Honi Soit: Week 13, Semester 2, 2022

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Honi Soit is published on the stolen land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded; the invasion of this land was, and still is, a process of immense violence, destruction, and theft.

The Editors of Honi acknowledge the suffering caused by ongoing colonial structures and commit to confronting the political, economic, legal and social systems which continue to oppress First Nations people.

As a collective, we acknowledge that we are each living, writing, and working on stolen Gadigal, Cammeraygal, Dharawal, and Darug land. Further, the university which we attend is an inherently colonial institution, one which upholds the systems of knowledge and power that have caused deep harm and pain on this continent.

As a student newspaper which operates and distributes within such an institution, we have a responsibility

to remain conscious of, and actively combat, complicity in colonisation.

It is important to recognise that First Nations people have, since 1788, resisted and survived colonial violence. Our newspaper needs to platform the voices of this ongoing resistance, truly valuing and heeding Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.

Honi has stood on stolen land since its inception 93 years ago; embedded in the history of this paper is the tireless resistance to oppressive,

EDITORIAL

By Roisin Murphy.

Ode

Stucco

colonial structures within society by First Nations writers, contributors and editors — it is our duty to uphold their legacy, champion their voices, and continue to fight for First Nations justice.

We pay our deepest respect to Elders both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations students, staff, and readers of Honi Soit.

Always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

EDITOR IN-CHIEF Roisin Murphy

EDITORS

Carmeli Argana, Amelia Koen, Sam Randle, Thomas Sargeant, Ellie Stephenson, Khanh Tran, Zara Zadro.

WRITERS

Carmeli Argana, Iggy Boyd, Nicola Brayan, Oscar Chaffey, Alexandre Douglas, Felix Faber, James Frederiksen, Callum Gallagher, Christian Holman, Henry Junor, Lucas Kao, Amelia Koen, Charlie Lancaster, Jessica Maronese, Finn McGrath, Eamonn Murphy, Roisin Murphy, Luke Ottavi, Alana Ramshaw, Sam Randle, Swapnik Sanagavarapu, Thomas Sargeant, Robert Smith, Ellie

Stephenson, Khanh Tran, Caitlin White, Zara Zadro, Chamberlain Zhang.

ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS

Amelia Koen, Imogen Marosz, Yasodara Puhule-Gamayalage, Alana Ramshaw, Ellie Stephenson, Khanh Tran, Zara Zadro.

COVER DESIGN

Photo by Anonymous

BACK COVER ARTIST

Thomas Sargeant

Adapted from Honi Soit Issue 20, 29 August 1989.

One Friday evening early in the semester, I told a friend – a former editor – that editing Honi only really started to get good as I realised it was starting to end. This happens to everyone, every year, he said. You become overwhelmed with putting out the paper, always just trying to make it to the next week. Then it’s week 13, he told me. And you’ll wish you had just a little more time.

Truthfully, editing Honi is a lot of work. More work than is reasonable for a uni student, who almost always comes into the job already balancing study, financial and family commitments. Spending 16+ hours on a Sunday putting together a 30 page paper, doing a 3 hour meeting in the middle of the week, editing 5+ articles, as well as writing your own ones, is an entirely unreasonable workload, particularly on $200 a week. It’s been the most difficult year of my life and I have cried on the phone to my Mum and Dad an unreasonable amount. Sometimes the workload made it hard to be in the moment, soaking it all in.

But I’d do it all again. And again, and again, and again. Because there is no newspaper in the world quite like Honi. And because I won’t remember this year for the breakdowns, the heated arguments, or the many, many tears.

I’ll remember it as Thomas, Sam and I sneaking through windows between buildings, finding the best rooftop views to share with our readers, looking over campus and feeling like kings of our little world. I’ll remember it as consistently being made to feel more clever just for having been around Ellie. I’ll remember it as getting scolded by Carmeli, the best news writer I know, for suggesting the news pyramid is obsolete. I’ll remember it as the way Zara romanticised the every day, diagnosing not herself but the world around her with main character

syndrome (complimentary). I’ll remember it as Fabian challenging my prior inability to socialise with men, and also my inability to be challenged; as Christian’s commitment to holding us to a moral baseline when we were perhaps too unwilling; and as Amelia’s pushing us to be better, refusing to let lack of effort lower the pride we feel in our paper. I’ll remember it as Khanh consistently surprising us with information they’d been hiding from us for months, the smiling assassin.

I’ll remember the Langford Office, where we lay up the paper, as the place where it accidentally slipped out that Sam was our last choice for the ticket because he ticks literally no diversity criteria (sorry Sam). But I’ll also remember it as the friendship that blossomed between us through our mutual desire to spark controversy. What I won’t remember as much is the urgency with which Thomas and I pursued the office for kick-ons, where we definitely prescribed to the SRC’s policy of not consuming alcohol on the premises.

This week’s edition has a naked body on the back cover. I hope it’ll prompt you to question what you associate with holes, and why you might make those associations. Is what makes a hole sexual, dirty, tender or rough solely reliant on who it belongs to? I hope that, if your initial response was disgust and discomfort, that you take the time to question how we categorise our bodies. And hey, we all have a hole.

Some people find themselves in Europe. But I found myself in the Langford Office. I’d be lying if I said I won’t be lost without Honi. Most of my late teen years were spent wanting to edit. Now I’ve done it. It might be true that the most precious things in life are fleeting, but I wish I’d had just a little more time.

facebook.com/ honisoitsydney instagram.com/ honi_soit twitter.com/

youtube.com/ honisoitau

https://linktr.ee/ honisoit

2022. ISSN: 2207-5593.

Sex & the City Rd

Reaching the end of the year, Rude Girl is ready to hang up her Manolo Blahniks and Log Off. Reflecting on the year that was, it appears that Rude Girl just couldn’t win. When reporting on things that really did happen, she was too mean. When she took a week off due to lack of gossip or reliable sources, she was admonished. It seems that as the year progressed, students were more ready to air their grievances anonymously online.

It is worth questioning what everyone

considers the role of this gossip column to be. When you turn straight to this page to read it, are you checking to see if anyone you know is up to lighthearted campus antics? Or are you a seasoned hack, keeping up to date with the latest stupol machinations? Are you hoping to have personal scores settled, your enemies taken down? If you were writing gossip on your fellow students, what would you have to say? Would you lift people up, or tear them down?

With those thoughts, here’s some final gossip. Next year’s SRC will have their work cut out for them, given how many councillors are more keen on hearing the sounds of their own voices rather than

providing for students. Councillors should still be more mentally present than this year’s, given that mould remediation in the SRC offices has begun.

Last week’s SASS AGM is covered on the following page, and is a welcome change from years of Liberal stacking. To the new President, some advice: SASS Camp is a time-honoured recruitment ground for USU campaigners, be discerning about who the camp leaders are.

Rude Girl wishes next year’s editorial team the best of luck. To Rude Girl’s readers, critics, and friends, she hopes you enjoy some summer reads that are not University gossip.

Michael Spence Column for Disagreeing Well

On pasta and electoralism

Ellie Stephenson rants.

This op-ed will defend two things: USU and Senate elections.

The first pro-electoralism tirade might surprise people. Although I was once an ardent USU-election-defender, the course of this year has pretty seriously disillusioned me with the pursuit. I am unconvinced by candidates’ claims to progressivism and unhappy with the Board’s insipid attempts at transparency.

However, I would be tempted back into my errant USU-positive ways by a singleissue candidate running on one simple message: pasta should not be flaccid.

I’m not sure what being a frequent customer of Courtyard Cafe says about my psyche (definitely nothing good). What I

SRC President’s Report

Lauren Lancaster

Here we are. The final report (short version).

It is difficult to put into words the impact the Presidency has had on me this year. We have achieved a lot, and I am proud: the largest base increase to our funding in recent memory, the introduction of the 5-day simple extension pilot, a permanent stipend increase for Honi student editors, 6 days of student solidarity for the NTEU strikes, protests and fora on climate action, sexual violence, student welfare and housing crises. We brought elections back in person, had the first SRC Welcome Party in Semester 1, hosted the National Union of Students’ Education Conference with 250+ student unionists from around Australia, ran a diverse Radical Education programme throughout Semester 2 and have served 2000+ students via our FoodHub in collaboration with the USU.

We’ve signed onto massive petitions for action on various social and political causes, made arrangements to grow our exceptional Casework team in 2023, brought on a paralegal in the Legal Service. We’ve stood up against the campaign of austerity being waged by the University and government against our education and future - like coordinating the defeat of the Business Law cuts at Academic Board, working with disability advocates to counter ableism within Faculty assessment regimes, and supporting Indigenous students in

do know is that every time I sit down with a bowl of their vegetarian pasta of the day, I am about to be sorely disappointed. The pasta is going to sit limply in my bowl and disintegrate hopelessly in my mouth. The texture of the pasta is best analogised with the lifeless worms left on a footpath after heavy rain.

With that financial surplus sloshing around, why are my noodles sloshing too? The USU urgently needs to hire a real Italian chef as a pasta consultant. Learn the meaning of the term al dente. And cook off your tomatoes and onions properly! Maillard reactions are your friend.

My second contention is also fairly caveated. The Left should run for Senate, and by the Left, I mean Socialist Alternative.

I know SAlt will not take this advice on board, and I think that is a great shame, because they are quite clearly the best people for the job. The unique power

of SAlt is that they spurn careerism, palatability, respectability politics, and all other manifestations of cowardice. You might not like them much — but, crucially, they don’t give a shit.

As a humble observer, I feel that they’re being wasted on the SRC. What use is pugilism against fellow students, whose main crimes are wanting to go to class rather than leaflet and being a little too keen to update their LinkedIn.

No, the attitude of SAlt is perfect for a much more despicable set of people: University management. Most SAltmanagement interactions currently happen briefly and sporadically on Eastern Avenue. But I ask you to imagine a world where Deaglan Godwin and Eleanor Morley were legitimately elected into a boardroom with Stephen Garton and Mark Scott.

Is that world substantially funnier than the one we inhabit? Hell yeah.

The

Editor’s choice marked with

Tuesday 1st

Phoenix Central Park // Lisa OdourNoah // 6:30pm

Jetsets (Tempe Jets) // Women’s Jazz Fest // 9:30pm

Wednesday 2nd

Manning // Party at Manning: FRIGHT NIGHT // 6pm

Butchers Brew Bar Dulwich Hill // Deadman’s Blues// 8pm

Vanguard // 8 Ball Aitken // 7pm

Enmore Bar // IDLES // 8pm

Thursday 3rd

Seymour Centre // SUDS Major: Everynight // 7:30pm

Vanguard // Brekky Boy // 7pm

Oxford Art Factory // WIIGZ //7pm

The Lansdowne // Cap Carter // 7:30pm

Enmore Theatre // The Kooks w/ The Vanns // 9pm

Manning // Soilwork // 9pm // Melodic death-metal gig

Friday 4th

Seymour Centre // SUDS Major: Everynight // 7:30pm

The Vanguard // Sonny Grin // 7pm

Vic on the Park // Fuming // 9pm

The Lansdowne // Andy Bull // 7:30pm

Oxford Art Factory // Upsahl (USA) 7:30pm // TikTok star

their rejection of proposed changes to the University’s Confirmation of Aboriginality policy. We’ve pushed back against the appalling behaviour of management in the NTEU’s strike campaign and articulated a vision for tertiary education that undermines the class and colonial hierarchies of the neoliberal state, a vision founded on the premise of education as liberation, resistance and counter-culture.

However I won’t lie, it has also been a really tough year. It is hard to be a young person as it appears the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and the powerful don’t give a shit about us. The follies of student politics sometimes make this seem an inevitability and have had me at moments wanting to tear my hair out. Concurrently, as with any public-facing job there comes a lot of pressures and scrutiny (mostly good, sometimes horrifically unhinged).

It’s inevitable that we, and I, don’t always get everything right. I have a lot of people to thank for backing me up and supporting the SRC through these moments in addition to through the wins. Thanks to my executive, OBs, friends on the USU Board, the NUS, Honi, the incredible SRC staff, my family (everyone should go read my brother Charlie’s article on country music and 9/11 in this edition!). You can see the full list in my report on the socials, can’t fit all the names in print.

Thanks to the many activists on campus who give the SRC the relevancy and radical spirit for which we are famed. Bonne chance to Lia Perkins, incoming Prez 2023 - you’ve been such an inspiring organiser this year, and I am so keen to see

where you take the SRC next.

But what am I up to as we reach the final 4 weeks of the Presidency? We are submitting the SSAF base application for 2023 this week and have moved the final November council to Thursday so that reps can attend the Cassius Turvey vigil at 6pm, Wednesday 2nd at Town Hall. The SRC abhors this tragic and senseless act of racist violence against a mere kid, and will be looking to support First Nations organisers re this event in whatever capacity we can. I’m studying for Public Law and pushing the website development forward with UKMSL. It’ll launch by the end of the year!

I am pretty sad to be reaching the end of this. As mundane as the reports have been to write throughout the year, they have punctuated my weekends during semester like a reliable if slightly irritating friend. I think we as the student union have done a pretty good job this year and I hope that as President I have achieved things that have benefitted you all in some sense. Keep engaging with us, keep reading Honi, come to Collectives, and get in touch if you need a hand. Student ‘politicians’ and Presidents come and go but this year has proven to me beyond doubt that the Uni would be a lot worse off without a fighting, left-wing SRC like ours and the many characters who shape it.

Good luck with exams, congratulations if this is your final sem at USyd and enjoy the summer break. Down with the Libs, up the student left!

In solidarity and thanks, signing off for the last time - Lauren.

Waywards @ The Bank // Miramar // 8pm

Enmore Theatre// Passenger // 8:45pm

Bootleggers @ Kelly’s on King // Lora Keet // 7pm

Parramatta Lanes Night 3 // Joseph Liddy and the Skeleton Horse, Mung Mung, Nicole Issa, & more // 6pm

Saturday 5th

Seymour Centre // SUDS Major: Everynight // 7:30pm

The House of Music & Booze // Cocorico ‘Minifest’// 3pm — late

The Lansdowne // WitchSkull // 7:30pm

Vic on the Park // Lincoln’s Gold // 7pm // Final ever show

Waywards @ The Bank // Pricey // 8pm // Solo project of Josh Price - former guitarist of The Chats

Sunday 6th

Great Hall USyd // Barbersoc presents: Stage Fright // 1:30pm

The Lansdowne // Soso // 5:30pm // Pop punk lineup

Upcoming

8-9 Nov // Dua Lipa @ Qudos Arena 7:30pm

Federal Court rules Tim Anderson termination violated academic freedom

Ellie Stephenson and Swapnik Sanagavarapu

The Federal Court ruled in favour of former University of Sydney lecturer Tim Anderson and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in an appeal over Anderson’s termination of employment that concluded on Wednesday.

Anderson’s employment was terminated over a series of social media posts and public statements that the University considered to be misconduct. These included a series of public arguments with journalists over media coverage of his involvement in a 2017 conference on conflict in Syria, and posts and emails about the University’s handling of the matter.

The University also viewed lecture material produced by Anderson, which featured an Israeli flag with a swastika superimposed over it, as “offensive and derogatory”. Anderson also posted an image of tutor Jay Tharappel wearing a Houthi patch reading “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”.

In 2019, Anderson and the NTEU took the University and former Provost Stephen Garton to court after they sacked him over his controversial statements. Anderson and the NTEU argued that the University’s actions violated Anderson’s right to academic freedom, and that the University took adverse action against him by punishing him for public commentary on University processes in accordance with his labor rights.

The 2019 decision found that Anderson’s termination did not violate the Fair Work Act 2009. The court found that, while a commitment to intellectual freedom did exist within the Enterprise Bargaining

Agreement, any academic rights were qualified by the requirement that conduct be “in accordance with the highest ethical, professional and legal standards”.

On appeal last year, the Federal Court found that the primary judge erred in judging that there was no enforceable legal right to academic freedom. Justices Allsop, Jagot and Rangiah found that the University’s Code of Conduct was an “inferior document” to the Enterprise Agreement in which the commitment to upholding intellectual freedom was contained.

As the appeal could only rule on matters of law, the Appeal Judgement put to the primary judge Justice Thawley the question of whether Anderson’s rights to intellectual freedom had in fact been violated.

Justice Thawley found that Anderson was exercising his intellectual freedom.

On Anderson’s comments to journalists, the court decided that Anderson was defending his work via engaging in public debate, and did not engage in harassment or vilification.

Regarding the ‘Gaza Graphic’ in Anderson’s lecture slides, Justice Thawley acknowledged that the material could be considered offensive, but did not take it to be harassment, intimidation or vilification.

Concluding that the graphic was made for an academic purpose, Justice Thawley said in his judgement: “I do not draw an inference ‘that the superimposition of the swastika over the flag of Israel was a form of racial vilification intended to incite hatred of Jewish people’”.

As such, the court concluded that the University had violated Anderson’s

employment rights by terminating his employment. Stephen Garton, currently the Principal Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor, was also found liable as an accessory based on his role in the termination.

President of the University of Sydney NTEU Branch, Nick Riemer, told Honi: “The principle of academic freedom is always going to be hardest to uphold with controversial positions, especially given the pressure universities are under from the Israel lobby. Regardless of your views on Anderson, everyone who is serious about universities should welcome this decision.

It shows once again that it’s the NTEU, not university management, that is the guardian of the fundamental principle of academic freedom.”

The University said in a statement: “We are disappointed by today’s decision, which focussed on just one aspect of the proceedings initially brought against the University. We note that we previously

succeeded in having all other aspects of the proceedings dismissed. We will now take time to review the decision and consider our response and next steps. We won’t make further comment on this matter at the current time.

“The University is deeply committed to the expression and protection of intellectual freedom in line with the principles set out in our Charter of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom.

“These fundamental freedoms are critical for staff, students, the University and our society at large; we remain firm in our belief that they should be exercised responsibly and according to the highest ethical, professional and legal standards.

“We also believe that civility and respect should be particularly valued when people disagree with each other.”

Tim Anderson has been contacted for comment.

‘Education is a public good’: New Greens bill to scrap student debt indexation

Sam Randle

Green Deputy Leader and Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi on Thursday gave notice of a new bill to freeze all education and training loans.

The Education and Other Legislation Amendment (Abolishing Indexation and Raising the Minimum Repayment Income for Education and Training Loans) Bill 2022 will be introduced by Faruqi. The bill hopes to see the abolition of HELP loan indexation from 1 July 2022, and the minimum repayment threshold increase to the median wage from 1 July 2023.

The Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) includes four types of loans. The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) provides students with subsidised Commonwealth-supported Places (CSPs), with HELP loans covering the student contribution portion of their fees. FEEHELP provides loans to domestic students paying full fees. OS-HELP provides loans to students enrolling to study overseas as part of their Australian degree. SA-HELP provides students with loans to pay their SSAF loans.

While the loans are interest free, HELP debts are currently indexed to CPI inflation, with this year’s indexation at 3.9 per cent, the highest in at least a decade. CPI inflation is expected to rise to 7.8 per cent by December this year. The minimum repayment threshold for HELP debt in 2022-

23 was $48,361, while the median wage sat at $51,389.

The bill comes against a backdrop of rising living costs and an increase in student debt from $25.5 billion to $68.7 billion as more people have accessed higher education over the last decade.

