Woroni Edition Four 2017 by Woroni

Woroni Issue 4, Vol. 67. Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

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Don’t ‘Eagle Rock’ the Boat: A Story about Disclosure and Response

Tuning in to the Discovery Channel: Stories of Self-Discovery

On Being Good Enough

Five Secret Ways to Get a Park on Campus

‘Revisiting one college community’s response to sexual harassment and looking forwards’

‘David Attenborough’s guide to figuring your shit out’

‘Not being perfect doesn’t mean you’ve failed’

‘They’ll never find you here’

TIME’S UP FOR BRUCE HALL Text: Jasper Lindell Photography: Marwan El Hassan Bruce Hall, the once grand monument to modern, co-educational tertiary education, is slowly being devoured at the top of University Avenue by demolition equipment after a last-minute legal attempt by the Bruce Hall Alumni Association was not enough to save the iconic residence hall. The gardens and trees have been desecrated and heavy machinery has moved in, poised to d i sm a nt le more than 50 years

of ANU undergraduate history, after the ANU succeeded in clearing all hurdles in the way of its demolition, despite previously concluding the buildings should be heritage listed. The mad hope of the Bruce Hall Alumni Association (BHAA) was finally dashed at a Federal Court hearing on 4 April, when stop work orders were overturned, and the BHAA withdrew its case after a release of Environment Department documents showed that sufficient community consultation on the demolition application had taken place. The hall, which opened in 1961 and was the first co-educational residential hall in Australia, has been the subject of a strong campaign led by former residents to save the buildings based on their social and historical importance.

也有中文文章啊! 翻到第21页.

The ANU initially denied plans to demolish the buildings but, after securing funding from Graham and Louise Tuckwell in 2016, announced that Bruce Hall would be demolished and replaced with two accommodation towers, which would provide funds to sustain the Tuckwell scholarship. But critics say that the quickest way to increase the number of beds for students on campus would have been to construct new halls either side of Bruce Hall. The ANU said, while this was investigated, there were too many issues with this proposal. The President of the BHAA, Bec Duncan, said that the group had ‘always been open to expanding Bruce Hall,

Spoons Pull Out on Pages 28-32

even with major changes, but done in a way that was sympathetic to the heritage buildings, but [the ANU] would not listen.’ The ANU had previously concluded the Bruce Hall buildings were of significant heritage value, but the ACT Heritage Council’s decision in November not to add the buildings to the heritage opened up the possibility for their demolition. A 2015 ANU heritage assessment recommended adding Bruce Hall to the Commonwealth Heritage List, that any future work be ‘informed by a

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Issue 4, Vol. 67

Contents comment 10

[re]action Brianna Muir

Don’t ‘Eagle Rock’ the Boat: A Story about Disclosure and Response Emily Jones

A broken shovel. Anna Morscheck

The Road Mistaken Rosalind Moran

Why Residents are About to get Hit with a Big Fat Price Hike Max Koslowski Making Sense of Us: How ANU Students Compare to the Typical Canberran Mia Jessurun 12

Why Lectures Shouldn’t Be History Guy Exton For Fuck’s Sake, don’t make Education Free Again Jessy Wu 13

Comprehending Complexity Anthony Merlino 14

In the Corner of the Queer* Ally Ali McMaster 15

Where’s My Castle?: Understanding Negative Gearing Jonathan Tjandra 16

There’s an App for That: When Revenge Porn goes Viral James Atkinson 17

Embracing the True Essence of ‘Treat Yo Self’ Supriya Benjamin Student activists are driving Canberra’s Refugee Campaign John Dove 18

Diplobrats: Inside the Lives of Diplomats’ Children Max Koslowski 19

Chimaek with a side of Impeachment Dylan McGirr 20

Who’s the Fairest of them All? Una Chen PROMPTED 21

为什么要学习文学

Sylvia Zhang 23

Dear Friend / Dear Stranger Nigarish Haider Clicking the Link Rebecca Hobson and Naomi Austin 24

Tuning in to the Discovery Channel: Stories of Self-Discovery

Me, Myself and Africa Casley Rowan

The Industry Filling Holes Phoebe Hamra leaRN 41

Socially Conscious Consumerism: A Strip Mall of Brand Anxiety Victor Wang 42

SPOONS pull-out

Food Smart Lydia J Kim

Better off Dead Than Disabled: Ableism Through the Ages Shae Maree Nicholson

Fluency in the Language of Coding: The Future of Coding as a Skill Patrick Paton

A Spoonful of Sugar Steph Kerr 30

Deeper Than Skin Miriam Sadler 31

Moving Away Anonymous On Being Good Enough Tom Kesina 32

How Can I Help My Friend With Mental Illness? Anonymous CULTURE 33

Behind the Magic Julia Faragher (Actually) Looking at Art Jasper Lindell 34

The Art of the Art Documentary Phoebe Hamra 35

Discovered by Bob: Why Citizen Science is the New Frontier of Research Imogen Brown 45

Unpaid Internships – The Difference between Learning and Getting Exploited Prachi Arya SPORT 46

Burley Man Initiative Founder Notso-burly After Running 2500km Max Koslowski SATIRE 46

Five Secret Ways to Get a Park on Campus Caroline Dry MANet’s Gaze: Mind Over Meme Elizabeth Harris 48

Comic Caitlin Setnicar Sudoku Sebastian Rossi

Our Finest Diplomats: Client Liaison at Academy Ruben Seaton

Cryptic Crossword NWJ

Corrections:

Review: Lego Film Alex Unikowski Review: A Date for Mad Mary at the Mardi Gras Film Festival Hannah Wolfhagen 37

Your Guide to Bullet Journalling Laura Perkov and Shani Horii-Watson 38

Dear Woroni Mary-Anne Nolan 39

Bar Rochford’s Women in Hospitality Takeover Georgia Leak

It has come to the attention of Woroni that in the article titled ‘Loveitis’ published on 20 March 2017 that it stated that Chlamydia could be treated with a bum injection and a round of antibotics. This is incorrect. Chlamydia can be treated with one round of antibiotics and no sex for a week. The online version of this article has been corrected to reflect this. Woroni apologises for this error. It has come to the attention of Woroni that in the article titled ‘More than Meets the Eye: Understanding Visible Homelessness in Civic’ the author’s name was misspelt. e apologise to Eleanor Armstrong for this error.

TIME’S UP FOR BRUCE HALL CONTINUED heritage impact statement’ and: ‘The significant remnant features, should be maintained with any changes to the use or refurbishment of the building.’ The National Capital Authority, which controls development applications on the ANU campus, approved plans for the demolition of the residential wings in February and the demolition of the dining hall in late March. The BHAA launched an emergency application in the Federal Court on Saturday, 1 April to prevent any irreversible demolition work before their challenge was heard the following week. But this challenge’s legal basis evaporated after the Environment Department produced documentation supporting its claim that there had been sufficient community consultation on the works. The BHAA had been seeking this documentation, which was eventually released after the deadline, weeks previously. ‘ANU will now proceed with its plans in accordance with approvals granted by both the National Capital Authority and

the Department of Environment and Energy,’ an ANU spokesman said in a statement. Former ANU architect Derek Wrigley told The Canberra Times in September 2016 that he was shocked and saddened by the decision to demolish the hall, which he helped design, and that the plan to open up University Avenue to Clunies Ross Street was ‘pointless’. ‘If you look at the War Memorial, if you look at the Australian Memorial or you look at Parliament House you see terminal buildings at the end of each axis. If you imagine yourself looking down the University Avenue axis all you’ll see will be CSIRO buildings, which is appallingly bad, quite frankly,’ Wrigley told the Times. When the plans to demolish Bruce Hall were confirmed, the vice-chancellor, Professor Brian Schmidt, said in a statement: ‘It is clear there is a great desire to preserve the unique culture and experience of living at Bruce Hall. The iconic furniture and art will be retained, and the dining room and social spaces will remain as focal points to bring people together in a community culture.’

But one former prominent resident of Bruce Hall said that the ANU had broken a number of promises made to the ANU community by moving the Hall from its original buildings to SA5. They said that the ANU has increased the size of the Bruce Hall community – filling more space in SA5 – to the detriment of the community spirit of Bruce Hall. But the president of the Bruce Hall Common Room Committee, Matthew Bowes, said that the current Bruce Hall community is ‘just looking to move forward, onto the next stage of transition.’ This comes despite reports of Bruce Hall returners being drawn to the half-demolished buildings, still home to pieces of Fred Ward furniture, with a strong sense of nostalgia, risking asbestos exposure to spend a few stolen hours late into the night at the former residence hall. The ANU expects the new two-tower, 800-bed residence facility to be operational in 2019. Know more? Email news@woroni.com.au

2 Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional owners of the land on which Woroni is written, edited, printed and distributed. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future. We would also like to acknowledge that this land – which we benefit from occupying – was stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded. Within this ongoing echo of colonialism we commit, as writers and editors, to amplify the voices and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at our university. We will honour the diversity of their stories and stand by their right to recognition.

Board of Editors

Editor in Chief: Bronte McHenry Managing Editor: Kat Carrington Deputy EiC/Radio Editor: Finn Pedersen Content Editor: Lauretta Flack News Editor: Jasper Lindell Radio Editor: Oscar Jolly TV Editor: Kanika Kirpalani Art Editor: Joanne Leong

staff and Sub-Editors

Admin Assistant: Arun Murali Financial Controller: Brendan Greenwood Business Development: Fred Weber Marketing: Mark Manantan Social Media: Laura Mendoza Garcia Instagram: Tony Gu Event Guide: Mehar Chawla Comment: James Atkinson Comment: Nick Wyche International: Nathalie Rosales Cheng Features: Amanda Dheerasekara Multilingual: Rosalind Moran Arts: Phoebe Hamra Reviews: Alex Green Life & Style: Georgia Leak Environment: Grace Dudley Science: Jenny Tinston Business & Economics: Victor Sukeerth Munagala Sport: Ollie Brown Creative Writing: Nadia Kim Creative Writing: Emilie Morscheck Satire & Humour: Eleanor Armstrong News: Bella Dimattina News: Lorane Gaborit News: Josie Ganko News: Max Koslowski News: Isabella Ostini Distributor and Radio Presenter Liason: Loretta Lackner Radio Technical Officer: Will Fletcher Music: Cosmo White Social Media: Poppy Perry-Evans Events & Sports: Stephanie David Art: Rowan Everard Art: Tom Campbell Design: Katie Ward Design: Julia Hammer Television Manager: Bremer Sharp Camera Operator: Shasha Ma Reporter: Casley Rowan Reporter: Jemimah Cooper Reporter: Linda Chen Photography: Dillon Vibes Photography: Chloe Tredea Photography: Marwan Elhassan Photography: Christine Song

Contact Phone: (02) 6125 9574 Shop 15, Lena Karmel Building 26 Barry Drive, Acton 2601 Woroni is printed by Capital Fine Print.

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Send words to write@woroni.com.au and visuals to art@woroni.com.au. Woroni is powered by 1kg tubs of hummus it’s all i’ve eaten the past 48 hours send help

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

news

AGAINST THE WILL OF THE GODS BRAVE NEWS WORLD Journalists are rarely popular – or trusted. They are usually found low in various surveys of the most trusted professions, tucked down the bottom with used car salespeople, real estate agents and lawyers.

Text: Jasper Lindell

The ANU has terminated the license with the Gods Cafe and Bar in the Arts Centre and withdrawn an offer of space in the pop-up village, despite the license with the cafe’s management extending until at least 2018. The manager director of the cafe, Jaye Min, said that he felt ‘threatened’ by the approach the university had taken to evict the business from the Arts Centre. ‘The future of Gods on campus is nothing,’ he said. ‘ANU tries their best to force small business to close down.’ A termination notice, dated 4 April and seen by Woroni, says that it will be effective in 90 days and that the ANU ‘demands possession of the premises … from 3 July 2017.’ Min said that the ANU had not responded to emails from his lawyers after negotiations faltered. Min has written a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Schmidt, calling on him to intervene in the negotiation process. ‘I remain hopeful that ANU and I can reach a fair resolution without the need for an escalated legal response, however, I fear this is becoming increasingly inevitable,’ Min wrote on 13 April. Woroni revealed last month that negotiations between the ANU and the management of the cafe had broken down. At the time, an ANU spokesman said: ‘The ANU is keen to have The Gods Cafe to be part of the pop-up and revitalised Union Court, and continues to work in good faith to that outcome.’ But Min has slammed the negotiation process between his company, Mint

International Pty Ltd, and the ANU, accusing the University of ‘ignor[ing] the actual law.’ Min said that he ‘did negotiation for six months in good faith’ but now sees court proceedings with the university as the only likely option. The ANU’s offer for the Gods to move to the pop-up village during the Union Court redevelopment was ‘ridiculous’, Min said, as the space was smaller, the competition would be more fierce and the rent was higher. ‘It would be a suicide mission to go there,’ he said. Emails seen by Woroni show that in November 2013, prior to the sale of the Gods Cafe to Mint International Pty Ltd the ANU’s then property and development accountant, Mark Grieb, confirmed a new license would be issued for five years, with an option for a further term of five years. The license commenced on 25 November 2013, with the first term expiring on 24 November 2018, and the second five year period ending on 24 November 2023. In a meeting in October 2013 the ANU’s then business manager, Wayne Ford, told the previous owners of the Gods Cafe and Jaye Min, who were negotiating the sale of the business, that there were no plans to demolish the ANU Arts Centre. Woroni understands those at the meeting saw preliminary plans for the Union Court redevelopment, but were given an especial assurance that the Arts Centre would not be demolished. Plans to demolish the Arts Centre first emerged in March 2016. Min has prepared a document he hopes will serve as a real-life case study, which outlines the allegation that the ANU has broken the Leases (Commercial and Retail) Act 2001 by not giving six months notice for the proposed demolition or

offering compensation. However, the contract between the Gods Cafe and the university has a clause allowing the ANU to terminate the contract with 90 days’ notice if the premises are need for ‘higher priority university use’. This clause has been invoked in the termination letter sent to the cafe’s management. Min bought the business in November 2013 for $470,000 under the proviso that there was a long term lease in place. The ANU approved a $125,000 renovation to the Gods Cafe premises in December 2015, with ‘no indication’ that the Arts Centre was slated for demolition, Min told Woroni.

But the difference with journalists is that we care, and, despite the regular facade of cynicism and pessimism that we masquerade behind, most of us firmly believe that society is imbued with the endless potential to be better. We get angry at society because we know it could be better. We demand answers from those in charge because we believe there is always capable leadership. We seek to explain the society which we shape and which shapes us by asking: Why do we live like this? And you will know we have succeeded when you see Woroni report with unflinching honesty, the steady-hand of fairness, integrity and curiousity. As your new news editor, that’s what I will strive to make happen in the pages of Woroni.

In Min’s outline of the situation, he notes that the potential loss from terminating the contract is in the vicinity of $650,000.

A newspaper is an odd creature, with its own temperament, idiosyncrasies, habits and views. Newspapers can never be truly fallible.

The closure of the Gods Cafe and Bar could see between 10 and 15 staff lose their jobs. ‘My first priority will be my staff,’ Min said.

The most effective newspapers are diverse, curious, funny and driven by its readers. Above all, they are self-reflexive.

An ANU spokesman said that the University was unable to comment on individual negotiations. ‘The University negotiated in good faith with all vendors and is delighted that many existing campus vendors are moving into the pop-up village, and that we’ll have some new ones as well. We’ll be announcing the full list in coming weeks,’ the spokesman told Woroni. The smaller Gods Cafe at the Hedley Bull Centre will also face an uncertain future, as the larger kitchen in the Arts Centre premises supplies the smaller cafe with food. Min said that he was ‘mentally stressed’ by the negotiation process. ‘The feeling of counting down the days kills me,’ he said. It was ‘like knowing the day you will die’, he said.

This is the newspaper we aim to be. We don’t write in a vacuum and nor do we edit on top of a distant, unreachable peak. Talk to us, tell us your stories, make sure we know what’s happening and what’s important. Keep us updated so we can do the same for you. Reports of news’ demise at this paper have been exaggerated in recent weeks. Don’t believe the hype. It is clear that you demand quality journalism from us. To provide it is a challenge I have sought out and accepted. I’m hopeful that, in a short amount of time, we’ll win your trust, continue to hold power to account and report truthfully and fairly on what matters to you. And not become bogged down in cynicism.

Jasper Lindell News Editor

news

Issue 4, Vol. 67

ANU BAR FINALE GIG SPARKS FURORE OVER ALL-MALE LINE UP Text: Bella Dimattina

The promoter of the ANU Bar Finale has prompted controversy in the media after accusations of gender discrimination and political incorrectness, after attempting to stave off criticism of an all-male line up. The event, to be held at the ANU Bar in its final days before demolition on 17 June, is organised by the Greenroom Canberra’s Garry Peadon and has attracted attention from national media outlets. Peadon’s replies to queries about the lack of female acts attracted national media attention. The headlining act, Regurgitator, as well as local band Slow Turismo, have pulled out following backlash online. Regurgitator, in an online statement announcing their non-involvement, said, ‘Music is not about gender but we can not ignore gender in regard to the ongoing practices of music as an industry.’ Slow Turismo’s Louis Montgomery, speaking to Woroni, echoed the sentiment. He stated that ‘if we want equal representation by coincidence, we need to be more careful’. Montgomery stressed that the band’s decision to pull out of the ANU Bar Finale was not a statement of unwavering derision towards the Greenroom. He said that while the promoter’s initial response was inappropriate, he would not rule out working Garry Peadon again. Montgomery said he respected the ‘just being about the music’ approach Peadon takes.

He said that while there were so many reasons to stay on, ‘it wasn’t about the ANU Bar any more.’

Peadon replied to the query with ‘Why do I have too even think about this shit? What the fuck is a non-binary?’

‘Any farewell is tainted due to the fiery debate,’ Montgomery said. While it was important discussion to be had, he said he ‘wasn’t proud of how it’s being discussed’ and that the medium of discussion perhaps aggravated further exclusion by both sides of debate.

The response from many ANU students was one of incredulity and anger at Peadon’s messages. One student commented on the event’s page, which was locked on 11 April, that she and others would feel unsafe at the event following Peadon’s admissions. Others derided Peadon’s lack of commitment to gender diversity in the music industry, noting that 70 per cent of festival line ups in Australia are male.

The ANU Bar finale was conceived by the Greenroom as a response to the demolition of the ANU Bar, which will begin at the end of the semester. The Finale is not endorsed or funded by the ANU Bar, ANU Union, or the University. Peadon told HIT 104.7 that ‘it just so happens that I booked the last date’. The Finale included 11 acts connected to the Canberra music scene or the ANU Bar, all of whom are male. The event is to celebrate the ANU Bar’s history at the ANU, with the event description saying ‘over 60 years, thousands of gigs, tens of thousands of acts’. The description goes on to list some of the many acts that have performed at the venue, from Nirvana to Midnight Oil. However all on the list were male, with some commenters suggesting the organiser had a heavy gender bias, and a lack of appreciation for the diversity of the ANU Bar community. Regurgitator picked up on these comments, saying ‘Being presented under the auspices of the ANU we also feel the lineup has a need to reflect the typical charter of a university in regard to diversity and inclusiveness.’ The controversy began when one Facebook user asked, ‘Why are there no women or non-binary performers on the line-up?’

