Honi Soit: Week 8, Semester 2, 2024

Acknowledgement of Country

Honi Soit is produced, published and distributed on the stolen land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded. For over 235 years, First Nations peoples in so-called ‘Australia’ have continued to suffer under the destructive effects of invasion, genocide, and colonisation. As editors of this paper, we acknowledge that we are each living, writing, and working on stolen Gadigal, Wangal and Bidjigal land, and are beneficiaries of ongoing colonial dispossession.

We acknowledge that the University of Sydney is an inherently colonial institution which is not only physically built on stolen land, but also ideologically upholds a devaluing of Indigenous systems of knowledge and systematically excludes First Nations peoples. We recognise our complicity in such systems. We strive to remain conscious of, and actively resist and unlearn, colonial ideologies and biases, both our own and those perpetuated by the University and other institutions like it.

As a student newspaper, we pledge to stand in solidarity with both First Nations movements and all Indigenous struggles toward decolonisation worldwide, endeavouring to platform Indigenous voices. Honi is committed to countering the exclusion, censoring, and silencing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in mainstream media.

Always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

Editors

Huw Bradshaw

Valerie Chidiac

Aidan Elwig Pollock

Victoria Gillespie

Ariana Haghighi

Sandra Kallarakkal

Zeina Khochaiche

Simone Maddison

Angus McGregor

Amelia Raines

Contributors

Iris Brown

Jesse Carpenter

Emilie Garcia-Dolnik

Lachlan Griffiths

Kuyili Karthik

Anica Milic

Imogen Sabey

Charlotte Saker

Lotte Weber

Artists, Photographers

Laudy Kareh

Mahima Singh

Crossword

Michael Smith

Cover Art

Amelia Raines

Victoria Gillespie

Editorial

I have not been leaving the apartment much this year.

I’ve been seeing my friends and the pub less, and have been existing in what I can only describe as a very sensible routine. Big nights are scarce, and I'm mindful of being in a lucid way for Honi layup on Sundays. My meals are budgeted and planned, and I’ve been eating more recipes with chickpeas in them than ever before. I have been trying to take omega 3s and wear my retainer.

Recently, I thought to myself: am I becoming heinously boring?

A few weeks ago I sunk into my pillows and watched The Bling Ring, a femme heist film, based on the true story of Alexis Neiers, which follows a clique of LA teenagers who sneak into, and rob, the opulent Calabasas homes of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Experiencing risk vicariously in such a way did not deliver the satisfaction it used to.

There are more layers to risk-taking as a young person in 2024. Travelling, or going on exchange — oft marketed as a prolific university experience — is incredibly expensive and largely unattainable for most people I know. I'm awfully suspicious of how it still manages to be marketed as a quintessential experience. Risks of this kind are a privilege.

In this economy, if you have an appetite for risk, you must challenge its meaning – rethink risk to encompass something else. When I told the Honi reporter group that this edition would be risk-inspired, I encouraged them to think beyond being handed their first joint.

Cheap risks were everywhere in adolescence: your first kiss, laughing with villainous glee while doing knock and runs. There were still foods you were yet to try, fashion experiments to attempt and visibly fail.

We are lucky, then, that a largely inexpensive way to exercise risk is through writing. In pitching for Honi you take a risk. In writing, you risk. In submitting an assignment, you take a risk. In an interview for The Guardian, Annie Ernaux said, “if it’s not a risk then it’s nothing.” This mantra has rattled in my mind since.

I’d like to thank all the contributors for composing such thoughtful pieces for the Risk edition. Honi has chronicled risks since 1929. And to the reader, go ahead and take one.

USU Corporate Daddy Yes, another Council 4

Lawyers arguing... Left loses NTEU election!

6

Adelaide ditches lectures Mark Scott runs away!

Exams get tested 7

Digging in the Megaphone archives

Spilling the tea on Spill Presidential menage a trois

12 OB NAPLAN

Culture Within the Education Building

Stujo at Monash 15 Words on words Who should you read books with?

Annoying Stupol TV show

Rebecca revisited

Perspective

Giggles

ISSN: 2207-5593. This edition was published on Wednesday 18 September 2024. Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications (DSP): Dustin Dao, Jasmine Donnelly, Lia Perkins, Tiger Perkins, Victor Zhang, Lucinda Zheng. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions.

Amelia Raines

Cartoon Caption Contest

Submit your best caption for the above to editors@honisoit. com for a chance to WIN and be published in the next edition! Winners receive a personalised limerick from Angus McGregor.

Letters

A Public Letter from the Socialist Labor Society (SLS)

I write on behalf of the Socialist Labor Society (SLS) and the University of Sydney Labor Club in response to a Honi Soit article about a contested Labor Club AGM published on September 1st 2024. We found the piece to be overall enjoyable and well-written. However, we feel compelled to respond to what we deemed to be an unfounded mischaracterisation of our group in the closing commentary, specifically that “SLS’s oppositional positioning to Albanese is more a matter of their factional exclusion from federal politics, rather than political principle or vast ideological difference.” SLS throughout its history has been a democratic socialist caucus that works to align the ALP to its socialist objective, as well as campaigning for civil liberties, Palestinian liberation, gender equality, queer liberation and climate justice. Our chief goal is to disrupt the careerist pipelines of Young Labor and the transactional and cynical style of politics it inculcates in young people, and provide a genuine alternative of rank & file mobilisation. We aim to educate, agitate and organise to that end. We disagree with the view held by some activists that working as members of the Labor Party is futile. It is not false people associated with our group face degrees of ‘exclusion from federal politics’, and the reason behind said ‘exclusion’ is due to conservative opposition to our ideologically driven project. SLS holds no reservations in supporting people and policies arising from groupings all across the nation given they are principled and progressive. As Honi noted, our caucus is diverse across backgrounds, but it

Got something you want to get off your chest? A love letter? A limerick? Something you would tweet back when Twitter was good?

Submit your letters to us! editors@honisoit.com

Winner’s caption:

Thunder booms in the distance

“You know what? Noah can have his stupid Ark, at least we have each other”

-

JJames Wily

Winner’s reward:

In a cartoon with lions so grand Cooking stew as they sit in the stand. “Forget Noah’s ark, We’re just fine with thi spark, Together, we’re more than we planned.”

is also worth nothing roughly half of our caucus is made up of gender nonconforming and women members. Cynthia Wang, a member of SLS, was recently elected by a large majority of female members of the club to be the next Women’s Officer. The article referenced the fact that SLS no longer engages in university student elections. We do not dispute this. We believe there are a variety of important channels for young people to exercise their voice, and that student politics has no shortage of active engagement. Where we choose to focus our resources is engaging young people, regardless of their education status, in direct political campaigns to democratise the ALP and shift its policy platform to the left. That doesn’t exclude fighting for issues important to university students, for instance our recent successful campaign to make the extension of transport concession cards to all students official party policy. Our philosophy is that changing Australia’s conservative political system requires disrupting the political establishment on all fronts, and that includes within established party structures. We believe in the politics of a united front, and will work with any socialist force - be it on university campus or in the trade union movement - that shares our vision of a radical redistribution of wealth and power in society.

Signed, William Yang - President of the University of Sydney Labor Club and Socialist Labor Society Member

What’s on?

Wednesday 18 September

Gerry Harvey’s 85th birthday @ wish him an unhappy birthday.

Thursday 19 September

Protest Mark Scott! 5:30pm @ The Women’s College by Students Against War.

Uni Tunes ft. Awa Mbaye + Bloodyarvo + Darling St + Tina Rez. 7:30pm @ Oxford Art Factor Gallery

Friday 20 September

2024 SRC Presidential Debate. 6:30pm @ Herman’s Bar.

PULP Volume 17 Launch party

Hiatus Kaiyote. 8pm @ Enmore Theatre

Sunday 22 September

Rally for permanent visas for refugees. 1:30pm @ Tony Burke’s Office, Punchbowl.

Ongoing shows:

The Student Media Conference is near! Fri 27 - Sun 29 @ USyd campus. Mark your calendars and book your tickets.

SUDS presents You’re Killing Me, 7pm Sep 11-21 @ The Cellar Theatre. Secure tickets on the SUDS website.

Union Made: Art from the University of Sydney Union, Mon-Sun until March 16, 2025 @ Chau Chak Wing Museum

Honi Soit’s statement on the ongoing genocide against Palestinians

At the time of publication, it will have been 346 days since Israel and its allies’ have inflicted the ‘second Nakba’ on the Palestinian people. Israel’s actions have not just been in response to October 7 but part of a 76-yearold campaign to kill as many Palestinians as possible, and with them, any and all claims to their homeland. The official death count remains at approximately 42,000 but there is no doubt that the figure sits much higher.

Just this week a massacre took place at Al Mawasi refugee camp in Khan Younis, a ‘designated safe zone’. American-supplied MK-84 bombs led to destruction so rife that 9 metre craters were full of sand and melted bodies. The IDF conducted raids and airstrikes in the West Bank while a ‘humanitarian pause’ in some parts of Gaza allowed for children to be vaccinated against polio.

116+ journalists have been killed with impunity. Israel has attacked the Lebanese front since October 8 and engaged in psychological warfare each time it threatens to “expand military operations”. Outside the Israeli consulate in Boston, Matt Nelson, who self-immolated in protest of American complicity, remains in a critical condition. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a volunteer at the International Solidarity Movement, was killed by Israeli forces when protesting illegal settlements.

We also witnessed the scale of police violence during the state-sponsored Land Forces Expo in Melbourne. One photographer was shot by police with a rubber bullet, losing part of their ear, while many anti-war protestors were arrested or vilified in the media as “fighting violence with violence”.

What this week and the last 11 months have made abundantly clear is that the Australian government will not consider addressing its complicity in genocide abroad and on stolen land here. However, it is voters at the polls who will retain the final say, even if only at a local level for now.

We must keep the pressure on our leaders because every act of solidarity and protest is one step closer to a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Cartoon: Ariana

Haghighi

Cartoon: Mahima Singh

USU announces 12 month plan to incorporate

Victoria Gillespie and Angus McGregor

The USU CEO and student Board President have announced a historic 12 month plan to incorporate the organisation and are currently seeking feedback from USU staff and members on the proposal.

This builds on a long campaign where various USU Presidents and CEOs have put forward incorporation plans in the past without success.

The proposal has sparked an internal debate inside the USU and would be the largest governance change since 1983 reforms to the Board.

In an email to all USU staff on Tuesday, interim USU CEO Michael Bromley announced his intentions to incorporate the USU.

Bromley began the email discussing the USU Board’s historical campaign for incorporation and then stated it was “incredibly unusual for a commercial organisation to remain unincorporated and this status brings with it a number of legal, governance, regulatory and other risks”.

Bromley went on to explain that the changes incorporation would bring about were “not likely to substantively effect day to day operations”.

Bromley asked staff to complete a survey on the proposed changes. Specifically, Bromley asked staff if they were in favour of the student Board continuing. A survey has also been sent out to all members of the Union on social media with the post’s promising in-person consultation sessions to be announced in the coming weeks.

Currently the USU is unincorporated which means that it is not a legal corporate entity, stopping the organisation from entering into specific agreements. Creating a separate legal entity, this governance reform would give the USU greater powers.

An incorporated USU would bear liability, and be able to enter into contracts, without a member having to act on the organisation’s behalf. Bromley argued that the plan would increase accountability in the organisation and the formalisation of roles and responsibilities would better allow the USU to apply with its regulatory obligations.

Any changes to the USU’s constitution, including incorporation, requires approval from the current Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) Joanne Wright and the University Senate.

Current Board President Bryson Constable (Liberal) believes this is long overdue, and “should’ve been done 20 years ago”.

Constable stated that past campaigns have been plagued by a “lack of planning and prioritisation”, but now, under his and Ben Hines’ lead, there is a “12-month timeline”. For Constable, the goal is for the process to end before his term finishes next July.

Constable affirmed his commitment to retain a student chair and the “same level of student representation”.

He believed that the current consultations will return an

“overwhelmingly positive” response, and said the reform achieved “near unanimous” approval by the Board while conceding that he and Hines (Libdependent) had been driving the project.

When asked what he thought he would get out of the consultations if his executive was already committed to the proposal, Constable said the survey was part of his efforts to maintain “radical transparency.” He agreed with the CEO that average USU members would not witness major changes when they interacted with the services the union offers.

Some sources inside the USU have raised concerns with the proposal. A Board Director, who wishes to stay anonymous, labelled the decision as “right-wing”. They raised concerns about student representation, stating incorporation would risk the loss of the independent student chairperson “and the structure of the influence of the Board could change drastically”.

They viewed incorporation as problematic, lending greater power to the Senate. The Director recalled that Senate-appointed Board Directors “voted against the student majority earlier this year to install a right-wing executive”.

Another source in the USU pointed to the Senate’s prior interventions, including sacking the Board’s Honorary Treasurer and Vice-President over an attempt to acquire the USU’s food and beverage facilities in 2011.

Incorporation would mean the USU’s agreement with University would be up for renegotiation, and that could change the amount of Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) the USU receives. The union received $8 million in SSAF last year and won over $2 million more in contestable grants.

The Director thought it was timely that this reform is being pushed through “in a year where the Senate appointed Directors have orchestrated a manipulable right-wing executive who can push for incorporation against relatively negligible left-wing control.”

“The moment the USU becomes incorporated, I will become an abstentionist,” they said, meaning they would retain their seat but refuse to perform their role on the Board such as attending the monthly meetings.

Despite the dissent the plan appears on track to go ahead. The University confirmed that they had consulted and provided initial feedback on the incorporation proposal and a spokesperson told Honi that they “will stay involved as they refine their models for consideration.”

The spokesperson said that “we appreciate the important role the USU plays for our student community and are open to considering additional protections that will help ensure it is well set up to continue its operations into the future.”

“I’m not interested in your response, it was a rhetorical question”: September SRC Council

Sandra Kallarakkal and Huw Bradshaw

Following the cancellation of last month’s council, we were back to business as usual for September’s SRC council.

President and Vice-President reports were used as pretence by responders for a larger interfactional argument about the failures and successes of the USyd Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Simon Upitis (SAlt) and Maddie Clark (SAlt) criticised Grassroots for meeting with representatives from the University of Sydney’s management, while Harrison Brennan (Grassroots) and Rand Khatib (Grassroots) argued that the left should have a presence at these negotiations.

This argument carried on through the night: seemingly the only point of agreement reached between Grassroots and Socialist Alternative was their shared loathing of Labor Left.

Somewhere amid this chaos, Queer Officer Jamie Bridge resigned and renominated with Wendy Thompson to be elected as Queer Officers. As reports finished, we moved to the first motion of the council calling on the SRC to “support the union-led campaign to scrap junior pay rates.”

NLS spearheaded this motion, and despite Grassroots members labelling it as right wing, the motion was carried with full support from all councillors.

The following motion sought to assert the SRC’s support for community legal centres, particularly in response to the June Federal Budget, which provided no relief to centres during a widespread funding crisis. The motion carried successfully.

The third motion, “Save the Arts at Macquarie”, was spoken to by many students across many Sydneybased Universities, condemning the “corporate tactics” of Macquarie University management and was passed with no dissent.

Q4 reflected on the Annual Report on Sexual Misconduct and outlined the Women’s Collective’s demands for a campus free of sexual violence.

The fifth motion called on the SRC to stand in support of victims and survivors of gendered and domestic violence. Q5 was passed unanimously.

We then moved swiftly to general business, starting with a motion to oppose the Australian Labor Party’s actions against the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU). NLS conceded that Labor were in the wrong, with Angus Fisher’s (NLS) opening statement — “Labor is not on the side of workers this time” — causing an uproar in the room (you just had to be there).