The bill is also part of a more aspirational goal of free education in Australia — as is common in Europe — and the abolition of all student debt. “No one should be shackled with a debt sentence just in order to study. Higher education should be free. This bill is one of the first pieces of the puzzle in making that vision a reality,” she said.

In an interview with Honi, Faruqi explained the need to reframe our understanding of tertiary education moving forward. “Education is a public good,” Faruqi said.

degrees. In this context, universities will play an increasing role in preparing students for the workforce.

“Students are not customers and staff are not service providers, but that’s what I have seen happen over the last 20 years,” Faruqi said.

“So the vision for universities is… where students flourish, where students have the resources they need, not just to study, but also to engage in activism.

Labor’s budget on Tuesday also did very little to alleviate the immediate financial stress for students, including a failure to increase the availability or amount of welfare payments, curb rising energy prices, or centre its Housing Accord around public housing or renters.

While student debts generally don’t impact the financial position of domestic students while studying, they have a more direct impact on recent graduates who are trying to make rent, pay bills, and finance other rising living expenses. “Study debts are impacting people’s ability to obtain loans, their mental health, their ability to save up to buy a home or simply afford to live a good life,” Faruqi said in a media release.

“It’s really interesting that we accept quite easily that school is free for everyone, but we don’t accept that same level of education at university to be provided without fees.”

Universities are more than service providers and tertiary education extends beyond the classroom through extracurriculars, activism, and rich conversations had with new friends. Helping students from all backgrounds succeed in these spaces also means providing them with the financial assistance and support structures they need.

Attaining a tertiary qualification is also becoming increasingly necessary for graduates entering the workplace, with half a million of the jobs created over the next five years expected to require university

“With free education comes the support that students need. So a guaranteed livable income. And we have said for some years that it should be above the poverty line: $88 per day.

“The Greens would definitely want to see funding for students, which is determined by students, for them to be able to have an active political life while they’re studying.”

When asked whether she thought Labor or the crossbenchers would support the bill, Faruqi explained it was early days.

“It is absolutely crucial that we make the step of freezing study debt,” she said.

“I will be having those conversations with others over the next few [days].”

The bill is set to be introduced in November — time will tell whether the Greens can muster the necessary support in the meantime.

“Students are not customers and staff are not service providers, but that’s what I have seen happen over the last 20 years.”

Naz Sharifi crowned SULS President in uncontested race

The incoming Sydney University Law Society (SULS) Executive will be led in 2023 by President-elect Naz Sharifi (LLBV) following the withdrawal of opponents Eden McSheffrey (LLBIV), Vaughan Marega (JDI) and Michael Kallidis (JDII). Marega took the Vice-President (Careers) position and McSheffrey withdrew to formally support the ticket’s nomination along with members of the incumbent executive, including Ben Hines, Maja Vasic, Michelle Chim, Nishta Gupta and Harriet Walker.

Sharifi’s Expression of Interest highlighted cultural inclusivity and a social justice focus as her priorities for the Society in 2023. Sharifi also stressed the need for advocacy against faculty changes happening without student consultations, particularly with reference to examinations and the PASS program, which is due to be discontinued in its current form next year.

Familiar faces on the executive include Julia Lim (LLBIV), the current Marketing Director who will be joining next year’s executives as Secretary, and competition’s heavyweight Arasa Hardie (LLBIII). Mahmoud Al Rifai (LLBIV) also brings with him experience from past years, having previously served with Hardie on the 2021 executive under former President Wendy Hu, in the position of Ethnocultural Officer.

The 2023 SULS Executive, confirmed by Electoral Officer Jacob Lerner this afternoon,

will consist of the following students: President: Naz Sharifi

Vice President (Education): Arasa Hardie Vice President (Careers): Vaughan Marega Vice President (Social Justice): Charmaine Lui

Secretary: Julia Lim Treasurer: Mahmoud Al Rifai

Sponsorship Director: Vivien Lu

Social Directors: Niveditha Sethumadhavan and Priya Mehra

Competition Directors: Christine Aung and Danielle Tweedale

Sports Director: Nick Leavenworth

Campus Director: Kaela Goldsmith

Publications Director: Charis Chiu

International Student Officer: Lea Nguyen

Other positions, namely, the autonomous portfolios: Queer, Ethnocultural, First Nations, Disabilities, Women’s, alongside the Equity Officer, Design and Marketing Directors will be appointed at the incoming executive’s discretion.

This marks the second year in a row in which the SULS presidency will be held by someone with student politics experience, with former USU Honorary Treasurer Ben Hines presiding over the Society this year. Sharifi currently serves as a University of Sydney Union (USU) Board Director, having

been elected earlier this year, and this could represent the end of an apolitical period for the society. Sharifi will also not be the only sitting USU Board Director also at the helm of a major society, with fellow Board Director Alexander Poirier elected as President of the Conservatorium Students’ Association at their AGM last week.

Sharifi did not rule out running in USU Executive elections next year when speaking to Honi.

“I’m not opposed to it in principle. The USU role is one of predominantly governance and driving the vision of the organisation, which SULS President also does, however society presidents are more operationally involved and have a different set of responsibilities and priorities.”

The entrance of USU Directors into society races has arguably had a chilling effect on contested elections, where candidates withdraw or negotiate as they feel they cannot go up against electorally tested and experienced candidates.

This has recently been the case for SULS, one of the few societies to elect their executive by a general election and not within an AGM. The voting period ordinarily takes place late in the semester toward STUVAC, where campaigning could be considered particularly difficult.

Additionally, the Presidential EOI

system means no alternative tickets can be formed if Presidential nominees withdraw, leading to a situation where candidates strategically nominate to secure roles in one another’s executives.

Asked to comment on the lack of contestation, Sharifi told Honi that uncontested elections are not inherently a problem but could risk reducing engagement with the society.

“Rather than being an issue of the quality of the executive, as has been rightly noted, the issue is more so one of the lack of input the wider membership has on who takes up these roles that represent them, and I do agree this is of utmost importance,” Sharifi said.

She added that a key reason for the phenomenon could lie in barriers to entry in contesting elections: “It really does look to be an issue of the willingness of candidates to spend the time, effort, and capital on a race that they might lose, particularly given the lingering pain suffered by losing tickets and their members in each of the years with contested elections. SULS seems to suffer from “election fatigue” each time there is an election, particularly given the three-way 2020 election.”

“Reforming to make the electoral process more accessible will be something our executive will be working towards.”

SASS wards off Liberal stacking as unresponsive Faculty continues to withhold funding

The Sydney Arts Students Society (SASS) has successfully locked out the Liberals from gaining executive positions for a third year in a row, after their annual general meeting on Wednesday.

The majority of the new executive do not have any factional affiliations, with outgoing Vice-President (External) Jamaica Leech succeeding Angelina Gu as President.

“As President, I really hope to continue making SASS as accessible to students as possible, providing a safe and welcoming space for all,” Leech told Honi

Two Liberal candidates attempted to nominate for the positions of Vice-President (Internal) and Treasurer, despite their lack of involvement in the society. However, Returning Officer Cole Scott-Curwood ruled that one candidate was ineligible because he was not a member of the society.

Despite the Liberals’ attempts to stack the elections, outgoing Marketing Officer Miranda Cao and outgoing Sponsorship Officer Justina Hua won Vice-President (Internal) and Treasurer respectively, with Hua winning by a landslide.

In contrast with other recent society elections, the composition of the incoming executive signals a shift towards depoliticising the society. Historically, positions on the SASS executive have been used for entry into student politics, usually for USU Board hopefuls to build networks and accumulate credentials, often at the expense of the society.

The incoming SASS executive is expected to continue the society’s work into the next year, including first year camp, coffee and pub catch-ups, and SASS Ball. Leech also highlighted as priorities the importance of

increasing equity tickets and organising a range of society events.

“There is a general sentiment that we need to bring back student life post-COVID, however, I feel COVID has significantly changed everyone’s behaviour and it is important that rather than trying to revive what was, we adapt and offer events and opportunities that students want now,” she said.

She also expressed her desire to continue printing its flagship publications, including Avenue (formerly ARNA), its journal for BIPOC students Wattle, and its journal for diverse sex and genders 1978.

The production of SASS publications is one of the society’s more expensive initiatives. In recent times, SASS has struggled to finance its publications due to receiving insufficient funding, mainly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).

“The Faculty initially committed $5000 in for the publication of ARNA when it was restarted in 2008,” outgoing President Angelina Gu told Honi.

The society was advised to submit a separate application to FASS for additional funding in Semester Two, as $2500 was not enough to cover the two publications printed last semester.

“This semester, the Dean [Professor Lisa Adkins] took three months to respond to our email. Our funding request was denied because, according to her, the Faculty had already matched previous years and they didn’t review applications on a semester basis,” she said.

The Dean has yet to reply to any of SASS’ follow-up emails as to why the process had changed, or why they had failed to communicate this change with SASS in advance.

According to Gu, the society receives $1300 per semester from the USU, which is not enough to cover production costs. This grant was also recently reduced on the “false understanding” that SASS receives up to $10,000 yearly from the Faculty, in line with other faculty societies.

“We’ve been using our profits from our ticketed events to cover the costs of our publications, but this also means we have to dig from our equity budget, which is also a problem,” Gu said.

“SASS remains inherently disconnected because our funding is reliant on abstract rules that appear to be easily changed pending the Dean’s goodwill. A lack of funding provided by the Dean is the very reason why events are not accessible to students with a disability, experiencing difficulty with finances, from a regional area, or simply trying to balance work and study.”

Previous SASS Presidents have also reported difficulties in communicating with the Faculty for funding, with 2021 FASS Dean Annamarie Jagose reportedly ignoring all of 2021 SASS President Nicole Baxter’s communications throughout Baxter’s term.

The full list of the incoming SASS Executive is as follows:

President: Jamaica Leech

Vice-President (Internal): Miranda Cao

Vice-President (External): Nicole Pan

Secretary: Katelyn Williams

Treasurer: Justina Hua

Socials Directors: Ruby McGinty and Mia Freeland

Sports Directors - Emma Christie and Muhammad Ali

First Year Representative - Georgia Wheatley

“But since then, to my knowledge, they haven’t really been financially supporting us beyond providing $2500 last semester,” Gu said.

“I perceive that to be a serious lack of respect and interest from the Dean in the work of the Faculty’s student society, its executives and all Arts students, combined with an expectation for those very students to devote their free and voluntary labour at the cost of their own personal income, commitments and study to uphold the reputation of the Faculty by giving it the vibrancy and colour that attracts so many to the University of Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,” she said.

International Student Representative: n/a

Postgraduate Student Representative: n/a

Queer Officer: Matt Velder

Women’s Officer: Tara Grice

Indigenous Officer: Ben McGrory

Ethnocultural Officer: n/a

Disabilities Officer: Annalise Schwarz

Ellie Stephenson, Khanh Tran and Christian Holman.

Carmeli Argana writes.

“In contrast with other recent society elections, the composition of the incoming executive signals a shift towards depoliticising the society.”

An ode TO STuCcO

Stucco is affordable student housing, cooperatively run by 40 students. It offers many the chance to attend university while living somewhere safe and inclusive.

In the summer of 2017, astronomers discovered a ‘supermassive’ black hole at the centre of an ultra bright quasar. It had taken 13 billion years for the light of the black hole to reach earth; “a rare relic from the early universe” that made me feel really small, like a tiny ant. On the same day they discovered this supermassive black hole — I discovered I was moving into Stucco, USyd’s Student Cooperative.

The name Stucco really rolls off the tongue, while the supermassive black hole’s name ‘Ulas J1342+0928’ felt very clunky, very unpoetic. When you are moving away from your childhood home, you search for little things to make the journey feel profound. You can listen to Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna’ all you want, but the idea of the most distant supermassive black hole ever discovered being named ‘Journey’ or even ‘Distance’ just felt more significant. I suppose in life we all search for meaning in something, as if a supermassive blackhole being named ‘Bon voyage’ will ever make the journey any less hard. The journey will always be hard. For me, moving to Stucco made it that little bit easier.

Although, Stucco is not just the eight units that wrap around a canopied courtyard or the abundance of bikes that reside in a carless garage — it’s the people and the community that really make it what it is. While living with 40 people sometimes made me feel like a tiny ant all over again, in Stucco I was a part of something far larger than myself.

about the quest she went on today just to find a piece of paper. “Leah, we have charity in our hearts, that’s why we would leave paper next to the printer, not all people are like that,” she said.

My housemate Eilish and I spend hours thinking about what costumes to wear on Halloween. We beg everyone to dress as something altogether. “Maybe we do Scooby Doo…or we are all different versions of Drew Barrymore?” We can never manage to agree on anything.

My housemates Marley and Yonah both went as Spiderman last year, and we laughed in the Uber home as Yonah’s mask twisted the entire way around. I have grown fond of every inch of this building, but I have mostly grown fond of the family I have made along the way. Stucco is nothing without its residents, without the wacky, passionate and radical people that live within these walls.

ART BY IMOGEN MAROSZ

needs of students so that everyone has the opportunity to study without the fear of being without permanent residence.

Sometimes Stucco feels hidden behind its strong exterior, secretive to those that exist on the outside. Most people who know about the cooperative only heard about it through word-of-mouth. It sometimes feels like a little community, misjudged and misunderstood, hidden behind closed doors and filed away in dusty cabinets. But for the past 30 years, Stucco has existed as a radical space that has defied the rapid rental price increases in Newtown and the pressure of dickhead landlords.

Now, what feels like an eternity later, I’m still at Stucco. My housemate Rhayne feeds me tortellini while we study together for our upcoming exams, and she tells me

Stucco embraced me in a community that I had never had before. While I feel so lucky, I often feel a deep sense of sadness. Safe housing is still not available to all students and currently the cooperative is the only affordable student accommodation at USyd. Everyone deserves to live somewhere that supports them. With the current rental crisis, we need to push for more radical housing spaces that meet the

In the end, we all discover quickly that leaving will never be easy, we just become better at it over time. The feeling of saying goodbye to the life you’ve known feels jarring, even more so when you realise you will have to do so over and over again, until one day you stop forever. One day, soon in the future, I will have to once again venture from my home and find somewhere new. Over these past years, Stucco has become my home and I will miss it deeply. Although, I know now Stucco will be there for someone else, who needs it just as much as I did.

Sources: Elliot Peck (left), Stucco (right), Em Frank (bottom). Images adapted by Sam Randle.

Leah Bruce is gonna miss it.

“Sometimes Stucco feels hidden behind its strong exterior, secretive to those that exist on the outside.”

On parting with the SRC Office

lets you into the SRC.

Growing up a particularly sentimental and anxious child, the prospect of moving house and leaving my childhood bedroom behind is one that would regularly fill me with premature grief. I spent many nights inconsolable, melodramatically sobbing into my pillow.

I quite simply did not want to move on, because in my mind to do so would be to betray my tiny, messy room, and to abandon everything it had given to me; warmth, comfort, safety.

When I was fourteen, the time finally came for my parents and I to move ten minutes down the road. I had a swimming pool and my own bathroom. I had long since shed my fear of leaving my little Watanobbi bedroom, and I felt okay about it.

I turned 21 last week, and I’m contending with the same emotions that so often brought me to tears as a child. This time around, I find myself mourning my departure from a space that is objectively quite unpleasant.

The SRC office, sequestered away in the basement of the Wentworth building, is occupied by the organisation’s professional staff, the Honi editors, and a revolving

door of unwashed hacks with anger issues and strongly held opinions. The SRC does not receive adequate airflow, and moulds of varying varieties and degrees of toxicity appear to have reached symbiosis, cohabitating and thriving in the carpets and walls.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of spending any amount of time in the depths of the SRC is the fact that it doesn’t have a single window past the front foyer, and that it does not receive any natural light as a result. Entering the office in the morning, doing a few tasks bathed in clinical overhead lighting, and then walking out to find yourself in the darkness of night is a crucial part of the SRC experience.

A broken (belatedly fixed, courtesy of USyd management) zip tap can be found in the kitchen, as can a fridge storing exclusively palaeolithic food items (and not in the lean meats and cashews way), including a two litre bottle of orange juice that has turned an unsettling shade of brown.

The real main attraction is the office bearer room. In the middle of the OB room is an assortment of mismatched tables, their surfaces coated in acrylic layers that have built up over years of banner paints. A collection of battered chairs can be found strewn across the office, half of which I am certain I helped throw out last year, only

for them to rematerialise in their apparent rightful place.

Desks and overhead shelving units line the perimeter of the room, adorned with activist stickers that are likely older than God himself. This room, as messy, stuffy, and overstimulating as it is, has become rather dear to me over the past two years. Faced with the fast-approaching end of my paid involvement in the SRC, I don’t quite feel ready to let it go.

I spend an unhealthy amount of time in the office, attending collective meetings, laying up publications, struggling through assignments, or simply chatting with mates. I have been reminded over the past year, with each minute I’ve spent inhaling black mould spores, of a friendship that formed in the bowels of Wentworth a little while ago.

This friend of mine embodied everything about collective organising that I have repeatedly fallen in love with in my time at university. They diligently nurtured those around them in ways that often came at a personal expense emotionally and mentally. The fonder I grew of them, the more this hurt to watch.

In the middle of a perfect storm of personal and political disagreements, we had something of a falling out. Suddenly everything from the wicker chairs to the brown-grey stain on the women’s room

ceiling (that has since become a rather large open hole), was a persistent reminder of the disorienting windowless days we’d spent together in the office, of an absence in my life that never grew less noticeable.

Recently I decided, as I was preparing myself to leave this space, that I wanted to tie up loose ends. I debated reaching out to my friend, wrestling with questions of what it was all for and what I wanted out of all of it.

By some twist of fate, we ran into each other the next day. We reconciled over a meal of tempeh and fried rice, and more than ever I was struck by how much this absurd space and its absurd people mean to me. It was the foundation of so many firsts, and as the lasts come rolling in, I could never stay mad at it, nor at its peculiar population, even if I wanted to.

There are some homes we choose, through mountains of paperwork and hyper-competitive rental viewings, and there are some we simply find ourselves in. Like most homes, the SRC has seen love, loss, and anger, all of which have a way of sticking with you when you leave. I am thankful for the many people I met in the office, and who I get to cherish and keep, even if the whole ordeal leaves me with mould on the brain.

From international relations to flower arrangements

James Frederiksen

on not using your degree.

The last thing Yasmine wants to be is a cliché. There was no formative experience involving a picnic at the Botanic Gardens, nor a childhood marvelling at her grandmother’s rose bushes. She specifically asks me not to mention that her name means jasmine — the flower — in Persian. She is wearing light blue jeans and a brown pullover with an embroidered flower on the right sleeve.

Yasmine and I first met in 2018, as co-workers at an office in Artarmon. Our desks stood at opposite ends of the building, separated by many lovely older workers, as well as a decades-old filing room I once rearranged by hand (if your boss ever asks how strong you are, feign back problems). Luckily for me, Yasmine’s desk was near the kitchen, so between microwaving my lunch and making coffees, it was relatively easy to manufacture reasons to cross paths. It was the start of my ongoing caffeine addiction, but at least I had a friend.

That was until Yasmine quit.