However Peadon was supported by many members of the Canberra music community, who praised Peadon’s stance that his decisions should be based purely on musical talent. Peadon said: ‘This is a gig. Music is not about genre, it’s not about anything’. When asked on 666 ABC Canberra if he would change his method of choosing acts in the future, he said ‘not at all’. Many commenters in support of Peadon also criticised what they saw as excessive political correctness. Peadon repeatedly said in interviews that critics of the line up should hold their own event. ‘You’re welcome to go and book your own gig at the ANU bar, it’s open to anyone... So if you want to hold an all-female rock gig, no one’s holding you back,’ he said. The ANU Union, who own and run the ANU Bar, responded to the controversy with a statement on Facebook. They said: ‘In order to address the concerns raised by our members and students, the ANU Union will be re-opening the offer for acts to perform at the ANU Bar Finale Concert which will be held before the Bar is demolished at the end of June.’

STUDENTS ALLEGE DISRESPECTFUL BEHAVIOUR AT BOOST Text: Bella Dimattina

Boost has responded to student criticism of a senior employee at the ANU store, who was accused of rude and disrespectful behaviour. A local Boost employee posted online, saying that a reminder of store code of conduct policies was sent out nationally in response to social media criticism of the Union Building store. Instigators of the online petition withdrew it on April 9, after quickly receiving a direct response from Boost’s Operations Manager. Woroni understands that those who launched the petition were pleased with the response from Boost and are not considering further action.

There were previous suggestions of bringing concerns to the Dean of Students and the ANU Union, who own the building in which the store is situated. Of particular concern was Boost Juice’s potential presence in the pop-up village or Union Court development.

such as ‘sweetie’ and ‘darling,’ others described being winked at or receiving lewd comments.

Criticism was swirled online, as the ANU Stalkerspace and the ANU Women’s Dept Facebook pages featured posts outlining allegations of rude and disrespectful attitudes towards patrons of the store from one employee.

‘I changed my order prior to payment and was told “Oi Idiot, make up your mind”,’ he said. When he brought up his treatment with the man, he was told to leave.

Many students provided statements attesting to discriminatory behaviour, such as repeatedly calling one first-time patron an ‘idiot,’ and another feeling he was treated with more respect than female patrons. Students spoke about being patronised by him with names

Edward Jin, who made the initial Stalkerspace post, suggested that there was a pattern of discrimination.

A petition was started on 25 March to attract the attention of Boost Juice’s higher level management to the manager’s attitudes. It attracted 387 supporters from the ANU community before being temporarily deleted following negotiations with Boost.

ANU4U SWEEPS PARSA BYELECTION The ANU4U group performed strongly in March’s PARSA by-election, with four candidates elected to four positions. Three further positions were filled by default after only receiving one nomination. Avish Amin was elected treasurer in first round voting, Emma Davies was elected environment officer in a third round run-off, Arjun Mathilakath Madathil was elected communications officer in first round voting, and Stella Kusumawardhani was elected College of Asia and Pacific representative in first round voting. Darcy Jackman, also an ANU4U candidate, will serve as Indigenous Australian officer, Riley Berry as the ANU College of Law representative, and Ryan Ridden as ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences representative.

EDUCATION OFFICER RESIGNS Jessy Wu has resigned as the ANUSA education officer. In a comment piece for Woroni, Wu says that her resignation is not connected to the SRC’s recent decision to reaccredit with the National Union of Students (NUS). She has been a vocal opponent to such a move. A new education officer will be elected at the next SRC meeting, scheduled for 6pm on 18 April at the Law Link Theatre. The resignation followed resignations of two College Representative last month – one from the College of Arts and Social Sciences and one from the College of Asia-Pacific.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

news

PIPPED AT THE POST: ANU SPORT WON’T RUN NEW GYM AND POOL Text: Bronte McHenry Image: ANU

play a role in sport and recreation on the ANU campus after the redevelopment.

The ANU Sport Council revealed they were unsuccessful in their bid to operate the recreation building in the redeveloped Union Court at their AGM on Wednesday, 12 April.

‘The gym and pool will be for high end users – that is what they [the ANU] have said to us, and they would like us to continue to operate and offer a service. Our operation is highly accessible for students,’ he said.

The new recreation building – which will feature a 25-metre swimming pool, a 15-by-eight-metre hydro pool and a 24-hour gym – was announced in a statement by the ANU in December, which said it would ‘help meet community demand for additional facilities.’

The Club Group Pty Limited was formed in 2003 after a lease was secured over the Canberra International Sports & Aquatic Centre (CISAC) – a location that now attracts over one million visitors per year. The Club Group currently operates 14 businesses.

The ANU Sport Council’s president, David Luchetti, explained at the AGM that the group was unsuccessful in their bid ‘due to the commercial aspect of the facility that the ANU are looking to operate.

Luchetti also commented that ‘The entire redevelopment is designed around off-campus traffic being redirected onto campus for the commercial aspect.’

‘They felt the Association wasn’t in the position to run a commercial facility,’ he said Instead, The Club Group, better known as Club Lime, will operate the new recreation center. The CEO of ANU Sport, Michael Brady, made it clear that ANU Sport would still

This statement reflects the words of Brian Schmidt, who said at a press gathering in February that ‘it’s a good time to be able to come in and experience our university life even if you’re not still at university.’ The Reunion Court website says that ‘A dynamic mix of food, café, bar and retail services, with year round increased operating hours, will contribute to the rhythm and vibrancy in the new Union Court precinct.’

The ANU declined to comment whether the year-round utilisation of the new precinct by the Canberra community would lead to an increase in the prices of goods and services on offer. An ANU spokesman told Woroni that a year-round calendar of events in the Union Court precinct will be a ‘welcome change’ for those who stay on campus. ‘Rather than the campus becoming an empty place when our students are away and events competing with teaching space during semester, the inclusion of a large purpose-built events centre means we will be able to host more festivals, plays, films, events, conferences and concerts on campus all year round, and encourage the Canberra community to visit ANU and take part in ANU events,’ he said. The spokesman declined to comment on whether the university would be imposing restrictions on businesses to ensure that the goods and services in the new Union Court precinct remained affordable for students. At the ANU Sport AGM, Brady said: ‘Universities are now big businesses. They have a way of running

their businesses that see to their high-end objectives. This university has made it clear they want to be a big player on the international stage. There is a lot of ambiguity that comes from grand statements like these.’ Luchetti also emphasised the impact the redevelopment was already having on the group’s ability to engage in capital works spending. ‘The Union Court redevelopment has also had an impact on potential expenditure that we had been expecting to make. We have some capacity to spend money and invest it in infrastructure on campus but we are hesitant until we know where we stand,’ he said. The ANU Sport Treasurer, Neil Parsons, echoed this, saying, ‘We [ANU Sport] have got a very healthy balance sheet. We have about $2.7 million in the bank and low levels of debt. We are looking for things to spend the money on, but it is very difficult to build things on campus at the minute – either due to finding the space or getting permission.’ The Club Group did not respond to a request for comment before deadline.

ANU MAKES ENTRANCE ON INTERIM THEATRE PLAN Text: Jasper Lindell

The ANU has accepted there is more to be done to secure access to performance space during the Union Court redevelopment and apologised for a lack of communication about the plans, while giving the go-ahead for bookings in alternative theatre spaces. In a meeting late last month with the ANUSA President, James Connolly, the ANUSA Social Officer, Cameron Allan, and theatre campaigner Kat Carrington, the Union Court redevelopment project manger, Robert Hitchcock, apologised for poor communication. The Executive Director (Administration and Planning), Chris Grange, was also present at the meeting.

Hitchcock conceded that there wasn’t enough available space in Theatre 3 to cater for the theatre groups on campus, who have been scrambling in recent weeks to secure performance space after the demolition of the Arts Centre.

A deal could still be reached with the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) to secure space there. But despite the building being on campus, the space is unsuited to productions which involve sets.

Grange had previously said in an email, seen by Woroni, that his ‘understanding is that we achieved enough additional theatre time with the Rep [Theatre 3] to provide the alternatives we need. This means we would not book time at other theatres, and in any case, the Gorman Arts Centre is a bit far away to be considered a good option.’

Interest in a deal with the NFSA came after it was found no time was available at School of Music venues.

However, following meetings with campus theatre representatives, the ANU now understands the need to secure more theatre space during the redevelopment period.

The ANU is currently looking into the possibility of housing student productions at the Street Theatre next year during the redevelopment process. Kat Carrington told Woroni that the outcome of the meeting ‘bodes well’ for theatre groups on campus. A number of campus theatre groups have already made alternative arrangements

for their shows this year, including securing space off campus. Jonathan Peake, the director of the 2017 Med Revue, told Woroni last month that the disruption caused by the planned demolition of the Arts Centre have been a ‘huge pain in the arse’. The Med Revue will be performed at Canberra Grammar School, in a move which adds around $4000 in costs to the production, which donates its profit to charity. The redeveloped Union Court precinct will feature an outdoor amphitheatre with a seated capacity of 300, a 200-seat theatre and an events facility with a capacity of 1000 non-seated patrons.

news

Issue 4, Vol. 67

SRC VOTES FOR NUS REACCREDITATION, REVEALING ANUSA DIVISION Text: Jasper Lindell

The Student Representative Council voted to reaccredit with the National Union of Students (NUS) last month, after a debate which highlighted apparent division in the ANUSA executive. The motion to reaccredit with the NUS was carried 24 votes in favour, 11 against and with no abstentions in a secret ballot. The ANUSA President, James Connolly, who moved the motion, said that, ‘A vote against accreditation is effectively a boycott. It says that we have identified problems with the NUS but don’t want to have a voice in their solution.’ Connolly said that the NUS’s strong national campaigns, as well as an opportunity to be involved in moves towards reforming of the organisation, were the most compelling reasons to reaccredit with the union. The vice president, Eleanor Kay, spoke in favour of the motion, which was seconded by general representative, Lauren Clifton. But the division in the executive became quickly apparent as other members of the executive opposed the President’s motion. The education officer, Jessy Wu, who has since resigned, the general secretary, Kat Reed, and the treasurer, Harry Feng, rose to express their opposition. The women’s officer, Holly Zhang, and the queer* officer, Gabriel Scott, also spoke against the motion.

An amendment, proposed by general representative and NUS observer Tom Kesina was also passed, and means that the $5,000 required to reaccredit with the NUS will not be transferred until: – Minutes and executive office bearer’s reports are made available online – The full audited financial report is made available to member organisations – A returning officer is appointed who is not a member or former member of any faction – A guide to National Conference in line with Laura Campbell’s reforms is produced and distributed – And the NUS budget is approved online

said that it was important students had a national voice for campaigns in the interest of students. ‘If [university fee] deregulation happens, I’m going to be so devo,’ Allan said in the meeting. ‘In my mind, we’ve got to give the NUS the best possible chance it can have.’ The ACT state branch president of the NUS, Nick Douros, spoke in favour of the motion to reaccredit, saying that, ‘We have some of the best people at our university, why can we not add to the debate?’ Douros told Woroni after the meeting that he was very happy at the result, as he was not sure what the outcome would be. He thought the vote would ‘go down to the wire’. ‘I think it is a step in the right direction in terms of building the relationship between ANUSA and the NUS,’ he said.

ANU UNION ELECTIONS Sustain Our Union’s Dominic Kasah, and We Need for ANU Union’s Nathan Kerwood and Annalyse Betts were elected for two-year terms as directors on the board of the ANU Union last month. The two tickets were cross-pollinated by members from both the Labor Unity and Labor Left factions, in a break from usual factional contests. The results were announced by returning officer Rohan Spence on 27 March.

But those speaking for the motion argued that it was only be reaccrediting could reform happen.

ANU BOAT CLUB RANKS IN NATIONAL TOP 10

‘We [ANUSA] have demonstrated that we don’t need a national body to coordinate campaigns and capture media interest,’ Wu said.

Former NUS secretariat member and previous national conference delegate, Harry Needham, said that the only way to achieve reform to the NUS was to reaccredit.

The ANU Boat Club finished in eighth spot on the medal tally at the Australian Championships in Penrith in early April, with Caleb Antill taking gold in the Open Men’s Quad event.

The ANUSA social officer, Cameron Allan, speaking in favour of the motion,

‘Sitting on our hands will not achieve anything,’ he said.

The Club won six gold, three silver and two bronze medals in the competition which saw 120 clubs compete. Seventeen ANU Boat Club crews made it to finals.

Then Education Officer Jessy Wu argued that, for reaccreditation to be justified, the SRC should be satisfied that the NUS ‘is meaningfully accessible to its members,’ that it ‘amplifies the voices of ANU students’ and that the NUS’s policies advance equality. Wu said that ‘compassionate and caring people’ are ‘disempowered from fighting for change within their factions’ and that the NUS normalises damaging and discriminatory behaviour.

The majority of speakers acknowledged that the NUS has been plagued with cultural and institutional problems, especially at national conferences where delegates have been intimidated and mistreated.

WHAT THE HELL IS THE N.U.S.? Text: Max Koslowski

The National Union of Students (NUS) is a national body representing the interests of university students. The NUS has made headlines often over the past few years, often regarding both financial and factional disputes. A few weeks ago, ANUSA decided to reaccredit the NUS – meaning that it would contribute around $10,000 in accreditation fees and funds for NUS’s annual national conference. The NUS, in its current form, came into being in 1987. In the early 1990s it rose to national prominence with a campaign that helped lower the age of financial independence, making it easier for students to get welfare while at university. It has frequently been included in government bodies and councils that determine higher education policy. More recently, the NUS has been involved in concerted efforts to prevent university fee deregulation, which would relax pricing restrictions for university courses.

Current NUS policy aims don’t just include fee deregulation: not only do they want free tertiary education for all, but they also want the Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF) to be controlled entirely by students. Currently SSAF, a fee of a few hundred dollars paid by students at universities across Australia, is collected and distributed by universities – however, students often have some input into where that money goes. The NUS also wants a return to Universal Student Unionism, with the aim of better representing all university students, and increasing NUS funding. The NUS indisputably has an impact: it has an annual budget of near $1 million, and assets that have a value in excess $1 million. However, many criticisms have been levelled against the organisation. One criticism is that the NUS has structural issues with its finances. A report from independent auditors TLConsult in 2013 stated that structural problems ‘unchanged for nearly two decades’ meant that the NUS only had enough funds to ‘sustain the organisation for

approximately one year in its current form’. Over the past few years, attempts to rectify the budget by cutting the stipend for the national Indigenous, International Students and Disability Officers have failed. Another criticism is that the organisation is crippled by intense infighting and factionalism. The NUS is split, in order of positions they hold, between the parties Unity (Labor Right), National Labor Students (Labor Left), National Independents, Socialist Alternative, and the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation. Some, like current ANUSA Education Officer Jessy Wu, have argued that ‘compassionate and caring people’ are ‘disempowered from fighting for change within their factions’ by the NUS. The NUS will mostly like remain a feature in ANU student politics, at least for the time being. Both NUS’s agenda, and the way it sets this agenda, will remain the subject of heated debate because the decisions it makes – or doesn’t make – influences all Australian students in some way or another.

AFP RUN JOINT EXERCISES IN TEACHING BREAK The Australian Federal Police held joint exercises at the Pauline Griffin Building during the non-teaching period. The building is slated for demolition and is not currently in use. Thursday 6 and 13 April saw officers use the space to hold at times noisy joint exercises, while the bulk of the student body was away.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

news

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION DEFENDS SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVEY Text: Josie Ganko

The Human Rights Commission has been forced to defend their decision to withhold individual universities’ survey results from a nation-wide survey into sexual assault among university students, which was launched to determine the prevalence of the issue in Australian universities. The survey, a collaboration between Universities Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission, saw a representative sample of students from all 39 Australian universities share their experiences with sexual assault and harassment. The survey asks respondents to explain in detail their experiences of sexual harassment or assault, signify whether they reported any incidents and the response they received upon doing so, and finally any recommendations or thoughts they may wish to share on the matter. While the survey was well received at its conception, the Human Rights Commission’s decision to withhold the individual results of the universities has been widely criticised. Rather than release the results of each university, the Commission elected to allow universities to decide whether they would publish their own results; a decision that has led many to worry that the worst performing universities would simply elect not to.

Such concern was expressed by the NUS Women’s Officer Abby Stapleton, who feared that it would create a situation where institutions with a lower reported incidence of sexual assault will disclose their survey results while those with the worst record do not. The Human Rights Commission’s decision is made more controversial by the fact that many of the leaders of the universities involved have stated that releasing the individualised data would be the best way to mobilise changes within universities. The controversy was eased however with the announcement that all of the universities involved have elected to simultaneously release their individual results, bringing into question why the Commission ever chose to withhold them in the first place. In a statement, Universities Australia Chief Executive Belinda Robinson explained that the survey was ‘led by vice-chancellors, and so it should come as no surprise that all universities will release their institutional data’. The Human Right’s Commission affirmed their ‘unwavering commitment’ to prevent sexual assault and harassment in a statement which also welcomed the universities’ decision to release their individual results.

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com.au

‘The Commission takes this commitment in good faith as an indication of their commitment to drive change within their universities.’ The announcement that all 39 universities would releases their results in conjunction with the release of the AHRC’s report was hailed as a victory for transparency and accountability among universities. However, further controversy arose when it was revealed that the survey would not result in any formal recommendations, only the identification of ‘areas for action and reform’. As a result, many of the respondents felt that they were led to relive traumatic experiences for a survey that would not lead to any changes.

quickly recanted the previous decision against making formal recommendations. Jenkins has now clarified that the commission’s report, due mid-2017, will make a series of recommendations for action and reform. The ANU’s response to the survey includes a press release announcing the survey and the universities co-operation and support. Along with the other 38 Australian universities, the ANU has also committed to releasing its individual results from the survey when the AHRC’s report is released later this year. In another statement on the matter, Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt personally supported the survey, and encouraged students to respond.

This announcement was met with an immediate response from Nina Funnel, a journalist and participant in the survey.

‘On behalf of the university I want to make it clear sexual assault and sexual harassment are not acceptable,’ Professor Schmidt said.

In a comment piece published in The Sydney Morning Herald, Funnel calls the survey ‘one of the most egregious examples of exploiting survivors for the purposes of research in Australian history’. She further comments that rape victims were lured into reliving distressing events under the false pretence of recommendation and progress.

‘I encourage anyone who is not selected to participate in the survey to make a submission. The survey will provide us with data to help improve our policies, procedures and support services.’

In response to criticism, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins

The time for survey responses has since closed and the HRC are in the process of collating the evidence for a report that, along with the individual results of each university, will be released later this year.

LIKELY END TO FLAGSHIP FEE DEREGULATION Text: Jasper Lindell

The federal government looks set to drop plans for university fee deregulation in so-called flagship courses, but the May Budget is likely to include increased fees and a lower HECS repayment threshold, Fairfax Media reported earlier this month. The prospect of full free deregulation was abandoned in last year’s Federal Budget, but some form of fee deregulation has haunted the government since the harsh 2014 Abbott-era Budget. The measure faced harsh criticism from in the sector and the proposal failed to pass the Senate. The education minister, Simon Birmingham, flagged potential changes to the higher education sector in an interview last week with Sky News. He said the sector would ‘have to live within the budget settings that we’ve outlined before.’

