding you through reporting services should you wish to use them.

JOB-READY GRADUATE PACKAGE

Melissa de Silva, SRC Casework and Policy Manager & Tiger Perkins

What is the Job-Ready Graduates Package?

The Job-Ready Graduate (JRG) bill was passed by the Liberal government in 2020 and will affect domestic students starting courses in, or after, 2022. It is based on the premise that students should be ‘job ready’ when they graduate and enroll in disciplines where there’s greater need for skilled graduates. This includes science and math-based disciplines, engineering, allied health, and teaching.

Students are directly impacted by the changes to fees for some disciplines, in particular Arts (up by 113%), Law, and Business. It will remove Commonwealth Support (HECS) from a student with a ‘low completion rate’. That is, either taking more than seven years to complete their degree, or after attempting the first eight units, failing 50% or more of their subjects. These students will need to either start paying full fees or drop out. That’s about $25,000 per semester, depending on what course they are doing.

What is the purpose of university?

Understanding the significance of the Job-Ready Graduate Package can be a little confusing because ensuring we have enough people in various socially necessary jobs may first appear to be a good thing. The key issue however, is that universities should not be institutions designed to funnel students into certain jobs preselected by members of parliament. At its core, uni should be about fostering a love of learning, developing the critical thinking skills necessary to be an engaged and productive member of society, studying passionately that which interests you and developing those interests. Universities, however, are becoming increasingly corporatised and streamlined and the JRG is just the next step in this program that is transforming institutions of learning into degree-factories, with a focus on churning out a high volume of job ready graduates. Regularly, this occurs alongside a budget surplus, such as USyd’s 2021 $1.04 billion one, generated through a well-documented program of wage theft, along with the systematic and unrelenting slashing of courses that has seen several hundred subjects previously available be quietly removed. Uni should be a hub of new experiences, passions, hobbies and learning, all of which should be fully-funded and free,

not incentivised and increasing in cost.

Who will be most affected?

The JRG Package will affect some students more profoundly than others. This includes students who must work while studying, students with disabilities or caring responsibilities, students who experience physical or mental illness, and students who experience grief and are not able to complete the required administration for special consideration before the requisite deadlines.

Why should you care?

This is a universal issue for students. Even if you are not affected by the JRG, because even if you can pass all your subjects or if your degree is not one of those increasing significantly in cost, the JRG is something you should care about. It sets a precedent for future cuts and bad bills to be passed and implemented. The only people who will learn how to learn or think critically, will be those who are not affected by illness, misadventure or financial stress while studying. This is not fair or representative of the broader community. Further, it is easy to be distracted by what costs more or less but relative to the free education we believe should be accessible to all students, the JRG makes every student a loser.

What changes will this bring to the Uni?

The Uni has made changes to some of their policies and processes, including applying for Discontinue Not Fail (DC) grades and showing good cause. If you are at risk of failing any of your subjects, talk to an SRC caseworker as soon as possible.

What can you do?

Talk to your friends and family about what the JRG is, and why they should care. Talk about what their world would look like without a diversity of people as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or nurses, about what the possibility of free education for all might entail. Get involved with the SRC’s campaigns in whatever capacity you can - the Education Action Group (EAG) has historically been a staunch defender of student rights and free education and can be contacted at education.officers@src.usyd.edu.au.

[COUNTERCOURSE]

Welcome to Countercourse 2023! This section is dedicated to articles written by members of the Education Action Group (EAG), an on-campus SRC activist collective. In recent years we’ve fought the introduction of the Job Ready Graduates Package, defeated anti-protest laws in NSW, and mobilised around various social justice issues. Read on to find out why you should join and how to get involved!

Strikes

2023 will be another big year in the education portfolio. Last year, we supported and built the militant strikes and pickets held by the NTEU and USyd Casuals Network with the goal of securing important demands for USyd staff including an end to casualisation, a real pay rise above inflation, First Nations employment targets, paid transition leave and the protection of the 40-40-20 workload model. That so many staff and students stood united on the pickets last year is evidence enough that this has been one of the most important campaigns we’ve supported in the last few years.

National policy

At a national level, we recognise that the new ALP government’s proposal to fund 20,000 new university places will do nothing to solve the problems of students facing exponential fee hikes, a cost of living crisis and worsening quality of education. The ALP’s silver bullet is the ‘Australian Universities Accord’, a negotiating roundtable that will bring together government, industry groups, uni management, staff and student unions. But why should staff and students, who make the university run, put their seal of approval on

Get involved with us!

a deal which will be made by the people who’ve spent years trying to gear higher education towards industry and profitmaking? Check out our op-ed on page 30 to read more!

Militarism

The university has just extended their insidious deal with the weapons manufacturer Thales. The new agreement extends a pre-existing one from 2017, and will see Thales further integrated into research and education at the university. They already fund PhD research, but the university and Thales want to embed their staff in each other’s research teams and expand into faculties other than engineering.

Thales produce some of the major weaponry and technology used by the world’s largest military forces in their bloody wars around the world. Every person who has stared down the barrel of a gun held by an Australian Army soldier has looked at the handiwork of Thales. Every refugee attempting to reach the EU, vast numbers of whom are denied safety after fleeing war or climate-change induced natural disasters, has their details recorded in a biometric system maintained by Thales. Their work can be found in every branch of the military, from ship maintenance to electronics, and they want to use the university’s research capabilities to further their project.

Universities should be for education, not for militarism. University management have shown that they have no qualms about signing onto deals with companies like Thales, or repeatedly appointing the chair of the Thales board, Belinda Hutchinson, as the university chancellor. If we’re going to succeed in getting USYD to cut ties with Thales, it’s going to take a fight! We’ll be running a campaign around the issue this semester - come join us at one of our organising meetings to get involved in activism!

To get involved or keep in touch you can find us on Facebook as Sydney University Education Action Group, or on Instagram @usyd.education.action Scan the QR code on the right to be directed to our page!

Adapted from The UTS Occupier, with thanks to H. Hinze.

Your Uni Has A Radical History

Yasmine Johnson charts Education Activism from 2010-2022

The first staff strikes in over a decade at USYD took place as part of the enterprise bargaining period. Staff and students are met with repression by riot police.

Mass student protests against the Liberal government’s attempts to deregulate university fees and cut education funding. PM Tony Abbott and education minister Chris Pine became hate figures on campus and fee deregulation was defeated.

Further protests against fee deregulation. Liberal Party education minister Simon Birmingham was met with opposition when he attended a Liberal club event on campus.

Staff strikes occured for improved pay and conditions.

The federal government pushed through the Job Ready Graduates scheme. This massively increased the cost of university education for incoming students. Amidst state government attempts to ban protests on the basis of COVID measures (while allowing thousands to attend other events), the EAG mobilised hundreds to oppose this attack on campus. Students defeated the anti-protest laws.

Staff took strike action in opposition to uni management’s attacks on their conditions, and refusal to grant a decent pay rise. Student contingents see hundreds of supporters attend across the 7 days of strikes.

You decide... Join the EAG to make history!

Students’ Rights in Students’ Hands: Opposing the Higher Education Accords

This year, we will see the tabling of the ‘Australian Universities Accord’ by the Albanese government, a negotiating roundtable designed to bring together government, industry groups, uni management, staff and student unions to build ‘consensus’ on Australian universities. At first glance, this is designed to appear more benevolent than the slash-and-burn Liberal Party policy of previous years, which saw attempts at fee deregulation and the implementation of the Job Ready Graduates package. But look a little closer and you’ll see that this policy is by-and-large a continuation of the neoliberal education policy plans of the Labor government’s predecessors, with the ALP opting for tokenistic ‘consultative’ processes with staff and students when overwhelming structural change is needed.

A bit of history

Before we go further, let’s indulge in a little bit of history on the Accords process. An accord typically refers to an agreement that is made between the government and any number of peak representative bodies. In Australia, the Prices and Incomes Accord provides one example of the problems with such a process. These agreements, negotiated in the 80s and 90s between the Australian Trade Union Council and the Labor Government, saw trade unions cut down their demands in exchange for some limited promises from the Labor government. In doing so, however, union leaders accepted that instead of mobilising from below to fight for their rights, which had been the strategy that won serious gains for workers in the previous decade, unions should sit down and collaborate in negotiations with bosses and the government. Australian bosses, who had been looking to undermine unions, cut wages, and boost their own profits, used this opening to go on the attack, weakening the union movement overall.

What does this mean for students?

So, with the government’s newest addition to a long tradition of Accords being the Australian Universities Accord, what will this mean for students? The first thing to consider is whether the ‘stakeholders’ involved in the Accords process can actually come to any meaningful consensus which would constitute a win for students.

University management spend their time undermining the quality of education and cutting costs by slashing course offerings, sacking staff, and trying to reduce the pay and conditions of their workers. And the heads of industry

Interested in fighting for the rights of students and staff? Join the USYD Education Action Group! Find us on Facebook under 'USYD EAG Organising 2023!', or like our page ‘Sydney University Education Action Group’ to see when meetings or campaigns are happening.

groups aren’t interested in improving education - they just want a trained workforce, at minimal cost, as well as the provision of research which can boost their bottom line. On the other hand, staff and students would benefit from things like massively increased government funding for universities, broader options for courses, and research geared towards improving knowledge rather than just the needs of industry.

The fact that staff and students have opposing demands to management, industry bosses and the government means that unions have nothing to gain from sitting down at the table with the very same people who’ve been attacking them for decades. This ‘consensus’ can only really signal a continuation of the corporatisation of universities in which the ‘customer’ - studentspay for an increasingly expensive product. The Accords will continue the trend of Australian universities being structured around the needs of Australian industry, efficiently ‘producing’ student graduates at the expense of choice and quality. This Accord will prevent more radical restructures which favour staff and students by lumping in staff and student unions as having reached ‘consensus’ with uni management and government. That many Vice Chancellors have eagerly welcomed this Accord as such an opportunity is just one indication of this fact.