“I saw an ad for this florist, which is close to where I live. I had been following them on Instagram and I really liked them, so I just decided to apply,” Yasmine says.

Yet her path to floristry wasn’t straightforward. After high school, Yasmine enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University. She attended for a total of three weeks before realising she wasn’t ready, and ended up dropping out just days before the census date.

If not for the fact that her mother had worked at TAFE, Yasmine says she would not have been aware that a floristry course was even an option.

“I went to Willoughby Girls, and in Year 12 they definitely put an emphasis on getting a good ATAR. They also talked like university was the only option,” she says.

This is the reality for around half of school leavers, with 47.8 per cent of Australians under 25 currently enrolled in a bachelor degree. Worryingly, 19 per cent of undergraduate students had seriously considered leaving their current institution in 2021. For the record, you are allowed to keep your options open.

“I did floristry part-time, and that’s one day a week at TAFE. I still wanted to go to uni, I just wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, so I took some time first. I went back and did a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie, and I did international relations as my major, which I really enjoyed and found really interesting.

“I feel like I have a better understanding of a lot of things than I would if I didn’t go to uni, so I don’t regret it at all,” she says.

Yasmine finished at Macquarie this year, and she now works full-time at The Ivy League florist in Naremburn. Her colleagues have similar stories of finding floristry after leaving vastly different industries.

“We all have done something else and then switched over: one did finance at uni and then worked for PWC. Another of the girls was in events, and my boss did a bunch of stuff first,” she says.

“I think quite a few people in the industry did come from other backgrounds like corporate jobs, but that can actually really help, especially if you are business savvy.”

Part of that business acumen includes an immaculately curated Instagram page.

“Instagram is really huge for floristry. I think that’s how brides and customers find their florist. It’s like having a portfolio,” she says. I can not conceive of a more compelling advertisement for working in a flower shop than this.

“When I go into work and we are all just chatting, it just feels like you are hanging out with your friends. And working with flowers is really nice. Being surrounded by nature is amazing. It definitely isn’t all easy, and it’s not as romantic as it looks, but overall it is a really beautiful place to work.”

Yasmine tells me she needs to leave soon because she promised to walk her neighbour’s dog.

“If there were other people in your position, unsure, possibly thinking about floristry, what would you say to those people?” I ask.

“I’d definitely say try out whatever it is. Typically people at uni are young, and while we are this age it is easier to take risks like that rather than when you’re older and maybe have more responsibility. It’s scary, but in a way, I feel like it is easier to do it now.”

“I’m definitely happy. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll be doing in ten years, maybe I will go back and use my degree. But for now I’m really happy.”

ART BY KHANH TRAN

Alana Ramshaw

Behind the news: How does Honi Soit end up on stands?

Ellie Stephenson interviews SRC distributor, Mickie Quick.

Most Tuesday afternoons, a new batch of Honi Soit appears on stands across campus. Fresh stacks of 50 get swapped out for whatever remains of the previous week’s edition. The collation and printing of a weekly newspaper, for students and by students, has been going on at the University of Sydney for nearly a century, although it’s changed a lot over that period. So what’s going on behind the scenes?

The basic production of the newspaper is fairly straightforward — the editors seek pitches from students, edit them, and lay them up in a digital spread. This infamously involves a gruelling several-hour layup that goes late into each Sunday night (or Monday morning).

After that, the paper must be checked by the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications and President. As the SRC is the publisher of Honi, they have a stake in ensuring we don’t publish anything legally problematic, so they check for issues like potential defamation.

On Monday afternoon, the paper gets sent to the printers — a commercial printing press located in a large warehouse in Marrickville. SRC Publications manager and total legend, Mickie Quick, picks it up and delivers it to the stands across campus in a route perfected over several years of deliveries. Mickie also heroically detects every InDesign fuck-up — missing links, overset text, things that might not print right — he’ll catch them.

I spoke to Mickie about the process, and what he wishes more students knew about Honi ’s production.

A rich history

Having been the Publications Manager for almost nine years, Mickie is a rich source of information about Honi. I asked him if he had a favourite edition of the paper from his time working with it.

He said that the 2016 joke edition — an uncannily accurate satire copy of The Australian — stood out: “I would’ve called myself a culture jammer back in the ‘90s when I was doing that kind of culture jamming. But to see it done on that sort of scale, where it’s in newsprint, it’s the same size as The Australian

“I got quite personally involved too, because our current printer refused to release it. After they printed it, one of the managers found it and just said, ‘what the hell! We don’t print for The Australian’, and then just got very confused, and then realised it was us and wouldn’t release it.

“So I busted a gut to find a printer to make it happen, and that was really fun, I just loved it.”

Mickie says the paper is a rich source of history on campus life. Bound editions of the Honi editions from each year can be found in Mickie’s office. He says: “For some reason, there’s a tradition that they’re bound in red cloth. There’s one volume in blue cloth which is 1979… the year that Tony Abbott was President [of the SRC]. It sticks out like dog’s balls on my shelf, this blue version.

“I don’t quite know if he ordered that… it raises more questions than it answers: who ordered the blue? Was it

him?”

Mickie says the blue version contains telling lessons on Abbott’s character: “You open it up and you realise what a wrecker Tony Abbott was. He took control of the SRC in order to destroy it. If you read his President’s reports, they’re just unbelievable.”

thriving, and so is Honi.”

Mickie feels like the weekly element of the paper is essential: “Too often student media is, at best, a monthly, lifestyle-like magazine, and Honi gets to actually be topical, right down to the week.”

In his job as Honi distributor, he sees how students interact with it and seek it out.

“Pretty much every week, at least a few people stop in their tracks and wait for me to actually take the plastic binds off it so I can put it in the stands. I can tell they want a copy so I grab one off the top and give it to them personally,” he told me.

This campus history is tangible and visceral: “I love seeing the actual newspaper too. The yellowed, old, tattered copies that we have in our notvery-great archive,” Mickie says. “The ongoing nature of the paper means you look back into this one source on what are these bits and pieces that happened in the history of student activity on campus.”

The paper has changed over time, however. Mickie notes that, “it’s possibly in my time been way more professional… [In] the ‘90s, it might have felt a bit more underground, and way more so in the ‘60s and ‘70s.”

“I like that you can have wild and cutting-edge satire and content, and a kind of professionalism as well, that you see in the most recent times. But I do also really love the very DIY sensibility in early times.”

Print media? Not old news! Despite much anxiety about the death of print media, Mickie feels Honi and community media more broadly is still going strong.

“When we went into lockdown and all the local community newspapers around the country were shutting down because they were all syndicated and the big syndicate owners were just cutting them, I was worried the printer would go out of business and I had a chat with someone high-up in the printer,” Mickie recalls.

“I asked them how it was going and they said, for every community newspaper that’s shut down, local communities just started up their own. He said it was thriving, and it was just this really nice thing that feels like you can’t believe it still exists, and I do get that from ex-USyd students if I’m wearing an Honi t-shirt or they see me distributing it. They say ‘oh my god, does that still exist’.

Mickie said interest in the physical paper is pretty hard to predict from stand to stand: “It surprises me, like I’ve got this ongoing sense of what I think each stand will take, and then some I’ll go ‘oh, there’s not so much of a take up on this stand, I’ll do less’. Then I’ll come back the next week and it’s completely gone.

“But there’s maybe three or four locations where sometimes I could just leave a pallet load there and I wonder if they’d all go. One of those is the Holme Building, I could put six bundles and they might all go. Fisher is pretty big and Jane Foss Russel. I guess they’re a kind of thoroughfare through the campus, a lot of people are picking it up.”

Mickie also saw the project of mailing out Honi during lockdown last year as indicative of ongoing interest in the physical newspaper.

“You never know whether people are picking it up out of the stands out of just habit and not reading. But when people specifically type in their address and request one, it’s like, oh they really want it. The form online would have commentary about how much they missed that as part of campus culture. It was a great pivot,” he said.

“It was just really heart-warming. I love any moment that you can tell the paper is really appreciated. Sometimes you wonder, is it an anachronistic project, is it out of date printing a printed publication when you could just put stuff online? But projects like that just revealed how much people loved getting a thing that they could just open up and flick through from page to page, and it’s weekly.”

The joy of playing at adulthood

The project of putting 300 to 400 editions in envelopes, stamping them and sending them out involved a lot of work, which Mickie managed with the assistance of a junior helper:

“I would engage the help of my 10-year-old kid, actually, to run from the car to a letterbox. I worked out that the ones all really close to campus, it wasn’t as efficient to put postage stamps on those. A street like Australia Street in Newtown would just have like seven different addresses along it. I paid my 10-year-old 50 cents an envelope to run out, and it was his form of lockdown exercise and income.”

love the sense of what might seem to a 10-year-old as a novel playing-atadults kind of game, of making your own newspaper. But it’s real, and it keeps going and it’s there every week!

“It totally reminds me, I did that as a kid, but I hadn’t got access to a photocopier so I had to go up to this newsagent where I would hand it over the counter. And I was just taking bits of news — I was basically just regarbling bits of existing news, but making it into my own newspaper.”

Editors try distribution

Typing away maniacally in the Honi office, I do very much feel like I’m playing at being a real journalist sometimes — it’s a pretty fun game!

But a few weeks ago, two of my fellow editors and I swapped places with Mickie, taking on the distribution while he had a week off. There were a few pitfalls — the papers didn’t quite fit in the compact boot of my Corolla; we forgot the trolley used to roll Honi around, so we had to carry them; and, crucially, it was absolutely pouring rain.

We sprinted around campus bearing stacks of 200 or so newspapers, attempting to follow the path of maximum efficiency indicated to us by Mickie on a custom Google Map. I parked sheepishly in loading zones, a handwritten ‘SRC business’ sign surprisingly successful in warding off parking tickets.

I experienced a marginal increase in bicep strength and, given it was Queer Honi, a test of spiritual strength as I lugged an A3 dick around campus, enduring a deluge of quizzical looks to rival the meteorological downpour.

“There’s just this sort of expectation that surely it’s going to die soon, but actually, community newspapers are

Asked whether his 10-year-old was interested in Honi, Mickie said: “They

Nevertheless, seeing the pallet of newly printed Honis in the flesh, holding its weight in my arms, I was inclined to feel very similarly to Mickie about the indelible delight of the printed edition.

“There’s one volume in blue cloth which is 1979… the year that Tony Abbott was President [of the SRC]... It sticks out like dog’s balls.”

“There’s just this sort of expectation that surely it’s going to die soon, but actually, community newspapers are thriving, and so is Honi.”

Honi Soit Census 2022

Honi conducted a census, and with a sample size of more than 100 responses, the data revealed a diverse readership and range of views on the paper.

Who the fuck reads this shit anyway?

Why does USyd rant? Going behind the Google form

Nicola Brayan interviews the admins of USyd Rants 2.0

On the limestone walls of Pompeii’s ruins, you can find graffiti. Words from thousands of years ago, etched by scribes who will never be known, and never wanted to be. What do they say? Found next to a bar: “Would that you pay for all your tricks, innkeeper. You sell us water and keep the good wine for yourself”; “Epaphra, you are bald!”; and, poetically, “Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog”. Ever since humankind have been able to write, we have used that power to anonymously complain, insult, and gossip. I, for one, think that’s beautiful.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” There is something uniquely freeing about anonymity. When you can voice opinions without them being tied to you, you’re free of the consequences they incur; no one can track you down and punish you, nor can they judge you for having an opinion no one else does. That’s why we have written on city walls for millennia, why we publish books under pseudonyms, why we ask journalists to hide the names of whistleblowers. It’s why over 22 million people a month use anonymous online forum 4Chan. And it’s why almost 14,000 Facebook users follow the page ‘USYD Rants 2.0’.

I am one of these Facebook users. I have never posted a rant, never commented on one, and have liked maybe 10 in my whole time following the page. And yet, when I scroll through my feed and see one of the many posts the page uploads per day, I can’t help but stop and read. The rants range from petty gripes about USyd admin or classes, requests for dating or friend-making advice, campus coffee recommendations, and dense paragraphs about Zionism. Many posts refer back to each other, forming a sort of mediated dialogue about a given hot topic between anonymous individuals. I wanted to explore what it is about USYD Rants that draws people to it, why it gets as heated as it does, and how it actually works.

USYD Rants: A quick history

USYD Rants started in November 2014. The original page still has 46,000 followers, despite having been inactive since March, 2020, when the admins lost access to it and created USYD Rants 2.0. Some of the earliest rants on the original page include “Shut up about Frozen”, “Dat feel when you support (regulated) capitalism because you look at facts and figures, not dreams and delusions. ;)”, “I hate Redfoo”, and “When you know there is no food in the refrigerator but you keep opening it for no reason…”.

There are also rants from 2014 which would be much less out of place in 2022; gripes about people walking slowly on the Redfern walk, back-and-forths between “Northshore/ Eastern suburbs haters” and private school proponents, and complaints about the state of bathrooms on campus (see page 20). The admins at the time would comment on these posts somewhat frequently, either by adding a comment underneath or adding commentary in the body of the rant demarcated with an asterisk. Like today, they would post multiple times daily. Despite

the eight years’ difference, the machinations of moderating the page seem largely unchanged.

To find out what those machinations are, I interviewed two Rants admins. Like the people who write submissions, the admins are anonymous. I don’t know how many there actually are, let alone any details which could lead me to their identities. As such, I contacted them by messaging the page. For

the purposes of clarity, I’ll call them A and B.

To submit a rant, you fill out a Google form. This, too, is anonymous — the admins don’t know who the posts are from. “Our policy is all of [the rants submitted] get posted unless they go against specific guidelines,” Admin A tells me. Those guidelines include: being too long (“an essay”), too short (the rant won’t be posted if it’s “4 words long”),

“I interviewed two Rants admins... I don’t know how many there actually are, let alone any details which could lead me to their identities. As such, I contacted them by messaging the page. For the purposes of clarity, I’ll call them A and B.”

clearly offensive to a certain group of people, or one of several similar rants submitted that day about a single issue.

B explains their process of discerning the latter criterion: “I personally just post the [rant about a common topic] that I see first, because the exact same sentiment is being communicated [in each rant] anyway. We aren’t going to post 5 rants in a row about students saying they’re stressed, we’ll post maybe 2.” Once posted, some admins choose to comment on the posts — as I mentioned, this was something that happened in 2014, but hadn’t happened for a while until the recent handover of admins earlier this year.

At present, there are two new admins who began at the start of this semester. Prior to this, the previous admin had overseen the page for roughly two years, with much less of a personal presence on the page than at present. The ‘personality’ of USYD Rants as an entity is linked to the individuals who run it; editorial comments left by admins which agree or disagree with the posted rant in personal pronouns, and engagement with their own posts such as sad reacting.

The rise of [redacted] rants

The latest editorial change in this vein is the recent ‘[redaction]’ of rants that go against the page’s guidelines — replacing entire rants about the colleges or racist sentiments with fun animal facts. This level of personal intervention from the admins is unprecedented – where previously, admins would generally not post rants of this nature, the new admins outline what the post was about prior, their thoughts on it, and then animal-posting. Whether this is a result of jaded admins or a new approach, its reception by students has been mixed.

One post reads: “A response pro-college rant essay. Wow. USYD literacy rates are so low no one can follow simple instructions. WE DON’T POST ESSAYS. Also, this is a Gouldian Finch. They rely on fire to burn the undergrowth so they can eat the seeds underneath.” Another: “There was a long multiparagraph rant about liberals or something. I’m not proofreading it. Have a picture of a pygmy possum instead, they’re cute and endangered, unlike your political opinion.” There have been six posts like this in the last four days. Arguably, the choice to make posts like these only further muddies the waters of what the admins do or don’t post, redact or don’t redact.

According to the admins, they use these posts as opportunities to communicate things they find important. “We realised that as admins, we have our own personalities that we don’t have to check at the door,” A says. “We’re not just the guardians of copy and paste. If there are issues/ jokes that we want to raise, this is the best platform to do so… [Endangered animals are] something I feel passionate about (and share frequently from my own page) but would never dream of getting the platform for without USYD rants.”

Is USYD Rants too political?

This leads to the first complaint I’ve heard when speaking to students about USYD Rants: a concern that the admins have too much curatorial power. I have spoken to students who have submitted rants that weren’t posted, with one telling me that, during the flurry of rants posted about the NTEU strikes in early October, she had submitted pro-strike rants which never made the page.

A and B tell me there were hundreds of rants about strikes submitted each day, and that they made an effort to post rants supporting a range of perspectives. A says, “I personally attempted to post as close to 50/50 as possible,” but notes that the proportion of pro- or anti-strike rants is informed by what gets submitted: “I can’t post pro strike if no one is submitting [pro-strike] rants and vice versa.” They also both insist that they post rants which

don’t align with their personal politics. B tells me, if it’s an opinion I personally disagree with but it’s a valid point, I would still post it, to just represent a spectrum of opinions”. They note, however, that some admins “are more political than others”.

Despite this, many students I’ve spoken to have expressed dismay at a perceived right-wing bias reflected in the rants chosen to be published. “The admins clearly have a political perspective that’s not helping,” one student suggests, while conceding that the increased right-wing presence may be due to the page receiving “a lot of reactionary rants as of late.”

Regardless of the actual extent of admin intervention, the perception of the page as highly political seeps into how students use it. Many students told me they disliked how “political” the page had become, with the admins themselves even expressing frustration over it.

“People… often read too much into our posting patterns and make assumptions about our political standings etc.,” B says. “I put a mental health disclaimer in the page description because there were recent posts re mental health and suicide, and some political person tried to twist it against us by making it seem like this was related to the strike content we were posting.”

Many of the rants cover hotly debated issues, such as whether the NTEU strikes are helpful or harmful, whether there should be period products in male bathrooms, and many, many takes about the colleges. To address the newspaper-print elephant in the room: yes, there have been an abundance of rants about Honi Soit, including its coverage of the Queen’s death, its editors’ political stances, and mistakes it has made. These strongly opinionated rants, as well as the comments which accompany them, can put people off the page.

What keeps us coming back?

I can think of five reasons. First: people love gossip. Anonymity encourages ranters to talk about shocking or taboo things, like flirtations with tutors and StuPol scandals. Second, even when they’re not scandalous, the rants are often just entertaining. Furthermore, the rants act as canaries in the coal mine of public opinion; submitting a rant to be anonymously posted gives you a chance to see what others think of it without the risk of reputation damage. Fourth, the rants can be helpful. Often, when ranters ask for advice, people reply with recommendations in the comments. Other times, A tells me, the rants about particular units have catalysed change in how they are taught: “rants have done MUCH more in recent semesters to change things than the [Unit of Study] surveys because of putting pressure on unit coordinators”. Lastly, USYD Rants forms a sense of community.

“The BUSS2000 rant #justiceforjames was probably popular because it spoke to a common experience of frustration against compulsory core units,” suggests A.

I know a student who submitted a rant about the Interdisciplinary unit while we were both doing it, and the next class we had, people in my group made reference to how funny they had thought it was.

The student, too, found validation in the positive responses, telling me it was “nice to see other people agreeing.” Another student I talked to submitted a post asking why Eastern Avenue smelt like toast. After some discussion in the comments, he learnt why. Despite the vitriol that gets bandied around divisive rants, there’s something kind of beautiful about the way the posts bring people together.