Following a procedural to reopen the speaking list, a lengthy line of speakers to the motion, and a request from our very tired minutes-taker and Returning Officer Riki Scanlan for someone to fetch their Thai delivery (Honi apologies for missing the email), the motion carried and we were let out from our windowless New Law cocoon for 15 minutes of fresh air.

It was then that NLS decided to not only dip out of the building, but

also the meeting, resulting in a good 20 minutes of anxious waiting to see if we would hit quorum to continue the meeting. Thanks to a few councillors zooming in, we resumed the meeting with a procedural from Honi to move our motion to back pay our recently onboarded editor. SAlt voted against the procedural, citing that there were “more important political matters” to argue over and that Honi was “drivel”. Nothing we haven’t heard before! Thankfully, the procedural and motion were both passed in a matter of minutes with no arguing, despite SAlt’s dissent and abstention, #yay.

The following motion called for the abolition of prisons and an end to the racist system of carceral violence, with Dunsmore and Brennan speaking to the disproportionate rates of incarceration of, and police brutality against, First Nations youth. Wittforth amended the motion to add an action that USyd cut ties with Parklea Correctional Centre and other prisons, noting that FASS3999 has a case study which asks students to make recommendations to improve comfort in prisons.

We then moved to motion R3, which called for the SRC to condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel’s escalation of attacks on Jenin, the West Bank and south Lebanon. The motion also called on the University to divest from weapons companies and companies complicit in the genocide in line with Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS).

After a long debate between Grassroots and SAlt over Encampment organising, negotiations with Management and prescriptions of activism, the motion was passed unanimously.

A procedural was passed shortly after to move R4: ‘Solidarity with the Refugee Encampments’ and R8: ‘We Stand with Mano & Tamil refugees’ en bloc. Annabel Pettit (SAlt) spoke to R4, recounting her experiences at the Punchbowl protest outside Tony Burke’s office. She spoke against Burke’s response to the protestors, stating that he “could alter the lives of these refugees” with a “flick of pen” but instead “he told them to shut the fuck up”. Dunsmore and Ravkaran Grewal (Grassroots) then spoke to R8, with Grewal reading the ACAR statement on the death of Mano Yogalingam, the Tamil asylum seeker who died in Naarm after self-immolation.

With morale dropping as the clock ticked toward 11pm, a procedural was moved for all remaining motions to be voted for en bloc with two speakers. The speakers, Bridge and Yasmine Johnson (SAlt), spoke briefly to R5: ‘The Sad State of the Response to the Disabilities Royal Commission and the NDIS Bill’ and R9: ‘Solidarity with international students, scrap the international student cap’ respectively.

All remaining motions were passed en bloc and the last council before elections wrapped up at a surprisingly early 10:53pm.

Five-way contest for SULS Presidency kicks off with debate

Ariana Haghighi

Overly complicated in more ways than one, the Sydney University Law Society (SULS) is the only student society that involves an election to select its President and executive team. In the SULS election, voting is open to every SULS member, not just active society hacks.

This marks the second consecutive year of contest for SULS Presidency. Trust FIVE law students to put their names in the ring — and why wouldn’t they? This mammoth project management position may be unpaid, but has been shared by revered judges and evil corporate lawyers alike.

Electoral Officer and wannabe Michael Kirby (attempts at both SULS and USU presidency) Ben Hines explained why this annual debate was shifted forward to September: “so you can really take the time to get to know the candidates before voting or joining tickets as executive members”. Hines also wanted prospective ticket members to have more information on what candidate to join. With SRC elections just around the corner, let’s hope it’s not a case of candidate overload.

Interestingly, the SULS Presidential or ticket campaigning time is not yet upon us; apart from during the debate, candidates are not yet allowed to speak about their platform. So, for now, only the debate’s spectators, likely SULS executive hopefuls, have a grasp of the five’s policies.

The five gave brief opening statements:

Zara Paleologos (LLBVI) told us she’s “been around the place long enough to know law school isn’t just about exams, it’s about the community we build and the connections that we make”, and that her vision is “not about creating flashy new initiatives, but about building on what’s already going on”.

SULS enthusiast Priya Mehra (LLBIII) spoke to her multifaceted experience on the SULS executive and her vision to “build a community for everyone to get involved in, new comers and regulars”.

Juan Facundo (JDII) pointed to his leadership of the Queer Committee and his international background as factors that have “informed how he sees leadership”. Rather than the common policy platform to develop community, he envisions the creation of something new, such as a “different networking atmosphere”.

Michelle Chim (LLMI) is “dedicated to supporting students who have experienced similar struggles to [her]”, her policies prioritising diversity and accessibility by way of targeted outreach.

Justin Peng (LLBI) bravely puts himself forward for SULS President in his first year, framing himself as a singleissue candidate: “a pressing issue is the struggle of pre-penultimate students in finding relevant work experience”.

Independent Peter Chen narrowly elected USyd NTEU Branch President

On Tuesday September 10, election results for the University of Sydney Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) were revealed, with independent Peter Chen edging out Rank-and-File Action (RAFA) candidate David Brophy by six votes (296 to 290).

Chen is a senior lecturer in the school of Government and International Relations, teaching media, politics, public policy and Australian politics.

The election was contested by three major tickets: RAFA, Renewal, and Fightback, with the incoming 14-member branch committee consisting of six RAFA and Renewal members, one Fightback member, and one independent.

He promises to bring more career opportunities to pre-penultimates — an attractive policy which is, regardless, likely better suited to the Vice President (Careers) portfolio.

Hines then asked some studentsubmitted questions topical and controversial, and we were off to a swinging start.

First on the agenda was Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS), a free group tutoring program paid for by the Law School that was discontinued after 2022. Ever since the Law School’s contested decision to axe it, SULS teams have promised to bring it back. Paleologos’ institutional knowledge promises a chance: she explained how creating an explicit action plan could be effective, considering the appointment of a new Law School Dean. Sitting executive members Mehra and Jacundo raised the current team’s trial run of the Academic Pilot Program (APP), a volunteer-run tutor group, as evidence of student need to present to Faculty. Chim spoke about her plan to engage in broad and in-depth student consultations, and Peng deviated from his opponents, selecting “sponsorships” as his solution to sourcing funding for a tutoring program.

The debate touched on some hot-button issues: death, taxes, the relationship between SULS and the University of Sydney Union (USU). Paleologos was asked about her

as USyd representatives. The National Council has two year terms.

team’s position on cross-SULS and USU contamination (i.e. USU board members who also serve as SULS presidents or on the SULS executive), and she explained that she believes there is an inherent conflict between the two institutions, given “the USU is meant to oversee SULS and all other societies”.

Next was the question of whether SULS should be a political organisation, given it operates much more apolitically than other elected student organisations such as the USU or SRC.

The five candidates proffered similarly milquetoast answers, dancing around the war and genocide in Gaza. Paleologos agreed SULS should make statements but should “draw the line at political issues which directly affect students”. Mehra expressed support for SULS’ statement about the Voice to Parliament, stating the “role of SULS is to foster a sense of inclusivity”, Chim similarly supported the 2022 statement about the war in Ukraine.

We will see whether mergers and acquisitions translate from the law classroom to student politics. A five-way race is unprecedented and would foretell a crowded New Law Building and colourful t-shirt-heavy Taste Baguette line in the months to come. Whether just power-hungry or hankering for tangible change, one of these contenders will control the richest faculty society in 2025.

Fiona Gill (Renewal) was elected Branch Secretary over Riki Scanlan (RAFA). Gill gained a total of 318 votes to Scanlan’s 264. Gill had previously resigned from the Secretary position last October, following the Branch Committee’s stand for Palestine.

Previous Branch President Nick Riemer (RAFA) defeated Maryanne Large (Renewal) and Catherine SuttonBrady (Fightback) to win Vice-President (Academic). Jennifer Dowling (Renewal) was elected as Branch Vice-President (General Staff) over Jason Todd (RAFA) and Jennifer Huch-Hoogvliet (Fightback). In the final vote, Dowling won 112 votes to Todd’s 82, while HuchHoogvliet received 53 votes in first preferences.

Alma Torlakovic (Fightback) was elected National Council Representative (General Staff) over Jennifer HuchHoogvliet (Fightback) and Matte Rochford (RAFA).

Markela Panegyres (RAFA) was elected USyd Branch Committee Ordinary Member (Casual Employees) over Lucy Nicolls (Fightback).

In descending order of votes,Jennifer Dowling (Renewal), Matte Rochford (RAFA), Marcus Strom (Renewal), Sophie Cotton (RAFA) Alma Torlakovic (Fightback) and Dylan Griffiths (RAFA) were elected to the National Council

The following members were elected to the role of Branch Committee Ordinary Member (in descending order of votes): John Buchanan (Renewal), Nikki Wedgwood (RAFA), Alan Fekete (Renewal, Alex Luke (RAFA), Beccy Connell (Renewal), Alma Torlakovic (Fightback, Rae Cooper (Renewal), Sophie Cotton (RAFA) and Matte Rochford (RAFA).

The position of Indigenous B.ranch Committee Member remains unelected, and is expected to be filled in later this year.

In a comment to Honi Soit,incoming President Peter Chen expressed his thanks “to all the outgoing members of the Branch Committee who have worked extremely hard during the last few years, particularly during Enterprise Bargaining.”

He also “specially recognise[d] the work of [outgoing President] Nick Riemer, who took on the role of Branch President during a particularly difficult time.”

Chen maintained that under his presidency the NTEU will continue to “advocate vigorously to protect employment and the quality of research and education at the national level,” while also actively “engaging with management to ensure that the considerable “war chest” of the University is employed to ensure that jobs are not lost, and continuity of education provision is maintained.”

Chen also stated his aim to “work

productively” with the new Branch Committee, student organisations, and external University stakeholders on worker issues, as well as “instigating regular meetings with the ViceChancellor”.

He concluded with a reaffirmation towards “building Union power on campus” and ensuring that all staff are or become Union members.

In a statement to their website, RAFA expressed their disappointment in the election results, noting that “after a period of left dominance, the recent University of Sydney NTEU elections have seen a swing back to the right.”

RAFA acknowledged its loss of “majority of executive positions” but said it will “retain a strong presence on the incoming branch committee”, in addition to their three delegates at the National Council. They also reiterated the support of members who were striking and picketing during the 202223 strike campaign, and involved in Palestine solidarity work.

Despite noting an uptick in participation of members in the elections, casual participation decreased, with RAFA identifying this as a result of “many casuals feel[ing] let down by the NTEU Division and National Office”.

RAFA concluded by affirming that they “will seek every opportunity to collaborate with the rest of the newly elected BC in fostering collective action across political differences.”

This year’s election saw 28% of the Branch’s 2,124 members cast votes.

Valerie Chidiac and Sandra Kallarakkal

Pro-Palestinian ANU student wins expulsion appeal

Jack Stubley

On Wednesday September 4, Bea Tucker, a pro-Palestine student activist at the Australian National University in Canberra, had their expulsion overturned by the university appeals committee.

Tucker had been expelled by ANU for supporting the right of Palestinians to armed resistance – a right guaranteed under international law – in an interview with the ABC earlier this year.

In the interview Tucker stated, “Hamas deserves our unconditional support… Not because I agree with their strategy, [I’m in] complete disagreement with that.”

After their expulsion was overturned, Tucker released a statement where they condemned the complicity of the ANU and other universities in the slaughter of Palestinians:

“At campuses across the country, students have faced disciplinary action for speaking out to Free Palestine and for taking action against the genocide in Gaza.

University administrations have been willing to violate their own commitment to free speech in their efforts to silence students and staff who oppose the genocide, and demand that university administrations cuts ties with the Israeli apartheid state.”

Tucker reiterated that oppressed people have a right to resist occupation, as recognised under international law, and the hypocrisy of their expulsion. They also spoke to the recent Student General Meeting for Palestine at USyd where over 600 students voted “almost unanimously, to recognise Palestinians’ right to armed resistance against occupation.”

Tucker continued, “The ICJ decision declaring Israel’s occupation unlawful, further highlights that it is imperative that university administrations ensure they are not complicit with genocide and the Israeli apartheid state.

Four months ago I was suspended, then recklessly expelled. Yet after almost a year of genocide and more than 5 months of the ANU’s ties with Israel being public, the ANU has not expelled its connections with institutions that are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza”.

“Outrageous”: Adelaide University to end in person lectures

Lachlan Griffiths

The University of Adelaide has announced that from 2026 they will no longer hold face-to-face lectures. It declared in a statement that the new policy would make the campus “stackable, modular and digitally rich,” and will involve the replacement of conventional in-person lectures with several other online and in person

An open letter opposing the expulsion was signed by 1200 people, including many university staff and students at the ANU and around the country.

In a statement, SSAW ANU said, “We are very pleased that Tucker’s expulsion has been overturned, but very critical that they were suspended and excluded in the first place.

SSAW hopes that the ANU will uphold its commitment to free speech on the campus.”

Throughout the year, the University of Melbourne has used controversial methods of surveillance, tracking students’ phones to determine their participation in the occupation of Mahmoud’s Hall – an action done to demand the University cuts ties with genocide. They subsequently threatened students it found to have participated in the occupation with suspension and expulsion.

Similarly at University of Sydney, students are being threatened with suspension for a peaceful sitin protesting Tel Aviv University’s presence at an exchange fair in March, while multiple students were suspended for making announcements in lectures about the university’s links to weapons companies.

Students Against War (SAW) organised two protests in the coming weeks to fight USyd’s ties with Israel. On Tuesday September 17, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott invited undergraduate STEM students to the “Faculty of Science Industry Networking Night” where weapons manufacturers like Thales and aviation company MicroTau were present. Government body Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANTSO), who is integral to the rollout of the nuclear submarines part of the AUKUS military pact, was also present at the networking night.

On Thursday September 19, SAW will also be protesting Mark Scott during his live podcast recording at the Women’s College where he is slated to talk about how “liberalism may be the source of your soul.” Scott recently cancelled an appearance on the ‘Difficult Conversations’ podcast that was set to include a live Q&A section after SAW planned to protest outside and ask questions inside.

classes.

Administrators announced that the driving philosophy behind this reshuffle was that course structures ought to be defined by “stackable qualifications, modular courses, and a digitally rich learning environment.”

Chief amongst this potpourri of online study is the vaguely worded “rich digital learning activities.” These will be “self-paced” and “self-directed,” and the University claims this will deliver an “equivalent” amount of information as lectures currently provide.

The University stated that other

Campus “psychologically unsafe environment for Jewish staff and students” allegations rejected

Angus McGregor

Eighteen staff and students have signed a SafeWork complaint alleging that the University has breached work health and safety laws by not taking meaningful steps to prevent the bullying and harassment of Jewish people on campus.

The complaint says that multiple reports have been made since October 7 last year of “psychosocial hazards at the workplace to the university.”

Examples of intimidation, according to the complaint, include the use of the term ‘intifada’ during protests and the recent Student General Meeting (SGM) motion which the complaint argues “affirmed violence against Jews.”

Whether the term intifada incites violence against Jews is heavily disputed by activists who argue the word refers to an uprising or shaking off oppression.

Last year, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott banned an event held by the socialist group Solidarity, claiming it violated campus policy by supporting Hamas, which Australia designates as a terrorist organisation.

A separate letter signed by 31 staff members in January called on the university to ban certain campus factions like Socialist Alternative and Solidarity completely.

While no groups have been banned and Federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus refused to give legal advice on the meaning of intifada, multiple students have faced disciplinary action for making announcements during lectures to inform students about protests. The University also released the new Campus Access Policy which heavily restricts all forms of student protest and was widely seen as a response to the encampment.

SRC Education Officer Grace Street, who was involved in the Gaza solidarity encampment and SGM, told Honi Soit that there was no basis for the anti-Semitism allegations.