Towards an Alternative

The last three decades have seen sustained cuts to higher ed funding, forcing universities to rely on the extortionate fees international students pay, as well as private streams of income to function. Tertiary education which, five decades ago, was 100% free, has now become a commodity. The 2020 JobReady Graduates scheme and the fact that JobKeeper was withheld from the higher education sector have accelerated the neoliberalisation of the modern university. This accord can only indicate a continuation of this trend. Students and staff should be able to engage with education as a social good. This means that we should fight for degrees to be free and accessible to both domestic and international students, and for research to take place for the sake of contributing to human knowledge, not for furthering Australian nationalism or the profits of industry.

Courtesy

Education officers Ishbel Dunsmore and Yasmine Johnson weigh in on the Accords

‘The Accords will continue the trend of Australian universities being structured around the needs of Australian industry, efficiently ‘producing’ student graduates at the expense of choice and quality.’

Honi Soit Issue 23, 1985.

You don’t have to look far to find reasons to be an activist in 2023 - climate catastrophe, the rise of the far right, ongoing Indigenous deaths in custody and youth incarceration. The list of injustices to fight goes on and on, as most people are all too aware of. However, the question that can seem less straightforward is, what do we actually do about it? What kind of role can you play here at uni, in the fight for a better world?

This is where you’re likely to come across a whole range of different answers - donate to charity, write to a politician, study to become a lawyer and try to fight for the oppressed through the court system. These might all just seem like different means to the same end, however in practise, they all run contrary to the strategy of an activist.

Being an activist is not something that you can do alone, through sheer willpower, legal smarts, clever argumentation or political connections. Greta Thunberg alone won’t stop climate change or convince fossil fuel bosses to stop digging coal out of the ground. However, as an activist she plays an important role in inspiring and mobilising hundreds of thousands of people to fight for climate justice in the streets. And, as any activist should, she has no illusions in simply asking politicians, or any other representative of the capitalist state to just give up what is the lifeblood of their endlessly exploitative economic system. So what is her answer?: “We can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. So everyone out there: it’s time for civil disobedience, it’s time to rebel.”.

This is how we win a better world - not just by being an ally, or an advocate, but a rebel and an activist like Greta. This is what we are trying to do in all our various work through the Education Action Group (EAG). The EAG is a place where campaign organising can take place, involving any and all students who want to help shape the political direction of activism on campus, be a part of designing the next leaflet, hanging up the next poster and building the next rally.

If you stop by one of our weekly EAG meetings, you’ll be a part of a long and rich history of activism on Sydney Uni’s campus. We have sprung into action building student solidarity for every staff strike, and were a hub of organising during the 2014 campaign against the Abbott government’s (failed) attempt to introduce American-style university fee-deregulation. More recently, in 2020, when the Jobs Ready Graduate Bill was announced and threatened the doubling in price of most degrees, the EAG was the place where almost-weekly rallies on campus in its opposition were organised.

Nobody could have predicted what this education campaign became though - which was a cop-defying civil liberties campaign, which challenged the rule of the courts and helped win back the democratic right to protest in New South Wales. It so happened that the Jobs Ready Graduate Bill was introduced during the initial wave of the COVID pandemic, which the NSW police were using as a justification to clamp down on the right to protest, all at the same time as shops, pubs and racecourses remained open for business.

The EAG joined forces with another group, Community Action for Rainbow Rights, who were running their own campaign against Mark Latham’s transphobic ‘Religious Discrimination Bill’, and launched a civil liberties movement called ‘Democracy is Essential’. Through organising dozens of protests, copping thousands of dollars of fines, and drawing attention to the hypocrisy of the government’s ruling, our modest campaign group of activists were able to stir up enough public anger and support that the anti-protest laws ultimately had to be repealed. Although the Jobs Ready Graduate Bill ended up passing, this moment was a huge victory for our side, and a huge vindication of a strategy of activism that relentlessly organises for the rights of students and the oppressed against attacks from the politicians, the cops and the state.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE AN ACTIVIST

By Yasmine Johnson

In Defence of Free Education:

Ishbel Dunsmore explains what your education could and should look like.

The onset of COVID-19 in 2020 laid bare the cataclysmic weaknesses of our current tertiary education system. Hundreds of courses were cut, staff were laid off and casualised, and students faced a worsened quality of education like never before. Any normal person would think our university was in crisis. But here’s the jump-scare: the University of Sydney raked in over $1.04 billion in revenue in the last year alone. We must understand that this phenomenon - that an institution may squeeze and squeeze its workers and ‘customers’ (students) for money - is the central problem to any for-profit model of education. And we must recognise that the only way to truly provide an accessible, democratised and liberatory education is through making it free.

Let me take a step back. To fully do so, we must know exactly what it would look like. There are two ways to think about the concept of ‘freeness’ in this context. The first one we will explore is probably what you would expect: ‘fee-free’ and fully funded education, which rids the financial barrier to tertiary education by allowing students to enrol and study without the imposition of course fees.

Whitlam and the Abolition of Uni Fees

This approach was perhaps most visible when the Whitlam-era Labor government abolished university fees in early 1974 with the hope that “...a student’s merit, rather than a parent’s wealth, should decide who should benefit from… tertiary education.” Had this policy not been scaled back and eventually abolished 14 years later by both Labor and the Liberals, it might have actually made a difference to members of the working class - especially because uni participation was increasing.

Since many school-age kids in these demographics did not complete high school at the time, Whitlam’s policy was ironically deemed untenable. It is plain to see that tertiary education has vastly improved the quality of life world-wide.

The front cover of Honi Soit, Issue 17 1987. Courtesy Honi Soit.

Courtesy Honi Soit 1987

Education: Education for Liberation

So why reinstitute fees which make it even more inaccessible to the people who need it most, especially when the vast majority of people in these demographics now complete high school? Why leave a ‘public’ institution vulnerable to volatile market pressures, when the emphasis should be on maintaining education as an accessible community resource? Now there’s a bit of food for thought.

Correspondence Theory and The Degree Factory: What Makes Education Liberatory?

The second prong of ‘freeness’ in education is probably not one you’ve thought much about. You might hear someone refer to uni as the “degree factory” at some point, a phrase relating to a real phenomenon best theorised in 1976 by Marxist sociologists Bowles and Gintis. According to their Correspondence Principle, education requires accepting that the main function of education in capitalist societies is the reproduction of labour power; in other words, producing more workers who will fulfill the needs of the rich and powerful.

To achieve this , employers must procure a workforce (in this case, of university graduates) who are hardworking, subservient, and won’t kick up a fuss if they are exploited. Doing so requires students to adhere to certain norms and values they learn at university, which then correspond to norms and values employers may exploit when they enter the workforce.

The Labor-led Dawkins Plan, which was the cluster of policy changes made to abolish free education in 1987, makes reference to this very phenomenon and gives it undeniable plausibility. According to a 1987 edition of our very own Honi Soit, the Dawkins Plan “...details proposals to tie universities to national economic goals and make institutions more entrepreneurial in their approach to the charging of fees, obtaining revenue from private sources, availability and design of courses, applied research and staffing questions.” In other words, preparing the degree factory. Unfortunately, it seems little has been done to prove Bowles and Gintis wrong since 1976. More current bills like the Job Ready Graduates Package, which have made less ‘job-ready’ degrees like the Arts criminally expensive, have only proven them more right!

Looking Forward

All of this is to say that free education is not just about having a fee-free university. Sure, being feefree is very much linked to any other ‘freeness’, but it is also, crucially, about democratising our institutions and curriculum.To fight for a liberatory education requires students working side-by-side with staff to institute and force through a better model of education, because we are the university - and should be trusted as such.

The announcement of the Dawkins Plan in late 1987 triggered nationwide anger. A National Day of Action was led by student unions across Australia, bringing together tens of thousands of students in defence of free education. Sydney alone saw tons of disruptive action: occupations at UOW, boycotts of the HEAC fee being instituted by the Plan, and more than 7000 students marching from various Sydney universities to converge on Town Hall.

Campaigns run since then have carried forth this legacy of protest. Our very own Education Action Group has been organising for more than 20 years in its current form, building and executing campaigns against the corporate university, fee deregulation, course cuts, staff cuts and more. Crucially, we have also been consistently fighting for free education, for student unionism, and for the Good University - because we understand that this is, ultimately, the way we win.

Courtesy Sue Hodgson, Honi Soit 1987

Always Was, Always Will Be: Aboriginal Land.

It is no coincidence that the University of Sydney’s most recognisable features are also its most glaring manifestations of colonialism. Wandering through manicured lawns dotted with bronze sculptures, jacaranda and gothic sandstone buildings, it is not difficult to see how this campus satisfied the colonial project of “terra nullius” upon its declaration as Crown reserve land in 1790. But this jacaranda sits opposite an Illawara flame tree, native to Australia’s east coast; its sandstone backdrop was quarried from Wianamatta shales in what is now known as Victoria Park. However unrecognisable it may be beneath almost 250 years of violence and invasion, this land always was –and always will be – Gadigal land of the Eora nation.

Despite its spiritual and cultural significance as a source of fresh water, education, technological production, medical care and gathering for Gadigal and Wangall people, early colonists initially divided the fertile 400 acres of “Kangaroo Ground’’ amongst settlers for agricultural purposes. Lieutenant Francis Grose’s farm quickly became one of the largest military camps, accompanied by a convict stockade and school for orphans. By 1848, New South Wales’ colonial government ordained William Wentworth and Sir Charles Nicholson to begin designing the main Quadrangle in pursuit of a “society aspiring towards self-government.”

At the same time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) populations were devastated by an influx of scurvy and smallpox introduced by European settlers and convicts. According to Gai-mariagal and Wiradjuri oral histories, the Macleay Museum was built on part of a Gadigal burial ground. Indigenous knowledge systems were also replaced with the first curriculum on offer, known contemporarily as “modern subjects” like the classics, political thought and mathematics.