In thousands of years, when Facebook is as ancient as Pompeii’s limestone walls, I’ve no doubt that humankind will still be gossiping and complaining. The masks we construct for ourselves to speak behind may have changed, but we will not. USYD Rants is a testament to this; no matter how partisan it may be seen, how divisive the rants can be, people will keep coming back.

ART BY ZARA ZADRO

“The proportion of pro- or anti-strike rants is informed by what gets submitted: ‘I can’t post pro strike if no one is submitting [pro-strike] rants and vice versa.’ They also both insist that they post rants which don’t align with their personal politics. B tells me, ‘if it’s an opinion I personally disagree with but it’s a valid point, I would still post it, to just represent a spectrum of opinions’.”

“A says ‘We’re not just the guardians of copy and paste. If there are issues/jokes that we want to raise, this is the best platform to do so… [Endangered animals are] something I feel passionate about (and share frequently from my own page) but would never dream of getting the platform for without USYD Rants.”

MAPPING THE uncertain future of INTERTATIONAL HOUSE through its past

FEATURE ARTICLE BY ROISIN MURPHY // SPECIAL THANKS TO HARRY BERGSTEINER

International House sits on City Road across from Victoria Park, between the Wilkinson Building and the Seymour Centre. Since opening seven odd decades ago, it has been home to just over 6,000 students and fostered a culture that is seemingly unreplicated in any other student accommodation.

At the end of 1966, the first residents moved into International House — a year before Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were counted in the Australian population and allowed the right to vote, and seven years before the White Australia Policy would be officially denounced by the Whitlam government...

Continued on pages 14 and 15.

ART BY YASODARA PUHULE-GAMAYALAGE

international house, a unique history

The land that International House would sit on, at the corner of Cleveland Street and City Road, was acquired by the University between 1960 and 1963, and saw the demolition of at least 16 homes and a pub, the Junction Hotel. Construction began in 1965, under the design of renowned Australian architect Walter Bunning. Now, it’s one of just a handful of publicly visible buildings by the architect — the other of note being the National Library in Canberra. It exemplifies a cultural movement forgotten by the University architects and capital works planners of today, designed with an emphasis on a timeless aesthetic appeal, ongoing practicality, and communal interaction.

importance of challenging its social perceptions of people from other countries. One of the main talking points was that the House wouldn’t just benefit overseas students, it would also benefit domestic students by giving them the opportunity to learn from people with entirely different experiences and world views, something hard to come by when television was still black and white, and overseas telephone calls put you back two weeks’ pay.

Dr Harold Maze (whose name you may recognise from the Maze Building, or Maze Crescent along Cadigal Green) was appointed to the planning committee by the University in 1959. Serving as Deputy Principal at the time, Dr Maze committed himself entirely to seeing through the plans for the House. The eventual involvement of Rotary — a humanitarian service organisation — brought the House to life. Their fundraising efforts pooled enough money to kickstart its creation, an area the University failed to provide in, and became intimately involved in the management and administration of the project.

students with Australian students. In regards to the latter objective, particular significance is to be attached to the provision both for eating facilities, communal and incidental and places for social intercourse, recreation and conversation.”

The first stage of International House buildings, which includes the Rotunda, has been listed by the National Trust of Australia heritage organisation. The Trust’s classification report of International House notes its architectural significance as a “representative Sydney example of an international genre of buildings”, referring to its significance to the 1960s modernist movement. But what the report places greater emphasis on is the building’s social significance, and how it’s explicitly linked to ideas employed in modernist architecture.

“The International House at the University of Sydney, dating from 1967, is historically significant for being amongst the first university colleges to offer secular accommodation for students in NSW,” The Trust points out.

finished being built. He’s a fellow of the House, served on the Alumni Association, and sat on the Council for 11 years (the last two of which he needed special permission from the Senate for, because he’d extended past the time limit on terms).

The International House movement was a global one, starting with a house at Columbia University in the 1920s. At the core of the concept is global citizenship — the belief that it would benefit all students, foreign and domestic, to live together, eat together, and study together. At the time, the idea that university accommodation should be built with an abstract benefit — a cultural one, rather than an economic one — was truly radical, and something we should admire.

Like many overseas movements, the International House wave arrived in Sydney a little later than elsewhere, in the mid-50s. A report was delivered by the Secretary of the Overseas Student Bureau, Margaret Briggs expressing the need for such accommodation.

Not long after, the University of Sydney SRC took on the campaign, pushing for the university community to open its mind and understand the

Crucially, the House’s governance was not to be entirely overseen by the University. While its executive body is a Senate-approved council which does consist of members of the University Senate, it also includes representatives from the Rotary, House residents, and alumni.

The document which largely governs its vision and goals, the Trust Deed, was written in 1962. It made clear the council’s hope of “promoting goodwill and understanding among students” and that “such Houses should be completely selfcontained having their own dining rooms.”

Similarly, when a Project Planning Committee was established in 1964, they established that “the House will have two main purposes. On the one hand it should provide for strangers in a strange land, facilities for living and study as individuals under reasonably comfortable conditions. On the other, it should provide opportunities for easy contact between individuals and groups of overseas

“International House was deliberately designed to provide more independent, inexpensive and culturally flexible accommodation for a multicultural array of residents of both sexes and all ages, both domestic and international.

Harry spoke to Honi about the importance of shared spaces to the International House experience.

“I liked having other people from my floor, which included people who were Indonesian, Indian, Asian, various nationalities — I’d have them in my room for coffee. And I used to also invite the girls, because my floor was all men.

“These consciously modern, cosmopolitan social expectations of encouraging interaction and integration between cultures are expressed in the modernist architectural style of the building complex and by its location on the city side of the campus, bounded by busy roads and public transport rather than being located in the more suburban, park-like college precinct.”

These factors comprise a unique and successful place of university accommodation, which the University of Sydney seems to have forgotten.

Harry Bergsteiner is an architect and town planner who works in adaptive reuse, and spent time in Europe working on repurposing plans for centuries old structures like castles and palaces. He was also the first person to apply for accommodation at International House, way back in 1966, before it had even

“So I’d invite some girls from other floors, and one of them — who’s now a barrister in Australia, London and New York — told me one day, ‘early on, when I stayed in International House, I was so grateful to you for inviting me to coffee’,” Harry said, explaining the conversation.

“And I said, ‘What? What’s the big deal about being invited to coffee?’ ‘Well, you know, I came from a little town, south of Wollongong, with a very small circle of people I knew. And then all of a sudden, I’m at Sydney University with all of these people from different countries.’”

The concept of International House was, as a baseline, ahead of its time. As a natural consequence, its residents adopted a similar forward-thinking mindset in all aspects of their planning and socialising. International House was one of the only residential facilities on campus that didn’t place men and women

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE IN CONSTRUCTION, DEC. 1965, CNR CITY RD & CLEVELAND STREET. COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.

STUDENTS USE THE IH POOL ROOM, 1984. COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.

HONI SOIT HEADLINE ANNOUNCING THE SRC’S CAMPAIGN, 1958, ISSUE 17.

“At the core of the concept is global citizenship - the belief that it would benefit all students, foreign and domestic, to live together, eat together, and study together.”

in separate buildings. Male residents didn’t think twice about having women in their dorm. At St Paul’s College, they are only just adjusting to the idea today, decades later.

In 2018, residents of International House were notified that they would be required to relocate to the newly-opened Regiment Building by December 2020. One of the move’s immediate alarm bells was the potential loss of communal spaces, a hallmark of International House. Most apparent throughout this article’s research was how important these spaces were: the relationships between students, formed slowly and naturally through sharing common spaces, was what made the House special.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR I-NIGHT. HONI SOIT, 1991, ISSUE 11.

to be much more reserved, you know, they’re not as upfront as Australians.”

Research from the University of Melbourne in 2007 found that integration with local students helps international students lead a happier and healthier life in Australia, feeling less homesick and culture shock. Additional research by University of Technology Sydney in 2020 also found that 47 per cent of international students agreed or strongly agreed that making close friends in Australia was difficult, and 35 per cent said they felt lonely while here.

Harry emphasised that continuous shared spaces can bridge social barriers between international and domestic students.

Of equal importance was the Wool Room, which sits at the centre of the Rotunda and was host to (according to rumours) “epic” parties, as well as the famous yearly International Night (“I-Night”). This decades-long tradition saw performances planned and choreographed by the residents to celebrate their many cultures. Of similar importance was the rooftop balcony, where many a summer drink looking over the University, Chippendale, and the city was enjoyed. As was the pool room, the TV rooms, the communal library, and the gym.

This is why one of the first questions the IH Council had for the University when changes to the House’s structure were mere whispers was whether the dining hall space would be preserved. It’s also why many people expressed complete dismay at the University’s suggestion that the Regiment was adequate for the House’s residents to be moved to. It doesn’t have a communal dining hall, and severely lacks spaces like the Wool Room, which allow for social traditions to continue and develop.

International House is an institution with a social goal. It fosters friendship opportunities for international students who are often foreign to the University, and opens the minds of domestic students who have grown up in a globally isolated and parochial Australia.

If the proposed hope is to develop higher density accommodation at the site, then the plan is at huge economic and environmental fault — to abandon the building entirely is seemingly devoid of logic.

Harry Bergsteiner provided Honi with a plan he presented to the University in his capacity as a member of the International House Council, which outlined how the House could be refurbished: its potential faults (potential, because the University has not outlined what the faults are) mended, its heritage preserved, and its capacity for residential rooms increased. Harry’s plan projected an expenditure which saved 40 per cent on the estimated costs that a knock down rebuild would cost, and it didn’t even require people moving out. The University did not respond to this plan.

At the centre of this was the dining hall, where residents were served three hot meals a day.

“This is how you get the Australian students and the overseas students to actually interact,” Harry said. “The whole idea of International House was half Aussies, half overseas. And the overseas students, even with a common dining room, had a real struggle with the interaction. A lot of their cultures tend

“The idea was, if students have to go into the common dining room, to have breakfast, to have lunch or to have dinner, and mostly they do, because they haven’t got the money to go to restaurants all the time. Eventually, not by fate, but by circumstance, they’ll get to know each other. This is precisely what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Regiment doesn’t have a shared dining area — while it may have an open eating area, the individual cooking areas and separated tables don’t invite social dining.

The House’s cultural impact leaves a sense of purpose and dedication with its residents, who often go on to become active in the House community for many years, through the Sydney University International House Alumni Association. Across the world, during any given month, you can find IH Alumni lunches and events. The alumni of the House are active in its community; it is an experience one is eager to share with others.

Harry also highlighted the intellectual dishonesty that a knock-down-rebuild would represent for a University ostensibly committed to sustainability.

“One of the things that architects are saying around the world is if you don’t need to demolish, don’t, because the embodied carbon which is already in the building is wasted.” Embodied carbon is the term used to describe the existing emissions and carbon footprint of a structure. “The third biggest contributor to global warming is concrete,” he explained.

In the 70s, one ex-student felt that international students should have the opportunity to get out of the city, and organised for the alumni to build a log cabin a few hours out of Sydney. Right up until the cease of operations at International House, there was an annual stargazing trip to the cabin organised by alumni, where cross-generational stories of the House were shared.

With all this in mind, it’s hard to understand why International House is closing. It is a hallmark of 60s architecture, and, in the last six decades, has developed traditions unique to the 6,000 residents who have come through its doors.

What’s more unclear is the University’s intended goal in redeveloping the International House site. Their own policy states that a building should only be demolished when it has “reached the end of its useful existence.” A clear indicator of how International House has reached this point remains to be seen, as does a material plan for future buildings, beyond the ‘decant and demolish’ being applied to current structures.

As Harry outlines, the current situation for International House, particularly the lack of clarity on the University’s part, leaves a lot of room for questions and little hope for preservation of the House’s unique and ongoing history. However, we should have faith in the deep care and passion held by alumni, who are unwaveringly committed to ensuring there are future generations who get to experience what they did.

Places like International House are few and far between; knocking them down does irreversible damage. Students must not just roll over and watch them go.

LOG CABIN IN CONSTRUCTION, 1970S. COURTESTY OF SYDNEY UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL HOUSE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION.

BEDROOM AT INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, 1960S. COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.

“What the report places greater emphasis on is the building’s social significance, and how it’s explicitly linked to ideas employed in modernist architecture .”

“The concept of International House was, as a baseline, ahead of its time. As a natural consequence, its residents adopted a similar forwardthinking mindset in all aspects of their planning and socialising.”

A CONCERT IN THE WOOL ROOM, 1980. COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES.

1960S.

USyd fails student carers Here’s what needs to change

I

n 2020, my Mum was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer; by 2022, it had spread to her brain. Among the confusion and devastation of such a diagnosis, I have repeatedly sought systematic support from the University of Sydney to ensure that I can complete my degree while also being able to care for my Mum. Instead of providing me with a sense of relief, I have found myself caught in a bureaucratic quagmire, left without clear or adequate assistance.

Currently, the University of Sydney has no structure for young carers seeking ongoing support. The page on the University website that aligns most closely with student carers is called ‘Parent Networks and Other Resources’, but this directs one to school holiday programs and playgroups—not exactly helpful for someone who is caring for their mother with cancer.

If one has primary caregiving responsibilities, they can apply for special considerations, although this is done on an assessment-by-assessment basis and ongoingdelays regularly plague the system. Throughout three years of caring, I have reached out tothe student centre multiple times, and have been told, in various ways (and never this explicitly) that no structural support for student carers exists.

Of course, USyd’s lack of recognition for student carers fits into broader trends of informal care work being undervalued (despite it underpinning the formal economy).

Young carers disproportionately come from populations already excluded by tertiary education; young carers are more likely to come from families who are economically disadvantaged, and be from a nonEnglish speaking background. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are almost twice as likely to be young carers, and young carers themselves are more likely to have a disability or long term health condition. The ongoing lack of support for student carers from the university further entrenches these inequalities.

Caring is multifaceted, and young carers are not a homogenous group. No two carers’ lives, and responsibilities look the same, further increasing the complexity of providing structural support. However, the university can and should be doing more. Students shouldn’t have to decide between caring for people they love or completing their education. The steps below are intended to provide a pathway for management to better support young carers.

1. USyd needs to broaden its understanding of what counts as care.

The University’s ‘Parent Networks and Other Resources’ is grossly inadequate and presents a single view of caring.

Across the literature, and in my experience, it is difficult to identify young carers, with many hesitant to self-identify. In Australia, a young carer is defined as a person aged 25 or younger looking after a friend or family member with a disability, mental illness, chronic condition, terminal illness, or who is frail aged.

Care can be practical, like cooking and cleaning; emotional, such as providing encouragement or comfort; or personal, like bathing and monitoring medication. Responsibilities vary wildly from person to person, but an explicit and broad definition from the University would ensure that students who perform additional care duties see themselves represented, regardless of how they feel about the title ‘young carer’, and access support to assist them.

2. USyd must centralise information relating to student carers onto a single web page.

Student carers have limited time, and sorting through convoluted information across disparate pages adds an additional burden. This webpage should include, at a minimum: a clear definition of what counts as care responsibilities (as outline above), what ongoing support the university can offer students (both academically and through CAPS), and what support the university can offer if you suddenly find yourself in a position of care taking (importantly, this should mention the opportunity to discontinue without failure after the census date owing to exceptional circumstances).

Both the University of Technology Sydney and Western Sydney University have clearly accessible and easily understandable pages directed

at student carers if USyd management would like a place to begin.

that the university can provide if you are a carer? The availability of these services must be clearly communicated to staff, particularly those in studentfacing roles, so that students asking for help can be pointed in the right direction.

5. USyd should engage with student carers across multiple disciplines to ensure that the system is working across the board.

3. Ideally, a structure that applies to student carers should be implemented or, in lieu of that, academic plans should be expanded to recognise students with additional caretaking needs.

There must be a recognition of the ongoing requirements of care work— special considerations do not suffice. I was only able to access an academic plan after my mental health declined due to a lack of structural support from the university.

Crucially, my disability plan does not include the main reason for me accessing the service: my mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis and my resulting additional caretaking responsibilities. This plan has been immeasurably helpful; however, it still does not adequately respond to my caretaking responsibilities.

To receive support, I have had to individually email unit coordinators to inform them of my situation, something which is personally distressing and increases both mine and lecturers’ administrative load. A systematic structure would alleviate these pressures and provide a pathway that carers and academics alike can rely on.

4. USyd must ensure that these services are advertised widely and regularly.

There is no point in investing in support if students are unaware such support exists. In the same way that many units advertise disability services, and, importantly, what is covered by disability services, support for student carers should follow the same principle; what counts as caring? What are examples of support

Course requirements differ according to discipline, and young carers are a diverse group. The university should engage with student carers to learn how their additional responsibilities impact on their education. For example, how can placements fit in with caring responsibilities? What works best in terms of timetabling for student carers? Could attendance be wavered if one has carer duties? What student carers need will not be revealed without consultation.

***

Student carers face enough challenges. Support from the university should not be dependent on how understanding unit coordinators are, or through short term means such as special considerations.

To care for my Mum has been a joy in hundreds of big and small ways, but a lack of support from the university has meant that I have had to sacrifice my dreams and goals. I won’t be doing honours, I haven’t received the marks I could have, I have felt endless shame about failing units after my mother was diagnosed, and I have learnt that once you fail one unit it is much easier to fail another.

I don’t want other young carers to feel the same way or experience the same system. Students should not have to choose between caring for a loved one and completing their education. The solutions above are not perfect, but they are actionable. It is long overdue for USyd to examine how it can better support young carers, because truthfully, it is not supporting us at all.

Caitlin White calls for long overdue action.

“Students should not have to choose between caring for a loved one and completing their education.”

“... an explicit and broad definition [of care] from the University would ensure that students who perform additoal care duties see themselves represented.”

“USyd’s lack of recognition for student carers fits into broader trends of informal care work being undervalued (despite it underpinning the formal economy).”

A burden? Who, me?

L

ast year, the Sydney University Catholic society (CathSoc) displayed this question on an A-frame: “Are disabled people a burden on society?” Two jars were put out, one labelled “YES,” and one labelled “NO.” CathSoc’s defence when criticised for ableism was that it was all an innocuous exercise — a ‘spark’ to incite debate.

On the election trail this year, Scott Morrison implied all neurodivergent children are theologically aberrant. “I have been blessed,” he responded to a mother questioning why her son on the autistic spectrum had lost funding under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). “I have two children who haven’t had to go through that,” he said while addressing her question.

I went through “that.” At two years old I had six words in my vocabulary; a child at that age normally has anywhere between two and three hundred. I knew “Mum,” “Dad,” my brother’s name, my name, “clap,” and “wave.” I was taken to a paediatrician by my mother and pronounced mentally retarded and autistic. This doctor—thinking it best to eschew sensitivity and put plainly to my mother his prognosis for my life— declared me brain dead.

Fortunately for me, my mother thought I demonstrated an intelligence playing with my older brother that was modicum enough to warrant other, more charitable opinions. She also loved me. The fourth paediatrician we saw recommended the then-nascent Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) therapy. It was ostensibly a benign form of abuse, he cautioned my mother. “I don’t give a fuck,” she said, “I just want him to talk.” I started ABA therapy just

ART BY KHANH TRAN

‘Sit down.’

