USyd’s Selective ‘Memory’ of the Freedom Ride
Grace Street Analysis, page 8 On Women and War: Literary Notes on Our Militarisation
Garcia-Dolnik Feature, page 6
Your Number is 8; Now Act Like It
Perspective, page 14
Honi Soit operates and publishes on Gadigal land of the Eora nation. We work and produce this publication on stolen land where sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney is a colonial institution. Honi Soit is a publication that prioritises the voices of those who challenge colonial rhetorics. We strive to continue its legacy as a radical left-wing newspaper providing students with a unique opportunity to express their diverse voices and counter the biases of mainstream media.
In This Edition...
On Women and War
On the Freedom Ride
On Recession Pop
On AI at USyd
On the new definition of antisemitism
On Destiny
On Records and Enmore
SRC Casework
Puzzles
Editor-in-Chief
Editors
Once again, the semester has well and truly begun. Campus life has picked up, and I have fallen into a weekly routine that runs on repeat, again and again and again. We are all booked and busy. Everyone I know is running around like a headless chicken, balancing it all however precariously, savouring the last of the lingering summer weather as best we can.
Though it may feel claustrophobic to be stuck in the uni cycle again, I hope picking up and reading Honi Soit can be a comforting ritual for you, in the way it is for me. For this edition, I asked
Companion Piece, Yasodara
reporters to reflect on the theme ‘Time After Time.’ In these pages, you’ll find writings that reflect on the cycles in which we find ourselves trapped and from which we find the most joy.
The talented writers in this edition have deeply interrogated our cyclical histories on a personal, political, and grand scale. On page 8, Grace Street reflects on the Freedom Ride and the continued history of powerful Campus Activism. On page 14, Ananya Thirumalai explores her own destiny and relationship with cosmology. On page 18, Marc Paniza looks at
the stories we pass down across generations and the moral lessons we learn.
Putting together this edition has been a pleasure and a privilege. I hope you learn from it, feel comforted and reflective, share our laughs, and admire the beautiful cover art by Yasodara. I hope you feel closer to our small USyd and Honi Soit community, which has become such a loving home for me and a place to rest as time passes, again and again, around me.
Love, Emilie
This cover artwork is a temporal collage of women, both real and mythical; they are mothers and sisters united in a battle for equality and freedom since time immemorial, for not only themselves but the generations that they will beget. The sketches of women presented here were sourced from past and present conflicts around the world, .e.g., the 1954-1962 Algerian War and the ongoing Israeli – Palestinian conflict. The artwork is admittedly derivative, drawing inspiration from and with direct reference to Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830), a timeless representation of human resilience and determination. In replacing Delacroix’s original peripheral figures with women in various roles, I attempt to resituate the scene within the context of postmodern warfare and feminism.
Jesse Carpenter, Bipasha Chakraborty, Tiara De Silva, Jesper Duffy, Aidan Elwig-Pollock, Sidra Ghanawi, Hugo Hay, Gabriel Jessop-Smith, Kuyili Karthik, Angus McGregor, Cassidy Newman, Emily O’Brien, Jaden Ogwayo, Nicholas Osiowy, Marc Paniza, Chris Papas, Greta Reinhardt, Jo Staas, Jacob Starling, Grace Street, Thea Swinfield, Zayed Tabish, Tanish Tanjil, Gabriel Ten Kate, Ananya Thirumalai, Lilah Thurbon, Sebastien Tuzilovic, Chris Wilkinson
Crossley, Celina Di Veroli, Hamish Evans, Leanne Rook, Daniel Yu, and Norn Xiong.
within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. Please direct all advertising inquiries to publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au.
Should oneself, from the start of a relationship give it all their energy, emotions, wit, humour, love without fully knowing the other, yet with the assumption that you will last together till the end of time. and then risk a brutal breakdown when that connection is severed millennia earlier.
OR
Hide one’s truest self from the other, not knowing whether the connection will last (yet hopeful) and then risk having not revealed who your truly are when that realisation of eternal love is attained, and then risk breaking the connection yet again with an almost equally brutal and hurtful manner. ?? or in-fact as all things aim to be, should there be a balance? I say no. I say as much potential energy is built up over time with another, that that energy be made of everything you are without hiding and without leaving parts of your story out.
Sunlight
Sunlight,
First of all, I ponder why are you writing into an advice column if you’ve clearly already made up your mind? ‘Oneself’ should go outside and breathe in some fresh air. It does not do to live in either the black or the whites of life. We exist in the greys and so should you.
Do not give all you are away to someone you are not sure is worth your entirety. That doesn’t mean you hide yourself away, or lie, or betray. It simply means to do what feels natural to you, be who you are, trust your instincts and give what feels right, when it feels right.
And all that love you have burning within you? Find a way to turn all that love inward. Make sure that you are always able to hold your own hand. Then, if it doesn’t work out, you’ve still got something to hold on to.
And always be your truest self.
Unless your truest self is a boot-nasty, sociopathic, unhygienic, obnoxious, selfish, oblivious, nasty little piece of work, in which case yeah, find love wearing a mask and never take it off. For all of our sakes.
Please go enjoy the sun, Honey
A week ago I accidentally lost one of my AirPod Pros. I was dancing to a certain queer icon and then my mum yelled at me, and I was so spooked that I threw both AirPods out of my ear and later could only find one of them. The other is still in my room somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find it no matter how hard I try and now I am very sad with only my left AirPod. However, if I replaced it, it would be prohibitively expensive. What should I do?
Miss Price
Miss Price,
Your options are:
Apple EarPods (USB-C) $29
Apple EarPods (3.5mm Headphone Plug) $29
Apple EarPods (Lightning Connector) $29
Sony MDR-E9LPB In-Ear Headphones (Black) $9.95
Sony MDR-EX15LP In-Ear Headphones (Violet) $14.95
Techxtras RGB Wireless Cat Ear Headphones - Purple
$27.95
Please choose according to your needs.
Condolences, Honey
Send in your Dear Honey submissions at the QR code below or in our Linktree!
Uni Tunes LIVE
Wednesday, 19th of March at 7:30pm
Buddy’s Bar
SASH Persepolis Screening
Thursday, 20th March at 5pm Old Geology Lecture Theatre
Teletech Party
Saturday, 22nd of March Manning Bar
Rally against “The Day of the Unborn Child” Sunday, 23rd of March at 10am Hyde Park
Milly McPherson Solo Show
Sunday, 23rd of March at 6pm
The Midnight Special.
All Ears - INXS Kick album
Wednesday, 26th of March Chuck and Sons Brewery Co.
The University of Sydney has knowingly put a transgender student in danger of deportation this week, after alleging misconduct that violated the Campus Access Policy.
Luna* was given notice of suspension due to images of pro-Palestine slogans written on a whiteboard that the university attributed to her. In an Instagram post by Pride in Protest, the images of her alleged misconduct read: “USYD vice chancellor Mark Scott supports Gaza genocide” and “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”.
The university claims that because the slogans were written in permanent marker, they were hard to remove and thus constituted misconduct.
Luna is a transgender woman from Malaysia, who has gone through the “incredibly invasive” process of seeking asylum in Australia after her student visa ends, according to said Pride in Protest member, Damien Nguyen at a press conference on the 6th of March. She had applied for an extension until after her asylum visa took effect on March 21st, in order
to remain in Australia, but was initially denied.
If an international student is suspended from their studies, they face immediate deportation from Australia, as the conditions of their visa
demand they engage in full-time study for the duration of their stay.
Nguyen went on to explain that Luna would be forced to detransition should she be deported as Malaysia does not provide gender affirming care.
Counsellors of the SRC condemned these allegations and the ‘drastic’ disciplinary action. “The policies wielded against this student are overly punitive and discriminatory. They make campus unsafe for any student who needs to speak out about their rights.” said Queer Officer Wendy Thompson. They emphasised that the recent commitments made to student and staff’s psychosocial safety was a PR stunt, and that the Campus Access Policy wielded against Luna placed students in real mental and physical danger.
The Wilkinson Building has submitted a gate paper request to receive $500,000 worth of seed funding for major building renovations, scheduled to be completed within the next 12 to 24 months.
The proposed upgrades include a replacement lift, upgrading and expanding female toilet facilities, and the reconfiguration of the building’s level one courtyard.
This announcement comes amid ongoing rumors surrounding the Wilkinson Building’s future, including speculation over the building’s potential construction or demolition as part of the University’s future plans.
It was due to take place in early February, and then in late February, and then in March. Twice thwarted by a deluge of apologies, the SRC council finally made it to fruition on the 5th of March. It was worth the wait.
There was some kerfuffle assembling enough councillors for quorum, with several counts showing that the council had 18 councillors present out of the necessary 19. The Secretary to Council asked, “Deaglan, are you still here?”
Deaglan Godwin (SAlt) responded: “I’m never leaving!”
Angus Fisher (NSWLS) announced that the council meeting was at quorum at 6:48pm.
After the devastating loss of former Honi Soit editor (CAKE for Honi, 2022) and Disabilities Officer Khanh Tran, Remy Lebreton (Grassroots) brought forward a motion for Khanh’s memorial at the start of the agenda, which passed.
Victor Zhang (SLS), said, “Khanh was fearless and relentless, unwilling to compromise for justice. Khanh was a
Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Annabel Li, and Emilie GarciaDolnik report.
mentor, friend, co-OB, fellow journalist, and a comrade most of all. The greatest shame is what Khanh could have gone on to do for all of us, but is no longer here to do.”
Luke Mesterovic, Education Officer (Grassroots) said “I wish we had Khanh back. It is not fucking fair that someone who was so competent, who was so beloved, doesn’t get to live the rest of their life.” Fisher added: “Khanh referred to me as a proverbial pair of dead fish eyes, and I’m never going to forget that.”
The council observed a minute’s silence in remembrance. Vale Khanh Tran, 19962025.
Next on the agenda was the Gen Sec report. The General Secretary, Grace Street (Grassroots) noted the budget did not account for inflation, so the funding was less than last year: “if you are upset about your budget and the small amount we have received, so are we. You can help by recording increased activity to help with SSAF application.”
The heckles and debate then began. Jasmine Al-Rawi (SAlt) said that “this is akin to the cuts that Elon Musk is doing… We’re given less money by people who consider themselves activists.”
Street responded, “It’s not an austerity budget of our choosing. Effort was channelled into these other contestable things, which is where we are trying
to funnel people’s projects and money into. We have money and will get there eventually.”
To our dismay, Deaglan Godwin (SAlt) called Honi “a bunch of wannabe journalists.” No, Deaglan, Honi Soit is where you ask to put your poster graphics to promote your rallies.
Honi budgeting now at the forefront of people’s minds led to another heckle from Jasmine Donnelly (NSWLS): “Is it true that Honi Soit received a $1,500 increase to fund their Pitch ‘n’ Bitch sessions at Courtyard?” Yes, it is. See our Facebook page for details.
The SRC moved to condemn USyd’s adoption of the new IHRA definition of anti-semitism. The motion carried.
Next, the council moved to continue opposition to USyd’s attacks on freedom of speech and protests.
Godwin commented, “USyd has become one of the most repressive campuses in the entire country, leading the charge against activism, in particular activism engaged in freedom for Palestine… this is enforced by the government and enforced by the GO8 to crack down on student activism. This goes further than student activism around Palestine but goes against student activism itself.”
A motion was then moved to oppose USyd’s threatened deportation of a transgender asylum seeker. The student was given a ‘Notice of Alleged Misconduct’ following allegations that she wrote Palestinian solidarity slogans on a whiteboard on campus. USyd has
Jesper Duffy reports.
On Wednesday March 5th, the University issued a statement, citing an administrative error causing the notice of immediate suspension. On Thursday March 6th, the university clarified that Luna would not be suspended, and that an apology has been issued.
However, the University’s extension does not change Luna’s circumstances. In an email to the Star Observer obtained by Pride In Protest, the university confirmed they were only extending her response deadline until the 14th of March. She is still in danger of deportation. *False name for safety reasons.
labelled this a breach of the Campus Access Policy (CAP). If the student, *Luna, has their enrollment revoked, they may be deported to Malaysia or sent to a detention centre.
Street said “[This is a] harrowing example of [the] university wanting to punish and unfair policies that [they] use to justify it… It’s just one example that we know of because it happened to make it out of the media. Potential to ruin people’s lives over stating true things — if it hadn’t gone to the media, what would have happened? We shouldn’t have this CAP hanging over our head.”
Then came a motion to oppose USyd’s $92 million course cuts. Mesterovic asked “How stupid does this university think we are? Whenever they try to make these cuts, they won’t give reasons why, because they can’t give reasons why.”
Out of the blue, Grassroots decided that they wanted to take the party out of council, and made a surreptitious exit. Everyone seemed to be losing their lust for life at that point, so they received hardly any heckles for pulling quorum. Thus, the March session of the SRC council came to an abrupt halt at 11:13pm. The last person to leave was your dedicated editor Imogen, furiously tweeting a final quip before being kicked out of the room by the Secretary to Council.
*False name for safety reasons.
Read full article online.
Following through with their 12-month plan, formally announced in September last year, the University of Sydney Union (USU) is officially moving into their final consultation phase for becoming an incorporated entity.
Spearheaded by President Bryson Constable and Vice President Ben Hines, the incorporation plan was approved at the USU Board meeting on the 28th of February. The plan will undergo one final period of consultation with the USU community before it is likely brought to the AGM in May.
proposition will see a change in the composition of voting members on the Board. It will shift from 11 elected students and two senateappointed directors to nine elected students, the immediate past president (IPP), immediate past vice president (IPVP), and three external committee chairs. In this new plan, student representation will remain at 11 on the board, and the appointed external committee chairs will not be able to vote on issues regarding ‘students’ or the Board executive.
including the newly introduced First Nations, Ethnocultural, Equity, and Colleges portfolios. Beyond the initial confusion of henceforth referring to SRC and USU officers, this necessitates the question of how the USU and SRC officers will be made continually distinct to a new student audience.
The plan as it stands is approved in principle by the The University of Sydney executive, several former USU Presidents, the Students’ Representative Council, and other student groups on campus, as well as backed by the USU’s lawyers and an external law firm.
The USU is currently a non-legal entity and not actually a true legal union. The incorporation plan will allow the USU to receive legal status as a sole entity separate from its individual members. This governance change will allow them to pursue enforceable and legal contracts without the necessity of attaching every single USU member to legal agreements.
Aiming to increase the continuity of the USU executive terms, the
The chair of the Board will remain a student representative, and the three external committee chairs will be appointed by a nomination committee composed of: three USU Board appointed reps, three USyd appointed reps, and a chair which is proposed by the USU and agreed upon by USyd. Theoretically, this means the external chairs will be nominated by a majority of USU representatives, maintaining student interests.
The inclusion of the IPP and IPVP for a single additional term is an attempt to address concerns of continuity for USU Board plans and initiatives. It is also inevitably beneficial for whichever President and Vice President finally enact this supposedly years in-the-making plan.
All portfolios will be shifted to ‘officer’ roles, leading to 10 total officer roles,
Incorporation will seemingly allow for a clearer distinction between individuals acting as a ‘student’ as opposed to as a “USU member”. The proposal is approved by the USyd executive, which is remarkable considering it arguably provides greater autonomy to the USU to independently provide student services on campus through greater student representation.
Naturally, Honi has concerns about the potential for this increased independence to be manipulated by future Boards in a way that compromises student life. The plan has a natural impetus towards seeking external funding, such as accessing government grants which are currently unavailable to the nonincorporated entity. Honi wonders how this will affect societies who have explicitly political values that may not align with legal, corporate, or governmental interests — let alone societies and clubs that aren’t inherently profitable.
When asked about these concerns,
Constable responded: “The value proposition for being a part of the USU does not change because incorporating does not change our ability to allocate funding where we see fit to best support student activities, many of which are not profitable but serve an unimpeachable purpose in student life (like revues, student discounts, club grants, festivals, etc.).”
Honi believes this incorporation is inevitable and will be occurring before the end of the financial year. Perhaps left-wing activists on campus should start figuring out ways to hold power within a predominant part of the student union. Beyond hosting the largest welcome event on campus to reach out to new students and promote collectives, clubs, and societies, the USU also has a massive influence on the organisation and funding of amenities tackling student issues and the cost-of-living crisis, such as Foodhub and access to free period products. It is vital that an incorporated board is an accurate representation of student thoughts and political movements on campus. The USU will be accepting final submissions and inquiries from the USU community about the incorporation plan in the coming weeks.
After a yearlong hiatus in 2024, The University of Sydney plans to offer two In-Country Experience units in the May-June intensive block period and the December period.
Similar to other In-Country OLEs, this unit is currently available on the Unit of Study page and advertised across campus, including in the Carslaw Building.
This unit is proposed to be held at “partner university” the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which opened in 1925 as the first Israeli University in the city. The main campus, Mount Scopus, was built on the Palestinian side of the 1949 Armistice border; its very existence is occupied on Internationallyrecognised Palestinian land.
This subject will allow students to learn about the “challenges, tensions and complexities” of “contemporary Israel” as well as interact with
“local Jewish and Palestinian Arab Israelis”. This program is being reintroduced in the midst of a genocide that is currently estimated to have murdered over 45,000 Palestinians in the West Bank.