‘The budget policies decision we’re taking is looking at the fairest way to do that, that ensures student access is still guaranteed for the future with no upfront fees and no penalties in that regard,’ he said. The proposal for partial fee deregulation would have allowed universities to set the fees in speciality courses. Universities would have been allowed to enrol up to 20 per cent of their total student cohort in these ‘flagship’ courses. The 2016 Budget saw the Coalition head to last year’s election with no clear policy on higher education, instead releasing an options paper which suggested lowering the student loan repayment threshold and a 20 per cent cut to course funding. Fairfax also reported that the 20 per cent cut, which would save $17 billion over 10 years, could be dropped in the Budget, which is set to be released on 9 May.

News

Issue 4, Vol. 67

AUSTRALIA NEEDS ‘DIFFICULT’ CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE: DAVID MARR Text: Jasper Lindell Photography: ANU College of Law

would continue to have great power.

Australia needs to have a ‘difficult’ conversation about the effect of race in its politics, says writer and journalist David Marr, who spoke at the ANU College of Law last month about his new Quarterly Essay.

‘We have given a kind of respectability to the fear of Islam that we have not conferred on distaste for Aboriginal Australia,’ he said.

The White Queen: One Nation and the Politics of Race, which shows that One Nation voters are different from how they are usually portrayed in the media, relies heavily on the Australian Election Study, led by Professor Ian McAllister at the ANU. Marr’s essay demonstrates that One Nation voters are almost exclusively born in Australia, identify predominantly as working class, but have not been left without jobs as a result of globalisation. More One Nation voters live in cities than in the bush and they are rarely university educated. Over 80 per cent of One Nation voters want to see immigration levels cut. Marr said that ‘the commentary and the reality don’t completely square’. He said that One Nation voters are nostalgic for a White Australia. ‘And it’s not even clear what epoch they’re nostalgic for. It’s kind of their own childhood mixed up somehow with their parents’ married life. ‘There is this vague appeal to an Australian way of life where one thing was certain: Australia was white,’ he said. Marr argued that the element of race in Australian politics, if left undiscussed,

‘I’m intrigued by the fact, that racism, that hostility to Aboriginal Australia, which is still very strong, is not exploited politically. Or is only exploited by absolute masters of the art of race politics.

‘I think we have to find a way of having [a conversation about race in politics], otherwise the situation is going to continue to be exploited by people who wish to distort the values of our national politics, rather than have out what this country really feels on questions of race. ‘The unexamined demon has such power – that’s why I think we mustn’t be squeamish about it and it will be extremely difficult but we’ll be better for it,’ he said. Speaking to Woroni before his talk at the Phillipa Weeks Staff Library, Marr said he agreed that political journalism and political science should interact more often. ‘Over the water there is Parliament House and there’s a whole discourse going on in Parliament House about the nature of politics in Australia. Over here on the other side of the water, at the ANU, there’s an academic study of precisely the same questions and they’ve got the figures,’ Marr said. ‘And it’s fascinating. The figures are amazing. The figures are just amazing.’ Marr noted the ‘generosity’ of Professor Ian McAllister in providing and explaining the data from the Australian Election Study, and praised the other Australian academics who assisted with the essay.

Invest in Education Marr said that the solution to the ‘profound problems of Australian politics is to invest in education.’ He drew comparisons between the education levels of One Nation supporters and Donald Trump’s supporters in the US, while discrediting the view that Hanson is riding the same tide as populist right-wing movements internationally. Hanson’s support base in Australia is often exaggerated, Marr said. ‘Hanson is used as a reason for stalling on progressive change, and if we go down, say, the equal marriage road, or if we address intelligently the problems of climate change or energy, there’s going to be this revolution from below and we’re going to be swept away by populist hordes who’ve come to despise elites. ‘That might be true in America, where

Trump got 46 per cent of the vote, but Hanson at the moment is pulling eight per cent of the vote,’ he told the audience. Marr is an animated speaker, who leans out of his chair to make points more profound while repeating variations on clauses to ensure everyone in the room knows exactly what he means. Speaking to Woroni, Marr said that, even after 40 years as a journalist, he was still intrigued about the nature of the socalled Australian way of life. ‘I’ve spent a professional lifetime looking at, analysing, describing the Australian way of life, in one way or another – mainly it’s political life, sometimes it’s artistic life, sometimes other things – but I’m as mystified and thrilled as ever about what it is. It is so diverse and perverse and hard to define but strong to feel, all at the same time,’ he said.

NEW DATA SHOWS ANU STRUGGLING WITH STUDENT SATISFACTION Text: Isabella Ostini

University of Canberra students are more employable than ANU students, although both universities struggle to provide a positive student experience, according to new data from the federal government’s Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) report.

of Canberra undergraduates found employment in the same time. Postgraduate students found full-time employment in more than 85 per cent of cases at both universities. Over 90 per cent were employed in any kind of work.

ANU graduates earned a median wage of $58,800, and University of Canberra students took home $58,000, compared to the national median starting salary of The report provides information for stu- $56,000. dents deciding where to study, and holds universities accountable for their results, Postgraduates from the ANU earned spurring them on to improve programs. $75,000 while University of Canberra students earned $71,200. These figures ANU undergraduates sat below the na- were both below the national median of tional average for employment, with $80,000. 87.4 per cent finding work within the first four months after graduation, com- ANU students also rated the university’s pared to the Australian average of 88.6 teaching practices poorly, with approxper cent. Over 89 per cent of University imately 65 per cent of students saying

they had experienced good teaching practices compared to 68 per cent nationwide. University of Canberra students recorded 70.3 per cent.

pointed out the positives in the university’s official statement, referring to 2016’s Global Employability University Ranking, as well as the QILT data.

Both ACT universities trailed the 64.2 per cent national average in terms of positive learning experience. ANU undergraduates recorded a positive experience only 60 per cent of the time, leading University of Canberra students who sat on 55.1 per cent.

‘Our graduates are consistently rated Australia’s most employable in the world. They are also the future of Australian research, with some 20 percent going on to further full time study and eight percent to further part-time study,’ she said.

On the other hand, more than 29 per cent of ANU students went on to pursue further study after completing their undergraduate degree, above the national average of 21.6 per cent. Only 17 per cent of University of Canberra students undertook further study.

She also mentioned the Union Court redevelopment, and the university’s new Academic Plan.

The Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington,

‘These initiatives will continue to enhance our already strong culture of excellence at ANU.’

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS TEAM UP WITH ANU ASTRONOMERS TO DISCOVER NEW WORLDS

For many years a ninth planet, which is predicted to cause the lopsided orbit of a number of dwarf planets, has been believed to exist beyond Neptune. The search has recently been reinvigorated, and a team from the ANU’s Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (RSAA) are asking citizens to help their efforts analysing data from the university’s SkyMapper telescope. Planet 9 is predicted to be between four and 10 times the size of Earth, and up to 350 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Scientists do not know if it would be a rocky or ice planet, but after the three days Stargazing Live was aired, they have determined that it must be smaller than Neptune. A super-earth sized planet would be an exciting discovery, because super-earths are common in many systems, but it is difficult to study them when they are light years away. Comparatively close, if Planet 9 is found it could help astronomers better understand how planets are formed. Woroni spoke to the head of the project, Dr Brad Tucker, and PhD student Ryan Ridden-Harper about their work in the Planet 9 search. Tucker described his surprise at volunteers’ enthusiastic responses over the three days Stargazing Live was aired.

Text: Isabella Ostini Photography: Bremer Sharp Australian citizen scientists have helped to discover four new planets orbiting a star in the constellation Aquarius. Trawling through data from the Kepler Space Telescope as part of the ‘Exoplanet Explorers’ citizen science project, participants discovered around 90 planets, including a system 597 light years away from Earth, where four ‘super earth’ sized planets are in close-orbit around a small star. The planets are closer than Mercury is to our sun. In fact, they are so close that they take only between 3 and 13 days to fully orbit their star. But because the star is smaller and

cooler than our sun, some of the planets in the scaled-down solar system might lie within their star’s habitable zone. This means there is a small chance that life could exist in the system. The planets have not yet been named, and are currently known as EE-1b, EE1c, EE-1d, and EE-1e. The names of the volunteers whose work helped locate the system will feature on the paper reporting the discovery. The Exoplanet Explorers project was one of two ANU citizen science projects launched through the ABC’s Stargazing Live program, filmed at the ANU’s Siding Spring Observatory. Professor Brian Cox and co-presenter Julia Zemiro encouraged viewers to head online and help search for exoplanets or the mysterious ‘Planet 9’.

‘We were ecstatic with the turnout,’ he said. ‘For the Planet 9 search we had 110,000 images, each checked 50 times, in under three days. If I sent Ryan to do his PhD project on it, it would’ve taken him an entire PhD, about four years, to do.’ As well as helping scientists deal with the sheer volume of data, volunteers are vital to the project because of their uniquely human brains. Although programs that can process the data are possible, humans can spot differences and identify patterns far better than any computer algorithm. ‘You would spend months to years writing something that could be foolproof and it still wouldn’t be as effective,’ Tucker explained. ‘With these kind of subtleties, human eyes are better.’

for four weeks in June, lied to the US Congress in 2013 about the nature of National Security Agency surveillance programs, later revealed by Edward Student activists criticised the ANU’s Snowden. decision to invite a former US national security chief as a Vice-Chancellor’s Dom Cradick, Vanamali Hermans and Distinguished Professor to discuss the Marko Tucovic argue in an opinion nature of the US-Australia alliance. piece for Woroni that Clapper has ‘utter contempt for privacy, free speech, huAn open letter on Facebook condemned man rights and the law.’ the Vice-Chancellor, Brian Schmidt, for ‘endorsing James Clapper’s war-mon- Speaking to Woroni, Cradick, an organgering views.’ iser of the ANU Students Against James Clapper group and NUS ACT Education But the ANU defended Clapper’s ap- Vice-President, questioned the legitimapointment, saying that the campus is ‘a cy of having Clapper speak about the place of robust debate and exploration of role of international security. ideas’. The group also notes that Clapper was Clapper, who is set to visit the ANU involved in using the now-debunked

RSAA. Although Planet 9 has not yet been located, volunteers and scientists have identified at least four unknown bodies, on top of asteroids, known dwarf planets such as Chiron, and even a new star. The next step is to go back through the data, compare it with previously gathered information and determine whether these mysterious bodies are more asteroids, new dwarf planets, or even Planet 9 itself. ‘We will have a pretty good answer at the end of the year on whether we found this planet or it doesn’t exist, or if it’s in a very small parameter space of space and is going to be harder to find,’ Tucker predicted. On top of this, the SkyMapper telescope is currently undertaking the first digital survey of the southern sky. The data will be made openly available, eliminating for some the arduous process astronomers must go through to gain research time on a telescope. The hunt for Planet 9 is also ongoing, and anyone can get involved by visiting planet9search.org. There are many other citizen science projects to be found at zooniverse.org, from astronomy through to health science. ‘I always call astronomy the gateway drug of science,’ Tucker said. ‘People have a natural interest in astronomy and space, so by making it accessible, people realise there are all these other projects.’ The most exciting thing about citizen science projects for Tucker is that there’s always something new to discover. Ridden-Harper added his own take on the phenomenon. ‘All these thousands of people, who wouldn’t have otherwise spent their time perhaps even caring about astronomy, have come along put effort into a project, got interested in the scientific process and the process of astronomy, which is a very valuable thing to have if we want to bring people into science, and include them,’ he said. Tucker agrees. ‘It benefits everyone, and that’s the beautiful thing about it. No one loses.’

The work continues for the team at

NO APPLAUSE FOR CLAPPER INVITE Text: Jasper Lindell

News

narrative of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ‘We cannot stand idly by as the ANU presents a representative of the illegal and catastrophic Iraq War as a model citizen to be looked up to,’ Cradick writes for Woroni. ‘I’m looking forward very much to being involved with The Australian National University,’ Clapper said in a statement when his visit was announced. ‘I have tremendous respect and affection for Australia as an ally of the United States. I have long appreciated Australia’s distinct insights on security issues and I look forward to engaging more closely with thinking in Canberra.’

A spokesman for the ANU told Woroni that: ‘Students are welcome to express their views, and the University is aware there are students with many different views on this issue. ‘The University is delighted that it is able to attract high calibre appointments from around the world,’ he said. The open letter attracted 11 online signatures, including the NUS National LGBT Officer, Lauren Saunders. The University of New South Wales student representative council passed a motion supporting the campaign on 3 April. The ANU Students Against James Clapper group is made up of activists pooled from different campus groups, including the Refugee Action Committee.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

COmment

Don’t ‘Eagle Rock’ the Boat A Story about Disclosure and Response

Text: Emily Jones

A recent report published by End Rape on Campus Australia found that universities have frequently failed to support victims of sexual assault and harassment in the aftermath of their experiences, and have even actively sought to cover up instances of sexual assault to avoid reputational damage. Given the often unacknowledged power of our response to events or disclosures, I thought it would be interesting to explore what I experienced after publishing an article about an incident at Burton and Garran Hall in 2016. Though this article is by no means intended to encompass the full range of responses to sexual assault and harassment at ANU, I think it provides an interesting case study for how peers and residential colleges choose to respond to such incidents when they are made very public in this way. The incident took place on the dance floor during the ‘Thrift Shop’ mixer at B&G in August last year. I had been dancing with a friend to Daddy Cool’s ‘Eagle Rock’ when several male peers circled us and linked arms with one another – effectively trapping us, and other women, in their circle. These men then dropped their pants to their ankles, and many watched on hungrily as women in the circle stripped off their shirts and danced. Though I tried to leave the circle, some of my male peers blocked me from doing so. Feeling deeply unsettled by the experience, I decided to relay the ordeal in a Woroni article. I argued that these sorts of behaviours allow a culture of

objectification to manifest itself within colleges – a culture which tells first-year boys who take part in these practices that objectifying women, as well as taking away their ability to give consent, is acceptable from the outset of their university degrees. Though I had expected some controversy to arise upon the publication of the article, I could never have anticipated the backlash that I was to receive when someone posted the article in a B&G Facebook group. What ensued was a whirlwind of comments, ‘angry’ reactions and heated online arguments. Many accused me of overreacting and of misrepresenting what had happened to me. I was told that it was all ‘just a bit of fun’ and that I was attacking a muchloved B&G ‘tradition’ that was central to college culture. The backlash continued to escalate throughout the night, with some residents blasting the ‘Eagle Rock’ song down the hallways in protest. Despite this backlash, I quickly realised that writing the article was the best decision I could have made. For every negative reaction I had received, there were many more women bravely sharing their own ‘Eagle Rock’ stories on both the Facebook post and in private messages to me. It became apparent that my experience was by no means unique, and it was regularly the case that first-year girls were unwittingly caught up in the ‘Eagle Rock’ tradition during their first week at college. More often than not, they were left feeling scarred by the experience. Many students disclosed to me that they left the dance floor whenever ‘Eagle Rock’ had been played at B&G events, some even hiding in the bathrooms. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people reaching out to me,

thanking me for starting the conversation about this ‘tradition’ that made so many feel objectified and powerless.

article and will be an important step towards making residents feel safer at B&G.

As a result of these disclosures, B&G’s Residents Committee decided to hold an open meeting. As I was making my way to the meeting, I overheard a large group of boys talking about how they were going to attend the meeting and ‘fuck shit up’ for those of us who wanted to see the ‘tradition’ banned. Sure enough, these boys were all in attendance, many of them smirking at me as I walked into the room. However, as the meeting progressed and women were sharing their experiences, I was pleased to see the arrogance of these boys slip away, some even appearing embarrassed. The meeting was a success overall. Most who came shared their opinions and possible solutions in a calm, considered manner, and agreed that, above all, change was necessary.

What was less heartening was the treatment I received from many of my peers. Despite the article describing the helplessness and shock I felt at finding myself trapped in the circle, many still found it appropriate to berate me for speaking out. A number of those posting angry comments clearly hadn’t even bothered to read the article at all. However, I was most disappointed by peers who did read the article. Evidently, these residents (predominately men) decided very quickly that being able to have a good time with their mates was more important than ensuring peers felt safe at parties in their home.

After consultation with staff and students, the B&G Members Association developed a policy regarding how they would approach the practice of the ‘Eagle Rock’ in the future. The new policy would ban the encircling of women by male students during the Eagle Rock. The song will also be banned at mixers, external venues and during formal events. Additionally, it was decided that new B&G residents will now receive information about the ‘past practices’ of the Eagle Rock, and will be given a warning before the song is played to allow students time to decide whether they will take part or leave the dance floor. If this policy is to be implemented, then it seems the B&G Members Association took the concerns raised by students seriously. The new policy addresses most major issues outlined in the Eagle Rock

What bothers me most about this is not the fact that the backlash ‘hurt my feelings’, it’s that other women may now be too scared to speak out about other college experiences that make them uncomfortable. This process has only served to confirm my fears that, despite the best efforts of the ANU Women’s Department and others on campus, sexist attitudes remain woven into college culture at ANU. And it’s these attitudes that continue to threaten the safety of women in residential halls nationwide. Despite this backlash and anger, the Eagle Rock hasn’t been played at any B&G events this year, and its absence has passed without any formal complaint. The world goes on turning.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Comment

Why Residents are About to get Hit with a Big Fat Price Hike Text: Max Koslowski

As ANU’s campus redevelopments continue to roll forward, it seems ANU is withholding crucial information about how their new privatisation agreement will work, and how much the residents will be made to pay. Bruce Hall (also referred to as SA5) gives us some clues. Where Bruce residents paid approximately $367 per week in 2016, new residents this year must pay $392.05 per week. As a consolation, returning residents pay $377 per week – but there is no confirmation whether that will continue beyond this year. Managed by UniLodge, Bruce Hall has become a guinea pig in ANU’s privatisation experiment. Just like in the UniLodge residences on the other side of campus, Bruce Hall students must pay $6 to wash and dry their clothes – a cost that was included in their weekly tariff last year. And there are more hidden costs already creeping in – such as the $15 fee each time a resident locks themselves out of their room. UniLodge’s intentions are sometimes too transparent. Despite

repeated requests, they still haven’t put up any washing lines at the new Bruce Hall, forcing residents to have to pay the $3 extra to dry their clothes. Some residents fear that prices could jump to as high as $433 per week next year. Bruce Hall representatives did not reply to Woroni’s request for comment – twice. And that’s the problem. With these seismic changes to ANU’s accommodation policy, there needs to be a clear and open line of communication between the university and the students. Instead, the only idea we have about how private investors will manipulate accommodation costs comes from the ‘FAQ’ section of one of Brian Schmidt’s press releases – which reads that ‘Student rents will not exceed 75 per cent of market rates, and rental tariffs will be calculated based on a pre-determined formula referenced to changes in the consumer price index’. The first issue with that is that no one knows what the hell ‘75 per cent of market rates’ means. In Canberra, the median weekly rent for a unit is $411. The ANU accommodations where rent currently sits above 75 percent of that include Bruce Hall, Ursula Hall, Burgmann College, John XXIII College, and most of the UniLodge residences. When

asked to clarify what that ‘75 per cent’ figure was, ANU spokespeople said ‘we will ensure rents will not exceed 75 per cent of the current market rates for similar accommodation in the Canberra Community’. Even if the university truly caps prices at 75 per cent of the median Canberra unit, an 18-year-old working in retail would have to work 15 hours a week, at award rates, to cover their accommodation costs alone.

students would be denied key elements of university culture, they would struggle to make the most of the on-campus resources, and inevitably participate less in student events. By maintaining public, not-for-profit ownership of large swathes of student accommodation, ANU has prevented this from happening for decades. However, Schmidt’s new accommodation plan marks a massive shift in the program.