‘Mum?’

‘Sit down.’

Where is mum?

***

I would cling to mum in the inbetween. I didn’t want to go in there. She’d peel my arms from her and say to me… what… say to me what?

***

‘Pig.’

What?

‘Point to the card Pig.’

What?

***

One day when I wasn’t trapped in a room screaming my head off, strangers gesticulating and garbling, my mother was wheeling me in my pram down the sidewalk of a hill. She saw a truck coming up the road and thought: If I relax my hands, just enough. She was horrified, and confessed that the thought passed her mind to another mother with an autistic son at a support group. “You should do it when the bus is going down the hill — the bus will hit him with more impact… I’ve had similar thoughts,” the other mother replied.

***

I did ABA therapy six hours a day, six days a week, for two years. Recently, it has garnered criticism from people who have actually gone through it, and rightly so.

Preventing kids from stimming, only one problematic aspect of the therapy, entrenches the notion in them that they should repress their natural behaviour to try and pass as neurotypical. I was lucky in that I did not behave in what was considered an untoward manner, and so was spared in this respect.

But ABA therapy can help through the use of pictures representing every noun, verb, adjective, and preposition, and by me pointing to the ones being spoken of.

For example: “Bearded Gandalf waving his staff in Mordor” (my mum tried to make it fun). I learnt words… very slowly. It took me six weeks at the outset of the therapy to learn one word.

With the words I’ve written so far, I hope I have cast aspersions upon the proclamation that my brain is a torpid blob incapable of cognition. Autism manifests differently in different people. In my case, I have both an auditory and visual processing disorder, both mitigated now through a great deal of effort.

That effort was exerted not only by me but also by my mother. Indeed, mostly by my mother. I asked her about our travails. “You became my life,” she said to me, lovingly, but laced with an undercurrent of exasperation. I became

listening to sheep ‘baaaa’ and cows ‘mooo’ in various tones, in the hope that doing so would help me process auditory information more effectively (that I can speak somewhat intelligibly goes some way towards speaking for its efficacy).

These were interventions. My mother directed me to therapies under the belief that the impairments I had needed fixing. It’s an interpretation of disability that can be problematic.

As a young teenager, my mother encouraged me to see an esteemed gastroenterologist who advocated faecal microbiota transplants for autism — Honi reporter Katarina Butler wrote about the procedure in an article, detailing how it treats actual pathologies like cancerous tumours. I humoured my mum by attending the consultation. Sat in his office, my mother described how I had been nonverbal and diagnosed with autism — I can recite how she did so, having heard her do so, so many times. I looked at the university degrees that adorned the walls and politely smiled at him when he glanced at me.

Upon me beginning ABA therapy, she quit her job to take care of me fulltime, a setback for her career she has never recovered from (I was extremely fortunate in that my father could financially support our family alone). She didn’t leave the house for six months except to get groceries — a lockdown of sorts. The minutiae of our home became opportunities for her to reinforce the words I was learning: “Would you like the round blue cup in the big pantry?”

After school and on the weekends up until middle school, she would drive me across Sydney to the Lindfield Speech Pathology and Learning Centre where I would do the Fast ForWord program,

I then spoke.

“Extraordinary,” he stammered incredulously.

I spoke some more.

“Listen to this guy!” He exclaimed to my mother.

My mother walked out, and I followed her.

There’s a portrait of me as a toddler. I’m sitting cross-legged in my nappy, my head is cocked to one side, looking straight at the camera. Sometimes I look at me looking at myself curiously. When I asked my mother if she’d do it all again, she only rolled her eyes.

Alexandre Douglas loves his mum.

“This doctor— thinking it best to eschew sensitivity and put plainly to my mother his prognosis for my life—declared me brain dead.”

“‘You became my life,’ she said to me, lovingly, but laced with an undercurrent of exasperation.”

Being a dyke! A comprehensive review

Do you ever lay in bed at night and think: I wonder what it’s like to be a lesbian? Or maybe, I wonder if I am a lesbian?

If either of these are you, and you are interested in a deeply personal and unnecessarily detailed account on what it has been like for me, a lesbian, to live out my sexuality as a USyd student, please read on. If you are specifically the latter, and want a yes/no answer on who you want to fuck, I suggest Googling ‘am I gay quiz’ and accessing the lesbian masterdoc.

In last week’s Honi, I wrote a review of being gay. The review was intended to be humorous, but, in giving being gay a rating, I just couldn’t bring myself to pretend that it’s been a 10/10 experience. It has been incredibly frustrating, isolating, and difficult. Equally, it has also been joyous, fulfilling and rewarding beyond the bounds of what heterosexuality could ever allow.

Ultimately, being a lesbian has been an experience that I try not to think about too much, because if I do, the joy is met with a simultaneous grief, anger, or resentment towards the people around me for not understanding what the journey has actually been like (especially queer people). This feeling is, of course, relatively futile, and I am largely to blame, given I most often bring up my sexuality in conversation to joke about it, or talk about how hot women are. It’s also stupid, because people more generous than myself have made being gay great for me, showing me community in ways I hope everyone gets the chance to experience.

Due to this, I feel like I am a perfect experiment. You can remove a child from homophobia and hatred within your own home and community as much as you want, but it’s still there — on TV, on the radio, and eventually in the playground.

a groupchat. It was a semi success — we went to the Flodge a few times, but we now mostly use the group chat for updates on the Birdcage line. It certainly wasn’t quite the same as the lesbian societies present on campus in days gone by.

Every now and then, seeing a dyke on campus makes me overwhelmed with relief. But still, I rarely see myself reflected in my circles of friends. This is not an inherently bad thing — it’s important to mix with people who look nothing like yourself. But it’s isolating when those people look like each other.

Take note, teen dykes: you probably won’t find a huge friend group who had the exact same experience as you. But you’ll learn that there’s something lovely in how varied the experience of queerness is, and that there is equal, though different, joy to be found in how much you may learn from others.

#ItGetsBetter etc

The peak of my shame came towards the end of high school. My friends all started kissing boys and having sex and I didn’t, and I could feel my youth slipping away from me. I tried partaking in the activities (spoiler: it didn’t work), drank too much vodka with the hope that if I vomited enough my subconscious would reset and I would no longer be gay (not even sure where this idea came from), and did extensive research into the potential that my homosexual tendencies may be epigenetic, eventually coming to the theory that perhaps if I conditioned myself to enjoy the presence of men, maybe a genetic trait would be (de)activated, and I would be at least bisexual. When none of this worked, I resolved that if I just waited until university, all of my dreams of a queer adolescence would come true.

University: false hope

I still grieve for the coming-of-age experiences that little 17-year-old me never got to have — not just because American movies say you’re meant to pash people at high school parties, but because those around me got to and I didn’t. But the experiences I had were made extraordinarily unique by these people too, and while I grieve for what I could have had, I’m so grateful to have gotten something entirely different. I know what I missed out on by being gay. But if I wasn’t, I’d have no idea I was missing all this. The experience itself wasn’t inherently positive, but good, community-minded people made it so.

They are why, for all my lamenting, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This article attempts to communicate both of those feelings at once, instead of neglecting their existence entirely, through the threepart account below of my journey through #lesbianism. My hopes are that 1) the people in my life may have an insight into what it’s like to want to sleep with women and 2) there is a lonely dyke on campus who feels like they have some emotional company.

Realising I was gay: this part didn’t rock.

I knew I was gay in year 9 when I was watching Gossip Girl. Blake Lively was making out with someone and I thought it was so awesome. Then I noticed it was Blake Lively and not the bloke I found awesome, so I immediately slammed my laptop screen shut, cried, and banned myself from watching Gossip Girl for 12 months.

What confused me for so long about this disgust towards my own sexuality was that I’d never had any social indication that being gay was bad. I grew up around gay people — lots of them! My Mum told me Spongebob and Patrick were boyfriends in pre-school, and my best (girl) friend and I got married at her birthday party, complete with a kiss on the lips. In fact, my experience of gender and sexuality was so ideally socialised by my Inner City leftie parents that, in Year 5, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t play on the no-shirts team in a game of after-school soccer.

SPOILER ALERT: University, for the first little while, crushed more of my queer dreams than it fulfilled. Perhaps it’s because my expectations of a magical dykeland were a little high, but arriving at USyd felt more isolating than anything up to that point.

I thought that uni would contain campus lesbians like those in American movies: crazy, hairy, stoner dykes who refused social interaction with men. Unfortunately, these are few and far between. I could probably count on two hands the number of lesbians I have met since starting university.

At uni, I found I didn’t quite fit in anywhere, and for the most part, being a lesbian has made me feel like an outsider. Upon reflection, this was largely due to the misc. space that the lesbian gender identity occupies. But of course, there have been highs and lows, both holding equal weight in shaping my experience.

The lesbians I did meet, I latched onto. Usually, they were older — realising that they would graduate before me, and I would be alone again, always left me with a deep sadness. It went without saying that they had the same experience as me; the queer people around them exuded confidence in their sexuality, but the space wasn’t quite there for them to do the same.

Dissatisfied with my experience, and determined to make it more markedly gay, I even tried to entirely manufacture queer culture on campus. I put every queer woman I knew in

Like for so many others, older queer women took on the role of nurturing my sexuality. I am almost certainly more privileged than most: I was surrounded by them, and constantly shown love by them. When I had a meltdown upon a very teenage, very drunken discovery that I was gay, it was older queer women who hasted to remind me that this was great — I had a huge statistical advantage regarding orgasmic frequency ahead of me.

Though I’ve complained about the initial dissapointment of uni, I only felt that way because I’d developed a certain confidence in my sexuality by then, including the idealised belief that the whole world was gay like me.

Hearing lesbians a little older than me talk about crushes, sexual encounters, and girlfriends with an actualised confidence altered the way I thought about myself. Not in a grand, immediately identity shifting way, but in the way that stopped me from policing my little gay thoughts.

I hope that articles like this hit the top of “am I a lesbian” Google search functions, and serve the same function these women did for someone else like me.

“The peak of my shame came towards the end of high school.”

Roisin Murphy says the L-word (lesbian, not loser).

“I thought that uni would contain campus lesbians like those in American movies: crazy, hairy, stoner dykes who refused social interaction with men. Unfortunately, these are few and far between.”

“I put every queer woman I knew in a groupchat.”

Gays or lesbians? I say neither!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that gay people are quite annoying. When we first emerge from high school — usually an unsavoury, isolating and homophobic experience — we are temporarily humbled. This does not last for long though as gays quickly find each other in unprecedented quantities, forming and reproducing enclaves that are endemic to student politics and the performing arts, among other spaces. Ensconced safely therein, gay people are free to allow our true personalities to emerge. Regrettably, Our True Selves are usually histrionic, self-centred and machiavellian; read: annoying.

Oscar Chaffey investigates.

Gay men are, above all else, an honest bunch of people. Critiques of gay men centre on the deleterious consequences of this — an unfriendly dating culture, catty senses of humour and a propensity for gratuitous public displays of evil. Nevertheless, honesty is a virtue of the highest esteem. In my view, it is infinitely preferable to know where you stand with someone rather than dealing with artifice and social lubricant. Additionally, growing up gay can make you an extremely good liar and so it is remarkable that gay men do not more frequently give themselves over to this instinct in their personal lives.

Who is better: gay men or lesbians? In some senses, this is a futile question. You’re all rotten jackals and I hate you all. On the other hand, I am also an Extremely Annoying Gay Person (EAGP) and so feel that making comparisons may help us to apportion blame equitably. Let us then engage in some thoughtful and well-considered critique.

The most salient realisation that I have ever had about lesbians is that I have a ridiculously low hit rate with them as friends. I have never quite worked out why, which perhaps speaks to their general reticence to give feedback to their fellow queer. However, every lesbian that I do know and like is incredibly successful. While gay men are often equally as ambitious, they are simply less good at realising that ambition. Lesbians are so good at tasks. They are the most reliable group in the alphabet soup. While this makes me scared at times, this surely counts for an awful lot in their ledger.

The real answer to the age old question of gays or lesbians is therefore I suppose neither. The true heroes of the queer community are a group of people who are forced to deal with our worst traits but are seldom invited to share in the fruits of our best traits. A group of people who face the devastating sting of erasure. This group is bisexual women. By virtue of the relative quantities of queer women and straight men, bisexual women often find themselves dating straight men. Gay people who once identified as bisexual regularly form the sharp end of a biphobic spear. I have seen this first hand; regrettably I have often played a part. Well no more. In the days that I have left I shall dedicate myself to the project of uplifting bi-woman voices. And you, dear reader, should do the same.

IMAGERY COURTESY OF HONI SOIT EDITION 23, 1990

THE MORE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH: ANTI-SMOKERS

Iggy Boyd takes a deep breath in.

When Northwest Orient Airlines

Flight 305 landed in Reno, Nevada on 24 November 1971, federal agents boarded the plane in order to apprehend D. B. Cooper, who had hijacked the plane and received $200,000 (USD) in ransom money only hours earlier. It was not to be; he had leapt from the plane’s ‘aft airstair’ approximately 30 minutes after it departed from Portland, Oregon with the money. In his place he left only a black clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip, and eight filter-tipped Raleigh cigarette butts.

“Cigarettes, on a plane?” I hear you exclaim. Indeed, just like quaaludes, this veritable Sangraal, this unparalleled heaven on Earth was taken from us, first in 1987 when smoking was banned on Australian domestic flights and finally in 1996 when smoking was banned on all Australian international flights. Perhaps more egregiously, smoking was banned in “enclosed public areas”, sans bars and licensed premises, in 2001. 2006 saw the completion of perhaps the greatest curtailing of civil liberties since the Accords when smoking was finally banned in enclosed areas of pubs and clubs. It’s no wonder the union movement is in the state it is today, when the gentle labourer cannot even appreciate a cigarette with whatever Australian piss beer he is drinking with his mates.

D. B. Cooper was never found; it can be assumed that he did not die in the fall, for his body was never found in the vast stretch of wilderness that his estimated drop point encompasses. You know what else? D. B. Cooper was never diagnosed with any kind of cancer; since he has never been found it is also very possible he is still alive. Now, am I saying that smoking on planes allows you to evade federal authorities working at maximum capacity, survive dangerous falls from moving airplanes in the black of night, lessens your chances of developing cancer, and grants you eternal life? Not at all, this would be phenomenologically unsound and medically irresponsible. But it would be equally irresponsible for me to claim that it definitely doesn’t do any of these things. Ultimately I believe the most intellectually rigorous conclusion is that smoking on planes might allow you to evade federal authorities working at maximum capacity and survive dangerous falls from moving airplanes in the black of night, lessen your chances of developing cancer, and grant you eternal life.

when I asked her she replied that she believed that allegation to be Soviet propaganda, and that her children have been replaced by ASIO informants for the purposes of surveilling her. I can’t speak to the veracity of the latter claim, but I would be willing to stake my life on

I also have reason to believe that vaping causes immediate death in all who partake in that Satanic pastime. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

Now, I hear you, my sniveling reader, ask “but uhhhh doesn’t smoking cause cancer?? Can you cite your sources?”. To that I respond, not according to my research it doesn’t. I haven’t googled it, but I did ask my 106-year-old great

COLLAGE BY ELLIE STEPHENSON

“Gay men are, above all else, an honest bunch of people.

”

“Lesbians are so good at tasks.”

“The law restricts me from answering that question in a publication such as this, so I’ll let you decide. ”

“Cigarettes, on a plane?” I hear you exclaim.

RANKING THE WORST TOILETS ON CAMPUS

The time spent in a toilet is an experience that can be shared across class, genders, and politics. Both you and I, the king and potentially Jeff Bezos, all have to spend at least 10 minutes a day in a toilet.

As a student, the toilet is a precious location where I take my study break. Where I relax my bladders after applying for three simple extensions. Where I breathe in the alluring stench of poop and piss to seek inspiration for my next paragraph on the unsustainability of capitalism.

However, the state of campus toilets is a tragedy in and of itself. Despite the importance of these institutions to us, most of them are in a dire state that only provokes fear (looking at you, law library toilet).

I’m sick and tired of just simply accepting what is and not what could be. Last week I embarked on a great journey. I traversed the terrains of USyd, spending four hours in the rain adventuring to a total of 25 different buildings on campus.

There was but one goal in mind — to experience as many toilets as I physically could in four hours in the name of journalism and the public interest.

To rank the notable toilets I found from the worst to the best on campus. I present to you my greatest work: .

1. Wallace Theatre:

The face on the man who left when I walked in said it all. This toilet is, I believe, where WWII mustard gas was sourced from. As I walked in, an overpowering punch to my nose by years of urine and faeces immediately hit my nostrils. I believed I was in there for at least five seconds before my lungs decided to combust on itself. This place is a biohazard.

Cleanliness: 1/4

Smell: 1/4

Y’all need help.

3. Chemistry building (ground):

I did not know where to put this on this list…Is this even a toilet? The lid was blown off by years of neglect.

Smell: 2/4

Cleanliness: 2/4

Alice in Chunderland

7. Manning Bar (lvl 2):

Smell: 0

Cleanliness: 0

So this is what happens when you squat on the toilet seat?

4. Carslaw building (ground):

A Pangea of toilet stalls is the best way to describe this place. Its notoriety precedes itself. Imagine walking through a British town after the Blitz. The sheer size of it allows you to find at least one toilet stall that has yet to be graced by the butt of a sweaty third year student questioning every life decision he has ever made.

Smell: 2/4

Cleanliness: 1.5/4

Where bombs are dropped and grades torpedoed.

5. Bio Molecular Building (ground):

Now we are starting to get into the area of the list where I almost start praising the toilets. This was one of the very first toilets I went to during the day. I also had to take a dump here after all my morning weetbix were finally digested. This toilet reminded me of a charming English gentleman in his mid-70s. Sometimes the pipe may be exposed, but you forgive him due to his old age. This was a fine one.

Smell: 2.5/4

Smell: 0/4

Cleanliness: 0/4

No. God no. God, please, no no, no. noooo.

2. Mechanical and Mechatronic building (lvl 1):

Students who used this toilet, one word of warning, I am worried about you guys. I would recommend an immediate subscription to BetterHelp, there was a lot of hate speech on the walls. This place was about as bad as things can get in a campus toilet. The walls have absorbed the years of urine released here and have turned the once pristine white walls into a yellow-ish rice white.

Cleanliness: 2/4

Back in his day he was a fine fella.

6. Hermman’s:

The only word I can use to describe this place is STARK. Bright Pink and dark forest green. You will never forget that you once graced this place. It has an acceptable level of cleanliness considering it is the toilet of a uni bar.

This toilet made me think about the industrial revolution. The steel tone used throughout the toilet felt decidedly steampunk. Just like Hermann’s, its cleanliness was acceptable considering it hosts some of USyd’s craziest events. I also found out you can buy Panadol here, perfect for a hangover.

Smell: 2/4

Cleanliness: 2/4

Steampunk, funk, punk, poop?

8. Courtyard:

No, that is not my pee, someone just forgot to flush. This toilet reminded me of a hotel lobby toilet. Clearly there was some attention paid to the interior design, it is not brutalist in design like some of the older campus toilets. The marbled floor and the wooden accent used throughout the room adds to the style.