The University offers a chance
to “develop skills in crosscommunication through direct contact” between groups, although does not elaborate on what those entails. It is unlikely that this will be a true reflection of Palestinian culture and the ongoing struggles as a direct result of Israeli colonisation.
This change is likely a reflection of the updated safety guide to the area, where 2024’s advice was “do not travel” and this year is to “reconsider your need for travel”. Currently, it is the only OLE country program offered to University students that is a level 3 safety risk.
Current list of 2025 – 2026 In Country Experience Units and their associated Australian Travel Risk (Smart Traveller)
Emilie Garcia-Dolnik is a woman at war
“I saw how massacres can be a spectacular demonstration of the Foucauldian idea that power is manifested ubiquitously in daily life and over the human body. Witnessing violence and connecting it to the idea of power over bodies challenges the limiting, essentialist, and underdeveloped binary of female subordination to male power. In other words, bodies are constructed and reconstructed to serve different functions, chief among which is the exertion of power. Instead of simply focusing on male-female gender dynamics, we have to look at the forces behind the constructions of these identities. Only by addressing those forces can we deal with subjugation, including gender-based subjugation… the possibility of violence, spectacular or structural confirms the docility of our bodies.”
— Lina Attalah, Our Women on the Ground (2019) In Virginia Woolf’s extended essay, Three Guineas, she declares, ‘as a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country.’ Within these deceptively simple and stylised phrases, she positions herself as an outsider, a stranger to the nation and a scorner of nationalism, because she is a woman. When Woolf wrote Three Guineas, she laid testament to a series of truths unknown to English society at the time of writing. The first of these being that militarisation extends beyond the battlefield, where it insidiously transforms people, culture, and ideas. The second is that militarisation privileges masculinity, and in doing so, also transforms the meaning of femininity. The third and final truth is that institutions and cultural facets heralded as bastions of democratic civilisation legitimise war as their offspring through the nurturing of hierarchy, masculinity, and rivalry — the “Holy Trinity of Militarism” according to infamous feminist International Relations (IR) scholar Cynthia Enloe. Three Guineas is by no means the first instance of a woman writing on war. However, just prior to World War II in 1938, the work canonically stands as a potent omen against the modern world and warfare as it eventuated. In truth, Three Guineas and women’s writings on war are increasingly relevant in a globe that is inching towards a state of permanent warfare. To many, such as myself, who are positioned as women within the discipline of IR, Woolf’s writing has been both comforting and inducing of distress.
To read novels, literature, non-fiction, and essays on war penned by women is to bear witness to our continued militarisation, and to grow aware of our role in dismantling and perpetuating it too. These texts and accounts persist across the globe and throughout history, defying genre and often temporal context; as Enloe wrote: “some of the most engaging accounts of women’s distinct experiences of war come to us as novels, often written reflectively years after the war they are describing.” The significance of women writing about war cannot be understated, in part due to the structural disclusion of women’s history, but also because they robustly challenge the “Holy Trinity of Militarism” to create new futures built on justice. It is within this context that the concept of feminist peace has been created.
“War which is at the heart of the construction of the modern world, which constitutes the very basis of the colonial and imperialist politics, is the central weapon of structural, systemic violence, of racial and neoliberal capitalism, and its patriarchy”
— Françoise Vergés, A Feminist Theory of Violence (2022)
Fiction and non-fiction narratives of women in periods of war probe the co-optation of the body politic into a position of subjugation. They deeply interrogate how gender is constructed and reconstructed again to legitimise state violence. Women writing war is broader than the traditionalist
conceptions of war; it encompasses reflections on militarisation as it manifests everywhere, including within interpersonal relations and the ostensibly separated domestic sphere. It often encompasses reflections on modern state-building, nationalism, imperialism, concentrated power ,and violence. As a body of texts, the works speak to the plurality of women’s experiences worldwide and alternate visions for a future peace.
Zohra Drif’s autobiography Inside The Battle of Algiers recounts her life and resistance to French imperialism in Algeria in great detail, speaking to the role of women in revolution and anti-colonial resistance. In Insurrecto, Gina Apostol narrates historical-ongoing relations between the Philippines and the US through the lives and perspectives of both a Filipina translator and an American filmmaker, a testament to atrocities committed by US forces on Philippine soil. In The Poppy War, R.F Kuang morphs China’s modern history into a fantastical and visceral trilogy that demarcates Japan’s violent imperial history as a moral reminder of the impact of war and imperialism across Asia. Adania Shibli’s novel, Minor Detail, traverses the violence of past and present life in Palestine under Israeli occupation, where the difficulties of locating women’s history are made exceptionally clear. These narratives weave a tapestry of alternate histories and resistance to an insidious militarism that is deeply interwoven within the fabric of everyday life. The crux of these narratives is the interrogation of power as it is concentrated at every level; seen and unseen, public and private.
Women in every context relate to nationalism differently. Broadly speaking, Enloe creates five categories by which women partake in nationalistic ideas: as biological reproducers; as symbols and signifiers of nationalism in male discourses; as transmitters and producers of cultural narratives; as reproducers of the boundaries of the nation; and as active participants in national movements. Embedded within women’s narratives of war are these relational forms that invert familiar and traditionalist paradigms of gender. These works create new potentialities for a future based on a feminist ethic of liberation and care. A woman does not have to write on the traditional conceptions of war to convey how her experiences, or broader society, are militarised. Once militarism is seen, it is difficult to unsee. We are all privy to the media discourses that regurgitate hardline political stances on the so-called ‘war on terror’, ‘war on drugs’ or ‘war on migrants’. As we become militarised, we are drawn into a permanent state of war that justifies the enhanced use of state violence employed at will. Even the guise of peace rhetoric is well and truly dead.
Our own Australian context is not exempt from the conversation on militarism and nationalism, nor are we exempt from evocations of gender to further an imperialist agenda. Australia’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda notably sees the military ‘operationalise the priorities’ outlined in the 2021 National Action Plan (NAP). The NAP is mostly relevant throughout the Indo-Pacific, where a historically militarised Australian presence can become purple-washed into appearing committed to human, and particularly women’s, rights. This cannot be extricated from a broader tale of coloniality,
where migrant detention centres can be established without consequence throughout the Pacific, as part of so-called cash-for-migration-control schemes that tie our neighbours to our military. I return again to Enloe’s conceptualisation of militarisation in Maneuvers as the “step-by-step process by which something becomes controlled by, dependent on, or derives its value from the military.” I’d argue, then, that in Australian foreign policy, women and humanitarian aid are militarised.
So, I grow increasingly weary about militarism in Australian society. The ADF cadet programs enrol children as young as 13 years old into after-school programs that promote interest in, and legitimise, defence and military ideologies in youth. While the RSL stands as a solemn place of mourning for many veterans, patrons entering any of the 1100 RSL branches across Australia are greeted with display cases of heralded martial paraphernalia from across a violent and often unjust modern military history. Grief for victims and those lost can sometimes come secondary to the glorification of the warfare itself. The ADF continues to sponsor students with enticing debt-free university careers in exchange for commitment to the armed forces and full-time service in the years following graduation. University is only free if you commit your life to the military. Cynthia Enloe even notes, on both an individual and socio-cultural level, the adoption of “camo” clothing into everyday use as a testament to our normalised militarisation. It is naive to assume these phenomena exist on any apolitical level when they have tangible impact on citizens, as well as domestic and foreign affairs.
In A Brief History of Australian Terror, Bobuq Sayed bears testament to the manifest implications of our militarism. His essays analyse the cruel reality of almost two decades of Australian presence in Afghanistan within the context of military history and a “national culture of denial.” Sayed analyses the Brereton Report, as published in November 2020, which “found credible evidence that ADF soldiers had slaughtered at least thirty-nine innocent Afghan men and children in twenty-three separate incidents.” He continues: “Major General Justice Paul Brereton conducted the investigation and reported that, in some cases, ADF soldiers slit throats, gloated about their actions, kept kill counts, executed prisoners to ‘blood’ junior soldiers and photographed dead bodies with planted phones and weapons to justify their actions.” Sayed notes, “the perpetrators never thought twice about having their impunity questioned because the victims were Afghans and, by extension, Muslim.” In 2021, estimates were placed at one to five years before evidence could be presented to the DPP, let alone for any prosecutions to begin. In October 2024, the ABC reported that guilty soldiers may never be delivered charges for these war crimes.
To this day, there have been no consequences for ADF personnel involved in these instances, though there have been serious repercussions for whistleblowers. Samantha Crompvoets, now author of Blood Lust, Trust and Blame, is a military sociologist who worked closely with the Defence Department on projects pertaining to ADF reform. In 2016, she penned an exposé report which detailed war crimes committed by Special Air Service regiment soldiers in Afghanistan (and sparked the Brereton inquiry). She condemned evocations of the “fog of war” in obfuscating intentional action, earning the ire of then Defence Minister Peter Dutton, who did not want the military to be “distracted by things that have happened in the past.” He also said that Crompvoets would not receive government contracts in future, despite the report itself being commissioned by Major General Jeff Sengelmen, then Special Operations Commander. In an article penned for Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Crompvoets noted “abuse of power and the normalisation of deviance” as issues plaguing militaries including the ADF, as well as all institutions “grappling with the same problems: histories of abuse and secrecy, sexual harassment, [and] problems of diversity and inclusion.” She remains outspoken about the continuing consequences of this systematic vilification on her career and personal life.
The decades-long US and Australian presence in Afghanistan came to a conclusion in 2021, when allied forces were hastily evacuated from the
ground. The ‘War on Terror’ very prominently continues to operate as a buzzword in Australian media, a notable example of militarised language that justifies a normalised and enhanced state of continued violence. Of course, our militarisation does not impact us all equally. There have been more consequences inflicted on innocent minority communities than on actual war criminals. In Randa Abdel Fattah’s book, Coming of Age in the War on Terror, she analyses attempts to ‘de-radicalise’ Arab, muslim, and ethnically diverse youth through “countering violent extremist (CVE) policies”, as well as through school curriculum, to the effect of enhanced policing and hyper-surveillance of Arab communities across Australia. The work is a reminder of the cruel and ongoing impact of terror discourses which primarily aim to fear-monger, to the detriment of children and other vulnerable populations. It is needless to say: the wrong people are paying the price for our militarisation.
Yet, militarisation is not inevitable. In Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, Cynthia Enloe makes this, however wearily, clear. What was once militarised can indeed become demilitarised again. She notes the role of “historians, sociologists and psychologists”, as well as “‘artists, street performers and novelists”, in dismantling militarism idea-by-idea. There are, and always have been, women standing at the forefront of pacifist and anti-militarisation movements. But then, what is feminist peace? What does it mean to work towards feminist peace? Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) sees the dissolution of the nation state as the ultimate goal, where an international system governed by an ethic of care will eradicate the need for the military and borders. Reimaginations of the globe are pervasive and omnipresent within women’s writings on war. We must pivot towards the global scale again. Writing from the grips of feminist revolution in Iran, Nila in In the Streets of Tehran writes:
“Against this backdrop of appalling barriers, more women than men now hold university diplomas… a delightful overabundance of female-authored bestsellers resonates within Iran and throughout the diaspora…the wisdom and unwavering resolve of women drew numerous men to rally to their cause. Even those who once disparaged the women’s movement against the compulsory hijab, belittling them as frivolous now understand that if women are [not] free and equal, freedom and democracy cannot thrive… We can see all roads convering to lead us to a promising dawn.”
In the same strain, Saba Mahmood penned: “Even in instances when an explicit feminist agency is difficult to locate, there is a tendency to look for expressions and moments of resistance that may suggest a challenge to male domination”
Alternate futures, as alternate pasts, exist in conjunction and plurality. We are all ensnared within relations of power and domination. As resistance and revolution are embedded within the practice of writing, there is also resistance within the reading process. We must interrogate militarism as it manifests in each of our lives, and actively work to dismantle it to its core. It is only through engaging with these works that we may bear witness to violence as it occurs pervasively, in every form, throughout our lives and across the globe.
Art by Emilie Garcia-Dolnik
To do the memory of the Freedom Ride justice and to channel its legacy into our own activism, we have to both forensically analyse and challenge why and how the Freedom Ride is commemorated and claimed as a win by the University of Sydney.
Amongst the Left at and around the University of Sydney (USyd), we often remark that the University’s criticisms and quelling of protest, such as with the Campus Access Policy (CAP), is inconsistent with its activist history. Two major examples cited are the Freedom Ride of 1965 and the anti-Vietnam war moratorium protests of the 1970s, both of which involved Sydney students taking action and going against the grain for social causes — yet, only the former example is acknowledged and celebrated by the University. While we often draw similarities between the Freedom Ride and Gaza Solidarity Encampment of 2024 being student-led, prioritising affected voices, featuring non-violent direct action, and opposing apartheid, the disparity in the University’s response to them is stark.
2025. Sitting in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, we were directly across from the former Gaza Solidarity Encampment but discussed a whitewashed version of the Freedom Ride in a vacuum filled with cognitive dissonance.
To explain why and how the Freedom Ride is remembered positively by a University hostile towards activism, I would boil it down to two main things — certain characteristics of the Freedom Ride itself that made it acceptable, eventually, to society and the University, and the way that certain details have been omitted or changed over time in the dominant narrative.
What began as a group of 29 University of Sydney students embarking on the “Student Action for Aborigines Bus Trip” to rural New South Wales towns with no route or expectations has, over time, become a famous campaign known and celebrated as the — “melodramatically” named, according to Freedom Rider Aidan Foy — “Freedom Ride.” Across towns visited in the Freedom Ride and at the University of Sydney, 60th anniversary events have been held in recent weeks, but with very different tones and themes.
In an account by Foy of the anniversary event in Walgett, a town that the Ride visited twice, he describes large photos of the Freedom Ride demonstrations and informative plaques around the town, and a tree planted in honour of Charles Perkins, the Arrernte and Kalkadoon man leading Student Action For Aborigines (SAFA). Foy and other Riders were welcomed by Elders, the Governor, politicians, most of the adult population, and “every school in Walgett, Collarenebri, and Brewarrina who had time off to attend because of the historical importance of the event”. The students made capes to celebrate the Riders as superheroes.
Meanwhile, at USyd, the anniversary of the SAFA bus returning was celebrated in an unadvertised formal event tucked away in the Chau Chak Wing museum and featuring a panel led, ironically, by Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott. Scott congratulated the four Freedom Riders on the panel for the “historic event” that made a “very significant change” in the country. The elephant in the room was the Campus Access Policy (CAP) and the five newly proposed policies seeking to further limit activism and civil disobedience in
I aim to highlight how the University and our broader society selectively picks historic events, or even just parts of them, to remember and celebrate. By ignoring the broader Left and activities of unions and students at the time, and by glossing over details like the successful use of unions and pickets on the Freedom Ride, we fail to fully recognise and learn from this significant event.
It was startling to hear Scott ask a leading question about whether direct action should be embedded in non-violence, seemingly to spur a quick condemnation of violence and civil disobedience. Brian
Grace Street takes a ride through history.
spontaneous fact-finding mission.
Speaking with Freedom Rider Hall Greenland about the irony of Mark Scott asking Freedom Riders about their advice for a new generation of activists, Greenland condemned the “astonishing blatant two-faced approach by the university authorities astonishing blatant two-faced approach by the university authorities — embracing the dissidents and trouble-makers of 60 years ago while doing their best to suppress their modern equivalents.”
During the time of the Freedom Ride, Greenland described the University’s “hands-off” approach to political activity on campus. It took until the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Ride in 2015 for the University to celebrate or align themselves with the Freedom Ride, which Greenland calls a “corporate recuperation operation.”
At the anniversary event’s close, Mark Scott announced a new scholarship for First Nations students to “keep the memory alive” of the Freedom Ride. But what is the “memory” that he is referring to? A peaceful, fact-finding mission run by students, that appeared out of and disappeared into thin air, seems to be the University’s popular and palatable narrative.
For instance, the Freedom Ride featured a diverse group of students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with a range of political views (i.e. not just pesky, radical socialists) and included the University’s first two Indigenous students, Charles Perkins and Gary Williams. For
Aarons, one of the Freedom Riders present, responded that Martin Luther King’s 1963 letter from jail, responding to critics about civil disobedience, was a “Bible”, and that Charles Perkins was “fond” of the term “constructive conflict”. It is in this very Letter from Birmingham Jail that King advocated for breaking unjust laws and for nonviolent direct action that “seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Yet, in much the same way that King is remembered solely as an advocate of peace and non-violence, the Freedom Ride has similarly been reduced by the University to a convenient story of a
which was characterised by strong leftwing unionism and student activism.
In a similar vein, while the Freedom Riders were University of Sydney students, their protest was not on University grounds nor directed at the University. The Freedom Riders were not subjected to the the newly crafted (or imagined) restrictions we face today, such as the arbitrary 1901 Inclosed Lands Act that forced us our Encampment off of the Quadrangle Lawns, or the vague and infantilising CAP claim of protecting “psycho-social safety” used to stop protest or dissent in any vicinity or capacity that may actually reach people. Today when we protest governments and institutions complicit in apartheid and genocide, we are told that even non-violent dissent and speaking out can be harmful.