“Quite simply, our encampment and campaign for Palestine stands for freedom and liberation. We condemn all forms of racism and discrimination, and the encampment was a place for community-building, which was sustained alongside antiZionist Jewish students.

classes, such as tutorials, workshops or practical lab classes “may” still be delivered on campus, though this would depend on what provided the “best outcomes.”

Dr Andrew Miller, secretary of the Adelaide Branch of the NTEU spoke of the “enormous concerns” felt by staff about the move.

NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes called the move “outrageous” and argued that it prevented staff from providing crucial in person support to students and shift teaching to respond to day to day student needs.

“Nobody was turned away or made to feel unwelcome on the basis of their background or ethnicity,” she said.

Street also rejected the allegation that the SGM called for violence against Jews, telling Honi that “the SGM was a powerful show of hundreds of students voting to end complicity with apartheid and genocide, for oppressed peoples to resist the violence of occupation (a right enshrined in international law), and for Palestine to once again be a land where people of all religions can live together equally.”

The NTEU confirmed to Honi that it has not been approached by any of its members to assist in the complaint.

When asked if the union supported the allegations Sydney Branch President Nick Riemer said, “It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that the idea that there has been a ‘vicious’ and ‘racist’ antisemitic campaign at the University of Sydney is absurd. Many of the protesters are themselves Jewish, including some of the most active and prominent ones.”

Riemer criticised the University for not doing enough to protest staff and students who took part in the encampment and other demonstrations.

“Staff and students have been subjected to continual attacks from Zionists, often amplified by the mainstream media, especially Murdoch. University management has done nothing to protect staff from this intimidation.”

A university spokesperson told Honi that “ensuring the safety of our staff and students is always our top priority,” and defended its record of protecting members of the University community from harm.

“When the encampment was first established, we quickly put in place additional measures to help students and staff continue to move around the campus safely, including additional security and personal escorts where requested. We’re providing comprehensive wellbeing support and continue to assess and control the psychosocial hazards on our campuses.”

SafeWork NSW has not yet reached out to the University.

A spokesperson for Adelaide University said: “Universities have been increasingly responding to student needs for flexible delivery over the years, and the shift away from faceto-face lectures is not new.

“Lectures are passive learning activities that can be delivered online to maximise flexibility for students without impacting learning quality,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Adelaide is the first of Australia’s Universities to announce they are removing physical lectures, though, Perth’s Curtin University attempted to remove them 2021.

Mark Scott pulls out of ‘Difficult Conversations’ panel at Seymour Centre

Imogen Sabey

Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott pulled out of the ‘Difficult Conversations’ panel scheduled for Thursday, where he was due to appear to discuss USyd’s policies related to Palestine and its ties to Israel.

The panel took place from 7pm at the Seymour Centre and was moderated by Jane Hutcheon and features Benjamin Law, Debra Keenahan and Jeremiah Edagbami. It also took place over two days, from September 11-12. USyd and Red Line Productions were both partners of the panel, in association with Christine Dunstan Productions with the event being part of Sydney Ideas, USyd’s “flagship public talks program.”

The Seymour Centre updated the event page on its website to reflect that “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Mark Scott is unfortunately no longer available.” Philosopher and science writer Tim Dean was been selected to fill in for Scott.

Students Against War (SAW) had previously advertised on campus about the panel and planned a protest to take place at 6:30pm outside the Seymour Centre. In response to the cancellation, SAW claimed that “Mark

Scott doesn’t want to have a ‘difficult conversation’ about his ties to genocide.”

SAW criticised Scott for his inaction on divesting from Israeli universities claiming that he cancelled his appearance at this panel “because of the possibility that students would be there to hold him to account for his complicity in genocide – despite advertising for the event claiming that “no topic is too difficult.””

“Even though he has pulled out of this [panel], we must keep up the pressure. He cannot get away with his complicity in genocide.”

In a statement to Honi, a University of Sydney spokesperson said, “Unfortunately our Vice-Chancellor can no longer attend the Difficult Conversations panel event tonight as he is travelling interstate to attend a briefing alongside other senior representatives across the sector – we’re pleased Tim Dean has been able to step in, to take part in what will be a thoughtprovoking event.”

Scott has instead scheduled a live podcast recording for a USyd podcast, ‘The Solutionists,’ to be recorded at the Women’s College on September 19 at 6pm. SAW has planned a protest that will take place at 5:30pm outside the Women’s College.

Snap rally opposing abortion abolitionists on campus

Iris Brown

On Tuesday September 10, the Women’s Collective organised a snap rally, Bigots off Campus, Reproductive Justice Now!, in response to the twotime presence of abortion abolitionist protestors on campus last week. A crowd of around thirty people collated at the City Road end of Eastern Avenue, with pro-abortion and feminist signs and banners.

The abolitionist position is that abortion procedures should be completely banned under all circumstances. Abolitionists advocate for the criminalisation of abortion, believing that people who have abortions and those that perform the procedure should receive legal punishment, such as imprisonment and even the death penalty.

The group of protestors on USYD campus appears to be affiliated with the Oklahoma-based group Abolitionists Rising, as they were holding signs from the group and displayed similar tactics of standing in popular walkways and waiting for passersby to engage in conversations initiated by their intentionally controversial messaging, however this is unconfirmed.

SRC Women’s Officers Rand Khatib and Eliza Crossley headed the rally. The current inaccessibility of abortions in Australia was addressed, with only two public hospitals in NSW currently providing surgical abortions and only 10% of General Practitioners (GPs) being trained to provide instructions for over-the-

Pencils down, please

Lachlan Griffiths

Every student knows the sinking feeling of sitting in an exam hall, proctors gliding by, gingerly worrying about an unseen question staring back at them. With the recent announcement that this University will increase the number of first-year exams in the humanities, it’s well worth the opportunity to reconsider the value of formal examinations in the arts.

ideas coloured with variation if they are to be reduced to the conveyor belt indelicacy of an examination?

phone abortions.

Other speakers included Sophie Cotton as a representative from the NTEU, USYD student Maddy Barry, SRC Education Officer Grace Street, SRC Queer Officer Jamie Bridge, and SRC Welfare Officer Jasmine AlRawi. All spoke to the need for safe and accessible abortions for women and people who can fall pregnant in Australia. The demands of the rally were for safe, free, and accessible abortion, the separation of church and state, an end to religious lobbying power, and an end to sexual violence on campus and the abolition of the colleges.

The Campus Access Policy (CAP) was mentioned, with speakers denouncing it and rejecting the notion that the policy was helpful in removing the abolitionists from campus. Instead it was clarified that the desire was for abolitionists and other far-right groups promoting the restriction of rights to not come to campus because they feel so unwelcome by the student body, rather than a “draconian” policy imposed by university management removing them.

At least four campus security officers surrounded the rally for its duration, and were observed to be speaking to many different individuals throughout. It is unclear whether these people were complaining about the rally. Police officers were also present, most likely in response not only to the Women’s Collective’s rally but for the multitude of other stalls.

On the one hand, examinations make it far harder to cheat than assessed tasks, as students are given one of several possible questions, and essays are written under the cordon sanitaire of the exam hall. They reduce the possibility of ‘contract’ cheating or students relying on AI to work. It is unavoidable that as AI becomes more common, so will cheating. To that end, the preservation of integrity and fairness requires the university to take action, and examinations are perhaps the only available recourse for academics.

Exams are also valuable for students who find it challenging to devote time to completing assignments. Many students, burdened by the weight of work or caring, find it hard to devote time to their studies. The short time of an exam means work can be done quickly. The increase in exams also imparts a levelling effect, especially in areas like first-year Ancient History, one of the subjects set to gain a final exam. Sources can be harder to come by in some areas than others, and setting a single exam question, or a few, would mean that students would not be unduly disadvantaged by writing an essay on an area with a lack of primary material.

However, these benefits aside, the over-examinification of the humanities is a negative turn of events worth more interrogation. The Arts degree, which claims to present itself as the tool of a liberal education where students can think for themselves and understand information, is not a course suited to exams.

How can one be expected to truly understand and discuss complex questions of philosophy, or history, literature, or art in a one or two hour paper? Scholars spend decades prodding and thinking about ideas and events. How can we expect our students to truly appreciate complex

The necessity to memorise dates and vomit out an essay on orders, like a Brazen Head responding to a foolhardy provocation, is a very serious problem that exams provoke. Students don’t get a grasp of the material if they are only able to recall the date of a battle or the pithiest of Hamlet’s observations; exams take away the opportunity for students to study secondary sources or to consider the sources in detail.

Essays, in-class-presentations, or discussion boards are simply a better way of assessing things that don’t have a simple answer. Humanities subjects are about making an argument. Can you really make an argument with a cramp in your hand and the corner of your eye on your wristwatch?

Perhaps the greatest issue that arises from exams is the anxiety of taking part. Going into a cold, echoing hall amidst a sea of faceless desks, sharpening pencils, and turning cold pages, students fill themselves with the fear that up to half of their grades are dependent on a single exam. It is such a stressful proposition that people often lose sleep over exams. The truth is that some people just don’t test well. They are very intelligent and understand the course content, but give them an intentionally blank page and a clock, and they clam up.

Of course, it would be impossible to suggest that exams be done away with entirely. That has been the sirensong of the undergraduate since the first Ming bureaucrat struggled with their eight-legged essay. It is simply impossible to expect or assume that formal examinations can be replaced, since they are fair and practical ways of examining candidates.

Rather, we can lament their increased place as a method of looking at first-year humanities undergrads, especially considering that in some cases up to 50% of a mark is dependent on exam success. It is reasonable to hold examinations, but it is regrettable that they are going to hang over first years like a sword of Damocles.

Exams are unavoidable, but we can at least take a moment to reflect on their place in the Arts course. Pencils down, please.

While student protests in the 2020s have become no less frequent in recent years, their methods for voicing dissent have been vastly limited, particularly due to the Campus Access Policy and NSW protest laws. However, the use of the Quadrangle as an activism homeground has remained constant. During the late 1960s through to the 1980s, several less conventional forms of protest took place in and around the Quad, giving the impression our students were unhinged “louts,” who were “utterly unsuited for tertiary education” and should be “exprelled [sic].”

1: War of the Flours

In May 1969, Governor of NSW Arthur Roden Cutler came to USyd for a Ceremony of Conferring of Degrees, at which he was supposed to give an address. The Sydney University Regiment, a unit of the Australian Army Reserve which still exists today, had provided a ‘guard of honour’ for this ceremony. The President of the SRC at the time, and later High Court judge, Jim Spigelman, detailed how the SRC were planning a benign, pacifist protest: “the protestor group intended to sit down in the path of the Regiment allowing it to avoid the demonstrators or to march into them.”

However, on May 1, a group of counterprotesters consisting of the Labor Club and Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S) escalated the tension. A student called Ross Clark dressed as a military officer mimicking the Governor. Suddenly he was pelted with “a barrage of fruit, milk cartons and flour bombs etc.” The ammunition that missed Clark sailed past him to hit the protesters, who promptly threw it back at the anti-protesters. Soon afterwards, a student named Mike Jones, who was from the protester group, started to make another speech. He was ambushed from behind by two students armed with a rubbish bin which was half-filled with water and drenched him. Violence broke out: the protesters bitterly fought against the anti-protesters, and the scuffle was so intense that it drew widespread public attention. Spigelman reported that “The Governor became the centre of the continuing storm…Neither of the two contestant groups is wholly to blame and both must bear the responsibility for a series of events which has brought discredit to the entire student body.”

2: Reaching New Heights

3: Tear-inducing SRC Meeting

An SRC meeting in early March 1970 saw students whose creative limits were not bound to relentless heckling, and who decided on a much less judicious alternative: tear gas. At 10:30 pm, a can of tear-gas was opened beneath a table in the “confined and poorly-ventilated” Gosper Room, where the meeting was taking place. The meeting immediately broke up, and the fifty students present were forced to evacuate. One student, Martin Johnston, was affected by the tear gas to the extent that he “collapsed in the Quadrangle” and experienced “temporary blindness.” That student had to be taken to hospital, while many other students “complained of difficulty in breathing and facial neuralgia.” The meeting relocated to the Italian Department, after several students experienced nausea and other side effects of the tear gas.

It was later found that six students were responsible, and that all of them were current or former members of the S.D.S. The tear gas in question was made by a student doing Honours in Engineering. The motivation appeared to be that “the S.R.C. performs no genuine function for the Student Body as a whole and that the members of the S.R.C. seek election purely for their own advancement.” Thank goodness those times are behind us. The then-editor of Honi, Mel Bloom, invited “those persons responsible for the tear-gas[…] to submit an explanation of their behaviour. Should a SIGNED reply be not forthcoming, they must stand condemned by their actions.” No such reply was made. Bloom repeated the invitation the following week, but the offer was not accepted.

The below images show a bonfire constructed in 1975 on the Quad lawns specifically so that students could dance around a burning effigy representing “professorial power.” This was part of a movement centering around political economy, which involved protests, disputes & scuffles from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s.

However, a bonfire was the least of the administration’s worries. In 1983 student activists treated the sky as the limit, when a series of protesters took to the clock tower to protest against an administrative move to end the separate streaming of political economy within undergraduate degrees. Professor Frank Stilwell and Professor Ted Wheelwright had been fighting for years to establish a unique department of political economy, which eventually succeeded in 2008. Bizarrely, this gang of gung-ho students included Anthony Albanese, alongside several other students including David Re, Adam Rorris, Tony Westmore, Daniel Luscombe and Chris Gration. Re is pictured leaning over to bend the hands of the clock, while another photo shows the group of protesters perched on top of the clock tower. A caravan was brought onto campus to provide a place to sleep, and after a tense three weeks the NSW police moved in, charging eight students with a breach of discipline, arresting all six of the aforementioned students and temporarily banning some students from campus, including Albanese, who was fined $100.

Playful protests in USyd history

Imogen Sabey marches into the archives.

4: Maths-induced Mischief

However, at the same time another conflict was brewing. Victoria Lee was a student originally studying at Macquarie University, who in 1970 was refused transferral to USyd on account of her not having studied Maths or Science when she applied to study Honours in Archaeology and Anthropology. She was told that “if she had sat for the HSC Maths paper and merely written her name on it she would have matriculated” and thus been eligible to transfer. Her application was mishandled in several ways, but Lee was still firmly rejected multiple times by the administration.

This led to an outpouring of student support and public outrage to the effect of some 200 people, who in a General Meeting of the Student Body called by the SRC had assembled to march on the administration and occupy the offices. Forcing their way into the Quadrangle and the Vice-Chancellor’s office, they insisted on staying put until the VC met their demands, primarily that Lee was admitted into the university. Some casualties of the conflict included windows, a folding iron door and panels of a wooden door. The students had climbed in through the window and brokenS in the front door with the help of a smoke bomb. “At the time of [Honi] writing”, there were “100 militants lodged in the corridor.”

The culmination of these events was a move in early April from the administration “against every student on this campus” with orders not to damage buildings, interfere with staff or incite other students to do likewise. Bloom wrote, “Let nobody underestimate the gravity of this application. The wide provisions of the injunction sought could be used to quash most forms of dissent on this campus now and in the future.” The SRC was against the violence used by militants to gain access to the building and raised a motion to this effect in a meeting attended by 700 students in the Wallace Theatre (with a further 300 outside), which was rejected by students. Alas, Victoria Lee’s application never succeeded. Student sentiment against the injunctions was widely felt, but despite several stepping forward to say that they would use militant protests again, the meeting ended without coming to blows. For once.

Photos: USyd Archives

Spill for Honi

2024 SRC Honi Profile

Spill was represented by Ellie Robertson and Will Winter in their interview and Emilie Garcia-Dolnik and Aidan Pollock in their quiz.

