HOROSCROPES

Coming out of Mercury Retrograde isn’t easy, especially for an Aries who does not like to be messed around. Maybe your technology gave up on you, maybe you lost your wallet or had a messy breakup. It’s time to gain direction in your life, just like the boss that you are. Try downloading a meditation app. Tap into your calm side — while this isn’t your natural instinct, it might just pay off… It’s time to stop scrolling through TikTok and go outside! Avoiding laziness — which you may be currently indulging in a little too much — will bring you endless rewards this month. Prioritise spending time with your family and friends, and you’ll reap the benefits of having them around. Seriously, put your phone down. Mercury Retrograde went easy on you… but the good news is that more positive energy is coming your way! Offer help to a friend to show them just how adaptable you are. While you’re not used to consistency, there’s nothing wrong with a healthy routine either. Learn to adjust as you go along; trust yourself.

While you’re always seeking balance, now is the time to throw caution to the wind! Buy all those cute outfits on your wishlist. They’ll come in handy this month as you socialise more and more with good friends. Avoid slipping into your spiral of self-pity this month. Mute your ex on social media. It’s not worth it. It’s time to declutter your digital life. Unsubscribe from those spam email accounts. Backup your hard drive and delete those old pictures off your phone. You’re running low on storage anyway! Unfollow the people on your newsfeed you don’t care for. Make your digital space breathable again. Go on an adventure this month. A Google earth adventure. Travel to the most distant corners of the globe and write about your experiences. Imagine the people you’d meet. The food you would eat. Then don’t actually do any of those things because of COVID-19. Sorry, adventure awaits. Probably next year.

Tread lightly, sweet Cancer. The planetary shifts might make you unsteady on your feet. Keep your shoelaces tied and always follow the route Google Maps tells you to. This is not the time for spontaneity. Update your profile picture. Your new haircut looks amazing and it’s been a while since you reminded your ex how hot you are. Shower yourself with likes and love-heart reacts. You’re gorgeous! It’s not always about you, but this time, it is. Ah, the joy of a fresh semester. Polish off your highlighters and Google Calendar. It’s time to get organised. Read all your subject outlines and make detailed, alphabetised notes. Plan your days in hourly blocks to maximise your time. Remember, work- life balance! Schedule at least one self care day fortnightly. Or don’t. I’m not your mum.

People are often drawn to your wisdom and headstrong nature. You may not have felt that appreciation recently, but as Mercury moves on, you can relax into your responsible and self-assured nature again. For the next few weeks, keep your calendar packed with social events to balance out your workaholic nature. Have you been having trouble with your social media presence lately? Have your Tinder matches been sub-par? Or perhaps you’ve been having issues with some people close to you? Your humanitarian nature won’t let you hold onto grudges. But perhaps, you can make a fake Insta account to stalk your recent ex, who (oh-so cruelly) broke your heart. Pisces, it’s your season! Your time to shine for the year is upon us. Keep romanticising your life everyday. Enjoy the harmony around you. Things are starting to sync up. Get down and dirty and focus on selfexpression. But try not to procrastinate too much! This month will bring you a sense of achievement and fulfilment if you embrace all that’s ahead.

Student’s Association Reports

Aidan O’Rourke

PRESIDENT

Hello Vertigo readers,

Check out what I’ve been up to:

A number of items were raised with Shirley Alexander (Deputy Vice Chancellor—ES) during our most recent meeting, including addressing extended wait times for e-requests, reintroducing Association services, securing a funding agreement for the Association, digital inequality, and other individual student concerns.

I joined a meeting with FASS Association Dean, Maryanne Dever, alongside the Education Officer, Ellie Woodward. We received a comprehensive explanation of the course restructures occurring within FASS, in addition to other issues raised in the Education Action group (EAG) meetings. The Education Officer led a well-informed discussion. Key items to watch include the introduction of the Indigenous Graduate Attributes in FASS and the delivery of content relating to and critical of colonialism and imperialism.

I received a detailed briefing from Patrick Woods (DVC & VP), in company with the CFO, on UTS’ financial situation. If any councillor or student would like to discuss this meeting and receive further detail, they can make an appointment with me.

In January, I had a meeting with the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) President, Errol Phuah. We discussed a range of postgrad issues and Association affiliation. I referred CAPA President to our Postgraduate Representative, Peter Munford.

As raised with Council last meeting, I have undertaken a review of the Association regulations including benchmarking and reviewing documents provided by King & Wood Mallesons. In January’s Meeting, I submitted minor alterations to the by-laws. At the most recent meeting (February), I submitted Standing Orders that have been substantially drafted and reviewed for consideration by Council. The details and explanation of the standing orders have been included in the motion presented to Council.