It’s difficult to know for sure, but the circumstances seem fishy enough to guess that a big fat price hike is coming our way. We, as students, don’t know what the price cap is – or even whether one exists – because no one except for ANU and UniLodge know what’s inside their contract. There is clearly also a capacity for private investors to stack hidden costs – like imposing fines, and charging for washing, drying and vacuum cleaner hire – in their favour.

According to a press release from August 2016, the accommodation agreement will cover ‘the new student residence building under construction, Burton & Garran Hall, Graduate House, Toad Hall, Ursula Hall, Lena Karmel Lodge, Kinloch Lodge and Warrumbul Lodge’. ANU is not telling us how much we will have to pay, nor are they telling us who will have the leases of accommodation beyond the new building, or how much control they have over peripherals like additional costs, fines, and student life.

For a new accommodation direction that has advertised itself as a way to get more people into on-campus accommodation, this risks pushing low socioeconomic students into accommodation in Canberra’s suburbs. The repercussions of this are unknown but reasonably predictable – financially disadvantaged

The most explicit cost hike is to the average ANU student’s rent. That’s bad enough. But hidden beneath this plan is a cost to the poorest students that is hard to measure and almost impossible to rectify.

Making Sense of Us: How ANU Students Compare to the Typical Canberran Text: Mia Jessurun

The first glimpse of results from last year’s census – of #CensusFail fame – were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week. Using the median age and modal category for a range of basic variables, the ABS has produced a series of statistical snapshots that represent the ‘typical’ Census respondent in each state and territory. While, realistically, this a very cursory look at a complex set of statistics that seek to simplify the characteristics of an even more complex population, it’s really interesting information to reflect on. Especially for me, as someone who’s only lived in the ACT as a student – much like many of my peers – it can be easy to overlook the existence of a wider Canberran population beyond the confines of the ANU. Sure, we may joke that it’s a city full of public servants, but some contextual understanding of the city we live, work and

study in couldn’t hurt, right? After all, while we’re watching the political repercussions of the average citizen’s insular perceptions of the world play out on a larger scale, a little contextual grounding about their situation might help us to understand and, even, retort their views. According to the ABS, the ‘typical’ ACT respondent is female. She is 34 years old and her highest educational qualification is a Year 12 certificate*. Already, it is clear that this person is a far cry from the typical ANU student, and even further removed from the average resident on Daley Road. They are married, have two children and live in a home which they own with a mortgage. The thought of marriage and children is a stretch for many of us, and presently impossible for some, and recent data suggests that we’re likely to spend our lifetimes in rental properties. The typical resident was born in Australia, as were her parents, and if they are a migrant then they originated from England. This, too, reflects a far lesser degree of the multiculturalism within the microcosm of the ANU student body.

These statistics provide a brief snapshot of Canberra now. But, for the first time, the census can be compared to statistics for the ACT – then known as the ‘Federal’ Capital Territory – from over 100 years ago. The first ACT census, collected in 1911 – only a year after the ACT was legislated into existence – paints a very different picture of the average resident. This contrast is even more interesting to consider for a city that continues to develop before our very eyes. It’s really important to note, however, that these statistics exclude Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, who were unforgivably excluded from Census counts until after the 1967 referendum. In 1911, the typical Census respondent was male, not female. This can largely be explained by a reduction in the risk of death during childbirth and, supposedly, the advent of the motor vehicle – which have together widened the gap between male and female life expectancy in the past century. They’re far, far younger – the median age class was 21 - 24, and relatedly, are unmarried and have no children. They’re still born in Australia, and although comparable

migrant statistics were not collected, it is striking to consider that at this time there were only five people in the ACT who had been born in Asia. Conducting a Census is plagued by complex methodological issues and is generally associated with important policy applications but, personally, this doesn’t have to be so. On a much simpler level, it provides us with another way of reflecting on what our country looks like today and where we fit within it. Making those results accessible to the people they represent has value, and the kind of simple presentation of basic statistics within this first release does exactly that. Of course, this is only a glimpse, and I for one eagerly await the the full results release in June, and the insights that will bring! * This doesn’t mean to suggest that most Canberrans are, in fact, 38 year old married women with children (that would have been a very surprising finding indeed!) but, instead, that these are the modal/most common categories for each variable.

Comment

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Why Lectures Shouldn’t Be History Text: Guy Exton

If lectures are the heart of a university, then good lecturers are a university’s lifeblood. Luckily for me, my experience at the School of History has given me both. The proposal by the university to eliminate lectures from the School is absurd, and would only serve to run into the ground yet another valuable but neglected faculty. Appreciation of history is a rare thing these days, but I reassure myself that within every economist, lawyer or Nobel prize winner is a historian trying to get out. When Britain was under attack from Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill was approached by his cabinet and asked to cut funding for the arts in order to funnel more money into the military. His response: ‘If we do that, what are we fighting for?’ While it is true that the ANU is not fighting Nazi Germany, it is a world-leading university. It can afford, and should prioritise, furnishing its students with a world-leading education about history. The old saying that ‘if you refuse to

learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it’ was written for moments like these; if the university limits the School of History from teaching students directly, it surely dooms these students to ignorance. Perhaps this statement seems melodramatic, but it is hard to understand how vital lectures are to the teaching of history unless you are a history student. You need to have a dialog about history to learn about it. That is something Echo360 will never be able to do and something students from other disciplines may struggle to grasp. History lecture slides are often a painting or a quote – trying to understand them without a qualified lecturer is like trying to understand a book by reading the last page. This should not be interpreted as advocacy for a cheap ‘high school detention’-style seminar solution, where 150 students are crammed into a classroom for four and a half hours a week, trying to fill the roles of both lecture and tutorial. History is best taught when students are told a historical narrative by a qualified academic in lectures, and then presented with the opportunity to discuss this with their peers in tutorials.

Lectures have been the most superior method of teaching since universities began. They are the weapon of choice for scholars; Oxford began giving lectures in 1096 AD. It is arrogant and ignorant to dismiss almost a millennium of teaching pedigree to save a few bucks. ANU’s history department is world class. To strip it of lectures would be to strip it of its prestige. It would not revolutionise the ANU, but send it backwards – about 921 years. The ANU has an unimpressive history of neglecting smaller faculties. The powers that be aren’t supervillains plotting the destruction of Schools from the top floor of the chancellery, but a pattern is beginning to emerge. In 2012, the 23 academic positions within the School of Music were cut to just 13, funding was withdrawn, and only one undergraduate music course was offered. At the time, enrolments were down to less than 100 students a year. If numbers are dwindling, shouldn’t the answer be to better fund the School – especially in such an established field as music – to make it more attractive to students? Either way, we are paying for it now with a half-hearted $12.5 million commitment over the next five years to restore

its former glory. It would be a sad day indeed if the School of History headed down the same path. Universities can be scary places these days. As a student, you’re surrounded by buildings you’ll never step foot in, with thousands of kids just as smart as you darting around. In the digital age, human contact has never been so important to preserve, and lectures from professors put a human face on the institution that is the ANU. Kids want to feel connected to their education, not electronically, but by forming friendships with professors and learning from them. If you want to build alumni that care about the university, start by meeting them. Lectures are an investment worth making for any university education, but especially for the School of History. If they are removed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the School sees a drop in enrolments. And it won’t be a question of the chicken before the egg, it will be the removal of lectures before the decline in enrolments.

For Fuck’s Sake, Don’t Make Education Free Again Text: Jessy Wu You may have seen their garish posters plastered around campus, emblazoned with the rallying cry ‘Make Education Free Again’. This is the National Union of Students’ (NUS) education campaign. The NUS is the peak representative body for students in Australia. In March, the ANU Students’ Association voted to accredit with the NUS and agreed to pay $5,000 in affiliation fees. Under the mantle of ‘accessible education for everyone’, the NUS campaign encourages students to ‘fight for free education’. The campaign assures us ‘free education is not impossible’, stating ‘a very generous estimate of the cost of free tertiary education in Australia is $8 billion’ annually. However, free education is not a self-evident good. Given the existence of universal, income-contingent, student loans, there is no clear a priori relationship between free tuition and increased access to university for low SES students. The Longitudinal Survey of Australian

Youth tracked university attendance among those who turned 15 in 2006, the year after the third major increase in tuition fees since the end of free education. The empirical evidence found students from low SES backgrounds were just as likely to attend university despite higher fees. A similar trend was observed in the United Kingdom, where higher education reforms significantly increased fees in 2012. But application rates and enrolment shares from students from low SES backgrounds actually expanded; a report found 18 year olds in disadvantaged areas were 12 per cent more likely to be admitted in 2013 than in 2011. These examples support the findings of an Australian study on the under-representation of low SES students in higher education, which found no evidence that credit constraints deter high-achieving students from pursuing tertiary education. However, SES background is likely to determine ATAR – those from higher SES backgrounds are much more likely to obtain higher scores. This finding is important because entry scores are the

dominant driver of university attendance, particularly in the case of elite universities where ATAR cut-offs bar many from attending.

transport. It can also be because they do not feel a sense of belonging as they are financially restricted from participating in university life.

Given a student’s academic performance in secondary school is the most important determiner of whether they can access higher education, an ‘accessible education for everyone’ should begin by redressing educational disadvantage in primary and secondary schools, rather than giving $8 billion in handouts to those already privileged enough to attend university.

Instead of addressing these endemic, but resolvable, issues, the NUS is wasting its oxygen campaigning for a pie in the sky: a measure that would cost Australians one quarter of the annual education budget and three times the amount spent annually on Youth Allowance for students.

Based on conservative estimates, this sum would be enough to build over 500 new primary schools, or fund over one million early intervention programs for young children with special learning needs. Moreover, introducing free tuition fails to tackle the pressures that low SES students currently face at university. According to another report, low SES students are indeed more likely to drop out of university. It’s not because of the deferred tuition cost, but because they have to work to pay for rent, food and

In accrediting with the NUS, the ANU Students’ Association have pledged to help the NUS spread its message nationwide. But does this end goal really help to make education ‘more accessible for everyone’? Jessy Wu was the former Education Officer of the ANU Students’ Association. She resigned in April 2017 for reasons unrelated to ANUSA’s decision to re-accredit with the NUS (she swears). To call for a referendum to permanently disaffiliate from the NUS, a petition with 107 signatures is required.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

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The Philosopher’s Stoned

comprehending complexity Text: Anthony Merlino In this regular column, Anthony seeks to capture the unique perspective of a different ANU philosopher each fortnight. In doing so, the column will act as a bridge between the School of Philosophy and the ANU student body.

As the sun descended above Queens University Belfast on one evening in November 1967, a psychedelic twang from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar rang throughout the university auditorium. To enter this concert, Philip Pettit scaled a brick wall instead of using the faraway entrance gate. That night, Hendrix employed mercurial instrumentals in performing his classic tune, Purple Haze. Hendrix’s central music style manifested in diverse forms. Professor Philip Pettit’s experience with philosophy reflects this performance technique. Namely, Pettit’s overarching approach to philosophy has been expressed in a range of settings. Through the practice of philosophy, Pettit has traversed continents, transcended ethnicities, and addressed the perennial questions of existence. Pettit was raised in an intellectually curious Catholic family in Western Ireland. At the age of 17, he commenced training for the priesthood at a seminary. Simultaneously, he was studying classics and mathematics at university. Eventually, Pettit realised this was not his passion. Consequently, he was forced to ruminate on the direction he wished to steer his life. One possible route was to study philosophy. Upon investigation, he became ‘hugely excited’ that one could academically dedicate themselves to examining philosophical questions. This marked the first manifestation of his experience with philosophy.

the ANU. Whilst in Australia, Pettit discovered that the long-standing tradition of ‘republicanism’ addressed questions he was exploring in political philosophy. Ultimately, the concept of republicanism cemented itself as a central tenet of Pettit’s work. In his monumental text, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Pettit uses republican ideas to investigate democratic institutions.

*** The republican tradition developed through Ancient Rome, Renaissance Italy, 17th century England, and 18th century France and America. An enduring theme in this development is a particular conception of ‘freedom’. In Pettit’s view, this notion of freedom provides for more adequate political frameworks. For example, imagine a husband is conferred superior legal rights to his wife. He may still provide his wife with non-interference. Regardless, she is free only insofar as her ultimate controller allows her to act. She may change her behaviour because of this oversight. Therefore, individuals must possess freedom from ‘non-domination’. Pettit extracts this from the republican tradition.

On the streets of Paris, in 1968, thousands of students protested the conservative structures of French universities. One year later, a similar movement was flourishing at University College Dublin, where Pettit was employed as a lecturer. In this revolt, students and young faculty members, including Pettit, demanded that academic appointments be publicly advertised and competed for. Under pressure, the university granted these requests. At this point he witnessed abstract concepts from political philosophy take life in political mobilisation.

In Pettit’s eyes, freedom from non-domination has a social implication. For example, a wife cannot have freedom in a marriage without legal protections against a husband’s mastery. This freedom also has a political implication. Namely, the polity imposing laws that protect individuals from private domination can also become a dominating power. Therefore, the citizenry must possess an equal measure of electoral control over the governmental entity. Likewise, citizens must be able to ‘contest’ government during the parliamentary term. Pettit uses the ‘eyeball test’ as a heuristic device. Specifically, a republic is functioning ideally if individuals can look at both government and their fellow citizens in the eye ‘without fear or indifference’.

In the following years, Pettit obtained a Research Fellowship at Cambridge University. Upon returning to Dublin, three years later, he published his first standard book in political philosophy, Judging Justice. After this, Pettit accepted a professorship at Bradford University, and in 1983 he obtained employment at

When José Zapatero assumed leadership of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, he began heralding Pettit’s republican philosophy in public speeches. After Zapatero became the Prime Minister in 2004, Pettit accepted an invitation to deliver a public lecture in Madrid. Here he expounded his philosophical values. To

***

commit to these republican principles, Zapatero requested that Pettit provide an independent assessment of his government. Upon returning in 2007, Pettit awarded Zapatero a ‘nine out of 10’. One reason for this was that Spain had become one of the first legislatures in the world to legalise marriage equality with minimal parliamentary and public support. Zapatero invoked the ‘eyeball test’ to muster political support. This time in the international political arena, Pettit’s central approach to philosophy was able to manifest itself as a tangible solution.

*** Currently, Pettit holds dual positions at Princeton University and the ANU. He detects a distinct difference between the cultures of the two institutions. Princeton is ‘one of the wealthiest universities in the world’ and usually ‘attracts the very best minds’. In Pettit’s view, this is due, in part, to an American culture where individuals ‘are uniquely faithful to their alma mater, which is totally admirable on Princeton’s part’ – though, Pettit is hesitant to claim that Australian universities can or should replicate this culture. Specifically, it engenders ‘extreme privilege’ for some universities. In turn, those existing outside this privileged sphere are presented with vastly different academic opportunities. Many experiences have been woven into Philip Pettit’s career. This highlights that philosophical enquiry is not shackled to a distinct guiding force. Rather, it is manoeuvred by each individual who wields it as an intellectual tool. For Professor Philip Pettit, his central philosophical concerns have become a prism through which to comprehend the complex diversity of the external world.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Comment

In the Corner of the Queer* Ally Text: Ali McMaster I am rather fond of the fun bundle of humanity that are the queer* community’s allies: those who align themselves with supporting queer* rights and greater respect for queer* individuals, whether or not they are queer*. In my mind, all allies, including those that display solidarity in a visible way, can be an incredibly important part of larger efforts towards supporting queer* individuals and the community as a whole. However, it would seem some people feel somewhat differently. There are people within the queer* community who take issue with the way some allies show their support for queer* rights. This might include such heinous acts of displaying ally stickers on objects, or becoming human glitter bombs and marching in pride parades. The argument goes that this type of ally dips their toe into queer* community culture where convenient, fashionable or safe to do so, but takes little time to talk to their queer* friends or family about their experiences. They also have the privilege to opt-out of the queer* experience when the going gets tough. This leaves them incapable of truly understanding what being queer* is like, or what the community needs, rendering their actions almost hollow and meaningless. But perhaps we should pause before we hop up on this rather rickety high horse of moral outrage that’s trotted out at every seemingly momentous scandal of the day. I think we should take a moment to take stock of some of the knee-jerk assumptions we make about the motivations and activities of this visible ally. Firstly, as a community, I think we may be quick to assume that by displaying merchandise like an ally sticker, this is the only thing such allies are doing as a tokenistic gesture. Frankly, we have no idea about the other ways they engage with the queer* community, beyond a glance. Many allies do attend marches, speak with queer* friends and family, mentor and counsel those in need. They help lobby governments, vote in a way that helps improve lives of queer* members of the community and engage people who may not support the queer* community in a way that gets through to them – without placing the burden on queer* people themselves. The allies that I have been fortunate enough to spend time with have genuinely cared about supporting members of the queer* community, and are not acting as allies just to somehow be seen to support the progressive issue of the day. Further, there are members of the ally community – for

example, through the ally training program at the ANU – who are queer*. You can be an ally and part of the queer* community too – an ally is to be there to support people, from the inside and out. While it is central to talk to your queer* friends and colleagues, and a single piece of merchandise may seem a poor attempt at engagement, this is exactly what putting an ally sticker somewhere visible can invite people to do. It communicates that this is a safe place to be yourself and have a conversation if need be. I think whether you are out as queer* or not, if you are unsure of whether the environment you are in is safe, seeing an ally sticker is a reminder that people support you. It also allows individuals who are not out to know who could help them, without having just to drive in, tell someone and hope for the best. While just displaying merchandise won’t change things overnight, it is the start, not the end. Change takes time – especially change in how society perceives and treats a minority – and is achieved through conversation and human connection. The argument that allies who are not queer* cannot understand or truly know what being queer* is like is neither here nor there. While yes, they may not be able to comprehend what you are going through, they can empathise, support and stand beside you. On this point, the queer* community is not some paragon of virtue when it comes to intersectionality. We have our issues of racism, classism and sexism, to name but a few, and may not support others when they need it, or in a way that’s appropriate. Queer* people experiencing intersecting oppressions need the support of those in other communities they belong to. To put it bluntly, while as a minority, we should never accept tokenism over real action, we need the support of the wider community to push for meaningful equality. Allies of all identities play a key role in making this happen. Ultimately, I think that however simplistic or rough-and-tumble the effort, that when people try to display support and solidarity, this is a good thing. They are human, and they are doing their best. They may not understand what living as queer* is like, but that is fine – there is a lot to be said for people who support causes that do not directly impact them, but which they nonetheless support because it is the right thing to do. I would much rather live in a world where people do things they feel are right, however imperfectly, than do nothing at all out of fear that their efforts may not be good enough.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