Members:

• Ellie Robertson

• Mehnaaz Hossain

• Purny Ahmed

• Ondine Karpinellison

• Lotte Weber

• Imogen Sabey

• Emilie Garcia-Dolnik

• Annabel Li

• Aidan Pollock

• William Winter

Ah, the annual interview with the uncontested Honi Soit ticket is upon us. Not a question of who can best who, but if these Honi hopefuls are up to the task.

As in most cases, Spill was bright-eyed and hopeful, with many seasoned writers lining their ticket and big dreams for Honi Soit in 2025. Despite these bold ambitions, Spill seemed shaky in their team’s political values, vision for a more activist paper, and knowledge of key issues in higher education. Like for many Honi teams, the summer break will be a busy one, with days spent underground in the Wentworth bunker.

Spill’s Politics

After consistently describing their politics as “left wing,” Honi asked Spill to describe what this actually meant: asking for a description of their politics which excludes the words “left” and “wing”, a task familiar to any lovers of the game Taboo. After all, anyone from Albanese to Lenin might describe themselves as such.

“We understand why this is important, but we haven’t had the big intense conversation”, responded Winter, before taking a moment to confer with Robertson. After deliberation, Robertson described their platform’s politics as “feminist, anti-racist, LGBQTI+, collaboration and liberation.”

When asked what issues they wanted to focus on, Robertson answered that Palestine, fighting the Campus Access Policy, the international student caps, and student accommodation were the issues the team wanted to prioritise.

Spill proposed having more explainer content on the SRC, and spending more time diving into the debates at council. This was framed as an “accessibility” policy, where including exhaustive transcripts of council were suggested as a way to ramp up the coverage. With it being

a challenge for Honi editors each year to keep council coverage engaging, it is unclear how providing exhaustive transcripts will actually improve the accessibility, or the appeal, of council to the average student.

Under their editorial tenure, Spill stated that more space in Honi would be provided for SRC councillors and members of collectives to contribute “insightful perspectives that we can publish in the paper”. This was combined with a desire for “closeknit relations with student activists” as outlined in their policies. When questioned on what this would look like, Robertson stated this would require a “willingness to be actively engaging with individuals that are involved in relevant political issues” and “making it accessible for OB’s within their activist spaces to also be contributing”.

Spill was adamant that these close relations and increase in partnerships with the SRC would not impact their ability to cover student politics impartially. When pushed on whether Spill’s factional ties could influence which groups benefit from these closer ties, Robertson stated that she would be leaving Grassroots at the end of her OB term.

Spill sits the Quiz:

Scoring 50% on the quiz, Spill demonstrated some institutional knowledge and has clearly kept up with recent Honi news, correctly recalling the Chancellors Book Fair’s partnership with Lifeline, the renovation of the Darlington terrares, the cuts to Philosophy and recent policies impacting international students.

Knowledge about Palestinian activism, however, was inconsistent. Garcia-Dolnik and Pollock were able to identify the motions passed at the August Student General Meeting and list many Universities who had encampments but finer details like the SUMSA deal with management, the Coalition’s inquiry into alleged anti-Semitism, and the University’s

academic relations with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were missed. Most concerning, however, was the lack of higher education knowledge. They were unable to identify either the Federal or State Education Minister,a repeat question asked every year, and struggled to recall what the University Accord Report was, let alone what the report recommended. They were unable to explain the specific role of the National Student Ombudsman which is to tackle Sexual Assault and Sexual Harrassment claims on university campuses. Spill’s quiz results are the lowest since 2019: each year’s quiz is constructed similarly based on recent Honi news and SRC, campus and political happenings.

Spill Policies

Beyond engagement with student politics, the rest of Spill’s policy platform focused on building up and extending the Honi community both Robterson and Winter said they cherished as reporters.

One of their policies is a weekly stall on Eastern Avenue to promote the paper and attract new artists and reporters. This is not a bad idea in itself, but many of Spill’s policies would effect a significant increase in editor workloads. Combining the stall, fortnightly meetups, and a push for more digital content, Spill’s time could be spread very thin.

When asked if they thought the investment was worth it, considering regular Honi events get inconsistent attendance, they argued even getting a small number of new people more engaged was worth the investment.

Spill highlighted that making art

a larger part of the paper was also crucial to their design vision. They aim to establish pages for artists on the website, similar to reporters, so artists can have digital portfolios.

Robertson suggested investigation pieces as another aspect of the paper Spill would prioritise, arguing that “We haven’t really seen too many of [them] just in general, like in the past few years.” When asked how they aimed to achieve this, Robertson stated that “the community of people that are willing to give us information” would be expanded if Honi was able to reach other corners of campus.

A stronger balance was struck on news coverage. Robertson was upfront that they needed to upskill in news quickly while also carving out some specific instances — such as reports where there is advance notice — where reporters can be given opportunities for news coverage.

Final thoughts…..

Spill is a group of talented writers with a clear passion for Honi as a community and a voice for students on campus. Some of their policies — such as a revamp of how art and artists are represented on the website, as well as an interest in developing more video content — are insightful and demonstrate a passion for expanding the reach of Honi

However, like many Honi tickets have before them, they seek to prioritise everything without sacrificing anything. If Spill wishes to make significant changes to Honi Soit, some serious, practical discussions need to be held regarding what sort of newspaper they want to produce and what parts of it they are willing to cut loose.

IfLabor Left policy was a person, it would be Angus Fisher. White, loquacious, and a desire to enact change from within, Fisher was brimming with ideas, both regarding policy changes and stylistic activism changes, but a main takeaway from his platform is his “twopronged solution”. Not to be confused with a sex position, he enlightened us that this strategy involves enacting change through both collaboration with activists and “being at the table,” negotiating with institutions such as the Labor Party and University Management. Throughout the interview, Fisher constantly critiqued Grassroots’ refusal to engage with Management, signalling a point of contention he holds against the faction that his contender, Rand Khatib is running on.

Fisher boasts the leading quiz score, just shy of a Distinction at 70%. Fisher demonstrated strong literacy pertaining to government and broader state politics, the mechanisms of the SRC and the changing policies around international students. His experience did however have gaps in general USyd knowledge, including being unable to name the percentage of SSAF funding allocated to clubs and societies, the percentage of low SES students at USyd, and which student accommodations were under renovation.

Fisher’s policy statement mentions disclosure and divestment from weapons manufacturers, but otherwise notably omits policy on pro-Palestinian activism.

Thomas Thorpe

Angus Fisher

Degree: Bachelor of Economics (Honours)

Faction: NLS

Quiz score: 70%

Colour: Black

When raised in the interview, Fisher became strongly-spoken, saying, “I reject this characterisation; it is clear from my candidate bio that I am a pro-Palestinian individual.”

Fisher went on to further criticise Grassroots’ refusal to engage with University management about the encampment, claiming their “strategies and skills are not up to scratch.” Divestment “is an achievable goal,” Fisher said. He pointed to the “NLS led campaign” at the University of Melbourne as an example, who were “getting results” because their activists worked with Management on divestment strategies. He suggested that this was a “strategy which Grassroots would never never do.” However, Fisher may not be fully across the relationship between University of Melbourne management and activists, given the institution threatened to suspend or expel 21 students for peaceful protest. This may suggest a naivety in how Fisher imagines communication between management and students can play out.

Despite characterising Labor Left as “an aggravating force within the Labor party,” various answers he gave to Honi started by saying “I’d go to management.” Fisher implied that his strategy of collaborating with management would differ to the past five Grassroots presidents, stating he would attend “Academic Board” (although the SRC President attends these meetings anyway).

When pressed on what he would do if management discussions do not pan out as hypothesised — particularly on issues that management has been unwavering, such as staff-student ratios and course cuts — Fisher noted that this would lead him to the second “prong” of the “two-pronged” solution: “activism.”

Fisher was asked about how, if elected, he would reconcile being a cardcarrying Labor member, the party that the current cohort of student activists frequently protest against. Fisher responded by referencing “what the Labor party teaches” [which is] “strategy, and rationality, and the power of incremental change.” Despite this, Fisher referenced his experience “protesting the Labor conference” and aligning with the NUS President Ngaire Bogemann’s (NLS) stance against the international student caps.

“...if Fisher is elected, his presidency would signal the first NLS tenure in seven years...”

Fisher told Honi that his SRC campaign will differ from his unsuccessful bid for USU board earlier this year. He noted that the nature of the USU was “unfortunately apolitical”, and that his ‘Impact’ campaign would run on a comparatively activist platform. Fisher’s more novel electoral promises sound optimistic but perhaps will struggle to be effective in practice. He plans to organise a mandatory inperson consent workshop for first-years, hosted by the SRC. When asked how he would arrange this in practice, he noted he would “go to management to discuss.” The existing “Consent Matters,” module has been widely criticised for its patronising approach, indicating a need for change. In a time where On-Campus Sexual violence warrants immediate action, whether Fisher’s proposed workshop will rectify this is uncertain. It is also unclear whether the SRC could mobilise the University to invest such time and resources into in-person training for a large group of students, and if so, whether it could be cultivated into a safe, rather than uncomfortable, space.

Fisher’s policy statement also

included continuing campaigns such as International Students advocacy and drug reform efforts, with actionables that range from building on the NUSendorsed ‘Legalise it’ campaign, banning sniffer dogs at Someday Soon and introducing readily accessible pill testing kits at the SRC.

Other features of his appeal to accessibility included better utilisation of SRC social media, hosting more “events” and even “making Honi Soit more popular” — a shout out that did not flatter but rather confused us.

When asked about his aspirational policy platform, with “free education” listed under an “advocacy and negotiation” section, Fisher told Honi that Grassroots and SAlt “don’t put forth a strategy” with similar policies on their platforms.

Honi asked Fisher how he would effect change despite these being matters of state and national policy. Fisher told Honi that he would work with National Union of Students (NUS) to be involved in these matters, and that currently the “SRC doesn’t think NUS is valuable.” Fisher noted that the “SRC president has a lot of political capital” —- fitting observations from an Economics student.

After hearing Fisher’s open-arms approach to meeting with University management, Honi asked what this approach would look like, and if he saw it as contradicting left-wing values.

Fisher denied his approach was contrary to left wing values. He again invoked the “two-pronged” strategy, citing that the SRC should do activism “outside and also inside the board,” sitting at the table with a “stern and rational presence.”

If Fisher is elected, his presidency would signal the first NLS tenure in seven years. His candidacy and campaign sees a deviation from the platforms of Grassroots presidencies. Fisher’s approach to the presidency is marked by a social makeover of the SRC, and a controversial move towards making amends with management.

It is now up to students to decide at the polls whether their interest is piqued by the prongs.

Degree: Bachelor of Engineering (Civil)

Faction: Liberal

Quiz score: 35%

Colour: Light Blue

Ithas been five long years since a Liberal candidate has taken a run for the SRC Presidency, yet it seems little has changed in Thomas Thorpe’s approach to this election. As his predecessors did before him, Thorpe attempts to present himself as a moderate candidate, seeking to turn from political egotism and radicalism to focus on service provision and “governance over parliamentary politics.”

However, behind this veneer of moderation and reason, an unmistakably severe conservatism is present. Despite declaring to leave his politics at the

door in his presidency, Thorpes’ views on climate change, the Campus Access Policy, and Morrison–esque religious rhetoric set him out as a markedly right wing candidate.

Thorpe’s quiz score was the lowest of any candidate, at 35%. This places his knowledge of the SRC — and broader politics that concern USyd students — far beneath that of both Rand Khatib (59%) and Angus Fisher (70%).

Thorpe scored highest in the SRC section, demonstrating decent knowledge of the current status of the organisation, but notably failed to accurately name both motions passed during this year’s SGM. More concerningly for a candidate who professes to return the SRC to a focus on governance and working with the University, Thorpe’s weakest quiz section was that pertaining to USyd. Thorpe failed to name two subject areas that have experienced course cuts in

the last year, and demonstrated limited knowledge of the Campus Access Policy.

Though the policy statement provided to Honi by Thorpe was relatively brief, his goals seemed to be straightforward and feasible, including improving the International Student Lounge, installing a Return&Earn depository, and providing more water bubblers. However, Thorpe’s full policy statement (provided for print in Election Honi) was much larger than those sent to Honi ahead of the interview. It is also worth noting these policies include positions far more controversial than those presented for the interview.

It seemed the more general, approach-oriented policies were those most significant to Thorpe’s campaign, particularly his policy of “reason over radicality”. Thorpe criticised the current state of the SRC, stating that in his 2023 term as Interfaith Officer, “there was so

RAND KHATIB

Degree: Bachelor of Arts

Faction: Grassroots

Quiz score: 59%

Colour: Green

Running on significant momentum, Rand Khatib is the 2024 SRC Presidential candidate for the Grassroots ticket and the Free Palestine campaign. Khatib, currently an Arts student entering her sixth year, has been a member of Grassroots for the past 18 months. She ran for a position on the Student Representative Council on a Grassroots ticket in 2022, prior to officially joining the faction. She is also an inactive member of the Australian Greens.

With a quiz mark of 59%, Khatib sits behind Angus Fisher’s 70% but ahead of Thomas Thorpe’s 35%. Of note, Khatib was able to name university chancellors but unable to recall two current Faculty Deans. She was also unable to name recommendations from the University Accord report and the role of National Student Ombudsman showing a surprising gap in broader campus literacy.

A self-described “Palestinian student activist [and] community organiser”, if elected, Khatib would be the first Palestinian and Muslim president in the SRC’s history; a relevant consideration for Khatib who rarely saw herself “represented in places of leadership”.

Khatib claims it was Grassroots’ “revolutionary ideals” that drew her to the faction, while also stating that her politics are “not really limited or deeply influenced by the Greens” and their “essentially reformist” political standpoint.

When asked if the caucus discussions within Grassroots would affect presidential decisions, Khatib was markedly evasive. She first noted the

much talk about ‘we want people to be angry, we want people to be radical’,” which he regarded as “not conducive to making good decisions.” When pushed on what his vision of ‘reason’ would be for the SRC, Thorpe cited both Aristotle and his background as an Engineering student as examples. Along with this, Thorpe also remarked that he possessed a “cool head” and “an ability to work with people I disagree with”, specifically citing Labor Right and Labor Left as factions he sees positive qualities in.

“...I want to serve them [students] and serve God...”

When pressed on Palestine, Thorpe said “I don’t think the SRC really has a way to end the conflict,” noting that he believed that “the student body has done pretty much everything it can on that matter.”

faction’s non-binding nature and claimed that being “informed by the wills and the meanings of undergraduate students” is “exactly how I plan to govern the SRC.”

Khatib also noted that she would “have consultation hours, which is exactly where I would be getting feedback from students [and] making sure that our policies [are] in line with what students need.” However, Khatib never explicitly said she would contradict Grassroots caucus, and claimed that “nine times out of ten,” the faction’s “positions are reflected” in the fact that it “is about putting students first.”

When discussing her vision for the SRC, Khatib returned time and time again to the organisation’s radical history. According to Khatib, “the SRC is a place where movements have really had the opportunity to grow and bring students on board”, a “history and legacy” that she wants to continue.

Khatib also noted that “supporting the [SRC] collectives” was one way of broadening student engagement, turning to her experience as Women’s Officer in facilitating events like Cheese and Tatreez and bake sales for Sudan as evidence of the outreach power of the collectives.

Before entering student politics, Khatib was involved in activism off campus. In particular, Khatib has been consistently involved in BDS Youth as well as Palestine Justice Movement, where she learned “how to work with union delegacy, union leadership [and] rank and file union members.”

She also spoke at length about the importance of localising Palestinian civil society’s calls to action and her positionality as a refugee who fled

Thorpe’s environmental policies revolve entirely around waste management, which he called “a really important issue.” Thorpe claimed that he has often tried to pick up rubbish on campus, only to find that the bins are overflowing. Alongside his push for a Return&Earn bin on campus, Thorpe also plans for bins to be emptied more often.