As Vice Provost and Chancellor until 1861, Nicholson funded these endeavours by importing indentured labourers from Asia to Sydney. His early involvement in Australia’s first gas company Australian Gaslight Co. set a precedent for the University’s current administration, with at least $1.83 million of portfolio funds indirectly invested in BHP alone. Wentworth, who famously argued that Indigenous people were a “savage race” in an 1842 NSW Legislative Assembly, also opposed First Nations land rights on his properties in the Blue Mountains.

Anti-colonial resistance led by Charles Perkins, the Freedom Riders and Aboriginal Teachers Aides during the 1960s and 1970s certainly provided a radical model of visibility and struggle, inspiring the University’s new policies like the One Sydney, Many People strategy and Walanga Wingara Mura design principles in 2022. These programs, aimed at respectively making pre-tertiary admissions pathways more accessible for prospective ATSI students and building “collective dialogue” into the University’s pedagogy, indicate a new openness to change.

Recent years have also brought the promise of new progress: the number of Indigenous staff members increased by 105% between 2011-2018, while the success rate of enrolled ATSI students rose to 84.96% in 2020.

Yet the descriptive representation of Indigenous individuals in senior leadership positions and advanced studies programs does not guarantee substantive change. Only 0.9% of the University’s students identify as ATSI, compared to 1.72% in the national sector average. Moreover, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy 2022 requires applicants for scholarships, bursaries and employment to confirm their ATSI identity with a Local Aboriginal Land Council and Commonwealth three-part identity test. In addition to denying ATSI identity on unceded sovereign land and echoing the same assimilationist logic used to justify the Stolen Generation, this policy ultimately threatens present and future students in the continuation of their studies.

For an institution which consistently boasts its founding commitments to “religious tolerance and meritocracy”, these policies do little to support safety, inclusivity and diversity amongst its community. First Nations students therefore remain ensnared in a similarly oppressive nexus of vulnerability, discrimination and exclusion as in 1791, made most visible today in increasingly unaffordable housing services, underfunded crisis support and unattainable equity schemes.

The blights of racism, eugenics and oppression laid by the University’s founders endure today. They are overgrown like the English ivy shrouding the Great Hall, rooted deeply within other issues of class, gender and sexuality permeating academic disciplines, faculties and the colleges. Although change cannot occur from within this deeply broken institution, students cannot afford to overlook it – nor can they escape it in any corner of the University’s campus.

Simone Maddison breaks down the University’s colonial history.

' However unrecognisable it may be beneath almost 250 years of violence and invasion, this land always was – and always will be –Gadigal land of the Eora nation.’

Sydney University students, including Charles Perkins, led the anti-colonial resistance and provided a radical model of visibility and struggle.

Leadership for war, weaponry, destruction, imperialism, starts here.

Who Are Thales and Why Should I Care?

Aidan Elwig Pollock unpacks the university’s renewal of its deal with French weapons manufacturer Thales.

Students may be surprised to learn that the University of Sydney and Thales – the French multinational weapons manufacturer – are names that often come together. Thales has been implicated in a number of practices that leave many with a slightly queasy feeling in the stomach: staff underpayment, contract overcharging, and accompanied government lobbying to cover up the grifting after the fact, the delivery of weapons systems to regimes involved in major human rights abuses – and, more generally, the development and distribution of lethal weapons used to maim and kill human beings across the world.

In fact, Belinda Hutchinson, the Chancellor of the University of Sydney, is the chairwoman of Thales Australia – a position she has held since 2015. Perhaps more alarmingly, in 2017, the University and Thales Australia signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, which according to the University of Sydney was established “to research, develop and master emerging technologies” through close collaboration with the weapons manufacturing giant.

At the time the exact details of ongoing programs within the Memorandum were kept confidential. Despite Belinda Hutchinson’s position as both Chancellor and Thales chairwoman, then Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Duncan Ivison asserted that “all conflicts of interest had been resolved”.

In December 2022, the Memorandum was extended. Both parties cited the extensive achievements of the program, including in areas surrounding “digital technologies, including big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence” alongside “significant success through directly funded PhD programs in areas of aerospace, mechanical and mechatronic engineering and electrical and information engineering”.

Join the Education Action Group to fight for education for good: facebook.com/SydneyUniversity EducationActionGroup

Both Professor Willy Zwaenepoel, dean of engineering at the University of Sydney, and Dr John Best, chief technical officer of Thales Australia and New Zealand, have praised the program. Zwaenepoel asserted that “working closely with Thales gives us opportunities to make sure research solutions can be translated into practical outcomes”. The latter claimed that “over the previous five years we have […] delivered some tremendous research outcomes, inducing application in support of key defence capabilities”, confirming that “practical outcomes” can be translated as ‘developing

USYD fund and are partnered with global weapons manufacturer Thales, responsible for weapons deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and more.

weapons systems and adjacent technology that can be used to lethal effect’.

A further statement regarding the ongoing aims of the renewed relationship simply hammers this point home further: “...both parties intend to embed staff within each other’s organisation to accelerate the translation of research and development into solutions that bring impact to the community, particularly focusing on national security outcomes”. Such a statement dispels any excuse that University of Sydney students may be working on nonlethal products, such as air traffic management and other airport-related solutions; “national security” (read: weapons and surveillance technology) are named as a focus of the Memorandum in the words of both parties.

So what does Thales Australia actually produce? In other words, what might our University be directly contributing to?

Via Thales’ own website, they are the “largest Australian manufacturer of explosive ordnance for the ADF”. Thales Australia developed “one of Australia’s most successful defence exports” - lethal warheads for anti-ship missiles –which have been exported to six countries, including Turkey (which has been accused of numerous human rights abuses). Additionally, the company is involved in bidirectional Intellectual Property and Technical Data transfer with the USA, and many of the other weapons systems designed and supported by Thales have been used extensively in armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name a few. Thales Australia has also been implicated in other controversial arms deals, notably the sale of Thalessupported Bushmaster Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) to Kopassus, Indonesia’s special forces. The Guardian reported that Kopassus is among “the most feared of all Indonesian security forces and have been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings across the archipelago”. Amnesty International states that Indonesian repression in West Papua in particular has involved the murder of at least 30 Papuans by security forces in the two years up to 2021. They also report that between 2010 and 2018 Indonesian security forces participated in at least 95 unlawful killings in West Papua, “including targeted slayings of activists”.

Additional controversies have embroiled Thales Australia. The company was accused in 2019 of underpaying 240 Australian employees by $5.4 million over 7 years. Despite $5.4 million being a pretty significant amount, Thales asserted this was an “unintentional error”.

More recently, in 2021 – a year before the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding – the Guardian reported that a “suppressed auditor general’s report warned that [a] $1.3 billion Australian defence deal [with Thales was] not value for money”. In 2018, the disgraced former Attorneygeneral Christian Porter, following lobbying from Thales Australia, extraordinarily used his discretionary powers to suppress sections of the auditor general’s report that criticised the purchase of Thales-produced vehicles in the interest of “national security”. According to the Guardian, “Thales was furious at the auditors finding, believing it could threaten its ability to market the [weapon] abroad”.

This is the company that our university has signed and renewed a close collaboration agreement. University of Sydney students will be contributing their most valuable asset – their academic work – to an international arms manufacturer that produces lethal weapons and surveillance systems, sells them to brutally repressive regimes, underpays staff and lobbies governments to intervene to protect their profits. These are the “practical outcomes” so vaguely identified by our Dean of Engineering – corruption, death, and war profiteering of the highest degree.

“Such a statement dispels any excuse that University of Sydney students may be working on non-lethal products, such as air traffic management and other airport-related solutions...”

Thales weapons deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq were designed to “enhance the lethality of the individual soldier, fire team and section” according to Defence documents

Belinda Hutchinson (centre) and Mark Scott (VC, fifth from right) meet with Thales to sign the MOA, Dec ‘22. (Photo from the University of Sydney)

a year of strikes.

Strike action was fierce and an absolute force to be reckoned with last year, with University of Sydney staff striking for six days, shutting down the campus. Organised by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), staff are fighting for improved working conditions, job security and increased pay.

Of the six days, there were two 48-hour strikes which saw students and staff standing on the picket line, shutting down the entire campus and rendering it a ghost town.

The strikes were held as part of the ongoing negotiation of a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) with the University, which was last drawn up in 2017. The EBA determines the working conditions for staff over four years. With it up for negotiation, management want to repeal pay and conditions previously hard won by staff.

The university, far from being an idyllic marketplace of ideas, is run like any other corporation. ViceChancellor Mark Scott sits on a salary of $1.04 million, while casual tutors often have to work a second job just to survive. Those very same casual staff are owed a total of $12.75 million in wages stolen by the university, which also refuses to grant long-term casuals ongoing contracts (and so, secure work).

The union’s demands centred on a pay claim of inflation + 1.5%, as opposed to the meagre 3% that management were offering. Another core claim was to automatically transition all ongoing casual staff to permanent contracts. The union also demanded

management back down on a plan to make most academic staff “teaching only”, leaving them with no paid time to pursue research. Demonstrating that unions are also key organisations for fighting for social justice, the union put forward demands for enforceable targets for the number of Indigenous staff employed, and for paid gender transition leave.

Strikes and Pickets: A highlight reel

For the first 48-hour strike, the pickets ran from 7am-1pm on both days. Much singing and union chants were heard across the campus.

Chemistry Professor Ron Clark graced picketers’ presence with stapled music sheets and played his french horn for the crowd. ‘The Internationale’ (an anthem of celebration for the international workers’ movement), ‘The Red Flag’, and ‘Bella Ciao’ (an anti-fascist Italian liberation anthem) were among the favourites.

