Honi Soit publishes on the Gadigal land of the Eora nation. Sovereignty was never ceded. All our knowledge is produced on stolen Indigenous lands. The University of Sydney is principally a colonial institution, predicated on the notion that Western ways of thinking and learning are superior to the First Knowledge of Indigenous peoples.
At Honi Soit, we rebuke this claim, and maintain our commitment to platforming and empowering the experiences, perspectives and voices of First Nations students. This basis informs our practice as a paper. As a student newspaper, we have a duty to combat the mechanisms of colonisation.
Misbah Ansari, Katarina Butler, Luke Cass, Bipasha Chakraborty, Ethan Floyd, Veronica Lenard, Luke MešteroviĆ, Eamonn Murphy, Caitlin O’KeeffeWhite
Nicola Brayan, Valerie Chidiac, Ben C, Isabella Freeland, Elliot Lawry, Rajanikhil Malaramuthan, Angus McGregor, Evelyn Redfern, Khanh Tran
Artists
Long Huynh, Margot Roberts
Estella Kennedy Front CoverAs student journalists, we recognise our responsibility as a radical student newspaper to oppose the inherent racism and exclusivity of mainstream media outlets. We also uphold the struggle of other Indigenous communities worldwide and acknowledge that our resistance is intertwined.
As an editorial team of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous heritage, we are both victims and beneficiaries of colonisation. We are committed to unlearning our colonial premonitions and working to hold current institutions accountable.
We are galvanised by our commitment to Indigenous justice.
Over the winter break, I caught a strange case of nihilism. It was an inertia, stuck between the gravity of unfulfilled dreams, and a future that I may never create. I tried to find a reprieve in hope, a hope that I could one day move beyond my current, unimpressive self. But, sometimes we have to disavow hope in order for our days to pile up into progress.
A past Editor once said that reading Honi is taking part in a “collective delusion.”
For people who do not read Honi, it may all seem frivolous. However, for us who share this community — the nine other people who I share the editorship with, our treasured contributors, and our readers who pick up the paper off the stands — it is a world in itself. A space built by students, wide-eyed and self-serious, hoping to find somewhere to dream and grumble.
In sharing these spaces with other people, we forget the worlds which exist outside the narrow frames of reference we live through. Though it is wise to keep an open-mind,
there are times we should live in the warmth around us.
This edition, like any other, is a record of the strange, horrifying, and beautiful time we live in.
I wrote the feature (p. 14) on unpaid student placements to shed light on what the cost of living crisis means for young people. Khanh Tran exposes the flaws in superficial university rankings (p. 8) and Ben C reminds us that young people can make change (p. 10). We look back, as Angus McGregor busts myths about Sydney’s history (p. 16), and Nicola Brayan asks us how we consider “time” in the first place (p. 12).
I often find myself thinking about time, and with Honi, legacy — to write and edit is to partake in a storied history of students dreaming above and beyond, telling the tales of people who are forgotten. When I’m in the right place, I realise I’m seeing it wrong. It’s always been about love, and that’s what keeps me, and this paper, alive.
Andy ParkThe Editors of Honi Soit apologise for the inclusion of a paragraph published in last week’s gossip column, which referred to Onor Nottle. The paragraph has been removed from our online edition. We understand that our words hurt Ms. Nottle and we apologise for this.
Dear Editors of Honi Soit, I hope this letter finds you well. I would like to bring to your attention an issue that has been brewing in our university’s pool table room – a place cherished by many students for its camaraderie, bonding, and lively atmosphere.
The room, designed as a common area to foster connections and friendships among students, has unfortunately become a space occupied primarily by individuals playing solo games. Though it is certainly within their right to enjoy the facilities, their monopolization of the tables is hindering the room’s purpose and the larger communal goals of the space.
It is not uncommon for newcomers to walk into the room, hoping to join in a friendly game, only to find all the tables occupied by lone players, each engrossed in a game with themselves. The experience is disheartening for many, and the possibility of building new friendships is thwarted by this
rather exclusionary behavior.
The pool table room should ideally represent an opportunity for students to come together, engage in healthy competition, and forge new connections. It’s a place to learn, to grow, and to make memories with peers. A single player monopolizing a table for extended periods stands in stark contrast to these values and diminishes the communal spirit.
I kindly request the university to consider implementing some guidelines or scheduling to promote a fair and friendly use of the pool table room. Perhaps designated times for solo play could be balanced with other periods exclusively reserved for group games. Additionally, clear signage could be posted, encouraging an inclusive atmosphere and welcoming new players.
The University’s commitment to building a tight-knit community is commendable, and I believe that a small adjustment in the administration of the pool table room could further enhance the
social cohesion among the student body.
Thank you for considering my concerns. I trust in the wisdom and dedication of our community to find an amicable solution that benefits all. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further information or discussion on this matter.
Yours sincerely, Luke
Dear Luke,
Wednesday 9 August
Georgia // Red Eye Records // 5pm
The Mitch Anderson Organic Orchestra // Lazybones Lounge Restaurant & Bar // 7pm
Thursday 10 August
Bellwether // Landsdowne Hotel // 7pm
Henry Wagons // The Vanguard // 7pm
Yours Truly // Lansdowne Hotel // 7:30pm
RupoloWe agree! Pool is not a game to be played in isolation, and the University should foster social interaction. Perhaps around lunch and early evening times, the tables should be for group use only. All your solutions make sense. Pitch a full article about it (in Italian)!
Best, Honi
Aries: Eastern Avenue is a hell hole for introverts but you will indulge in some light flirting with someone at a society barbeque and man, that won’t be the only meat getting cooked.
Taurus: The Courtyard benches are uncomfortable for sharing a meal but make for amazing kissing spaces before a class. People around you will be rolling eyes, but who cares about the world when they’re holding you this tight.
Gemini: Victoria Park ponds make for a scenic lunch spot. Get yourself an iced latte with a sandwich and write some erotica involving nipple play by the water. Be careful, don’t get too wet in public!
Cancer: Not all dates need to involve drinks followed by fucking at their house. Take them to a farmers market, get a little pastry, and kiss them on their nose. Soft, warm romance can help build the tension more.
Leo: Roar, time for you to meow in the bedroom! Explore all the sex shops on King Street, get some sexy cat ears and feline lingerie, and express your power in bed.
Virgo: So much to do, such little time. So many people to do, enough time. Start a petition to have an orgy at Manning and invite all your library crushes.
Libra: Manning Cantina is opening soon but their margaritas are not the only spicy things, baby. Sneak into one of the abandoned Manning rooms and make the tables creak more than they normally do with your legs fervently in the air.
Scorpio: Stop being so fucking flaky, bro. They like you so much and think you’re obscenely hot, so show up for the date and let them adore you. Get a few drinks in, dance with them and let the night take you further (in really wet places).
Sagittarius: KISS stands for “keep it short and sweet,” but make your kisses more lingering and raunching. Indulge in light kissing, synced tongue play, and touch each other through the movement.
Friday 11 August
Pacific Avenue // Metro Theatre // 7pm
Antarctic Monkeys // Manning Bar // 7pm
Fortay // The Great Club // 7pm Z-Cluster // The Vanguard // 9pm
Saturday 12 August
Cable Ties // The Lansdowne // 6pm
Bronte Alva // Vic on the Park // 7pm
Harper // The Chippo Hotel // 8pm
Sunday 13 August
Menopause The Musical // Casula Powerhouse // 2pm
Winter Starlings // Gasoline Pony // 5pm
Varials // Factory Theatre // 6pm
Horny Soit starts an orgy.
Capricorn: Look, what you’ve done to me. I would watch shows from start to finish but now I find myself going down on you before the climax. Because who cares what happens to the protagonist, when you’re the one I want to see finishing.
Aquarius: You will find yourself a bit boggled down with the maze of texting, so take it slow and spend time away to refresh your sexual energy. Go for a hot sauna bath, massage yourself with oil and let the rest recuperate your passion.
Pisces: Run recklessly with all your sensual heart’s wishes. You need to self-criticise less and grind wildly against them in bed because I can assure you that they’re more into it than you can imagine.
Ethan Floyd
As part of the USU’s push to reinvigorate campus life, Manning Cantina — a Mexican street food-style restaurant — opened last Tuesday morning at Manning House. The venue will operate every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11am to 3pm.
“The kitchen is a part of our [the USU’s] overall vision,” said Head of Hospitality Operations Ben Pinney. “We hope by providing great food, at affordable student prices, we will see Manning Bar alive again during the day.”
Manning Cantina offers an affordable menu — featuring tacos, nachos, and empanadas — priced between $6.50 and $10.00 for students. During parties and events at Manning Bar, the menu increases in price by almost 50% for non-students.
Pinney made mention of the “Bonus Lunch” program — which promises 200 free meals to USU members every Thursday — as part of the USU’s ongoing food security strategy.
The initiative has been funded in part by a Destination NSW grant, along with approximately $150,000 of SSAF contestable funding allocated to the USU’s food security strategy.
Manning Bar is also set to offer an expanded schedule of programming and events — including comedy every Tuesday, live music on Wednesdays, and the long-awaited return of lunchtime Theatresports on Thursdays — after extensive refurbishments of the venue were undertaken earlier this year. The USU is also incentivising clubs and societies to host Tuesday bingo at Manning Bar in exchange for sign-ups and club promotion, a $100 food and drink tab, and “big prizes”.
The return to daytime trading comes after years of delay and disruption. Pinney attributes the popularity of outdoor venues like Courtyard Café and Laneway to the changing social atmosphere. Manning Bar, largely an indoor venue, has struggled to keep up. However, USU CEO Andrew Mills expressed hope at the last Board meeting that the launch of Manning Cantina will revitalise the venue as a hub of student activity.
Bipasha Chakraborty
Community Action for Rainbow Rights (CARR) held a rally on Saturday outside Town Hall protesting against the religious vilification bill, demanding that trans rights be defended and extended and that there is no discrimination in schools and workplaces.
Greens spokesperson for LGBTQI+ policy in NSW’s Parliament, Amanda Cohn, explained the Labor state government’s recent bill that made amendments to the Anti Discrimination Act by adding protection against religious vilification.
“Their definition of religious activity was so broad that it accidentally included religious activity that is unlawful under other acts. So what they’ve done is if religious people protest outside an abortion clinic, which is illegal under the Public Health Act, and they’re asked to move on, they can now make a complaint about religious vilification,” Cohn said.
“We’ve had a promise from the Labor Party to ban so-called conversion practices. And there’s a risk that [conversion protections are] going to be protected.”
Due to these broad legislative definitions, Cohn stressed the importance of continued pressure that people need to keep on the government, as the entire Act has been promised to go to the Law Reform Commission.
“Now it’s more important than ever to stay loud, to stay united, to keep the pressure on so that the Law Reform Commission will make those changes that we need,” Cohn said.
The rally was endorsed by Australian Services Union NSW & ACT Branch, with secretary Angus McFarland similarly adding that he “welcome[s] that the new government has committed to do a review of discrimination law, but to first make adjustments for one group while others have to wait is just not good enough.”
McFarland added an anecdote about the Coalition government eight years ago when they decimated women’s refuges across New South Wales, with many being taken over by the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army had attempted to force members to sign employment contracts that required the upholding of teaching of their church. Without action and criticism, the contract would not have been withdrawn. McFarland notes that “the religious vilification laws that have passed are so broad that they could threaten campaigns against contracts like that again.”
“Because anti-discrimination law should liberate, it should not discriminate. We need an end to religious exemptions, we need equality without exceptions, we need equality without compromise.”
First Mardi Gras Incorporated and People with Disabilities Australia (PWDA) spokesperson David Abello spoke to lessons that he’d learnt in his confrontation with the religious right, “that it’s okay to mock them, and it’s okay to use other devices like allegory, or irony, or juxtaposition. And I recall, of course, they tried to do the same thing to us once, when they marched up Oxford Street in 1989 with mops and brooms to do a cleansing of the street.”
Abello was the first openly queer president elected in PWDA in 2018 and 2019, noting different but similar concerns with the Religious Discrimination Act and the Disability Discrimination Act
“We don’t support religious exceptions and statements of belief to be exempt from the Disability Discrimination Act. In fact, it brings us back to the religious model of disability by allowing people to believe certain things about disability based on their religious beliefs.
“The DDA is our best defence against ableism and a key way of ensuring that LGBTIQ people with disability have access to safe and accessible support. Religious exceptions will limit further the number of safe and accessible supports, but an even better defence than the DDA would be a National Human Rights Charter with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities enshrined in it,” Abello said.
National Union of Students Queer Officer Damien Nguyen highlighted the reality that existed before the passing of the bill where preferential hiring “had been a real political battle that queer workers had to fight against. That even before this bill in NSW right
now exists a system that allows schools to not hire a queer teacher because of who they are.”
Nguyen noted the upcoming introduction of Alex Greenwich’s Equality Bill, which “the community have to welcome… [but] we must fight for more, and we must address the bill’s shortcomings.
“The bill failed to address the reality that sex workers on the street right now are denied housing. The bill at this moment failed to address the reality that for being a sex worker, you can have your bank account frozen. And furthermore, the bill failed to address religious exemption. That is a shame.”
Lannen Stapleton, from Parents for Trans Youth Equity, noted that the Equality Bill would enable trans people to amend the gender marker on their certificate without having surgery, but only if you are 16 years and over. “This bill does not support trans youth under 16 years of age that are in out of home care, that are homeless, and trans youth that have a parent listed on their birth certificate that does not support them.
“At age 14 kids can, quite rightly, have their own Medicare card, see a doctor without their parents, undergo treatment, unless the child is transgender.”
As a proud parent of two kids, Stapleton states three requests, “we demand new legislation that prohibits conversion therapy for trans youth. We demand fully funded, multidisciplinary, accessible gender care for all youth across New South Wales. And three, we demand inclusive, age appropriate education in all schools across New South Wales that let trans kids know they are open.”
Another rally will be held on 2 September at 9pm on Oxford Street hosted by Pride in Protest. To reclaim space after an increased presence of organised street harassment and assault.
Climate activist Anjali Sharma launched a campaign to establish a duty of care owed to young people for climate decisions earlier this week.
The duty would require decision makers to consider the likely impact of decisions that are harmful to the climate, on the health and wellbeing of current and future children, and to not make a decision that would pose a material risk of harm to their health and wellbeing.
Sharma told Honi that, “This bill is born out of years of advocacy by young people leading the charge for greater climate action. Recent years have been characterised by climate disaster increasing in both frequency and severity, and yet it has been young people who have stepped up, calling for our government to act in our best interests and safeguard our futures from catastrophic climate change.”
Sharma was the lead litigant in Sharma
v Minister for the Environment which successfully established that young Australians are owed a duty to take reasonable care to protect them from the harms of climate change, before being overturned by the Federal Court on appeal.
“As a young person, I’m increasingly scared about my future. The past few years have seen climate disaster and temperatures that have broken records, and all evidence shows us that this will only get worse. We are at a crossroads in history where the government can either act in accordance with its duty to young people to deliver us a safe and liveable future, or set us on a path to climate catastrophe,” said Sharma.
As part of the campaign, ACT Senator David Pocock is introducing the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Equity) Bill 2023 to the Senate. Pocock said, in a media release, that “the focus on the short term — polls, the media cycle, the next election — need to end. We need to be
looking at how our decisions impact young people and future generations.”
The duty would apply to decisions made under six pieces of environmental related legislation, including the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, Infrastructure Australia Act 2008, Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Act 2016, Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Act 1991 and National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Act 2023
Sharma told Honi that, “what we are asking of the government is simple. As the future generation, we want our health and wellbeing to be a paramount consideration for the government when exercising its powers. Ultimately, caring for current and future generations should be the very essence of the government’s job.”
The campaign is collecting signatures at dutyofcare.com to support the bill.
The Australian National University (ANU) Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) went on strike for half a day on 27 July, following the refusal of ANU management to make concessions on pay.
The bargaining team secured an 18.5% pay rise — the second best result in the country for the sector. The branch has also achieved a number of improvements for casual staff, primarily an 18.7% reduction in casual staff paired with the creation of 116 FTE jobs for casually employed staff. The new agreement also includes superannuation, sick leave, long service leave for casuals, and improved notice periods.