Honi asked Thorpe whether this represented a superficial environmental policy, given the fact that the University has not committed to full divestment from fossil fuels. “It’s just not really feasible to move completely away from fossil fuels at this stage,” Thorpe replied, before discussing his “family over in Europe” that had to have power curfews during recent heat waves. “I think from memory, even if you covered the entirety of Tasmania in solar panels, you wouldn’t have enough,” Thorpe claimed, explicitly

colonial violence and having to contend with being “part of a system that inflicts colonial violence on [First Nations] people here.”

Khatib also has extensive experience working within the SRC collectives, including her current role as SRC Women’s Officer. Previously, Khatib held the position of Ethnocultural Officer and ACAR Convener which she highlighted as “building power with the Blak Caucus […] and the Tzedek Collective.”

As a candidate, Khatib offers greater visibility to the SRC’s ongoing activism for a free Palestine and an end to the University’s complicity in the genocide.

Khatib was involved in making the SRC the first ever apartheid-free zone in Australia, including stopping the contracts with Hewlett-Packard (HP). She reiterated her belief in the importance of the SRC having a “radical stance”, identifying aspirations of the National Union of Students (NUS) moving towards apartheid-free zones.

When questioned about the higher proportion of stupol-affiliated students at the Gaza solidarity encampment, and whether that foregrounded them, Khatib noted “perhaps that might have been true” but the encampment brought “every faction that cares about Palestine [together]”.

“...Khatib would be the first Palestinian and Muslim president in the SRC’s history...”

In reference to the SUMSA deal with USyd management in exchange for the end of the encampment, Khatib acknowledged the limitations of signing a deal but explained that it was “clear that they put Palestine first” and echoed the obligation to “try every single tool at our disposal to bring an end to the horrifying scenes that we’re seeing.” In what can be interpreted as a dig at SAlt, Khatib concluded that “it is not up to us to say, we’re not going to try this one tactic, because I don’t believe in working with management”.

In general, Khatib attributed management as being often responsible for so many of the issues that students are facing. Despite Khatib’s platform being that of an oppositional stance to management, she recognised that the

stating that policy combating climate change was not part of his general goal as President.

Thorpe’s main experience for the role of President derives from his term as SRC Interfaith Officer for 2023, as well as his roles on the executives of the Libertarian Society and the Evangelical Union. Despite his presence alongside Freya Leach and Satvik Sharma as inflammatory right-wing provocateurs in the last year’s SRC, Thorpe presented himself as polite and reserved, and kept his notorious bible-bashing to a minimum. Despite this, Thorpe did make explicit throughout the interview that his faith would inform his leadership, stating that “I want to serve them [students] and serve God” and that his presidency would follow “the model Jesus Christ showed”.

Furthermore, when pushed on

President sits on several committees, and that is an avenue to represent the student voice.

Khatib criticised the University’s commitment to an Experience Palestine OLE, noting that different Palestinian experiences cannot be taught within a single unit of study. Besides safety, Khatib argued that it is “naive” and “deeply problematic to experience Israel or Palestine right now” especially as “Palestinians in Palestine don’t really support people coming in this touristic way”.

Khatib stated her willingness to meet with management about the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, noting that during her role as ACAR Convenor, she gave feedback on a draft anti-racism statement.

Khatib said that it was important for the SRC to be involved in political campaigns targeting state, national and international issues. Khatib claimed that the SRC’s student union status creates opportunity for inter-union collaboration to put pressure on state and federal Labor governments as they are “deeply linked to a lot of these unions.”

Regarding her position on the international student caps, Khatib warned of “a real threat here to increase racism” in the wider community. To address the issue, Khatib said she would “reach out” to the International Student Officers to “see if they’ve got a campaign already in mind” and work with them to build that campaign.

Khatib expressed a willingness to ensure that the Education Action Group (EAG) was supported in their ‘Scrap the CAP’ campaign, ensuring she would advocate for the funding and resources for every left-wing campaign.

Khatib suggested that she could consult office bearers to see how she can help alleviate their workload because “across factional lines, we should absolutely be working as a team to ensure things are done”. To manage presidential duties, Khatib expressed her intention to reduce studies and likely defer.

And so, the question remains, will Khatib bring about the sixth-consecutive Grassroots victory? Or will the monopoly on the Presidency since COVID-19 come to an end?

some of his more controversial views, Thorpe was evasive, but eventually doubled down, stating that “I do think bad things happened as a part of colonisation, I also think good things have happened” and that “it was never legal to hold a slave in Australia.” Thorpe did not believe such statements were at odds with his selfcharacterisation as a moderate candidate. Thorpe’s run for presidency comes at an interesting time for the University. As the largely left-wing SRC argues about ongoing strategies of negotiation and resistance, the USU remains under the control of Liberals, and the University, as always, is dominated by corporate interests and vampiric managers. While it is unlikely Thorpe will come out on top of this race, the preferences of voters from conservative backgrounds and the colleges will certainly have an effect on the results.

HONI SOIT’S

OFFICE BEARER REPORT CARD

Honi Soit takes attendance.

President Harrison Brennan

• Pay: $55,031.63

• Reports submitted: 18/21

• Grade: Credit

Alongside many other Office Bearers, Harrison Brennan should be commended for his efforts in mobilising a broad contingent of students to support the Gaza Solidarity encampment, protest the Campus Access Policy and attend the 2024 Student General Meeting. Yet beyond these high-profile events, Brennan has taken a lacklustre approach to ongoing issues such as the recent international student caps. Beyond this, it seems that since the SGM, Brennan’s time and attention has been significantly divided between his establishment of the Sydney University Greens Club and his actual role as President. Did we really need another political party on Eastern Avenue?

Vice Presidents

Jasmine

Donnelly & Deaglan Godwin

• Pay: $36,687.55 ($18,343.78 each)

• Reports submitted: 7/11

• Grade: Credit

A succinct reflection of their term as Vice Presidents, for the last two weeks Donnelly and Godwin have sent in separate — and at times, conflicting — OB reports to Honi. While both appear to have been engaging with students, much of this seems to be done toward the benefit of their respective factions: whether it be storming F23 or “doing activism” — as NLS love to say — neither seems to have the student body they represent in mind as much as their own political groups.

General Secretaries

Rose Donnelly & Daniel O’Shea

• Pay: $36,687.55 ($18,343.78 each)

• Reports submitted: 6/11

• Grade: Pass

Besides the occasional budget reallocation and attendance of a Labor-endorsed strike, all has been quiet on the General Secretaries’ front. Unlike in previous years, Donnelly and O’Shea appear to have neglected their duties around event logistics for Semester 2 Welcome Week, support for caseworkers and applications for contestable funding. Honi would be extremely interested to find out from either General Secretary what the student body is paying them 36 thousand dollars to do, exactly.

Education Officers

Grace Street & Shovan Bhattarai

• Pay: $36,687.55 ($18,343.78 each)

• Reports submitted: 9/10

• Grade: High Distinction

Grace Street and Shovan Bhattarai have been a shining example of professionality and proficiency as the Education Officers of 2024. Despite their differing factional allegiances, Street and Bhattarai have delivered strong results in their organisation of protests against attacks from University management and production of the CounterCourse handbook. Both also managed to balance their workload with their involvement in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a GIPA request revealing the University’s ties to Israel, and the Student General Meeting. These two have been queening out all year, putting some of their less productive coworkers to shame.

Women’s Officers

Rand Khatib & Eliza Crossley

• Pay: $36,687.55 ($18,343.78 each)

• Reports submitted: 8/10

• Grade: Credit

Rand Khatib and Eliza Crossley have accomplished integral yearly WoCo protests, such as the Day of the Unborn Child counterprotest. Despite this, momentum for historically significant campaigns like abolishing the colleges and sexual assault on campus have dwindled significantly, with Women’s Collective meetings regularly cancelled or rescheduled. Beyond some new initiatives like Cheese & Tatreez and the ACAR-WoCo collaboration Feminist Anti-Racist Liberation Library, Khatib and Crossley have only recently shifted gears in light of the upcoming election season. Older initiatives such as women’s collective reading groups, and radical sex and consent week (which flaunted prizes such as feminist literature and vibrators!) seem to be relics of the past. Honi would love to see this level of commitment return to Women’s Collective.

Disability Officers

Khanh Tran & Victor Zhang

• Pay: $18,343.88 ($9,171.93 each)*

• Reports submitted: 4/4

• Grade: High Distinction

Khanh Tran and Victor Zhang have enjoyed significant, material success during their tenure as this year’s Disability Officers. From the recent opening of the autonomous Disabilities Community Space in Manning House to the seamless organisation of Disabled Honi, the collective has delivered consistently over their term. It should also be noted that, unlike almost all of their fellow Office Bearers, Tran and Zhang have managed to hold consistent collective meetings at least every few weeks. Overall, this pair have passed with flying colours.

Queer Officers

Jamie Bridge & Wendy Thompson

• Pay: Nil

• Reports submitted: 4/5

• Grade: Discontinued Fail (DF)

If the Honi Editors thought Instagram arguments were real praxis, QuAC would get an HD! Unfortunately, those who touch grass would know that it takes more comment section chaos to achieve genuine intersectional activism. Queer Honi was thoroughly disorganised, and with a revolving door of QuAC convenors this year, we have awarded them accordingly a DF. Ouch!

Autonomous Collective Against Racism Officers

Ravkaran Grewal & Sidra Ghanawi

• Pay: $18,343.88 ($9,171.93 each)*

• Reports submitted: 5/5

• Grade: Distinction

ACAR can be commended in their organisation of OB cornerstones such as Honi autonomous editions and consistent meetings with their collective. ACAR were active participants in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and are active participants in other grassroots campaigns such as the Cut the CAP Protest. The collective have hosted various teach-ins over the course of the year, and members (alongside some non-members) should also be proud about producing its first Welcome Week zine Armed. Keep up the good work!

Environment Officers

Madeleine Clark, Thomas Williams & Jordan Anderson

• Pay: Nil

• Reports submitted: 4/4

• Grade: Absent Fail (AF)

No meetings, no rallies, a tumbleweed in a gust of

*As these figures were not included in the 2024 budget, Disability and ACAR Office Bearer pay has been estimated based on past stipends and information provided to Honi by Office Bearers.

The backrooms of the Education Building

Emilie Garcia-Dolnik haunts Level 5.

I.

It is the time of the semester when the Education Building begins to smell. It is pouring outside, and the white fluorescence inside seems to illuminate the dankness: the sanitised feeling of rot and the cool moisture in the air. Here, grime festers in every corner, sourness seeps into the carpeted floors and coats door handles in a thin transparent film.

The building layout is unique at best, deeply confused at most. If viewed from the outside, the building is a castle of mismatched shapes, at once pointy and round with decorative checkered detailing and multi-coloured bricks. Inside: endless uses and iterations of grey and hospital blue, tables at random, a reception that, to my knowledge, is never manned. Each floor is a maze of hallways where classroom numbers fall abruptly out of logical order; a trick of the building that will have you walking around and around in circles, circling your own personal grey sensorydeprivation tank, until you can no longer remember what you are looking for at all.

Level 3, your entryway is friendlier at first glance. Though, more scrutiny (squint your eyes and cock your head) will soon dissolve this facade. You soon learn here that each door has a double meaning. It is never clear which way is back or forward or up or down. Entering an inconspicuous side door will lead you into a cavernous room (a black hole of sorts) dangling over the precipice of a cliff, until you descend the ravine and take your seat in the centre.

Each classroom faces a different direction. The stairs abruptly cut off at level 4. Confusion only grows from here, signs of life begin to wane as you ascend into the building. It is best you become well-acquainted with these tricks and deceptions before you find your class.

II.

Class begins in the early morning. The uni at this time is only populated by stragglers, bereft of coffee and a full-night’s sleep. You are early, and last night’s rain has not yet completely tapered out before you take refuge in your classroom. The room is a windowless box; yellow and suffocating, on the wall a neglected noticeboard advertising events and opportunities from 2021. You are the only one here.

The classroom on level 5 is almost standalone — it borders one room on the southwall, with hallways bordering the other three walls. You can’t quite picture your location, imagining the scale of the building from the outside; you are lost in the deep perils of the Education Building. Sitting on the side of the room renders you small and lonely. In the corner of your eye, a shadow passes the slats of the door. A soft murmur comes and goes and reminds you that you are not alone. You cannot turn your head in time to view the source of any noise or shadow; these things only happen in the corner of your eye or when you turn away.

When class finally begins and you are joined by a handful of students, you breathe a sigh of relief. The dullness of your early morning seminar and the monotony of the building is only interrupted by a soft pounding coming from the right-side wall. Like fists on wallpaper, the sound is hollow and muted. No one, except you, seems to react to these knocks. Your consciousness is like a defect, a brief ripple in the fabric of this dreary class, a clear violation of the unspoken rules of pretend and isolation. Excusing yourself from the room will find no source to this noise. On the other side of the hall is an empty and soundless hallway.

It is best to return to the classroom, and resume your show of order and rationality. Pretend you do not hear the rhythmic pounding of fists through the wall, as if something is communicating directly with you.

III.

If you are in need of a constant, I suggest pursuing an arts degree at the University of Sydney. Semester upon semester, you will enter and re-enter, come and go from the Education Building. You will see it on your timetable and it will evoke a wave of mental revulsion, a disgust you will inevitably repress each week. When class ends, you are the first out the door. The only escape route is the cement fire-escape stairwell. You may be tempted to detour; to the bathroom or otherwise. I remind you that each room here has its own riddle. None of them are secure or to be trusted.

The bathrooms here are a similar shade of blue-grey and desolate. One stall is always closed, though it seems to switch week-by-week, and really you are unsure if there is anyone ever in there. Emerging from the bathroom back into the hallway is like emerging from a portal into another realm. The hallway seems to have shapeshifted. It extends far and wide, left and right; it seems to have grown endlessly to stretch as far as the eye can see. This is how the building attempts to keep you trapped, circling the hallways forever.

Head straight to the fire-escape from your classroom. Descend down the endless grey loops (the exit is always one floor further than you expect) until you see the exit door. There is a gap between the final step and the door of approximately 6 or 7 steps. It is best that you cover these steps with haste. To the left is the final long and dark hallway. It is a black void in the corner of your eye that calls to you. You cannot bear to look for what you might find but the siren song is so tempting. Every student avoids this long, dark hallway though some brave individuals spare it a passing glance before crossing the threshold out of the exit. On the other side, there is finally sunlight.

IV.

It is a perfect summer night at Manning Bar. You’re here for some silly event, skin glistening with sweat and glitter. It’s hot and there’s a deep pink drink in your hands. You’re seated on the balcony, surrounded by friends with a brilliant view of the Education Building. Checkerboard printed details and brown brick; you almost see the vision. You can’t stop staring at the castle with a strange nostalgia for every class (first year to present) you’ve ever taken in the building. It’s robbing your attention from the live music and the atmosphere. This is the final trick of the building; how beautiful it looks from the right angle on the right night.

Student media spotlight Lot’s Wife

Zeina Khochaiche and Sandra Kallarakkal have a flick through the pages.

We are so very back.

After a short hiatus from the glimmer and glamour of student media spotlights, we (digitally) travelled down the Hume Highway to meet our friends over at Lot’s Wife. Hailing from Monash University, the newspaper-turned-magazine has been the purveyor of student media since 1964.

In the lead up to the much anticipated Student Media Conference taking place on the last weekend of September, we were eager to meet and understand more of our interstate media comrades. For this spotlight, we spoke with Mandy Li and Angus Duske, two out of the three editors who make up the Lot’s Wife 2024 editorial team. Both Mandy and Angus are second year Arts/Law students, but their editor roles vary: while Mandy takes on the administrative side of running the magazine, Angus is responsible for written content.