I attended a number of committees including the Teaching and Learning Committee, Sustainability Steering Committee, and the Informal Learning Spaces Committee on behalf of the Association. We discussed the reactivation of campus and statistics revealing higher rates of dissatisfaction amongst domestic students in comparison to international students. The Sustainability Committee heard about the Association’s long running campaign to encourage UTS to divest 100% from fossil fuels. We recently heard news that UTS has taken large steps in this direction. Finally, the spaces committee looked at ways to make informal learning spaces more attractive and to increase the volume of study spaces on campus. We also reviewed how the use of technology can be used to monitor traffic in study spaces to more efficiently direct students to under-utilised spaces.

O’Week went well for the most part. The location of Association stalls made it difficult for the Association to maximise outreach, and the lesser amount of foot traffic made it harder to reach students. Regardless, our power bank giveaway increased signups by 65% compared to last year, which is encouraging. The Association is excited to relaunch Bluebird Brekkie and Night Owl Noodles on campus which will hopefully drive up engagement.

We’re proud that going forward we can ensure students have a nutritious breakfast and dinner a few times a week so please come and get yourself some food in the Building 1 foyer at the following times:

Bluebird Brekkie – Tues & Wed 8:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Night Owl Noodles – Tues & Thurs 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Camille Smith

ASSISTANT GENERAL SECRETARY

I have been working closely with the Indigenous Officer in the last few weeks, planning for the stall on O’Day, which despite unfair and unfortunate stall placement by Activate, was a success. We have over 30 new members and we’re looking forward to our first social event.

We’re hoping that next year, we will be allocated a better placed stall in order to engage additional Indigenous students. Excitingly, we had some non-Indigenous students enquire at our booth throughout the day about our work, our future work, and how they can get involved in supporting Indigenous students as allies. I also spent the first day of our O’Week handing out free power banks to new and returning students. We gave away almost 2000 Power Banks over three days to students who signed up for Students Association emails. Many students asked a lot of questions and were very interested to hear about the Association and the services we offer. Expanding the engagement of students during events like this will hopefully increase awareness of the Association, the services we offer in the hopes to help struggling students. Overall, I believe O’Week was a success, and I’m looking forward to engaging with new students throughout the year.

After a very busy start to the year, many of us in the SA were left already burnt out, unable to enforce healthy boundaries between our work in the Student’s Association and our personal lives. It occurred to me that while the UTSSA offers mental health support and advocates for students access to it, we haven’t been following our own advice. To remedy this, I collaborated with the UTSSA Welfare Officer, Sabrine Yassine, on a mental health-based Communications policy. This policy will ensure all members of the SA can actively distance themselves from stupol work outside of a regular workday and therefore, be able to commit themselves healthily to the various features of their lives.

We are also very excited for Bluebird Brekkie & Night Owl Noodles to begin again this month. The chaos of 2020 meant that many students were left without jobs leading many students to lose access to healthy meals.

Sabrine Yassine

WELFARE OFFICER

As we make our way through the semester, we begin to fall into some old habits, but also develop some new ones. With many people returning to campus we get a sense of normalcy back, or for those who started in 2020 like myself, we get a taste of the university life that we thought we were in for. However, with the positives that come with being back on campus, are also the struggles that we may have forgotten about in a year of online university.

Having class on campus, and with many social activities being back in person, we are generally going to have a lot less extra time laying around than during quarantine. Adjusting to a more involved university life can be overwhelming. This can affect one’s mental, physical, and emotional health which is why the Welfare Collective is focusing on mental health initiatives, partnering with other collectives to bring attention to our mental health in an ever-changing world.

Being out-and-about more also means additional financial pressure on students especially in terms of transport and food costs. Which is why we are really looking forward to the re-launch of our Bluebird Brekkie and Night Owl Noodle services to provide free meals for students as a way to relieve some financial pressure and be able to meet other students on campus.

Even with some new obstacles, we must of course remember all the benefits in coming back to campus, including being able to host a very successful O’Day Welfare Stall. Thank you to all the people who visited the Welfare Collective Stall. We hope you enjoyed our on-brand candles! Through the stall we were able to inform both new and old students of the services we provide and get new students on board to be a part of the active collective. I encourage anyone who has ideas on how we can improve student welfare at UTS to contact me at: welfare@utsstudentsassociation.org

Also, follow us on Instagram @uts.welfare.collective for more updates on our upcoming projects.