After the success of the strike, the branch voted to withdraw strike action initially planned for the third week of semester.
Dr Lachlan Clohesy, Division Secretary for ACT NTEU, told Honi “We made significant progress because of our members’ willingness to take action.” He described the strike “an incredible success. This was the first action in two decades at the ANU, and hundreds of members turned out in support of union claims.”
Enterprise bargaining has been ongoing for over a year at ANU, as the union has fought to secure better conditions for all staff — especially casuals.
The Union has been fighting against workload increases, which it claims have only worsened after the pandemic, and the ANU Recovery Plan, which saw job losses at the university. The Union was also fighting for a fair pay rise, as cost of living pressures have increased over the past year. The previous enterprise agreement occurred during
the pandemic, where ANU Senior Management pushed through a nonunion enterprise agreement which saw minimal changes in pay.
Student activists were also involved in the strike action. Ben Yates, ANUSA President, said “The strike was motivated by the need for ANU to do better by casuals and to provide a meaningful pay rise to all staff. We saw broad support from students, recognising that there is alignment between staff and student interests. There is a clear sentiment that student activists will stand with staff as long as they choose to strike.”
Zeina KhochaicheNSW Labor cabinet member and Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education Minister, Tim Crakanthorp, has been asked to resign, after it was revealed that he concealed a private property portfolio held by members of Crakanthorp’s family.
The personal holdings include an extensive estate across the Hunter region, which is held in Crakanthorp’s wife and fatherin-law’s names. As Crakanthorp currently serves as Member for the Hunter, his breach of ministerial code shows a conflict between public duties and private interests.
The lack of disclosure by the cabinet member is a “clear breach of the ministerial code,” said Premier Chris Minns in a public interview released yesterday.
The findings bring forward questions about Crakanthorp’s contribution to matters that concern the Hunter Region’s development and public interest.
Crakanthorp allegedly selfreported the personal holdings to the minister earlier this week, which lead to Minns’ request for his resignation and the forwarding of the case to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
The concealed personal property holdings and subsequent resignation are Minns’ first ministerial sacking, within just five months of holding office.
Should the ICAC choose to investigate the allegations of a breach of ministerial code of conduct, Crakanthorp will be required to step down from governmental responsibility, and the Labor Party room.
Fuck. The train is running ten minutes late because it rained yesterday and your lecture is compulsory (for some reason) so you have five minutes to get from Redfern to Carslaw.
In such situations, the side gate of Redfern, on the corner of Lawson and Little
Eveleigh streets would be of use. As the closest entrance to USyd campus, and mercifully lacking ticket barriers, the entrance would be familiar to most students. But, for the last few years it has been closed, with a big yellow gate blocking the once busy passageway.
And that sucks. For enjoyers of geographical directness, and the habitual fare evader, the Little
Eveleigh gate’s closure has meant a detour to the Lawson Street gates, slowing down the commute and, in a pinch, requiring students hurdle over the ticket barriers.
What has Transport for New South Wales got to say for themselves? Not much.
A spokesperson told Honi that the
gate officially closed in 1999 and that there were no plans to re-open it.
“This gate is not an official entry/exit into Redfern station and was opened temporarily to manage customer volumes while work was carried out on the main station entry,” they said.
Booooo. Bring the Little Eveleigh gate back. Why not?
The upstairs annex of the Holme Building was buzzing with excitement last Friday as Welcome Fest approached and the incoming USU Board directors attended their first official meeting of the year. Nonetheless, business proceeded largely as usual.
CEO Andrew MIlls took his report as read, presenting a PowerPoint with key upcoming legislative changes. USU lifetime member Ben Hines asked about the USU’s relationship with its alumni community, noting that the organisation wasn’t able to get in contact with them during his previous term.
Hines commented that “consistently, [the USU’s] alumni relationships have been subpar.” Mills mentioned that he’s reached out a few times, and will continue to reach out with an aim of “rebooting alumni relations.”
Mills then went through upcoming changes for the organisation. He noted that there have been changes to casual conversion under the Albanese government, as efforts have been made to “firm up” permanent positions. Mills also noted the Privacy Act Review Report delivered in early 2023, however he reported that the USU collects “very little data on its members” (aside from SIDs and student email addresses) and holds no financial data, therefore will be adequately protected under the wider University cybersecurity positions.
Mills also spoke to the results of the most recent round of Student Servies and Amenities Fee (SSAF) contestable funding. The USU received 40% of the funding from a pool of $914,000,
totalling $365,000. $70,000 each will be allocated for the USU’s Festival of Creativity and the hiring of a new Volunteer Program Coordinator, respectively. The USU/SRC FoodHub collaboration, as well as other food security initiatives, will receive $150,000. Clubs and societies (C&S) management will receive $5000, while the clubs/communities program and wellbeing program will enjoy a 60:40 split of the remaining $70,000.
Every year, $2 million of SSAF funding is set aside for infrastructure projects. Given the backlog which has built up over the past few years, Mills explained that the $2 million will be pooled with contestable funding for 2024.
Mills concluded his report by announcing that the long-awaited Manning Cantina will launch next week, and that the Holme Building’s Elliott Miller Studio has been moved downstairs. He spoke to the success of FoodHub over the semester break, averaging 60 visitors a day to the new space on Level 3 of the Wentworth Building.
The financial report pointed out the relative successes of USU vendors in the previous semester. Hines asked for a little extra data “for my own interest and nothing else”.
Moving to reports from the executive, Honorary Treasurer Nicholas Dower thanked Immediate Past President Cole Scott-Curwood for a smooth transition and welcomed the organisation’s new CFO, Michelle Tonge — “I can report that Michelle is lovely.”
Vice President Madhullikaa Singh
spoke to the culture of the organisation, stating “anything you walk by, you are accepting as your culture, so don’t be afraid to speak up.”
Naz Sharifi then delivered the President’s report, speaking about her “ambitious, but cautiously optimistic” approach for the coming year. Sharifi also congratulated the newly-appointed PULP Editors, stating she was “excited for their upcoming editions”.
As usual, the meeting ended with question time. As Welcome Fest approaches, Honi asked Mills whether the USU had made any changes to the compensation structure for its volunteers (the V-Team).
“No changes” was the abrupt response from Mills.
Next were a number of follow-up questions from last month’s discussion surrounding the USU’s draft Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).
In relation to the USU’s commitment to community consultation on behalf of clubs and societies (C&S), Honi asked for a progress update on the USU’s First Nations focus groups.
Mills responded by reaffirming the USU’s intention to onboard two new staff members — one permanent fulltime position, and another casual student leadership position — to coordinate these focus groups. Despite an unsuccessful funding application, the USU has budgeted for these new roles, and position descriptions will be finalised within the next two months.
Honi then asked about the USU’s awareness of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), and
how the organisation would approach compensating students for their involvement in consultations and focus groups.
Both Mills and Sharifi reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring First Nations students can benefit from engagement with the USU.
“We would not ask students to share their sacred knowledge(s) without putting in appropriate measures to compensate them for doing so,” said Sharifi.
Mills confirmed that optional compensation will be available for students who participate in focus groups, if they are otherwise forfeiting paid work to participate.
Finally, Honi referenced an action point in the USU’s draft RAP which reflects a commitment to engaging with First Nations businesses. When asked whether the USU will formalise a process for seeking free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) from vendors, Mills stated that while he “personally doesn’t have a position on [the issue],” that the Board will consider a formal statement. Mills confirmed that the USU has been approached by the University of Sydney Business School to install Indigenous-supported vending machines, but the organisation’s main focus is to set up First Nations focus groups and finalise the RAP.
When pressed for a timeframe on this, Mills estimated that this process would take between six to eight weeks. Honi will continue to report on the USU’s reconciliation efforts.
The Board will next meet on the last Friday of August.
of the offending spew. One person unfortunately stepped in it (our condolences).
A cheeky vom on the footpath outside the Wentworth Building has entered its fourth day of basking in the sun.
The street, decorated by the contents of one mystery person’s stomach, welcomed students back to campus on Monday, provoking conversation and quick side steps. One student exclaimed “what the fuck”, and another pondered why “vomit always looks like it has carrots in it”.
More insidious however, is its proximity to one of the busiest bus stops on campus — the City Road stop.
Students in a rush are at risk of stepping directly in it as they sprint obliviously towards their bus. In five minutes of observation, Honi noted six people leap out of the way
Weather forecasts for the rest of this week indicate that the vomit could remain until Sunday — unless someone steps up with a bucket of water. Students and staff with emetophobia could be in for a long summer, with the reduced rainfall from El Niño putting a pause on the natural street cleaning enjoyed by all during La Niña.
One student exclaimed “what the fuck”, and another pondered why “vomit always looks like it has carrots in it”.
When the University of Sydney Law School announced that it was discontinuing its award-winning PeerAssisted Study Sessions (PASS) in May last year, many students were surprised and disappointed. PASS offered students in their first-to-third years of their law degree a structured way of revising course content, led by highachieving student facilitators. Since its cancellation, law students have been left without equivalent support, as they waited for PASS’ replacement to be designed and announced.
Fifteen months later, that replacement will be put into place this semester. But it remains to be seen whether student concerns about the Law School’s academic support will be alleviated by the new mentoring program, named “mentoring for success”.
The new program will operate differently to the old PASS. Instead of subject-specific support, it will be based on a mentor-mentee model, which provides social support and general skills for academic life at university. It will initially be available to first-year students only, with an expansion not yet certain.
When announcing PASS’ cancellation in 2022, Law School Dean Simon Bronitt and Associate Dean of Student Life Roger Magnusson took issue with its model — Bronitt said that data held by the Law School showed PASS was not reaping its intended benefit; Magnusson claimed PASS targeted “middle class” students receiving average marks and that its replacement should target struggling students.
The data referred to by Bronitt is yet to be seen by students. Sydney University Law Society (SULS) President Naz Sharifi confirmed to Honi that the SULS Executive has not been presented with this data, or any evidence that PASS was ineffective. In contrast, although they also were not privy to this data, multiple PASS facilitators told Honi that they received positive feedback from students of all abilities.
In response to Honi’s question whether “mentoring for success” would in fact specifically target struggling students, a University spokesperson said that the program would be “aimed at increasing student retention and completion rates.” That is PR-speak for “yes”. Sharifi further confirmed to Honi that “mentoring for success” won’t be compulsory for struggling students, but it would only be available to them: the Faculty will identify students in need of extra support. According to Sharifi, the Law School originally planned on making the program compulsory for these students, but changed its mind after lobbying from SULS.
However, Christine*, a former PASS facilitator, expressed her concerns about such a model, saying that a program targeted at students at risk of failing risked “outing” those students.
With PASS, Christine said, “there is no labelling. You could be here
you could be a middle-class student who kind of gets it but needs some more help or you could be a struggling student.
“No one knows that.”
Even if outing was not an issue, Christine said “to be told by the Law School that you are a struggling student, and you need to take this program, can be really motivating and really discouraging.
“If I had been one of those students, it would have been a serious whack to my confidence.”
Additionally, it is unclear why supporting struggling students is mutually exclusive with designing a program which supports all students. As Christine told Honi, “students at the middle and even at the top deserve support. Just because they are not struggling does not mean that they shouldn’t be given resources to do better.”
lot of time spent in class is spent learning firsthand, so being able to go back and review what you’ve learnt solidifies this.”
Mentoring for success does away with this specific support. Leaving students without any access to content-specific support.
The other, less spoken about, benefit of a regular system of academic support such as PASS is its ability to mediate the competitive environment which surrounds studying Law at USyd.
“[PASS’] value is that it is based upon a collaborative model. If you’re not willing to share your resources and contribute, it’s not going to work. It’s adverse to competition, which gives you for the first time an environment which isn’t competitive,” Christine said.
Ella agreed, saying that “in a University context that is increasingly socially disconnected and competitive, small group settings where students can go over content taught in class can allow them to clarify complex concepts and learn collaboratively. This kind of teaching approach is unique to PASS in the law school and not recreated by regular unit content.”
It is unclear if mentoring for success, with a one-onone model, will be able to construct such a welcoming environment, based on collaboration with students of all abilities.
There are a range of alternate support mechanisms offered to students, apart from PASS and its successor. The University spokesperson noted the Law School’s offering of financial support in the form of scholarships for financially disadvantaged students, and academic support through the Legal Writing and Language Club, as well as a series of seminars run by academics on exam skills.
These offerings are clearly popular: the University said a recent seminar saw 150 participants. A third-year student, Ella*, who regularly attends the Legal Writing and Language Club told Honi: “The law school’s current offerings such as legal writing language club and the proposed PASS replacement to help students at risk of failing units are certainly valuable, however, they serve different purposes and demographics than PASS did.
“Support-focused programs like PASS which review content taught in class are still highly valuable for law students. The historically very high level of demand for PASS in law by itself supports the fact that students find it valuable to their learning, and that it should not have been cancelled by the law school.”
The popularity of these sessions indicates a burgeoning demand for academic support provided by the Law School; PASS was regularly fully booked at the beginning of each Semester. However, these forms of academic support differ from PASS in a key way: whereas they are focussed on skills such as exam technique and legal writing, PASS specifically helped students revise the content studied each semester.
Christine noted that “law is clearly a very content heavy but a
The decision to initially only offer “mentoring for success” to first-year students means that other students, in second year and beyond, will be left without content-specific academic support, or even the new program’s social support, that the Law School’s other offerings cannot replace. This led Sharifi, on behalf of the SULS Executive, to say that SULS advocates “for the implementation of a PASS alternative that is accessible to all students and caters to all skill and year levels.” This may yet be forthcoming, but the delay has clearly frustrated students.
The University spokesperson added that during the design of PASS’ replacement “students have been consulted and kept updated, in particular through the Student Staff Consultative Forum” and in engagement with SULS and the Chinese Law Students Society. However, Sharifi said that the “Faculty provided SULS with initial details at the Student Staff Consultative Forum, yet did not provide opportunities for the Society to be involved in active design or incorporate the significant concerns of SULS representatives. In April 2023, SULS received an update on the finalised program and was asked for suggestions on its name only. This marked the first time that SULS was invited to give input after the initial conversations in 2022.”
Perhaps the Law School realised the name “mentoring for success” needed some workshopping. Honi agrees. Students could have helped with more than that, though.
The abrupt cancellation of PASS, and the concern that it provoked among the student body — and the haphazard way its replacement has been designed and announced — may not be the biggest issue with USyd at the moment. But it should not be too much to ask for regular academic support, accessible to all years and abilities, and for students to be listened to in shaping the nature of this support, at the Law School or in any other faculty in the University. USyd was recently ranked the third-worst university in Australia for the student experience: students feel isolated and often unsupported in the post-COVID university. Avoiding another PASS saga, and expanding the academic support available to students, would go some way in ameliorating that.
*Names have been changed.
The popularity of these sessions indicates a burgeoning demand for academic support provided by the Law School; PASS was regularly fully booked at the beginning of each Semester.Anonymous analyses the Law School’s support for its students.
During the semester break, Australia’s higher education sector rejoiced as three Australian universities — Melbourne, Sydney, and UNSW — broke into the world’s top 20 in the latest edition of Quacquerelli Symond’s (QS) World University Rankings, with Sydney joint 19th with archrival UNSW. Now, as we return for Semester Two, it’s plastered everywhere — topped with a brand new lion statue to boot.
How true is this?
In research, global rankings like QS generally do a good job at gauging research excellence, with research output afforded significant weighting in QS and Times Higher Education (THE). As a result, academics at “top” institutions frequently win soughtafter grants, publish in renowned journals, secure industry income, and take top spots in national research exercises. In this respect, Sydney’s universities and Australia’s Group of Eight pull well above our population’s weight.
QS leans heavily towards research and academic reputation, measured by data fed from surveys circulated to academics other than one’s own institution. As Jeffrey Khoo put it in 2020, this is an “essentially subjective measure of sentiment”.
Today, the same flaws persist — and, in some ways, they are worse than before. From 2023 onwards, QS will see weighting on faculty-tostudent ratios slashed by a third. Yet, this metric is where both USyd and UNSW perform the worst out of any university in QS’ top 50 – outdone only by Monash – mirroring the two’s consistently poor showing in student satisfaction surveys. Both universities, badly affected by years-long wage theft and managerial intransigence, have undermined academic morale for a while. Under this lens, QS’ heavy research focus, perversely, may provide a disincentive to teaching excellence in Australia in favour of the publish-or-perish mentality.