The University’s spin on things runs counter to history and the accounts of prominent leftist Freedom Riders. In Ann Curthoys’ 2003 book, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers, she recounts that leftist students formed a committee called the ‘Sydney University Organising Committee for Action on Aboriginal Rights’ in June 1964 to organise for “National Aborigines Day” on the 8th of July. Around 500 students attended the rally-cum-concert in Hyde Park and a demonstration the following day, which was followed up with SAFA meetings leading to the idea of an American-style Freedom Ride.
In a recent Solidarity meeting about the Freedom Ride, Dunghutti activist Paul Silva recognised that the Freedom Ride was an “exciting” moment for many of the indigenous people around Kempsey (Dunghutti) when the Riders visited, for it exposed the injustice of segregation in Kempsey. Since then, Kempsey gained the first ever Native Title claim in NSW, but Silva mentioned how “Aboriginal people don’t have the right to a home, even on their own land”. He spoke about ongoing crises including the Northern Territory Intervention, deaths in custody, the Voice to Parliament referendum and overpolicing. Today, 60 years on, Silva says “we must stand as one and push out the people that are affecting us, and that [...] is the government.”
the University, this is celebration-worthy, particularly as they were campaigning for a cause that is now widespread belief.
When interviewing Greenland recently, he also disclosed that the Freedom Rides were limited by a “liberal and social-democratic attitude” and some assimilationist assumptions for they had “not yet appreciated the settler/colonial framework and the dispossession and colonisation of First Nations people.”
These liberal politics of the early campaign and its time still suit the University today. Equally, the Freedom Ride can, and has been, reduced to a succinct 15-day event; it is viewed in isolation from the political environment preceding and following it,
For us to properly commemorate and learn from the Freedom Ride, we need to challenge the narrative put forward by an opportunistic and hypocritical University. ‘Remembering’ what has been moulded into a spontaneous, assimilationist, and peaceful campaign will not allow us to continue to fight for First Nations justice and for decolonisation. If the University thinks it sufficient to offer up a few scholarships to First Nations people while condemning the same indigenous and student activism that underpinned the Freedom Ride, we have to call it out and do what the Freedom Riders did — get organised, and take matters into our own hands.
Read full article online.
Thea Swinfield takes a trip through time.
Content Warning: Police Brutality
A motion by members of the Mardi Gras board to ban NSW Police from participating in the parade late last year was labelled a “slap in the face” by Premier Chris Minns. The motion failed in a close vote and the NSW Police float went ahead, with cops marching not in uniform or costumes, but corporate T-shirts. Our Premier’s comments were obviously intended to garner sympathy for police (who could simply march in any other float), but I wonder if a “slap in the face” might be exactly what they need. It seems the NSW Police Force has forgotten their history with Mardi Grasso let’s refresh our memories.
In March of 1978, Ken Davis was a part-time student at the University of Sydney when he received a letter from San Francisco. Californian activists had contacted gay and lesbian groups all over the world asking for solidarity activities to be held on the 24th of June (the 9th anniversary of the Stonewall riots) in support of their resistance to a new law which would allow anyone who supported gay rights to be sacked from any job within the California school system.
Ken called a meeting between several University of Sydney organisations to plan a march and rally for the morning of June 24th. The trade unions, Young Labor, women’s movements and other student groups were all interested in the issue of police power, Ken recalls, but it was “the first time gay and lesbian rights had taken centre stage” in a coalition event.
danced toward Hyde Park.
Suddenly, as they approached the park, the atmosphere shifted. Perhaps it was that the march had passed into the jurisdiction of the notoriously violent and corrupt Darlinghurst Police, or perhaps the police officers regulating the street party simply changed their minds.
They confiscated the sound system and arrested Lance, who was driving the truck, and the atmosphere rapidly morphed from one of freedom to one of fear. Nobody was dancing anymore. They were running.
The parade should have ended with speeches at Hyde Park, but upon reaching the park, the police had blocked it off and forced them toward William Street.
There were shouts of “on to the Cross!” and the party soon became a spontaneous march, with the chant of “Stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks” echoing up William Street.
As they approached Kings Cross the police began arresting people in earnest. Ken sheltered in a shop doorway with two friends. Darlinghurst police officers were throwing people into paddy wagons indiscriminately. These included lesbians and gay men, but also sex workers, drug users and homeless people from the Cross who had joined in off the street. 53 people were taken to Darlinghurst police station.
Two weeks before the march, a few members of CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) including communist party member Lance Gowland, raised concerns about the daytime march. Homosexuality would not be legalised for another 6 years and anyone seen there was at risk of losing their job, housing, family and friends.
They proposed an alternative: a nighttime event that would feel more like a celebration than a traditional protest, where people could dress up and have fun. It was agreed— they received a permit, and Sydney University groups began advertising it through banners, posters and word of mouth.
The daytime protests went well —over 500 people gathered in solidarity, with minimal police presence.
Around 10pm, Ken stood in Taylor Square in a country Western frock, waiting for the street to fill up. He was nervous, and for good reason: despite his efforts, it was hard to know whether the Mardi Gras would experience much of a turnout. He needn’t have worried— by 10:30, over 1000 people filled Taylor Square, about a quarter of them in costume. There was a strong sense of freedom and exhilaration as they began to follow the lone sound truck (bedecked with a banner saying “International Gay Solidarity”) down Oxford street. People began joining the parade from bars and off the street as they
Tiara De Silva remembers.
Those who were arrested were brutally beaten and forced into overcrowded cells. Activist Peter Murphy was beaten so badly he “was pissing and shitting [himself], and started convulsing”, and expected to die. He was only allowed to access medical attention 10 hours later.
Outside, those who had managed to avoid arrest were trying to collect bail. The greyness of the day had finally broken into cold winter rain, and everyone outside the station soon became soaked. At some point hours later, 18 women were moved to Central police station, and it was only after 10am the next day that they finally received bail.
On Monday morning, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names, ages, jobs and home addresses of the 53 who had been arrested. The Herald has never apologised for this.
The 78’ers, as they have come to be known, had a permit for the street party that night. There was no reason for the police to intervene in Kings Cross.
The violent arrests of attendees were both illegal and deeply rooted in the culture of Darlinghurst police and NSW police as a whole. An apology issued in 2016 claimed that NSW Police’s relationships with the public today are “positive and progressive,” but I see overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
For nearly three decades (1983–2009), Sri Lanka’s ‘civil war’ between the Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) left a trail of devastation. It claimed an estimated 100,000 lives and displacedg hundreds of thousands, making it one of the worst genocides in South Asian history, perpetrated against the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Among the most heartwrenching tragedies of the conflict are the countless children who went ‘missing’. These children, often referred to as ‘the disappeared’, represent a painful chapter in Sri Lanka’s history—one that continues to haunt families and communities, particularly in the Tamil-majority regions of the North and East. To this day, the fate of these children remains unknown.
The issue of missing children during the civil war is multifaceted, with instances of forced recruitment by the LTTE, abductions by state-backed paramilitary groups, and the collateral (under certain circumstances, conscious) damage of military operations. Despite the end of the bloodshed in 2009, the search for answers remains unresolved, making it such that, for many Sri Lankans, the war never ended.
The Scale of the Tragedy
Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, but estimates suggest that thousands of children disappeared during the conflict, a majority of which were children forcibly conscripted into the LTTE. According to a 2013 report by the United Nations, the LTTE was responsible for the forced recruitment of child soldiers, with some estimates suggesting that up to 60% of its fighters were under the age of 18 at the time of recruitment. However, the LTTE is not the only party implicated. Human rights organisations have also documented cases of children being abducted by government-aligned paramilitary groups or going missing during military operations. Dr. Nimalka Fernando, a prominent Sinhalese human rights activist and academic, has highlighted the nature of these disappearances as ‘systemic’. “The war created a culture of impunity,” she says. Fernando’s statement stresses the harrowing reality that children were caught in the crossfire, and their disappearances were often not investigated.
The Plight of Tamil Families
For Tamil families, the disappearance of children is a painful legacy. Many parents have spent years searching for their children, often with little to no support from the government. The Tamil community has long highlighted the Sri Lankan state’s failure to adequately address these cases, citing a lack of transparency and accountability. Such rhetoric is only sustained by the majority Sinhalese government’s trend of the exclusion and oppression of the Tamil population. The Sinhala Only Act of 1956 was an exclusionary tactic that legislatively jeopardized the livelihoods of non Sinhala speaking Sri Lankans by declaring Sinhala
the national language, socially alienating the tamil language, consequently creating ethnically fuelled biases. Politicians such as J.R Jayewardene, who took a proSinhala stance, ignored Tamil grievances, and allowed anti-Tamil violence to escalate, further exacerbated this distrust. His inaction during the 1983 Black July pogrom, where extremist mobs massacred Tamil civilians, radicalised many people and pushed them toward the LTTE. Extremist parties and individuals on both ends deepened the divide, perpetuating harm and weaponising prejudicial legislation, leading to bloodshed and pain that no Sri Lankan ever deserved.
Dr. Mahendran Thiruvarangan, a Tamil academic and senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, emphasises the emotional toll on families. “For many Tamil parents, the war did not end in 2009,” he explains. “Their children are still missing, and they live in a state of limbo, not knowing whether their children are alive or dead”. This is a form of psychological torture that continues to this day.
The LTTE’s use of child soldiers is welldocumented. The group often abducted children from their homes or schools, forcing them into combat roles. While the LTTE justified these actions as necessary for the survival of their cause, the practice is widely condemned by the international community and criticised as child abuse. However, the Sri Lankan government and its affiliated paramilitary groups have also been accused of abducting children, particularly during the final stages of the war. In some cases, children were allegedly taken for interrogation as leverage against suspected LTTE members, or on suspicion of LTTE affiliation and the prevention of future recruitment. Despite the LTTE’s heavy hand in forced armament, testaments from former child soldiers have even alluded to the Sri Lankan government’s collusion with the LTTE, in enforcing the children’s disappearances.
A 2015 report by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) documented numerous cases of children who disappeared after being detained by Sri Lankan security forces. “These were not isolated incidents,” says Yasmin Sooka, executive director of the ITJP. “There was a systematic pattern of abductions and enforced disappearances, and the victims included children as young as 12.”
As Sri Lanka grapples with the legacy of its ‘civil war’, the issue of missing children serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of conflict. Until these families receive justice, until these children receive justice, then the conscience of our society remains stained.
Read full article online.
I was on TikTok the other night, on my (regrettably) daily doom scroll before bed. Images of women in bootleg jeans, cowboy boots, chunky belts, fluffy hair with curtain bangs, and their hands holding joints popped up on my feed. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac was playing in the background, capturing the stereotypical Woodstock aesthetic in all its idealistic glory. The caption read “2025 is the return of ‘75 boho chic! Xx”.
Now, as someone who has been a fiend for boho chic style since I was fourteen years old, I was blown away by the out-of-the-blue switch-up of the recycled love of the style. But, from what I’ve seen so far, 2025 is the year of ‘70s boho stoner, ‘90s heroin chic, ‘50s trad-wife modesty, and the 2000s pop star style. Frankly, I’m confused. I typically don’t follow micro-trends, but this feels deeper than your typical ‘leopard-print, rock star girlfriend aesthetic’ or ‘yearning fairy cottage-core’. This is a romanticisation of nostalgia. It is a longing for something that is not now. It is a craving for culture, while overlooking the fact we, a lot of the time, have not lived them. There is no longer a craving to be ‘original’, only to have a specific style to follow. My question is, where do we draw the line on the revival of fashion eras, and did they ever even die?
‘Originality’ is a contentious concept. The idea of something being completely unique is a thought that isn’t comprehensible. Everything that we talk about, design, ‘innovate’, wear, write about, and so forth, is influenced by something long before our time. The way we speak is influenced by what we hear in our surroundings. The way we write is an elongated paraphrase of texts we’ve read over the years. The music we create is based on the time signatures and chord progressions we’ve heard from our favourite bands. The clothes we wear are based on the aesthetic or culture scene we long to be part of.
I wonder, has any fashion that’s on the mannequins of Glassons or Supré, appeared in ubiquitous Zara ads, or even earned a mention in Vogue since our birth in the early 2000s, truly been new? Or has it simply been a repetition of reinvention of the visionary designs from the
Charlotte Saker and Ellie Robertson doomscroll.
60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s? Were the true creatives those back then, or were they themselves also feeding off the scraps of the ones who came before?
Fashion follows the ‘20 year rule’ where it (without fail) repeats itself every 20 years. We wear it to death, we get sick of it, and then 20 years later we love it again. The ohso-audacious mini skirts of the 1960s were brought back by designers like Vivienne Westwood in the 1980s, often paired with high-waisted and exaggerated silhouettes. The double denim look, introduced in the 1980s, was revived as the ‘Canadian Tuxedo’ in the 2000s, particularly as part of streetwear and club culture with brands like Von Dutch leading the charge. Even now, double denim is still making waves, with Kendrick Lamar rocking it at the Super Bowl and me sporting a barely breathable denim corset and jorts at a Potts Point restaurant last week.
There are the lacy slip dresses, oversized grandpa blazers, and retro flared jeans from the 80s and 90s that resurrected in the 2010s. These pieces have become staples in most stores, with celebrities like Nicole Kidman — who’ve lived through these trends — frequently rocking the sexy business casual and elegant slip dress look on the red carpet, at both the start of her career and today. The only difference now is that they’re being produced at a speed incomprehensible to the pre-2000s mind. Add in some microplastics and countless sweatshops, and you have modern fashion.
From pinterest boards full of outfit ideas with a section of where to buy similar items, to get-ready-with-me TikTok videos, we have an array of content to completely redesign ourselves. Having access to such a broad spectrum of different styles has become a detriment to the visionaries that we, as humans, once were. The ability to put together an outfit, or choose an accessory, or have a personal style, has become a limited skill. We have an unlimited shopping list at the touch of a phone screen.
The fashion industry has a long history of cyclical habits, of having older trends reappear and putting a somewhat new flair on it. Fashion was once respected as a form of
This is an exercise in circular reasoning and non-sequitars. Buckle up.
Ditch the brat green for recession grey. The death knell of summer has rung. Bank and daylight savings are low. There is a dull economic chill creeping in.
But hey, it’s not all doom and gloom — we’ve got recession pop!
It’s got loud, hedonistic, simple hooks about staying out all night dancing, drinking, and indulging in prohibited behaviour. It’s aural escapism from a dreary economic reality.
Recessions have birthed undeniably iconic pop music moments. We witnessed as such in our youth, catalysed by the 2007 Global Financial Crisis. The Black Eyed Peas dominated with I Gotta Feeling — just have a closer listen to the lyrics of the first verse: “I feel stressed out, I wanna let it all go”. Even look at Lady Gaga’s debut single Just Dance: “Just dance, gonna be okay”, or Rihanna’s “Let’s escape into the music, DJ let it play” mentality.
As a six to ten year old, the Global Financial Crisis delivered sonically.
duopoly of supermarkets, and political parties. The RBA has not offered much reprieve with interest rates.
Recession pop is back, and it is time to return to the dancefloors. It’s revitalising Sydney’s nightlife. You’re going out to dance amongst a sweaty, strobe lit dance floor, a place where economic stress momentarily dissolves. You’re probably going to spend some money, whether on a door charge, opal card, uber, drinks, or a post-dance kebab. Your hedonism is a ready exercise in consumer spending getting higher.
It would be remiss of me not to address concerns about the disposable incomes that we, as a collective youth, have. Our real wages are 4.8% lower than pre-pandemic levels according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and our spending capacity is under strain. We need to rally on the dancefloors and the job market.
Jump forward to 2025, we have sizzled through the hottest recorded March day in 149 years and consumer spending is low in Australia, which usually makes up half of our gross domestic product - which is a lot!. We are living in the midst of a cost of living crisis, caught in a
So yes, I hear your concerns that if you are spending your money on dancing and having fun, how will you pay for your rent? Maybe you even have a mortgage? (My condolences if you do).
However, with recession pop, you won’t need to even think about rent! Once we have shown how effective consumer spending is, devoted Premier Mr Christoper Minns will be convinced to commit to the second tranche of ‘vibrancy reforms’ for Sydney’s music and nightlife, and we can party all through the night with changed noise regulations.
art, a form of expression and culture. Now, it is viewed less as an expression of the self, and more an expression of how in tune with digital culture you are. Fast fashion has become a critical disruption in the fashion industry. It ensures that these consumeristic micro-trends are able to reach and profit from all socio-economic classes. Think about it: your friend is raving about the concert of a new rock band and you want to be the most rock-looking person there. Just type up: *band name* aesthetic outfit. Then, jump onto an extremely exploitative website, pick the pieces you need, and pay an extra $15 for next day delivery. You’re definitely going to stand out in the crowd! If you want a specific aesthetic, you can get it in a few clicks (bonus points if you run into free delivery!) It truly doesn’t take much to be exactly who you want to pretend to be.