Pouring rain drenched picketers throughout the day, but our feisty chorused-chants and unrelenting defence of campus remained. Spontaneous speeches from USyd workers and students peppered the strikefest, and people began using any surface they could to rouse up noise (many make-shift drums were made with empty cylinders or using sticks to bang against fences or walls). Many cars and buses honked their horns in solidarity, to sung-out lines like “I would rather be a picket than a scab.” Students were defiant, angry and stood arm-in-arm with one another, and with other NTEU members, ready to brace any condition: “Rain, hail or shine. We will hold the picket line”.

Other highlights included union dogs (some snug in handbags), ponchos, traffic cones used as microphones, rain drenched shirts, any scab being turned away by the picket lines, and cops giving up from trying to help people through.

Debates in the campaign

Like any strike or campaign, there were numerous debates over what strategy could lead the campaign to victory. These played out both amongst NTEU members, but also amongst student activists. They

Deaglan Godwin and Christine Lai reflect on

The front cover of Honi Soit, Issue 14 1973. Courtesy Honi Soit.

USYD Staff Strikes in 2022

reflected different political perspectives for how change can be won, both in the workplace and in broader society.

The key debate was over when and how long to strike for. Initially, militants in the NTEU won the vast majority of members to support a first strike for 48 hours and then another a fortnight afterwards, in order to send a clear message to management about the firm intentions of staff. However, after this initially very successful strike, another one was not called for months, and when it was, it was only for 24 hours. It would then be another two months (October 2022) until the second 48 hour strike would be called.

In contrast to this approach, others in the union argued that faced with intransigence from management at the bargaining table, the union had to escalate the duration and frequency of the strikes. Delivering greater blows to management’s bottom line was the only way to force them to concede to our demands. The main argument for not doing this was premised on the fatigue of striking staff. However, this ignores that the collectivity on the picket lines is an essential antidote to the isolation and powerlessness workers experience every day at work. Escalating the strike campaign would have generated greater momentum and demonstrated that the union was serious about winning all of its demands.

Right-wingers made the physical picket lines the target of their anger, claiming that striking staff and students had no right to physically shut down the campus. They concocted blatantly fictional stories of being assaulted by strikers. In reality, it was these scabs who attempted to break through the picket lines by force. College rugby players charged at us like an opposing front-row, cyclists attempted to ride right through and one particularly violent scab

filmed himself as he shoved strikers to the ground. Unfortunately, there were those who argued that our response to these incidents should be to have soft pickets, which would would require making an argument to scabs who were dead-set on crossing the picket. Instead of forthrightly blaming this violence on the scabs responsible, responsibility was laid at the feet of striking staff and supporting students.

The strength of the picket lines was in the very fact that they demonstrated that staff and students could collectively disrupt and shut down the running of the university. Not only were they a way to convince potentially sympathetic people who were trying to cross to not do so, but they also prevented those who could not be convinced. This is because by crossing, scabs were helping university management to undermine the effectiveness of the strike. It is a travesty that at most strikes, picket lines aren’t a normal occurrence. In this light, the picket lines at USyd were an important part of rebuilding a core tradition of the union movement.

Staff need YOU!

Building industrial power takes a dedicated, unrelenting, organised base of activists. People who are prepared to put in the hard yards to build strike action, but who also will not be deterred by the intransigence of management and attacks from right-wingers. We need more people who understand that workers win by using their power, not by playing by the rules of the bosses. The strike campaign involved a vast array of students, many of whom had done very little activism before. If the prospect of striking and fighting for what’s right excites you, you should join the EAG and get involved with its campaigns. After all, staff and students make the university run, so we should run the university!

Scenes from the pickets this year...

Scenes from the Pickets

Get To Know Your Uni Bosses

Julius Wittfoth gives Uni Management a run for their money.

When students begin their studies at uni, we all come face to face with a pretty glaring contradiction: the contradiction between what uni represents to most people and the tough reality of it. We go to uni with dreams of making the world a better place, deepening our understanding of the world and our passions, and sharing our ideas with the people around us. What we get on the other hand is a lifetime of debt paying for a course made up of regurgitated tutorial slides from years ago delivered by an overworked and underpaid tutor. What gives?

Contrary to the way unis are often spoken about, serene islands of intellectual bliss, uni as we know it today is the result of decades of ruthless neoliberalism designed to make university a profitable nursery for capitalism. The villains of this story are the usual culprits under capitalism - the bosses, whose job it is to ensure the profits come steadily streaming in.

Enter USYD management, who were recently exposed as having used $24k of university money a year to pay for top executives’ meals. If you’ve ever wondered where your uni fees and workers’ stolen wages end up, they’ve been paying for managements late-night Southern Rock Lobster and $300 steak cravings.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as that figure pales in comparison to the whopping billion dollar surplus uni management made over the last year. This was the same year uni workers faced continued, manipulative casualisation of their jobs, hours upon hours of stolen wages and were told that management simply couldn’t afford to give them a decent pay rise, as it was supposedly a tough time for everybody.

As despicable as they are, uni bosses aren’t just mustache-twirling villains who do what they do for the mere sake of it. Uni bosses are guided by the same logic that guides all bosses under capitalism, one of profit and competition. To personify this, we don’t need to look any further than current USYD VC Mark Scott. Before his tenure at USYD, Scott was responsible for huge cuts to jobs and services in his role as managing director of the ABC, part of his ruthless cost-saving initiatives. Scott has brought his old tricks with him to USYD, and presided over continued course cuts, casualisation of staff jobs and wage theft.

People often complain about how uni is run as a business as if the ‘right’ uni boss might run it a different way. But as long as capitalism exists and USYD has to remain competitive with other sections of capitalism, figures like Scott will always rise to the top. Especially in the context of the ongoing COVID pandemic, which saw international students’ fees disappear for a time, the sheer cost of running a university will always be pushed downwards, onto the students charged extortionate fees for subpar courses and the staff who actually do all the work that keeps uni running.

Debate: What Does The Albanese Government Offer Students?

Rose Donnelly and Tom Williams battle it out.

Rose makes the argument FOR a Labor approach.

National Labor Students (NLS) believe free education should be accessible to all. Free education has been proven to decrease poverty, and barriers to opportunity. NLS strategy for successful free Ed is a twopronged approach. The first method is protesting the status quo; marches, publication and in some circumstances boycotts. The second is by joining and lobbying the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to enact reform for free education. The ALP was in the strong labour movement of the 1890’s, united by the vision of an equal society free from poverty. At the time, it was regarded as the world’s first social-democratic government at a national level.

The ALP introduced free education during the Whitlam Government in 1974, the aim being to ensure tertiary education be accessible to working and middle class Australians. Following this, the Liberal National Party repealed the reforms. When Labor returned to government they introduced HECS/HELP, which NLS acknowledges is an insufficient middle ground, but one that still adheres to the ethos that education must be accessible and does provide that opportunity. The Whitlam reforms created precedent for universal access to higher education and NLS believes such conditions can materialise again by building broad-based coalitions.

We have seen reform through broad-based coalitions such as the Builders Labourers Union’s Green Bans, which saw builders refuse to work on projects that were environmentally or socially undesirable. Unions insisted labourers had a right for their work not to be used in harmful ways, giving rise to a new principle of social responsibility within construction.

This kind of environmental activism known as the green bans movement was the first of its kind in the world. These efforts saved some of the oldest buildings in the Rocks, the construction of a car park underneath the Botanical Gardens and a concrete sports stadium being built in Centennial Park. Green bans style activism can be applied in the fight for free education— through collective strike action and boycotts. Students can draw upon this powerful record of union action.

NLS unequivocally supports striking workers. Strikes have played an important role in bettering conditions for workers. 1968 saw the first statewide teachers strike. The push resulted in Commonwealth and State education funding increasing by 6 million dollars. Such action was headed up by the NSW Teachers Federation, a body affiliated to the AEU. The AEU recently released a statement endorsing the Albanese Labor government, with their intentions to work closely. We look forward to working with the new government to deliver their TAFE funding commitments, to expand universal access to preschool to three-year-olds and to bring public school funding up to a minimum of 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard as soon as possible.” Such cooperation is what NLS posits is the best way to achieve universal education.

Australia’s democracy is often slow-moving and incremental, as such, our tactics for winning must acknowledge and utilise the system, as it exists, in order to encourage movement in policy. Thus, NLS rejects accelerationist strategies others may have, and hope to make meaningful change to people’s lives right now, workers and ordinary people cannot afford to wait for these conditions to change.

It’s an overstatement to say the current government offers little to students. The Albanese government is orchestrating the greatest setback for students and workers in decades. Company profits are skyrocketing alongside the prices of everyday goods, meanwhile real wages are tumbling, rent is less affordable than ever, and welfare sits below the poverty line.

Our future isn’t looking bright either. Labor “ended the climate wars” by ending any debate on the subject. They’re opening more than 150 new coal and gas projects, dealing a decisive defeat for the climate. They’ve delivered more nursing and teaching places, which means many more young workers will be overworked, underpaid, and burned out in a handful of years. More and more of the federal budget is being spent on the military, not our futures.

What Labor offers is false hope. Left-wing people felt confident to fight the outright conservatism of Morrison. Today, the sentiment is totally different. If Morrison was a write-off car crash, Albanese is a flawed project.

This is an intentional mirage. Labor has a long-term plan for Australia, and it’s thoroughly for the richest. They’re in power to deliver a stable economy, meaning guaranteed profits and a docile workforce. Their international plan is

to thoroughly assert Australia’s influence in the region and square up to China with nuclear submarines, land-to-sea missiles and a revitalised military.

Crucially though, they aim to dissipate resistance. On multiple accounts the responsible party of Australian capitalism has asserted that the unions will not fight the bosses or hamper their demands, and instead make ineffective consultation bodies to get us to shut up. No wonder union density is at historic lows.

History tells us reforms end in parliament and begin on the streets. They start as slogans on placards or demands chanted by thousands. The most significant reforms are not correlated with Labor holding power, but with massive, vibrant protests. Labor didn’t drive the reforms of the 70s, it was the tens of thousands of left-wing people who fought for them. Labor acted as a funnel, directing this writhing torrent into the channels of parliament, trading off reforms for passivity.