Khanh Tran considers the flaws in the astonishing rise of USyd and Australia’s universities.
University of Sydney rebounded heavily in five areas, including three of QS’ newly introduced metrics — sustainability, social impact, and employment outcomes.
Sustainability assesses institutions’ commitment to net zero, equity, and social inclusion. What worked in the University’s favour is a public investments report claiming that its absolute carbon emissions fell by more than 80% between 2010 and 2020 (as calculated by its sustainability consultant Mercer) in its investment portfolios. Additionally, last year’s deal with Red Energy to power Camperdown and Darlington entirely through renewable energy likely also played very well with QS. To top it off, actions undertaken by student groups such as the SRC Environment Collective and the USU’s Enviro Fair contribute directly to USyd’s high standing.
Now, here’s where it gets murky.
To make matters worse, Mercer Superannuation is currently in hot water with ASIC for alleged greenwashing and misleading the public over its clients’ fossil fuel investments. If QS considers hundreds of millions of dollars in funds tied to fossil fuel companies to be a job well done, then that’s profoundly disturbing for our environment. At best, this is another egregious example of greenwashing. At worst, QS is giving universities free rein to game metrics to their advantage.
Inclusion, student gender ratios, and diversity policies (such as Disability Inclusion Action Plans) are also factors in USyd’s rise. With the USU’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and Disability Inclusion Action Plans (DIAP) in the works, we can expect the University to fare well in next year’s edition. However, these new measures also suffer from a dearth of any enforceable targets — such as recruitment rate of disabled
I’ve always liked watching the credits. I don’t know when I picked up the habit, but there’s always been something magical about watching all the names scroll past. Thinking about how each of those names is someone who played a part in creating that media that I’m now watching. As I’ve grown up, I’ve found myself more interested in following who is in the list and following the names between productions. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since 2 May, after a strike authorisation passed with a yes vote of 97.85%. The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joined the strike on 13 June.
Amidst other proposals, the WGA is fighting for a proposal relating to the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting. They are seeking for AI to not be used to write or rewrite material, and for scripts to not be used as source material or be used to train AI. As of May, the proposal had been rejected by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The AMPTP responded instead with an offer to have meetings to discuss technological advancements, which seems, at the least, like a cop out on having a hard conversation.
At the heart of this conversation is the question, what value do we ascribe to the creation of written work?
QS’ methodology for its sustainability metrics only considers “whether a university holds membership in officially-recognised climate action or sustainability groups”, “has a publicly available sustainability strategy and energy emissions report,” and a commitment to net zero. Subsequently, as long as the University touts a vague commitment and can cobble together an environmental strategic plan, QS is satisfied. There is no uniform test or a set timeline for net zero that institutions are measured against, rendering QS’ sustainability metric largely a set of empty promises with no accountability mechanism.
Then, there’s the sheer size of holdings in fossil fuel investments that USyd holds. By the end of 2021, University of Sydney held over $500 million in various funds that invests in major oil and gas players such as Santos and Whitehaven Coal. Just last week, Honi revealed that USyd, after divesting from some fossil fuel holdings, bought a combined $10 million worth of shares in mining and gas giant BHP, Rio Tinto, Shell and British Petroleum (BP) in 2022.
In what world does that make our university truly responsible to the environment?
academics — preferring the quantity of diversity policies over an in-depth look into whether universities have attained their promises.
QS’ rationale behind the changes is that students demand better governance from the world’s top universities. Yet, too much of QS’ metrics only scrape the surface of what makes a genuinely responsible university. The flip side is it gives our institutions an excuse to further sideline what students have to say on the ground, cost of living pressures and academic morale.
There is much more to be said about the fallibility of university league tables like QS. They are, in a way, a reflection of the deeply problematic consumerist corporatism that tertiary education has trapped itself in. At the status quo, institutional behaviour is sadly too often driven by these rankings, with universities’ reputational risk assessment and managerial KPIs permanently wedded to them. Others resort to skirting the boundaries of what’s allowed and, in a few cases, cheating their way to the top — leading to the student experience being muffled. Instead, universities must be committed to the common good of students, academics and society.
It’s easy to forget when you watch a movie or a tv series that a person, often a group of people, has written the moment you are watching play out. In fact, if they are doing their job well, you are probably intentionally forgetting this. But as much as that actor did a wonderful job bringing the line to life, so did the writer who came up with it or suggested it as an alternative. Writers have been chronically underappreciated for this work. Unfortunately, the increasing prominence of generative AI seems to be a continuation of this. Many have argued that generative AI is merely a tool for people to exercise their creativity. But there seems to be an issue with this argument, generative AI is not a tool that exists in a vacuum. The very development of these apparently creative technologies relies on taking the creative work of others and subsuming it into their processes without acknowledging the original contributions. This is partly why many artists and creators have issues with the use of generative AI. Not only do those marketing it, portray it as a way to effectively replace their work, they use their own work to do so. With lawsuits for copyright infringement, particularly in the US, against ChatGPT and other generative AIs starting to appear, we will have to wait and see how current legislative frameworks deal with these issues. Multiple jurisdictions globally are attempting to develop their
The flip side is it gives our institutions an excuse to further sideline what students have to say on the ground, cost of living pressures and academic morale.Source: Quacquerelli Symonds; Weighting of metrics used by Quacquerelli Symonds (QS).
own regulatory responses to deal with emerging AI systems more broadly.
But, generative AIs seem to pose a unique cultural threat to the written word. This threat then extends to those whose work involves the written word. If we are not willing to fight for the value of their work, then are we ready to accept that our media will be manufactured, impersonal, and repetitive?
Here’s my problem, generative AI is good at providing the average. If a model is trained on content that is freely available on the internet, the final product becomes what is essentially the common voice of the internet. This common voice is the average of the content it has been fed.
When you ask a generative AI to write a script, in most cases the AI is attempting not to write an interesting screenplay, but to write what it has been trained to expect as the next word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph of a screenplay.
The advantage that we, as people who care about the art we consume, have is that there is still a human who is required throughout these supposedly automated processes. It is important in these conversations to remember the human in the equation. Technology does not develop by itself. It is not used in a vacuum. People shape all of this. A human gives the generative AI a prompt, asks it to make changes, edits the text after it is produced, and so on. The person with the greatest potential impact, however, is the one at the very start, who decides to use or not use generative AI, and if it is used, how it is used.
It’s the “how” that really matters here. If we want to treat generative AI as a tool, then it matters how we use it and what uses we are willing to accept. With studios appearing to hire for AI related roles, it seems like they want to decide how it will be used. If they are allowed to do this, they will put cost above creativity. The WGA’s proposals put the controls in the hands of the writers, letting writers decide how and when it should be used.
These writers have trained, practised, and developed their skills to create the content that comforts and challenges us. They know how to transform perspectives, experiences, and skills into the stories that capture us. They are fighting to keep doing this (and to, very deservedly, get paid fairly for doing so). And I really hope that they succeed.
CW: This article refers to sexual assault and sexual harrassment.
In 2013, it was well-known, though not institutionally acknowledged, that a large number of students were being sexually assaulted while at university. Students widely felt at risk in residential colleges, clubs, and societies. Sharna Bremner, founder of End Rape on Campus (EROC), was working in International Student Support during her time at university, hearing disclosures from people who didn’t know where to turn or what resources they could access after a traumatic experience. Since 2013, when Bremner founded EROC, she has worked to provide both direct support to students impacted by sexual violence, and to lobby state and federal governments for change.
End Rape on Campus has grown since 2013 — it is now a registered charity, Bremner now working with another volunteer. She continues to fit lobbying and support work around other paid employment, but has not given up bold goal of ending rape on campus since ten years of establishing EROC.
Since its inception in 2013, End Rape on Campus has produced two key reports — Connecting the Dots report in 2017, and The Red Zone report in 2018. Connecting the Dots provides an overview of the problem of sexual assault in tertiary education, which was then submitted to the Australian Human Rights Commission University Sexual Assault and Harrassment project. It pointed out the lack of data that existed surrounding sexual assault, support required by survivors and the barriers they face to reporting sexual assault within university communities.
The Red Zone report was a meticulous investigation into sexual violence and hazing in Australian university residential colleges. The product makes a horrifying read, revealing the many ways students at residential colleges humiliate, harass, and harm one another without respect for bodily autonomy. Most notably, the report hones in on residential college culture at The University of Sydney, and acts to tease out the reasons why one in eight of all attempted or completed sexual assaults that happen at University occur during orientation week - where binge drinking and
According to
Bremner, the colleges “are sites of extreme privilege. They are sites of often quite racist, homophobic attitudes.” Five years after the Red Zone report, Bremner said “we haven’t seen a sort of systemic change within those cultures that we would need to see to address those high rates of violence… we don’t think the Colleges have taken enough action.”
The University Accords process has given some hope to activists in the field. While wholly inadequate and typically timid in suggesting actions, it at the very least acknowledges sexual assault and sexual harrassment as a systemic issue across the higher education sector. In a section on the duty of care that universities have for their students, it acknowledges the devastating impacts of sexual assault, sexual harrasment, and the inadequacy of institutional responses.
Following the release of the interim report, Jason Clare, the federal Minister for Education, gave a statement on the 3rd of August. He called for a task force of education ministers from all states and territories to hear from an expert on sexual violence prevention, and to make recommendations to universities to ensure that reporting systems are sufficient.
Speaking in parliament, Clare said, “the actions universities have taken to address this, to date, have not been good enough. We have the research, we have the evidence, we know the scope of the problem, we have to act.”
She also highlighted the work that student activists have been doing to lobby for change and prevent sexual violence on campus. “It’s been an issue for decades, and uni students have really been leading the work to address sexual violence more broadly.
“University students were the ones calling for improved justice responses, calling for alternative options like restorative justice processes. And they’ve been doing that long before #MeToo. Long before Grace Tame was named Australian of the Year, long before Chanel Contos’ petitions, uni students were the ones out on the streets demanding action.”
Six years after the Change the Course report, which brought the issue of sexual harassment at Australian universities to national attention, and theinterim Universities Accords report, organisations are still fighting. This report was commissioned by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the first of its kind, making allsubsequent national-level research into the state of sexual violence at universities follow in its footsteps.
Universities have since witnessed token changes, such as USyd’s move to change the name of Orientation week (O-week) to Welcome Week, for reasons only known to upper management. While the implementation of mandatory consent training is a step in the right direction, there are myriad flaws in the program, and overarching cultural changes are still essential.
Bremner acknowledged that this was the biggest win they have had to date — “It looks like for the first time ever, we may actually get some movement on this. He acknowledged that universities have not done enough and that is a massive step forward.”
However, there are flaws within the plan — there are no independent bodies set up to track the progress of sexual assault prevention programs, and there is nothing in the Bill to impose consequences on universities which lack in implementing necessary changes. The expert advisor must also be an expert not only in sexual violence prevention but also on the university system, and the systems that govern university residences such as residential colleges.
End Rape on Campus is sure to be watching the outcomes of this task force, and the University Accords more broadly. They have most recently launched their #IDeserveSafety campaign, which seeks to link stories to statistics by showing that every number has a face behind it.
Call 18000RESPECT for extra resources.
It pointed out the lack of data that existed surrounding sexual assault, support required by survivors and the barriers they face to reporting sexual assault within university communities.
“It’s been an issue for decades, and uni students have really been leading the work to address sexual violence more broadly.”
Katarina Butler reports.Veronica Lenard wants studios to pay their writers fairly.
Australians have long liked to think of themselves as laid back and relaxed. From the muchtouted “beach lifestyle”, to the image of the easy-going larrikin, this rather out-dated conception of Australia has become part of our national mythology. However, this impression has also been accompanied by the belief that Australian voters — specifically young Australian voters — are not only apathetic about politics, but have little power to effect political change. This notion is not only corrosive to democratic engagement and participation, but is incorrect in practice.
After every federal election since 1987, the Australian National University (ANU) has released the Australian Election Study (AES). The results of the most recent AES — published in 2022 — reveal not only that young people are actively engaged in politics, but that they have a significant effect on electoral outcomes.
As the 2022 AES revealed, young people’s support of Labor was key to the party’s success. Whilst the Coalition only received the votes of one in four voters under 40, 38% of this same cohort voted for Labor.
Young people were similarly pivotal to the unprecedented success of minor parties at the election, with the Greens being elected in four out of the five seats that had the highest proportion of voters under 30. In this way, the youth vote was a significant driver of the broader trend away from the major parties that emerged at the 2022 election.
But what are the implications of this “youthquake” for Australian democracy?
At the 2022 election, voters under 40 outnumbered voting baby boomers, with this under-40 cohort only set to grow in proportion to the broader electorate before the next federal ballot. This means that the political power of younger voters is only going to rise.
Arguably, this increase in political efficacy could not come at a better time. As the AES reveals, younger voters are more concerned about environmental issues than their older counterparts. This is partly due to the disproportionate effect that such issues will have on younger generations’ lives. It also means the youth vote is going to be essential in driving governments to take concrete action to deal with climate change’s ongoing effects. This was particularly reflected in the unprecedented four lower House seats secured by the Greens in 2022.
However, young voters are also going to be pivotal to the result of the upcoming Voice referendum later this year. New data released by the Australian Electoral Commission at recent Senate Estimates hearings revealed that 90.3% of voters aged 18-24 are registered on the electoral roll — the first time that this cohort has reached 90% since the commission started collecting data in 2016.
is only compounded by the significant role younger voters have historically played in educating older voters in their lives — a trend reflected in the 1999 republican referendum.
Such evidence only affirms the strong political potency of young people — a conclusion that it seems will only become more apparent as time goes on.
However, understanding this
will prove Horne’s thesis to be true is ultimately not important. What is important however, is the implication it holds — in a democracy, the quality of our elected representatives and system of government is tied entirely to the will and participation of the people.
As the 2020s roll on, the world will continue to face a series of crises. Now more than ever,
Furthermore, according to the AES, younger Australians are more engaged in issuebased politics than any of their generational counterparts, often avoiding partisan voting. Many political scientists have suggested that as a result, young people will be key to the outcome of the Voice referendum. This
fact, and ensuring it pervades the psyche of the broader Australian populace — particularly the psyche of young Australians — are two separate things entirely.
It was once said of Australia that we could be called “the lucky country”. However, rather than being an endearing descriptor, its use in Donald Horne’s 1964 book came with the caveat that Australia’s populace was deeply apathetic and unambitious, and largely elected “second rate” leaders who shared their nation’s “luck”. Whether history
it is vital that governments recognise the significant power that the youth vote holds and act accordingly. Similarly, younger voters must not lose faith in our system of government — their vote matters and will make a difference. As a nation, we must all recognise and acknowledge this fact.
After all, it is not just the health, but the future of our democracy that depends on it.
people’s support of Labor was key to the party’s success.
Young voters are also going to be pivotal to the result of the upcoming Voice referendum later this year.
CW: This piece mentions ethnic violence and assault against women.
Manipur has been burning for close to 100 days, and the Prime Minister of India has finally opened his mouth.
The North-Eastern Indian state is currently witnessing an ongoing conflict between two ethnic groups — the majority Meitei Hindus and minority Kuki Christians — which has killed almost 200 people in just over three months. Although this is a number sourced from the Indian government, the death toll is likely even higher. Hundreds of churches and a dozen temples have been destroyed in riots during this period.
Recently, a video of two Kuki women, paraded naked by a group of Meitei men shocked the world after it was circulated widely on social media. Because of planned internet shutdowns by the Manipur state government and the union government, both of which are governed by the Hindu nationalist party BJP, the video emerged almost 80 days after the events occurred on 4 May. There are now many similar videos being released. Such was the graphic nature of this video, the Prime Minister — who was touring abroad touring the world at the time of the incidents — was forced to make a public statement.
India has one of the most authoritarian governments in the world, led by PM Narendra Modi, who is the face of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the broader Hindu nationalist movement.
Despite this, many world leaders including the Australian PM Anthony Albanese fend for the Indian PM Narendra Modi. Recently when Modi toured Australia — while the North Eastern Indian state of Manipur was actually burning
— Albanese made horrible comments calling PM Modi the “boss” in a public forum attended by over 18,000 people. While asked what he thinks about the various human rights abuses that Modi is allegedly responsible for, he said that it is the “internal matter” of India.