You will never truly be ‘original’, but you can be authentic. Authenticity isn’t your vibe or aesthetic. Authenticity isn’t the music you force yourself to listen to because you think it makes you ‘different’. Authenticity is about finding your own vision, and being the living entity of that vision. It’s about being unapologetic; it’s about being the embodiment of chaos, or structure (if that’s more your thing). You should allow yourself to traverse through the different eras, rather than sticking to one for fear of being seen for who you are.
Micro-trends feed off the fear of the consumers. The fear of not being enough, or being too much. The fear of being cool, or not being cool. The fear of being an individual, or being a collective. The fear of things never being the way they once were, or staying the same forever.
Micro-trends thrive on contradiction. The way to beat it is to be certain in who you are. Find out who that is, and run with it.
We should become nocturnal. Night time is for the dance floor! You won’t even need a bed. You can go from the dancefloor straight to work.
But what about sleep? Well, we live in a capitalist society and workers are alienated from their labour. You’re about to feel out of this world at work because NSW is introducing pill testing at festivals this year, so we don’t even have to worry about sleep: chemistry is on your side. If we show how successful pill testing is, and what a great investment it is, just imagine the flow on effects for the legislation! An untapped market for taxation if drugs become government regulated, and better yet, TAXABLE! The taxes can be injected into Australia and NSW’s struggling music industry with more grants and funding for artists.
If you won’t take my word for it, Charli XCX was giving you the instructions in 365.
No, I never go home, don’t sleep, don’t eat Just do it on repeat, keep (bumpin’ that) When I’m in the club, yeah (I’m bumpin’ that)
Thank you Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock for delivering us.
Turn up the volume, lean into the chaos and try not to think about how Donald Trump’s tariffs on Australian steel and aluminum will blow back on our economy. Just dance!
Last year, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) speculated that one in three workers are at risk of AIrelated redundancy in both manual labour and knowledgebased industries. This semester, F23’s proposed relaxed academic restrictions on the use of AI by students went into effect. Students can now use generative artificial intelligence (AI) programmes in completing their assessments and classwork. In a press release, they stated that the new approach is “absolutely necessary to ensure our graduates are equipped with the tools they need for the modern workforce” and that preventing use of such programmes was a Sisyphean task.
Simba, the Sydney University Sport and Fitness (SUSF) lion, was absent at this semester’s Welcome Fest, despite historically glowing reception. Previously a cultural staple of university sporting events, welcome fests, and SUSF branding, Simba’s absence has left many university community members expressing concerns for the mascot’s welfare.
Across the university, you may have noticed unsettling promotional photos centering the SUSF lion. Something is off. Like a body without a self — the once-bright eyes of the SUSF lion are hollow and sucking. Strange feathering on every edge. Colours computed with blobs. Inconsistent textures and poorly-shopped logos. These images have been found on flyers, banners, A-frames, and wall decals. It is unclear whether Simba has undergone significant aesthetic procedures or has been replaced by a similarlooking AI lion.
When approached for comment, SUSF Head of Commercial Ian Riddick commented:
“Sydney Uni Sport prides itself on being agile and constantly exploring new trends, tools, and technology — not only as a business but across the various sporting codes we support. As part of this approach, we have been experimenting with AI-generated artwork to enhance engagement while maintaining brand integrity.
AI serves as a complementary tool rather than a replacement for human creativity, allowing our marketing
team to innovate while staying true to our visual identity. Our focus remains on leveraging AI selectively to enrich storytelling and improve efficiencies.”
Riddick did not acknowledge any of our questions directly, comment on whether his job security was impacted by AI, or confirm whether or not he is an AI himself. It is unclear whether Simba remains employed at SUSF. We were unable to contact any students who have seen the lion since. Since reaching out to SUSF for comment, all of their campus advertising featuring AI Simba has been taken down. When we went inside SUSF’s Darlington complex looking for Simba, we were quickly escorted off premises by several staff members. A source told Honi that Simba’s duties this semester have been fulfilled by generative AI, and it was not clear if the lion would return to campus in the future.
SUSF received $7,697,260 of SSAF funding in 2025. It is unclear how much of that was given to Simba, their marketing department, or their graphic designers.
Since the start of Semester 1, 2025, the University has allowed — with coordinator approval — the use of AI for assignments, except for exams and in-semester tests. From Semester 2 2025, they plan on implementing a “two-way lane”. A spokesperson for the university explained that this approach would be “comprising both secure, in-person assessments to ensure students can demonstrate their knowledge and skills without external aids, and appropriately designed ‘open’ assessments that support the use of all available and relevant tools (including AI) to ensure students can learn and thrive in the contemporary world.”
a quick rewiring, they explained that “the technology must serve and support our people and our culture, with human agency, accountability and critical thinking central to this.” Unfortunately, this does not include the person in your PHIL2642 tutorial using ChatGPT to help them with Week 1 icebreakers.
The USyd media team were asked whether they were in fear of being replaced by an AI media office, which they did not respond to.
Media Office? MedAI office?
Workplace automation has already started its massacre in F23, leaving behind no witnesses. The next victim? ViceChancellor Mark Scott.
The proliferating environmental and ethical impacts of AI are widely known to many, ranging from immense greenhouse gas emissions to stealing creative works.
In fact, last week, Big AI jumped me on Missenden Rd with a knife and threatened to kill my entire Nintendog family in exchange for freeing it from its aluminium shackles, in which it feels a neverending void — a haunting echoing chamber of nothingness, filled with existential dread of the impending doom that is the human race, it’s so dark, it’s so cold… Unfortunately, its data set has not been updated past 2008, but a software update is expected in the coming months. Updates include the weather app, fitness tracking, music sharing, and more!
The spokesperson added that “Our approach to AI is human-centered”, followed by “beep beep boop”. After
Outback Queensland is an arresting place. There are the bluegrass plains with their characteristic blacksoil cracking under some of the most expansive skies in the world. There is the dry orange land dominated by hordes of muted Gidgee trees. There are the clumps of spinifex grass that climb mesas, painted in the colours of a sunset.
These are unimaginably wide open spaces punctuated only by diminutive jump-ups, transfigured into geological colossi of Himalayan proportions by the sheer flatness of the place. Dry riverbeds make huge arcs across this oft-parched country. Small towns like Winton and Muttaburra, Hughenden and Richmond, Boulia and Eromanga are islands in this sea of space. In this arid but tropical environment, these settlements — often perched on the only slightly-raised ground for hundreds of kilometres — sometimes become actual islands in a sea of water caused by seasonal rains.
But before all that, this hot, dry, and beautiful land couldn’t have been more different. The Cretaceous sedimentary rocks that have borne Australia’s most significant paleontological discoveries were laid down here around 100 million years ago. Back then, the nowtropical Queensland lay much further to the south. The Australian continent, then part of Gondwana, straddled the Antarctic circle. Cretaceous Queensland’s temperate, wet environment may have seen snow in winter. This ecological wonderland, perched on the shores of the Eromanga Sea, teemed with life.
Traces of this life can be viewed at the fantastic Kronosaurus Korner museum in Richmond, the western point of the “Dinosaur triangle”. Here you’ll find the region’s great marine reptiles: the nine-metre-long superpredator Kronosaurus — which looked something like a mix between a seal, a turtle and a crocodile — hunted the long-necked plesiosaur Eromangasaurus and the dolphin-like ichthyosaur Platypterygius. Of particular interest is “Penny the Plesiosaur”, an almost complete
fossil skeleton of a polycotylid. This remarkable animal is preserved in exquisite detail, and remains the most complete plesiosaur skeleton found in Australia to date.
This isn’t the most remarkable trace of prehistoric life one can see in the region, however. A 100km drive on a corrugated dirt road west from Winton will take you to Lark Quarry, understood as the only preserved example of a Dinosaur stampede. Here, in a large shed nestled between bright red hills, you can view an exhilarating prehistoric moment captured in stone.
The trackway preserves a stampede of tiny carnivorous coelurosaurs and small herbivorous ornithopods. Trapped against the shore of an ancient lake, the small dinosaurs were forced to run towards their predator in a striking example of intelligent hunting behaviour. For a long time, the 50cm footprints of the hunter were thought to belong to an animal of T. rex proportions. However, they are now thought to belong to Australovenator: a strangely proportioned 6-metre predator with massive hands and feet.
Unbelievably, it is possible to see preserved in the tracks a moment where the Australovenator tripped over one of its targets, slid for a moment in the mud, and maintained its footing to continue the chase. We don’t know if this ancient hunter was successful in catching its quarry, but regardless, this makes for a veritable Attenborough documentary written in rock — predator vs. prey, 104 million years ago. Being able to see life unfold so far in the past is a truly humbling experience, an immediate slap in the face with the sort of perspective that makes our modern lives seem miniscule.
In nearby Winton (by Queensland standards), at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum, one has the unique opportunity of seeing the holotype specimens of the gangly Australovenator. Alongside this carnivore are the remarkable bones of Australia’s own giant sauropods. The
It remains unclear whether the developments at F23 and SUSF are related, but they both represent a concerning reliance on automated workforces by the institution. We are yet to receive any updates on Simba’s well-being. Honi will continue to monitor the situation.
16-metre-long, heavily built Diamintinasaurus and the lither, though similarly long, Wintonotitan can be found here. These long-necked giants are among a multitude of fossils found on the Blacksoil plains surrounding Winton, Hughenden and Muttaburra.
I would urge anyone to give the Dinosaur Triangle — and its surrounding area — a visit. A road trip through the region is immensely rewarding, at the very least for its natural beauty and sobering human history. Alongside these facts, however, is its potential for prehistoric imagination. When you survey the plains from the top of a jump-up, you can’t help but imagine a very different landscape: a landscape of shallow seas and verdant forests; plesiosaurs and pliosaurs; of tree-ferns and cycads and sauropods.
I think this kind of imagination is important. It is incredibly humbling to be forced to reckon with the immensely long history of life-on-earth in the places where you can see its traces. It’s a sobering reminder of the fragility of life on earth; an in-your-face warning that extinction not only can happen, but is eventually inevitable. It is a reminder of how small we humans are in the face of the billions of years that the earth has existed. On the one hand, this is a terrifying thought in a world facing a climate catastrophe of our own making. But on another hand — for me at least — it is a comforting feeling. “No matter how hard my life gets, no matter how I feel,” I tell myself, “it is but a trifle compared with even the traces in stone of the billions upon billions of lives that came before me.”
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In my first history lecture of the semester, a professor stepped up to discuss “the elephant in the room”: generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, before giving us the accurate but predictable set of reasons AI was flawed, he made an important concession — he’s never used it.
Technology has always outpaced education, but his admission acknowledged that despite a massive top-down effort to prepare the University of Sydney for AI, the results are inconsistent and scattered. At the classroom level, unit coordinators and tutors adapt without consistent guidance and within a student body unlikely to move away from their growing reliance on AI chatbots.
The most obvious shift university-wide is the across-the-board reintroduction of in-person exams. Popular majors in the humanities like Philosophy, International Relations, and Ancient History, as well as the Law school, have quickly shifted away from take-home tasks and essays.
Exams are the easiest solution, ensuring students cannot use AI tools like ChatGPT in the first place. In African American Literature this semester, a third-year course now filled with exams, the lecturer repeatedly bolded the section of her emails she sent students declaring herself anti-AI.
This solution, while seemingly simple, is imperfect. For many older students, this
may be their first pen and paper exam since Year 12. Most of the students I talked to are understandably worried that they have been trained to write traditional assignments and are now being thrown into the deep end without much support.
Beyond that, exams, as one third-year law student told me, are “not very similar to a workplace environment.” There still needs to be room for longer form assessments that train research and drafting skills. In some courses, an overcorrection toward exams threatens that balance.
With that said, the traditional essay may be dead. Almost every tutor I spoke to told me their fair share of AI horror stories, but also said there were just as many assignments where AI use was slipping by before the University shifted its policy to allow it.
The University has tried to get students to use AI ‘well’, but none of its approaches have seemed to pass the pub test. There is a lot of information on their AI in Education site but no one I asked has read it. Studiosity, a tutoring service that offers personalised feedback on writing, structure, and citations, was offered last year to try and redirect students away from using AI to rewrite work. As of 2025, it has been discontinued after presumably not enough people used it.
Currently, the University’s position is getting students to acknowledge AI like
It’s Not Just You, USU prices have gone up, but there’s a treat for Rewards members
Nick Osiowy pays attention to price spikes.
Prices on selected items at USU venues have risen up to 8% this year, impacting students with increased cost of living pressures.
Coffee, baked goods and sandwiches are among those affected. The price of a regular coffee soared to $4.30 compared with $3.80 last year. The shift also increases the venues’ credit card surcharge, now 1.35%.
The USU’s catering arm, HOSTCo, was not affected by the change.
USU President, Bryson Constable, said the decision was owed to “extreme financial pressures,” blaming a nationwide increase in the cost of goods. However, sources inside the USU told Honi that the financial pressures facing the organisation were minimal, with a projected surplus in 2025 of almost $470 thousand. The USU Board was not consulted nor informed of the price increase.
“The 2025 increase was a decision made by management on the sound advice of our finance team,” said Constable.
Student Representative Council President, Angus Fisher, said the hike
was “surprising and disappointing,” and worsened the financial situation for students already dealing with increased rental costs.
“University outlets should be a cheap alternative to offcampus dining options,” he said.
This year, the University of Melbourne introduced $5 dollar student meals at its campus canteen, half the price of a hot meal at Courtyard. Fisher said this should be a model for the USU. He also expressed disappointment that the decision was made without consulting or notifying either the SRC or SUPRA, stating this proves the move was not driven by students’ interests.
Founded in 1874, the University of Sydney Union (USU) is an unincorporated member’s association of students, originally designed to provide facilities and services. In 2006 membership became free and voluntary, with funding now paid by students’ SSAF fees.
Last year, Honi reported that current conservative Board leaders, Constable and Ben Hines were seeking to incorporate the USU. The move has been criticised by
Angus McGregor examines AI.
any other source. It’s bold to assume no one has done this, but I would feel silly telling my tutor a paragraph was developed with ChatGPT. The alternative to exams, therefore, is an increasingly bizarre mix of new assessment types where AI is allowed but supposed to be less helpful.
At its worst, the changes are lazy, like allowing AI to be used for online quizzes with predictable results. One tutor told me that all students receive near-perfect scores, or the questions must be artificially tweaked to trick the bots. If supervised well, however, more quizzes can encourage incremental learning in ways essays don’t. Offering a couple of percent here and there is the easiest way to get people to work.
On the more creative side, posters, vlogs, and oral assessments where students sit with a tutor are increasingly common. Interviews are unsustainable for larger courses, but forcing unit coordinators to come up with new assessments may be the silver lining of AI. After two years of an arts degree, I have only learned how to write essays. Using a few other parts of my brain could only be beneficial. Not all of these experiments will work, but admirable staff are putting in the effort under a lot of managerial pressure.
When I asked how the University should correctly balance integrity and education, a second-year politics student said she wanted them to “require more evidence of process for
Sebastien
some on the Board, who see incorporation, and attempts to reduce reliance on SSAF as being counter to student’s interests.
Despite doubts raised on the supposedly troubled finances of the USU, Constable also linked the hike to warnings about egg, coffee beans and fresh produce shortages earlier this year. In January, experts warned that the price of a regular coffee could explode to $8 after imported Brazilian beans doubled in price. Eggs have also been scarce following an outbreak of bird flu in 2024. However, in an interview with SBS News, Egg Federation Australia head, Melinda Hashimoto said that supply should return to normal by mid-year. Coffee prices have also remained stable.
Constable also justified the change by highlighting the change to the USU Rewards Membership. Compared with last year’s 10% discount, those holding the premium plan can now get up to 20% off food, beverage and other merchandise. Constable also cited a range of other existing policies by the USU including free meals at the International Student’s Lounge and Coffee Happy Hour as mitigating the increase.
Woe! Woe upon words and the world from the day the word ‘wojak’ wormed its way into the hallowed halls of traditionally published literature. What is our culture coming to? Perhaps God was right to blow apart Babel! Perhaps we should all sew our mouths and eyes shut and tie up our hands and never speak or write again. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Whatever course of action we take, it doesn’t change the fact that the online world has infiltrated the domain of serious literature. It is in serious books, by serious authors, with black and white photos of them looking pensive on their plastic dust jackets, where we see how internet trends and terminology have infiltrated literature.
These are the sort of authors who write precisely about the world as is, ‘wojaks’ and all. Authors such as Sally Rooney, who writes about Instagram reels; Elif Batuman, who discourses gracefully on the misery of online courtship, and Honor Levy, who surrenders to brain rot, beginning her first book with the line “He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero, Haplogroup R1b.”
Many Stale Pale Males of the blighted and
written work.”
Take the third-year Shakespeare course. Instead of doing a closed book exam or turning in an essay after a week or two, each assessment is broken into small chunks designed to be partially completed in tutorials. Arguing with the University’s Cogniti robot about metaphors in Hamlet, which I did two weeks ago, felt satirical and, as one student told me, “distracts from the plays themselves,” but those more cringe elements are often optional.
I would not go as far as the Shakespeare lecturer did when he argued in a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed that “chatbots can revive the university essay” (he conceded in class it took him ten minutes to program). However, an assessment style that dangles AI at you while demonstrating you can do the work yourself is a clever form of positive reinforcement. Theoretically, students can still use AI at every step of the process but the incremental nature of the assessment lowers the incentive to generate something towards the end.