Left-wing people cannot spend their time pleading with a force that exists to quiet discontent. To win anything we must acknowledge the disarming role Labor plays and turn away from their proper channels and endless consultation. There currently isn’t a mass protest movement anywhere in Australia, and its high time we rebuilt the beginnings of one.

Tom makes the argument AGAINST a Labor approach.

Affordable Student Housing (or lack thereof...)

As a bewildering rite of passage, first-year students and beyond are inevitably tasked with finding suitable accommodation adjacent to campus - whether that be university accommodation, privately-owned student lodgings, private rentals, or very unfortunately… college residency. Regardless of their selection, the capitalistic exploitation of students and the reprehensible living and financial conditions perpetrated by accommodation are inescapable constants.

Unprecedented rent rises driven by bloated demand and insufficient supply have all but locked students out of a financially stable living situation. Private accommodation suppliers likeScape have similarly followed this trajectory, charging $419 weekly per person for a Redfern medium twin apartment. For local and international students alike, this accommodation is the most viable option to be close to campus and interact with their peers; those on low incomes are exploited by suppliers to the point of rent stress or crisis. This is in addition to the restrictive requirements and the 22-year-old age of independence which shockingly excludes students from accessing Youth Allowance. Hence, the financial stress culminates in the insecurity of food and basic living necessities, approaching a student’s living and education standards as an arbitrary variable rather than a lived experience.

Private rentals have their own unfortunate set of hurdles, particularly ‘no grounds’ evictions and the absence of rent freezes. Landlords also frequently abdicate their responsibility to structural issues like the emergence of mould in their rentals, again prioritising their income over honouring students and their need for safe accommodation.

International students are disproportionately affected by this impenetrable housing market. Yet, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has unfairly mandated that this group returns to campus in 2023 - a rebarbative subversion of their purported agenda to improve students’ “education quality.” These struggles are amplified by additional financial burdens, including inflated university fees and the inability to use concession opal cards, thus verifying the dysfunctional nature of the student accommodation market.

However, the University of Sydney does not seem to be phased by this crisis; in its thinly-veiled endeavours to prioritise profits over the livelihoods of students and staff, the University has recently sold large swathes of affordable accommodation near the Camperdown campus. The NSW government also demonstrates an apathetic unresponsiveness to the evident housing shortage, selling off $3 billion worth of social housing. Their attack on this basic human right continues into the future: the state still intends to privatise 70% of public housing at the Waterloo South Estate.

The faltering state of student accommodation necessitates staunch activism to counter this attack on our basic human rights - a fight that the USyd’s Student Representative Council (SRC) intends to participate in. In a recently circulated open letter, we enumerated our demands to the University regarding this, such as ceasing the selling off of accommodation and dismantling the colleges. This fight also includes attending the Rally for Housing Justice, organised by the Action for Public Housing (12pm on the 11th of Februaryat Town Hall), demanding action related to homeless, public housing, rent freezes and mortgage repayments.

Ultimately, capitalistic exploitation erodes our entitlements to safe accommodation and sustainable mental, financial and academic well-being - unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, consistent with the commercialisation of our university experience.

Jordan Anderson ponders the trainwreck that is student accomodation.

' The faltering state of student accomodation necessitates staunch activism to counter this attack on our basic human rights...’

Courtesy Honi Soit Issue 12, 1985

“Women, Life, Freedom”: The Struggle in Iran

Mass resistance has engulfed Iran since the murder of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in September 2022. Amini was arrested by the morality police for allegedly breaking mandatory veiling laws and was subsequently beaten in custody, leading to her death 3 days later. Since the protest that erupted at her funeral, thousands have joined into continuous demonstrations which have become the biggest and deepest struggle since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy.

The movement against women’s oppression, captured by the slogan “women, life, freedom”, has gripped every corner of the nation, with the involvement of all sections of society - men and women, workers and students, young and old. Videos of schoolgirls leaving class to join protests and burn their hijabs have come to characterise the brave and defiant resistance of the movement. Protestors march day and night, setting fire to police compounds and building barricades. The movement has inspired workers from various industries to take strike action, including teachers, truck drivers, sugarcane workers, construction and oil workers, demanding the unconditional release of imprisoned protestors, an end to all repression, and the prosecution of Mahsa Amini’s killers.

The backdrop for these protests is the repressive regime of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi. The government has faced increasing levels of crisis as the economy continues to deteriorate with high levels of inflation and poverty. This situation is especially harrowing for women, who are treated as second-class citizens. Raisi was responsible for a further ramping up of oppressive laws against women, alongside ethnic and religious minorities.

These attacks included banning access to birth control and introducing new hijab and chastity laws. Women, already affected by extremely high rates of poverty, are routinely abused by the morality police who exist to enforce mandatory veiling laws in public, often through verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

The Islamic Republic has always been ready to use force against its own people. In response to the current mass revolt, the regime has intensified political repression, arresting over 18,000 protesters as of this January, including 652 students. The regime has already killed over 500 protestors and dozens are currently facing death sentences, carried out through unjust military courts. It is a testament to the heroism of the movement that people continue to come out to demonstrate in the face of such brutal repression. Students have come to the forefront of the struggle. University campuses have become hubs of resistance and protest in the capital, Tehran, and surrounding cities, with over 100 universities having gone on strike. Students have been carrying out their activism through their student bodies, organising protests and sit-ins, boycotting classes, and making arguments to professors. They have also been releasing statements of solidarity with imprisoned protesters, demands on the government, and calls for nationwide strikes. They represent some of the most radical sections of the struggle, giving a lead on the political strategy to defeat the regime.

The protests in Iran can teach us as student activists in Australia many lessons about the role students can play in struggle, and the way in which mass movements can challenge oppression. Iranian students have been relentless in their daring activism against the regime, inspiring other sections of society to come out and fight alongside them. This has made them one of the prime targets of the regime’s brutal repression, which has done nothing but inflame their anger and resilience.

To some it can seem like oppression is simply a reflection of the bigotry of ordinary people in society. The example of Iran, however, cuts against that entirely. Men have joined women in the streets to fight against the brutality of the morality police. All over Iran, men and women chant “I will kill he who murdered my sister”. And in the course of the movement, it’s not simply the divide of women’s oppression that has been challenged, but the ethnic and religious divisions that have been fostered by Iran’s rulers for decades. After the regime massacred protesters in Baluchistan province in September 2022, officials attempted to blame the events on ethnic sectarian clashes. Their attempt to whip up ethnic conflict backfired - instead thousands of people from all backgrounds across the country came out chanting, “Long live the Kurds, the Arabs, the Baluchis!”. The main enemy is the Islamic Republic. And in the process of fighting to topple the regime that is to blame for inequality and oppression in society, Iranians have overcome constructed divides. Their call, “We are all Mahsa!” demonstrates how deep this solidarity runs.

Jasmine Al-Rawi recounts the radical protests in Iran.

With thanks from @mahdisnikou on Instagram

The Interdisciplinary Fad

Interdisciplinarity is all the rave internationally. Universities have historically taught highly specialised degrees that equip students with discipline-specific skills. The modern corporate university considers these skills and the idea of specialisation useless, and so interdisciplinarity is heralded as the solution to a non-existent problem. The university believes that by forcing students to study other fields, their methods and history, students will be better equipped for the practical application of their degree beyond university and are more rigorously prepared for research in academia that values interdisciplinary innovation. This is the view taken by the University of Sydney and its program “Future FASS” which seeks to “improve interdisciplinarity, strategic research and education initiatives and the student experience”. In reality, this program being forced upon students studying in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) is degrading the quality of undergraduate education the university provides, wasting students’ money on utterly uninspiring and useless units, all to ensure a steady revenue stream.

Transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary are all abuzz in the modern corporate university, with executives investing much time and money in marketing interdisciplinarity as the future. But what is interdisciplinarity? Most commonly seen in research projects in and outside of academia, it entails using knowledge, skills and approaches from varying disciplines to investigate an issue or resolve a problem. It follows then that an interdisciplinary education is one that equips students with discipline-specific skills from outside their own field allowing them to produce innovative research and resolve real-world problems. Atleast this is what any student would expect when having to undergo their mandated FASS units. What they receive is something entirely different.

If you ask any student who has completed FASS1000, FASS3999, and FASS3333, you’d almost definitely be met with a guttural sigh and a muttered: “thank fuck it’s over”. Described in scattered online testimony as “horrifying” and “an utter waste of time”, these interdisciplinary units are well-known for being woeful student experiences. FASS1000, whilst admittedly helpful in educating students on the expectations of writing and research conduct in the humanities, drags onto topics irrelated to the students who undertake said course, asking ceramic majors to future-proof AI. FASS3999 is the equivalent of a party game; shoving an art historian, English major, political economist and linguist into a room and asking them to construct a report on the feasibility of a universal basic income scheme. Further, FASS3333 involves an internship at an affiliated institution in which you bestow your intellectual labour to said institution at your own personal expense, $1832 to be exact. All three subjects involve a mind-numbing surfacelevel survey of other disciplines which may be

Harrison Brennan laments the death of the simple arts degree.

The weary student encounters a few of Sydney’s best. Adapted from Honi Soit Issue 06, 1991.

completely irrelated to your studies. Further, all three subjects set you back approx. $2000 each for an experience that is at best, uninspiring, and at worst, mentally ruinous.

This interdisciplinary education which the university is so keen to pursue is built on a slew of false assumptions, believing that surface-level exposure to other disciplines imparts useful skills and that specialisation is inherently bad. Historically, research spanning disciplines has produced significant outcomes or ground-breaking conclusions, at times responsible for the formation of whole new fields themselves. However, these were the product of collaboration between highly specialised scholars with a significant depth of knowledge regarding their own profession, interacting with scholarly neighbours at a postgraduate level. Undergraduates are not specialised individuals. It is in fact the entire purpose of a bachelor’s degree to educate students and engross them in their chosen discipline, so that they may understand their field with refined depth. By depriving students of elective units and forcing upon them interdisciplinarity, students are unable to specialise further in their designated schools or use elective units to investigate other fields thoroughly, culling the ability of students to specialise and branch out. The FASS pursuit of an anti-specialist education is intrinsically anti-interdisciplinary. Innovative research is achieved not by forcing vague, generalised units upon students, it is achieved by focusing on specialisation in the primary juncture of their tertiary education, their bachelor’s degree, and facilitating interdisciplinarity for students at a post-graduate level.