Global leaders are largely sticking up for Narendra Modi, likely because of India’s rapid economic growth. This growth, rather than being spurred by Modi’s BJP, has been fuelled by the policies of previous governments and has significantly benefited billionaires such as Modi allies Gautum Adani and Mukesh Ambani at the expense of the wider Indian public and the environment.
Manipur has been burning for over 80 days. In that time, Narendra Modi has been touring 7 different countries — Australia, the United States, Japan, France, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Papua New Guinea. In almost all of these countries, he met the privileged Indian community living a very comfortable life in each country. These communities are strong supporters of Modi, a reflection of this privilege. If they were living in any of Modi’s conflict driven territories, they would have used their voices to shout for help instead of applauding Modi.
It is no secret that the North East of India is one of the most heavily militarized regions in India and probably the world. The Indian government also uses surveillance techniques like phone tapping and extensive usage of cameras, under the pretext of “protecting the region”. This invasion of privacy occurs despite privacy being one of the seven fundamental rights in India. But is today’s India still considered a democratic country that values the constitution?
In the riots that have happened in Manipur, the internet was shut down. This has also occurred in other zones in India suffering conflict and iron clad authoritarianism — for example, Kashmir. So, not all that happened in Manipur is public knowledge. Some incidents might never even come out. This has been purposefully done by the ruling authoritarian governments, so the state driven human rights abuses don’t become a topic of debate in the global arena and the rest of the country. This violence and conflict perpetrated between the Hindu Meitei and Kuki Christian communities is also state sponsored terrorism, rather than a self induced situation, similar to the previous instances under the same BJP governments.
In 1992, Babar Masjid (a heritage site in Uttar Pradesh, India built by the Mughal kings) was demolished and in 2002, many Muslims were killed in Gujarat under the same pretext of a planned riot among the majority and minority communities in the region. In 2002, the chief architects were none other than Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, who then was the Chief Minister (equivalent to Premier in Australia) and Home Minister of the Indian state Gujarat, respectively. Today, they have together risen to become the Prime Minister and Home Minister of the entire nation, a rise to power fuelled by nothing but hate against religious, linguistic, cultural minorities and the lower castes, while cunningly catering to the needs in the different regions of India.
The BJP’s motto, right from the start, has been to target the minorities and
they have successfully done that against the Adivasis (indigenous people), Muslims, Dalits, and now Christians. They have also been ideologically against linguistic and ethnic minorities. Before they knock on the door of the next minority group in India, it is important for us to voice out and seek justice for all the horrors that they have committed. Before Modi and the BJP appoint a Kuki Christian from Manipur to the ceremonial position of President of India in a political gambit, merely just in the position of a ceremonial President of India, they must be wiped away from the parliament, so they have no power to appoint presidents, or cause any more harm to the community that they hail from.
For as long as humans have been around, we have sought to understand time. It dictates the way our society functions, disciplines exist dedicated to understanding it, and it is a notion we have a grasp of from an incredibly young age. Despite this, so little is known about how time works. This poses a challenge for language: how can we put this nebulous, but crucial, concept into words?
The challenge is twofold: how do we refer to points in time, and how do we refer to time itself? The solution to the former issue is systems of tense and aspect. By using a range of grammatical and lexical features, speakers can situate themselves temporally in relation to the event they’re describing. While it is possible to describe any point in time in any language, the tools that each language equips you with differ.
In English, we make morphological distinctions — distinctions related to the construction of a word — between past and non-past tense (for example, “walked” is past tense and “walk” is non-past), and additional grammatical distinctions between present and future (“walk” versus “will walk”). Some languages, like Italian, make morphological distinctions between all three tenses. Languages can have more tenses. Swahili, for example, makes a morphological distinction between the recent and distant past. In other cases, languages have fewer tense systems. Some, like Burmese and Dyirbal, don’t have any morphological tense systems.
The issue of describing time as a concept is a bit more challenging. Time is an abstract and nebulous concept — it’s not something we can see, and its nature is difficult to physically determine. Because of this, much
of the language we use to describe time relies on metaphor. While these metaphors are typically consistent within a language, they tend to differ crosslinguistically. In English, a lot of the metaphors we use to describe time relate to direction, imagining time as if it is a straight line. We describe future events as “going forward”, and the past as “looking back”. In contrast, in languages like Aymara (which is spoken in the Bolivian Andes), the past is in front (the Aymara word is “nayra”, meaning “eye” or “front”), and the future, which you cannot see, is behind.“Q’ipa”, their word for “future”, is also the word for “back” or “behind”. This metaphor is not restricted to spoken language; an English speaker may gesture over their shoulder when speaking about the past (accompanying something like “way back when”), while an Aymara speaker might do the same when talking about the future.
Many languages don’t see time as linear at all. In Thai, metaphors that describe time characterise time as a pool within which the speaker can walk around. In Malagasy, the national language of Madagascar, time moves, but speakers are static observers to it (as opposed to moving through time themselves). In some languages, like Greek and Spanish, time is three-dimensional — in Spanish, you can talk about someone being away “por mucho tiempo” (for much time), but not for a long time, because length is a fairly linear concept.
What do these differences say about the people who speak these languages? In 1944, Benjamin Whorf wrote a seminal paper comparing the way time was described in English and Hopi, a Native American language spoken in Arizona. He found that, in contrast to the direction- and movementbased metaphors of English, Hopi grammar suggested that time was simply a “getting later” of everything. His conclusion was that this reflected deep truths about Anglo and Hopi cultures, pointing to movement being central to much Western art, and Hopi culture having a strong emphasis on being prepared. While these conclusions have been contested in the 80 years since its publication, Whorf’s basic claim – that the affordances a language has to describe time are closely linked to how a culture views time — does seem to hold up. More recent studies have found, for example, that speakers of futureless languages — that is, languages like Mandarin, Japanese, and German which don’t have a future tense — tend to be more concerned about preparing for the future than speakers of languages like Greek, English, and Italian, which do have a future tense. Futureless speakers are more likely to invest in savings, practise safe sex, and to smoke less than those whose language does have future tense.
As well as being a straight line, English speakers conceive of the line of time moving from left to right in the same way as our writing. In a study that asked English and Hebrew speakers to physically arrange images of events into a timeline, English speakers typically arranged them left to right from oldest to most recent, while Hebrew speakers, whose orthography goes right to left, arranged them in the inverse order. Similarly, speakers of Mandarin, a language which is traditionally written in vertical columns, see the “line” of time as being vertical rather than horizontal like English speakers do.
Our thoughts are inescapably filtered through language — I have written previously about how hard it is to conceive of things which we do not have words to describe. When the language you speak uses a particular metaphor or grammatical structure to communicate time, and when the culture you exist in echoes those same metaphors right back to you, it is easy to see how your understanding of such an abstract concept is so strongly shaped. Time is immensely complex, but it is something we can talk about with relative ease from childhood, and that is only made possible by the specific metaphor and structure that our language gives us access to. And I, for one, think that’s cool as hell.
Art by Katarina ButlerTime is immensely complex, but it is something we can talk about with relative ease from childhood, and that is only made possible by the specific metaphor and structure that our language gives us access to.Nicola Brayan goes back to the future.
It is harder to be a student now than ever before. Amidst the fee hikes in 2019, record inflation, and soaring rent, balancing one’s social life, work, and studies is a delicate task — a struggle for even the best of us. However, there are many students who are stretched even further as their degrees require placements which are often full-time and, always, unpaid.
Students working in vocational placements are not considered
Andy Park asks for the bare minimum.
employees according to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). One of the key criteria of a vocational placement is that it is a requirement of an education or training course. Institutions justify the lack of pay by considering the placement to serve a larger pedagogical purpose in preparing students for working in the industry they are studying in. Placements are essential in nursing, teaching, social work, psychology and the allied
health professions.
These placements do in fact play a crucial role in helping students acclimatise with their prospective workplaces, learning skills for when they leave university. However, with rising financial pressures, these placements are increasingly shifting an unfair burden on students, one which takes a significant toll on their wellbeing and lifestyles.
Art by Estella Kennedy
In the 1900s, education students were on bonded scholarships which paid an allowance, and nursing students were also paid an apprentice wage, before nursing became a university degree. Today, students on placement receive no financial support, nor rightful compensation for the work that they do, and also have the burden of eventually paying HECS debt on top of their living costs.
Numerous students shared their experiences on placement with Honi and the consensus was obvious — it is simply too difficult. Though being thrust into a work environment for the first time is never easy, there are structural issues which detract from the educational experience, and take a toll on the student’s wellbeing. The fundamental problem is that placements are merely considered as an educational threshold; they are compulsory parts of degrees.
Professor Christine Morley, Head of the Social Work and Human Services Disciplines at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), spoke to Honi as one of the leading advocates for paid student placements, having conducted extensive research on the issue.
“There seems to be some confusion about learning versus work, and people think if it’s learning then it’s not work, but I learn in my job as a professor all the time and I’m paid, and presumably apprentices are learning what they need to learn in order to do their trade.”
For instance, Social Work students are required to complete 1000 hours on mandatory placements by the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). This is not to say that placements are fundamentally problematic — an education student described their placement as, “everything I dreamed it to be” — they are a necessary part of a student’s progress. The problem is that students are not being fairly compensated for the work that they are doing, work which is often complex. That lack of sufficient support is ignorant of the work that they are doing, if not exploitative.
All the education students I spoke to, most of whom are studying at USyd, emphasised the gruelling workload they had to undertake. A third year student studying to be a highschool teacher said that they have had two placements (one for fifteen days across a term, and the most recent twenty days across five weeks), with an upcoming placement for forty five days: the entire school term. “Everyday I was at the school from 7am - 4:30/5pm where I was in charge of 3 classes and had to look after them
entirely on my own (with supervision),” they said.
These struggles are particularly intense, because students are often undertaking placements in sectors which are already strained. A nursing student said that they could not work on weekends due to the fatigue, with mornings as early as 4:30, and some placements involving 12 hour shifts.
These student experiences dispel any concerns that paying students would mean they’re merely being paid for observational study — full-time placements necessarily entail intense workloads.
The assumption that the kinds of practical learning that placements require is not genuine work is flawed. Students spend hours in their prospective workplaces learning the ropes, and directly contribute to work completed by regular staff. Furthermore, apprenticeships in the trades are already being paid for what is essentially the same process.
during their holidays, with only thirty minute breaks everyday. On top of these full-time work weeks, they struggled living far from home, with students expected to go on rural placements. “I would need to cook, clean, do my own laundry whilst working full time and not receiving any compensation whilst doing so,” they said.
This student is still waiting for a grant to be accepted for up to $750, covering travel costs and accommodation, but even this, they say, is not enough. Although there were subsidised prices for students on placement, they would pay well over $100 per week for groceries and fuel.
These stressors disproportionately impact students who are in difficult financial situations, and students who are disabled. The third year secondary student said, “With my mental and physical disabilities, working after school or on weekends was impossible due to extreme levels of exhaustion and unfortunately I did not have enough leave at work to even cover one full week of my hours.”
A student teacher said they take up 60% of a full teaching load, involving 2-4 classes per day, with an expectation to partake in staff meetings and attend school events.
Beyond maintaining student welfare, there is public utility to ensuring students do not burn out, so that they learn better on these placements, and have more capacity to sustainably contribute in their respective fields.
“Teaching plans had to be submitted to my supervising teacher usually 24 hours before I had to teach classes, so once I got home I usually was planning and preparing classroom material, which also meant I couldn’t work [paid] after-school hours,” said one student.
Not only are the costs often prohibitive as the opportunity cost of having to forego work in order to go on these full-time placements is particularly high; many students drop out of their courses altogether due to the financial burden. A third year social work student said the amount of money they would have earned working during the time they were on placement was $30,000.
“As a mature aged student working professionally for the past 7 years, my placement experience consisted of going into debt due to loss of income and day to day expenses, not being able to provide for my family as I used to, adding more pressure on my family to accommodate for my loss of income, and negative experiences with my field educator.”
An occupational therapy student spoke of their experience at an inpatient rehabilitation ward. They worked 40 hours per week
“I wouldn’t see that learning and work need to be seen as mutually exclusive, I think that’s a problematic construct,” said Morley.
In response, students have rallied around the Students Against Placement Poverty (SAPP) campaign, which relaunched last month, after having commenced in 2020. Their demands are clear and centred around providing adequate support for students. In an open letter, they’ve focused their key demands on students being compensated for their work, either by being paid directly, or making access to scholarships and bursaries easier. Though the campaign is currently driven by social work students, organisers are looking to involve as many affected students as possible.
The question remains as to why there has been no action. Honi has previously published a feature on the issue in 2016, outlining the same concerns as students now, except with rising inflation and the housing crisis, the situation is more dire. The Coalition has progressively stripped
including “providing remuneration for mandatory work placements.”
There are signs of promise but only the final report will show whether Labor is truly committed to supporting student welfare. So far, the report is non-committal in saying that the Review will look at the potential for “some form of financial support,” but it does provide some more concrete parameters. There is mention of a potential stipend for these students, with “particular urgency for teachers and nurses.” These changes may require amendments to the Fair Work Act, which currently stipulates that since students are not employees they do not need to be paid.
The cleanest solution is for students to be directly compensated for their time on placements at minimum wage, where the government gives extra funding into hosting
expectations placed onto them. For example, Morley notes that research has shown that though social work students are required to complete 1000 hours of their placements, as little as 400 hours are necessary to meet educational requirements.
Another supplementary solution is, where possible, allowing students who are already working in their respective fields to undertake placements in their existing workplaces. Much of Morley’s findings are derived from research she has conducted involving hundreds of social work students, but these insights look as though they could be transferable to other disciplines too. It isn’t as simple as paying students, and there are other ways to make placements more manageable and sustainable.
“We could reduce hours, we could have work-based placement recognised, and we could do much better at recognition of prior learning.”
The Accords themselves note a potential for new solutions such as DegreeApprenticeships programs which “combine study with paid employment and work-based learning.” These programs are common in the United Kingdom, and integrate study and work-based learning.
They were introduced in 2015 to fill skill shortages in key industries, now with over 7000 programmes available, including options for students looking at entering a profession such as nursing.
These apprenticeships are a rarity in Australia, but there is one particularly telling case where they have been implemented: AUKUS. The SA Labor government has allocated $450,000 to the University of South Australia to fast-track engineering apprenticeships to prepare students for defence-careers. Honi has previously reported on how AUKUS only reinforces militarism, and the opportunity cost that is lost to spending billions on submarines which will be outdated when they are built, over supporting people where they really need it.
In this case, students who are working fulltime, with no pay, who are burnt-out, often struggling to make ends meet, and learning to work in industries which provide an immediate, tangible benefit to society. The government can take action when it feels that it is urgent, and it is imperative that they do. The struggle of students on placement is a symptom of a larger system of austerity that has placed us here in the first place — a world where the cost of living is soaring, where young people feel that they have no hope of ever owning a home. We deserve
I would like to personally thank the students who shared their stories for this article, and Professor Christine Morley for sharing her expertise.
If you open the average Australian history textbook to the chapter on the post-war period, you get a sea of optimism. After the failure of the Chifley Labor government to nationalise the banks, Robert Menzies and the Liberals came to power in 1949 for a conservative reign that would last almost thirty years.
That emerging sense of complacency is likely why many in Sydney were shocked to find the opening chapters of The Harp in the South by Ruth Park written in the Herald. Winning a fiction contest out of hundreds of entries, Park’s novel highlighted a very different side of Sydney. Set in Surry Hills, then a slum district, Park opened Australia’s eyes. While Menzies preached from The Lodge, Park’s characters suffered squalor, alcoholism, racial oppression, and patriarchal prisons.
Born in New Zealand, Park was an unlikely novelist. Growing up in a lower-middle-class home without access to formal education she, according to biographer Joy Hooten, “made up for the lack of books by observing and eavesdropping.” She worked odd jobs for newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and Auckland Star before marrying Australian Darcy Niland and moving to Sydney. All they could afford was a cramped tenement in Surry Hills and because of the conditions, Park was sick for most of her first pregnancy. Writing in her autobiography, she described her home as “like a visit to some antique island where the nineteenth century still prevailed.”