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Where’s My Castle? Understanding Negative Gearing

Text: Jonathan Tjandra

Affordable housing is a hot topic in Australian politics, and it is a complex policy issue. The housing market is heavily regulated in Australia, and it has many demand-side and supply-side distortions that make it difficult to isolate the root cause (if there is one) of the rapid rise in housing prices. The rise in house prices itself is not a problem if real income growth were to increase at a similar rate, but it does not. The result is that many young potential first-home buyers are locked out of the market. I would like to focus on one aspect of the issue: negative gearing. As a demand-side distortion, it increases the demand for houses, thus increasing the price. The Coalition Government and the ALP have distinctly different approaches to negative gearing, with Treasurer Scott Morrison firmly rejecting changes to negative gearing, and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten decidedly arguing for adjustments to be made. Firstly, what is negative gearing? First introduced by the Hawke Government in 1985, it is a tax principle that allows investors who run their investment at a loss to claim that loss against their other income. It is not restricted to property investors but is mainly applicable to property. Rental properties are run at a loss usually because the investor borrows most of the price of the property, and the interest payments on the mortgage are higher than the rent. This means that if I make a monthly loss of $100 on my property, I can reduce $100

of my taxable income from other sources – like my salary – and therefore pay less tax. It is estimated that the Government forgoes about $15 billion in tax revenue every year due to negative gearing. Negative gearing benefits high-income earners far more than low-income earners. It is essentially a tax deduction, so if you were earning a salary in the highest tax bracket, say, $300,000 – you would get about 50 per cent of your loss back. If you were earning on the lowest tax bracket, say, $20,000, you would only get about 20 per cent of your loss back. Thus, Scott Morrison’s claim that most property investors are ‘mum and dad’ investors may be true, but the vast majority of the $15 billion in foregone tax revenue goes to high-income earners. Initially, negative gearing had two main goals. It aimed firstly to encourage low rents by ensuring investors can still make a profit off low rents, and secondly, to stimulate the construction industry by increasing demand for property. There is no evidence that negative gearing has resulted in these two effects. In fact, Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen argues 93 per cent of negatively geared properties were existing homes. The ALP proposal to limit negative gearing to new properties may help to address this issue. So why is negative gearing so popular? Surely a loss is still a loss, even if you are able to claim some percentage of it back in tax deductions. Negative gearing only works in tandem with capital gains: that is, buying low and selling high. If house prices are increasing, a rise in the price of the property offsets any losses incurred through negative gearing. Furthermore,

if you hold a property for more than 12 months, only 50 per cent of any capital gains you make are actually taxable. But there is also a much deeper reason. Negative gearing has become synonymous with property investment and is now the next step after home ownership. It’s another chapter in the ‘Australian Dream’ for Baby Boomers who have paid off their mortgage. It’s the story of personal aspiration, as property investment is seen as the safest way to increase one’s wealth and therefore a path to upward economic mobility. It is also a partial explanation for why many middle-class people may object to increases in taxes to the upper class: they believe and hope that one day, that might be them. Nowhere is it more evident than in Scott Morrison’s latest speech to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. He talks about ‘mum and dad investors’, which he argues are the focus of the negative gearing program and a positive force for the economy. He paints it as un-Australian to be against negative gearing: one in five police officers own an investment property, as do around 58,000 teachers. The argument being made by Morrison and supporters here is that any attempt to change the policy would essentially be making police officers and teachers worse off. Be that as it may, there are 160,000 young people who would otherwise be homeowners. It does not make sense, to me, that this argument appeals to some Australian aspiration for an investment property when it comes at a cost to the more fundamental aspiration to own a home.

More than two million Australians own or benefit from investment properties, which is just under 10 per cent of the population. Of the properties owned by these Australians, 1.3 million are negatively geared. 72 per cent of these owners only own one investment property, and 90 per cent less than two. It does not make sense that a tiny minority of the population who own more than one or two investment properties should be able to benefit from negatively gearing their fifth or sixth investment property. Of course, negative gearing is only one part of the complex housing issue in Australia. Fixing negative gearing or any other policy, in isolation, will not be a silver bullet. The Government needs to work on a comprehensive policy that addresses Federal and State incentives for demand, as well as regulation of the supply side of the housing market. Perhaps the Government should institute a ‘smashed avocado’ savings plan: for every smashed avocado a millennial does not eat and puts towards a savings plan, the Government will contribute the same amount to the plan. Otherwise, thousands of young Australians and their families may never live in a home that they own. This should send a chill through us, collectively: As Darryl Kerrigan argues in The Castle, ‘It is right and fair that a family be allowed to live in its own house. That is justice.’

Issue 4, Vol. 67

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Content Warning: Mentions of revenge porn, sexual violence, domestic abuse, cyber bullying, child pornography and manipulation

There’s an App for That: When Revenge Porn goes Viral Text: James Atkinson

Revenge porn is one of the most prevalent issues facing young people today. One in 10 Australians are victims of revenge porn, according to a recent RMIT University survey – that’s thousands of people within the ANU student body alone. So why, if revenge porn is so prevalent, are our parliamentarians so unwilling to legislate on this pressing contemporary issue? Why are we not advocating on behalf of victims who are left voiceless by our justice system? Politicians and mainstream media will happily dismiss revenge porn as a ‘digital phenomena’, and push it aside into the ‘too hard’ basket. We know, however, that revenge porn is so much more than this. It represents a cross section between domestic abuse, sexual violence and cyber bullying, and predominantly affects women under 30, typically perpetrated by a male intimate partner. Further, it highlights the incompetence of our judicial and legislative systems to deal with such issues in a respectful and comprehensive manner. Thanks to the growing prominence of photo sharing apps such Snapchat, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, revenge porn materials can be easily captured and disseminated within seconds. Combine this with the anonymity of the internet, and the act can be far more damaging. Some perpetrators will upload these images or videos onto revenge porn websites accompanied by the victim’s personal details. Once online, they are there

forever, subjecting the victim to public perusal and ongoing harassment by men seeking sex. One young Australian woman went public with her experiences as a victim of revenge porn after an image of her was doctored and placed on one of these sites attached with her phone number and home address. The perpetrator also established a fake account posing as the victim and invited men to visit her home to rape and torture her. She was followed and harassed by sexual predators for months. Meanwhile, she was told by police that it was her fault and that nothing could be done to achieve justice. Recent revelations regarding a child pornography ring that targets school girls further highlight the prevalence of this issue and the need for proactive legislation. Investigations by the Australian Federal Police found that the websites featured thousands of sexualised photographs and videos of young girls from at least 70 Australian schools. While the AFP was successful in closing the site, it has since been re-established overseas thus making it virtually impossible for domestic law enforcement to take further action. Cases like these highlight the complexity of the internet as a legal jurisdiction and the incapacity of our legislative and judicial systems to sufficiently act on cyber crimes such as revenge porn. Copyright issues further complicate the situation, which arise when these materials are captured on smartphone apps and

then published online, making it difficult to have them removed. The law is slowly catching up, however. Victoria and South Australia are the first Australian jurisdictions to take steps to criminalise revenge porn. The act now incurs up to two years imprisonment in both states or a $10,000 fine in South Australia. It’s also a crime in both states to threaten to distribute an intimate image without consent. Similarly, there has been a recent push in the ACT to introduce laws which would see the act criminalised, indicating a positive, albeit gradual, shift toward achieving justice. The ACT Greens are supporting this push led Rhys Michie, an ANU graduate, whose online petition needs 500 signatures for the issue to be considered by the ACT Legislative Assembly. Outside of these laws, federal telecommunications legislation criminalises the use of technology as a tool for harassment. However, significant gaps remain. For instance, they only address the capture and dissemination of these materials and ignore the copyright issues associated with publishing online or via apps. Furthermore, these laws blatantly ignore the gendered nature of the act. They ignore that revenge porn is committed without consent mostly by men against women, that it is sexual abuse, and do not acknowledge the emotional and psychological distress which victims endure. At present, a teenager who possesses and distributes revenge porn materials in NSW could face child pornography

charges. If convicted, this means that they can potentially be placed on the sex offenders register and continue to face repercussions later in life. Here, the law completely misinterprets revenge porn and fails not address its fundamental aspects of consent, privacy and malicious intent. The impact on minors must be actively considered in drafting revenge porn legislation because the status quo – where children face charges under the very legislation designed to protect them – is ridiculous. While it is unlikely that revenge porn laws will act retrospectively to support present victims, it will provide them with the comfort that future victims may seek justice. It will send a strong, clear message to perpetrators that they cannot ignore consent and if they do, they will face retribution. Regardless, revenge porn can no longer be brushed off as an online phenomenon, as elderly male legislators would have us believe. We must acknowledge the impact that it has on victims, and we must break the cycle in which young men think they can harass women and subvert consent. We must call out these boys club antics, and we must acknowledge the psychological trauma that revenge porn perpetrators inflict upon their victims. For, while revenge porn may seem like a gag to some, their suffering will undeniably last longer than the ten-second timer on a Snapchat. If you need help or support, contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or Lifeline (13 11 14)

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Comment

Embracing the True Essence of ‘Treat Yo Self’ Text: Supriya Benjamin

I first stumbled upon this phrase while watching the second season of Parks and Recreation. Ironically, I was treating myself to a study break while watching the show but, for the first time, I found myself craving the free-spirited and laid-back nature of the ‘treat yo self’ philosophy. In the show, Tom and Donna (played by Aziz Ansari and Retta), dedicate one day a year to treating themselves to luxurious goods and services without keeping tab of the money they spend. In the scene, we witness both characters purchasing fine leather goods, velvet clothing and expensive brooches. At the time, I laughed at their ridiculousness, but I have slowly come to realise how important it is to treat oneself from time to time.

Studying at one of the top universities in Australia can take its toll on the mental health of its students. There is a toxic culture at ANU where students continuously thirst for achievements to add to their CVs because the competition is so rife. Being a perfectionist myself, I was quickly drawn into this culture – resulting in several emotional breakdowns due to this environment as well as pressure I put on myself. I even felt compelled to do something productive during my winter and summer breaks as the people around me take on internships or travel overseas. I found myself slowly deteriorating into a shell of misery and not being able to enjoy the small milestones in my life. I had deprived myself of any happiness unless I thought I had wholeheartedly deserved it. And I know I am not alone in this. For an icebreaker activity during my first tutorial this semester, our tutor put it to

us to talk about our hobbies. It amazed me how very few of my classmates could come up with an answer. In the race to be better than our peers, we have somehow neglected to take care of ourselves. Unlike the treat yo self experience showcased in Parks and Rec, you don’t have to be overly dramatic and materialistic about how you give yourself something nice. Treating yourself is often associated with procuring something tangible like retail therapy or a massage, but treating yourself can also mean doing the bare minimum. I recently took up playing the ukulele and found that it helps me with relieving my stress, even if just for a short while. Sometimes taking a short walk around the park or belting out my favourite Queen Bey tunes in the bathroom helps make me feel human again. In this day and age, where we are constantly on the run for the next line to our CV, it is so vital not to get caught

up in the robotic cycle of work, eat and sleep. I often felt conflicted as to when I should be treating myself. Do I wait to achieve my next milestone, is that when I deserve it? Adding to the insurmountable pressure already present within the university by only treating myself when I thought I earned it became counterproductive. Instead, I took to treating myself whenever I needed it. The treat yo self experience is almost like a one night stand – it keeps you happy in the moment even if it is instantly forgotten the next day. Treating yourself can be anything from buying yourself that expensive outfit you have been eyeing for a while, to slumping on your sofa to watch Netflix after a long day. It need not be productive at all, but if you feel relaxed and happy in the moment, you have treated yourself just right!

Student activists are driving Canberra’s Refugee Campaign Text: John Dove John is a member of ANU RAC and the Steering Committee of Canberra RAC.

Refusing to let the stormy forecast dampen their spirits, thousands of people – from Canberra, Queanbeyan, Yass and the NSW South Coast – descended en masse to Civic Square at 1pm on 9 April for the Palm Sunday Rally. United by their passion, the crowd gathered to call on the government to welcome refugees and end the offshore detention regime and, ultimately, demand humane treatment for refugees and people seeking asylum. The Canberra Refugee Action Committee estimates the total number of those in attendance reached 2,500 – a significant feat that highlights the strong community support for the cause. The rally heard a rousing speech from St Vincent de Paul Society National Council of Australia CEO John Falzon, who called on Australians to ‘resist the politics of cruelty and replace it with the politics of love’. Following this was Jamila Ahmadi, who gave her account of journeying to Australia as a refugee, her time in detention, and, eventually, her road to

Australian citizenship. Ahmadi, who now holds a degree in International and Development Studies from the University of Adelaide, declared that she was ‘the product of giving refugees a go’. Ahmadi spent a total of three months in onshore detention; refugees on Manus Island and Nauru are now pushing four years. At 12.30pm, students from ANU’s Refugee Action Committee (RAC) gathered in Petrie Plaza alongside contingents of fellow students from the University of Canberra and ACU, as well as unions, faith groups, LGBTQIA+ activists, mums and academics. In recent months, university groups have become cornerstones of a campaign that is otherwise perceived by some to be the domain of a particular demographic comprised of bleeding-heart grandmothers and idle

retirees. On Palm Sunday, students delivered critical energy on the ground – leading chants with a unique fervour that accompanies an unquenched thirst for justice. Cheers of applause from the crowd met them as they marched with other contingents into Civic Square. Not only do students imbue rallies and marches with a much-needed vitality, but they are also at the very forefront of organising for the campaign. A 48 Hour Vigil for Refugees preceded the Palm Sunday rally, coordinated by a team of Creative Activism volunteers – a group which includes several students from across Canberra. Others contributed their time and expertise to running the Vigil, which featured artworks from refugees, a film night, live performances and other activities.

Additionally, ANU has played host to several campaign events including a recent protest meeting calling on the ACT’s federal Members of Parliament to break their silence on the injustices of offshore detention. The campus will also be the site of a national conference for the Australian Refugee Action Network, taking place on 20 - 21 May. The conference is the first of its kind in Australia and will enable thousands of activists from around the country to work together with a nationally coordinated strategy. The proximity of student activism to these sorts of developments gives us a crucial insight into what it takes to run an effective, high-profile campaign. Some believe that students today are less passionate, even apathetic, compared to previous generations. I disagree. Student voices are increasingly being dismissed and derided, breeding a defeatist attitude that prevents many from speaking up at all. This makes our position at ANU, arguably the centre of the national refugee rights campaign, even more valuable. Here, students have a voice. Here, we are unafraid to make it heard.

Comment // international

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Diplobrats: Inside the Lives of Diplomats’ Children

Text: Max Koslowski

At around 4.45pm local time on 26 October 2008, two US Black Hawk helicopters landed in Eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. They were accompanied by two smaller helicopters, hovering above the Blackhawks as two dozen CIA paramilitary soldiers scaled down to the village ground. What happened next changes depending on who you talk to. The US soldiers ran towards and entered a building – some say this only happened after they grabbed and shot some Syrian locals – and a firefight ensued. Minutes later, eight were dead. Then the Americans were gone. And the Syrian Government was mad. Over the next two days, tension shifted from the streets of Eastern Syria to the embassies of Damascus. The Syrian Government delivered messages of furious denouncement to the US – labelling the attack an act of ‘terrorism’ – and the US responded, predictably, by denying this. For a Syrian public that demanded justice, the focus shifted from the measured words of their TV screens to angry mobs and protests in the streets of their city. To them, this was a violation of their fundamental sovereignty. Demonstrators didn’t just focus on the embassies in Damascus, but on one particular American school – the Damascus Community School – which had created divided opinion since it began in the 1950s. In the days after the US raid, Victor Munagala could hear the protests and shouting from inside that contentious school. Embassy protection forces were brought in to ensure the children’s safety. By 29 October, in figuring out a way to punish the US for the attack, the Syrian Government’s course of action was clear – they would shut down the Damascus Community School.

For Victor, the son of parents who both worked in the UN Diplomatic Services, this wasn’t as destabilising as one might think. As is the life of a diplomatic family, he had up-and-gone before: born in Bonn, Germany, Victor had lived in Syria before Ethiopia, and was about to move on to India and finally Australia. And he enjoyed it. The nomadic life of a diplomatic family allowed Victor to ‘better understand people’ and ‘get a good understanding of how we think’. He could see the Syrian community he spent late primary school with as friendly, warm, and human: ‘You could start chatting with randoms … taxi drivers, just about anyone, and they would start talking to you for four hours.’ Interestingly, Victor struggled the most when living in India, his parents’ country of origin. He was the kid with the funny accent, the different fashion and unusual interest in movies and TV shows. There weren’t exactly many screenings of Bollywood movies in Syria or Ethiopia. It was confronting for Victor to re-accustom himself with a culture that he was only faintly familiar: his neighbours criticised him as a bad influence on their own children, and school reminded him that he was ‘this diplomatic kid … and they were just, sort of, Indian.’ Victor isn’t alone – Egshiglen Chuluunhuu, the daughter of the Mongolian Ambassador to Australia, also felt the alienation of returning to her country of origin after stints abroad in Turkey and the US. By the end of Year 12, Egshiglen had moved between seven different schools but found the period

between Year 7 and Year 9 in Mongolia to be the hardest. She found herself oftentimes caught between preserving her own identity ‘and wanting to fit into the community.’ When Egshiglen spoke about her experiences, she talked about a ‘blended’ lifestyle: she saw herself as a mix of both the values of countries she had lived in and the values of Mongolia. There were always those short moments of insecurity where Egshiglen felt less confident speaking Mongolian when she arrived back home; or those doubts about whether she identified as a Mongolian national after living in other countries for more than half her life. Over time, both Victor and Egshiglen have come to realise that these doubts are unfounded – for these diplobrats, it was just a matter of recognising their own unique brand of identity, which was a conglomeration of multiple nationalities, languages and lived experiences. This is a studied phenomenon. The term often coined is ‘Third Culture Kid’: which is, according to the former Education Counselor for the US Department of State Kay Branaman Eakin, ‘someone who, as a child, has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture[s] other than [their] own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own

birth culture into third culture.’ Studies have found that Third Culture Kids have a greater tolerance for other cultures, are often quicker to take up new languages, and are significantly more likely to enrol in and complete tertiary education. As our world shows increasing cracks along an increasing number of diplomatic fault lines, the need for measured diplomacy will continue to grow. The ability to cross-culturally empathise and understand will be critical in clearing the way forward. And maybe these Third Culture Kids – just like their parents in the embassies of Syria, Australia and beyond – with their lived lessons in diplomacy and grown tolerance for difference, are best placed to lead the way.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Comment // international

Chimaek with a side of Impeachment Text: Dylan McGirr

December 3. ‘Chimaek’ means ‘chicken and beer’. It’s a bit of a Korean tradition – a genius idea which, as the name suggests, combines two great things: chicken, and beer. And it has become the new favourite for myself and three mates since we arrived in South Korea four days ago. Tonight, we’ve managed to eat a seemingly impossible amount of chicken, to the point at which I feel both sick and gratified. My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a BBC news update. Normally, I would welcome a news update like this: what is happening around the world? What has Trump done this time? What has Turnbull not done? As a politics student, I feel obliged to be at least partially aware of what is happening around the globe. But I don’t have time for politics right now. I’m on holiday, enjoying a chimaek with my friends. I’ll refocus on politics when I get back to Canberra. However, before I put my phone back, my eye is caught by the headline sprawled across my phone screen. ‘Hundreds of thousands march in Seoul to demand Park Geun-hye resign’ Seoul? Here? With the chimaek? Hundreds of thousands of protesters? I can’t help noticing the number of protestors: 500,000. That is 150,000 more people than the entire population of Canberra. And they are 900 metres from our hostel. So, how did this happen? It became apparent that (now former) South Korean President Park Geun-Hye had been sharing information with what The Economist noted as a ‘close confidante’ by the name of Choi Soon-Sil, who did not have a position in the government. Choi had used this position of power to seek donations of money from businesses to foundations that she controlled. These were large businesses that The Korea Times outlined to include the likes of Samsung, Hyundai and Lotte. Choi’s influence did not stop here. It was reported that her power extended to advising the president on normal, everyday affairs. In October, the Hankyoreh

reported that Choi was receiving ‘presidential report packets’ from the Blue House on a daily basis and then advising the president on matters relating to state affairs. This degree of influence and notoriety has led to political pundits at The Guardian labelling her as Korea’s ‘female Rasputin’. Revelations of misconduct angered the public, and this wave of discontent was reflected in the polls: By November, The Washington Post reported that Park’s approval ratings had fallen to four to five per cent.