Our Zoom started with a friendly shared appreciation for working out of an office with no windows, and quickly progressed into a conversation concerning what inspired the editors’ interest in student media.

“I had an interest in Lot’s Wife because I have a big background in media, film, performing arts and creative writing”, Mandy told Honi. “My interests are in reading, journalism, playing guitar, and writing a lot. I [also] like to sit in dog parks and watch dogs.”

Angus joined us about 20 minutes into the interview, just as the conversation moved towards the archives and history of Lot’s Wife. He recently oversaw the collation of the magazine’s archives, in preparation for their 60 year anniversary as a publication.

Asking about how the magazine’s name came about — and noting the controversy over the name — we learnt that Lot’s Wife was originally named Chaos. Due to a “messy, sexist and chaotic run”, the original paper lasted two years before being renamed to its current moniker.

For those who need brushing up on their biblical proficiency, the name Lot’s Wife is derived from the tale of Lot and his disobedient wife, who turned into a pillar of salt while looking back at the destruction of Sodom. According to Mandy this name change symbolised “never looking back on Chaos…and its insidious history that was far too controversial for a student media publication.”

Throughout its existence, the paper has been in a feud with Herald Sun, faced unexpected resignations and navigated the universal tremors of Voluntary Student Unionism. Despite its many controversies, Lot’s Wife has boasted being a countercultural and secular paper that reported on the Vietnam War, student unionism and Victorian politics. A history of activism is not surprising for a Monash publication, the editors

revealed, with Mandy highlighting that Monash used to be known as a “really rebellious and protest-based university”. Angus acquiesced, telling Honi that the university “actually used to be more known for protesting rather than academics and that bled into Lot’s Wife naturally”.

Speaking on the publication’s 60year history, the editors reflected on the once-contested and controversial paper through to their periodical magazine today. Lot’s Wife’s publication functions a little more sporadically than some of the other student publications we’ve talked to this year.

Initially operating as a weekly newspaper, Lot’s Wife moved to a fortnightly paper in 1971, but publication times fluctuated due to funding and printing and censorship issues. In 1998, the paper moved to a periodical as a result of further funding cuts. The introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) further slashed budgets and the publication moved to its current magazine/journal format in 2010, with a brief broadsheet stint in 2011.

According to the editors, Lot’s Wife is a mix between newspaper, periodical and journal, and is “never strictly aligned to one.” As a contributions-based magazine, this year has seen a pretty even split between non-fiction and fiction pieces. Regular editions can be found in print, with the number of pages ranging from 48 to 60 based on the number of submissions they receive. The number of editions published every year, however, varies, and is very much dependent on budget allocation as per the decision of the editorial team that year. “Last year there were four editions,” Mandy explained; this year, they are doing six.

As with Honi, editors of Lot’s Wife run on a ticket and need to be elected by the Monash student body. Unlike Honi tickets however, Lot’s Wife editorial tickets have no number caps, meaning there can be as many editors on them as the ticket wants. Mandy noted that there were twelve editors in 2019, and five last year. The elected editors have a shared stipend that they split evenly amongst themselves.

When asked about the design and editorial decisions of Lot’s Wife, Angus noted that “every year has brought a different touch” to the publication. Reflecting on the 80s and 90s era of the paper, he stated that “there are periods where people look back, but every year the editors have brought something new to the table, be it a formatting change or a column.

“For example, the editors in 1981... where the two of them the night before layup would review a bottle of wine and write a column of their review. We should bring that back, that was fun”.

The career pathways of Lots Wife’s alumni are quite varying. Mandy

revealed a tendency of past editors and contributors to rise the ranks of Victorian politics. One such case is Peter Costello, a former contributor whose political pipeline is one to behold; once praising compulsory student unionism in a Lot’s Wife article, he went on to become treasurer of the Howard government, later slashing it.

Other notable alumni include Antony Loewenstein, Julian Hill, Rachel Griffith, Carina Garland and Peter Steedman.

Historically, student media in Victoria has experienced fluctuating health. The Victorian Intercampus Edition (VICE), a joint collaboration between Lot’s Wife and Farrago, came onto the scene in 1966. A first multiplatform VICE was seen in 1990 — the publication combining the journalistic efforts of Lot’s Wife, Farrago (University of Melbourne), SEED (Victoria University), Naked Wasp (Caulfield Institute of Technology) and Rabelaise (La Trobe) — published out of necessity due to a wide lack of funding in student publications.

When asked about their vision for the future of the magazine, Mandy said, “I wish the heart of student media and student journalism is brought back to Lot’s Wife. We wish to cultivate more campus culture and write about campus issues. That is one of our biggest dreams.”

For Lot’s Wife, the value of campus culture is abundantly clear despite its alleged decline. The sentiment is that student media represent more than a vehicle for expression but rather holds a mirror to the state of their tertiary education, be it the good, the bad and the ugly.

We look forward to meeting our windowless office editors very soon at the Student Media Conference.

Choking down the sincerity pill

Anica Millic attends a book club.

A wise woman is aware that she shouldn’t meet up with strangers on the internet whose names she doesn’t even know… especially not people from Reddit. No exceptions, not even for something as harmless as a book club. When wise woman enters the pub and turns the corner to see that the group is all men, she most definitely slinks back out the door quietly…

I am eternally thankful for my naivety. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I was expecting from a Reddit book club, but I needed something. When we went around the circle answering the customary question, ‘what brings you here?’ Everybody had a different answer. For me, it was the end of the line, an ‘if I don’t talk to someone with similar tastes to me I’ll explode’ situation.

I got what I initially came for. Every fortnight, seven of us crowd around a table at a pub and talk literature. Short stories, articles and essays, mostly. We briefly tried basing each session around a theme, but for a session about ‘transformation’, both people responsible for setting the texts chose harrowing short stories about death, so that didn’t last very long.

After a session about David Foster Wallace’s essay ‘E Unibus Pluram’, I realised that in the process of talking to these strangers I was saving something in myself that might well have been withering to a husk: my capacity for sincerity.

Maybe the real reason I joined was because I was lonely. Yes, social media makes it easier for us to ‘connect’ in the superficial sense. It’s how I found these people in the first place. But above all else, the internet makes it easier and

more gratifying for us to sit for hours in a room alone. This loneliness is complicated by the fact that irony and cynicism have become dominant modes of our culture. This is the crux of Wallace’s essay. Whilst irony and ridicule are amusing, they are ultimately ‘agents of great despair and stasis’. We agreed it’s probably for the best that Wallace didn’t live to see how completely irony would permeate what we consume in the age of social media. Every explore page is tangled in webs of it. Gen-Z posting has gotten so convoluted that ‘irony’ no longer seems like a serviceable descriptor, shrugged off in favour of terms like post-irony, meta-irony and post-truth satire. Consuming immense volumes of

ironic content inevitably seeps into how we interact on a person-to-person level. Cool, ironic detachment and self-ridicule are very useful defence mechanisms. I’m guilty of this. After all, people can’t roll their eyes at my aversion to AI when I beat them to it by proclaiming that I’m ‘in my tinfoil hat era’. But what this pervasive irony, ridicule and cynicism really achieves is distancing us. From each other, from what we really mean, from what we really believe. It trains our gaze away from the world around us and onto ourselves; onto how we might come across to others and only that.

For Wallace, sincerity is the way for us to step back into ourselves. He ends the essay by suggesting that the

Well, when a mummy word and a daddy word love each other very much…

I’m not sure how good this explanation is – plenty of words come from just mashing two other words together, but the process isn’t particularly sexy, and is far from loving. Words don’t come from a stork either, and they usually don’t turn up on doorsteps. So what’s left? Where do we get our newborn-littlelinguistic-darlings from?

To answer this question, it is easier to treat words like things than people. Words are invented rather than born, and even if they seem to evolve organically, there is often someone behind them pulling the strings. Of course, words are not like things, in that words most often come from poems and stories. I finish a book and leave it with a word that rattles and shakes around my head, scraping against bone until it claws its way out of my mouth. This is not a unique experience, I’m sure.

We should take a serious look at these invented words, what linguists call neologisms. When an author or poet creates a new word, what are they implying? Of all the words out there, across every language,

there is none that could possibly contain the meaning they wish to convey? Do the tools of language lack the depth of their mind? How narcissistic to think yourself better than words!

But words have to come from somewhere. This is the risk of wordmaking, how to balance a desire for beauty and clarity with ego. This is a deeply shallow view. I do not think one can be truly committed to the idea that the creation of words is narcissistic, without pinning it on the notion that language is a tool to shape meaning or beauty. If you dig deep enough, you will find that languages can be meaningful and beautiful in and of themselves. This ties into what makes a neologism a good or bad word; it is not enough to be invented thoughtfully, carefully and purposefully. It is entirely possible for a word to be delicately crafted, dreamed, woven, and atrocious. Still, I have my pet authors, who in creating their words reveal a part of myself to me, whose neologisms give a name to something that before only existed in the hollows of experience. In the end I cling to these words for no particular reason other than that they are beautiful.

Art: Mahima Singh

real ‘rebels’ of our age are those who turn away from irony, cynicism and the comforts they offer. Who ‘treat old untrendy human troubles and emotions … with reverence and conviction’ and are ‘willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs’ that come with being sincere, earnest and sentimental.

I don’t fancy myself a rebel, but by committing to regularly spend a weeknight passionately discussing literature with strangers, weren’t we doing exactly what Wallace was talking about? Here I had stumbled into something I didn’t know existed. A place where sincerity was wholly embraced. An opportunity to share reflections that would usually be relegated to the pages of a diary, or that wouldn’t have surfaced at all had we not dedicated close attention to whatever text elicited them. That a group of edgy hipster types can manage to be, even for a few hours per fortnight, unabashedly sentimental and reverent about literature and all its associated themes is a cause for hope.

These short bursts of sincerity wield an unexpected power over the rest of my life. I’m more curious and attentive. I’m more sure of what I believe. I’m seeing the beauty in things I otherwise wouldn’t. Maybe this boils down to it just being easier to be vulnerable with strangers. The book club has the same appeal as a holiday romance – no need for pretence, no real consequences involved. Or maybe there’s something to putting aside cool, ironic detachment and choosing to choke down the sincerity pill together.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) is supremely inventive, both linguistically and stylistically, in how it chronicles the end of the world. Vonnegut constructs a satirical reality that sits just above our own; San Lorenzo has its own set of doomsday weapons, eccentric dictators, languages and religions. Everything in Cat’s Cradle is fictional yet familiar, and the religion of Bokononism is no exception. Bokononism is deeply illegal, being punished by death via giant hook, but is practised by everyone in San Lorenzo in secret. My favourite aspect of Bokononism is its terminology: a bizarre set of neologisms that have yet to escape into English.

Cat’s Cradle is a ridiculous novel, but I promise there is some wisdom in its words, and one such word is foma. Foma in essence are harmless untruths, and they float through the text. Vonnegut often writes in foma, nonsensical jokes and lies that prove meaningful despite their inherent meaninglessness. The epigraph to the book stands out in particular –– “Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy,” attributed to the Books of Bokonon. This is the

very same book that opens with the paradox “close this book at once! It is nothing but foma!” In the word foma, Vonnegut really creates a framework that challenges notions of epistemology –– there is much more in a word than simply its definition. These harmless untruths make up everything; they are the atoms of culture, and the onus is on you to wrangle these lies into a network that brings you happiness. Foma reduces postmodernism, existentialism and critical theory — all these forces that attack the previously held ideas of culture and truth — into a single word. Vonnegut, in his simplicity and strangeness, creates neologisms with beauty.

This is what I find incredible about analysing neologisms, whether they are from Borges or Le Guin; whether they are narcissistic or not, it feels difficult to assign any sort of value to them.

Words, at least the ones I am interested in, come from authors and poets, but I am not sure what makes them good or bad, narcissistic or necessary. I only know that I love some and not others, and so neologisms, much like everything, are foma of a sort.

Beirut 1992

Light drizzle taps the blue-eyed girl on the shoulder. With a gleam in her eye and nervous flutter in her chest, she clutches onto the pamphlets like her lifeline. George and Abdo, freshly 19, race toward her, breathless, “how many houses Carla?”

“Just start with the apartments up ahead,” Carla calls back.

The streets of Achrafieh are lined with surviving apartment blocks, their facades suffocated by tangled wires, while unloved ginger cats tiptoe through the streets with the same stealth as the teenagers.

They reach the entrance of a dingy, concrete five-storey complex, the main door ageing as each spec of blue paint disintegrates into dust.

Carla takes a deep breath and slides a pamphlet under the door. It gets jammed for a second, staring back at the group and reminding them of its message: ‘Deny the Syrian Militia, Save Lebanon.’

Breathe out. Abdo and George smile, “Let’s keep going!”

The group picks up the pace, trekking down the street. They place the pamphlets under luxurious doors, broken mesh doors, in mailboxes and folded in the hoods of Toyota Corollas and BMW’s.

Suddenly, their ears are assaulted by a menacing engine roaring behind them. Green. Camo uniforms. Syrian flag.

They were almost at the end of the street before they heard the militia’s deafening footsteps. They stop, knowing their fate. Carla, looking away, feels rough hands grab her arm to turn her towards them. She keeps her eyes to the gravel, and like a limp doll, allows the metal cuffs to clasp around her wrists.

Her hands tremble as they guide her toward the truck awaiting them but she can’t see the boys. “Where are my friends?” she asks, her voice breaking with panic. The soldier, his gaze fixed ahead, replies stoically, “They’re in the other truck.”

“But I’m alone. Why can’t I be with them?”

“They are boys.”

In the truck, she keeps her head down and steadies her breathing, silently praying to the Virgin Mary for protection.

–

Two nights and three days drag by, each moment stretching painfully like an echo of the lifetime of suffering war has inflicted upon her distilled into this singular, excruciating experience. They allowed her to call Amal, her favourite aunty, and the one with a friend in every place, to save them.

That’s how it works. Your rights are fickle, your life is fickle. Carla runs into Amal’s arms sobbing, “I’m tired, I’m tired. I can’t live like this.”

Sydney 2024

That blue-eyed girl who braved the depths of jail at the ripe age of 19, simply because she dared retaliate against a poisonous government, is my mother. I’m 19 now, a slightly paler, more Australian version of her, and I hope to possess even an ounce of her strength one day. But tip-toeing around an illegitimate government was the reality of Lebanese life.

Lebanon was the jewel of the Middle East, historically rich and culturally vibrant, life was modern, sexy and free. By 1975, war had arrived, with sectarian and political division internally and externally at a breaking point. External influences including but not limited to Syria and Israel exacerbated these divisions, and by 1976, Syria intervened under the guise of peacekeeping. The militia conducted daily street battles, terrorist attacks, sieges and bombardment. Lebanon, once a beacon of artistic freedom and prosperity, descended into chaos and bloodshed.

Beirut 1993

The blue-eyed girl is soaking in what’s left of Beirut, surrounded by five cousins and her best friends, Nadine and Katya.

As Rabih El Khawli’s ‘Nwina Al Jazi Nwina’ fills the air and Carla spins her friends around, she spots a man with dark hair, hazel eyes and a long Lebanese nose, laughing on the balcony with a Heineken in hand. Their eyes meet, and he smiles, standing up straighter, as they approach each other.

His piercing Australian accent splits her ears, but the novelty excites her. Gazing into his eyes, she can see the future: maybe love, maybe marriage, an escape from Hell.