Not all readers of the early chapters in the Herald liked her dim view of Sydney. Many working people wrote in letters of support but almost just as many wrote in opposing her work — some called it a lie, others a plot. The Herald went on to publish a daily tally of pro and con letters (sixty-eight for; fifty-four against). Miles Franklin was one of Park’s harshest critics: “It is a shoddy sordid performance of a very phony journalistic book… full of catch cries to the gallery.”
Park’s novel is an exploration of how women navigate and survive in a working class conservative Catholic environment. The story follows the Darcy family, of which there are Margaret (Mumma) Darcy, her husband Hughie, and their two daughters Roie and Dolour.
only place he can exert some power. As Park points out in an interview, “A great many mothers in the basic wage families longed to get away, but a great many of the fathers did not.”
It is shameful that writers who are touted as feminist icons, like Miles Franklin, turned their noses up at these experiences. Responding to her criticism among others, Park said in an interview: “I was just as horrorstricken and unbelieving as my critics when I first went to live in Surry Hills. I could hardly believe that such conditions could exist in a civilised country… I came to love the people, found humanity there, and felt I had to write about it all.” It was that humanity, as well as her activist message, which makes Park’s work so essential. When these stories were finally displayed in a national masthead, people were either forced to confront them or show their true colours by turning a blind eye.
This is especially because The Harp in the South faces, head on, the racist underbelly that defined post-war Sydney. As migration rapidly increased and First Nations people were forced into the slums, Surry Hills quickly became a hotbed of xenophobia and segregation.
again she writes, “and never once did Jimmy fail to smile, for he was not destined to learn the intricacies of Surry Hills English.” Portraying migrants as accepting of their mistreatment does a disservice to decades of resistance that Park was ignorant of even while living in the slums.
The Darcy family must confront their own racist ideas when they realise Roie’s partner Charlie is part Indigenous. The fear of raising what she sees as an impure or “sooty grandchild” is painful to read and casts a shadow on what was a sympathetic character. Eventually, Hughie convinces her that Charlie is a good man, with the telling caveat, “the children will be white.” One critic wrongly argued that this emphasises how “working class solidarity and openness go deeper than surface racism.” What this really demonstrates is how pervasive racism is in this country, it lays bare the truth that despite the shared struggle of all working class people, racism would tear any hopes of solidarity apart.
Like many working-class men in the 40s, Hughie felt constantly ashamed he could not provide for his family. The constant pressure to live up to a standard of masculinity leads to, as Park observed in her own tenements, alcohol fuelled domestic violence. Roie recounts a usual Monday night: “And when he got home he started on Mumma. He
The Chinese shopkeeper Lick Jimmy lives on the edges of society. He is dehumanised and reduced to an exotic being for children to gawk at. Children would walk by his shop and joke, “Where do you want to be licked today Jimmy?” We never hear his voice or see him interacting with anyone else. Park displays the brutal, horrifying reality
Park was ironically awarded the Miles Franklin Award in 1977. The Harp in the South tells the story of a forgotten part of Sydney and the people who were left behind when the country was supposedly marching forwards — working class women, immigrants and First Nations people. It highlights that increasing class inequality and housing shortages are nothing new. The Darcy family and those around them never experienced the golden age Menzies spoke of, and never experienced the freedom he promised.
Park’s novel is an exploration of how women navigate and survive in a working class conservative Catholic environment.Angus McGregor sets the record straight.
Let the reader be warned, this article is not a spoilerfilled review because that would lead to an existential crisis, arched feet, and an enduring sense of guilt that determines the history of the world — or at least 2023.
Barbenheimer has now entrenched itself in popular culture with its very own Wikipedia page. It was primarily birthed when Warner Brothers scheduled Barbie’s release date on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer in an attempt to defeat Nolan at the box office after the TENET (2020) debacle. Fan-made memes over the stark difference between the two blockbuster films led to a global audience embracing this rare instance of counterprogramming as a double feature. Coincidentally, both films entail the presence of horses, fascism, the military industrial complex, as well as presidents and mentor figures helping the protagonist understand their position in the world.
Stars like Tom Cruise have encouraged Barbenheimer, as did Barbie director Greta Gerwig and star/producer Margot Robbie. The viewing order has been widely debated, with many seeing Oppenheimer for breakfast-lunch, and Barbie for dessert. By July 17, more than 40,000 people in the US had purchased tickets to view both films on opening day. Australian cinemas like Dendy Newtown, Ritz, and Event Cinemas have promoted their back-toback screenings, as cinemagoers have championed pink as the new black. USyd also jumped on the bandwagon, emailing students a Barbie x USSC2601: Power, Conflict and Diplomacy unit.
For example, it’s important to note that the Oppenheimer biopic does not depict the plight of the thousands impacted by the A-bomb, and the fallout of testing on Native American communities.
However, many believe Nolan justly displayed the human and psychological impact without evoking traumatic images for sensationalisation, especially as the film situates the audience within Oppenheimer’s perspective. You can also acknowledge that Nolan’s female characters remain underdeveloped relative to other characters, despite outstanding performances by Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt. That being said, criticism is often reactionary and serves to reinforce existing political agendas, as seen with the many reviews that have chosen to focus on the supposedly “woke” and “anti-men” agenda of Barbie. Such buzzwords and inflammatory angles encourage a fragile line of argument, and superficially engage with the content, appealing to provocative perspectives.
This is not to say that Barbie is without its flaws, and we should critically engage with work produced by companies raking in billions of profit. The movie attempts to invite everyone along for the ride, marketed as subversive, hilarious and self-aware. In the film, Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt, criticises Barbie as vapid and shallow, on the grounds of encouraging an unrealistic body image and materialism, even labelling Barbie a “fascist” at one point. Mattel executives flagged this with the filmmakers and only agreed to keep it in the film after a “six-hour long” exchange. This serves as a reminder that no matter how much Mattel lets the writers poke fun at them, they are the ultimate arbiters of their life-long branding.
It’s clear that “Operation Summer Barbie” is a way of the industry encouraging more consumerism. Besides the advertisements on social media, billboards, bus stops, partnerships with fashion brands like Aldo, Dotti, and Review, Mattel has collaborations with Grill’d, Burger King, Chatime,
dating app Bumble, and the Airbnb Malibu DreamHouse that have all turned heads. These licensing deals have been signed to compound on the film’s success, with Mattel’s desire to turn various of their IP into a Mattel Cinematic Universe. It is safe to say that “each doll sold separately” no longer applies.
It’s clear that fans have bought into the hype, proving that the strategy has worked. Fears regarding the uncertain future of cinema are being alleviated as both films are bringing numbers unseen after the COVID-19 pandemic. Within mere weeks, Barbie is close to reaching $1 billion and Oppenheimer is nearing $400 million worldwide. Even Francis Ford Coppola stated that a cinematic golden age is on the horizon. Despite the joy of this dual cinematic experience, the film industry is deeply flawed, as Hollywood executives are causing the delay of film releases and new productions by failing to respond to the demands of striking writers and actors.
As we ponder if Barbenheimer and anything postBarbenheimer can truly live up to months worth of hype and marketing, it can be said with conviction that the journey to these two films remain unmatched by any previous cultural phenomenon.
I know I am having my cake and eating it too, but such is the world that we live in. We consumers are fascinated by the Barbenheimer phenomenon as an experience that is one for the ages, whilst also recognising that we partake in a larger consumerist culture, where huge corporations have control over the media that we consume.
Excuse me, while I listen to Ryan Gosling as Ken sing his heart out in “I’m Just Ken’’, and watch Cillian Murphy contend with questions about being a Ken in a Barbie sequel.
As I made it to the ripe age of 18, subsequently moving out of home and into the big city from my very small and very straight hometown, I felt elated knowing that a world of “adult” experiences lay ahead of me. Especially considering my queer identity, I was ready to experience my preferred “adult” experiences, or so I thought. I envisioned a very structured love story, one that looked suspiciously similar to an HSC chemistry paper flow chart.
Thus I began my journey, a journey of dating apps which was mostly brisk, but at times rather painful and demoralising. This didn’t necessarily worry me as it mirrored the experiences of most of my friends on the apps. Unlike them though, I found someone I got on with on my very first date — praise me as lucky or label me as desperate, both can be applied. The first date was smooth and pleasant. I assumed this was the most one could ask for.
Date two should’ve been a warning to me that something was off. I didn’t make any sexual or physically intimate advances, not that I ever had with my high school relationships, but now that I was older, maturer, I was ready. I was
supposed to be ready. Date three was certainly not smooth, early in the night I asked to kiss them and they replied yes. Hours later they asked if they could kiss me again, and I said no. In the morning I freaked out, only to come out for what felt like the thousandth time, as asexual.
Asexuality is what many consider the middle child of the LGBT+ community, inoffensive but generally overlooked and forgotten by most. In my experience, so much of the queer community feels like it’s built off the romantic love people feel for each other, presumably leading to the sexual intimacy I had heard so much about. From what I could understand, a real relationship included sex, which was more of a hurdle for me than an exciting concept. I felt restricted and that I had gone on dates with this person just to accidentally lead them astray. It felt as if I was withholding some type of reward for all the work we’d put into getting to know each other.
There seems to be this expectation of sex, this expectation of something, this disappointment associated with taking it slow. Dating apps appeared to me as this overwhelming push to just get on with it. There’s no natural build up of interest, or intermediate period.
Without this interlude, people on the asexual spectrum come to an impasse — you either label yourself as asexual and no one swipes right on you, or you don’t and force yourself to enjoy makeout sessions and lingering touches as you internally melt into a pile of selfloathing resulting in boundaries being broken.
I’ve been openly weird, openly queer, for what feels like my entire life, yet this, out of everything, is what estranges me. For months I was in a relationship and attempted to be alright, and normal. I attempted to want and crave something I had so little desire to be a part of. What I do know now is that I need time with romance and even then, there is no certainty of sexual intimacy. Hookups aren’t an option for me as I cannot end a date on a physical note, it feels somewhat of an insurmountable problem with the way apps are structured nowadays. There’s nothing natural about meeting someone over text; if it’s hard for sexually active people, it feels impossible for someone uninterested in sex in the early stages of a relationship. Asexuality is a spectrum, it doesn’t mean what many people assume it to. Many ace people have sex, many enjoy it, many don’t,
I fall fast or not at all. Often unjustifiably, and always disproportionately. But I guess those two words almost perfectly describe the sensation of having a crush on someone. What has this person done to deserve my undivided, and totally loyal, sense of attention? Usually, nothing. They are, a lot of the time, blissfully unaware of my lifeconsuming infatuation with them.
I think the feeling of having a crush is one of those unique things that stays the same regardless of age.
There’s something about having a crush. It’s the feeling that sneaks into the pit of your stomach. It’s the shortening of your breath. Regardless of how many people you’ve liked, a new crush always feels exciting.
And what a gift that is. To know that your body is still capable of feeling euphoric. To feel utterly weightless in the presence of someone else, and be guided, occasionally, by your heart and not your head.
This is not to amalgamate all crushes into one sensation. Even though those feelings stay the same, the infatuation and pangs and euphoria all perfectly familiar, our types of crushes shift — ever so slightly.
As Emily Dickinson pines after her unnamed crush in “Wild nights - Wild nights!”, we see the sheer magnetic pull of a crush: “Were I with thee / Wild nights should be / Our luxury!” This is the type of crush that electrifies every fibre in your body. The type of crush that releases an unearthly amount of dopamine and norepinephrine into your brain. Volumes that make you feel simultaneously elated and giddy. In other words, the one where you can’t sleep. Sometimes this crush hits you the moment you first see them, almost instantly and totally unexpectedly. I remember the first time I experienced this type of crush at university. I became so caught up in the electricity of the feeling, that I forgot I had a purpose beyond thinking about this person.
I was listening to a Maisie Peters song, “Wendy” recently: “You could take me to Neverland, baby / We could live off of magic and maybes”. This song is so trite, but everytime I listen to it I can’t help but think of my younger self, who got so lost in the magic of this type of crush that she forgot who she was. It’s the type of crush that makes you think you’re the first person to ever experience this feeling. It’s the
one that takes you to a new world, often against your rational volition.
The first time I watched Céline Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, I knew that all I wanted was a bond like Marianne and Héloïse. It’s the one we all yearn for. The crush that affects your body and mind equally, creating a bond that transcends physicality. There is no feeling more validating than realising that the other person feels the same way. And there is no feeling more devastating than realising they don’t. When they do, the experience is intoxicating and life changing. Those moments are as equally impossible to forget as they are to describe.
Growing up, I never told anyone about my crushes. They were my place of escape, my secret happy places that I could come back to whenever I desired. I would lie in bed and think about the prospect, giddy on the high of possibility. Now, my crushes are usually something far more bleak. Often, they are about yearning for the memory of something that was, rather than yearning for something that could be.
Unfortunately for me, my current crushes much more closely resemble
many feel indifferent. It frightens me that I don’t know where I sit just yet, it frightens me that I can’t give someone a definite answer of what I want and don’t want to do.
I want to believe in romance and I want to believe that I can have it, I want to be on my seventh date and have no imposing structure on where we should be up to, no pressure to rush myself, first base is enough for me.
the lyrics of “Message In A Bottle” by Taylor Swift; “Cause you could be the one that I love / I could be the one that you dream of / Message in a bottle is all I can do / Standin’ here, hopin’ it gets to you”. This is the most unsatisfying and unfulfilling crush of them all. The one that is so irrational you could classify it as a para-social relationship. The cruel abundance of content you can tap through at any moment makes this one far worse nowadays. It’s not them, it’s the idea of them. Don’t get me wrong though, being told this does not help. Clearly, when you’re in a dopaminenorepinephrine induced love coma, this annoyingly succinct phrase means nothing. Who cares if you’ve spoken to them twice, or drunkenly made out with them once. When you’re in it, your brain has no inability to tell lust from love. You simply must sit with it, which is the best and worst feeling in the world.
Maybe writing this was my attempt to justify my current “Message In A Bottle” crush. Who knows. In the meantime — hey Alexa? Play “I really, really, really like you” by Carly Rae Jepsen.
I redownloaded TikTok last week. This scene is pretty common. I put on a cute outfit and open the app to capture my wittiest takes on the latest cultural phenomena, only to delete it after a quick spiral. As a Masters student studying journalism at USyd, we are encouraged, nay, willed to weaponise our personal social media profiles for future success. I don’t love it, but the fact is: it’s not entirely stupid advice.
A quick look at national news consumption habits will show you that Aussies are moving more and more towards social media. A lot of the journalistic skills of times gone by are being mapped into a new medium to varying degrees of success. This I can accept. I get it. What I struggle with is the pressure to arrive at cadetship interviews as a fully formed online celebrity. I’ve always wanted to be a writer and generations before me got their foot in the door by being able to, well, write.
Yet the most successful contemporaries in my field, young journalists just a few years older than me, are often better known as meme
making, podcast hosting, social media icons than they are for their writing. There are a few lucky ones like Jia Tolentino — the New Yorker writer who built a career via an effortlessly glamorous online presence only to retreat into virtual mystery once the quality of her words had enough recognition. But Tolentino is the exception, not the rule.
This is so much the norm that it is baked into the curriculum for media and communications students. We are taught that to guarantee job security we must be readily-recognisable and chronically online, ready to comment on anything that has captured the cultural zeitgeist and drum up engagement in the process. To my teachers’ credit, when the AI overlords finally take all of the last reporting jobs out of Australian newsrooms, the remaining writers will be those with
a recognisable and uniquely human voice. Yet I remain struck by a couple of ethical dilemmas. Namely, can I write without crafting a caricature of myself online? Increasingly the answer is no.
When I was in high school I did a week of work experience at The Age in Melbourne. Bushy-tailed and brighteyed, I excitedly boasted to the adults around me that one day I would be a writer too. The consistent response to my enthusiasm was that journalism is a dead-end job. “There’s no work left,” I would hear, “the whole industry is spineless and corrupt anyway.” A grim outlook, yes, but not entirely incorrect. In 2012, Australian media was entering a dark age. A proliferation of digital technology had led to a demand for more news content, and people wanted it faster, and for free. By the early 2010s, most of these publishers
had shut down and quickly the two titans of print, News Corp and Fairfax, accounted for 86% of all newspaper sales.