10. The Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences building (basement):

This toilet came highly recommended from my student ambassador colleagues. I had saved up some pee after walking around the engineering side of the campus just to release it here. However upon arrival, it was just a Westfield toilet replica at best. Slightly disappointed, not worth the hype.

Smell: 3/4

Cleanliness: 2.5/4

Fun fact about me, I once took a dump in the Tokyo Sky Tree.

11. RC Mills building:

This used to be my favourite toilet on campus. As a member of the Chinese Australian community, feng shui matters a lot. Chinese Australians love a toilet with a big window that shines on you as you try to seek refuge from your children’s underwhelming performance. Apart from the window, the combination of piss odour and lavender in was bizarrely soothing.

Smell: 100/100

Cleanliness: 3/4

And god said let there be light.

12. Social Science building (lvl 2):

A lot of people’s favourites. The creme de la creme of school toilets. The warm light that embraces you when you walk in is an experience in itself. I once walked from Fisher to here just to take a shit.

Smell: 3/4

Cleanliness: 3.5/4 Ooh la la.

13. Seymour centre

My favourite. I discovered this toilet for this project. I thought I had found myself on the fimset of the next Star Wars movie. The whole room feels like an emperor’s throne. Whoever designed it, take a bow!

Smell: 3/4 Cleanliness: 2.5/4 The most toilet of the toilets on campus

9. RD Watt building (ground):

The fun thing about doing a project like this is that I can go to places I have never been. This was the first time I walked into the RD Watt building and this toilet was a pleasant surprise. Its stone tiling was very aesthetically pleasing for my love for symmetry. It was acceptably clean and well ventilated.

Smell: 2.5/4

Cleanliness: 3/4 Very flushy.

Smell: 4/4

Cleanliness: 4/4

Intergalactic shit

The next time you need to take a massive shit you do not need to go to the mess that is the chemistry building toilet. You can walk about 20 minutes to Seymour centre and enjoy a shit in a spaceship. Now if you may excuse me, I need to go and stare into the mirror in my toilet and question my life choices and my negligence towards my assessments.

Lucas Kao skids across campus in search of a royal flush. An article for the next time you need to take a massive shit at USyd.

The art of crying on campus

Zara Zadro needs some tissues.

On sadness for the sake of sadness.

There is something deliciously vain about wallowing.

To luxuriate in sadness might feel indulgent and unethical, like having a crush just for the sake of it. You watch mascara-stained tears streak your face in the mirror. You poeticise the fall of rain against a bus window. You write sad words in your notes app, a reminder for another day of your superior emotional depth.

Student life is so patterned with drama that it’s essential to know what locations at USyd are best for coaxing out one’s tears. I, for one, am a big fan of wallowing. It is an art, and all art needs a good background.

A good wallowing location must be semi-private. An oblique sense of the ‘outside world’ can reinforce just how alone you are, intensifying the drama of it all; blatant publicity, however, could be quite humiliating. Trying to wallow somewhere where you are bound to bump into every person you’ve ever met at USyd since

first year in the space of 15 minutes (see: Courtyard Cafe) is simply social suicide.

For this reason, I’d recommend ‘weeping discreetly on levels 6-8 of Fisher Library’. Positioned at a desk by the windows that overlook the Quad, the distant, untouchable beauty of its green lawn and gothic architecture will contrast wonderfully with your pit-like misery. Better still, abandoning the desks, you might curl up against the spines of tragedyriddled histories and literature, imagining yourself as a main character whose suffering is felt by sympathetic readers.

If libraries aren’t your thing, you might prefer ‘feeling depressed in the shade of Victoria Park’. Some afternoons, I have sat below the bay figs and silently cried. The slant of sunlight through the leaves will shape your sadness into poetry, while the hum of traffic down Parramatta Road will be a painful reminder of your own stagnant loneliness as the world carries on.

What makes a BNoC?

Words by Thomas — wait, like Thomas Sargeant?

A small article for big names.

B ig Names on Campus (BNoCs) are a vital part of campus life. They are the hands that hold us up, toiling away within our institutions to ensure that we have everything that students need, such as cheap Courtyard piz za and bathrooms that don’t overflow with shit each month. However, they are an increasingly endangered species due to the impacts of Voluntary Student Unionism (decreased funding for stu dent orgs) as well as pandemic-related campus shutdowns. After all, you can’t be a BNoC without a thriving campus culture.

BNoCs themselves help to carry on this culture through oral histories, inducting the next generation of

students into campus life. When you first show up at Uni, it helps immeasurably to have someone tell you about all the unspoken rules and secrets of campus: how to avoid campaigners (or become one), where to study (or slack off), and which clubs are fronts for which factions.

BNoCs: we all know one, and if you’re reading this, you might just be selfinvolved enough to be one. Being a BNoC, however, is about more than just knowledge or popularity.

What makes a BNoC is right there in the term. First, they have to be big: big presence, big personality, or big impact. They might be a society president, a

Finally, feeling a wave of sadness coming on when you’re leaving uni can also be optimised. My personal favourite, ‘crying on the bus home beneath a face mask’, is arguably the most convenient, adaptable way to wallow. The face mask is, of course, key to fulfilling the ‘semi-private’ criteria.

though, it will make for less stressful, more decadent wallowing when you’re out-andabout on campus.

And when you are feeling the true depths of your misery, remember all the USyd students who have sat there before you and also wallowed, thinking, like you, that their sadness was bigger than everyone else’s.

Imagine: you get on the 461X and feel the urge to cry after a long, mediocre day. You secure a window seat at the back, plug in your grubby wired earphones, and amp up ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)’, hoping the man on his phone behind you can’t hear it. Slowly, your tears begin to fall, blurring the shitty shop fronts on Parramatta Road. No one bats an eye.

This list is by no means comprehensive. Hopefully,

student politician, or a rising revue star. They’re the loudest voice in the room, they’re in charge, and they make sure everyone knows it.

Secondly, a BNoC by any other name would not smell as sweet. Being a BNoC relies on having a strong personal brand, so you need a memorable name. There’s a reason that Onor Nottle is a BNoC and Sam Randle isn’t. Uncommon first names, alliteration, and doublebarrelled surnames are all beneficial to your name-brand recognition. Alternatively, a strong visual identity can do wonders for your brand: a distinctive jacket (hi Deggles), hairstyle, or tattoo is a good place to start.

Thirdly and most importantly, you need to be on campus. It is not enough

That time the Pope visited USyd

Students may not be aware that Pope John Paul II visited Camperdown Campus on 26 November 1986. The crusty old prick spoke to an audience of several thousand in the Quadrangle on the importance of tertiary education in building a more human society and strengthening society’s values.

The talk was the only one its kind in Australia, and was attended by representatives of State and Federal Tertiary Education organisers. Admission to the audience was by invitation only.

Pauly was accompanied by an Official Vatican Photographer and was welcomed by then-Chancellor Sir Hermann Black.

Three demonstrators interrupted Pauly’s address to the congregation at USyd. The University of Sydney News reported that the demonstrators gave Pauly a “noisy reception”, but he was“undeterred”, and “more amused than dismayed”.

The University of Sydney News reported Pauly saying “I feel at home among friends” at one point in his address.

for people to have heard your name or seen you online. USyd Rants comments does not a BNoC make. You need to be at faculty balls, at Taste Cafe, and at every Manning party so the NNoCs (No-Names on Campus) can whisper to one another, “oh my God, Zara Zadro is here?” While BNoCs are never known to the entire campus, they are most commonly big within a specific demographic. SUDS BNoCs and Engineering BNoCs can wield similar influence, but never meet — like ships in the night.

BNoCs are the tastemakers, the trendsetters, the thought-leaders of campus. Their names echo through these hallowed halls for generations to come, etched into the very sandstone of this university. If you see one in the wild, please do not disturb them — they’re people too, and are no doubt working tirelessly to improve all of our lives. Most importantly, don’t forget to tell someone that you saw them.

“I’d recommend weeping discreetly on levels 6-8 of Fisher Library.”

“Crying on the bus home beneath a face mask is arguably the most convenient, adaptable way to wallow.”

Images courtesy of The University of Sydney News.

art above and below by ellie stephenson.

With lockdowns and lockouts a frequent presence in recent years, many have echoed the sentiment that Sydney has a shit nightlife. We say, wistfully, that outside of house parties, there’s nothing to do when the weekend rolls around. But is this true?

Both underground and legal raves have been around for a long time, but with the repeal of the lockout laws and an end to lockdowns there’s been an opportunity for party culture to truly re-emerge. To find out what shape it is taking in 2022, what draws people to the counterculture, problems in the scene and what it could look like moving forward, I spoke to a number of artists and organisers heavily involved with Sydney’s rave community and dance music scene.

Dithyra (Fred) is part of Cocorico, a close-knit group who came together around a love of organising parties, who now host both underground and legal raves.

“The first one we hosted was at Malabar in 2018 and was really scat,” Fred laughs, “We didn’t really know what we were doing at the time.”

By the second event, things were coming together and the name ‘Cocorico’ had emerged: a word the group liked, and French onomatopoeia for the sound of a rooster’s crow — the victory cry of those who make it to dawn.

For DJ Mistry (Chintan) it was the importance of high-quality sound production following a love of electro music and parties that got him organising with Prion Audio, a group who host events but have also developed their own sound system for hire. Chintan’s personal project within the group is Landing, the second iteration of which occurred over the weekend. He described it as “a sit-down, low-impact, experimental event, a little different to your classic rave but still very much about losing yourself in the music and the community.”

Isa (Louisa) is a DJ, radio host and the founder of Athletica, a club night that aims to provide a consistent sound they felt wasn’t available or accessible in Sydney.

Growing pains

“Fui il tuo esilio. Ripenso anche al mio, alla mattina quando udii tra gli scogli crepitare la bomba ballerina.”

(Eugenio Montale, 1934)

Somewhere in Northern Italy lies a seat in a public garden. Two figures rest on this seat, their coats touching. They have spent the morning wandering through bookshops, and their fingerprints now mark the satin pages of the town’s magazines. Now, they are eating roasted chestnuts. The shells of the chestnuts fall into the wool of the girl’s coat. The boy, one-by-one, removes the

Starting out at Tokyo Sing Song on King St, Athletica takes place across a range of venues from the Red Rattler Theatre to the newly opened, community-run Pleasures Playhouse, an abandoned cinema in Haymarket.

Through Athletica, Louisa aims to bring together “a largely queer crowd that draws a beautiful array of different people with great music that is just really fucking fun.” For her, a diverse lineup is truly fundamental to lowering the barriers to take music in new and interesting directions but also because, in their words, “I started DJing because I looked up at a stage and saw someone that looked like me killing it — I would love for people to come to Athletica and feel those same feelings.”

Despite techno music originating in the African-American communities around Detroit in the early 1980s and club music being “gay as shit” according to Louisa, straight, white guys still often hold the power even if the scene is diversifying rapidly. “The social biases that people have around race and class of course seep in and so you have to be really intentional about representation,” Chintan says.

“It’s just not that interesting to have homogenised lineups when there exists such a diverse and vibrant scene but also just in terms of our personal values,” Fred echoes.

from society with some undeniable roots in working class black and brown communities.”

On this inherent tension with authorities, Fred says, “we’ve been caught maybe three or four times [by the police] but they seem more intent on dispersing the crowd than they do issuing fines or pursuing organisers.”

Although some of their events are illegal, the safety of the community is something that they all think about.

“People make their own decisions around drug and alcohol consumption and such but where there are things that we can manage as organisers, we do,” Fred says.

Although they did actually try, “it turns out it’s hard to get public liability insurance for illegal raves,” he half-jokes.“Underpasses are a fair bit safer than headlands and rocky shores — closer to roads, further from cliffs.”

Even if they are yet to be fined, avoiding a shutdown remains a goal for the organisers. Fred tells one story of scattering the glowstick trail to a bunker across numerous paths, leaving riot police wandering through the bushes for hours as the sound reverberated off the cliffs and water, impossible to hone in on.

When we get to talking about the music, their enthusiasm makes it clear this is what binds the community.

“[Cocorico] have refined a similar taste around garage, chillbreaks, into harder breakbeat, electro and finishing with jungle or drum and bass, sometimes with some more authentic techno…the general trend is lower BPM to higher BPM through the night,” Fred says.

movement. “Why do we all want to escape from this world and why don’t we talk about that? I’d like to see some other route of education or solidarity, or just a broader connection,” he says.

As Chintan points out, clashes with authorities are inherent to underground raving, which “has always been counterculture — a form of resistance against the establishment, an escape

Whether it’s about music culture or, as Chintan says, “providing an escape from what can otherwise be an isolating experience living through COVID and also just more generally in modern society,” he would like to see its connecting capabilities extended — beyond the six or so hours that people usually come together — into a real

On the question of whether Sydney has a shit nightlife — a view Louisa, Fred and Chintan all once shared — they agreed that you can no longer get away with not being creative or doing interesting things, both with the music but also with the production and visual effects.

Louisa sees the dance community as “a funnel towards an underground area with so many different worlds and something for everyone.”

“We may not be in the same position as somewhere like Berlin or Bristol where it just doesn’t stop Monday to Sunday,” Fred admits, “but we’re on our way.”

That consistency is something Chintan would like to see too, a regular scene that allows people to engage with it both casually and professionally. Nonetheless, “it’s on a really great trajectory and I’m excited to see where it goes,” he says.“The things that matter at a party — the music, the people and the location — Sydney is more than capable of ticking all those boxes,” he says.

Shit sucked for a while, but Sydney has a great, highly-functioning and rapidly improving nightlife these days, they all argue. It is clear that the future of this community is in good hands with people who care about high-quality music and providing a kick-ass party, even if you might have to scratch beneath the surface to find it.

shells. He reads her Montale’s poem, smiling as the final words bounce off his lips — la bomba ballerina. They kiss.

At the heart of Natalia Ginzburg’s 1955 novel All Our Yesterdays, we find this portrait of young love. The novel is set in the midst of the Second World War, and depicts an eccentric family of socialist dissidents. In its opening, a man pens an antifascist manifesto; later, another is imprisoned for his revolutionary associations. Characters are sent into confinò, the regime’s practice of exiling enemies of the state to impoverished villages. A brother-in-law changes his semitic name to escape persecution, and the novel’s basements are places to hide from

the encroaching Nazi front.

In such a deeply political work, what place is there for love?

The beauty of this novel, recently republished in English for the first time in decades, lies in Ginzburg’s representation of how politics seep into everyday life. In her introduction to the new edition, Sally Rooney writes of how Ginzburg renders war a backdrop; the intimate lives of her characters take the foreground, as “radical social and political changes” unfold around them. Through Ginzburg’s love for what is human, we see the moral complexities and little idiosyncrasies of her characters: the

family friend who exclusively eats canned tuna; the hypochondriac maid always bearing a wine flask of coffee and milk; the fugitive next door with a knack for pingpong.

However, as the story unfolds, we begin to see through the eyes of Ginzburg’s teenage protagonist: Anna. We read as Anna attempts to understand the “dangerous, secret thing” conspired by her socialist brothers. We watch as she learns the pain of grief, and falls in love: her first dates at the local cinema, the cups of gelato at a café that “seemed just like Paris.” When Anna begins to realise that this first love is crumbling apart, Ginzburg’s words perfectly

“The things that matter at a party — the music, the people and the location — Sydney is more than capable of ticking all those boxes.”

Eamonn Murphy’s thoughts on Natalia Ginzburg’s All Our Yesterdays.

“Riot police [were] wandering through the bushes for hours as the sound reverberated off the cliffs and water, impossible to hone in on.”

Tiger Perkins has a night on the town

9/11, the death of country music and the beginnings of a revival

Charlie Lancaster and Henry Junor turn up the radio.

On 25 August,1921,in Logan County,West Virginia, the largest labour uprising in American history erupted. The biggest battle on American soil since the Civil War, the Battle of Blair Mountain lasted a week and involved over 13,000 unionised coal miners fighting to their last against 30,000 soldiers, coppers, and mercenaries from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, county and state police forces, and the US Army and Air Corps. While the miners ultimately lost this battle and failed to start a mass uprising against the mine owners — and the capitalist class as a whole — it marked a pivotal moment in the union movement of the Gilded Age. It’s also from this battle that the term ‘redneck’ originates, which despite its modern connotations, came from the unionised, broadly anarchistic, workers tying red bandanas around their necks and the ends of their rifles before charging into battle.

The soundtrack for these rednecks taking up arms consisted of a bunch of old geezers and their comrades with out-oftune banjos, fiddles and guitars, yodelling righteously about solidarity, hatred of the bourgeoisie, and the martyrs they lost in the struggle. These ‘union hymns’ included such bangers as ‘Solidarity Forever’, ‘Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!’ and ‘Casey Jones (The Union Scab)’, which tells the story of a miner who refuses to go on strike, gets turned on by his fellow workers, and winds up shovelling sulphur in hell instead of coal. These songs, which often stole their melodies from church hymns, united a working generation on picket lines and armed uprisings across the country and the world. This was a radically left-wing music which was notably intersectional compared to the broader background of the racist, sexist and generally-bigoted USA.

By the 50s and 60s, the genre was either largely apolitical (for its time), or maintained its left-wing tradition. Artists like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Utah Phillips were highly progressive, although none more so than the self-described ‘singing journalist’, Phil Ochs. His music was either a blunt attack aimed at America, or emotionally vulnerable and self-reflective in a way that conservative artists struggle to achieve. Ochs was unrelenting in his criticisms of American society, with songs like ‘Love Me I’m a Liberal’, which comedically highlights liberal hypocrisies and ‘Here’s to the State of Mississippi’, which features lyrics like “If you drag her muddy river/ Nameless bodies you will find”. This harsh indictment of what Ochs viewed as the worst parts of a deeply flawed country culminates in the songs’ short but potent chorus: “Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of/ Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of.”

With a similar disdain against the powers that be was a subgenre that you may know better than you think: outlaw country. Enter the gunslingin’ Johnny Cash, Willie ‘Shotgun’ Nelson, and the outlaw extraordinaire Merle Haggard. Singing about evading cops, legalising drugs and putting an end to American atrocities in Vietnam, these characters helped define country from the late 50s to the 70s with a strong aversion to authority and injustice.

Fast forward a few decades and mainstream country music has come to represent something very different: the American military-industrial complex in all its jingoistic, gun-toting glory. Songs like Toby Keith’s ‘Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)’ sing the praises of the eagle and Mother Freedom. The song’s poetry is unrivalled: “...you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of

people associate with country music today. If it’s not militant nationalism, it’s familial love (putting it kindly) or working on the ranch for the lord above. So what was the turning point, when did country become this neoconservative disaster?

That’d be September 11, 2001.

You don’t have to be a historian to know that the falling of the twin towers caused a seismic shift in America and the world. Jingoism swamped the nation, and George W. Bush’s war on terror triggered a wave of xenophobia that inundated American culture. Country artists like Toby Keith and Daryl Worley stoked the fiery nationalism brewing in America, finding great success in supporting the country’s efforts in the Middle East and waving the flag in the faces of any who opposed the mighty US of A. The genre which, a couple of years before, crooned about falling in love with someone while fishing (thanks Tim McGraw), now celebrated imperialism and demanded war (see Daryl Worley’s ‘Have You Forgotten’, the only No.1 hit to ever namedrop Osama Bin Laden). While Richard Nixon and especially Ronald Reagan’s presidencies helped create the cultural environment for this nationalism to fester, 9/11 was the nail in the coffin for this explosion of chauvinism.