Zebadiah Cruickshank

INDIGENOUS OFFICER

This month was spent focusing on recruiting for the Indigenous Collective during O’Week. Organising began with contacting the Jumbanna Institute about possible collaboration with the Indigenous Collective. I spoke with Sallie Paternoster, the Student Success and Engagement Officer at Jumbanna, and was offered a speaking time at Jumbanna Orientation to advertise the Collective to all of the first-year Indigenous students.

Next was the organisation of the O’Day stall. Our member Camille Smith sorted leftover 2020 tote bags, throwing out expired chips and condoms, as we planned to recycle them for this year’s O’Day. She ordered blank badges so that we could make Indigenous Collective badges. I booked the Activist Space and we produced 60 badges. The design of the badges was an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flag with the slogan, ‘Who’s your mob’ and UTS Indigenous Collective at the Bottom. We were also able to reuse the Invasion Day banner.

Finally, I had UTSSA President, Aidan O’Rourke, collect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flags from Tanya Plibersek’s Electorate Office. With the preparations complete, we were ready for O’Week.

Kicking off the week was the Jumbanna Orientation where I was able to sit down and speak to all the first-years about the Collective during lunch. I felt most were quite eager to engage with a collective just for Indigenous students. Then came O’Day. Camille and I were able to attract Indigenous students to give our merch to and have sign up to the Collective (literally having to lead students to the stall in one instance). Through my and Camille’s combined efforts, we have been able to solicit around 35 students and hope to have a welcome barbeque to start the collective for this year.

Queer Collective

In the last couple of months, the Queer Collective has been working on getting prepared for the year ahead and ensuring that as classes resume, we will be ready to kick off an awesome year. We did lots of preparing for O’Day, which involved making hundreds of pronoun badges, and ensuring we could help as many new queer members of the community as possible. O’Day ended up being a big success! We were able to meet so many wonderful new people who we hope to see become active members of our little queer family. Much of the community of the Queer Collective is built on being around each other in the queer space on campus, and with last year’s restrictions, that was missing for most of 2020. We are eager to have our physical spaces on campus once again become a touchstone for the queer community.

Our hopes for spending time with each other came to fruition with a wonderful welcome picnic we held on the Alumni Green in the first week of classes. We had plenty of food to share and picnic blankets to sit upon and around 40 people in attendance, many of whom were new to the university and the Queer Collective. After the picnic, we showed a number of new members around the queer space and there was an overwhelming sense of joy at the new connections and friendships we were creating.

The most recent event the Queer Collective attended was the Mardi Gras march on the 6th of March. In response to Mardi Gras being a paid, ticketed event this year, a number of groups organised a takeover of Oxford St to push back against the continued corporatisation of Mardi Gras. For an event that began as a protest fighting for queer liberation, it is a shame that over the years Mardi Gras has morphed to focus on assimilation into broader capitalist society. Mardi Gras is now backed by corporations looking to make a dime from a veneer of progressivism and police officers who are complicit in the oppression of all people, queer people included. This rally fought against all of that, with demands for striking down the proposed religious freedoms bill that is attempting to prevent transgender education in schools, and demands for the ending of mandatory detention for refugees, the support of the Black Lives Matter movement, the decriminalisation of sex work, and the decriminalisation of drug use. These causes are in line with the spirit of radical change and liberation for the queer community that initially drove Mardi Gras and other queer rights movements across the world. The rally was a big success, with a number of students from the Queer Collective attending. The action was granted a COVID restriction exemption the day before and so faced only minimal interference from the large police presence. It was inspiring to see so many queer people coming together to celebrate our identities and fight for our rights and the rights of all oppressed peoples. The rally concluded with a fabulous dance party in Hyde Park and felt like a perfect celebration of everything we had been fighting for.

Enviro Collective

As we continue into 2021, the Enviro Collective is focused on growth, both within the collective and within the climate justice movement.

We have spent the last few months strengthening our connection with the Sydney climate activist movement. Recently, we assisted the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN), Workers for Climate Action, and Uni Students for Climate Justice in building their event, the ‘Climate Jobs and Justice Now! No Narrabri Project, No Gas-Fired Recovery!’ Rally on the 20th of February. This action broadly demanded a just transition away from fossil fuels, towards renewables and well-paying, dignified employment. It directly opposed the Morrison government’s gas-led recovery plan, which has already resulted in the approval of the Narrabri gas project. Fracking giant, Santos, will be allowed to drill coal seam gas mines in the Pilliga Forest, decimating the cultural heritage of the Gomeroi people, and polluting the native ecosystem and water sources. The Liberal government has wholly greenwashed this project as a mechanism to recover sustainably from the COVID-19 crisis. It epitomises why we must continue to fight against the Australian Government’s weak response to climate change.