To understand that interdisciplinarity at an undergraduate level is a fad is not rocket science, it is in fact well-known to the university executive. However, these units (FASS1000/3333/3999) are planted firmly in the ground, with no sign of removal, because they ensure a steady profit

margin for the university. Already saddled with heavier debt after the 2020 Job Ready Graduates Package, humanities students are forced to undertake two to three of these mandated FASS units costing $1832 each for domestic students. In making said units mandatory, the university has created a reliable stream of revenue that goes directly to FASS. Simultaneously, these units function as a cost-cutting device. By depriving students of elective space, they are without the opportunity to study more of their own discipline or others that interest them, depriving departments of revenue and attendance numbers. This then allows the university executive to justify costcutting measures; namely, faculty merges, course cuts and redundancies, orchestrated in the name of “curriculum sustainability”. Not only is our education crumbling beneath the feet of these mandated FASS units, but said units which, are almost universally despised, are used to justify removing courses that students find truly fulfilling. The arts are not protected at the University of Sydney but are in fact being brutalised in the name of a fad used to guarantee a steady stream of cash. It is imperative that we resist the university’s ongoing streamlining of degrees and its “Future FASS” program. In place of that, we must fight for an education that is liberatory, just and based on principles of mutual benefit on the side of staff and students.

Courtesy Honi Soit Issue 02, 1981

Students at USYD rallied against Future FASS and other proposed cuts in 2021.

Grace Mitchell and Alastair Panzarino set the history straight.

The Radical History of Academia A

t first glance, the academy may appear as a fairly conservative institution, boasting neoclassicist sandstone architecture, a penchant for Latin phrases, and an entrenched professorial hierarchy. Certainly, the primary functions of the modern university are economic — that of research and development, and training an emerging labour force. Yet the university is also historically a site of ideological and political contestation. Students are occasionally encouraged to engage with radical and subversive perspectives which, when applied systematically, are incompatible with the Toryism and banality of ordinary university life. Academic staff are exploited and deprived of autonomy while the role of the educator is venerated. Courses critical of environmental degradation, structural oppression, and military conflicts are taught while the university Board invests in fossil fuels and researches military technologies. The university is therefore a contradiciton characterised by an internal contradiction between its ideological aspirations and the actuality of its function, and the movement and countermovement between the two.

This article will examine historical instances when the friction of this dissonance openly ruptured amidst the broader social upheaval of the early 1970s, producing both the women’s studies programme and the first political economy courses. These case studies demonstrate how academics, students, and the working class can align to demand social advances and successfully undermine the conservative pressures of the academy.

An Unlikely Union: The BLF and the Establishment of the First Women’s Studies Programme at Sydney University

Amid the long hair and liberty print of 1973, an unlikely union between Sydney University students and academic staff and the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was born. Spurred by mutual desires for social change and activism, these two sides came together for what would become a month-long strike. While Women’s Liberation activists at the university were the primary commanders of this ordeal, this collaboration ultimately engendered the establishment of the first Women’s Studies programme taught at Sydney University, ‘Women and Philosophy.’ This course set a precedent for further women-centred programmes, eventually resulting in the formation of the university’s Women’s Studies Department.

The creation of Sydney University’s ‘Women and Philosophy’ course was engendered by the Women’s Liberation Movement. The Women’s Liberation Movement began in the late 1960s, focusing on ‘liberating women’ –albeit chiefly white and cis women – from western society’s patriarchal confines. In academia, the Women’s Liberation Movement manifested as the push for women to work at universities whilst also promoting a scholarly platform for female academics to disrupt hegemonic representations of white Australian women. Thus, the establishment of a Women’s Studies Department was vital for Women’s Liberationists to achieve their movement’s goal; initiating a course operated by women, for women, allowed for the expression of new ways of viewing and representing the female experience.

Indeed, Sydney in the early 1970s was a hub of Leftist activism, the extent to which had not been seen prior. Occurring simultaneously with the Women’s Liberation Movement were the Green Bans, primarily carried out by Jack Mundey and the BLF. The Green Bans are best defined

by scholar Verity Burgmann as being the protection of outdoor spaces from development and protecting existing buildings, particularly older buildings, from demolition for new developments and freeways. The Green Bans Movement ultimately saved many of Sydney’s historical structures that we today take for granted, including innercity suburbs such as The Rocks and Woolloomooloo. Yet, the Green Bans also bled into social and political issues around workers’ rights, Queer rights, and women’s rights. Importantly, the Green Bans demonstrated the social change that could be achieved through the union of workers and activists.

This idea is epitomised in the 1973 strike to establish the first Women’s Studies course at Sydney University. The monthlong strike was a result of a complicated dispute within the university’s Philosophy Department. Inspired by the creation of Women’s Studies courses and departments at universities around the world, academics Elizabeth Jacka and Jean Curthoys proposed a ‘Women and Philosophy’ course to be taught within the Philosophy Department. While both the philosophy department and the university’s Faculty of Arts approved the idea for the course’s establishment, it was declined by the Philosophy’s Head of Department and the university’s professional board. As written in a 1973 edition of Honi Soit, the university board “took the almost unprecedented course of ignoring their own committee’s recommendations and deciding that Liz and Jean were incapable of teaching the course.” As a result of this decision, a motion was passed by over 300 students and university staff in favour of the teaching of Jacka and Curthoys’ course. Shortly after, students and staff voted to strike until the course was permitted.

Realising the importance and scale of this strike, the BLF saw its chance to push for social change and assembled at Sydney University. Luckily for the BLF, the union had power over the university; urgent repairs were required on several of the university’s older buildings. The BLF refused to

“Importantly, the Green Bans demonstrated the social change that could be achieved through the union if workers and activists.”

complete the required building works until the ‘Women and Philosophy’ course could be initiated, joining the bunches of university protesters whilst engaging in negotiations with the university. Finally, almost one month after the strike began, the university approved the protesters’ request, inciting the birth of the first women’s philosophy course in the world. While it can be seen as an unlikely union, the collaboration between the BLF and student protesters reminds us of the historic links between workers and students and the power of this relationship to enact change.

The Movement for Political Economy

This period also saw the development of Political Economy courses as an independent discipline of study. At the time, the study of economics at the University was preoccupied with mystifying mathematical formulae inaptly describing ‘market variations’. This dry, abstract, and uncritically capitalistic approach was becoming intellectually disconnected from an emerging layer of students concerned with the social struggles of the late 1960s, principally around the anti-Vietnam War movement. Students were increasingly questioning the traditional assumptions of mainstream economics, and coming to an engagement in issues of political power, environmentalism, social class, and exploitation.

Concurrently, a group of dissenting academics in the Faculty of Economics were actively contesting attempts by recently appointed professors to further strip economics courses of any critical or political content. Under the auspices of ‘modernisation’ this restructuring would have produced a narrow and conservative curriculum. Recognising a shared interest, these dissident academics and students aligned themselves around a shared goal of rebuking these attempts to entrench an orthodox economic approach as the exclusive and ubiquitous permitted understanding.

Inarguably, there was an explicitly political aspect to this confrontation. The dissidents were asserting the right and necessity of those studying economics to analyze capitalism critically and elaborate an alternative, rather than to merely reproduce formulaic descriptions of it. Among a range of demands, this contest concerned the right of Marxist economic theory to be institutionally studied at the University. The movement for Political Economy had been partially influenced by the conflict over the Philosophy Department’s intransigent conservatism in rejecting the introduction of a course on Marxist theory. Its eventual incorporation into the Political Economy courses, alongside aspects of other more critical tendencies, was a qualitative breakthrough against the ideological stranglehold mainstream economics.

Yet arguably more significant was the challenge to the assumed, sterile mode of education; that students are passive and uncritical receptacles of information from ‘a sage on the stage’, and that academics regurgitate the curriculum compliantly, and whose input into designing the educational process is relegated to performative feedback forms once every 6 months. The fight for Political Economy

was an elaboration of a democratic vision of pedagogy, in which students and academics collaboratively compose an approach based on collective intellectual interests. As described in ‘Political Economy Now!’ “the political economists argued that students should participate in the design of their education -- to help draw up curricula, to question what is laid down by the writers of textbooks, and to actively participate in the assessment of their progress in learning.” This novel method impugned both the assumption that the labour performed by academics should be dictated by upper management, and the conception of the University student as purchasing the commodity of education. The fledgling political economists dispensed with a transactional interrelation between the student, academic, and university structure, and sought to implement a collegial one.

Naturally, these radical proposals were not accepted by the existing professorial authority without resistance. Academics and students utilised sit-ins, rolling demonstrations and occupations, and mass meetings to maintain a continuous pressure on the Faculty of Economics. After a several year long campaign, the faculty eventually acquiesced and granted the first political economy courses in 1975, though it was only decades later that it was afforded the status of an independent department.

In 2023, these two instances of collaboration between academics, students, and unions seem strikingly relevant. With the persistent maltreatment of university academic staff, course cuts, and fee hikes, these case studies highlight how this ‘unlikely union’ can enact change both in the present and in the future. Ultimately, it is evident that radical action in the university space requires strong teamwork from a variety of groups and individuals, even if this collaboration seems perhaps outlandish at first.

Protests for Political Economy at USYD in the 70s. Courtesy Sydney University archives.

Sydney University students rallying in support of the NSW BLF following the establishment of Women’s Studies.