Nowadays, although this nationalistic country is by no means extinct, mainstream artists have generally moved away from championing the American militaryindustrial complex, back towards the wholesome themes of love and trucks. But, more importantly, a new generation of forward-thinking artists and an increasingly diverse listenership are working in tandem to reshape country music’s landscape. Revitalising the outlaw subgenre with a

voice like Cash and outfits inspired by country queen Dolly Parton, Orville Peck’s popularity is soaring, celebrating queer narratives in country. Lil Nas X pioneered this in the mainstream with his 2019 country-rap hit ‘Old Town Road’, a remix of which brought back 90s country darling Billy Ray Cyrus. Rhiannon Giddens’ eclectic discography tells stories of the AfricanAmerican experience in country and folk, which have been sidelined for years.

Further saving country from the Toby Keiths of the world are mainstream pop artists infusing their music and social commentary with the genre. Taylor Swift’s well-known roots are in country music and it continues to influence her sound. The 1975 frontman Matthew Healy cites country as a throughline in the band’s entire discography. Beyoncé’s undeniably country ballad ‘Daddy Lessons’ (controversially rejected for consideration by the 2016 Grammys country committee) saw significant mainstream success, and a remix brought back the most popular allwomen country group of the 2000s, The (Dixie) Chicks. It’s infusions like these that both reframe country and expand its insular bubble. Even many strictly country artists are pushing against the genre’s harmful culture, such as Nick Shoulders, with lyrics like “I hope you choke upon that red pill” in ‘The World Needs Sissies, Too’, or the wonderful Chris Acker, who writes about queer love or finding the face of Mother Mary in a toasted sandwich.

Country’s political history is turbulent but profound. Understanding its early identity as a true people’s music, its perversion into nationalism after 9/11, and its nascent renaissance, reveals the genre’s potential as a strong political and social force.

encapsulate the truth of young adulthood:

“Anna plunged her head into the sweetsmelling, moist grass, and fear and silence increased within her. She had made love with Giuma and she knew that he did not love her, she knew that he felt rather sad and humiliated after they had made love together, and she would have liked to go back to the times when they used to read Montale’s poems and eat chestnuts, and the war was still a cold, distant war, the Germans hadn’t won yet.”

What we learn from Anna, though, is how growing up accelerates with war. Ginzburg’s talent is depicting how we mature more rapidly with chaos as a backdrop, and how that chaos disrupts the way we live. Where her brothers and playmates are conscripted or imprisoned,

where her own schooling is cut short, and where a pregnancy at seventeen threatens to affect the course of her entire life, Anna’s pain brings her to a moral awakening that is ultimately premature. As her world falls apart, we watch a child grow up far too soon — love, and any sort of intellectual and emotional enrichment, just disappears.

It’s no surprise that Ginzburg’s own experience of the war enriches its characterisation in the novel. Like Anna, Ginzburg’s childhood was marked by

political engagement: her family were embedded in Turin’s socialist subculture, and her brothers frequently imprisoned by Mussolini’s apparatus for their seditious tendencies. When the war hit, politics cut into Ginzburg’s life with a particularly sinister edge. Not only was she obliged to conceal her Jewish faith, she was persecuted for her editorship of an antifascist Roman newspaper; by the time the war ended, her co-editor, husband, and father to her children, Leone Ginzburg, had been tortured to death. In a way, Ginzburg bestows upon her novel’s characters the tragedy that befell her. Speaking to the New York Times, she lets us consider this influence:

“Of course I wrote about the war. I was formed by the war because that was what

happened to me. I think of a writer as a river: you reflect what passes before you. The trees pass, and the houses; you reflect what is there.”

When All Our Yesterdays was first translated into English, it carried another title: A Light for Fools. We must take heed of this indictment against fascism, and the foolish hurt it can bring. As fascism rises in Italy yet again, we see a leader who fetishises Mussolini, vilifies queer communities, and advocates for the same nationalistic parochialism that characterised Ginzburg’s world. The republication of her novels is timely and necessary, and hopefully, through Natalia Ginzburg, we can see what fascism takes away: the roasted chestnuts on a park bench, the poems of love, and youth itself.

“In such a deeply political work, what place is there for love?”

Labor's budget: Where's the rest of it?

With the new Labor Government having delivered its first budget today, young people may be wondering what will change under this government. Honi entered the lockup today to find out what’s in the budget.

Labor’s first budget since 2013 is predictably lacking when it comes to the needs and interests of students. While it delivers a refreshing change of pace compared to the uninspired fiscal policy under the Liberal-National Coalition, the Budget is timid in its approach to several key areas: climate change, cost of living, and higher education.

Despite the Coalition leaving a gross national debt of nearly $900 billion, fiscal success is better framed around whether the budget can meet social needs through the country’s available resources, rather than whether it’s ‘balanced’.

Australia’s debt-to-GDP ratio is already low at 37.3 per cent, which is significantly below many OECD nations. While

Tertiary

In the budget, Labor has promised an additional $485.5 million in funding for 20,000 additional university places. These places will be Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) and allocated to disadvantaged students from underrepresented backgrounds, including low-SES, remote, and/or Indigenous Australians. The biggest winners will be small and regional universities, with Charles Darwin University, the University of Wollongong, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, and the University of Newcastle set to receive the most funding.

The focus areas for the 20,000 additional university places include over 4000 places in education, one third of which are allocated to early education teachers. Earlier this year, the national childcare regulator found that the proportion of childcare centres who could not meet legal staffing requirements had doubled to 8.1 per cent, in the last four years.

Additionally there will be 2,600 places in nursing courses and over 2,700 for other health professions including pharmacy and health science, and just under 5000 between IT and engineering. The boost to nursing courses comes after the Victorian Government created 10,000 free places in nursing and midwifery degrees in August. Unlike these Victorian places, the 20,000 additional places will still require fees to be paid.

The National Union of Students (NUS), which is the peak representative body for students in tertiary education, believes that increasing accessibility goes beyond pledging more places.

“More university places just means more students living in poverty,” said NUS President Georgie Beatty.

Whether commencing a new course or continuing their current one, students will no longer receive the 10 per cent discount given to students who make a

economists debate the extent to which scale of debts and deficits affect economic stability, they generally agree that at such a low level of debt and with our current labour underutilisation rate, government spending could be much higher.

We don’t need to be ‘back in black’ –we need to evaluate whether the spending makes sense.

Likewise, a downgrading of the forecast – i.e, a projected decrease in GDP growth – is not intrinsically problematic. As GDP measures total consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports across the country, it necessarily obfuscates where that money is going. If the economy contracts, we should ask what is being squeezed, and subsequently, does it matter?

Taking an important step in this direction, Labor’s budget included a chapter on national wellbeing, rather than conventional macroeconomic indicators such as GDP and unemployment alone. The

chapter focused on how the government will evaluate key areas of wellbeing such as education attainment, premature mortality, housing affordability, gender gap in hours worked, greenhouse gas emissions and more. The first Measuring What Matters Statement will be published next year in 2023.

By moving away from metrics such as GDP and a budget bottom line as the most important factors, the government is creating room for an analysis that centres more human-focused outcomes. After all, if what we care about is how healthy, educated, and happy our population is, we should prioritise those ideals more directly rather than filtering them through the indicators of growth or productivity.

The budget impacts the way that households, businesses and government agencies behave – it is important to know how it will impact you. It includes issues that impact many students, such as the price of your degree, purchasing a vehicle,

buying or renting property, and whether there’s a real plan for climate action.

The budget also gets handed down in a particular context, placing pressure on the government to establish and weigh their priorities. With the economic forecast having been downgraded, the government now expects things to be a little gloomier, with slower growth and potentially flagging economic actors, therefore requiring increased spending to support the economy.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers described this budget as “solid and sensible”, what he sees as a measured response to adverse economic conditions. The Albanese Government will have two to three more budgets before the next election, so this first one can be seen as an indicator of its priorities and direction.

So, keeping in mind the extensive fiscal capacity of this government to meet the needs of students, how did Labor do?

voluntary upfront payment on their HECSHELP loan. The removal of this option is in line with the focus on disadvantaged students in higher education, with higherSES individuals who can pay part of their university fees upfront more likely to benefit from this program.

High-school leavers with an ATAR over 80 and an interest in teaching will be able to access up to $40,000 over four years as part of a $56.2 million package offering 5000 bursaries to potential education students. Meanwhile, a $68.3 million expansion of the High Achieving Teachers program will also recruit up to 1500 existing professionals in key areas like mathematics and science to retrain as teachers. Together these policies seek to address the shortfall in teachers across the country.

In a bid to increase entrepreneurial activity across the economy, Labor has allocated $15.4 million to its new Startup Year program. While the details are unclear, postgraduates and final-year undergraduates will be able to access an income-contingent loan from July 2023 to pursue a business idea through universitybased incubator and accelerator programs.

Finally, under a new pilot program, $12.6 million will be allocated over two years to assist temporary visa holders who are experiencing domestic and sexual violence. Those on a student visa will be eligible for support.

Vocational Education

The budget will also incentivise students to obtain vocational training at TAFE and through vocational education places, with an additional 180,000 fee-free places to fill skill shortages. Areas to be targeted include care jobs like aged care and health care, technology, and agriculture. This represents a $550 million commitment within the new National Skills Agreement, with the Federal Government negotiating with State and Territory governments to match the funding.

As a part of these extra places, and similarly to University places, the government has committed to “provide access to priority cohorts including women and Indigenous Australia, and those living with disability”.

The move follows over a decade of declining funding for vocational education, with the 2020 Productivity Commission Report on Government Services finding that vocational education spending per student was at a decade low in almost all states, despite the TAFE system contributing an estimated $92.5 billion to the Australian economy each year. The stance of previous Coalition governments on TAFE funding has contributed to, in essence, the privatisation by stealth of vocational education and training, as TAFE is forced to compete for students with poorly regulated private providers. It

remains to be seen whether the Albanese government’s injection of funding will revive the TAFE model.

“I’m glad that this new government is paying attention to vocational education and starting to look at a sector that is fundamentally broken,” NUS President Georgie Beatty said. “Apprenticeships should not be cheap labour, they should be a legitimate training ground with fair pay and safe conditions.”

“We need to be confident that with these new places, the government keeps a tight grip on private providers, and that there is increased women’s participation in these courses,” Beatty said.

“By looking into the vocational sector, we’re opening Pandora’s box - there are many issues that this government needs to address.”

Sam Randle, Thomas Sargeant, Ellie Stephenson and Christian Holman break down where students fit in the Federal Budget.

ClimateApolicy area of concern for many young people is climate mitigation, with Albanese promising to “end the climate wars” prior to the election. So what has the new government included in the budget to tackle the climate crisis?

Labor’s commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and environmental protection is a welcome change following years of stagnation with the Coalition.

The federal government allocates money to the transition away from fossil fuels in a few key ways. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is a government-owned green bank that directs finance into green industries.

Housing & Cost of living

Inflation is a key concern for many Australians, including students, for whom the cost of living is becoming a rising concern. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the overall change consumers are paying for an average set of goods and services, was at a three-decade high in June, at 6.1 per cent. Chalmers warned that recent flooding could place further inflationary pressure on the price of groceries as agricultural land recovers from widespread inundation.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) forecasted an inflation rate of 7.75 per cent in their August economic outlook. Alleviating this pressure on consumers will likely involve a two-pronged approach of attempting to put the brake on price increases and helping households to cope with rising costs.

While RBA interest rate rises will attempt to rein in prices, fiscal policy can play an important role in distributing the costs of inflation. The Stage 3 tax cuts, which were initially intended (in 2018) to boost sluggish inflation rates, have attracted criticism for essentially putting money back in the pockets of richer Australians, just as the RBA attempts to do the opposite. What’s more, the cuts, which will come into effect in 2024, have been forecasted to cost $254 billion, which could be spent directly alleviating cost of living pressures.

More progressive approaches to the crisis would focus on increasing the amount of money available to lower income households. One of the Albanese government’s first economic decisions

Acting as a specialist investor, it finances renewable energy development, loweremissions infrastructure, and grows less carbon-intensive sectors of the economy.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) similarly provides funding to help accelerate the transition to renewable energy, including financing research and deployment.

Particularly in the context of rising interest rates, providing cheap finance to green industry is needed. Further funding is needed to facilitate this, and could potentially allow the body to take equity stakes in green infrastructure projects.

The most significant environmental project in the budget is the Rewiring the Nation initiative, which will provide $20 billion in low-cost finance to assist the private sector in expanding Australia’s

various electricity grids.

Major upgrades to transmission are a necessary component of the shift to 100 per cent renewables. Concerns that solar and wind supply may be intermittent could be assuaged from this geographicallydispersed grid, making this funding a welcome package.

Despite highlighting the 3 gigawatt decline in dispatchable energy overseen by the Coalition, Labor has made very little commitment to deploy its fiscal powers to expand energy generation. Instead, there have been many smaller climate-focused commitments including:

- $141.1 million for carbon capture and storage

- $20.3 million to enable farmers and Indigenous communities to participate

in carbon markets and invest in low emissions technologies

- $345 million in tax relief for non-luxury electric vehicle purchases

- $275 million to build a national electric vehicle charging networks and for freight industry electrification

- $102.2 million for solar banks which will benefit renters and apartment dwellers who cannot access solar

- $224.3 million for 400 communitymanaged batteries.

Fortunately, there has been some recognition of the need for a just transition. $1.9 billion has been allocated through the Powering the Regions Fund to assist regional communities harness the benefits of decarbonisation and transition away from fossil fuel industries.

was to recommend that the Fair Work Commission raise the minimum wage by at least 5.1 per cent, in line with inflation at the time.

However, the government has been unresponsive on reforms to welfare payments like Youth Allowance and JobSeeker. The budget offers only indexation to inflation, but does not increase the payments to a living wage. This is despite a recent report from the NUS that found the payments inadequate for the needs of welfare recipients, with almost half a million 18-21 year olds locked out of payments entirely.

Another significant financial pressure for young people is housing affordability, with rental prices around Australia rising particularly quickly as repayments on debt increase. While RBA estimates forecast house prices declining sharply in the coming months, the housing shortfall remains a longstanding problem.

Labor’s new Housing Accord is an ambitious plan to build one million homes by 2029 in collaboration with all levels of government and the private sector. The hope is that increasing housing supply will decrease housing costs, which has been the largest contributor to inflation and cost of living pressures for students.

Currently, there are only concrete plans to build up to 55,500 homes. As part of the new Housing Australia Future Fund, social housing stock will increase by 20,000 homes and 10,000 new affordable dwellings will be built. A further 10,000 affordable homes are set to be built with $350 million dedicated to making affordable housing projects commercially viable. The states are expected to commit their own funding to build another 10,000 affordable homes. Finally, $575 million previously allocated to ‘critical infrastructure’ has been freed up to build

What next?

Peter Dutton will present the opposition’s budget Reply on Thursday evening. Given that the Coalition already presented their own budget in March of this year, it is unclear if the reply will differ markedly from what they have already presented to Australians.

Meanwhile, the new Labor government is faced with a tough economic context: the war in Ukraine, national disasters

around Australia, underinvestment in some of the country’s most important infrastructure systems, and a cost of living crisis.

This budget is a refreshing shift away from deficit-centric economic rhetoric, wisely focusing on the impact of spending on Australians’ living standards. It is pleasing to see cost-of-living relief that seeks to actively bring down or subsidise prices, rather than austerity.

For young people, a boost to university and vocational education funding will

a further 5500 homes.

The Labor government has made no specific commitment to build public housing, with the hope that community housing organisations – rather than the government – will maintain the properties. While governments have the ability to maintain public housing through their fiscal expenditure, community housing organisations are often severely restricted by their low revenue stemming from affordable rents.

The definition of affordable housing is also unclear. While best practice is to set the rate near 75 per cent of the market rate, market rates in Australia’s capital cities are some of world’s highest. Labor hopes that increasing housing stock by one million over the next five years will decrease the market rate, making affordable properties within reach.

The process of building these houses has been outlined in a series of accords with stakeholders, including local and state governments as well as investors.

“The accord recognises most of this supply needs to come from the market, with government playing a key role in enabling and kick-starting investment,” said Chalmers prior to the budget.

“It’s more important than ever that we work together to ensure there is an adequate supply of affordable housing where it is needed – close to jobs, transport and other services.”

The accord with state and territory governments includes the expediting of rezoning and land releases to create opportunities to build social and affordable housing.

Funding will be provided for these homes through a combination of the Housing Australia Future Fund as

be welcome, but must be followed up with further reforms to support youth struggling with the cost of living. In particular, skills shortages may be partially filled with students incentivised by feefree tertiary education places, but broader problems in sectors like education and healthcare must be addressed to reduce rates of attrition and make jobs more attractive.

It is good to see investment in Australia’s green energy infrastructure, but our transition will require greater and more sustained investment going

well as intended investment from the superannuation sector — a $3.3 trillion pool of funds that the government hopes will be encouraged to invest.

University students who are more interested in renting than buying will depend on the private sector to follow through on their commitment as part of the accord to invest in alternative models such as Build to Rent, as has been trialled most extensively in Victoria.

A similar scheme has been put into place in New Zealand, with the Kiwibuild program seeking to construct 100,000 homes in just 10 years. This is one-tenth of Australia’s target and allows for double the time frame. Beginning in 2018, the program has since been widely lauded as a failure, having delivered less than 1,500 homes as of July this year.

The budget also tackles housing with $5 billion to Commonwealth Rental Assistance, and $1.6 billion to states and territories in the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement.

The second largest contributor to inflation and cost of living pressures has been energy prices. Unfortunately, these are expected to remain high in the short term due to the war in Ukraine.

The cost of medicine is set to decrease, with the maximum co-payment under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme decreasing from $42.50 to $30 per script. This is estimated to save 3.6 million Australians on the scheme more than $190 million annually.

Real wage growth is another significant component. Unfortunately, inflation is set to peak in December before falling to 3.5 per cent mid next year. Students should not expect real wage growth until this point, given that wage rises above inflation remain elusive.

forward. Empowering our public green finance institutions to create a real stake in green industry should be a longer-term project of this government.

All up, Australians and our national economy will likely have some challenging months ahead of us — a reality that the Albanese government cannot fully control. This budget sets up several exciting priorities for confronting this crisis and building the Australian economy into the future, but the vision will require ongoing investment and elucidation to really come to fruition.

The Goblin in the Great Hall WON'T STOP GIVING ME QUESTS

“Did you just make that name up? Based on the Powerpoint logo?” and the goblin squeaks and rushes out of the room, stumbling on his frayed robe along the way.

he goblin that lives in the Great Hall won’t stop trying to give me quests. Every time I go in there he tries to set me on some sort of adventure.

“Oooh,” he says in his creaky little goblin voice, “oooh there is a dark forest but five miles west of here, where you may find a castle shrouded in vines. And in that castle is a great treasure!”

I just cut him off. I say, “Shut up goblin, I am not interested in your stupid quests.”