December 10. My friends and I are visiting Deoksugung Palace in central Seoul. Deoksugung Palace was inhabited by members of Korea’s royal family during the Joseon monarchy until the colonial period. The structures are beautiful and ornate, built in traditional Korean style. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I know better than to ignore it. ‘South Korea President Park Geun-hye impeached, could face criminal proceedings’ I can’t believe how lucky I am. I’m admiring South Korea’s rich history of the past while the history of the present unfolds before me. The impeachment was passed with a strong majority of 234 voters in a 300-voter assembly. ‘It’s about time’. A man overheard us talking and commented as he walked past.

*** So, four months on, where does this leave South Korea? Well, Choi Soon-Sil has been officially charged. Prime Minister Hwang-Kyo-Ahn has assumed the presidential powers as Acting President until a new president is elected around May. Moon-Jae In is currently the favourite to win the upcoming election to replace Ms Park. He is running as the candidate for the Moonji Party or the Democratic Party of Korea, and he will bring a more liberal outlook, in contrast to Ms Park, whose Liberty Korea Party is regarded as centre-right. Moon-Jae is of more humble upbringings; his father was a peasant farmer and he grew up poor. This

down-to-earth attitude may be what is required in a period where leaders need to be trusted. If he is elected, Moon-Jae will move the presidential office from the Blue House to Gwanghwamun, the district in Seoul where millions protested against Ms Park. Moreover, he claims that he will ‘do away’ with the presidential guard and use police protection instead. This is his way of reconnecting with the people on a more human level. It is disappointing that the first female President of South Korea failed to effectively lead her country. However, her removal from power is a win for democracy and shows South Korea’s effective transition since democratic structures replaced dictatorship in the late 1980s. South Korea’s democracy is unique as it consists of a unicameral ‘National Assembly’. This assembly is nevertheless powerful, and may hold the president accountable through an impeachment vote. The Constitutional Court then holds the responsibility of either confirming or rejecting the impeachment. This system of checks and balances is

reminiscent of democracies in the West and has remained strong at a time of great turbulence. It is also a testament to the will of the people, whose protests increased pressure on the parliament to reach a solution and ultimately contributed towards the outcome. So, while the country may be in a period of minor political instability AS it elects another president, the situation is being resolved in the correct manner. Ultimately, I experienced more than just chimaek during my time in Seoul. I got to see firsthand the democratic process that has ensured people are being held accountable when it is truly needed.

Comment // international

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Made In China

WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL? Text: Una Chen Una is a second year law/arts student who is passionate about voicing the concerns of the Asian minority. When she is not focused on decorating her apartment, she is dedicated to uncovering the hidden faces of society and dismantling Asian stereotypes.

When all my friends were trying to tan, I was putting on copious amounts of sunblock so I could stop my skin from getting any more tanned. Beauty standards contrast and differ all around the world, from culture to culture. In East Asian countries, fair skin is often the epitome of beauty. If you flip through some Korean magazines, women are often portrayed with fair, dewy skin and rosy cheeks. For many East Asian women, the illusion of being youthful and radiant is the goal you want to achieve when putting on makeup. In contrast, the Western world’s current makeup trends include a ‘sunkissed’ bronzed look featuring matte lipsticks and prominent contouring. The difference is jarring.

Korean man spending around 11 times more than the Australian man on beauty products.

or ‘white skin covers the seven flaws’, is an ancient Japanese proverb. Apparently, the phenomenon of whitening one’s face began during the Nara period (710794 AD) and has carried on since then. A manual on beauty (Miyako fūzoku kewaiden) was published in the 1800s in Japan and introduces techniques and remedies to make skin healthy, radiant and appearing more white. The book recommends rice bran, green tea and herbal treatments for acne. Japan’s fixation on white skin is not isolated: in 2010 a young Cambodian woman, Chhuon Sovann, sadly passed away due to using bleaching products found in some skin-whitening formulas. Skin-whitening creams are sold in an endless list of countries: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Dubai, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Egypt and many more. Talking with my friend Cassandra, she offered the explanation that being pale is more associated with being feminine, younger and delicate. When going back to visit family and friends in Japan, people always commented on how tanned she was, but her brother didn’t receive the same comments. ‘Men don’t need to be as pale because they don’t want to give the impression of looking too delicate,’ she says. Of course, beauty standards differ for genders in every culture: in anime, the female character always has pale, almost porcelain skin and the male the ‘perfect in-between’, which is considered just a few shades darker. This is echoed in Chinese and Korean drama, as well as Thai and Singaporean advertisements. In South Korea, men are also wearing more makeup, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The increase in skincare and facial products have grown rapidly: with the average South

My Vietnamese friend tells me that she is ridiculed and teased for not meeting the Asian ideal of beauty. She also says that meeting the East Asian standard of what is beautiful is emotionally draining, which I can’t help but agree with. ‘Oh but you’re so tanned for an Asian’ is something I, and many others, would have heard daily. Insecurities about one’s skin colour often come with the realisation that tan skin is unrepresented in the Asian media. Celebrities have been known to endorse products that aim for a whitening effect: for example, a decade ago, a famous Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan partook in an advertisement where he was giving his friend whitening cream after he heard that his friend believed he was unattractive and wanted a method to ‘woo the ladies’. Korean beauty products, from lotions to toners to creams, all have different formulas and are marketed towards different ages. However, one trend that they all seem to have in common are the ‘whitening’ claims each product endorses. It’s strange how skin tone is such a common metric, cross-culturally, to create standards of ‘beauty’. My British friend says that she used to dream of having naturally tanned skin. The beauty standard for whiteness in Asia and tanned in the Western world is one of complexity: is it an underlying class problem? A race problem? Nonetheless, whether you conform to a beauty standard or not, it is interesting to see the different beauty standards that cultures uphold, and how they can start to interact when East meets West.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Prompted // multilingual

为什么要学习文学学，我们其他人只是为了混个文凭，在做技能培训而已。”三年前，我可能会为这句话暗地里感到沾沾自喜，但当时我怔了一下，不知道该说什么好。这可能是中国留学圈里无奈的现状。

Text: Sylvia Zhang Photography: Marwan El Massan

今年是我在ANU学文学的第四年。本科毕业之后，我申请了荣誉学位，继续深造。对我国内的许多亲戚朋友来说，这是个多少有些令人费解的决定。他们大多以为我结束了三年的“胡闹” 之后，会安定下来，去墨尔本或悉尼读个传媒方向的硕士，然后回国工作。

我身边有太多人的大学生活与兴趣完全无关，只是不得不顺从父母的愿望，选择了“有可能” 带来更好的前程的专业，就连选修课，都为了拉高GPA，只挑容易拿高分的课来选。即使对文学和艺术很感兴趣，也因为各种各样的原因完全否定了自己探索这些领域的可能：英文要求太高了，要看太多书了，写论文太难了。做不到的。

我已经习惯面对这样的困惑了。我的父亲是学医出身，母亲从事金融方面的工作，他们的朋友圈子里，几乎没有对文学和艺术特别感兴趣的人。我常碰到父母的朋友得知我在国外学习文学时，露出困惑又略带轻慢的神情，“怎么喜欢学这个？” 他们带着笑意，称赞我与众不同，却又隐隐觉得我的父母太过娇惯我，才会将我养成了一个不切实际的理想主义者。

我们生活在一个功利的世界里，“理想主义”成了个多少带点贬义的字眼，人们喜欢理想主义者的天真，又觉得他们幼稚又不切实际，想看他们在现实的壁垒上撞得头破血流。然而什么是现实呢？物质与稳定。拥有这些就足以过好这一生了吗？除此之外，我们要如何安置我们的精神和心灵？

“理想主义者”，我对这个标签的感觉十分矛盾。曾有一段时间，我喜欢这样标榜自己，觉得自己确实与众不同。在校园里，我是少有的不学商的中国留学生，在文学院，我是唯一的中国人。大部分时间里我都独来独往，几乎不怎么接触留学生的圈子。

和专业时，他们还是建议我考虑些实际。文科中，传媒看起来前途最有保障，我接受了他们的建议，直到在ANU入学之前，都还以为自己会成为一个传媒学生。

巴巴。我自以为英语水平不错，也有深厚的文学基础，可是在这里，我一点优势也没有。我羡慕我的澳洲同学，羡慕他们能轻松地读小说，轻松地听课，轻松地参与课堂讨论。

直到大三，我搬了家，认识了两位很棒的中国室友，才陆续认识了一些其他的中国留学生。但我和他们的交际还是非常有限。我为他们得知我专业时的惊讶感到得意，暗暗享受成为他们眼中的“学霸”和“理想主义者”。但虚荣淡去之后，便逐渐感到隔阂。我是一个文学生，伴随着这个身份，是“高深”“文艺” 的印象，令人难以回应和接近。

然而ANU并没有传媒专业！我阴差阳错地得偿所愿，进入了人文社科学院，开始探索我真正的热情所在，期间的过程却一点也不顺利。我至今还记得我上的第一节文学课，老师要我们分小组赏析《贝奥武夫》和《夏洛特夫人》的片段，我简直没有几个字能看懂，讨论时一句话也说不出来，只能窘迫地盯着地面。

但我熬过来了，硬着头皮咬牙切齿的时刻很多，但我从来没有过“也许我学不了这个”的想法。慢慢的，我读书的速度变快了，我开始在课上发言，我拿了我的第一个HD，我开始享受写论文，享受读那些艰深的社会学和哲学理论，开始尝试新的事物——戏剧表演，写作，参加读书小组。大学三年成为了我人生中最自由、最满足、最有意义的时光。

我其实也并没有什么超凡脱俗那个学期，我读不完课业里要的。相比大多数中国父母，我的求读的小说和诗歌，认真写的有一天我在寝室里看书，一位父母很开明，但出国选择学校论文只能拿可怜的Pass。在课朋友突然对我说，“ 我觉得我上，我从不发言，演讲时也结结认识的人里只有你真的在读大

讨论这些，并不是想证明“不务实”就高人一等，只是我始终认为，让生命有意义的事才最现实。每个人都只有一生，所以落实到个体身上，其实也没有“阳关道”与“独木桥”之别。既然如此，为何不做点自己感兴趣的，喜欢的事呢？为什么不试试看去争取更丰富的人生？也许，我只是个不可救药的“理想主义” ，但每个人的道路，都只能自己去追寻。

Prompted

Artwork: Julia Hammer

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Prompted

dear friend/dear stranger Text: Nigarish Haider

It doesn’t take much to remember you; a song, a smell, a movie, that one celebrity with whom you bear an uncanny resemblance, or spotting a car the same model as yours. At times it’s something salient, like somebody mentioning your name, and at other times it’s less so, like cooking a meal and then realising it’s one of your favourites. Whatever it is that brings you back to the fore of my mind, it’s always a bittersweet experience to have you there. It’s bittersweet to think of the little moments in our friendship that I’ve retained with perfect clarity; the ones I need only close my eyes to go back to, which leave me feeling incredibly happy, and then in quick succession, incredibly sad. It’s bittersweet to re-read the old conversations between us I’ve saved from the past year or so. I see our words to

each other on the screen, and I can’t help but smile at the evidence of our pocket friendship – the most significant of its kind that I am likely to ever experience. I can’t help but marvel at how, with each sent and received, we each learnt a little more about the other, to the point where a deeper understanding was solidified beneath the surface. I look back at our early discussions, and I can recollect the exact thoughts that were going through my head at a given moment. This was my opinion about this, and that was your take on that. I shared my memories with you, and you’d provide humorous analysis. I laid bare my concerns and weaknesses, and you taught me to think, to react, to respond in ways that you saw fit – and in the process, you changed me. You’d send me a song that you were listening to, I would absorb its words and sounds – it was almost as if the lyricist was you – and then I’d learn to like it as well. I learnt the language too, so I could better

understand what was being said to me through the music. It is strange to speak that language or hear those songs now; things which grew to be familiar through you, but then were forced to become alien once again. An ongoing process of learning and unlearning, of knowing and forgetting is what I put it down to. But at times that’s difficult; I was a different person before I met you, and it’s impossible to go back to being that person after you.

shared my anxieties, and you illustrated how you think. I miss what those sounds represented. Right now, our connection remains. It is beyond my reach, but it’s there, floating somewhere. I’m not sure how to find it, and nor am I sure whether it’s better off left unfound. Even if all that is gone, the conversations are still here. Perhaps it is nice to have proof that something once existed, even if it no longer does.

Somewhere in the bittersweet aftertaste of re-reading our old conversations, I find that I miss you. I miss your bad jokes, hearing about your day and the people and events that populated it, about your plans for the future. I miss the experience of slowly discovering someone, of watching as the layers unfurled before me. I even miss the message alert sounds I’d hear when I recounted to you my memories, and you sent me those songs; when I

Clicking the Link Text: Rebecca Hobson and Naomi Austin Illustration: Yvonne Yong

Bec: When I was younger, my dad sat

me down and gave me the Internet Safety Lecture™. The usual maxims – ‘What goes on the internet stays on the internet’, and ‘Don’t trust people that you meet on the internet because you will never know if they are who they claim to be’. The latter in particular seems hilariously ironic now considering where my life was about to take me. Through what is admittedly a rather convoluted process, which spans no less than seven different websites at last count, I have met some of my most trusted friends over the internet. One of these people is Nai.

Naomi: I too have been warned many a time about the dangers posed by individuals on the internet. These warnings, however, did not deter me from joining various social media platforms and fostering connections with the people who populated these worlds. The result has been that I have made friends online who I treasure no less than those I have made in ‘real life’. Bec is one of my closest friends, and it is strange to think that there was a time when I only knew her by her username. Bec: The two of us first encountered

each other during ‘movie nights’ on a movie streaming site, hosted by Meg*, a mutual friend of ours on Tumblr. It took some time for me to muster up the nerve to join these movie nights and take part in the conversations, but I eventually did

and I am forever glad for this decision. The tentative social network that had begun to form at Meg’s movie nights gradually strengthened, extending to Tumblr and beyond. Internet friendships tend to form hard and fast, bypassing relatively superficial concerns like real names and cutting straight to far more personal matters, the kinds of things most people will only tell their closest friends. It seems topsy turvy, but it works. There is something about talking to someone through the internet that, oddly, seems to free you from judgement and social barriers.

Naomi: After these movie nights end-

ed, Pseuds*, one of the attendees, created a discord server – an online chat room of sorts – and invited the rest of us to join. Initially, I had my reservations – I had never heard of discord before and was unsure about its safety; I didn’t know the person who created the server very well as I had not had the chance to talk to them at length during the movie nights. Among them also was a very familiar fear that I just would not fit in. I weighed up the prospects and decided to give the discord server the benefit of the doubt – I messaged Pseuds asking for the link to the chat. Upon joining I found that it was one of the most inclusive and safe environments that I have ever been involved in. It is partly because of Bec that I am studying at ANU now. For most of 2016, I did not have a clear idea of what academic avenues I wanted to pursue. Midway through the year I found that I was drawn by the prospect of studying archaeology. This, combined with

the possibility of meeting up with Bec, prompted me to make the long drive up to Canberra for the ANU’s Open Day in August.

Bec: My experience with the discord

server was much the same. It has become such an important part of my life; it is an incredible reassurance and joy to have these people that I hold so dear just a message away. Nai is a an amazing friend, always ready with encouragement and support. She is part of a circle of people around me who have

pushed me to indulge my creativity and has come to be a sounding board for my ideas. We have both built friendships with some truly delightful people over the internet, and I am constantly in awe of the amazing support networks they provide us with. *These are nicknames derived from screen names and not the individual’s’ real names.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Prompted

Tuning in to the Discovery Channel Stories of Self-Discovery Illustration by Caitlin Setnicar, Photograph by Marwan El Hassan

the fallacy of adulthood

liminal spaces

The Moment I Realised I was Old

Text: Mia Jessurun

Text: Nigarish Haider

Text: Jack Shanahan

For me, turning 18 felt like a long time coming. So much so that by the end of my time as a 17-year-old (better known as the Dancing Queen Era) I was pretty certain that my 18th birthday would be anticlimactic. I had come to realise both that I had already grown up – and also that I, like everyone else, never really would. Or at least not into the cool, calm and collected, totally confident image of adulthood that we so readily aspire to as a society. This discovery evoked memories of the one I had on my sixth birthday, when I realised that growing taller was in fact not an annual occurrence that happened overnight on one’s birthday but rather an ongoing, incremental process. The night before I turned 18 I sat chatting to a friend in my polkadot pyjamas and as the clock ticked over to midnight, I realised once and for all that I wasn’t in for any instant transformation. It wasn’t that my birthday was dull or that the novelty of being able to categorise myself as an ‘adult’ wasn’t exciting, it was just that that’s all it was – a day. A single day could never confer all the social expectations embedded in the notion of ‘adulthood’ upon an individual. And honestly, there’s something reassuring about realising there’s no need to have it all figured out just yet.

While waiting for the train one summer, I had a realisation.

I realise it’s somewhat absurd for a 20-year-old to be writing about how old he is. But what you come to realise whilst at university is that we in fact have two ages: our biological age and our university age. Now, I’m sure I don’t need to explain natural aging to anybody, but I think university aging begs some elaboration. Your university age is purely based on the number of years you’ve undertaken to complete your degree. You may be an objectively young person at the tender age of 25, but if you have been at university for more than five years, then you’re a dinosaur! As a third-year student, I’m certainly not old, but I am starting to get on a little bit. This realisation dawned on me earlier this year when I found myself saying, ‘Back in my first O Week … .’ Basically, I had experienced more than a few O Weeks such that I had to specify which one I was referring to. As the years continue to pile on, and the number of O-weeks under my belt continues to grow, I expect this will only get more unnerving.