The plane

Definitely love. Clutching Jacob’s hand, tears swell as she recalls the heart-wrenching farewell hours earlier. In the bittersweet chaos of the airport, Carla stood at the centre of the turmoil, hugging her family one last time. Her mother leaned in, kissing her gently on the forehead and leaving a trace of her signature red lipstick. Saying goodbye to her childhood, her home and her entire life was the biggest risk she’d ever taken. But when you take the risk for stability, sometimes there’s no reward or regret, there’s just survival.

Australia 1994

With an engagement ring sparkling on her finger, Carla, having found a job after only two days of searching, waits tables at the chic North Sydney restaurant, LeSaffre. Dressed in a sleek black top and a slightly short skirt, she entices the room with her exotic French-Arabic accent.

Men from around the harbour sport Rolexes and green-and-gold kangaroo footy jerseys, and women wear elegant Chanel dresses with simple flats. She likes the subtlety of these people, it’s new.

“Where are you from? I love your eyes. Isn’t it wonderful here?”

With a playful smile, she replies, “Beirut, thank you! Yes, everyone here is so welcoming.”

Australia 2000

She cradles her eldest daughter, three-year-old Claudia in her arms, her forehead burning with fever and her nose red and runny from wailing all day. Jacob hasn’t answered his phone since morning, tied up at a construction site in Melbourne. “Mama, mama,” Claudia calls out repeatedly, her tiny voice a constant plea for comfort.

How Carla yearned for her mother’s gentle hugs, the tender kisses that left red lipstick stains on her forehead every night when she went to sleep. Carla gently places Claudia on the couch and grabs her phone. It’s 4 am in Lebanon. Everyone is asleep.

Present day

The other day, I sat on my mum’s bed, and we FaceTimed my Tati and Dodou, who are currently living it up with my aunty and uncle in Marseilles. When the call ended, she held me close in a tight embrace.

Looking into her saddened eyes I asked, “Mum, do you feel fulfilled in Australia?”

She sat up. “Charlotte, the people who made your childhood, you need them, and when I moved here, I was all alone and I had to be strong. I feel unfulfilled. If I were with my family, I’d be more emotional.”

“Do you regret moving to Australia?”

“No, because I listened to my gut feeling. I had to leave Lebanon. Listen to what’s in here because that’s probably a guardian angel telling you to do it.”

My mum traded emotional fulfilment for stability. She sacrificed the closeness she once shared with her family in favour of securing a future for her children. Risk reaps reward and regret, but with sacrifice comes the constant balancing of both. But at least she can balance it in Australia, what she calls her lucky country.

Standing in kitchens

Some of my earliest memories are of kitchens, and my grandmother.

I was something of a picky eater as a child, not enough for it to be constantly pointed out, but enough for me to refuse particular dishes. Like when I wasn’t feeling like eating a particular meen curry because it had too many bones my tiny fingers couldn’t pick out; or mathanga vanpayar erissery because I didn’t like the texture of pressure-cooked pumpkin.

On these days, my Mummee would make me her special neychoru. It wasn’t the fancy one, with the kaima rice and dried fruits, but just some rosematta red rice mixed in with ghee, fried shallots and an egg. It’s one of my favourite foods in the whole world, and one of the first dishes I ever learnt to make. And everytime I make it — which is, admittedly, not often — I am transported back to that house in Kerala I grew up in. To that small kitchen. To my Mummee feeding me hand rolled balls of neychoru as I sat on her lap and played with the fabric of her nightie.

Evidently, most of, or maybe a lot of, my nostalgia about growing up in India comes from food, and the people who once made me that food. I reminisce about standing in kitchens, and taking in the smell — and small bites — of dried fish fry and beef koorkka ularthiyathu and vazha pindi thoran as they cook over the gas stoves. Food that is not easily accessible here, or can’t be found at all.

Amma has been the one to do almost all the cooking. Unlike my grandmother and my aunties, Amma also worked. So the cooking and cleaning would get done in between shifts, on days off, in all her spare time. She likes to tell me that she prefers to go to work, because it’s less tiring than doing all the housework, because at least she gets paid for it: ‘it’s work at work, and it’s work at home’. Of course, Amma having a job and doing the housework does not negate difficulties in completing the housework alone as the non-paid-working women do. On top of the cooking and cleaning, Amma tells me at the dinner table, my grandmother used to make her daughters’ clothes, tend the animals, and go to sell coconuts and other crops at the local shops. It’s just that the cooking was the most arduous.

See, Indian food is complex, and elaborate; but where there is flavour, there is labour. A single dish can take several hours, and as Arjun Appadurai, even for the most modest of diets, there is variety. Women in my family spend the whole day cooking, and spend the limited time they have completing other tasks around the house. Kitchens, I have come to realise, can only be a place of liberation when there is time to enjoy it.

When I speak to my aunties over grainy Whatsapp calls they tell me about how they are making one of my favourite dishes, asking if I’m craving it and saying they’ll make it for me next time I go back. It does not escape my attention these days that it is always the female members of my family that talk to me about cooking; that when I call they are almost always standing in their kitchen. And of course, once you notice something, it is impossible to stop noticing.

It is not a new noticing of any kind, I know. Women have been standing in kitchens for millenia. Waves of feminisms have labelled kitchens oppressive, while others not impressed with these waves utter mantras of the ‘women belong in the kitchen’ kind. At age thirteen, when all I could cook was omelettes and rice, I would have unequivocally professed that kitchens were places of oppression. At sixteen, when I cemented my love of baking, I would have proclaimed that kitchens can also be places of liberation. At twenty-three, when I am just trying to keep myself alive, all I can say is that I have a complicated relationship with the kitchen.

So does my Amma.

And sure, I guess my aunties and my Mummee do enjoy it. They love cooking, showing their love through their food and feeding others, because that is one of the only ways they have to show it. There is no time for much else. I do not want to place my own feelings upon them, but it is hard to not feel a strange mix of anger-sadness when, whenever I’m back in Kerala, we go out for the day and around 4pm, Mummee starts getting anxious about needing to go home. Because around the time she usually makes chaya. Because she had been making chaya for my grandfather for nearly 50 years. Because he would get angry if his afternoon tea was late. My grandfather has been dead for over eight years now, but she still gets anxious. It is difficult to watch.

I do not like spending much time in Indian kitchens. I tend to duck in to steal a few bites from whatever is simmering on the stove, chop a few vegetables for the next pan, and then dip out. I only like cooking when it ends quickly.

She hates cooking, almost as much as she loves a clean room. Which is to say that for most of my life,

I want time; to drag my aunties outside, and sit with them in the sun. I want them to stop asking me if I’ve learnt how to make sambar, and parippu, and biryani, so I can feed my future husband. I want Mummee to tell me what her favourite dish is so I can make it for her, as she has done so many times for me, instead of laughing it aside as if it isn’t important, because she can do it herself.

I want to stop nostalgising kitchens, and start recognising them for the paradoxical places they are: sites of love and culture, but also sites of grief, and labour, and rage.

Art: Sandra Kallarakkal

Sandra Kallarakkal eats some choru.

Campus as stage and hacks as players: Simon Target’s Uni (1996)

If you walk into a room full of student politicians and mention Simon Target’s 1996 documentary, Uni, you can watch a display of rabidity and pressure of speech. Though the observational documentary chronicles many aspects of university life, from revues to campus protests to Honours theses to intra-friend group relationships, it’s unknown to the standard student who traipses down Eastern Avenue and denies flyers. How has this documentary, immortalised in Youtube episodes, reached fever-pitch popularity in some student life circles, but not touched others?

The documentary follows the lives of three undergraduate students in 1996: 1995 Honi editor and Arts Revue Director Charles Firth, English Honours candidate and 1996 Honi editor Andrew Hansen and Psychology student Cal Beattie. Two of these subjects went on to become members of the household-name comedy group the Chaser.

In student politics circles, the flyon-the-wall documentary is considered “an invaluable archive”. In a 2014 Honi article, Dominic Ellis points to it as proof that “Hacklyf never changes”. It does the unfortunate job of making these hacks feel their lives deserve cinematic attention. It also immortalises a time to which many devote nostalgia, a campus-as-world untouched by austerity measures such as Voluntary Student Unionism.

“She

1996 Honi editor Louise Buckingham articulated, “it was a magical time in student politics”, where aspects of student life were well-resourced. It preserves a time when campus life was pure folly, when (wealthy private school) students were unburdened by the cost of living and could dedicate their time to the grift of student politics and the play of student theatre. Charles Firth reminisces, “it’s almost an advertisement for university”.

But these arenas were clearly only available to those who could afford to play the game — an issue we continue to reckon with today. The plight of Cal — the psychology student who struggles with a full time work week, passing classes and an incidence of theft — contrasts the boys’ luxuriating and game-playing days on a sun-baked Manning Bar balcony. The joy in student life clearly runs on class and gendered lines — and, though the documentary fails to explore this — racial lines.

Interestingly, the documentary was initially meant to follow Buckingham’s 1996 Honi team and their processes. The 1995 team had gotten in enough trouble, and were threatened to be kicked out of university, that it got back to the ABC and was considered a good subject. Yet, once the ABC got to university in 1996, they realised that much of the work done for student journalism requires sitting behind a computer. Additionally, Buckingham

shared that their team was divided on whether they should allow the camera crew to invade the treasured Honi office. “We were worried it would change the way we worked, if we were conscious cameras were there. Honi involves all-nighters and latenight drives to printers, so we were worried filming would change how we operated”, she explained.

It’s important to remember that the campus of 1996 was a lot more unfamiliar with reality TV than us. Buckingham explained that the release of scathing 1996 documentary, Rats in the Ranks, about the 1994 Leichhardt Council mayoral elections, cultivated fears around reality television. For the camera’s subjects, they often forgot about the lens’ presence. Firth remembered, “I would find myself in the shower chatting to the camera crew, and I would forget, and then they’d peel back the curtains just to get the shot because I’d be crying”.

Some of these fears did materialise when Uni was released, and audiences were shocked to watch storylines play out on screen that never took place: the concepts of staging and editing, central to reality television, was still foreign. In the filming process, Target lent on unethical methods to manufacture “TV-worthy” storylines. He clearly sought out characters who were either vulnerable or feasted on publicity. Some days, when Target didn’t feel he had gotten enough material he would

ply his subjects with alcohol. Firth explained that Target was “able to find storylines that didn’t really exist”, which led to misrepresentations regarding relationships, and distortions of interpersonal dynamics.

It becomes an uncomfortable watch, especially the lengthy scenes delving into Hansen’s emotional state. Certain scenes of Uni have aged poorly, though perhaps they aren’t as estranged from our reality as we might like to think. Modern audiences may cringe at Firth and Hansen’s decision to use the nom de plume “Susan Tsang” for their unsuccessful Wentworth Medal essay attempt, under the guise that the judging panel may be biased toward a female Asian name. Target’s camera crew at the Arts Revue camp witnessed all sorts of misogynistic jokes. While it’s easy to sanction this behaviour as “acceptable at the time”, many of the women onscreen expressed discomfort. So who was this behaviour really acceptable for? And does this behaviour continue to be acceptable for a certain kind of university student? — it’s impossible to pretend that this type of rhetoric is consigned to the past.

Uni captures a slice of time that may never be recovered. Though we may yearn to re-live university in this golden age, our time may be better spent imagining an inclusive and vibrant future.

is the din of the stormy sea”: Rebecca (1938) in retrospective

Kuyili Karthik reviews a gothic classic.

being human, is much more. Maxim de Winter’s dead wife, the eponymous Rebecca, is the apotheosis of femininity, beauty, and charm. Rebecca is the flowering petals of Manderley’s famous rose garden, she is the din of the stormy sea outside the bedroom window. She is simultaneously desired and envied by the characters she haunts: Maxim, the narrator, and even the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers who worships Rebecca’s remnants in an erotic fashion.

whereas Rebecca is punished for her masculine transgressions.

the narrator simply rejoices that he never loved her.

How would I have scratched the itch of being a jealous woman in love in the early 20th century? I’d devour confessional writers like Annie Ernaux in the latter half, but did anyone earlier capture so perfectly the woman’s lapse into an almost anti-feminist selfeffacement in naïve first love? The Second Sex came in 1949 – Simone de Beauvoir brought to existentialist clarity these murky taboos. But Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) first brought the feminine condition to terrible life in a gothic classic. Reading Rebecca is like looking into a truthfully unflattering mirror. The more I identify with the nameless narrator, a young woman who splinters with insecurity when she marries a widower, I grapple with what it means to love as a woman: “One is

Reading Rebecca, for me, was like reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and poring over the selfbetrayal that woman endures. Daphne du Maurier hated being labelled a “romantic novelist.” Does writing about love as a woman make trivial fiction? Rebecca was marketed as an ‘exquisite love story’, but the author saw it as “grim”. It’s difficult to see how jealous agony can be manipulated into a fairytale…

our narrator clumsily breaks? Is it the frills of lacey petticoats, is it Rebecca’s mysterious perfume of white azaleas? Du Maurier tells us being woman,

Du Maurier was herself haunted by femininity, feeling like a “boy in a woman’s body”. The author modelled Rebecca after the woman her husband was briefly engaged to, whose love letters were signed with an elegant sloping initial ‘R’, which terrifyingly graces the book’s cover. The narrator’s description of cowering at Rebecca’s signature seems autofictional: the author exempted herself from a charade of femininity, dressing boyishly and in childhood adopting an alter ego ‘Eric Avon’. She was closeted, in love with women, but from within a boy’s skin. However, it’s the narrator who is weakly subordinate in the story,

The novel’s famous first line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” begins with the narrator’s fatalistic dream of her marital home engulfed by snarling trees and overgrown twisted flowers laying waste to her dream of first love. Our narrator succumbs to those naïve dreams drummed into every little girl– to be demure, virginal, maternal, and subservient to the male. “It is in man’s eyes that the woman believes she has at last found herself”, writes de Beauvoir. Instead of being appalled at her husband’s treatment of Rebecca, the mystery that occupies the novel,

Who wins in the end? Our narrator is blindly obedient and enslaved to Maxim, and the magic of Manderley disappears without Rebecca: “I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls”. Yet, no one is so self-aware of her own feminine shortcomings as the narrator who compares herself to Rebecca. She is in awe of Rebecca, who takes from life assertively, ignoring mediocrity, uncompromising in her perfection. Rebecca rises out of the ashes not only du Maurier’s novel: Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Rebecca (1940), though masterful, was made in the Hays Code era of Hollywood censorship, missing the scandalising ingredients of sex, homoeroticism, and bloody murder that make du Maurier’s potion so intoxicating. Ben Wheatley’s 2018 Netflix adaptation was merely a superficial remake of Hitchcock’s disguised in streaming-era flashiness. If Rebecca is never again done justice, it’s fitting that she remains a vengeful woman.

Ariana Haghighi and Victoria Gillespie travel back in time.

VOTE!

Voting will be open on September 24, 25 & 26

All Sydney University undergraduate students who are currently enrolled are eligible to vote in the upcoming 2024 SRC Elections. For more info see: bit.ly/SRC-vote

2024 Polling Booth Times and Locations

President’s Report

Harrison Brennan

The President did not submit a report this week.

General Secretaries’ Report

Daniel O’Shea & Rose Donnelly

Greetings from Dan and Rose!

As we head into another busy month at Sydney Uni, the weather is heating up, the jacarandas are out, and student elections are here.

Student Elections:

September 24-26 Mark your calendars! The student elections are just around the corner, running from September 24th to 26th. This is your chance to have a say in who represents you and shapes the future of our student union movement. Booths will be all around campus. Make sure to get out and vote – every vote counts!

Nurses and Midwives Strike

On Tuesday, our dedicated nurses and midwives took a stand by striking for a 15% wage increase. Their commitment to improving conditions and pay is crucial for ensuring quality care for everyone. We stand in solidarity with their efforts and encourage all students to support their cause.