In 2023 these challenges persevere, and as such, the job market continues to shrink. Those of us optimistic enough to believe we can and will be contributors and shapers to the public record have little choice. We can no longer simply join the ranks of a media brand to reach the Australian and global public. We must already be a brand in our own right. And that is something that I haven’t quite hacked. With all the worry and angst that I have about what this means for me, and for the priorities of our future journalists I also know that I am totally complicit. I love that my favourite writers are also stylish and current and insightful and vulnerable. and funny! I can complain but the dream to “Tolentino” my personality to access career opportunities remains very much alive. So if you see me shaking my ass on TikTok, chuck us a like — in doing so you are preserving the future of Australian journalism.
All University of Sydney students enrolled in undergraduate degrees or diplomas, or as other non-degree students, are eligible to vote in or nominate for the Annual Elections.
Nominations are called for the following elections/positions:
On-campus polling will be held on the 19th, 20th, and 21st, September 2023.
• Jane Foss Russell: Tues–Thurs 8:45am – 5:15pm
• Fisher Library: Wed & Thurs 8:45am – 5:15pm
• Manning House: Wed 10:45am – 3:15pm
• Conservatorium of Music: Wed 10:30am – 3:30pm
• Susan Wakil Health Building: Thurs 10:45am – 3:15pm
• Peter Nicol Russell Building: Thurs 10:45am – 3:15pm
Voters who are unable to vote in-person at the specified times above are able to request an online absentee vote via bit.ly/SRC-vote
The SRC Elections are conducted according to the SRC Constitution & Regulations, which are available here: bit.ly/SRC-regs. Appeals to the decisions of the EO can be directed to the ELA via srcela@src.usyd.edu.au
Nominations will be accepted online from 9:00am July 24th 2023 via the SRC nominations page: bit.ly/SRC-noms. The close of nominations shall be at 5:00pm August 18th 2023. For more information on how to nominate, please refer to the Candidate Information Pack available on the SRC website at: bit.ly/SRC-noms
For further information, please contact the Electoral Officer via elections@src.usyd.edu.au.
Authorised by R.Scanlan, 2023 Electoral Officer, Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: srcusyd.net.au
The speaker died and the still-buzzing began to leave, skidding away in clouds of bulldust, hunting for new thrills. Their headlights caught the spiralling particles in gold. We who were left huddled in little groups along the lip of the pit. Our pseudointellectualism was wearing thin. The faint sound of sobbing floated across to where me and Bodhi sat.
Should we head off? he asked me, head lolling.
Where’s Bubs?
With Matt and all them.
Has he got a car?
Nah, let’s walk.
I grimaced.
Not even that far dog, he said. It’s a perfect night.
Alright.
Bodhi jerked his head towards the shadows, away from the sodiumorange road.
It’s quicker this way, he said. I shrugged. We dusted off our arses, blinking as it rose and stung our eyes.
We followed a fire trail. On one side of the path, the earth sloped off sharply, shrubby trees tangled in vines hiding the valley. Sunbleached chip packets and bright plastic shards clung to their spiky branches like fruit. On the other side, a field of drying grasses, taller than us, stretched to the horizon, unseen mammals crunching inside. Bodhi was quiet. I found a star picket and swung it as we walked, listening to it slit the heavy air and crash against the grass. Startled moths beat their way towards the sky.
Wish we had a lighter, I said, thrilled by childish visions of our silhouettes against the blaze.
Don’t be stupid, said Bodhi.
Out here on the edge of town, the land was dead. It was hollowed out in sinking pits, carved up with sagging wire. The work of some developer before the money dried up again and the FIFOs left. It was art, really, almost, and a good place to torch a car. A few scraggly trees had escaped the bulldozers and the diggers, but it was mostly weedy grass, dotted with the odd fridge or rotten chair. It was inevitable that one day, the suburbs would bulge out and invade these spaces, but until then, the land was still.
I dragged my feet through the dirt. My stomach was aching and there was a steady pounding at the base of my skull. I could smell myself sweating out the cone I’d had earlier, cloying and slippery. It was a new moon and our vision buzzed with the screams of the crickets. Bodhi staggered just in front of me, his fuzzy form rendered in
black and slate, my guide through the static. His voice was raspy.
That was shit, he said.
Yeah.
I feel sticky, he continued, more to himself, I think. I could picture every contour of his face. He was staring up at the sky, the tendons in his neck straining, and I followed his gaze. The stars were blurry and cheap.
I dunno how much longer I’ll hang around here, he said.
Why? I asked. I kept my tone level.
Who’s still here?
What—all the fellas back the—
He sighed.
Yeah, but how many of them did you actually wanna see? Think about it. Kim and Hannah and George are overseas, there was that whole group that left for uni, Harry—well who knows—Matt told me tonight that he’s enlisting—
Really? I said.
I know but. What a creep.
We shook our heads.
I thought you liked it here though, I said.
Yeah, I do. But I need to get out man. It’s like- don’t laugh alright- there’s too much history here.
You’ve been watching too much TV.
I’m not being ironic enough for you? he said, waggling his fingers.
Everyone hates this shithole, mate.
Nah, you don’t get it.
Oh, what, you don’t wanna settle down yet? Yeah, real deep.
He rolled his eyes but I saw him swallow. I hoped he couldn’t see how much my neck was burning.
Somehow, we found the chain-link fence. Bodhi dragged away the itchy vines and kicked in one of the corners and squeezed through and I followed, the tips of the wire scraping my skin. We stood in an empty lot at the end of a cul-de-sac. A for-sale sign stood in one corner, the eyes of the grinning agent stabbed out. The streetlights were the LED type that were clean and bright and gave everything too many shadows.
We walked for a long time then, probably in circles, following winding roads with no footpaths, past boxy houses with frosted glass doors and grey roofs. Our voices echoed through the streets, though we spoke quietly. A four-wheel-drive roared by, tyres tearing at the road as it caught us
l Recollections
A kookaburra laugh cracks the quiet, Fractured mosaics of a dormant chorus.
Away goes the dull summer breeze
A voiceless invasion, Dry mouth
Dry limbs
Dry eyes
Aunty, Aunty?
My small hands make shapes in the red dirt; Unformed incantations.
Grit sifts through tired fingers
Grain by grain, Stone turns to sand, She turns into memories. Flashes of her face.
Bury it, Bury it.
Her eyes when she smiled.
Push it down.
I carry too much with me.
Too much sand.
Too many memories.
Bottle it up.
in its highbeams. The driver stared at us, though their face was buried in shadow.
The streets became straighter and the fences got taller. Then we were home. I started up the driveway to Bodhi’s place when he called me back.
Hang on, I wanna have a dart first.
He waggled a cigarette at me. I slouched at him and groaned, but I joined him on the kerb anyway. He lit it, took a puff, and passed it to me. I inhaled, imagining the smoke coiling through my sinuses.
You know the woman who lives there? Bodhi asked, pointing at one of the houses.
The old girl? I said.
Yeah.
I’d seen her a few times before, watering her immaculate lawn and her copperleaf bushes. She was short with sun-damaged skin and she wore loose floral dresses that frayed at the hem. I’d met her grandchildren years ago, but we’d never spoken.
What about her? I said.
Weirdest shit. A couple months ago, I was up real late, and I saw her walking naked down the street—
You’re a perv.
Nah, shut up and listen, he said, waving his hand in my face, his eyebrows tight.
She was full naked, right? And she walks up and down the road and sits on the nature strip for a while, and then goes back inside.
He looked at me expectantly. I shrugged and yawned. He clicked his tongue and turned away from me.
And from then on, she does this every coupla nights, only for like half an hour each time. After a while I kinda forgot about it. I dunno. I thought she might’ve been a bit cracked or something. But last week she did it in the middle of the day, just fully went out naked in front of everyone.
It’s a pretty busy street, I said.
Yeah oath. And everyone who drove past was staring at her and I think someone went out to check if she was okay and then some dog must’ve called the cops and they had a chat to her and took her back inside the house. Anyway, the next day she was back there watering the concrete again, seeming completely unphased. But I haven’t seen her out at night since. Not for at least two months. And I’ve been checkin— no shut the fuck up—she’s fully stopped.
He rocked back a little and blew air into his cheeks.
Hm. Maybe she’s losing it, I said.
Yeah maybe. But she might’ve been doing this for years.
Where can I put it all down?
Hands rake over crude squiggles, Clawing my soul. Dirt cakes my palms. Screw the lid on tight.
I leave the clearing, The headstone effigy And a single rose. Aunty, Aunty?
ll
Otto Blum
A silent intake of breath
The spirit’s breath
And no one noticed?
He snorted and shook his head.
Maybe they did, he said.
Bodhi’s room was the old granny flat. We blinked in the sudden light and we couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. Clothes were scattered across the floor though it wasn’t dirty. The fan creaked above us and made his hair flutter.
I can’t really be fucked blowing up the mattress. Can we just share? he asked through sagging eyes.
I was too tired to reply. I turned off the light and we took off our shirts and climbed into the double bed. Bodhi was turned away from me. We’d left the outside light on and it shone through the slanted louvres, and his back glowed gold.
Where do you think you’ll go? I asked, words slurred and quiet against the pillow. He didn’t respond. Then he rolled onto his back and turned his head towards me.
I dunno man, he said. He paused. You could come with.
His words smeared between us. The hair on his back was downy and swirled over his shoulders and his stubble was rough and it prickled up with each breath and there was a tiny drop of dried blood on his cheek where he’d knicked it with the razor and a pimple next to it, the skin around taut and shiny. I knew him, but not this close.
Yeah, I said. I struggled to collect my thoughts through the fog. My eyelids dropped.
Yeah, I continued, more forcefully. Nah, that sounds alright.
I opened my eyes lazily and was startled by the intensity of his gaze. He searched my face. I could suddenly feel my tongue in my mouth and the tightness in my jaw and the sweat between my thighs.
His fingertips were calloused and they scraped over my ribs with a dry rasp that I felt in my lungs as his arm wrapped around my back. His weight pushed against my breaths. I opened my own hand and rested it between his neck and shoulder. I felt the life rushing through him, just under his skin, calling to me. He was almost burning. His breath came out shaky and sweet, a tinge of acid and beer and adrenaline on his lips.
It’s only gay if your dad knows, he said, with a smile.
Our foreheads were touching, not pressed together, but gently moving against each other. He twisted a little under my palm, then very slowly brought his lips up to mine.
Bonnie JosephTussles Aunty Grace’s hair.
A mottled grey flurry
A rustle of leaves
A silent intake of breath. Reverence.
Wingbones pull against filmy skin
As she circles the fire, Skin alight with ember, Freckled with age.
Supple is the caress
Of aged immortality.
Eucalyptus branches croak
As Old Man magpie comes to watch, Eyes kindled and
Feathers damp with the spirits of rain, Wet seasons blessings.
The Old Man flaps his wings Ancient bones protest against taut skin.
Pit Pat
The ancestors fall from his feathers. He looks at Grace, Expectant.
The Old Man is waiting.
I am waiting. We are reverent. She cocks her head
Her voice but a warble Against the winds solemn march.
“Do you want to hear a story, old fella?”
lll Rebirth
Time heals all, But memories are nomads, Crammed in compartments, Wandering halls, Turning tight corners, Traipsing to the precipice... I fall.
Everytime.
I see her in the subtle forming of the earth, In the Babbling brooks
Glutted with fish, And the budding shoots
Soon to swallow the land.
I see her in my daughter, Rose.
Frolicking in my child-rivers, Turning water to gold
As the blessing of growth Settles in her bones, Mothered by the loam.
Sprung from the fecund valley, Come from the ash, The salt And clay.
A ghost in this new-old life. One day I will tell her, But not now. Not here.
Not amongst this unquiet earth.
Here, we are reverent. We are loved. We are one. Here, We are of the earth.
IV
Quickly, before you go An embrace.
Rich oils And clay-baked earth.
Half-cooked damper, Burnt wood, Animal feed, Dry linen, Spoken
But never once said.
“Let me show you something”
A needle on her compass, I follow.
Footsteps on familiar ground, Mud squelching under calloused feet, The belly of the earth, Swollen with beauty, Stained with the sun’s hues.
In the clearing
A kookaburra squeals. Empty, But not alone. Never alone.
Blades of grass tickle our backs
Petrichor hangs heavy, Seeping into my skin. Poking my soul.
Grace points, I look.
In the low branches hangs Old Man Magpie and his wife
Three baby birds
All grey And squawking And fresh And reborn. Eyes squinting against the
I had decided to go to a party. Everybody told me that it was far too soon to be out and about, but I couldn’t imagine spending another day cooped up in my bed, or sorting belongings, or anything really. More than anything, I wanted to get drunk and dance and talk to strangers who didn’t know about any of it.
By nature I didn’t know any strangers, so I called my friend Emily to arrange it. She was a good enough friend not to refuse me, but not good enough to babysit me all night and make sure I didn’t make any bad decisions. I was meeting her in an hour, so I sood in a towel and trimmed my fingernails over the bin in the kitchen, watching the clippings slide down between Dominos boxes and oily napkins. It was good to be clean, I hadn’t been in a while. I had taken some personal days, as suggested ever so kindly by my boss, which meant that I was underperforming and I looked like shit while doing it. I knew I looked like shit those first few days: red eyes and lank hair and yesterday’s clothes, but it helped to have somewhere to be. I had chewed the skin at the side of my thumb, leaving a raw patch that burned slightly when I washed my hands.
Rhea’s hands had short fingers, short nails. Wide, warm palms and forearms covered in angry oven burns and cuts. Her whole body was patchworked like that. Webs of tan lines from different bikinis interlinking over her back, freckles splattered over her nose and shoulders, silvery surgical scary criss-crossing under her belly button, a tattoo of a rabbit on her thigh.
She’d had the ileostomy when she was eleven. She had been a sickly kid: pale and underweight, scared of sports and boys and loud noises, avoiding birthday cakes at parties on account of the terrible stomach cramps she got almost every time she ate. She was the youngest in a large Greek family, she told me, living in a bustling multi-generational home in the outer suburbs of Melbourne—always able to give her helping to a hungry older brother or uncle, concealing for months that she was frightened to death of her body and of food. By the time she was ten, she would spend several nights a week doubled over on the toilet, passing blood and whimpering in pain.
Eight months later she had the stoma constructed, the strange white bag attached
to the side of her abdomen, and food, after that, was like a revelation. There was no more fear in it. Textures, tastes, aromas. Each and every one of them was hers to discover, to create.
I got so fat that Summer, she told me as I sat at her kitchen table finishing a report, that even my feet gr ewthree sizes.
Rhea taught me everything I knew about food, about taste. Growing up outside of the city, I had never had Thai or Indian food before I met her, and never put enough salt or olive oil on anything I made. We went on a trip to Germany together during my Summer break and ate fatty pork knuckles dripping with gravy and roast potatoes with golden, leathery skin. The next year she went to culinary school and would come home with pastries and purees and stir-frys thickened with cornstarch slurry.
The party was for the birthday of somebody named Ollie, held in a sharehouse in Newtown. Walking into the hallway, I was assaulted by the loud techno music coming from a speaker in the living room. On a table beside the speaker, I took a plastic cup and filled it with boxed white wine, swallowing it in a few sips and refilling my glass. I walked out to the back garden and sat on a wicker chair beside a man unconvincingly smoking a cigarette. He had a long face and a chin that veered to the left, slightly underdressed in a blue t-shirt and joggers. My age, probably.
Hey he said.
Hi, I replied.
We sat in silence for a moment.
I only smoke when I drink. He said. How do you know the host?
I don’t.
Then who do you know?
Emily. She’s got red hair.
I don’t know her.
Oh. Actually, I’m not sure that she’s here. I live here. He said, I’m housemates with Ollie.
Oh, right.
I was aware that I was boring him, but felt unable to think of my own question. I looked over my shoulder.
enormity Of life.
My fingers are taken By wrinkled palms. Like tree bark Dappled with the shade of time.
“This is forever. We are forever”.
V Reprise
Wrinkled hands take nimble fingers, An ephemeral touch In a pocket of eternity.
Rosie makes indistinct shapes In the red dirt. Plucking at the grit, Hands lined with red. Silence.