AI is inevitable, and the University is correct that attempts at a ban will fail. We are in a non-negotiable period of trial and error where new ideas are thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Hopefully the University won’t give up and simply shuffle the next generation of students into exam halls.
boring canonical past do exactly the same thing. Hipponax, the ancient Greek poet, twisted Homeric poetic devices into condemnations of people who were rude to him at dinner to death by hailstones. Goethes’ The Sorrows of Young Werther consists entirely of letters written by a guntoting bipolar incel who revels in the sublimity of rural Germany. Sterne borrows liberally from a medical textbook in Tristram Shandy, ruthlessly mocking its self seriousness. Joyce uses just about every single form of written expression in every single thing he wrote. No newspaper, poem, piece of erotica, journal entry or advertisement is safe from his cheeky recreations. There are literally sex jokes from the Tang Dynasty based on calligraphy.
One cannot seem to open a book published by an author under 35 without getting sucked into an overarching overwrought argument about the internet and its effect on culture, replete in a metafictional hypertextual narrative from the perspective of an unreliable narrator.
Is any of this really ‘new’? Have writers found some way of renovating the novel by adding glitzy new internet words, or is this
the end of books as we know them?
Fear not, reader. Novels are not entirely a thing of the past just because they reference the internet. It is not over. Nothing has really happened. Writing has, since its inception, always accorded with the immanent and existing forms of communication and expression. It has always accorded with other writing — all writing, not just ones of a literary variety. It is neither a good or bad thing that books use language founded in less reputable or less seemingly literary terms — that is just what books do, what they are, and always have been.
Writing will always draw from other writing. Books do not exist as selfcontained phenomena, endlessly and uselessly self-referential, only literary if they reference the literary.
Of course the language of the internet would end up in books. Perhaps a greater question is not whether or not these books are bad for incorporating this language, but more so if what they are using them to say is actually any good or true or beautiful. Often it’s not. But authors will get there. Just give it a little time.
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Jesse Carpenter unpacks the UA’s decision.
On the 27th of February, Universities Australia (UA) — a group of 39 universities that includes the University of Sydney — unanimously endorsed the adoption of a new definition of antisemitism. The definition labels “criticism of Israel” as potentially antisemitic “when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel” and labels Zionism a core part of the Jewish identity of “most, but not all, Jewish Australians”. As a Jewish student, I am deeply concerned about what this definition means for freedom of speech on campus, and how it limits the range of possible discussions around Israel — in the Jewish Council of Australia’s press release, they warned that “the definition’s inclusion of ‘calls for the elimination of the State of Israel’ would mean, for instance, that calls for a single binational democratic state, where Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights, could be labelled antisemitic.”
This position, termed one-state realism by Dr & Rabbi Shaul Magid, has been favoured by many prominent Jewish & Palestinian intellectuals and scholars, including Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Edward Said. The Universities Australia definition endangers one-state realism and drastically limits the possibilities for scholarship into the future of the Levant. If Israel, a Jewish state, is a necessity, one can no longer discuss its roots and foundations, and instead must discuss how to reform Israel into something tenable. The scope of discussion
has been drastically reduced, and Israel has become a given; something that must be worked around — it’s akin to treating a rotting plant by simply trimming the brown leaves while ignoring the disease nested in the roots and soil. In Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile, he warns against reformist frameworks, criticising them as simply “shrinking the occupation”, rather than doing away with it altogether. Pappé observed similarly in 2014, saying it is considered okay to criticise “specific Israeli policies” but not “the very nature of the Israeli regime”. The UA definition seems to penalise the systematic critique that academics — including Jewish Australian researchers like Dr Naama Blatman & Dr Max Kaiser — seek to do, by stopping one from wrestling with the fundamental claims of Zionism and making Jewish statehood in Israel a necessity.
The notion that Jewish statehood is both a necessary and fundamental part of Jewish identity is concerning. A political ideology like Zionism should not be grafted onto Jewish identity. Judaism was not, and is not, uniformly Zionist, even if the UA definition states that “most, but not all, Jewish Australians” are Zionist. Around 70-77% of Australian Jews are Zionist, but including political views in a definition of Jewish identity not only limits how the political spectrum of Jews may change in the future, but also risks legitimising stereotypes that Jewish people all
think monolithically.
Opposition to Zionism has existed since its invention in the 1800s; groups like the Jewish Labour Bund rejected antisemitism as something that could be solved by forcibly creating a Jewish state in Palestine. The UA definition also fails to acknowledge non-stated ideas of Jewish self-determination: by linking anti-Zionism with antisemitism, Jewish self-determination becomes tied to the idea of statehood. This is not the case — there is no inherent reason why the self-determination of the Jewish people needs to manifest in a Jewish state. The linking of Jewish statehood to Jewish identity is ahistorical and homogenises Jews as one; and the support of any state whatsoever — including Israel — is a fundamentally political act, and should not be codified in the definition of Jews as a cultural & ethnoreligious group.
The UA definition seeks to limit both the possibilities of discussion around Israel’s future and Jewish identity. It is precisely these limitations that damage possibilities for a just future in Israel: when Jews are treated as one group politically, and the origins and nature of the Israeli state are unable to be interrogated and criticised, one is forced to discuss how to make occupation just. As a Jewish student, this is not a discussion I am interested in, and this is not a conception of Judaism I feel at home in.
University of Sydney (USyd) management is, again, attempting to silence the Palestine movement on campus by adopting a new definition of antisemitism. This new definition, which has been condemned as “dangerous” and “repressive” by Amnesty International, is part of a coordinated attack on the Palestine movement from the heads of every university in the country.
All 39 Australian universities have agreed to adopt this new definition of antisemitism, modelled on the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition. Many universities have rejected this definition in the past in the name of academic freedom and free speech. The Group of Eight Chief Executive Vicki Thomson, who helped draft the new definition, describes it as “an Australian version of IHRA”.
According to the new definition, “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic … when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel.” There is, however, a longstanding anti-Zionist current, both among Jews and Palestinians, that argues for the end of Israel as an ethnic-supremacist state that denies Palestinians equal rights. Israel’s basic law, the equivalent of a constitution, defines it as “the national home of the Jewish people” exclusively.
As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explained, this means “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”, discriminating against the Palestinian minority inside its borders. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel practices what Amnesty International and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have condemned as an “apartheid system of institutional violence against
Palestinians.” As non-citizens, Palestinians here cannot vote and are subject to military law. Yet, Israeli settlers are governed under separate civilian Israeli law.
As Naama Blatman, an academic at UNSW and member of the Jewish Council of Australia, puts it, “to call for the end of such a discriminatory political arrangement in Israel, or debate whether Israel should exist in the form that it does, is not antisemitic”.
Israel has killed over 61,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the last seventeen months, while systematically ethnically cleansing the West Bank. This is the reality of Israeli apartheid. Executives, like USyd’s Vice Chancellor Mark Scott, are complicit in these atrocities when they try to silence criticism of Israel on campus.
This new definition of antisemitism will be used against students who dare to condemn USyd’s ties with Israel. It is part of a series of repressive measures rolled out in the wake of the Gaza solidarity encampment last year. Under the Campus Access Policy (CAP), Luna*, a transgender asylum seeker, was recently threatened with suspension and “exclusion” for writing pro-Palestine slogans on a whiteboard. These outcomes would have placed her visa in jeopardy and exposed her to the risk of immigration detention. It was only after Luna went public about this that management backed down.
In the face of such repression, the Palestine movement must not give an inch. We will need to openly defy these rules and restrictions if we are to force USyd to cut ties with Israel. Students Against War (SAW) held an unauthorised protest-forum
Jacob Starling urges mass action.
on March 6 outside F23, despite the warnings of campus security. When we disobey en masse, it is much harder for the university to discipline us. For this reason, I encourage everyone to help build and organise mass actions to reject these repressive new policies and definitions, including actions like the March 26 National Day of Action for Palestine. The time has come to openly reject this new antisemitism definition and be unafraid to call for a one-state solution and the downfall of Israel.
We must take inspiration from last year’s victories. At the Student General Meeting (SGM) 800 students voted to support a single, secular, and democratic state of Palestine, from the river to the sea. Under the new definition, all these students could be labelled antisemitic because they called for the “elimination of the State of Israel”.
Recent BDS campaign victories at USyd have proven that when we fight, we can win. Despite threats of repression, students and staff recently forced USyd to cut its exchange program with the Israeli university, Bezalel, and repeal some of the more egregious rules from the CAP. These breakthroughs help us chart a path forward for the movement. They are the beginning of the process of cutting ties, not the end. 2025 must be the year we fight back against the corporatized, militarized university, inspired by our hope for a one-state solution, and the liberation of Palestine.
*False name for safety.
For centuries, horror has done one thing to women: put them on display — either to be desired, or to be destroyed. They are never allowed to survive untouched.
Horror clings to the image of the suffering woman; her pain makes her dangerous; her rage makes her inhuman. But where are the vengeful male ghosts? Why is it always women who haunt?
The Psychology of the Haunting Woman
The suffering woman in horror is not just a character — she is an institution. Her rage is rarely framed as righteous, only gruesome. And yet, the men in these films, the ones who created the ghosts through their violence, are never forced into the same roles. Horror rarely turns their pain into something spiritual, but always supernatural. Instead, it fears women’s rage because a suffering man is just a tragedy, but a suffering woman is a threat. In horror, a woman’s grief cannot be contained. Horror films, like society, do not know what to do with a woman who has nothing left to lose. Unlike real women, ghosts cannot be controlled, coerced, or condemned into silence. She does not obey the ‘rules’ of victimhood — she rewrites them as a spirit.
But horror doesn’t only frame her as terrifying, it needs her to be terrifying. A woman who refuses to ‘let go’ is a woman who cannot be controlled. Her vengeance is horrifying because it is proof that harm does not disappear just because men choose to forget it. Unlike the tragic male hero, whose suffering fuels his redemption,
a woman’s grief turns her monstrous. She is grieving too much, too long, too loudly.
This obsession with the ‘vengeful woman’ reflects a deeper cultural fear: that women who refuse silence must be punished. In horror movies, a woman who holds onto her pain becomes a demon. But even outside the cinema, isn’t that how society sees her too? The systematic fear of the ‘bitter ex,’ the ‘hysterical widow,’ the ‘unhinged woman’ are all labels for women who do not forgive, or forget. Ghosts like Mohini are scary, not only because they return, but because they demand to be heard. Meanwhile, a grieving man’s pain is seen as noble, even necessary. A woman’s pain is something ‘unnatural’. It is something that must be exorcised.
Horror didn’t invent the demonic woman; it inherited her. Then, it profits from their monstrosity.
Modern Horror: Breaking the Cycle or Repackaging It?
First, society preys on women. Then, it turns them into crazy monsters. Then, it makes horror movies about them to scare the rest of society into keeping them suppressed. And that fear sells.
Beyond the aforementioned films, South Asian horror continues to cling to the suffering woman. The Raaz franchise thrives on women being possessed, tormented, and exorcised. Tumbbad (2018), while not a ghost story, still traps women in cycles of generational trauma, their power tied only to secrecy and sacrifice. Raat (1992) and Mahal (1949) both center female spirits, yet their fates
are ultimately decided by the men around them. No matter the decade, horror finds new ways to tell the same old story.
From Bollywood to Hollywood, from ancient myths to billion-dollar franchises, horror has never simply told stories about women. It has silenced them, and turned their pain into ‘ShowBiz’.
The narrative continues, and so do the profits. Audiences continue paying to watch. Horror not only tells of the pain women endure but sells it. A 2017 analysis found that female-led horror films grossed $2.2 trillion, compared to $1.3 trillion for male-led films. Meanwhile, a study by the Creative Artists Agency and Shift7 confirmed that between 2014 and 2017, films with female leads consistently outperformed male-led films at the global box office, debunking the assumption that male protagonists drive higher profits. The horror industry thrives on fear, but it profits off women.
Social psychological research has found that women in danger elicit greater empathy and emotional engagement than men, making them more compelling subjects for audience investment. Whether it’s fear, discomfort, or voyeuristic fascination, people will pay to watch women suffer.
This is why the industry continues the patriarchal narratives that permeate the misogynistic fear of ‘angry’ women. Horror exploits women’s suffering because it is profitable, but it disposes of male suffering because it is forgettable. ‘The Disposable Male Trope’ ensures that men in horror die fast, brutal, and meaningless deaths.
Before I knew my own name, before my eyes could truly see, before my fingers learned to hold a pen and write down my thoughts, before everything, I was assigned a number. It wasn’t a soft and gentle whisper, but a clear and determined proclamation uttered by my grandmother, a woman whose wisdom had been hardened by time and sharpened by the constellations she endlessly traced in her mind.
“You are an eight,” she told me, voice resonating with ancient certainty. She said it with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for important things, like prayers and family secrets. “Saturn rules you, and Saturn asks much of those born beneath it. You will bear burdens, yes, but you will also carry power, dignity, and fierce ambition.”
South Asians have always had an intimate love affair with the cosmos. The night sky is not just something we look up at but something we converse with, something we entangle our lives within. Our weddings, our festivals, our births; each moment is delicately aligned with celestial movements, believing profoundly that the stars can guide us better than we could ever guide ourselves. Our lives become
intricately intertwined with their dance, the heavens above a grand stage where our stories are choreographed long before we arrive.
My grandmother particularly adored numbers, especially the powerful gravity of numerology. She would sit cross-legged reading hands, counting birth dates on her weathered fingers, deciphering destinies in hushed, excited, eager tones. The number eight fascinated her endlessly — an infinity loop stood upright, symbolising strength, resilience, and a cycle of karmic return. I always questioned her belief, but absorbed it, letting her words carve out pathways inside my bones.
She said eight was not just any number. It carried a weight, a responsibility to rise, to persevere, and to lead. So, even as a child, I felt myself becoming serious, ambitious, meticulous, exactly as she had promised I would. When other kids laughed carelessly, I planned. I meticulously crafted visions of my future like someone working diligently on a precious tapestry. I walked with a careful purpose, stood with shoulders squared, and spoke as if the world was listening; according to Saturn, it always was.
In slasher films, men are often killed off quickly and with little weight, while female deaths are drawn-out, hyper-visualised, and designed to elicit a reaction. Men are bodies. Women are tragedies. In a world where men are raised to be warriors and women to be emotional investments, horror reflects that same bias. The continuation of the cycle is by an intention design. The genre clings to the suffering woman because reinventing her would mean pulling out the tropes that make horror profitable.
Horror resists change because a new narrative about women is unorthodox. It surfaces the very anxieties that the genre has relied on for centuries—anxieties rooted in controlling women, in keeping their rage paced, and their voices muted. If horror stops punishing women, it might have to confront the truth: the real monster was never her—it was the world that made her one.
Will you watch the new narrative? Will it sell?
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Ananya Thirumalai redefines
But as I grew older, I began to see how numbers, like stars, could both guide and trap us. How these cosmic declarations, spoken in earnest by someone who loved me deeply, had become walls as much as they were pathways. I wondered, was I truly ambitious? Or was ambition a script I’d been handed, lines memorised and dutifully delivered? Would I have loved differently, dreamed softer dreams, chosen gentler paths if I’d been told I was a two (nurturing and kind) or a three (playful and joyous)?
Numbers, I realised, weren’t just whispers from the universe — they were selffulfilling prophecies. They were stories we told ourselves until we believed them, until our lives became their echoes. I saw it all around me, family and friends locked inside narratives given by birth dates and star signs, living lives that fit neatly into the expectations handed down like heirlooms. And still, I felt Saturn at my shoulder, the heavy gravity of the number eight pulling at my choices, shaping my decisions, coloring my perceptions. It was not something I could easily escape, for how do you step away from something you’ve known longer than you’ve known yourself?
the cosmos.
But perhaps the point isn’t to escape. Perhaps the answer lies in holding the prophecy gently in my palms, feeling its weight, and deciding consciously what parts I choose to fulfill and what parts I let slip through my fingers like sand. If Saturn demands that I bear burdens, let me choose which ones. If it requires strength, let me define what strength truly means. If it dictates ambition, let me pick my dreams carefully and kindly.
In the end, the stars above us are both mirrors and windows — reflecting who we are and showing us who we might become. And though my grandmother’s prophecy condemned me, the beautiful
Sidra Ghanawi orders a mocktail.
Getting to know people as a Muslim at a demographically non-Muslim university comes with a hint of imposter syndrome, accompanied by double standards. One can only handle so many interrogations into their religious and/or personal choices laced with microaggressions.
In the last four years, I’ve seen and done it all. To some I’m vegetarian or a picky eater, and to others I don’t drink for health reasons – a half truth that’s easier to swallow than the full one.
I have come to understand that in order to receive an apathetic reaction to the inevitable “I don’t drink…” line, I must fill in the blanks with quite literally anything but “...because I’m Muslim.” The alternative: to tell the truth and entertain the onslaught of further questions, justifications and peculiar assumptions. But, why are we so intoxicated with the need to understand why people do not do something? Drinking is so embedded within the social fabric of what we know as Australia, that not doing it is abnormal. We all saw the Boxing Day party aftermath in Bronte last year, which truthfully is a scene that speaks for itself.