We found talking to new students on O’Day beneficial. It can be especially intimidating to attend rallies during the COVID-19 pandemic, when attendee limits are so strictly enforced. So, having the opportunity to encourage new students to get involved in the climate movement and

giving them a safe contingent to attend with was brilliant. The collective will continue supporting the fight for climate justice, working to help build the movement back to its preCOVID-19 power and beyond.

In order to drive environmental action, it is essential that we grow as a collective. Preparing for O’day was particularly important. A lot of current Enviro members were eager to help out in the stall and with social media promotion during the day. We recognised that recruiting new members was a necessity if we were going to continue with our ambitious plans for 2021. We also aim to focus on social media as a means of promoting the collective and sharing our voice with students. In February, we launched our Humans of Enviro Campaign which amplifies the diverse range of environmental issues.

Every week, we introduce a member of the collective and share an issue they feel passionately about. Not only will this get new members engaged, it teaches us all about the intricacies of the climate movement; everything from capitalism and greenwashing, to the intersectionality of faith and environmental justice.

The UTS Enviro collective is incredibly excited for 2021. We hope to spur one another on through a year packed with rallies, banner paints, poster runs, movie screenings, and even some social events.

Ethnocultural Collective

Hello!

The UTS Ethnocultural Collective is an autonomous Collective made up of students who identify as Indigenous, a Person of Colour, or as marginalised by mainstream Australian monoculture. Together, we work towards antiracism, in our shared safe space.

In the past two months, the Collective has participated in numerous initiatives. First of all, thank you to everyone who came by our booth at O’Week in February! It was a pleasure to meet and chat to so many lovely people.

Our article titled ‘Breaking down Attila’s anti-racism statement’ was published on page 104 in Vertigo vol. 1: ‘Remedy’. We urge that you give it a read! You can find it on issuu.com/utsvertigo. To summarise, our article breaks down the language of the statement and raises questions of Attila and his anti-racism statement. The article precedes an open letter we plan to launch, calling for a commitment to anti-racist action and policy. By the time this Vertigo volume is published, it may have already been launched! Please see our Collective’s Facebook and Instagram to keep tabs on how that’s going, and to support us and our work.

Another initiative I’ve been working on, as Ethnocultural Officer, is collaboration and communication with UNSW’s and USyd’s respective Ethnocultural Officers in planning an inter-university picnic! The picnic would be in a social capacity, building funds going towards Grandmothers Against Removals, an Indigenous-run grassroots organisation advocating against the ongoing Stolen Generations in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being removed from kinship. As People of Colour, and migrants on stolen land, it is important that we ‘pay the rent’ back into Indigenous communities and their self-determination, acknowledging them as the Traditional Custodians of the land that we live, breathe and organise on.

Luna Manandhar

INTERNATIONAL OFFICER

The Ethnocultural Collective also recently staged our first social event of the semester, a movie night! The movie was Cinderella (1997), starring Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg. Among the singing and music, however, was the deep-rooted and earnest colour-blind casting of the film. Representation matters; it is important that children of marginalised communities are exposed to media that reflects their image, thus empowering them in a world that’s default ‘white’ European. Not everyday do you see yourself represented in a fairytale Filipino prince, or for others, a Black heroine. Representation is important, and representation is powerful!

As always, if you yourself qualify for the Collective’s autonomy (by being Indigenous, a Person of Colour, or as marginalised by mainstream Australian monoculture), you are so very welcome to join us for meetings and social gatherings, and have a say in the direction of this group! Sign up for emails at utsstudentsassociation.org.au/ collectives/ethnocultural, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram (both @utsethnocultural).

Read about The Ethnocultural Collective’s response to the coup in Myanmar on page 120. My name is Luna Manandhar, your International Officer for 2021. I am from Nepal and I am pursuing my Bachelors degree in Nursing. The International Collective had their first meeting on December 22nd, 2020, where we decided to change our logo to represent all the international students across the world. You can now see the new logo on our social media. On December 29th, we elected Antara Narayan to be our International Collective Convener for 2021.

After O’Week, we posted a survey on our social media to engage with international students and better understand the problems they are facing that we might be unaware of. We will also be working closely with international student services at UTS and other student collectives to provide more support and welfare to international students. This year, we are focused on interacting more with students, and making them aware that they have a student union as their voice, who will always advocate for students. To make this happen, and if you would like to know what’s happening in 2021 in detail, we would like international students to get involved with the collective.

Follow us on Instagram @utsinternationalstudents. Like and follow us on Facebook @UTS International Collective, or email us at international@studentsassociation.org