And then a beating of wings, The call of an old friend, Laden with the sweeping Narrative of time.
Old Man Magpie lazes on a branch, Swatting his wings in the heat, Watching, Waiting.
Are you looking for someone?
No, I said.
Is something wrong?
No, I said. It’s not about the party. My best friend died last week.
What?
The music had gotten louder.
My best friend. She died, last week. He didn’t respond for a moment, so I gave him another to see what he would say. Then, the impulse to rescue him kicked in.
It’s okay, she was sick for a long time. I was prepared for it.
It wasn’t so much a lie than it was less than mostly true: she was sick, I wasn’t prepared.
What’s your name? I asked him. Max, he said.
Nice to meet you, Max. I said, does that mean your room’s upstairs?
Rhea and I had moved in together after I graduated university and got my first job at an accounting firm in the CBD. At the time, she worked at a trendy restaurant in Barangaroo, pulling her wild hair into a bun and packing her knives up every afternoon to go to work six nights a week. She would come home a little after three most nights, putting our shitty K-mart pans on high heat and filling the house with the intoxicating smell of fried onions, sausages and slightly stale bread seared in the leftover grease and smothered with butter. Other nights she would have loud sex with Tony, a heavily tattooed dishwasher from work, and I would cover my head with a pillow and vow to have it out with her in the morning. Of course, she was always still asleep by the time I left for work.
Upstairs, Max lay me on his dirty sheets and unzipped my jeans, sliding them off my legs as he climbed on top of me to kiss my neck. He had long, pale fingers, slightly cool to the touch. I tugged on the hem of his shirt and slipped my hand underneath it to feel the ripples of his stomach. He shivered, then shrugged his shirt off over his head as he walked over to his desk drawer.
She wasn’t scared at first. Rhea thought that it was another colitis complication, and
A slow warble, The unsung ancient verse. Solace in wisteria, Chorus of the quiet earth. A cock of the head, A bow of the neck, And then, He is gone.
I am saddled with all That once drove me away, But perhaps memory Is the only home I will get. And so I say, “Let me tell you a story”.
A kookaburra laugh cracks the quiet. All at once I have lived And I am living And I will live And I am here And I am real And Rose is holding my hand And I feel Grace And I am Grace All at once, I am here And I am of the earth. We are of the earth.
Lucy Baileythat she’d maybe need a revision surgery. She had lost her appetite again, and would wince with the pain of her stomach cramps in the evening. Eventually she called out of work, lying on the couch with a hot water bottle and watching endless reruns of Modern Family. I told her I could pay the rent, she wouldn’t have to worry. But, the night after the diagnosis, she told me she was moving home. Stage IV colon cancer, spread to the bowel and the bladder. We booked a plane ticket and lay in bed beside each other, awake. Neither one of us was brave enough to cry.
I went to visit her three weeks later, bringing a cardboard box full of clothes and Ottolenghi cookbooks. Her father brought us cups of milky tea and biscuits and we flipped through the pages together, bookmarking recipes for pan-fried salmon and Iranian herb fritters. Her appetite was all in her eyes, though, she looked far thinner and paler than the last time I had seen her. She was propped up in her wire framed bed in flannel pyjamas, a lumpy, hand knitted shawl over her shoulders. As the afternoon turned blue and cold, we looked through the window she used to sneak out of as a teenager. The leaves were thinning, it was the beginning of Winter. I told her the gossip about our mutual friends, that Tony had broken his parole, and we drank more cups of tea, listening to her grandmother yell at her nephews out in the hallway. It was strange.
While Max took a shower, I found my clothes and walked to the bus stop. It was quiet tonight, nobody about. I unlocked the door and let myself in, walking to the kitchen and pouring myself a glass of water. I felt drunk and slightly sick. It was still strange for the house to be so quiet at this time of night. The air was too clean smelling.
With that thought, I pulled a cast iron pan out of the cupboard and put it on high heat. I put in a few glugs of oil, watching it smoke slightly as it formed a film over the bottom of the pan. I rummaged through the freezer, digging out half a packet of hash browns and frozen sausages. They hissed violently as they hit the pan, spattering up onto the countertop and making the house room smell warm and savoury.
gratification it elicits. It matters because it pleases, like a piece of chocolate. While there is truth in this, the temptation ought to be resisted. To equate art with pleasure is to obscure it, turn it into a mystery: why an artwork moves us becomes not a matter of aesthetics, but one of psychology and anthropology.
inflexible; too fixated on ‘content’ and theory; it breeds and rewards obfuscation—but its most serious fault, the gravamen of my complaint, is that it leaves the student with no clearer idea of why literature matters. The question is a critical one, as art is constantly pressed to prove its value, and the fact that we often struggle to answer it is the symptom of a much wider problem—that in a society plagued by scientistic, utilitarian excesses, it is ever harder to take art and imagination seriously.
I take it as a datum that art matters to us in an essential way. Saying that literature is valuable because it teaches critical thinking or, better yet, formation of character, or that an artwork matters because of its supernal message, seems to me to miss the point completely. The value of an artwork is more primitive—we encounter it first in experience. When we listen to a celebrated classical symphony, or stand before a painting by Rembrandt or Monet, the sense of wonder strikes us before we could say why, spontaneously, we come to regard it as a piece of great art. Art does not need to be wonderful—it could also be harrowing or traumatic—but it needs to be overwhelming, immensely and endlessly interesting.
Here a temptation arises—we want to say: the value of art is the prodigious
But an artwork is, surely, not a mystery. When we look at it close-up, attend to its infinite details, we find clues about what makes it so impactful. This is why, after all, we have art criticism (and no ‘chocolate criticism’). Suppose that you think Chopin’s First Ballade is not a piece of art. To convince you, I would point to its features: ‘Listen here, the meandering melody suggests a search…’ By tracing for you, as it were, the terrains in the world created by the artwork, I invite you to see its beauty and grandeur. If you disagree that the Ballade is art, you may feel compelled to produce some arguments of your own: ‘This passage is too sentimental…that the harmony resolves so effortlessly defeats the purpose…’ And we might go on arguing about it. But the point is that if instead of offering a counterargument, you merely say, ‘I just don’t like it’, then we cannot help but feel that it is a feeble response. Whereas one might say this in explanation of why they do not like a piece of chocolate, it is out of place in a discussion about art.
Distinguishing aesthetic experience from sensory pleasure in this way leaves us with a problem: people often do not agree in their aesthetic judgments. Are Shakespeare’s plays art? (Voltaire and Tolstoy did not think so.) And what about John Cage’s 4’33’’? Sure, arguments could be made, but they are hardly ever decisive. Nowadays, it seems that anything could be art anyway. Does this not make the notion purely subjective, if not empty?
Judgments about artworks are clearly not objective—there is no ‘fact-of-thematter’ about aesthetic value; but neither is it merely subjective—as we
have seen, we can reason about whether an object is art. Immanuel Kant remarked that aesthetic judgments are really somewhere in between— they are ‘subjective and universal’, or, perhaps, ‘intersubjective’. When I say, ‘This Ballade by Chopin is beautiful,’ I’m making a subjective judgment, yet at the same time I expect you to agree. I posit my claim as if it were universally valid, and were you to contradict me, I would be shocked, upset, and, unless you could justify your belief, think you have bad taste. An artwork does not demonstrate its worth by way of an empirical proof. Rather, it demands your attention and appreciation, that you prove your taste by seeing it as art. Arguments in art are not tested against observable evidence, as in physics, but against each person’s sensibility and imagination.
In a world dominated by scientism, uncertainties may be hard to swallow. Yet the fact that aesthetic claims are not provable is not a fault but a strength. Because arguments in art do not compel the conclusion, but merely invite it, the judgement that a work is art is one freely made. I do not accept the nihilist view, sometimes touted, that art is whatever that is displayed in an art gallery. In art, as in ethics, there is no authority—everyone must judge for themselves. Just as a courageous act is commendable only because there was the possibility of acting cowardly, an aesthetic judgment shows ‘good taste’ only because it was not compulsory. Part of why art matters to us is because the sort of art we enjoy, and the aesthetic judgments we make, reveals something about who we are—it unites and divides us. Through art, we become aware of the astonishing degree to which we are similar to others, as well as where we are different. In particular, we might find in the composer a kindred spirit.
What I have been championing so far is the primacy of aesthetic experiences. Criticism and theory, by examining the artwork’s features and constructing its creative logic, demystify the je ne sais quoi that confronts us at first. But
the artwork does not thereby lose its magic. A remarkable fact about great art—and, in my view, its distinguishing feature—is that there always seems to be more that can be said about it. A play like Hamlet is timeless because it is a world so richly endowed—with hints and suggestions, but not messages— that there are always more discoveries to be made, more connections to be drawn. The metaphor of a world is apt, because viewing an artwork ought to be an imaginative exploration— one lingers and relishes in its infinite details. Theories can help one make sense of these details, but if they were aimed, instead, at imposing a totalising rational structure, then they are not only doomed for failure, but missing the point.
In How to Read a Poem, the literary critic Terry Eagleton complains about students’ obsession over a poem’s ‘content’: ‘They treat the poem as though its author chose for some eccentric reason to write out his or her views…in lines which do not reach to the end of the page.’ In my experience, too, literary analysis is often taught as an exercise in plucking messages from the text— as if were the work to not have a ‘key takeaway’, its value would hang in thin air. Yet if what made a poem great were its message, why not simply write it in prose? An artwork hints, intimates, and questions, but it never tells
Too often, when pressed about the value of art, an apologist has to choose between two equally unpalatable options. They must either postulate some utilitarian benefit—which is irrelevant if true at all—or concede that art is valuable because it brings pleasure. But, as we have seen, neither view takes art seriously. More than a source of pleasure, or a message masked in some beautified form, an artwork is a world that confronts us—it demands to be imagined, acknowledged, and endlessly explored.
When I was 18 Sydney felt like the universe:
Coming into gay life through the expansive nature of university, in all its culture and intellect, felt like the city opening up and folding in on itself as a constant, endless place for exploration and discovery.
I don’t mean gay life as in meeting other gay people. Rather, gay life as a mode of mixing with the world around me as a gay person. Ocean Vuong speaks about being queer as demanding ‘alternative innovation.’ ‘I had to make alternative routes,’ he says. ‘It made me curious; it
made me ask, ‘Is this enough for me?’
And it was never enough for me.
In the middle stages of my teen years when my friends were exploring their sexuality, there was no one for me to do that with. I should be clear that I’m not a victim here – I could most definitely chat about girls I wanted to date. But I mean in a more literal sense: there was no one for me to let out all my teenage, hormonal desire for sloppy washing with. It felt like after the rapid, upwards stretch of childhood, my growth was stunted. So instead I turned to the city around me, and placed myself in its constant, humming
history; a sloppy pash of sorts. I let it nurture me and I did my all to nurture it, through its people and pool tables and dance floors.
These later years of university have become increasingly populated by conversations about moving overseas, about finding something more. When did these spaces around us stop being more? When did the infatuation with our surrounds start feeling like a nostalgic end, not a beginning? Did Sydney open us up to so much, that we couldn’t help but
wonder what more there must be?
I’m of course not special in feeling like this.
Clive James was part of a generational group who uprooted Australian theatre through the student scene. But as soon as his cohort finished their time in SUDS, they got straight on a ship to London.
‘In Sydney Harbour, twelve thousand miles away and ten hours from now,’ he wrote in a memoir, ‘the yachts will be racing on the crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires. It would be churlish not to concede that the same abundance of natural blessings which gave us the energy to leave has every right to call us back.’
He’s right, it would be churlish not to concede the right this land holds over us – but it’s selfish to outgrow it in the first place.
I have a somewhat judgemental viewpoint. I’m Aboriginal; Clive is white. And maybe he doesn’t quite get it. But this land is generous enough, commanding enough, to place in all of us something we so commonly can’t shake.
The desire to go further away from where we are now is a curse of modernity. An almost colonial need to discover. To seek more through literally seeking more. What if we commit to going deeper instead – to staying in this place and rediscovering the every day.
This city demands thoughts and
I love finding little gay things in history. Whenever I do, I feel a vindictive triumph over the gaping vacuum of queerness in my education. I have achieved a victory against my enforced ignorance. The teaching of history takes on a structure of factual recall in early years—remembering when wars took place, this name, this location and what they ate; all the things we relish in the present. But as we revisit history, shades of grey begin to appear. The practice of history requires design with raw materials of evidence cobbled together in patterns. What do we find when we dig beneath these patterns—what does it mean?
Only recently in my life has this next stage, historiography, emerged. Who is history for? How is it conducted? Who records it, who recites it, who interprets it?
I enjoyed playing with these concepts in their abstract form, pondering the past being informed by the present, and having an evolving interpretation. I loved the idea of new, fresh investigation always being laid on top of the old in endless layers of new knowledge. At the same time, I was experiencing this process in real concrete time-—on the internet. Tumblr: It’s an ugly word when you want to be serious, but it cannot be denied that this was my first- embarrassingly rudimentary- introduction to queer theory as a teenager. Posts whispered to me in secretive lowercase: ‘shakespeare was bi’, ‘virginia woolf loved a woman’, and a rattling earthquake deep in the recesses of my skull: ‘the ancient greeks were gay’.
cultural interest; our mistake is thinking it’s pointing us to elsewhere. Sydney’s chronic issue is being of constant likeness. On a rainy day, you could be in London. Lay in the sun on the beach long enough, and you could be in Spain. We must shift our focus to stop thinking of these as borrowed traits, and start recognising them as unique.
It would be a mistake to let another generation view Sydney as nothing but a vessel to a life beyond it. Instead of knowing a little bit about everywhere, what if we commit to sticking around, and knowing everything about somewhere? What if we watch Sydney change, sit by it through its awkward stages, massage it through its growing pains. We could learn about the
Zoe Le MarinelInitially, these little tidbits irked me. They struck me as smug and selfsatisfied. They seemed to say ‘Ha! Bet you didn’t know that!’. Even though I was out of the closet at this time, my first reaction to a queer interpretation of history was not favourable. I couldn’t conceive that school, my one true love, could have kept this from me. The notion was offensive. However, the complacent absence of queerness from my education became glaringly obvious. In studying the development of societies originating thousands of years before us It occurred to me that to deny queer people a history was tantamount to denying us an existence. My first attempts to construct my own interpretation of history—one that meant something to me—was with the help of other teenagers over the internet who also had to find these things out for themselves. I had to seek permission to think of history as gay.
With substantially more robust queer theory under my belt these days, the queering of history is integral to my understanding of my own queerness. It’s moved me from using specified labels for myself to using none, purely to remove myself from my old ideas of sexuality and gender labels as concrete pillars of the human experience. Because truthfully, statements like ‘shakespeare was bisexual’ are making a lot more assumptions than they appear to be. The word ‘bisexual’ is doing heavy lifting here, and the mistake is to assume its concreteness, that ‘bisexual’ is an ever-fixed mark representing attraction to more than one gender. On the occasion of its first recorded use in 1859, the definition of ‘bisexual’ was much closer to our understanding of the term ‘intersex’. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was more synonymous with androgyny. Its current use emerged in the 1970s in the UK. The basic error here might be a categorical one i.e. because Shakespeare existed before the word was coined, the word doesn’t apply.
The more nuanced approach is to acknowledge the word ‘bisexual’ as having a specific cultural function that
doesn’t apply to Shakespeare. Another example would be the Ancient Greeks. I would consider it a gross simplification to refer to their society as ‘gay’, especially in an academic context, as the modern concept of a gay person would not map on to the Greek model. The Ancient Greeks viewed homosexuality as a developmental phenomenon, associated with both a strict gender binary and social hierarchy. A young boy, the eromenos, took on a feminine role in the relationship, and an older man, erastes, took on the masculine. Men in the ages between had wives and children. The Greeks had their own word for these homosexual relationships, pederasty Author and professor Emily Skidmore uses the term ‘queer embodiment’ to describe figures of history that exhibit sexuality and gender expression outside of the norm, especially those that might be thought of as transgender. It acknowledges the gap between their reality and ours, it honestly represents the limitations of our words, our labels. At the same time, it provides the connective tissue between modern LGBTQIA+ people and our history. It solicits space for our existence.