Mid-semester Break

With the mid-semester break approaching, we hope you’re all ready for a well-deserved break! Whether you’re catching up on studies or relaxing, enjoy the break after a jam-packed semester. Thank you for your continued support and engagement. We’re excited for what’s to come and look forward to seeing you all around campus!

Love, Dan and Rose - General Secretaries

Vice Presidents’ Report

Deaglan Godwin & Jasmine Donnelly

As the SRC elections approach, it’s a useful time to look back at the year that was so far. This year, the SRC has played an instrumental role in one of the biggest social movements in decades- the movement to free Palestine. The SRC and Students for Palestine have successfully mobilised students as part of this movement, and brought the movement onto our campus, drawing attention to our university’s complicity in the genocide. We organised the Gaza Solidarity Camp, a historic Student General Meeting, and multiple student walk-outs.

This has engaged students in the SRC and in one of the most pressing issues of our lives. I have been proud to be the Vice-

SRC Reports

President in such a year, because it’s been a vindication of the strategy put forward by myself and others.

There are those who want to denigrate this, and who have boycotted a lot of this activism. But the facts speak for themselveswe have had an SRC which has fought against a genocide being facilitated by our government (a Labor Party government that is) and seriously contributed to it. And we need more of that next year.

Students for Palestine are hosting a forum next week called “Degrees of Complicity”, about the ties between our universities and Israel. There’ll be an excellent panel with Randa Abdel-Fattah, Peter Slezak, Jake Lynch and Jasmine AlRawi. It will be at 5PM at Abercrombie Business School Lecture Theatre 1130, and I recommend everyone get there.

— Deaglan

Welcome back to yet another report. Lots happening currently thinking about the mid sem break. But I am excited to share a couple updates of what’s happening:

1. SRC BBQ Events

Over the past month, we’ve been thrilled to host a series of BBQs that have been nothing short of a success. These events have been a fantastic way to connect with students, provide a much-needed break from academic pressures, and foster a stronger sense of community on campus.

2. Upcoming SRC Elections

Mark your calendars! The SRC elections are fast approaching, and it’s crucial for every student to be involved in this democratic process. Here are the key dates to remember:

Campaign Period: Monday, September 16 - Friday, September 19, 2024

Voting Days: Tuesday, September 24Thursday, September 26, 2024

3. Future Initiatives

Looking ahead, the SRC is working on several initiatives aimed at enhancing student life and addressing key concerns. We’re currently focusing on expanding the reach of the SRC, improving campus facilities, and advocating for more affordable student services. If you have any suggestions or issues you’d like to see addressed, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Your feedback is invaluable in shaping our work and ensuring we address the needs of our student body.

4. Get Involved

Finally, if you’re interested in getting more involved with the SRC or have any questions about the upcoming elections, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to support you and ensure your voice is heard.

That’s all for now… Stay tuned for more updates and make sure to participate in our upcoming events and elections. Together, we can make a difference.

Yours sincerely,

Jasmine Donnelly SRC Vice President

First Nations Officers’ Report

Taylah Cooper & Cianna Walker

The First Nations Officers did not submit a report this week.

Sexual Violence Officers’ Report

Ellie Robertson, Martha Barlow & Georgia Zhang

This week we helped build and attended a snap rally by the Women’s Collective to protest the presence of “abortion abolitionists” who have been advertising on campus over the last few weeks, demanding these vile, misogynistic, racist bigots stay off our campus. The rally was a great success, however we were disappointed at the police presence - an increasingly common sight at protests since the implementation of the Campus Access Policy.

This month saw the release of the University’s annual sexual misconduct report, and the statistics that have come out of this year’s report are absolutely shameful. We know that there is chronic underreporting, and it’s not surprising considering the woefully inadequate means of redress available to those who do report; of the 246 reports, only 7 received some kind of resolution. The reporting system also continues to impose its abhorrent gag clause, silencing victim-survivors from speaking out against their perpetrators. We condemn this shameful outcome, and call on the university to do more to achieve justice for victim-survivors.

During our council motion on the sexual misconduct report, we voted to change the name of the Sexual Assault and Sexual Harrassment Officers to Sexual Violence Officers. We did so to acknowledge the breadth of experiences of sexual violence that cannot be placed isolatively into two neat categories, and to confront the seriousness of sexual violence in a way that the acronym “SASH” allows people to brush off.

Finally, we want to shout out FALL, the amazing reading group put together by the WoCo and ACAR conveners! Join us every second Thursday in the John Woolley building for some excellent dissection and discussion.

In solidarity, Martha, Ellie and Georgia

Student Accommodation Officers’ Report

Sofija Filipovic, Ishbel Dunsmore & Will Jubb, Patrick Jacombs

Hey all, been a busy couple of months in our corner.

These past few weeks have seen renewed focus on the abysmal state of student accommodation, with rents increasing by 6-8% according to a tipoff from student living there. This is the second time in less than a year that rents have increased. Students deserve more than a mouldy shoebox! We demand that USyd-owned (particularly the colleges) and privately owned accommodation be turned into 100% publicly owned housing, something that all students can afford and feel safe in in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis. This necessitates an activist approach like that led by the USyd Women’s Collective that can force the hand of the government and university management. We are proud to stand alongside them in their ongoing campaign to dismantle the colleges and fight for an end to sexual violence and bigotry on campus.

Speaking of government, we are just shy of one year since the current genocide in Palestine began. The Labor government have continued their unfettered endorsement of Israel and its murderous incursion into Gaza, and now the West Bank, in a new and comically blatant violation of international law. In the past week, we have witnessed a renewed alliance between Labor and Israel through Labor’s sponsorship of the 2024 Land Forces Expo, which brought together harms dealers from across the globe (including Israel) to trade “battle tested” weapons of mass destruction into the next imperial war. Solidarity to our comrades in Naarm who have defied cops, draconian anti-protest laws, rubber bullets and many litres of pepper spray to call for a Free Palestine, and disrupt the proceedings of the expo as much as possible.

Labor (and Liberal alike) would rather brutalise and arrest their own citizens than take an inward look at their own complicity in the expulsion and attempted extermination of the Palestinian people.

Shame on anyone who can justify their continued membership to either of these parties. Grow a spine and realise that your membership is tacit endorsement of the actions of the party. It is far too late to be maintaining illusions in the fallacy of ‘incremental change’ and ‘change from within’.

In 50 years time, wouldn’t you rather look back knowing that you did everything in your power to stop genocide?

Until liberation.

Ishbel and Sofija

Ask Abe

SRC Caseworker Help Q&A Domestic Violence Support

Do you want to save hundreds of dollars by taking a few photos?

When you move into a rental property from a real estate agent, you should be given a Condition Report. This lists each room in the house and states whether things are clean and working, e.g., carpets, lights, and oven. Most real estate agents are lazy and sometimes a bit dishonest, when it comes to the condition report and will say that everything is clean and working. You will have seven days to make any corrections, saying where things are dirty or broken. If it is at all possible, complete your Condition Report before you move your things in. Test every power point, every light, and stove/oven. Check that the underside of the blinds, the inside of the oven, and light covers, are clean. If you do not state that something was dirty or broken in your correction of the Condition Report, you will be responsible for getting it cleaned or fixed, regardless of whether it was dirty and broken when you moved in. Report it, even if you don’t care whether it is clean or working.

If you are renting from someone other than a real estate agent, you probably will not have a condition report. Instead, you can send the landlord an email listing anything that is dirty or broken. This is better than using social media messages, as it is clearly timestamped, and viewed by the tribunal as being a written form of communication.

Take photos. Lots of photos. This will help you to prove what you have said

Take lots of photos. This will help you to prove what you have said in your condition report or email. Everything that is dirty or broken should be photographed.

in your condition report or email. Everything that is dirty or broken should be photographed. Email those photos to yourself, even if your phone gives a timestamp. If you need to go to the tribunal to claim back your bond, you will have irrefutable proof of the condition the property when you moved in.

After you move out, take lots of photos showing that you have left the property in a clean state. Include photos of the floors, walls, windows, lights, stovetop/oven, bathtub, toilet, sinks, cupboards, lawn, garden beds, etc. Again, email them to yourself so that they are timestamped. That way, if the property is dirtied or something breaks after you have left, you will not need to pay for that damage. If you have any questions about getting your bond/deposit returned, or any other accommodation question, ask an SRC Caseworker. We’re happy to help.

If you need help and advice from an SRC Caseworker, start an enquiry here. bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker

Hi Abe,

I’ve been noticing some stuff in my friend’s relationship recently. Her partner is always putting her down in front of other people, and she recently told me she’s “not allowed” to go to our friend’s party. The other day we were meant to catch up for coffee and her partner randomly showed up and they left abruptly. What should I do?

Sincerely, Worried

Dear Worried,

What you’re describing sounds like it could be coercive control, a subtle form of domestic violence.

The next time you see your friend you can ask how things are going. Avoid intervening in a way that escalates the situation or causes your friend to isolate herself. She needs you to be her friend in a non-judgemental way. If she wants immediate support, call 1800 Respect (1800 737 732). For more information on how to support a friend in this situation check out the resources on the Dept of Community Justice website: dcj.nsw.gov.au

Sincerely, Abe

Department of Community Justice website: Help someone experiencing domestic violence

1. Sharon Stone often plays which archtype in film?

2. In ancient Greek religion, Helios is the personification of astronomical object?

3. Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting follows users of which drug?

4. In our solar system, which planet is second closest to the Sun?

5. Sonntag refers to which day of the week in German?

6. Key to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory is the ‘what’ stage?

7. Which English noblewoman is remembered for riding a horse naked through the streets of Coventry?

8. Which genre of music derives it’s name from the motion of a ship on the sea?

9. What name is used in the feminine form of ‘John Doe’?

10. What connects these answers?

Dusting off the cobwebs

Connections

Crossword

1. Alkali’s opposite

5. Awol, in brief

8.“Woe is me!”

12. Eats out

14. Crime preceding a joyride, say

16. Text next to a paperclip, say

18. Roots

19. Install in advance

21. ___-Ra (classic cartoon character)

22. Music publication company ___ Leonard

23. Swimming costume component, slangily

24. ___ water (stayed afloat)

26. Nintendogs is the second best selling one

28. Belgrade local

30. Mothra or Godzilla, e.g.

32. Some cold alcoholic drinks

33. Rat, in a sense

35. Some warm alcoholic drinks

37. Moments of risks paying off... or a description of this puzzle’s shaded squares

41. Lyrics before “little silhouetto”

42. Gym units

44.“___ is America”

47. Small Toyota model since 1999

50. ___ independents (Winners of seven seats in the 2022 federal election)

52. Upper arm bones

54. Uno card

56.“Catch you later!”, online

57. Communications-disrupting burst of energy, in brief

58. Booty

60. Gatekeeper, say

62. Dave in both the Marvel and Dune franchises

65.“Rainbow Connection” singer

66. Archetypal literary characters with traits like femininity, naivety and innocence

67. One of the “big four” Britpop bands

68. Anaconda offering

69. U.S. org. that monitors pollution

70. Adam and Eve’s grandson, in biblical lore

Across Down

1. Brings to the big screen

2. Their 2005 ad campaign featured their cars turning into Transformers

3. Area finder, in calculus

4.“That works for me!”

5. Circular Quay gallery, in brief

6. Singers Curtis and Dury, for two

7. Franz Ferdinand, e.g.

8. Relaxed sighs

9. ___ Company (2024 cooperative horror game)

10. Triangular house type that resembles a letter

11. Does up

13. Glaswegian, say

15. Common band merch items

17. First word in a Christmas carol

20. ___ number on

25. Punishes, as a lawyer

27. Washer, e.g.

29. Damage, as an ego

31. Sci-fi brain locale

34. Brings into an email chain

36. Place to find a bud

38. Argument’s crux

39. Affirmative vote

40. Exemplar

43. Ties the knot, in a way

44. Comedians commit to it

45. Ethical, as treatment

46. Call into question

48. Sword-wielding Smash Bros character

49. Word before road or worm

51. Some cafe orders

53. Weather app’s warning

55. Four’N Twenty offerings

59. How-to component

61. Word before blue or colours

63. Electronic musician Four ___

64.“Venus ___ Boy” (Björk song title)

Crossword: Michael Smith.

Mirror

Rock and Roll

Jane

Always Balanced Coverage

YAY! YOUR FAVOURITE BAR ISN’T BEING SHUT DOWN, JUST BOUGHT, CLOSED, OBLITERATED ON A MOLECULAR LEVEL, REDEVELOPED, AND TURNED INTO A PLACE THAT HAS ITS OWN ‘SPECIAL BURGER SAUCE’

CLOVER MOORE SMASHES AGE CONCERNS BY RAILING A LINE OFF BIRDCAGE BAR TOP

SCHOLASTIC BOOK FAIR RELEASES NEW REALISTIC ‘ULTIMATE SPY KIT’, INCLUDING:

• COLOUR REVOLUTION GUIDE

• CULTURE WAR INCITEMENTS

• IDENTITY POLITICS • MOSSAD CONNECTIONS

ASPIRING SAUSAGE-MAKER ENROLS IN WRONG ‘FRANKFURT

SCHOOL’

Three chapters deep into Adorno’s ‘Negative Dialectics’, Dylan, 21, has begun wondering when he’ll get to start making the snags.

“Obviously theory is important”, Dylan told ABC, “but I’m having trouble with this whole ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ thing”.

When we reached out again a couple weeks later, however, Dylan had decidedly changed his tune.

“It seems it is the ideological facade, the false consciousness, that is the true casing of the sausage that is Capitalism; inside which we find the organs of domination and oppression”, Dylan told us.

“Furthermore, I fundamentally reject the premise of this joke”, he went on to state. “The historical division between intellectual and non-intellectual work only serves to further the hegemony of the ruling class. Through the development of a mass political party, we will produce our own intellectuals, who will no longer be condescended to be the likes of petty-bourgeois University students!”

“Not sure how I’ll break this to the boys at the butcher shop though.”

FRIDAY 27 SEPTEMBER

10am-12pm

Opening Ceremony with Antoinette Lattouf

12-1pm

Sarah Ayoub Q&A

10am-12pm

Beat reporting with Avani Dias and Caitlin Cassidy

Comics workshop with David Rowe and Huw Bradshaw

10am-12pm

Newswriting 101 with Rafqa Touma, Luca Ittimani, and Alice Trenoweth-Creswell

Student and community radio with Patrick McKenzie, Kate Saap and Joel Duggan

Mehreen Faruqi Q&A

Dr Karl talk on climate science Zine workshop with Mia Rankin and Max Easton

4pm-6pm

1-3pm Journalism and the law with Jahan Kalantar, Louise Buckingham and David Rolph

InDesign workshop with Mickie Quick and Bipasha Chakraborty

Sweatshop Literary Movement panel and workshop with Winnie Dunn and Michael Mohammed Ahmad

1-3pm Investigations with Kate McClymont

Student journalism across the ages with Wendy Bacon, Pat Lane and Cam Wilson

FOIs made easy with Billy Zimmerman

Palestinian prose and poetry with Hasib Hourani, Jumaana Abdu, and Sara M. Saleh

4-6pm

Fatima Payman in conversation

Handling Archives with Marlow Hurst

6.30pm

1-3pm

Creative writing and cultural criticism with Sara M. Saleh, Sarah Sasson, Annie Zhang, Max Easton and Hossein Asgari

Social media workshop with Nandini Dhir and Arabella Ritchie

Workshopping governance and guidelines with Alex Neale and Hugo Hay

4-6pm

Crossword tournament with Paolo Pasco and Michael Smith

Fisher rooftop trivia Party party party!!! 6.30pm 6.30pm

Night at the museum... with Vic Zerbst

STUDENT MEDIA CONFERENCE

27-29 SEPTEMBER UNIVERSITY OF