“The fledgling political economists dispensed with a transactional interrelationbetween the student, academic, and university structure, and sought to implement a collegial one.”

and How We Should Respond

The far right are on the rise again. Last year, the far right won elections across Europe in Sweden, Italy, Hungary and Poland. They’ve had political victories like the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States. Far right politicians like Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi and France’s Marine Le Pen all have large bases of support. We’ve seen a proliferation of right wing ‘celebrity influencer’ figures like Andrew Tate (professional TikToker and human trafficker) and Jordan Peterson (intellectual guru for incels). They’ve helped to normalise a bigoted right-wing worldview, pulling broader layers of young people into the ranks of the far right.

These developments require an urgent response from the left. The success of the far right threatens the rights of activists, migrants, workers and the oppressed around the world. Our side needs to arm ourselves with an understanding of how to fight them.

How have the Far Right Grown?

In recent decades, the world capitalist system has failed to maintain the living standards of the vast majority of people since the Global Economic Crisis of 2007-8. This has created fertile ground for the far right to grow.

Millions have suffered intensified social and financial insecurity, rising unemployment rates, spiralling inequality, rising levels of personal debt, all exacerbated by the impacts of Covid-19. This has mostly been overseen by the political parties most identified with the mainstream centre who have continually presided over austerity measures, attacks on workers’ wages and living conditions. This has led to widespread political disillusionment, allowing previously marginal political ‘outsiders’ to grow support.

So a fascist Brothers of Italy party were able to win the election in 2022, in large part on the basis of being the only party who had not already been in government passing austerity measures. The despairing track record of every other party in the Italian government, from conservatives to the social democratic left, has opened space for the far right to pose as an alternative.

Centre governments have led the intensification of state authoritarianism and racism, primarily Islamophobia. Today, policies that would have been considered extremist some years ago are now common sense in Fortress Europe, helping the far right’s ideas about society become acceptable.

Emmanuel Macron, Europe’s neoliberal centrist par excellence, has pushed France massively to the right. Under his tenure, terror attacks have been opportunistically used to curtail democratic rights and declare successive states of emergency, giving extra powers to the army and police. Further Islamophobic legislation has been pushed through, Macron has gone as far as banning charity organisations which provide legal support to Muslim victims of discrimination and coining the phrase “Islamo-leftism” to attack left wing activism.

Out of Their Basements and Into the Political Mainstream

Emboldened by their European and American successes, the far right are feeling confident and on the front foot, both electorally and by stoking the culture war. They have successfully broken from the margins and into the mainstream in country after country.

Today, the far right peddle conspiracy theories about the “Great Replacement” of white people by migrants, QAnon and Covid-19 and vaccine denialism, which are increasingly treated as authentic by hundreds of thousands.

In Australia, these developments have not progressed as far as many European countries, but there are plenty of troubling signs about where things could be heading if the far right can find a movement, organisation and charismatic leader to cohere around. We have already seen some of the biggest anti-vax demonstrations in the world, so we have to be prepared to take up the fight.

How do we Fight the Right?

The key task for the left today is putting an end to this growth and defeating them for good. The long history of left-wing activism against the far right have given us three key lessons that we can learn from:

1. We can’t look to the political mainstream to stand up to the right: Mainstream liberalism offers no solution, and the far right has little to no respect for “legality” and democratic processes. In fact, the mainstream has given them room to grow. Left-wing activists will have to organise and mobilise independently to stop this threat.

2. We need to confront them in the streets: The far right are not a force that can just be won over by civil debate or parliamentary manoeuvres. When they grow confident enough to take the streets, we have to confront them. When prominent right wing figures find venues to spread their far right views, the left must be ready to take them on. There is no place for bigotry and hate.

3. We need to fight against every injustice of the system, not just the extreme right: These ideas do not spring out of nowhere. They are rooted in a capitalist system based on sexism and racism, on violent authoritarianism,nationalism and war. The left needs to rebuild the politics of solidarity. This means we can’t be single issue activists - we have to fight against every injustice capitalism throws up not only to stop the rise of the far right, but to smash the structures that create it.

Shovan Bhattarai charts the rise of the far-right.

In signing up to study at Sydney University, it is the hope of many students that the knowledge they will gain here might help them to challenge society, or even to change the world. However there is someone that your university classes don’t want you to know the truth about. That person is Karl Marx, history’s most famous socialist. His theories remain essential for understanding the world we live in in 2023.

Central to Marx’s theories is the belief that society is divided by class. Under capitalism, the capitalists hoard most of the wealth, but do none of the work. They don’t have to work, because they own all of the technology and tools which the workers use each day to create products. Then, nearly all of the money created by selling these worker-made products goes straight into the capitalist’s wallet and business, and not to the worker. In this lies their exploitation.

This class divide exists in all workplaces, including in the warehouses of Amazon, which are ruled over by one of America’s most hated capitalists, Jeff Bezos. Workers at Amazon are paid $18 or less, and are monitored by machines which calculate how much ‘time off task’ they are taking. They are fired for non-compliance, which means that even a simple bathroom break is a risky task. Although Jeff Bezos has not packaged a single product himself, he will soon become one of the world’s first trillionaires. His money was not earnt by his own merits, but by pushing his workers to work harder and harder, for criminally low pay. When workers work harder and for less pay, then profits increase, and so capitalist’s will always push for this as much as they can get away with it.

This system is not set up to fulfill human needs, but to make a profit. Capitalists do everything with the aim of making the greatest amount of money. The climate crisis is one of the best, and most concerning, examples of this. Even though everyone is aware that we need to switch to non-renewables to prevent climate devastation, this change does not happen. This is because the capitalists in this industry are making a profit in fossil fuels, and it would go against the logic of profit to shut down their mines.

However Marx did not look at the world, and see this class divide as an insurmountable evil. He declared that a new world is possible, and could be won through class struggle against the bosses. A spark of this lies in the courage of the Staten Island Amazon workers, who formed the Amazon Labor Union in 2022, demanding a $30 minimum wage, and challenging their daily monitoring. These unionists continue to push for the unionization of other Amazon warehouses, because they know the importance of spreading the fight. Jeff was furious at this, and tried to file complaints to the national labor board. Unsurprisingly, capitalists will always hate it when workers fight for better pay and conditions, and risk their profits.

Why Only Marx Can Explain 2023

So long as there is a capitalist system that endlessly exploits workers, and that constantly oppresses minorities and women, there will be people who are willing to fight back collectively. Throughout 2022, protests and strikes across the world rocked the system, and 2023 is sure to deliver the same. In Iran, a Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was murdered by the morality police for violating mandatory veiling laws, which seek to control women’s bodies. Protests erupted, echoing with the chants of “We are all Mahsa!” and, “Death to the Dictator!” Throughout the year, workers like the teachers and sugar cane workers had been striking for better conditions, and supporting the protests. After the government lied about abolishing the morality police under this pressure, protestors called for the strikes which shook the whole country.

It is with this same anger that protesters took to the streets in the USA after Roe v. Wade was overturned, chanting “fuck the supreme court!” They refused to simply back down after this terrible right wing attack on women’s rights.

In a year filled with strikes and riots, protesters overthrew the Rajapaksa regime, a government racked with chaos in a time of economic crisis. Although officials instructed train drivers to shut down the trains, protestors convinced the train drivers to take them to Colombo to take part in the uprising. When they arrived, the protestors overwhelmed police barricades and took over Gotabaya’s mansion, jumping into his pool and drinking his whiskey.

These courageous train drivers are reminiscent of the workers in the UK, where three different transport unions have surged forward, striking nationally. They are struggling for better wage rises during a cost of living crisis where the price of everyday goods is skyrocketing.

Like Marx understood, the oppressed and exploited must live under governments that do not serve them, and that always put the capitalists first. Wars break out often despite popular opposition, because capitalist economies are in constant competition. In 2022, Russia started an unjust war by attacking Ukraine. New sanctions placed on Russian oil impacted economies worldwide, increasing the prices of items like food in Australia. Under capitalism, food, houses, and medicine are commodities, meaning they are objects with a price that must be purchased. This means that even if you were starving, if you walk into a supermarket and ask for an apple they will only give it to you if you have the money to pay for it.

In 2023, 140 years on from Marx’s death, the world is still divided by class, and the system of capitalism continues to exploit, oppress, and prioritize profit over human life. This presents us all with a choice. Do we take to the streets and join the fight? Or do we simply accept the way things are?

With the system racked by crisis, it is more important than even to be a Marxist today.

Keira Garland examines the spectre haunting your classroom.

“This system is not set up to fulfill human needs, but to make a profit.”

Refugee Policies Under A New Government:

Australia may have a new government, but that does not mean the fight for refugee rights stops. If anything, it should be as strong as ever. Australia has long-since been in contravention of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the United Nations’ core international legal document acknowledging and protecting the rights of refugees. Disappointingly, both the Liberal National Coalition and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) support the continuation of the hardline migration policies causing such contravention.

Offshore processing is the most detrimental. Over the past ten years over 4000 people have been sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea (PNG) in offshore processing facilities. These facilities are characterised by lengthy and unfair vetting, the deteriorating mental and physical harm of detainees, individuals’ perpetual state of limbo, and cost Australia over $1 billion dollars annually. Boat turn-backs, mandatory indefinite detention and discrimination based on mode of arrival in Australia are among the other policies punishing refugees and asylum seekers for seeking safety.

Such punitive measures breach two core pillars of refugee protection. The first is non-refoulement, the principle that a person with refugee status should ‘not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom’. The second concerns the durable solutions available to helping refugees. These are voluntary repatriation, local integration in the country of asylum, and resettlement in a third country. However, resettlement should only ever be used as a last resort.

United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) 2022 Report

Australia has been urged most recently in the 2022 UNCAT report to end offshore processing, repeal the legal provisions establishing mandatory detention for irregular migration, and ensure all asylum seekers have access to efficient and fair processing and non-refoulement determination. This is in addition to a series of further recommendations. Considering the ALP’s election promises and 2022 budget, is there scope for reform in Australia’s punitive migration laws?