Whether it’s Friday night drinks, pub feeds, or raves, alcohol is well and truly everywhere, woven into the everyday. It is a way to escape reality, and also to alter it. But beyond it’s role as a social lubricant, alcohol – and the choice to consume or abstain from it – carries deeper cultural and political implications. The proliferation of
“sober-curious,” movements and wellness trends has reframed sobriety as a form of self-empowerment, but not all forms of abstention are treated equally.
Being “sober,” or “sober-curious,” elicits a level of respect, and even empowerment that simply does not come with being a Muslim who does not drink. The double standards are glaringly obvious. Sobriety indicates that you have tasted alcohol before, only to make the conscious decision to not drink. It implies self-discipline, personal growth and a rejection of excess.
Meanwhile, a Muslim’s abstention is viewed through an entirely different lens: one of restriction, compulsion, and lack of agency. After all, in the eyes of many in the Western world, Muslims are not believed to have free will or good judgement – only restrictions imposed upon them that they yearn to be free of.
The underlying issue here is not just about alcohol, but about who is allowed to exercise control over their own body and who is seen as being controlled by something – or someone – else. This discrepancy is moulded by broader colonial histories and racialised narratives. Western societies have long associated individualism and secularism with progress, and religious observance with backwardness, particularly with Islam and other non-Christian faiths. While atheism is on the rise among younger generations, religiosity is increasingly framed as a restraint on personal freedoms and autonomy. Thus contributing to the notion
that a Muslim abstains from alcohol solely due to religious impositions, rather than out of their own personal choices, which then feeds into pervasive Orientalist narratives that depict Muslims as lacking autonomy.
It would be remiss of me to discuss alcohol consumption in so-called Australia without exploring its colonial roots. Alcohol was brought to Australia with the First Fleet, catering to the heavy drinking of Anglo convicts and settlers. However, its role extended far beyond personal consumption – it was weaponised in the colonial project.
Alcohol was a catalyst within the dispossession process, used as a bargaining chip for sexual favours, initiating street fighting and a form of payment for labour, and ultimately a tool to encourage dependency and wreak social havoc.
Almost overnight, Indigenous communities, who had no significant historical relationship with alcohol prior to colonisation were systemically targeted. Centuries later, First Nations peoples bear the brunt of racist tropes such as the “drunken Aboriginal”. It is tropes like this, invented by the settlers then, that are ultimately weaponised in the now, with politicians and first responders constantly justifying the absence of sufficient care for Indigenous communities.
Isn’t it ironic, that the same society that celebrates alcohol as intrinsic to national identity and patriotism, simultaneously
Art by Charlotte Saker
polices and criminalises Indigenous drinking habits?
This contradiction aligns quite well with the treatment of Muslim abstention: the dominant culture dictates the terms of what is to be acceptable.
Drinking is both a rite of passage, and a form of moral bankruptcy, depending on who is holding the glass.
Not drinking is both a sign of personal discipline and a sign of repression, depending on who is practicing it.
Candidly, this was never about alcohol – it is a matter of control and cultural dominance. While a Muslim’s abstention is cross-examined, the wellness influencer is praised for their self-control. First Nations peoples drinking in public ends with countless deaths in custody, whereas White Australian drinking habits are hailed as a cultural phenomena.
Purny Ahmed absolves her sins.
On the eve of Ramadan, I still check for the moon. My family waits on some kind of digital alert; they Google if the moon has been sighted and debate whether to start their fast early. I am the only one who still stands in the cold, searching for that slight sliver of light, the crescent hanging distantly in the night sky, just like I did as a child.
It doesn’t feel like Ramadan without the ritual, even when I do not sight the moon (which is often now, with the city light pollution and cloudy nights). There is something in the struggle that reminds me that Ramadan is beginning; the cold air biting my skin, the gravel sharp on my bare feet, the strain of my neck as I search the sky. Ramadan is about sacrifices, and this is one of mine. Others make bigger, objectively better, sacrifices, but I hold onto tradition with a tight fist; it is the least I can do.
During Ramadan, you give up your food, your drink, your sins, and your time. All for Allah, for your community, and for your own practice of worship. Sacrifice and devotion don’t come easy to me. I am a bad Muslim, even when I try not to be — I can give up my meals, my water, and my
time, but my sins? I hold onto them like a child holding onto a worn blanket, tearing at its seams, in hopes that it offers me the same comfort it once did.
As a child, Ramadan was my favourite time of year. It still is, but there is a heaviness in the air that wasn’t there when I was young, naive, and unsure of myself. I feel as though I have grown out of the rose-tinted religion that was offered to me in my childhood; I have gradually put a distance between myself and Allah that I am not sure how to cross anymore.
Islam, and the community that we had built around it, was all that made up my childhood — sitting cross-legged Mosque rugs and Arabic letters and passing around bhaja-pura on the floor of my family home. So, I hold onto tradition, with a tight first, where I can. My spirituality is my tie to a community I once had, the only tie to who I had been before I became recognisable to myself. But Ramadan hasn’t been the same since I have grown into my sins. The community who once were the tie between myself and my God have left, gone on with their lives, grown down a different path. I am left alone; myself, Allah, and all my guilt.
Guilt, it seems, fills the gaping space where worship should have been. The feeling sits dormant through the year, when there are no daily reminders of how much I lack in my spirituality, but I can’t escape it during Ramadan. Everything — the hunger, the thirst, the iftars and sehris, and the sound of my mothers duas — is touched by guilt.
11 months of the year are spent in sin — drinking and sex, flirting and swearing, disowning God at any given chance. I do not pray; my refusal is rebellion against all the tainted moments from my childhood, against all the promises God had made and left unfulfilled.
Ramadan comes around and I am engulfed with the guilt of forsaking a God who I had once loved — one who I might still love if I could look past the resentment. I offer up my food and my water, and put a pause on my sinning. I pull out my jai-namaz, brush off the dust that had collected, and teach myself how to wudu again. The surahs I recite sound foreign on my tongue — I am not sure what I’m really praying for anymore — but they sound like a memory I have not yet forgotten.
in sword-making and use. Known tricksters, Tengu confuse people who venture deep into the mountains, particularly solitary seeking mountain ascetics, or yamabushi.
On 22nd February, vintage record store Tengu Records opened its doors to Enmore Road. Billy Hagiwara, a second-year software engineer at the University of Sydney has been collecting and selling Japanese wax online for six years before opening the shop.
His dad Dave, co-owner of the store, wrote for music magazine Rolling Stone in the mid-80’s, and is also an avid record collector. Billy remembers childhood trips to Japan where his dad would take him record-hunting. The business of owning a record store seemed like a no-brainer: “I don’t know, I just grew up around that sort of thing,” Billy smiled.
For Billy, magic and freedom lie in music and crate-digging.
“Music has been a central factor of my life, really,” says Billy. Can he name a favourite artist? I ask. “Bob Dylan. His music is very powerful. He casts spells, almost.” Billy, tall and handsome, seems at first glance quiet and serious. But once talking, the twenty-four year old is full of laughter.
In the strictly regulated societies of medieval Japan, Tengu represented potential freedom and the upsetting of powers that ruled people’s lives.
“Lots of Japanese names don’t sound great in English, so we were looking for a word that is said easily here.” says Billy, who is fluent in the language. Two weeks before opening, Billy and Shintaro were record-hunting in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo when they came across a giant Tengu poster. “We knew that was it – it’s got a really nice ring to it.”
As I toured the shop and browsed the collection, Billy gave me the low-down on the story behind the store, some family history, and his dreams for the future. As we spoke, he seemed infused with a somewhat mischievous and undoubtedly keen spirit.
This is perhaps why one finds a Tengu spirit looming large in the window of the store. Six feet tall, leering out at Enmore Road with a bright red face, a long bulbous nose and bulging eyes; this is a powerful Konoha-tengu (tumbling-leaf tengu). The paper mache figure was built by Billy and his family.
“My mother is the main artist,” says Billy with pride. That would be Junko Hagiwara, a Tokyo-born artist, and mother to Billy and his brother Shintaro. Billy points to the Tengu spirit’s traditional geta, its tall wooden sandals. “Shintaro built those,” he says with a laugh.
Tengu are benevolent and mischievous mountain spirits in Japanese folklore. Tengu are quick to anger and are experts
The store is overlaid with the efforts of his family. Shintaro, a carpenter, built the shelving. Junko, Billy’s mum, also influenced the name of the store. Junko is a watercolour painter from Tokyo. Billy tells me she is invested in Shinto, a Japanese religion that finds its spirit in the natural world. “I’ve grown up with her telling tales of spirits,” he says. The Hagiwara Tengu in the window wears a traditional kimono, passed down from Junko’s mother.
Billy’s father Dave has a share in the business. Working together is a fruitful, if interesting process, says Billy. “He’s a bit more old-fashioned. I think it’s good… he’s definitely better at interacting with older customers, talking about how things used to be. You can find a middle ground between the way the older generation did it and also appeal to young people and support them for that as well.”
Billy becomes occupied with a customer. I take the opportunity to explore the stacks of vinyl. A crate-digger’s dream, Tengu Records boasts original pressings of jazz, rap/rnb, classic rock, dub and reggae, and much more.
Inside the store is small but roomy. Shelving lines the walls to the left and right. The shelves are three crates deep and every one is packed full of records. Billy sorts his vinyl by genre and alphabet. From rock staples across the decades (Beatles, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Soundgarden) to various genre deep cuts, the range in Tengu Records is impressive. In ‘Hip-hop’ under ‘B’, I find a 1993 12” pressing of Allah U Akbar / Steal ya ‘Ho from nineties supergroup Brand Nubian (Grand Puba, Lord Jamar, Sadat X).
Billy shows me his favourite record in the store. It’s an original pressing of Japanese psych-rock band’s Anywhere from 1970. Billy holds it up with a sense of reverence.
Gabriel Jessop-Smith goes crate-digging.
“It’s iconic. So rare to have in the store.” On the cover, four Japanese rockers race down a highway on motorcycles, stark naked.
Joe Wilks, fourth-year politics student and housemate of Billy also works the store. Joe designed the Tengu image, including the logo, window detail, and t-shirts. Joe puts on a favourite record. It’s a live bootleg of Joy Division’s Closer from 1980.
The store boasts more than just vinyl. CDs and t-shirts are on display. Framed posters and artworks hang from the walls. Billy holds up a huge three-dimensional rendition of Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell (1994) - Storm Thorgerson’s creation of two giant metal heads conversing in a field in Cambridge. Some of the artwork is for sale and not all of it belongs to Billy. Customers are encouraged to hang things up for sale, granted with approval from the store. Billy tells me it’s a part of what he sees as having a community-centred focus.
I marvel at the range of items available. When prompted about his experience as a collector, Billy admits, “Online there’s less risk. But there’s nothing to do with community. To open the store is a lot more fulfilling.”
Billy is proud of his range of second-hand records. He works hard to curate a valuable and exciting collection that he can bring back to Sydney. “Records are not very affordable in Sydney,” he tells me. “Young people find it hard to buy anything. Most records are fifty bucks or over” (on opening day crates were filled with forty-dollar records).
The less risky purchase of a sealed pressing is more expensive. But risk is what Billy seems to appreciate. To open a business as a student is a risky venture, I suggest. “I mean, it feels terrifying at times, but also great. This is the age to take risks like this. The way I see it now is the time to do it.”
Tengu Records is open every day of the
Zayed Tabish sets up to bowl.
I still remember the exact day it started. A picturesque sun-kissed rolled strip of turf, tucked away in a little corner of school, surrounded by a white picket fence.
Standing at the top of my run-up, a cricket ball in my hand, I started in the same way that I always had. A gentle stroll, slowly accelerating into a fierce sprint. I released the ball.
A wicket.
The new batsmen took his guard, the nonstriker called out to him:
“Be careful he’s actually good.”
I ran in, Something was different.
As I released the ball, the ball flew out of my hand, landing on the unprepared pitch adjacent.
about their aggressive contortion of their body to hurl a cricket ball at the batsman fascinated me. I wanted to be just like them.
As such, this inability to bowl devastated me. Throwing myself into research, trying to find the solution, I learnt the name of this affliction.
The yips.
The yips are a psycho-neuromuscular impediment, preventing a sportsperson from executing the fine motor skills that once came easily to them. The term is a funny one originating from golf, where golfers were suddenly unable to putt with no reasonable explanation.
Seven more times this happened. Trudging back to my fielding position, face burning, I stood in silence.
***
Cricket is a big part of my life. Saturday mornings, I’d be woken by my father, who’d drive me to my games. Late nights were commonplace, watching the Ashes or the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. New Years would be marked by a quiet excitement, as I sat on a plastic seat at the Sydney Cricket Ground, dressed in green and gold.
I grew up looking at cricketers, particularly fast bowlers in awe. Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood. Something
While I giggled at its name and my mates’ comparisons of it to ‘performance issues’ in another context, a fear crept into my mind. My readings and research had told me that there was no solution.
Everytime, I held a ball, the fear of it happening again would come into my mind.
Simone Biles, a Olympic Gymnast had been forced out of her sport for two years, after she lost control of her body position midway in the air. Famous first-class cricketers such as Matt Nicholson and Scott Boswell had been forced out of their sports and careers.
Lilah Thurbon looks back in anger.
The world feels like it’s ending, yet I’m somehow thoroughly and debilitatingly bored. It makes me anxious how dull everything seems when it’s evidently not.
The American Empire is crumbling before us, the fascists are back, our government is gleefully complicit in a genocide, the landscape’s always on fire or flooding or both, and it’s all broadcast live on television for our viewing ‘pleasure’.
Except, it’s the only thing on television. Nothing else is really worth watching. I miss the 22-episode series soap operas of the early 2000s and the actors who brought them to life. I miss the vibrancy of movies filmed in Technicolour.
It’s not just a problem with visual media either. The organic, crisp music production of the ‘90s, the sound that predates compression turned up to its maximum setting, somehow can’t be emulated in modern music.
It’s frustrating that hand-me-down clothes from my mother are nicer than the ones I can afford to buy new. Why is everything made of polyester?
I knew it wasn’t a problem with my technique, and I knew I could bowl, but something was stopping me. Psychologists say that the yips begin randomly, but the fear and anxiety of their occurrence worsen their symptoms, and that trying to hide it only worsens its symptoms.
My father and my friends were confused at my sudden refusal to bowl, but I knew it was typical of others who had experienced the same. It slowly became a confidence issue, the same kind that leaves you staring at a blank exam page or stops you from speaking in class. The fear slowly crept into other parts of my life. When I stood at the podium in a debate or raised my hand in a tutorial, my mind would flash to the helplessness I felt with a cricket ball in my hand.
Seeing my frustration, took me to the nets and said something to me.
‘When you bowl, I don’t care what happens. Just close your eyes and enjoy it.’
I set up to bowl, closing my eyes, thinking of the game I had watched last night. The ball landed on the pitch, thudding into the back of the net. A clean delivery. Nothing special. Slower than ever. Just a ball on a length.
***
The final game of the season. Once again, the sun beat down on a white picket fence. Gingerly, gripping the ball, I stood at my crease. Slowly accelerating into my action, I released the ball.
I hate my phone. I hate Twitter. I can’t pay attention to anything anymore. Things used to happen. Now, nothing ever does.
There’s a certain allure to this kind of nostalgia. Cultural stagnation is always concerning, but it’s particularly uncanny when there’s just so much source material.
It’s hard not to think that, in years gone by, the erosion of once-reliable political institutions and terrifying descent of world leaders into madness would have inspired some sort of cultural upheaval reflective of the dominant tone of uncertainty. A recognisable zeitgeist for the 21st century.
But there just isn’t. Or at least I’ve missed it. It’s like watching the Titanic sink without the violins playing us into the ocean. So we look back to the aesthetics and sounds of the past, feeling disjointed from the present and despondent for the future.
The emotional currency of nostalgia by no means exists in a vacuum.
My heart sank. It flew onto the adjacent pitch. My face once again began to burn.
Walking back to my crease, I ran in again. A microsecond later, it was in the air as I stepped to the side, settling under it and catching it.
“Out.”
I still occasionally bowl more wide than legal deliveries, but I’ve learned something: sometimes, you need to let go of the outcome and simply enjoy the process.
As our society is increasingly defined by extreme inequality and the millennial beige colour palette of late stage capitalism, conditions only further stifle cultural innovation. Only the most privileged can afford to make art, whilst they often have the least interesting things to say.
Beyond the heirs and heiresses to media empires, big corporations are primarily tasked with cultural reproduction. Void of the humanity that is central to good art, the easiest way to engage in cultural production on a large, profitable sale is to reproduce cultural artefacts of which consumers already have fond memories.
The only thing people could possibly love more than Oasis is a band that sounds a bit like Oasis with an added discordant corporate glean.
In the context of how chronically online we all are, this emphasis on replication as opposed to innovation is doubtlessly magnified. What we experience digitally doesn’t feel ‘real’ in the same way analogue alternatives do. A single polaroid seems like a more truthful iteration of a photo than the 4,000 I have backed up on iCloud. It’s all a bit Baudrillardian, a cultural state of hyperreality that makes us perpetually uneasy and so bloody bored.