It was early evening and the sun had reduced to a pale lemon line in the distance. The horizon had turned a smoky pink and the summer’s dust heralded a rapidly gathering dusk. I could feel the warm breeze in my hair, hear it whispering as it passed through the red gum branches, and when I breathed it in I caught the scent of hot asphalt and sticky jacaranda flowers. I held the warm air in my lungs for a moment as I thought, I like railway stations. I always have. It was as I sat suspended in that jacaranda-coloured moment, that I first understood why. It struck me that the term ‘railway station’ itself is tinged with some lost pleasure one finds in waiting. Essentially, a railway station is a liminal space. ‘Liminal’ comes from the Latin word for ‘threshold’. A liminal space is one of transition; of waiting and not truly knowing. Neither ‘here’ nor ‘there’. A liminal space is one where boundaries dissolve and we are left standing at that ‘threshold’, subconsciously preparing ourselves to move across the limitations of what we were within what we are going to become.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Prompted

letting go of bitterness

no strings attached

Text: Prachi Arya

Text: Vaishnavi Rathinam

For most of my life I was surrounded by people who, by virtue of having tastes and preferences different to mine, thought it their inherent prerogative to judge me against yardsticks determined by them as I went about life on my own terms. On a subconscious level, I myself had granted this culture some degree of legitimacy and often unwittingly looked on others in a similarly harsh light. Thanks to all the hushed whispers and snide sneers that came my way, being cynical of every new person I met was hardwired into me.

At a point during a difficult period with a guy, I realised I loved him unconditionally. He wasn’t the first person I’d exchanged the word with. But, during that period when ‘we’ as a unit were in trouble, I realised that the warmth I felt towards him remained uncompromised. The narrative surrounding romantic relationships often feels like a stream of Game Theory, where caring seems to be synonymous with weakness. This time though, I realised that there was no possibility of me ‘losing’ as such. I loved this person for who he was, not what he could offer. This didn’t necessarily guarantee a future for our partnership. It may have been the glue that kept us together, but it also may well have been the generosity with which we let each other go when time called for it. This was somewhat unnerving. But ultimately, it brought me such peace and contentment, to truly experience something born from a depth beyond my own self-interest.

Fast-forward to February 2017 and I found myself plonked in the capital city of Australia, tens of thousands of miles away from my home country, India. As the first few days wore on, heartening gestures by those who were complete strangers to me took me by surprise. From hauling my luggage on the day of my arrival, to the warm introductions that followed, every single person that I met at the ANU has unknowingly contributed to helping me move beyond my cynical preconceptions. As I ponder this in retrospect, I realise that my negativity was spawned by all the scorn and scoffing that I had been receiving; a rather vicious cycle. As I let the affability sink in, here is what I have learnt – bitterness cannot diminish bitterness. Au contraire, it only adds to the already existing toxicity. It takes hard work to move beyond bitterness and treat other people – particularly those who do not reciprocate – with dignity and compassion. But the freedom that engaging with the world in this way confers on one is most definitely worth it.

The vegan friend an evolution Text: Sumi Venketasubramanian I’m the vegan friend. You know, the one you tag in memes about how you can’t talk to a vegan for five minutes without mentioning that they’re a vegan. Or maybe the one with the broccoli earrings (somebody get those for me please). You might be wondering, how did I come upon veganism and how did I know it was right for me? I was 16, and on a field trip with my high school. We visited a school in a village in China where we were shown a documentary about the environmental consequences of the meat and dairy industry. I was born and raised vegetarian, so I was under the impression that I was doing enough for the earth as it was. But when faced with these facts, I realised that it made little sense for me to support the breeding of cows for milk without eating them! I gave myself an ultimatum: go vegan or start consuming animals. In May 2012 I made the choice to go vegan. It took me until September to actually commit to doing it. It wasn’t easy at first, and I kept falling back for cheese and omelettes, but I persevered. This, friends, is how I went vegan, and it’s been almost five years. Bring on the memes.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Prompted

[re]action

The Road Mistaken

Brianna Muir Rosalind Moran Fear paralyses the sensible like a poison, corrupting bloodstreams as it spreads through veins.

Two roads diverged in a neighbourhood And sorry I could not see a third To bypass alleys, long I stood And peered down one as far as I could Through smoky haze where shadows stirred;

It grips the nervous system sinks in its claws, strangles logic and prompts that knee-jerk reaction.

Then took the other, as just as foul And having perhaps the better claim, For though it was glassy everywhere; And dead rats marred the passing there The two were really about the same,

Patients strike out blindly not thinking where their punches land or of the fallout that follows; shaking hands and broken relationships.

And both that twilight equally lay In concrete glory filled with cracks Oh, who needs a third track anyway? I’m not too good to walk this way, And perfectly able to watch my back.

The only course of treatment is a prescription of knowledge, three times a day. A remedy for gaps in experience. Further doses of action and compassion to be administered as necessary.

I shall be telling this with a smile Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged where I stood, and I— I took this one with dauntless style, And it has made no di—

A broken shovel. Anna Morscheck The man has had enough. For years he has worked under the eyes of the watchful eagles; hands so blistered and calloused they could pass for the mats hot pans were set upon. Sun beating down on his scarred, dark back. Beads of sweat dropping off him as he moved. Long ago he had been human. He had known love and family. It has been trialling for him to be a white man’s tool, to be cheap labour and the lesser man. To be an animal. The overseer’s shotgun was by the door. Loaded. It was a pile of twigs and polished iron, pulled from the earth and crafted into a machine through which the man could extract justice. His aim had never been good but he was quiet. The overseer’s back had a magnetic attraction he knew he couldn’t miss. Nobody would see the first shot. Everyone would see the second.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Prompted

Me, Myself and Africa

Text: Casley Rowan

If home is where the heart is, then I have a home in South Africa. Though born and bred in Melbourne, I have had the special upbringing that comes with being a part of a South African family. More than half of my extended family live in Johannesburg and Cape Town, which has meant that my family holiday planning conversations usually end with ‘or we could just go to South Africa.’ I’m torn every time I start to recommend it as a holiday destination. On the one hand I cannot recommend it enough. Head away from Joburg to Africa’s most southern city of Cape Town and the country’s brilliance shines as brightly as the diamonds it is famous for. The unique environment that results from majestic mountains meeting both the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean is breathtaking. The coastal hubs are at the same time quaint yet buzzing with the vibrant and undeniable energy that South Africans hold in their blood. Forget the Bondi Icebergs, Cape Town offers ocean swimming pools around every corner of the winding cliff face roads that outline the city. The wine lands of the Western Cape are so green and luscious that you can easily forget you are supposed to be surrounded by dryness and dust. You can sit atop Table Mountain at twilight and watch that omnipresent African sun fade away after lighting the whole city on fire. Away from the cities you have what is the most quintessential part of South Africa, the plains. I can’t count how many days of my life I have spent driving around the Kruger National Park with my eyes peeled for a lion or leopard. Johannesburg as a city is not all that enthralling. Yet, driving past the mine

dumps – huge mounds of white gold sand leftover from the gold reef on the fringe of Johannesburg – my Mum tells me that she sees a beauty in them that others cannot. She says that her Africa has never left her and that the gold dust that blows off them runs in the veins of everyone she loves and remembers. From the sound of the ‘smoke that thunders’ from the Zambezi river, to the roar of the lion, the beat of the drum and the singing of Zulu warriors, to finally the meeting of the two oceans that smash together at the tip of the continent; these sounds make up the mixtape of my childhood journeys. On the other hand, Johannesburg is the kind of place where you lock your car doors as soon as you get in, you avoid stopping too long at stop signs or traffic lights (or ‘robots’, as South Africans call them). In all of my happy memories in this country, I can’t forget to mention that my various family members live in gated communities. You have to be let in by a security guard, have a beeper to get into your driveway, and have iron bars over not only your windows, but the bottom of your staircase and over your bedroom doors as well. When I’m there, my sense of comfort is often undermined by a paranoia that follows around South Africans every day. South Africa’s troubled past and resultantly, its uneasy present and uncertain future, has played a large part in my own self-discovery. As this country fights to define itself and determine its future, I have learnt from it all of my most important life lessons. I have grown up with this country by my side and as such it has taken on a unique personality to me. Like any person, it is multifaceted – Mother Africa has her good days and her bad, her anger and her happiness. The people that make up her fabric have fought and pulled and torn her apart,

and also work tirelessly to re-sew her and weave in a new and delicate pattern. Today, racial conflict is hardly eradicated and of course, I can offer no solution or even real comments on the political issues it faces, the violence that occurs daily, and whether or not there will be a time in the future that I can visit and not hold onto a whole lot of fear. Being a member of a white South African family comes with moral conundrums stemming from a feeling of colonial guilt. The problems in this country, like in any colonised state, come from a question about who can rightfully call South Africa their home. In my opinion, South Africa and a deep connection to family and community go hand in hand, so goes the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. Nelson Mandela was affectionately called Tata – translating to Father in Xhosa. My own family and my own South Africa are unbreakably bound and it is that kind of connection that lets me call a bit of Africa home. Family teaches you things, arguably they teach you the most important things that you can learn, shaping the way that you come to discover the world and ultimately the way that you discover yourself. When I come back to Australia, I feel physical pain at being removed from the warm and loving arms of my South Africa, and it takes me nights of tears to feel whole enough to get on with my life again. My parents have never turned me away from the history that has formed the country. They have shared their upbringing with me, their disappointments about the way things were then and their disappointments about the way things are now. We can all feel sadness about the crumbling of a place that holds within it something so special and unique. They have encouraged me to learn about its past, think deeply about it, and take

the messages of tolerance, justice and equality with me every day. One of my parents most prized possessions is a painting done by African artist Boye Molefe. My parents were struck by this painting, so different from all the others that depicted your typical African animals, sunsets and scenery. This painting was based on a polaroid picture of twelve men working on the railroads. My Dad said when he saw it, ‘I can hear them singing.’ Today it hangs with pride of place in our lounge, alongside every other piece of Africa we have brought back here. During my last visit just three weeks ago, my cousin got married on a farm in a rural African town 3 hours from Cape Town. She danced her wedding dance not to the Waltz, but to a Zulu song whose lyrics sang ‘open the gates, my baby boy is getting married today.’ She walked down the aisle not to the Wedding March, but to Mumford and Sons ‘There Will Be Time’, part of their Johannesburg EP, featuring Sengalese artist Baaba Maal. Never have I felt more at peace in South Africa than standing there in the middle of the wide, open, emptiness of the country under the boiling 40-degree sun, surrounded by people who have committed to loving the country forever. Maal sings in his language; ‘Listen to me, I want to tell you something, the reason I love you is because, you are the only one who has taught me to how to love and appreciate life. To feel hurt and feel joy, feelings that come from loving you, situations can change between the morning and the night, but our love for each other stays the same, it stays strong, it is constant and it remains true.’ And, if that doesn’t sum up every South African’s relationship with their home then I don’t know what does.

Issue Issue12, 4, Vol. Vol. 67 66

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Spoons Pull Out Special thanks to Liv Ireland for her work as guest sub-editor for this pull out. Thanks also to Aji Sana, ANUSA Disabilities Officer. Design by Katie Ward.

Content Warning: Violent Ableism, Sexism, Rape

Better O f f Dead Than Disabled Ableism Through The Ages Text: Shae Maree Nicholson The history of Disability discrimination is a long one and can be dated back centuries. If words were ever able to quantify every singular moment of discrimination, the pages they could fill would take the world’s forests to print. I could begin to tell how Aristotle posited that Disabled people had no place within society, how Plato took these thoughts and essentially encouraged the total eradication of Disabled people – otherwise known as ‘undesirables’. How parents would often abandon or murder their children if they were seen as Disabled in any way. How women who were the mothers of these individuals were also persecuted, as they themselves were seen as undesirable by virtue of having a child with a Disability. How this way of thinking seeped its way through history, leading even to the Salem Witch Trials – where many of those persecuted were done so because of their Disability. But, simply, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting learning about and writing about how the community of people that I myself so strongly identify with have

been routinely executed for the crime of existence. It’s more exhausting hearing that not much has changed. In 2016, 19 Disabled people in Japan were murdered in a single massacre. This was not discussed widely because many people didn’t want to admit that it happened; rather than a hate crime this act was labelled as a mercy killing. Ableism is so embedded into everyday ways of thinking that we just don’t notice it anymore, or sometimes even know how to identify it. Historically, within our ableist society, Disabled women experience discrimination at the highest volume. We are more likely to be raped, assaulted, paid less, castrated, and used as validation mechanisms for men. As a woman with a Disability I am expected to be one of two things: inspirational or pitiful. I don’t get a say in how the world chooses to see me. A Disabled person is often defined by their relationship to another: people feel ‘sorry’ for the parents of the Disabled child, they see the husband/boyfriend/prom date of a Disabled woman to be a ‘hero’, and even some of the most prominent Disabled people in history – such as Helen Keller – have been defined by their caregiver. Many Disabled people often don’t realise that they can advocate for themselves because that role has been taken on by someone else, sometimes without the full permission of the Disabled individual themselves. Others often approach the Disability movement as an ally, which is great to witness, but the louder and often misinformed voice of the ally can begin to drown out the voice of the community. Too many times have I had my identity policed by someone telling me

that I’m not a ‘Disabled person’ but a ‘person with a Disability’. The other allies applaud but they fail to recognise that I identify as a Disabled person because, for me, my identity is linked to all of me. But all too often Disability activism and advocacy is without recognition or consultation of the Disabled community, and that in itself is a form of ableism. Self-advocacy is not a simple process. Just like women, Disabled people have had to fight for the right to firstly be seen as people. To identify as Disabled is considered synonymous with identifying as having something wrong with yourself. Ableism sees an amputee as a person who is incomplete, and an intellectually Disabled person as the product of a mistake. The word ‘Disabled’ in and of itself is ableist, as it denies ability. I am Disabled but that does not mean that I am unable. I am capable. However, Disability just means that I have to approach something differently; the delicious cookie dough of who I am flows out of the cookie cutter shape. This does not mean that I don’t find things hard – sometimes things are too much, and sometimes I am pressured to be more than what I have to give. After I have fought for my autonomy, I have to work twice as hard to produce work that is at the same level of anyone else. Then, like any minority, I am somehow expected to prove that I am worthy of any position I am in. A woman in a workplace is expected to produce work that is above their male counterparts in order to prove they are worthy of employment. Society views minorities as having been given a ‘chance’ when they have simply been given an equal opportunity. Disabled women have to fight even harder, we have to first prove that

we are just as good as our female counterparts, then we have to prove we are just as good as our male counterparts. And that’s if we’re allowed a job in the first place. Many Disabled people are put in the situation where they have to decide whether or not they disclose their Disability or further details of their Disability, with fear of what will happen if they do. This experience is not limited to the workplace, I’ve encountered it in almost every aspect of my life, from school to tinder. Do I tell a potential employer that sometimes my body aches so much that I can’t speak or stand? Do I tell a prospective partner that I have a personality disorder? Will they want to know me? Do I deserve to be known? Yes, I do. I am just as worthy as anyone else and I shouldn’t have to remind myself of that. I shouldn’t have to adapt to self-advocacy to declare my humanity, I should already be accounted for. But that doesn‘t remove the value of the act, or the effect that my self-advocacy has had on my quality of life and the lives of people around me. My wish is that the system was better, that it was clearer to navigate, that the self-advocacy that I embody was supported by the services I need. That’s why I fight for change, why I call myself a Disabled feminist, and why I involve myself in activism. My exhaustion comes only with the realisation that my community’s history is buried under the ableism that is considered normal. So I will be loud, I will get angry, I will build an accessible ramp through the glass ceiling. I strive for change which will honour the history of those who have come before me – as it enables those who come after me.

Week Semester1,2,2017 2016 Week10, 7, Semester

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Illustration: Naomi Appleton

Naomi Appleton is a third-year Bachelor of Arts student – an old-soul who likes dogs, quiet, sewing and home-made carrot cake. She lives the ‘spoonie life’, having a range of invisible and chronic medical issues. This is her first delve into expressing a spoonie’s everyday difficulties through drawing.

A Spoonful of Sugar Text: Steph Kerr Steph Kerr is a third year international relations/law student at the ANU - hailing from Sydney, she does not miss lock out laws but misses her black Labrador e.

‘Did you eat a lot of sugar as a child?’ One of the most consistent things in my life is being asked that question; more consistent than my energy levels, more consistent than my moods, and certainly more consistent than my blood sugar. And whilst I, along with all the other kids, ate tiny teddies and roll-ups at school, that is not the reason I became sick. Unlike type-2 diabetes, which at the risk of over-simplification) can actually be caused by poor diet, type-1 diabetes it is an autoimmune disease that just develops within your body. Your immune system, for no reason – or perhaps more accurately reasons still unknown – destroys the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, which is needed to convert glucose into energy. When I was diagnosed at 10 years old, I was told over and over again that diabetes was a ‘manageable condition’. Back then it may have been. I had unwavering parental support and oversight, a regular school routine, and a kind of naivety that – even though I was told explicitly otherwise – if I just kept on doing everything

I was told for a while, it would eventually all subside and return to normal.

snaked through my thoughts and dictated how I managed my condition.

diabetes, subsequently worsening its effects, leading to fatigue and frustration, and

Of course it did not. Diabetes did, however, become a regular, quotidian aspect of my life: the new normal. This was what the doctors had all emphasised to me – the illness was supposed to just be managed in the background, and eventually I would barely notice it was there. As I became an adolescent, an issue arose, emerging from my intense concentration on being the same as every other teenager; I moved from being complacent with my management, to almost within a state of denial. The reasons behind my increasing mismanagement were essentially twofold: I was experiencing what has been described as ‘burnout’, due to the relentless and sometimes unpredictable nature of diabetes, as well as becoming resentful and embarrassed about the illness. I stopped testing my glucose levels; I hardly wore my insulin pump – my illness, for a variety of reasons, became a secret burden that carried with it unwarranted amounts of shame and guilt. It was mostly internalised. People had generally never said anything towards diabetes that merited the painstaking attempts I went to in order to conceal it. In fact, no one really seemed to think twice about it. However it was the small things – overhearing a conversation about how ‘gross’ it was to have to prick your fingers for blood, or the few uncomfortable reactions I would receive when telling someone I was a diabetic – that insidiously

From 10 years old I was taught to count carbohydrates, how to decrease insulin levels if I exercised or increase them if I had the flu, but I was never really taught how being a diabetic would essentially govern my energy levels and my mental health. Those that know me personally would know I can almost never get through the day without sleeping – I constantly feel fatigued, even after having slept for 10 or so hours at night. I have learned to be selective and realistic about the things I am able to achieve in a day – going to all my classes, studying, and doing some form of exercise may be ambitious on some days. Learning about ‘spoons theory’ – constructed by Christine Miserandino – has really helped me understand this process and feel less frustrated and guilty that I often just cannot seem to keep up with my peers.

inevitably coming back to mental health again. The impact is a self-perpetuating cycle that can be incredibly challenging to break out of – especially when, as a university student, you are so preoccupied with assessments and maintaining some spectre of a social life that you may not realise how much you are struggling.