In short, yes. However, many of Australia’s most problematic irregular migration policies have bipartisan approval or are awaiting reform despite the ALP’s election promises.

Platform for Change

In 2017, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) established ‘Platform for Change’, a proposed a list of policy reforms and targets to improve the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

Since its drafting, some progress has been made: durable solutions have been found for some people in offshore processing, Australia’s refugee intake from Afghanistan has increased and the government has accepted New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees per year for three years. Notably, this resettlement was accepted nine years after being offered.

Furthermore, an assessment of these broader changes against the Council’s five primary targets highlights the gaps between current policies and ideal reforms; amongst the most glaring targets which have been ignored are a permanent end to offshore processing, a fair process for claiming asylum, reform of the immigration detention system, more responsive humanitarian programs and improved Australian engagement in Asia.

Empty Promises or Partial Progress?

Despite the Albenese government’s public claims of support for onshore processing, it has already promised to negotiate resettlement of refugees to third parties and increase the amount of money allocated to offshore processing facilities from $482 million to $632.5 million. These changes are, as the ASRC points out, a “moral and ethical black hole.” A new border force network is also on track to be set up in the Pacific, costing an estimated

Protestors gather outside Albanese’s office in Marrickville to demand permanent visas and an end to the inhumane ‘Fast-Track’ process. Via Refugee Action Coalition Sydney.

Amelie Roediger demystifies the ALP’s refugee policy.

Government: The Fight Does Not Stop

$22.3 million. Improvements the ALP has started to enact in other areas of migration policy are greatly overshadowed by this.

It is of primary concern that detention is still viewed as a buttress of the immigration system; a policy of first resort. In recent years, the Coalition made efforts to remove children from onshore detention centres but did not pass legislation barring child detention in the first place. The Coalition also implemented a policy requiring detainees to pay for their detention, a requirement described by Michelle Peterie as ‘futile and cruel’. The issue remains.

In Australia, mandatory detention is indefinite. Such an arbitrary system is cruelly punitive and innately inhuman; punishing people for seeking safety. Reforms that would drastically improve the system include repealing mandatory detention, including regulation criteria, maximum time limits for immigration detention, prohibiting child detention, and implementing regular judicial review and scrutiny by independent third parties. The Albanese government has not indicated such changes will be pursued in the near future.

Looking at Australia’s humanitarian program more broadly, the Albanese government, in line with RCOA’s advice, aspires to expand Australia’s refugee intake to 27,000 people a year. This is up from the Coalition’s drastic reduction to just over 5,000 places. The new government also intends to implement a new community sponsorship program.

However, the budget announced in October 2022 does not reflect these promises. Instead, it allows the humanitarian visa program to remain at 13,750 places in 2022/23 with additional places for Afghan refugees. It also does not appear that refugee places lost during the COVID-19 pandemic will be added to future targets.

When it comes to reforming the process of seeking asylum, the ALP’s election promises do offer hope for positive progress but at this point remain just promises. We are yet to see any tangible changes.

Looking at what changes have been made so far, the government has made the most headway in visa budgeting. Funding has been allocated to fast tracking the visa process, funding for Ukrainian refugees, and improving the adult migrant English program (AMEP).

But ultimately, while the 2022 federal election was a glimpse of hope for people seeking asylum, the fight for refugee rights continues, just under new management. Funding allocations suggest imminent improvements to aspects of the migration system but none that will address its structural flaws; which are where the biggest problems lie.

As such, the fight for refugee rights continues. It appears we will not see tangible change otherwise.

Several activist groups converged outside Parliament House in November 2022 in support of immediate and radical refugee action. Via Refugee Action Coalition Sydney.

Sydney Law School’s Darwinism

Jayden Nguyen tackles the elitist nature of the Sydney Law School.

Placing Arts/Law as my first course preference in year twelve meant always being asked whether I truly expected to achieve entry. Since no student from my school had achieved an ATAR above 98 for some time, I was told to consider more realistic decisions; because had I placed my hope into one degree, I would be bound for disappointment.

There is an unspoken reality to growing up in Liverpool, one which remains silent because it seems unnecessary to contemplate: that university is rarely for education’s sake. The motivation for one’s degree is one’s career prospects; coming from families whose origins are of immigrant and war-torn backgrounds, with additional first-in-family pressures, we seek comfort in financial security.

We realise how the ATAR system operates against us. School duxes where we come from rarely break into the high 90’s – and if they do, it is historical. We know the highest achieving students come from privileged schools far from us by means of distance and socio-economic privilege.

The intersectional struggles students from areas like mine experience means, within ourselves, we must accept that the education system will never reward us fairly. With a sense of impossibility in obtaining anything above 95, we are always reminded that where you come from indeed determines how much you can achieve.

So for me, the appeal of Sydney Law School was not necessarily its prestige – it was to distort it with my attendance.

Sydney Law School has taught me legal principles, legalese; will continue to teach me human rights, concepts of justice – but above all, this school taught me the great limitations of socio-economic disadvantage.

The excuse that such harshness is the reality of legal practice is a pathetic excuse for culling the cohort, and forcing insecurity onto the most vulnerable students. If the Law School and its students truly believed in change for good through restorative justice, then we would foster that attitude through our education.

We are made to believe that a law degree is the only means to make legitimate social change, but it is not. It is, in our unspoken reality, almost the opposite.

Legal education forces you to centralise your views, because the legal system does not want radical, progressive ideologies to dismantle the institutionalised white power it has preserved for two hundred years.

University of Sydney enrolments by school type 2021

Though as a law student, I have been disillusioned. Once you realise the University only allows shallow, exclusive inclusivity schemes including E12 or Future Leaders, you will be reminded of the high school feeling; that this education system wasn’t designed for you.

The entire experience of this law school – from admission to content learning – is fostered to the educational experiences of those who attended its feeder schools. If you come from outside, you will always feel that way.

Here, imposter syndrome thrives in students from disadvantaged backgrounds who continuously feel the need to prove themselves worthy. The more you learn your cohort have mostly lived in incomparable privilege, the more you realise how much harder it is for you to equally compete – and the more defeated you become.

The disparity between private/Catholic/selective and Government non-selective enrolments highlights part of the problem with classism within the Sydney Law School. Via Honi Soit 2021.

You have no choice but to surrender your morals the more you realise the hopelessness of our legal system in delivering reasonable and ethical outcomes. You are taught to dissolve your critical intelligence down to legal principles. You are forced to think that any possibility of progressive change beyond incremental legal evolution is not only inappropriate, but impossible.

And for those who manage to somehow preserve any passion, they operate deep within a swarm of corrupted lawyers.

Despite knowing the flaws of our inflexible legal system, law students are made to think complacently about the Constitution – but how can we justify a legal system responsible for the greatest incarceration of Indigenous peoples in the world? A reality where the age of criminal responsibility is ten?

Did You Know?

At USYD, home to one of Australia’s most prestigious law schools, the ATAR requirement for guaranteed entry to law in 2020 was 99.50. Yet only:

For those of us who come from an immigrant background; a low socio-economic background; a separated family; are the first in our family; the only one from a school nobody knows; the first to achieve a high 90’s ATAR for decades; have never gone overseas; owned your childhood home; or had the option to work –– it seems we will always be fighting this prejudiced system.

Sydney Law School lags far behind every other university’s welfare and representation rates due to its obsession with protecting its 99.5 or equivalent entrance mark. It could simply look to UNSW’s LAT test or WSU’s True Reward programme, which resolve student inequality by considering academic potential without the discriminatory ATAR scaling system. Our University’s exclusivity should be realised for what it truly is; classist, and loyal to Australia’s wealthiest students.

Additionally, just 10 per cent of high school students enrolling in law degrees across Australia between 2005-2015 came from the lowest quartile of socioeconomic status measures as defined by the Department of Education. Almost 60 per cent of law students came from the top two quartiles.

“I came first or second in most of my classes at high school but that didn’t give me the mark I needed, with the ATAR ranking system the way it is.”

“I have been lucky enough to go and move the admission for graduates who come through our legal centre. You still see there are at least half a dozen people who get up and they are moving the admission for their daughter, or their nephew or their wife.”

“It’s pretty well known that the ATAR ranking system comes down to your cohort and your school.”

“I came from a single-parent household and was the first in my family to go to university. There was no easy road into law school and to get admitted to legal practice.”

“Here, imposter syndrome thrives in students from disadvantaged backgrounds who continuously feel the need to prove themselves worthy.”

Via Allman, K. (2020). A profession for the wealthy? The enduring problem for diversity in law [online]

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of the Orientation Handbook and Countercourse, thanks for reading!

Hope to see you in a meeting, on a picket or wherever else these crazy activists go (hint: pub). You’ll see us one way or another...

[CONTRIBUTORS]

Editors

Ishbel Dunsmore

Yasmine Johnson

Tiger Perkins

Jasmine Donnelly

Simone Madison

Design and Layup

Harrison Brennan

Ariana Haghighi

Deaglan Godwin

Tom Williams

Art

Ishbel

Writers

Ishbel Dunsmore

Yasmine Johnson

Simone Maddison

Aidan Elwig Pollock

Deaglan Godwin

Christine Lai

Julius Wittfoth

Rose Donnelly

Tom Williams

Jordan Anderson

Jasmine Al-Rawi

Harrison Brennan

Grace Mitchell

Shovan Bhattarai

Keira Garland

Amelie Roediger

Jayden Nguyen

Lia Perkins

Alana Ramshaw

Eliza Crossley

Joseph Arabit

Alex Poirier

Emily McKay

Oscar Chaffey

Liz Marsh

Melissa de Silva

Daniel Bowron

Ishbel Dunsmore, Yasmine Johnson, Tiger Perkins and Jasmine Donnelly with thanks to the Publications Managers.

Dunsmore, Tiger Perkins and Jasmine Donnelly with many thanks to Honi Soit.

Find