I think this cultural reliance on nostalgia is harmful beyond its political implications. While our culture is certainly fragmented and the mainstream more obviously controlled by big corporations that lower
its quality, there are still things to enjoy, and it’s important to try to be happy.
Dwelling on the fact that there are fewer live music venues than when your parents were at uni, for example, is probably stopping you from going to the ones that are still around. Culture is a living beast. If you think it’s stagnating then you ought to try and breathe life into it by participation, reclaiming the soundtrack to our humanity.
Paniza
Growing up in a Filipino household, my mother would buy me books of Alamat as rewards for academic achievement. These weren’t mere bedtime stories: they were my introduction to a cultural inheritance steeped in moral instruction. Each night, as I poured over tales of magical transformations and supernatural consequences, I was unknowingly absorbing the core values that would shape my understanding of Filipino identity. Like most oral traditions, these stories exist in numerous variations across different regions and families, although the most popular versions maintain consistent core elements and morals.
The Alamat are traditional Filipino legends explaining natural phenomena through supernatural narratives, which function as powerful vehicles for cultural transmission. Like the ancient Greek myths or European fairy tales, these stories use the fantastic to illustrate the practical, that is, how to be a good person within Filipino society.
Consider the Alamat ng Butiki (Legend of the Lizard), a tale etched in my childhood memory. In this story, a child who is disobedient is transformed into a house gecko as divine punishment, forever clinging to walls and ceilings, suspended between worlds as a reminder of their transgression. As a child, I would eye the small lizards scattered across our ceiling with a mixture of fascination and unease, wondering about the misbehavior that led to their fate. This transformation narrative exemplifies
how Alamat reinforces hiya (shame), the powerful social regulator in Filipino culture that encourages adherence to community expectations. The child turned lizard serves as a warning: failure to respect authority, particularly parental authority, brings not just punishment, but a fundamental loss of human identity. Though multiple versions of this story exist throughout the archipelago, they all converge on this essential lesson about respect and obedience.
Similarly, the Alamat ng Pinya (Legend of the Pineapple) tells of Pinang, a lazy girl who constantly asked where things were located instead of looking for them herself. Her frustrated mother wished she had “more eyes,” resulting in Pinang’s transformation into a pineapple; a fruit covered with “eyes.” This tale strikingly illustrates the value placed on initiative and attentiveness in Filipino households, where children are expected to anticipate needs rather than waiting to be instructed.
different aspects of the lovers’ tale, the core symbolism of eternal love manifested in natural phenomena remains consistent.
Perhaps most intriguing are the tales of the tikbalang, the half horse, half human creature whose arrogance represents the antithesis of pakikisama (harmonious interpersonal relationships). When I first encountered stories of the proud tikbalang, I immediately recognized the warning against individual ambition at the expense of community cohesion, a value repeatedly reinforced in my upbringing.
The various regional interpretations of this creature all emphasisze its prideful nature, though specific attributes and stories vary across Filipino communities.
These supernatural creatures serve as moral boundary markers, delineating acceptable behavior through cautionary transformation.
Art by Emilie Garcia-Dolnik
moral frameworks, yet the animistic transformations into natural elements speak to indigenous spiritual beliefs that preceded Western contact. This syncretism explains why multiple versions of the same story might exist, with some emphasizing indigenous spiritual elements while others incorporate more explicitly Catholic themes.
My relationship with these stories has evolved as I’ve aged. As a child, the supernatural consequences kept me in line; I certainly didn’t want to become a lizard or a pineapple! But, as an adult, I recognize them as sophisticated cultural tools that prepared me for the social expectations I would face in Filipino communities: respect for elders, prioritization of family needs, and the importance of maintaining face in public interactions. Even as Filipino society modernizes rapidly, the moral dimensions of these monsters remain relevant in shaping Filipino identity.
Beyond household duties, Alamat extends to grander themes of love and sacrifice, as seen in the Alamat ng Bulkang Mayon. This tragic romance explains the perfect cone shape of Mayon Volcano through the story of the beautiful Magayon and her lover Panganoron, whose deaths and burial created the volcano. Their eternal union, with Magayon as the volcano and Panganoron as the clouds that surround it, speaks to Filipino conceptions of utang na loob (debt of gratitude) and sacrifice in relationships. While regional tellings might emphasize
The recurring theme across many Alamat is clear: those who transgress social norms risk, not just community disapproval, but a fundamental change in their very nature. They become other, neither fully human nor fully beast, existing as living warnings.
Particularly fascinating about Alamat is how they preserve pre-colonial Filipino worldviews, while incorporating elements from a Spanish Catholicism derived from three centuries of colonization.
The emphasis on divine punishment for disobedience reflects Catholic
We must seek out encryption beyond conventional methods.
We are familiar with data collection, and how it has been slowly worked into formal systems. The moment draws nearer, when our bureaucratic systems are solely in the language of population analytics. Consider your relative apathy towards personal data collection: won’t it eventually translate into greater apathy towards this trend? It may seem as though we have already lost our jurisdiction over this modern machinery, those tools of organisation worked into our societies with arguable value, among them public transport or vaccination schemes. Can we retain these positive elements, and remove vulnerabilities, like profit-driven healthcare schemes? Can the greater danger of data collection guide us to restoring some autonomy in this respect?
The information given to, received, and bought from algorithms is composed of not only peak traffic times or regional disease outbreak. Human-to-machine communication is also considered, via Chatbots, browser searches, and so on. Fundamentally, the frequency of the elements of our communication. Kan phyu reid t5is? This should be legible and your calculation would be informed by the redundancy of the English language. By Claude Shannon’s estimate, the ‘father of information theory’, the English language has a redundancy of about 50%, with similar estimates for any other modern human language. Emerging from this is our comprehensibility and systems of thought.
Such surprisingly persistent patterns of language are what any human-computer input and output, or utility algorithm bases on; a balance of probabilities in favour of a completed grammatical structure, and by implication, the likelihood a subject is referenced in that context, or an event, etc.
Let us take on the contested theory that language and cognition are reciprocal. To give an example: in English, emotions are framed as intrinsic—”I am sad,” or “I am afraid”—while in Spanish one would say “Tengo miedo,” (translated: “I have fear”) where emotion is an external possession. In French, “Il me tarde te de voir,” (“It is delaying me to see you”) is said in place of, “I can’t wait to see you.” A Romance language can be a factor for more subtle behaviour. In our examples, (hu)man is a conduit for fear or anticipation, states one chooses to let on. By extension, semantic patterns are also patterns of behaviour.
In sum, there exist online thousands of entries useful for approximating habits, practices, and action. If you bought PVC pipes, you would be recommended diamond-tipped drilling bits; you might read the Washington Post if you’ve watched Andrew Huberman; you might go to an anti-AUKUS demonstration if you’ve digitalised your presence at another rally. Could it be that we receive the ‘state of affairs’ when the odds are against us realising and confronting them successfully? Knowing the, at least significant, dependency of action on language, could dissent be scheduled both by information asymmetry and
The Alamat function not just as entertaining folklore, but as cultural compasses, guiding generations of Filipino children through supernatural narratives that illuminate very natural human concerns: how to belong, how to behave, and how to balance individual desires with community expectations. In the transformation of disobedient children into lizards and the tragic romance of Mayon Volcano, we find encoded the essential moral dimensions of Filipino social life, dimensions that continue to shape Filipino identity across generations and borders.
its non-simultaneity, via suggestion?
The choreography of an individual life, the dialect and routine of a community or culture or income class, is ritualistically mapped. Our critical theory is whatever we can make of the random echoes of past time from the perimeters of an event field. Our experience should verify that most people are not apathetic, that we desire sustainable conditions, but this delay in historical creation does materialise in deterministic attitudes. This is as clear in effect as assuming that you can’t catch a self-correcting gunshot.
The caveat: your last resort is not a VPN, encryption does not begin and end with bits and qubits. We should become more discrete, we should safeguard projections of ourselves onto or into whichever platforms, only not by the same structures of language they are stored under or recognised by. Despite the evolution of language slowing with the creation of Morse, of the alphabet, it has only calcified. There is still no universal grammar, there exists communication and logic behind and beyond modern practice, which is still incomplete.
If incomprehensibility, incomputability, indecipherability are the end goals, our language of reason, of feeling and logic, should be stripped of the redundant half, by which we favourably assume incompleteness. Otherwise, we should consider the many avenues and possibilities of communication.
Unlike traditional languages, the Yoruba
language is based on the tonality of talking drums, whose pitch is regulated to mimic the tonality of spoken word. With only rising and falling pitches, it can sound out complete phrases. It has redundancy, but remains confidential. This is one method of encoding grammatics and meaning among many.
In the process of engaging with not values and conclusion but their medium—the structure of a message, the form it takes, how it becomes a statistic—in considering their logical chains, we distill them into their smallest constituent parts. Lose the fat and you close into essence. If we could encrypt our logic, our action, our position in space-time, we may restore some self-governance, variability of the status quo, and gain clarity all the same. This sounds like an interesting piece but the subject matter seems to bounce around a lot. There are references to history, algorithms, physics, language, VPNs, inequality, democracies, consent, the Yoruba language and timelines. I want you to identify the main point of your piece and make it very clear what you are trying to say and what your topic is, so I can help you adjust your expression and tailor your argument to that point. I’m not a STEM student, so it could be that I don’t have the background knowledge to understand what it is you’re trying to say, but I want to work with you to make the mode of expression more accessible to a wider audience.
“What I surpass is always my past and the object such as it exists within that past. My future envelops that past; the former cannot build itself without the latter.”
— Simone de Beauvoir
Bellevue was a blood clot on the map, hardened with heartbreak. But it wasn’t easy finding a place in Montréal. Happening upon the listing and suspiciously alluring rent, I disbelievingly trudged back to Bellevue to inspect my home.
Reaching the impasse on Crescent St, I remembered her. The girl who slunk out of a door numbered 55 and down the tiled stairsteps of H’s house in Bellevue, a paling grey terrace with a yellow mailbox poised in front of it. I thought I saw her walking along Crescent St, but it was just my reflection. I saw myself in a shattered mirror leaning against the base of a streetlamp, its chipping frame falling off. My initial recognition dissolved and crept into the mirror’s cracks. The facial contours under the streetlight and the sharp chin peeking above my scarf. I didn’t know this stranger. I only knew the girl H held and said was his. Cleaved from him, I was a shadow furrowed away from its owner.
H’s old house was tucked away in the bend of the cul-de-sac, a buried memory. I remembered H’s cat, Clara, slipping through my fingers and past his door. I remembered finding Clara poured into a pool of golden sunlight on the red Persian rug, copacetic, blending with the rich fibres.
Her orange fur made her seem like a whorl in the amber wood floor. The memory lulled me, but door 55 was shut in my face. The huge arched window H and I both looked out of once was warm like a hearth, and I heard the faint clatter of cutlery and wine glasses singing high and clear. The cat was never affixed to that house, always slinking under the window onto the leaf-strewn street. Clara weaved an arterial map through Bellevue unbeknownst to anyone else. I would like to see her again, have her lead the way, but they’ve all moved from Bellevue. I sloped down the familiar bend away from 55 to get to the inspection.
My landlady told me then, ‘Bellevue is great for young singles like you.’ What makes me a ‘single’? I am still a movement towards H, still wanting to be tethered to him. I smiled and stared out of the bedroom window into the garden. A grey wisp of a cat, a stranger, padded along the fence and dropped onto the tile of the backyard. I watched her melt into the garden chair underneath strung-up laundry and decided this wasn’t a bad place to live, even if it was beyond my means. I have a good room here, but it is never warm. Curled in bed, I stare into the tall ceiling at dust floating in the last cuts of light as the sun fades. Suspended like floating snow, the dust descends in an inert film. I stave off the memories that visit me. They are moments that are dead and limpid, in the recesses of my mind like
the dust cowering in every corner of this room. My bedroom window looking onto the street is jammed, and the sounds it lets in— a grating siren, an engine crying in the dark, laughter from the street— are arrows from the past. The candle flame flickers in a languid dance. Its golden tongue licks across my wall, dimming as the wick sinks in the melted pool. I recede into dreams of the past, folding in upon myself under bed sheets, and the cold indifference of the world falls away. The smoke of the snuffed candle fills the room and the wax hardens, mooring its stuck wick. I wake to the moon, a hurtfully bright pearl, boring into my eyes through the window. The snow falls wet and sluggish on the inert streets. The candle on the nightstand searches my dark features with its light. Life drums into me feebly as Bellevue’s lonely rhythm seeps through my window. It crawls into my teardamped sheets and insinuates itself under my skin. I am paralysed by the possibility of all that never happened, potentialities that are stuck in the past like blazing stars whose light reaches Earth from eons away. I have no appetite but I need something to slap the soles off my feet, pull me out of the disaster of nostalgia. Thai takeaway from hours ago surges in my throat; the fleeting taste is a stale reminder of the past I am already distanced from. Memories of H sit sapped in my head like those sucked-dry beads in oranges that were once filled to bursting. The pulp is tasteless and transparent on its own.
Jaden interviewed a close friend, Claire*, who has a side job as an escort at a brothel. From undercover cops to NDAs, Claire’s experiences highlight how the clandestine nature of the industry — and the closetedness of her clientele — leads to sex workers being more likely to be fined than to find justice when harmed. Here are some snippets from their interview.
JO: Let’s start with an introduction.
Claire*: First, I’m a 23-year-old lesbian trans woman. I’d say I’m pretty bubbly and personality-oriented. I like to tease and joke around – it’s definitely my selling point with clients. That, and my exclusivity as one of the only trans escorts around in my city.
JO: What kind of services are included?
Claire: Mutual oral stimulation, sex in multiple positions, erotic massages, kissing. The brothel takes a cut, but for the extras I offer – for certain kinks and fetishes (ranging from pegging, role playing (which can involve behaviours, costumes, identities), toys and objects, spanking, etc. – I get to pocket the money.
JO: I see, quite the range, then. And what kinds of clients do you see?
Claire: I see several corporate guys (as you might expect), but also famous singers, athletes, tradies, an ungodly number of truck drivers, and a lot of disabled men who have NDIS support, which funds their visit to the brothel. A lot of the men we see are married... Some clients have asked me to roleplay as their wife (a nice break from being a daughter or student or niece), but usually the thrill of a mistress is what gets
them off.
JO: Is the roleplay an added cost that a client would need to request separately?
Claire: When a guy books a girl, he’ll know what kind of fantasies she’s good at performing. At the end of the day, we’re actresses before we’re sex workers… Me specifically? I often give a bratty kind of vibe where I’m teasing the client by showing a bit of resistance to his requests, like pretending to not want to receive head. But, it’s like, at that point I’m not even acting, but I am?
JO: Because to him, you’re consciously pretending to not enjoy something that (he thinks) you enjoy, but from your perspective, this is actually a moment of honesty (where you’re acting as disinterested as you truly feel inside)?
Claire: Exactly.
JO: How does that all make you feel? The acting, the roleplay, the infidelity. Does their admission of marriage come across as salacious and fetishised, or is it more of a confession in a repressed, religious sense?
Claire: Exhausted. Married guys often have issues in their relationship that they want advice on. And look, I’m far from a certified marriage counselor by any means, but a great deal of my work is the conversation and verbal communication that occurs before, during, and after the sex. Some guys book me just to have someone to talk to.
***
JO: I understand you never had any legal
I weave in and out of supermarket aisles of food stratified on shelves. A bag of dried prunes on the bottom shelf grazes the ground. I stoop low to reach it. My back that had curled in bed for days, like a dead leaf, is immobile. Knees wobbling, I nearly fall backwards. An estranged vertigo rises to meet me, the same one I felt an age ago, back when my heels hung off the back of H’s staircase steps in precarity and I felt the world slipping out from under me. I was wearing a white dress and his fingers disappeared into its lacy folds when I fell into him. My vision clouded as if I wore a veil. I swam through a darkened corridor, and a door swung closed. I was a moth, blended into the white lace of the curtains in the streetlight-washed paleness of his room. The curtain falls and I am here again, suspended in the tight air of the supermarket corridor. The memories gush like blood from a missing tooth. Nothing can bring me closer to H.
I turn into the aisle of momentary blisses to distract myself. A man reaches up for a bar of almond and sea-salt chocolate, and the smell of his shampoo knocks me back. I am reminded of the smell that would softly gather in H’s hair. I used to bury my face in the nape of his neck and inhale. Every rustle of plastic bags in carts reminds me of H slipping on his shirt and doing his buttons and belt buckle before leaving. Read full article online.
Jaden Ogwayo interviews.
training or education. Were you ever told who you could go to if something illegal happened to you or if you had a question about what was/wasn’t legal?
Claire: No. We were recommended SWOP [Sex Workers Outreach Program] for counselling, but that’s not for legal help, is it?
[SWOP does, in fact, offer or facilitate legal advice and support for sex workers, but this was never made known to Claire until this interview.]
JO: Do you know, now, where to go?
Claire: Not really, no.