He just cackles and cackles and scurries off and I roll my eyes and get back to class.

It wouldn’t be so bad, to be honest. I could just avoid the Great Hall, but he won’t stop following me to class. The other day I was doing a group presentation in one of the New Law basement classrooms, and right as I’m getting to my section on methodology he toddles in, his short clawed feet catching on the ragged purple robe. That’s another thing about him, the robe. He calls it his ‘warlock garments’, but it’s just a two-dollar store wizard costume that I think he picked up off the floor from the Paul’s halloween party a few years back.

Anyway, he toddles into the classroom, talons snagging and catching on the edges of his robe, and he immediately starts with his quest schtick like, “Young man! Young man!

The village of Westhorpe is under attack from the deadly chupacabra. It sucks their goats clean empty of their blood and steals away in the night with their sacks of grain! They say no weapon by human forged may harm it, but an elven blade forged in the Second Dawning still remains, hidden in the mountains. Find this blade, young man! Find it, and you may slay the chupacabra, and save the townsfolk!”

At this point, no one is paying attention to my presentation, as you’d imagine. My tutor goes, “Sorry, who are you?” and the goblin gets kind of flustered and sort of casts around for a moment before his eyes settle on my slideshow, and he goes “why I am… Powerpond! The warlock!”

My tutor just frowns a bit and says,

TAs if that wasn’t bad enough, I was at a job interview for a grad program and he did it again. There I was, explaining my greatest strengths and weaknesses, when he swayed in, his three-foot frame enveloped in a sagging large suit. He waddled up to one of the chairs on the interviewer’s side of the table, and after a couple of attempts, clambered up to sit in it.

Turning round to face me, he asked “So, what are your dragon slaying-related competencies?”

At this point, the interviewer, clearly bewildered, politely asked us both to leave. I walked, dazed, out of the office and practically stumbled to a bench in Hyde Park. My head fell into my hands and I couldn’t help but sob. I looked up and saw the goblin, smiling his dopey grin, and I realised just how stupid I was. How stupid of me to ever think that I could be anything more than what I was, what I had ever been, a walking catastrophe, followed by a quest-offering warlock. If this stupid fucking goblin didn’t exist, I thought, I would have to invent him I said this to him – I told him how all I ever wanted to do was make my mother proud, how she had had it so tough, and I had had it so easy and I could never seem to get it right. Square peg, round hole. I said this to him through my tears, and he just toddled up to me and placed one green, clawed palm on my knee and asked me if I wanted to slay a dragon.

I pulled myself together, of course I did. There were other grad programs, there were other opportunities, and I just had to push through, and I did. I made it through, and there I am in the Great Hall, graduating. The goblin hadn’t bothered me for months, and I had studied hard, and it had paid off. I was going to be something other than what I had always been.

My name was called, and I walked up the steps to the main stage. I took my diploma. I shook the hand. I smiled for the camera, and as the bright white of the flash faded from my eyes I saw the goblin swinging in towards me, his tiny clawed hands white-knuckled around a cord from a lighting rig, as he careened into the Special Guest they had brought in to present the awards. After having flattened the poor guy, the goblin stood up and looked me dead in the eye and said, “In the far off valley of Greysfall…”

I didn’t hear what the goblin had to say next because some campus security goon tried to grab him, and I – for whatever stupid reason, probably the last scrap of my instinct for self-preservation withering away – pulled him out of the way, dragging him through the crowd and up the stairs into the tower.

Security followed us closely behind as we climbed the spiral staircase, me practically dragging the goblin by the arm. Eventually, we reached the top and we entered a door. We were in a broom closet, and there was no way out but a high, high window. The security guards were still coming, though, and I jammed a chair into the door just before they slammed into it, their combined mass shifting the chair ever so slightly against the floor as the door creaked.

I gasped in air and stared at the stupid fucking goblin who had gotten me there. “Get us out of here!” I said.

“How?” he replied with a naive grin.

“I don’t know, a- a flying spell!”

“Oh I can’t -”

“You’re a fucking warlock!”

The doors pounded again and the chair shifted ever so slightly more. The goblin winced apologetically. “Not that type of warlock I’m afraid.”

The door thumped again and I heard the heavy jeers of the security guards from outside. I drew in a sharp breath. I saw my mother, asking me what was wrong with me when I was sent home from school. I breathed out. I saw myself sobbing in the bathroom of Martin Place Station when I went there at 8:50 one morning and imagined myself as one of those commuters. I breathed in. I saw the chair move again. I breathed out. I saw the goblin. I breathed in. I saw the window. I breathed out, slower now, and saw the goblin. I breathed in, picked up the goblin, hurled him through the window, and followed closely myself. I don’t know what goblins are made out of, but it’s springy as shit. I bounced off him and we stood up, bruised but alive, as I heard the door burst open and saw the security guards stick their heads out the window and stare at us in disbelief.

I met his eyes, and saw the same half-crazed look that he saw in mine, and we briefly amazed one another. There were dragons to slay, villages to save, cities to burn. I undid my tie, he hoisted up his robes, and we were off.

ART BY ZARA ZADRO.

Felix Faber does not want to accept your fucking quest!

NB: The adjacent advertisement is not endorsed by the editors of Honi Soit.

p

l AT he second workshop in the ‘Art in Place’ series took place last week over Thursday and Friday, this time focusing on Judy Watson’s work jugama (2020); see Week 4, Sem 2 Honi for the first in the series. The goal of the workshops is to introduce students to Indigenous artworks on campus, encourage them to think deeply about the work and write a reflective response — which is collaboratively edited on the second day with Art History lecturers and University curators of Indigenous art.

The work rests outside 2021’s new Susan Wakil Health Building — standing in the middle of multiple University intersections such as the ovals, the colleges and campus’ winding backstreets, jugama is deliberately integrated into the built environment of the area. The work is in direct conversation with the state-ofthe-art Health Building, as jugama, in part, represents the traditional practice of gathering medicinal plants. In fact, the word ‘jugama’ itself is in reference to the Gadigal word for ‘net bag,’ and is inspired by the dilly bags woven from tree bark by Indigenous women to store and collect medicinal plants.

The work is a large metallic sculpture in a shape referential to a dilly bag, with its mouth open toward the door of the Health Building, and native plants sprouting around its base. Students participating in the workshop had the opportunity to speak with the Brisbane-based Waanyi artist about her work, and share reflections on it together as a group. Watson impressed upon us that she hopes her work will touch each person who walks by it as an individual — and that we may each use it as a point of reflection for ourselves and the stolen land on which we stand.

Watson has described the work as paying “homage to the important role of Aboriginal women who gathered food and bush medicine to feed, nurture and heal their communities.”

Read on for the responses of students to Judy Watson’s jugama .

Amelia, Honi Soit

E mbedded in

soil of

the

Sydney University is Judy Watson’s

sculptural work, juguma . Watson’s piece radiates a sense of strength and solidity, evoked both from the materiality and the assumed roots of the artwork, which dig deep into the soil outside the Susan Wakil building. Her work mimics the shape of the Indigenous dilly bag yet simultaneously contradicts the soft, fragile material these cultural tools were made from. The choice in materiality and design isn’t solely to protect Watson’s work from onlookers, the wear-and-tear of outdoor life and the misadventures of the residential colleges, which happen to surround the perimeter of juguma like colonialist vultures. Instead, the immovable essence of this work suggests longevity. As the dilly bag is pulled upwards towards the sky an implication of a deep rooted connection to the land is enforced. The Gadigal land of the Eora nation, the land which once experienced the flow of two intersecting rivers and which now hosts a new type of intersection. At the centre of this gathering of colonialist monuments, Judy Watson’s juguma stands strong and resolute, reminding us of what ‘always was, what always will be’.

— Jessica Maronese, Art History / English Literature II

by Judy Wats on

W atson’s jugama establishes an architecture of tension, as its perforated quality both hides and reveals the growing shadow of cultural loss cast on both communities and institutions. The artist has opted to combine two activist mindsets by bringing Indigenous knowledge, practices, and philosophy to the forefront of the public artwork: colonial critique and amplification of Aboriginal language and voice. Watson has used patterns and forms from a dilly bag held in the British Museum archive and created “a drawing in space,” as she puts it. The piece, like the woven hatchings of the dilly bag, offers varied ‘apertures’ through which you may view through the work. Stand beneath the work (which lies atop a slope) to see the neo-gothic, straight-hedged colleges; stand behind the sculpture and see the Susan Wakil Health Building. Creating a didactic and cinematic narrative within and around the sculpture, it leads us towards an open-ended approach to its space/environment. It is the sensory marriage of space and artwork, as well as the rupture of vision, which delivers a ‘cultural retrieval’ (from the British Museum), but also creates a conversation with the Health Building — which seems to act, in some ways, as a mirror to the healing vessel of the dilly bag. Despite the discrete way that jugama operates –through transitory moments –this sculpture has a solid voice advocating for an embrace of interaction between the dispossessed and the introduced.

jugama offers

—Finn McGrath, Art History II

subtle embrace to those who walk by and to those who stop to take in the sculpture. Embedded in the land, the dilly bag embodies a material connection to the space in which it resides, physically reclaiming the land — This not only connects the work to Country, but also encourages a contemplation of the dilly bag in combination with its space. This is accomplished through the open holes in the body of the work, which provide a lens to view the surrounding landscape with. Furthermore, due to the angle the dilly bag is implanted in the ground it seemingly rises from the land, creating a sense of motion that demonstrates its active reclamation of connection to Country. Through a consideration of the sculpture’s relationship with its space, those who are welcomed to contemplate the relationship between their body and the site. Through this, Watson aims to create a subconscious presence that stays with the viewer as they interact with their everyday environment, evoking a recognition and deeper consideration of the stolen land

a

alking by the physics building, the colleges, and then seeing the Susan Wakil Health Building, is an impressive contrast. The 19th century sandstone, gothic exteriors and the brutal straight lines cut into the all-glass exterior of the “multi-purpose building” with a “Platinum Sustainability rating”. It takes me a moment to spot Judy Watson’s juguma and then a longer moment to determine how old it is.

Its weathered steel gives it a look of rust, the ‘net bag’ sinks into the soil as if a wreckage of the past unknown. Or ignored. Walk around it, and the handle sits and coils into the air as if mid-pull by an invisible maternal hand. Watson notes that there is an aspect of nurturing, a sense of embrace in the work. Juguma floats firmly from the soil beneath. In the midst of yet another La Nina for Gadigal Country, the glass walls of the Susan Wakil Health Building are free of the stains and smudges of the rainfall of the past week. Looking at juguma though, I can see native plants which I am told take time, even years to grow. And yet, streaked with dew and rain, they seem to be sprouting around and through the holes of the net bag.

— Robert Smith, Visual Arts

ransparency, or more precisely the relationship between inclusion and exclusion, is an important facet of Judy Watson’s work jugama . As a structure, the steel which bears resemblance to the colour of oxidised blood is interspliced with small, organic laser-cut-outs. In this physical sense, the metallic structure is simultaneously formed by its own tangibility, but also by its omissions. This affords the work a unique level of lucidity and opacity, though which the surrounding environment can be viewed. A crucial part of this environment is the living, breathing Indigenous plants which sprout from within and around jugama . Watson told us that “plants aren’t just plants; they have cultural integrity, history and meaning” — a sentiment which is reflected by the tall-standing leaves that spring through its negative space, interweaving the metallic structure with an organic touch. The work itself represents a traditional dilly bag, both in pattern and cylindrical shape, used by Watson to represent the Indigenous practice of gathering plants for healing and medicine. The land is both unceded Gadigal land, and University land; surrounded by bespoke built-environment and the Health Building. The dichotomous relationship between Indigenous and colonial structures, Indigenous flora and Western medicine, is highlighted by jugama ’s presence. In Watson’s words, jugama is a “connection between the dispossessed and the introduced.”

Koen, Art History / Philosophy of Science IV

—Chamberlain Zhang, Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing

Across Down Cryptic Crossword

1. Pulverised pie ingredient begins dinner (6)

5. Around 100 scrambled eggs, record for fat lady (8)

9. Famous plate etc: salad mixed with gin (8)

10. Elon Musk’s project setback as Los Angeles begins striking (6)

11. Smokers break boat around con artists without painting (12)

13. Spooner sings vocal fanfare for information (4)

14. Yoda consumed by divorce (8)

17. The French and Britain dissect mice with cancer (8)

18. Swam back from jaws (4)

20. Skipping queues to prepare drugs (7,5)

23. Begins picking between mint and rosemary (6)

24. A lion’s position over its food is more than necessary (8)

25. Appendage straps gives weapons to a group of musicians (8)

26. Friends say cheers famously (2,4)

2. A Couple cockneys hit them (4)

3. Make music at rack? (3,1,5)

4. Victorian premier gets lube but no head from very wet East European bender (6)

5. Michael Spence and Mark Scott’s immorality results in luck and 50 spoken laws (4,11)

6. Slam pussy and hooker, and endlessly lick paedophile (8)

7. Woman says yes in Spanish and is consumed by Indians (5)

8. Nashville? (10)

12. Juno Actor and English Painter make a great book (4-6)

15. Playwrights wife and famous actress, English philosopher and Irish artist most notably title Japanese drinks (9)

16. Norwegian explorer maps mundane river (8)

19. Censored cut of Monsters Inc establishes loving family dynamic (6)

21. When blood gets pumping, boil broth (5)

22. Mitigate risk and liquidate solar as well (4)

Maths Quiz

1. Take the amount of Angry Men in the Sidney Lumet film, and take away the amount of Samurai in the Akira Kurosawa film, then take away the amount of Amigos in the John Landis film then take away the amount of people that Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the Milos Forman film.

Angry men - Samurai - Amigos - Cuckoos Nests =

2. Take the amount of problems Jay Z has and divide that by the amount of Luftballons Nena has. And take the amount of miles (including how many more) walked by the Proclaimers (to fall down at your door) and the amount of miles walked by Vanessa Carlton (just to see you tonight) and add those two sums together. (Jay Z problems x Nena Luftballoons) + (Proclaimers miles x Vanessa Carlton’s miles) =

3. Take the amount of mens FIFA world cups won by Brazil, and add the amount of points one scores by hitting the bullseye in Olympic archery, Then add the amount of balls that make up a standard over in test cricket before taking away from that sum the amount of teams currently in the AFL. Brazil World Cups + Archery bullseye score + Cricket balls in an over - AFL teams =

Answers

4. Add the amount of women prime ministers of New Zealand there have been with the amount of women prime ministers of the Uk, then take away the amount of women prime ministers Australia has had and then take away the amount of women presidents the USA has had. Women PMs of New Zealand + Women PMs of UK - Women PMs of Australia - Women Presidents of USA =

5. Take the amount of countries that have “Congo” in their name and add that to the amount of countries that have Guinea in their name, then add the amount of countries that start with the word “United” and then take away the amount of countries that begin with the letter “O”. Congos + Guineas + Uniteds - O’s = 6. Give an answer that will come next in the sequence.

by Some Hack and Jeckiboy.

by Some Hack.

The End TimesThe End Times

USU BOARD OCTOBER RECAP: HEISTS,

AND HIGH CRIME.

Traipsing once again into the Cullen room in the Holme Building, the End Times sat down for yet another long, boring USU Board meeting. But this meeting was anything but boring, with the USU having become embroiled in a series of audacious and increasingly violent thefts.

Hands up! It’s a heist

After thirteen minutes of technological errors, USU CEO Andrew Mills presented a Powerpoint presentation about the USU’s finances, which served to confirm the classic idiom ‘pride comes before a fall.’

branded plywood fork. The USU has factored deep cleaning of the resulting blood stains into its assessment of its operating contribution for the coming year.

A criminal mastermind unmasked

The meeting came to a terrifying close as the criminal mastermind behind the spate of crimes was unmasked.

As we were watching USU President Cole Scott-Curwood explain something something uplifts SSAF something money, a masked figure snuck into the room, grabbing plate after plate of HostCo hors d’oeuvres.

Months of lauding the USU’s financial savviness and sizeable surplus have taken a sour turn, attracting thieves to the Union’s outlets.

Mills particularly condemned a heist at Courtyard last week that turned violent. Armed with various firearms, a burglar requested an iced mocha at the cafe in the campus’ West. Provided by a fearful staff member with an iced matcha, the robber turned violent, repulsed by the admittedly vile consistency of the drink.

Shocking displays of violence

The crime wave has also hit the Wentworth food court, with one casual pool player brutally hit over the head with a human-sized USU

The figure’s mask was futile however, as they were also wearing distinctive bubblegumscented sandals, which quickly identified them as an editor of our revolting rival publication, Honi Soit.

The villain in question explained that they were simply trying to sustain their habit of rewarding themselves every 1000 words in their thesis. “I have my eye on a really nice pair of Vivienne Westwood earrings,” they said, tearing up.

“Please, it’s due in a week.”

Doomed Sydney RGB Selling out Gunnpod [redacted] Being asleep Lungs Questions

Destined Canberra CMYK Being principled iGET [redacted] Staying awake Hearts Answers

IN THIS ISSUE:

Fine! Black rock bad! But yellow rock gooooood.

- Minnie Relscounsle

As per request: stop posting fucking animal pics

- Sybil di Scorse

Greens to build one million investment properties by 2029

- Costa Levine

Rishi Sunak steps down, cites being too sexy

- Ada Moira

Gas prices rise after bean shortage

- Aqua Fabah

TO HONI SOIT EDITORS FOR DEFAMATION TRAINING

HONOURS THESIS

The hiccup arose after the student attempted to autogenerate a thesis using GPT-3 technology.

The text begins thus: “In this thesis, I explore the relationships between semiotics, subjectivity and diverse methodologies. I argue that semiotics is a valuable tool for understanding subjectivity, and that diverse methodologies are necessary in order to understand the complex nature of semiotics. I apply semiotics to a variety of data sets, including online data, visual data, and textual data, in order to demonstrate the usefulness of semiotics in understanding subjectivity. I also consider the implications of semiotics for research methods and for the ways in which we understand and study subjectivity.

BUDGET

Following his famed acquisition of the Twitter override code, Musk is throwing the kitchen sink and hundreds of millions of dollars into bidding for USyd’s legendary F23 building, A.K.A the Michael Spence Building to get exclusive access to The Forum.

The Forum, so named after the Roman theatre that hosted everything from grandiose speeches, gladiator marches and even criminal trials, is a restaurant dear to the heart of every member of university management.

Musk explained that the acquisition is the logical end point of his thirst for ownership of theatres of speech.

“The fora of Ancient Rome were the sites of great oratorship and persuasion, much like ‘the Bird App’,” Musk said.

Historian and Principal Advisor to the ViceChancellor Stephen Garton was spotted chortling.

Musk also reflected on the things that bind him and Michael Spence: “Me and Spence have a special relationship, deeper than anything any man has ever known. I am from South Africa, Professor Spence comes from the North Shore. The South African accent is something that we bond over, he was very intrigued and curious about it!”

“The only surplus we care about is abolishing surplus value”, Greg Dogwin said.

Awoman at the University of Sydney has baffled markers after accidentally submitting an Honours thesis containing the complete works of William Shakespeare.

“Scholars in this field must consider Global Southern perspectives because the field is still dominated by Western epistemologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO”

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