So, my official stance is that to use labels like ‘gay’ and ‘trans’ to describe figures in history should be done very sparingly if at all, and with a strong appreciation for the cultural relativism involved. And yet I find myself to be a horrible hypocrite. After re-reading Peter Pan a few years back, I went online to learn more about the book’s history. I found this description of the author, J. M. Barrie from Nico Llewellyn-Davies, a dear friend:
“I don’t believe that [Barrie] ever experienced what one might call ‘a stirring in the undergrowth’ for anyone—man, woman, or child”, he stated. “He was an innocent—which is why he could write Peter Pan.”
A word I have for this kind of ‘innocence’ burns in me to be acknowledged. Barrie also maintained a long correspondence with author Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island. They never met but
secrets that hide in every little crease and fold, wear it out until its wrinkles tell stories all of their own.
A universalist mentality might be a privileged gift of university education. But on a rainy afternoon on Glebe Point Road, Sydney can be the universe, too.
“To be blunt I have discovered (have suspected it for some time) that I love you, and if you had been a woman...”
He leaves the sentence unfinished. And now my historical impartiality is struggling. The image of J.M. Barrie living his brilliant life as a homoromantic asexual man who was blessed by his queerness to write one of the most beloved children’s books of all time is sacredly precious. The appeal of it is unspeakable.
Even though it is often an inaccurate description, there is a wonderful intimacy in using ‘our’ words for them. It seems important to acknowledge that the impulse to do this is not something that comes about out of pure ignorance or stupidity. It is an intelligible desire to connect to our estranged history of queerness and I cannot reproach it. After all, the teenagers on the internet weren’t scholars; most of us were preJudith Butler. We were looking for ourselves in a version of history that seemed desperate to squeeze us out, to leave us drifting on the outskirts. But now that we are grown up, it’s time for us to add our knowledge to the pool. And part of this will be to show integrity in the ways we discuss ‘queer embodiment’ in its ever-changing manifestations. If queer history is going to be good history, it deserves better than any kind of simplification. Give yourself a place in history, use your own clumsy, modern words, it’s okay! Just remember—it can’t be like this forever.
Week 1 done! It was great to be at the stalls promoting the SRC and a number of the activist projects we are involved in. We handed out hundreds of mini-handbooks, semester planners, keychains and flyers for upcoming events. During the week, a number of SRC representatives ran the USyd Students for Yes BBQ, and next week the SRC is supporting a Yarn Circle at 12pm on August 10th.
On Tuesday I attended the Academic Standards and Policies Committee where I pushed against some changes to the Student Discipline Rule which I believe could be unfairly used against student activists. I also attended a forum on Homes for People not For Profit which SRC Education Ishbel was speaking at.
Welcome week went super well, thanks to everyone who helped out with the stalls, it was really great to chat to so many students and talk about the src and upcoming events. We’ve got plenty of leftover flyers and merch so keep an eye out for some mini src stalls on the busy strips in coming weeks.
Rad Ed week will be known as the Festival of Radical Thinking this year and will take place August 22-25 (week 4), put it in the calendars. Sessions are being planned by a range of great organisers all keen to get a hold of interesting speakers and host sessions w engaging formats!
YASMIN ANDREWS
JAMIE BRIDGE
ANGUS MCFADDEN ELLA PASH
QuAC meetings in semester 2 are now held on Tuesdays at 1pm on odd weeks, and Mondays at 5pm on even weeks.
QuAC had a very active pride month, which we began by successfully disrupting gatherings of over 150 bigots in Sydney’s queer hotspots and high-traffic areas, which were meant to intimidate the queer community. We drowned out the event’s preachers and took down their livestream (thus preventing donations) by playing ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry and ‘Born This Way’ by Beyonce over a large megaphone. On the night of the group’s march through Oxford Street, the police presence prevented any attempted community response, which emboldened the bigots to attempt two alleged assaults against queer bystanders.
On June 22nd, we co-organised NUS Queer’s ‘TERFs Begone’ snap action outside NSW parliament, against a gathering of 8
On Wednesday night, the 95th SRC met for our 7th Council of the year and we discussed the religious vilification bill (which unfortunately passed this week), the Equality Bill, the Welfare Not Warfare campaign (protest Wednesday 1pm), the Universities Accord, demanding independent oversight over unacceptable campus sexual assault, solidarity with the Black Lives Still Matter rally later this month and more.
Next week, come along to the SRC and SUPRA’s forum on Friday 11th at 3pm to re-launch the campaign for concession opal cards for international students. Details for all collective events throughout the week are posted on SRC Social Media on Monday mornings. My consultation hours and continuing as Wednesdays at 3pm to 5pm, drop by the office at this time or email me to arrange a new time.
Welcome back! It was lovely to see many of you during Welcome Week and hope you’re keen for the coming Semester!
ICYMI, FoodHub is now open on Monday-Friday from 10am-2pm and has moved to Level 3 of the Wentworth Building. All students in financial need are welcome to collect free food throughout Semester, and if you would like to volunteer or give feedback, please contact us at vice.president@src.usyd. edu.au.
We were so happy to see some of your faces at the USyd Students for the Voice BBQ, held on Tuesday 1 August at Manning. We heard from Aunty Norma, who spoke about the role a Voice to Parliament would play in providing important and honest advice to parliament in matters concerning First Nations people. We have many other events coming up in the next few weeks as the referendum closes in, so please come along! Contact @usydstudentsvoteyes on Insta to get involved.
Get ready for a very exciting Semester and for the SRC elections taking place in just a few weeks!
Love Daniel and Rose xx
Contestable funding - after a long wait in what feels like a very drawn out process that was very time-consuming during the application phase, we can confirm the following funding has been granted to the src through the contestable SSAF process: $10,000 further for ut WW activities; $12,000 for rad ed and rad sex and consent weeks; $24,662 for stipends for Disabilities, Ethno and Indigenous OBs; $7,769 to promote the SRC elections; $2,750 for SRC policy and procedures overview; $5,500 for maintenance to the Honi website; $0 for our 100+ years of international students project as that will apparently come through student life instead. We are very pleased to have received the vast majority of funding for almost every project that we applied for!
Accordingly, we were happy to present the council with the full budget of the 95th SRC last week, which may be of some interest to you. Keep an eye out for the minutes of that meeting in the coming weeks as there is not the space here to fit it all in.
of the most prominent transphobes in socalled “Australia”.
Furthermore, we also played an instrumental part in planning the June 25 ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights’ rally, which we also led. The rally saw a strong turnout of approximately 450 people marching for a raft of positive demands such as self-ID, trans healthcare and safe schools.
On July 8th, we co-organised a snap action against a transphobic event at UTS. Later that month, we organised a queer contingent to the RAC Refugee Rally and monitored a transphobic rally in Hyde Park, which saw protestors displaying signs reading “LGBTQ = pedophilia”. We also organised the student contingent to the CARR LGBTI+ rights Rally on August 5, against the religious vilification bill.
In response to the trashing of Fagi Soit, we successfully sought a reprint of the edition, in an ‘insert’ format. We also have our annual gender affirmation supply drive coming up soon. Get your request in quickly as the budget is limited. More info at @usydqueer on Instagram.
The Autonomous Collective Against Racism has been very busy…. Last week we had our first event for Semester 2 - a film screening of ‘Concerning Violence’, a 2014 documentary about anti-colonial resistance in Africa based on Frantz Fanon’s essay by the same title.
This Thursday 10 August we will have our first (autonomous) meeting. On Saturday 12 August we will have a delegation to Coonabarabran where we will stand with Gomeroi people against the Santos project in the Pilliga. If you’re keen to come along and not sure how to get there - message us to find out if we can fit you into a car!
We’ve been postering, flyering and building for the Black Lives Still Matter rally - which we are helping to organiseon August 19 at Sydney Town Hall. Justice for First Nations people does not end at constitutional recognition and we need to be on the streets echoing First Nations activist demands, like implementing the Royal Commision recommendations into Deaths in Custody.
We, like many other collectives, finished our recruitment effort over Welcome Fest!
We expect that the Disabilities Community Room -- that’s the official name for our autonomous space -- will be finished in mid-October following updates from the University. There are lots of moving parts in this project as we are in the unique position of having three student organisations presiding over the same space.
We are also working on a history of our Collective alongside SUPRA. Here’s a sneak peak: it was not until 1987 that we made real inroads into the SRC and then, 1988
These pages belong to the Office Bearers of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council.
On August 18 we are throwing a FUNdraising party with QOCO and POC Revue - Decolonising Colour - where all fundraised money will go to Mutual Aid So-Called Oz. This is a masqueradethemed party so grab (or make) a mask, wear a colourful outfit and come dance the night away while listening to our incredibly talented Black, Indigenous and POC artists. We have a really exciting night planned at the wonderful venue The Red Rattler!
If you identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of colour, and want to get involved in anti-racist, anti-colonial organising on campus, find us on Instagram at @ usydacar and come to our next event!
*all events listed above are nonautonomous (open to everyone) unless stated otherwise*
that a Disabled Students’ Committee was finally installed in the SRC Regulations -making it 35 years since our establishment. We will have a meeting next week and we are also planning a movie screening for Radical Education Week. On Friday 6 October, we will be hosting a panel event featuring disability activists, students and other advocates on Disability and Higher Education with a focus on how to attain political change following the Disability Royal Commission. On this note, we and the wider SRC executives are working on proposals looking at accessible and studentfriendly disability awareness training events to promote disability knowledge and pride on our campus.
We thank our fellow collectives and the SRC executive for being their assistance with our projects and proposals so far
They are not altered, influenced or otherwise changed by the Editors of Honi Soit.
Dear Abe, I’m really struggling with the cost of living. I can’t work many hours a week as I’m studying full time. I have an unpaid placement next week and I don’t know how I’ll afford rent. Is there anything you can suggest?
JS
Tips for staying on track at uni Deadlines seem to creep out from the shadows; silent, stealthy, sleek. You may have seen them in the unit outline, or maybe a lecturer mentioned the double D – due date! Your mind is a powerful entity that locked that somewhere deep within, so that the closer it gets the more the alarms sound. Luckily, you can train your mind to avoid panic and instead be proactive in confronting looming deadlines.
The time to prepare for deadlines starts early on. You can:
Get an SRC year planner and highlight these important dates:
• last day to add a unit: 11 August
• Census date - last day to withdraw (WD): 31 August
• First assessments: check your unit outline and Canvas
The time to prepare for deadlines starts early on in the semester. Plan out your due dates and other key dates in an online calander, time management module or the SRC Wallplanner.
Dear JS, Domestic students might be eligible for Centrelink benefits. The SRC webiste has information on Centrelink Payments for Students and a Living on Little Money article (linked below) that you might find helpful.
The University has bursaries, scholarships, and interest free loans that might help. Taking on too much could cause you to fail classes, so you may finish your degree quicker by reducing your study to part-time, or taking a break and coming back when you are ready. If you would like to discuss these or other options, you contact an SRC Caseworker through the online contact form (bit.ly / SRCcaseworker) or by calling 9660 5222. Abe.
• Date exam timetable released:
9 October
• Add these dates to your phone calendar with a reminder 1 week ahead
We know that Centrelink is challenging, but we want to know what you think about the changed way you report your income.
To have your say, head to: bit.ly/3tu6Kv0
Tackle things in little bits.
For instance, you begin writing a paper 2 weeks ahead of due day, setting 20 min intervals for where you just type whatever comes to mind, without stopping to think too much or make corrections. Then a week before deadline, you start editing and refining your thoughts.
Know who you can reach out to –please know that informing your lecture about difficulties you’re having can help you. Feel free to contact a caseworker at SRC help if you’re not sure how to communicatee what’s going on.
Sometimes, it seems that deadlines invite others due dates: show good cause deadlines, academic honesty deadlines… submit further evidence deadlines! These can all be very confronting, but it might help to break the task into smaller bits. For instance, respond to the person who’s set the date. Let them know if that date is feasible or if you need an extension. Explain any limits you might have or competing demands on your time. You can be honest about how busy you are. If your deadline arrives and you are not ready to act, then say so.
The university might offer you flexibility if they know what your issues are.
Finally, talk to a university academic advisor. They may be able to help you with managing your study load and give you some ideas on ways to improve the way your approach specific subjects and your degree.
Finally, if you are too stressed out and unwell to complete an assessment task, speak to your doctor or a counsellor to get a Professional Practitioner’s Certificate to be able to apply for special consideration
Across
9. Violently execute Coles shopper (5)
10. Cat and head lion tumble in a Spanish region (9)
11. Leaves sweets without sugary topping (7)
12. Gradual conversion to Cosmo’s Islamic sect (7)
13. The French leaves chilled spy, potentially (5)
15. Everyone’s talking about line of pool equipment (3)
16. Stand (3)
17. Channel showing big black cock (3)
19. Endlessly allege Rambo extremely gay (7)
20. Kelly returns to hideaway (3)
23. Thus you start becoming a beta (3)
24. Loudly kiss me (3)
25. Knead ingredients like 22 Down, say (5)
27. Rolled dice then ate fermented refreshment (4,3)
29. Know about desire to be where you might find 9, 13, 33 Across, 3, 5, 8, 15, 22
Down (7)
32. Widespread topless sext leads to sensitive STI eradication (9)
33. Wok-fried glass noodles initially inverted by dinner lady (5)
Across
9. Train or bus? (5)
10. Townsfolk (9)
11. Centre of an atom (7)
12. Holy day (7)
13. Stress, chaos (5)
15. Zip (3)
16. Poorly (3)
17. Fire residue (3)
19. Jesus Christ! (2,2,3)
20. Ovum (3)
23. Doze (3)
24. Consume (3)
25. Horizontal plane (1-4)
27. Oklahoma! or Oliver!, say (7)
29. Prospero’s daughter (7)
32. Occasionally (9)
33. Radio star killer (5)
Down
1. Depiction of a saint (4)
2. Bird of prey (6)
3. Piece of footwear (4)
4. Movies (4)
5. Torch (10)
6. Young farm animal (4)
7. French President (2,6)
8. Respiratory condition (6)
13. Vegetable (3)
14. Respiratory infection (5)
15. Pseudonym (3,2,5)
16. Pointer (5)
18. Attractive (8)
21. A state of matter (3)
22. Nearly (6)
26. Where Kubla Khan did his stately pleasure dome decree (6)
28. Blanchett (4)
29. Soybean paste (4)
30. Dance wildly (4)
31. Upon (4)
Puzzles by Luke Christopher West.
Down
1 You Spanish can’t keep trading head second-hand (4)
2. Snob goes up to robot tree (6)
3. Queen reveres Captain Cook (4)
4. One’s wins (4)
5. Ethnologist pointlessly pulled apart simple man (10)
6. Ape leaves apple with hesitation for other fruit (4)
7. Biased, so denied remodelling (3-5)
8. Oral traditions regarding goddess of the home (6)
13. Scoot by every second piece of corn (3)
14. History of milk products gone off (5)
15. Judge balsamic dressing to be infused with French gold (10)
16. Lost English letter found on ancient horns (5)
18. Cassandra loudly ate tape (8)
21. Bradman reversed gesture of approval (3)
22. Jam (i.e. fruit primarily recontextualised) (6)
26. Gun backfires, head honcho eyes model at testing site (6)
28. Fuck NATO, cut back military infrastructure (4)
29. Keen to smash joint (4)
30. Kid thanks discontent Kanye (4)
31. Endless night is on the horizon (4)
Address: http://misinformation.com.au
Nick Riemer announces USU workers’ strike after CEO Andrew Mills seen wearing bucket hat at Welcome Fest Man arrives at Big Bash League cricket game: This isn’t the BBL I signed up for Colleges to start mandatory afrobeats hour to combat systemic racism
Gym bro takes up challenge of squatting for 12 years to get house
Rio Tinto blows up Gadigal Centre after signing new agreement with University of Sydney
“The University is on a net zero glidepath” says media spokesperson, as Santos opens gas project on Cadigal Green.
“The University did not buy the stocks this year” says USyd media, as convincingly as Bill Clinton, circa 1998.
Great Scott! Mark Scott has fallen off F23 roof
Lemon myrtle-flavoured pancakes with bush honey named a key deliverable in USU’s Reconciliation Action Plan
Bananas in Pyjamas file a restraining order against Lizzo