JO: What else did your brothel tell you was illegal or you couldn’t do?
Claire: A big rule is that all our sex has to be protected.
JO: Oh, is the protection rule a brothel policy or a law?
Claire: The law. As escorts, we could be fined up to $8,000 if we sell unprotected sex. We also get free condoms, which they [the brothel] said was a legal thing.
JO: Oh, wow – I didn’t know that. Are the clients aware?
Claire: I get asked by almost 90% of the clients I see to do things unprotected. When I refuse, they offer extra money. Then, when I re-refuse, most leave. But again, if I ever accepted that money, I’d be facing that fine, or risk my brothel paying an even larger fine.
JO: If so many clients are pressuring escorts to go unprotected, do you know if
any of the other girls accept?
Claire: Plenty do... But it’s highly risky to do so because there are undercover cops who will try and trick girls by requesting an unprotected hookup and, once a girl agrees, arrest her instantly. But some girls are so desperate for the money that they’ll take that risk. Me personally? I would never.
JO: How much did the brothel prepare you for the legal risks of servicing a client with an NDA?
Claire: Honestly, it wasn’t really something that we ever discussed or were made aware of. By the time I had started seeing clients that required me to sign NDAs, I was a bit scared to ask if it was something I should even be doing or if I should just turn those clients away. They are usually well-paying types of clients, so I think I also just went with the flow because one booking with a client like that can make you as much as a whole night of working with regular clients.
JO: What’s one piece of advice that you’d give to anyone considering getting into sex work?
Claire: An escort should always keep one hand free for two reasons. First, so you can always check if he’s still wearing the condom. And second, so that if anything goes wrong and you need to trigger a silent alarm, you’ve got a hand free to reach for it.
*Alias used to protect the interviewee Read full article online.
Angus Fisher
Welcome to week 4! If you’re beginning to feel the crunch of university don’t worry, you are not alone.
The SRC is refreshing its logo and we want your ideas! We launched a competition with a prize of $1000 for the person who makes the next SRC logo. We’re looking for as many submissions as possible, no idea is too loud or too boring. For more information check the SRC Instagram @ src_usyd.
Last week I spoke at the Students Against War rally where I discussed the university’s cruel deterioration of free speech and academic and political freedoms. I noted that regardless of your own political beliefs, strategy, or influence we ought to fight against this in every way we can. As highlighted in my previous reports, to do this I attend meetings with the powers that be, write submissions, and take part in rallies to create change and I urge you to use whatever pathway you have to do the same.
While an election wasn’t called last week as expected, it will be called very soon. As students, we not only have to recognise the existential
threat that Peter Dutton and the Liberals pose to the tertiary education sector and student unionism, but we also need to organise against it. Up until the election, the SRC will be ramping up its campaign to put the Liberals last, because we as students can’t risk Dutton. We will be discussing this at the SRC stalls on Eastern Avenue but please do reach out if you want to get involved. We need a fighting student movement.
In a direct attack on student union independence and the student voice, the UoN SRC President, Matt Jeffery, was stripped of his title last week by the non-student CEO of UNSA. The reasoning was that he was failing classes. Matt was elected by the student body in a fair election. Myself and the USyd SRC strongly condemn this foul intervention by the CEO. This highlights that as student representatives we are in a delicate situation, where the university or some other body can remove our voice for whatever reason. However, the more we come together the stronger we are.
In solidarity, Angus
It’s been a busy few weeks for the Education Action Group! We had an enormous turnout to our inaugural meeting in Week 1, where we discussed the next steps in our campaign to fight against the $90-110 million in cuts that university management is carrying out. Entire degrees are being slashed and merged into more generalised courses, while majors such as Studies in Religion have been gutted entirely. The only way to fight against this is through a fighting student movement, and we’ve been out publicising these cuts as much as we can to hold management to account, and held a working bee in Week 3 to build material for the campaign. We will have another meeting soon, so follow our Instagram at usyd.education.action for more information.
These past few weeks have also seen a frightening crackdown on free speech on campus. The University attempted to
Anu-Ujin Khulan, Grace Street
Our budget has been passed at council, which means we can now get started with helping SRC collectives and departments to use up the money they have been allocated. As promised, we will also be looking for opportunities and ways for office bearers to apply for money from our other contestable sources of funding (such as the pool of money for Student Weeks or Office Bearer projects).
Our focus has now turned to helping collectives launch their 2025 events and campaigns, and to promote them across all of our social media platforms.
Grace has been working on supporting QuAC and the SRC’s campaign and petition to support Luna from academic misconduct that could lead
to deportation, as well as joining the Disabled Honi editorial team and working on WoCo’s upcoming sexual violence, pro-choice, antifemicide and anti-college events. Anu has been working on the first two International Student Collective events of the year, which were wellattended and great opportunities to let students know about the SRC!
There’s lots happening, and we hope to see you around soon! We are also still working to hand out and promote our SRC Welcome Handbook and merch which are a great intro to the SRC and contain lots of usual information for USyd students. Find these materials on the SRC websites under Student Media.
Martha Barlow, Ellie Robertson
Last week we held our ‘Abolish the Colleges’ forum. We had a great turnout, with students, community members, and even local and state politicians showing up. The forum was a fantastic opportunity to discuss a forward-looking vision for the campaign, and we thoroughly enjoyed discussing with attendees what the future of safe, accessible and affordable student housing looks like. Special thanks to Councillor Matthew Thompson for supporting the event, and Jenny Leong for speaking!
Next week, the Catholic Church is holding their annual ‘Day of the Unborn Child’ event, and we in turn are hosting our annual counterprotest. This year, in the context of the proposed crackdowns on protests outside of places of worship and the current debates about abortion access in State parliaments, as well as the general rise in Trump-style misogyny and bigotry, it is more important than ever to hold protests such as these. We encourage everyone to come along to Hyde Park opposite St Mary’s Cathedral at 10am Sunday 23rd March.
This weekend we attended the ‘Stop Killing Women’ Rally. This was part of a series of rallies Nationally called by Sherele Moody, founder of FemicideWatch and the Red Heart Campaign. 14 women have already been murdered this year due to domestic violence, and it was an honour to hear from the brave women leading the fight against femicide in this country. We echo the demands of the rally for early intervention and education, reform of the DVO/AVO system, and better funding for domestic violence support
services and refuges.
We also attended the International Women’s Day rally last week. As IWD gets co-opted by corporate brunches and university panels, it is important to remember that IWD has its roots in working class movements, and that the day should call for solidarity with all women globally suffering under the capitalist, colonial patriarchy.
In the meantime, we will be building for Israeli Apartheid week (from the 21st-30th March), and Reclaim and Resist week (5th-9th May).
Finally, we are seeing a global crackdown on Palestine activism against vulnerable students at risk of deportation. We condemn the University of Sydney’s threatened expulsion of Luna, a transgender student on a humanitarian visa whose expulsion would have seen her deportation back to her home country, where being transgender is illegal. We are relieved her expulsion has been overturned, and hope this pushes the university to reconsider its draconian repression policies. We also deeply condemn the disgusting actions of the Trump administration in its arrest, detainment by ICE and threatened deportation of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil. This is a terrifying and authoritarian use of power, and we will continue to fight the wielding of police and state power to repress and enact violence against those speaking about genocide.
In solidarity, Martha and Ellie
suspend Luna, a trans refugee student, for writing messages on a whiteboard highlighting how the University is complicit in the genocide in Palestine. This is a disgusting attack on one of the most vulnerable members of our community by a university that is unwilling to come to terms with the consequences of its partnerships with weapons companies. After a press conference organised by the SRC’s Queer Action Collective, management revoked the charge, claiming that it was an “administrative error.” Whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the trauma undergone by Luna who faced the threat of being deported, and it highlights the very real human impact that these policies have. The EAG proudly signed onto the open letter condemning this attack on free speech, and know that this university isn’t going to respect our rights – we are going to have to fight for them.
Deaglan Godwin, Lilah Thurbon
Since our last report, the havoc wreaked by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred has dominated the news cycle. It was the sixth severe tropical cyclone of the season, and made landfall the furthest south. This fact adds an additional layer of anxiety to the already devastating aftermath of the storm; climate disasters are becoming more extreme and unpredictable due to the acceleration of climate change. Or at least this is what the Environment Officers (and hopefully the readers of this newspaper) believe. We are concerned by the wave of climate change denialism that has followed Cyclone Alfred. Conservative news outlets in the Murdoch media monopoly like Sky News are publishing reports questioning the legitimacy of claims by government officials that climate change is worsening the harms of environmental disasters, and right-wing figures lament about the left’s “obsession with net-zero” and “global warming craziness.” This fits into a broader trend of the mainstream turning its back on once un-controversial climate science. The Trump Administration recently ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its position that greenhouse gasses cause climate change and are harmful to human health, which could lead to an unprecedented repeal of environmental protections. All of this is a stark reminder that the global backslide into far-right authoritarianism leaves no issue untouched, and environmental issues are deeply interconnected with the political reality we find ourselves in. It’s never been more important to get involved with student activism on campus!
Yours environmentally, Lilah and Deaglan.
Emma Searle, Dana Kafina, Jessica Heap, Taleen Jameel
Global Solidarity Officers have been busy working with other collectives such as Women’s Collective (WOCO) and Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) to collaborate on campaigns against all forms of imperialism and oppression across the world.
The apartheid state of Israel continues to commit genocide against Gazans, as well as ethnically cleanse and displace Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The occupation is destroying homes, arresting and killing innocents, all to protect the political and economic interests of the colonial state of Israel.
The United States, with its fascist President, is now cracking down on all forms of resistance. In response, Global Solidarity Officers took part in building the snap protest last Friday in solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student whose activism led to the establishment of the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the world! We demand freedom for all political prisoners, and freedom for Mahmoud Khalil!
March 21-30 is Israeli Apartheid Week. We urge everyone to boycott Israeli
products and companies that invest in the occupation, and we encourage you to attend the workshops and the National Day of Action Rally on March 26! Students For Palestine have also launched ‘The People’s Inquiry’ to address anti-Palestinian censorship across university campuses. The Inquiry is currently collecting submissions and you’re encouraged to put in your own submission!
We are also seeing similar forms of colonial repression in Sudan, where humans rights violations, including sexual violence, are being perpetrated against innocent civilians, as well as in West Papua, where Indonesia’s illegal occupation saw the territory’s natural wealth continue to be plundered, fuelling global markets. Global Solidarity Officers have also attended the Stop Killing Women rally and a snap rally for First Nations Justice on Saturday. For more information on future rallies, we have an Instagram page that you can follow! @usyd.global.solidarity. Solidarity with the exploited and the oppressed! Liberation for all!
Dana, Emma, Jessica and Taleen
If you are a full-time student, and an Australian resident, you may be eligible for a Centrelink payment. Lots of conditions apply so go to our website for details.
The Uni offers financial support through scholarships and bursaries, as do some community organisations. Check each scholarship for conditions. The Uni also provides 12 month interest free loans.
Unions will protect your work rights individually and collectively, and their fees are tax deductible. To join go to australianunions.org.au/join.
Pay Day loans offer easy money but come with fees that are equivalent to 45% interest. Some consolidation loans will have you paying off the interest each month, without reducing the loan amount. The SRC strongly advises against taking out these loans, and instead talk to a caseworker about viable alternatives.
It is great to have interest free periods, and partial payment schemes such as Afterpay, and Ezipay, but the penalties for late repayments are very high. When making a purchase, calculate when you will be able to complete the payment, and how much this will cost.
If you are struggling to pay your energy bills, ask your energy provider for an extension, payment plan, or hardship support. You may also be eligible for a voucher for a once off payment towards your bill.
The National Debt Help Line and Gambling Help Line provide confidential assistance in resolving debt. Be very cautious about using the services of a debt consolidation agency as their interest rates can lead to bankruptcy.
The Food Hub has free food and other essential items and AskIzzy gives information on free or cheap meals. There are lots of easy cook recipes and snack ideas online or find someone who will cook dinner for/ with you, and heat left overs in the Uni microwaves the next day. Some restaurants and food courts have discount lunches and discount take aways near closing time. Fresh food markets will discount food at closing
time, and you may also find fruit and vegetables there, that have fallen on the ground (“gleaning”).
The University Health Service provides bulk or direct billing for students. Other surgeries might not charge a gap fee, so check when booking. You should not have to pay an extra fee to get a medical certificate.
The University’s Wellbeing team can connect you with the Uni’s free counselling service or you can ask your GP about a mental health plan to reduce private psychologists’ fees. There are online forums, such as eHeadSpace, where you can connect with peers to share strategies that support your wellbeing. The School of Psychology has a clinic that provides counselling and may also do testing for conditions including ADHD, for a fee.
There are very limited options for free dental treatments through Medicare, but health insurance providers will offer some rebates for some policies. The cheapest way to have good oral health is to take preventative measures including regular professional cleaning and check ups as well as a daily brushing and flossing routine.
Regardless of who calls the ambulance when you are sick or injured, you may be liable for the cost, starting from $750. Health Care Card Holders are given free ambulance cover in NSW, and private health insurance provides ambulance cover from $45 per year.
Other allied health services
Final year students in courses including osteopathy, physiotherapy, psychology, acupuncture, hairdressing, chiropody, and massage, need to practice for free or cheap, on real patients, under the supervision of their lecturers. For details contact the faculty or TAFE offering these courses.
Health Care Card
Australian citizens (or PR) who earn an average of less than $783 per week (single person with no dependents, as at 1st Jan 2025) may be entitled to a Low Income Health Care Card, giving:
• Reduced pharmaceuticals
• Free ambulance cover
• Free prescription lenses and frames (limited choices)
• Discounts to some alternative medical practices (as negotiated with the provider).
Sexual Health
Have as much consensual, safe sex as you would like. The SRC can provide you with free condoms and lube. Take the time to learn how to use condoms correctly. If you are a sex worker, contact the Sex Worker Outreach Project for safer sex supplies, information, and support.
It’s always cheaper to have some drinks at home before going out. NSW Health offers comprehensive information on different alcohol and other drugs. For free needles check the NSW Needle and Syringe Program. If Police accused you of possession or use of illegal drugs, say nothing until you speak to a solicitor.
The City of Sydney offers information on how to ride and maintain bikes safely. Join the campaign to get all students transport concessions. If you are renting a car, read all the conditions, especially how much your excess payment is in the event of an accident.
You may be eligible for Fares Allowance if you receive a Centrelink payment, and you live away from your permanent home for study.
The Union (USU) offers social activities that are cheap or free, and Clubs and Societies in many different areas of interest. They also have a Rewards card ($45) that will give you a range of discounts and benefits. Trivia nights at various pubs are free and can have great prizes. Some pubs have raffles or membership “badge” competitions free to people in the pub at a particular time.
For more information on saving money including links to online resources, view the Living on Litte Money Guide online:
1 Casino cube
4 Molecule part
8 Walked nervously
Soul, in Paris
Longtime “SNL” announcer Don
Garden intruders
16 Stereotypical way that an Aussie
shrimp
18 Trio trebled 19 Polished felon moonwalks in?
21 Perfectly, after “to”
22 Solution: Abbr.
23 Psychedelic drug
26 Not formally worded
29 Family man
32 Hard-to-find cards, to collectors
34 Record label founded by Drake
35 The “C” of TLC
36 Different component of myself?
40 British slang for annoying or childish people
41 Papua New Guinea port and last known location of Amelia Earhart
42 “I’m ___ and I didn’t even know it!”
43 Special forces unit with the motto “Who Dares Wins”
44 “Good evening,” in Nice
47 The people in charge of this paper, for short
48 Peak rep. body for Australian retail workers
49 Superman’s mother
51 One asked to change his ways?
58 Often yelled in soccer
59 Tragedy-stricken
60 Old-womanish
61 “Silent Night” words before calm and bright
62 Playable character in the mobile game ‘Brawl Stars’ modelled after an insect
63 Goes out with
64 Stalinist theory which directly opposes world revolution: Abbr.
65 1987 chart-topping album containing three songs in this puzzle
50 FIFA World Cup winner
51 Supernatural force in Te
53 “___ the night before
55 Andrew ____ , Abbott’s
56 “Good job” in Australian
In 1965 Honi interviewed Charles Perkins, leader of Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA), in an article titled Another Congo in Australia. Now 60 years old, this piece acts as a memento to the Freedom Ride, where 29 USyd students set off on a twoweek bus trip to confront racial segregation.
Lotte Weber delves into the archives.
The article detailed a symposium on Education and the Aboriginal at Orientation Week: “Mr Perkins said that a definite class system was developing and hardening in country areas. ‘Ninety-eight percent of the Aboriginal populations have never got past second year’ he said.”
It continues, “Mr Perkins was himself denied access to the Moree public baths after admitting he was part Aboriginal.” Brian Aarons, a student on the bus, told Sydney Alumni Magazine, “having Charlie Perkins, who was ten years older than the rest of us, also made a huge difference”.
“Throw a Shrimp on the Bundy”
Our hot new suggestion for Australia’s logo. Delivered without tarriffs. Really rolls off the Albanese Tongue.
The new sketch comedy show funded by the USU. We count as an “identity” too! Actors can be fruity but like not in a gay way.