The correlation between diabetes and mental health is incredibly strong; being a type-1 diabetic more than doubles your risk of depression, and the risk of developing anxiety is also far higher. The consistent preoccupation with carbohydrate intake, categorisation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods, and a sense of a lack of control over your health also nurtures an unhealthy relationship with food that provides the foundations for disordered eating all too easily. Poor mental health will impact your ability to manage

What really helps is when the people around you acknowledge sometimes additional help and support is necessary – it isn’t about gaining an advantage, but attempting to level the playing field. wareness about managing type-1 diabetes – beyond just having to ‘eat some sugar’ – is paramount to shifting misconceptions about the condition and hopefully leading to internal acceptance for the people living with it. It can be tiring to have to constantly explain how the illness works and the severity of its implications. Some of the responsibility should be shifted onto others, so they can seek as a community to understand the illness of those around them, and offer support and reassurance. Diabetes is not, and never will be, the worst illness out there. Yet it is debilitating and vastly misunderstood. A cure may or may not come about in my lifetime – but in the meantime, a greater appreciation of what it takes to live with diabetes might make managing it a little bit sweeter.

Issue Issue12, 4, Vol. Vol. 67 66

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Deeper Than My Skin Text: Miriam Sadler Illustration: Sam Green

Sam Green is a 21-year-old non-binary person. They have a number of disabilities, 28 housemates, and 2 small angry birds. They have studied archaeology, ancient history, and library studies, and have high hopes of studying art curatorship in the future. Sam spends their time creating visual art and working more than they should in a shop. You can follow their art blog on Instagram at @illaddanamelater.

Miriam Sadler is a second year International Relations and Arabic student. When not memorising her verb tables, she enjoys British TV, eating bagels and the never-ending quest for the perfect hand cream. I’ve always been obsessed by skin. Obsessed by the lengths we go to preserve it and smooth it. The skin is fle ible one minute, taut the next. The skin is the largest organ of the body, fighting pathogens, cuts and bruises. The skin is your first defender, your protector. I’ve always been obsessed by my own skin. I could stare at every imperfection for hours. Skin disease does that to you; my mum always told me it would clear up if I just stopped looking at it. I find it mesmerising; my skin is my story. Other people have always been obsessed by my skin. Among them, the boy in grade seven who wouldn’t let me touch our project without a medical glove, the doctor who told me my skin was ‘actually pretty gross’, the customer who asked if it was ‘hygienic’ for me to be

serving food. Skin conditions are by no means invisible and in fact, visibility is a crucial problem in the dialogue on skin. What makes people seem so cruel in their response is the mechanical recoil. People are always staring. They look disgusted and expect explanations. Although variations on the ubiquitous ‘what’s wrong with your skin?’ are always welcome, the constant offering of cures can be ust as harmful. I have had a teacher hand me a disintegrated wrapper from a ‘seaweed soap’ that she swore would solve all my problems, humiliating me in front of my class. And perhaps the worst, ‘my brother had eczema when he was younger and he grew right out of it.’ This comment infantilises skin conditions into some kind of childhood ‘phase’. Whilst I’m over the time in my life spent listening to Nirvana, I’m fairly sure eczema and psoriasis are here to stay. Perhaps counter-intuitively, skin conditions and invisible illness go hand in hand. The

skin is a canvas for what’s going on inside and nowhere is that more telling than with the skin. I have psoriasis and eczema; but I also have fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel and mental health issues. y pain affects my skin and vice versa. At the moment, I have eczema on my eyelids which lets me know I’m tired. I just lost someone and my psoriasis flare is my body reminding me that my nonchalance is just an act. My skin is the only way of telling the outside world that I’m suffering. Too often, however, people can’t see that this requires holistic consideration. Doctors throw steroids and medication at me. These same doctors are sceptical that fibromyalgia even exists or that I’m ‘old enough’ to have carpal tunnel, let alone that there can be any link between chronic illness and skin conditions. We need to change the way we talk about skin. What these doctors should say is ‘your skin tells me you’re in pain, what can we do for that?’ People with skin conditions are working tirelessly. They have

heard of every treatment and tried every miracle diet. For all these people, there isn’t necessarily a cure and there is definitely not going to be that day where they wake up and have magically grown out of it. Often, they are dealing with something chronic internally; maybe their joints are stiff or their nerve endings on fire. They don’t have to tell you what’s going on with their skin. They don’t owe you any explanation as to why they need mobility assistance one day and not the next. And if they do want to tell you, listen. The most relieving thing for me to hear is ‘how are you going?’ rather than ‘that looks sore’. It is sore – let me tell you about it on my own terms. Recognise there’s a battle going on inside; whilst all you can see is something inflamed or maybe nothing at all, you are looking at some of the bravest people you will ever meet.

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On Being Good Enough

harder. I thought that being ‘good enough’ (read: perfect) was within reach, that it was just a matter of trying a little harder, staying in the o ce a little longer, and sleeping a little less.

Text: Tom Kesina

I made no allowances for the fact I had ongoing anxiety and depression. While telling myself that I’d come to terms with my disability, I didn’t alter my expectations to even slightly realistic levels. I felt that not being ‘good enough’ was admitting that I was lesser. I thought that doing less meant being less. I was worried that when I failed, other people would look at me the same way I viewed myself. Somewhat ironically, that fear of failing to live up to my impossible standards had a paralysing effect on my ability to work at all. I recall many moments when I tried to start working, remembered how far behind I was, felt I couldn’t catch up, and stopped. I thought that if I couldn’t be ‘good enough’, why bother at all. Inevitably I fell more and more behind, the cycle repeated itself, and I felt worse.

I used to think I wasn’t a perfectionist. ‘But I don’t want to be perfect at all’, I’d say. On the surface, I thought in terms of ‘just not good enough’ and ‘should have done better’. What I couldn’t see was that for me, those two things meant the same thing as ‘I’m not perfect’. Those who know me know that I’m a bit of a #involved person. I’ve been at ANU for four years; in ANUSA for three of those, as well as involved with clubs, initiatives and volunteering. I’ve got a lot to be proud of, but I’ve always felt an undercurrent of inadequacy and incompetence in comparison to those around me. It really kicked off in my first year, when a lifetime of selfdoubt combined with emerging depression and anxiety. For the longest time I tried to deny that anything was wrong, but my health worsened in my second semester. Coming to ANU I had fairly unreasonable standards and expectations of my healthier self. As my health deteriorated, my academic performance did as well, but my expectations stayed the same. In an

environment where everyone is amazing, it was hard not to compare myself to others. I honestly hated myself and my brain for not being able to do what it couldn’t. In my mind, I didn’t need or deserve help, I just needed to do ‘better’. Eventually I got some help, joined the ANUSA Disabilities Department, and met some great people. For a time, I thought I was well on my way to dealing with everything. In my third year, I became the isabilities cer. It was my job to advocate for students with disability, help them access services, and increase acceptance of disability in the wider community. Although I was good at my job, feelings of inadequacy quickly began to rear their head again. And when I inevitably made mistakes, I was uncompromisingly harsh on myself. I did this while I was telling other students to be kind to themselves, and to do the best they could. In my mind, self compassion was for other, better people. When I fell behind with emails or a project, I felt the need to push myself

Content Warning: Eating Disorders

Moving Away Text: Anonymous Everyone who moves away from home has a reason behind it. Whether it be for adventure, to escape, for a change, or because you are running away or to something. Moving to Canberra was exciting, challenging, and ultimately, the best experience of my life so far. However, it has affected me in ways I did not think it would. When I moved away I thought I would leave all my troubles behind, like they were somehow glued to that place and this was a new stage of my life where they would no longer exist. Yet what I discovered is they didn’t go away, but became more a part of me than ever. I couldn’t leave my problems with a person, or a place or a moment in my life. The important things came

with me – both the good and the bad – but ultimately, this helped me I realise who I am. When it’s just you, on your own, the things that matter won’t disappear despite how much we may want them to. Thinking now, I was so naïve to believe that the eating disorder that had haunted my life for the past two years would magically vanish when I moved to college. I honestly thought that my problem lied with everything in 2016. I blamed it on the stress of school, my parents’ constant nagging, and the hospital system that caused anxiety over every new appointment. I blamed my unfortunately high metabolic rate which has always kept me overly lean.

A Counselling Centre workshop on perfectionism, and chats with my psychologist at Headspace allowed me to start recognising the patterns of thinking that formed my perfectionism. I remember the first time my psych more or less asked me if I thought I was a perfectionist. I was adamant that I wasn’t, ‘I’m

Together I could see the solution was so simple; leave and it will leave too. My body though, was not prepared to take on such a transition. Everyone’s eating disorders are different and everyone has a different story and challenge. For me, I had never starved myself, but due to my high levels of activity and the nature of my busy lifestyle, my body had at times become unable to cope. This lead to a number of hospital admissions based off the medical instability of my heart rate and blood pressure. When I moved to Canberra, I was in denial about a problem I had because I believed it was a part of me but was somehow created by the external factors acting on me at home. Yet I soon discovered when I was left alone, the problem did not vanish and I didn’t have anyone to blame. It became my problem for the first time and it was that which honestly started to scare me. oving away is different for everyone. For me, the initial excitement of being on my own wore off as I looked down to see

not perfect at all’, I said. She smiled, and I heard myself for what I felt like the first time. I realised that I couldn’t think in terms of ‘I did the best I could’ – it simply wasn’t in my mental vocabulary. All I could think was, ‘I should have done better’, and there wasn’t an area of my life that wasn’t infected by that thinking, no matter whether social or academic. What I came to realise was that perfectionism doesn’t allow for nuance. You’re either perfect and doing amazing, or you’re a failure. Of course, because that’s always coupled with unreasonable standards and expectations, you tend to find yourself in the latter category. It took a long time before I was able to start to undo the damage, and it’s an ongoing fight. This year, after a lifetime of should-have thinking, I’m trying be more compassionate to myself. Instead of thinking about what I ought to be doing, I’ve been thinking about what I can do, and valuing that. I’ve still got anxiety and depression, and I’m not sure that’s something that is going away. But that’s okay, I’m doing the best I can. And that’s actually ‘good enough’.

my body fading away. I was crying constantly, feeling lost and bereft of the desire to continue building social relationships. It was taking away everything good about moving and being independent and turning it into something negative. It was at this point I realised I couldn’t continue to let myself slip backwards and something needed to be done. Alone, with nobody else to blame, I looked at myself honestly and thought: You are a mess. It is time to change. I think we all learn who we are when we move out of home. The identity we take away and the things we leave behind shows who we truly are. What we miss and what we don’t, tells us so much about ourselves. Don’t get too worried if you feel lost, it’s all in the ourney of finding ourselves. And sometimes who we are, is the hardest thing to accept.

Issue Issue12, 4, Vol. Vol. 67 66

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Illustrations: Naomi Appleton

How Can I Help My Friend With Mental Illness? Text: Anonymous I’ve had a lot of people in my life who have wanted to help me in my struggles with mental illness, but haven’t known how. I’ve noticed that because of not knowing how to help, they often don’t try to help. I have had friends who have pretended that my illness doesn’t exist or have disregarded it as they see it as too hard to address. There are a few things simple things you can do for a friend with mental illness, even if you find it intimidating. lease be aware, however, that this is based entirely on experience and thus not an extensive or authoritative list.

1. Ask them I think the best thing to do first is to ask your friend: ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ This seems so straightforward, yet I’ve found a lot of my friends have really struggled with it. veryone is different, and while this list offers a range of ideas, some may be inappropriate to use in particular contexts – you need to know what your friend needs. They might tell you exactly what you can do to help, or they might have absolutely no

idea. They might be enthusiastic about you wanting to help, or they may want to do things on their own or with minimal support. However they respond, respect that decision. And if they have no idea – I didn’t when I was first asked this – that doesn’t mean there’s no way for you to help them. In fact, there’s plenty you can do.

2. Talk to them about it Don’t avoid the issue. Directly ask them about their mental health. Ask them how their treatment is going and what they think about it – whether that treatment be medications, therapy, or something else. Directly ask them if they feel suicidal, and if so, if they have made any plans. Do not shy away from asking these questions – it is without a doubt the most helpful thing my friends do for me. Not only do people know when I am not safe and they can ensure I get help, I don’t feel alone in my struggles when my friends directly ask me about them. I know they care. You may be hesitant to ask about suicide because you

might not know what to do if you find that they do have plans. It’s not, however, up to you to take on this situation alone. Encourage your friend to seek help. Depending on the immanency of the situation, this might mean calling the Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team (1800 629 354), calling Lifeline (13 11 14), or supporting them to arrange to see a health professional. If your friend is in immediate danger, call the police on 000. For the most part, all you have to do after you ask about their health is listen. Just listen. It helps a lot when I can just talk out my struggles, to have a friend that doesn’t give advice but listens and asks about my experiences with genuine interest. Being told ‘you just need to stop thinking that way’, ‘snap out of it’, or ‘everyone goes through this’ is demeaning to my experience and often makes me feel worse; it is likely your friend feels the same.

3. Reassure them For me, as I have internalised so much of it, the stigma of mental illness feels like half the battle. It can feel like it’s my

fault I’m not getting better, or that I’m just immature, weak and dramatic. You can help by fighting the stigma. hen your friend confides in you, tell them they are doing so well and you’re proud of them. Tell them you admire them. Tell them you love hanging out with them and love being their friend. Tell them it’s okay if they’re sick, and they should take care of themselves just as they would if their illness was physical. Most of all, tell them you love them. It is incredibly reassuring to know that someone cares about me when I’m trapped in misery and anxiety.

4. Don’t expect things to change It is likely that you want to help your friend so that they can get better. Sometimes, however, people live with mental illness for their whole life. Or they might take years to make slight improvements. You need to accept this and love them right where they are. Friends have tried to help by saying that things will get better. While well-intentioned, comments like this make me feel like I’m under enormous pressure to constantly be improving.

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Fighting mental illness is exhausting, and sometimes your friend might not even want to fight it. That’s okay. espect that there are different ways to approach mental illness, and improvement may not look the way you expect it to.

5. Keep in contact Unfortunately, I lost many friends in the years my mental health worsened. My illness held me back from staying in touch with them as I was convinced they were better off without me. It was only the friends that constantly took initiative to keep in touch with me that could help me. Ideally, you should never have to try and maintain a friendship with someone who doesn’t reciprocate, but we don’t live in an ideal world. If you know that your friend’s illness may be keeping them from reciprocating as a friend normally would, don’t blame them. It may be tiring, but if you want to show you care about them – reach out. It’s a meaningful thing to keep hanging out with them, keep sending them messages, keep

talking with them about what they’re going through.

6. Be with them through tough times While mental illness sucks all the time, there are times that are worse than others. For instance, if you know your friend is changing their medication, it is likely there will be a period of a few days where things will be very tough. Ask them how you can help, and be physically with them if you can. Another such time is if your friend is admitted to hospital. First, ask if you can visit. If they accept, visit them often. What seems like two days to you can feel like a week to them. I was lucky enough to have my best friend and parents visit me every day, and another friend visited every three days or so. I don’t know how I would have survived that experience

without their support.

there to help and support them, not to be their knight in shining armour. Remember that as long as you show your friend 7. Look you love them and you’re there after yourself for them through the thick and thin, you’re being a big help to Please don’t dismiss this one. them. You need to look after yourself and make sure you are okay in If you or a friend need any suporder to help your friend. Make port relating to issues raised in sure you get enough time alone this article please contact: for yourself. Make sure you Lifeline - 13 11 14 have a support network of peo- Beyondblue - (02) 6287 8066 ple you can talk to when you feel overwhelmed or weighed down by your friend’s troubles. If you struggle with mental health, make sure you don’t over-stretch yourself. Avoid any topics that trigger you or make your condition worse. And communicate with your friend about this – let them know how you are feeling. It may be uncomfortable, but if your friend cares about you and your wellbeing, they will understand. There are many ways to support a friend with mental illness. Some of these suggestions are harder than others, but if you want to help, it’s worth the effort. It’s important, however, not to fall into thinking that you can save your friend. You’re

The Art of the Art Documentary Text: Phoebe Hamra

Most art is meant to stand alone, without explanation. It is for the audience to decide on its meaning and value. Art is supposed to be a subjective and highly personal experience. But whenever we look at art, although we can make our own interpretations, we often begin to wonder about the world behind the art – the artists’ intentions, where and when the work was created. Documentaries about art and artists provide that link between artist and audience. The art of a good documentary is to inform the viewer, while leaving a little room for individual understanding. New York based contemporary Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang, is well known for his explosive artwork. His firework installations and gunpowder performance art are of course temporary. So unless you’re lucky enough to watch these displays live, the only way we can experience the works are from behind a screen. The documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang preserves Cai

Guo-Qiang’s work digitally and makes it accessible internationally. The documentary adds more value to simple videos of the work, explaining the context of the works and recreating the place of site specific installations and performance art. I am Sun Mu, a documentary following the life of Sun Mu, a North Korean defector, provides a unique insight Sun’s story – from escaping North Korea to his first international exhibition in China. The artwork featured the documentary uses playful parody of communist propaganda style art to portray the artist’s experiences growing up in North Korea. Unfortunately, on the opening day of the exhibition in Beijing (at a gallery close to the North Korean Embassy), Chinese officials shut the exhibition down and confiscated the artwork. The documentary of this story and the included images of the artwork means that Sun’s art and ideas and experiences are not forgotten but are shared on a global platform. Netflix has also released a beautiful series called Abstract: The Art of Design featuring boundary-pushing designers

from many different industries. Designers are not often as well known as their designs but the story of Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s powerhouse behind the Jordan range – and the self lacing shoe – will give you a new appreciation for the history of the sneaker. Es Devlin has created stage designs for some ground-breaking and notoriously challenging theatre productions and worked with iconic artists including Kanye West and Jay Z, Beyonce, Adele and U2. Interviews with her and her colleagues provide an unlikely insight into collaborations with artists and directors and the types of messages staging can send. It’s easy not to question the functionality of design but this documentary series steeped in history challenges us to think about the other end of consumption in such a visually beautiful and authentic way that no two minute How it’s Made video, magazine feature or biographical book could. Iris is the documentary offering a glimpse into the life of now 95-year-old interior designer and fashion icon Iris Apfel. Using iconic items from her vast collection, the Met’s Costume Institute

curated the exhibition Rara Avis (Rare Bird): The Irreverent Iris Apfel about Apfel’s style an exhibition that few of us at 16,000 kilometres away will get to experience. The documentary is homage to a living icon who famously flaunted fashion standards and norms to dress only for herself, a unique insight we are rarely privy to. The film encapsulates the elegance and outrageous glamour that Apfel has commanded well into her nineties. Think Baddiewinkle, but with class. The function of a documentary can be as broad as the subject matter it can encompass. Although art should not be viewed exclusively through the lens of a documentarist, or even the artist themselves, art does not exist in a vacuum and art documentaries provide permanence and context to artworks. Art documentaries cement legacies, preserve stories and artworks, expand the reach of exhibitions and provide vital insight into artists’ messages and intentions.

Culture // arts

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Behind the Magic Text: Julia Faragher Photography: Dillon Vibes

Everyone who has ever stepped foot inside a theatre knows that it is made of magic. There’s something about seeing a story unfold right in front of your eyes that makes it so much more special than anything else. The theatre is a place where stories are brought to life by people brave enough to stand on a stage, construct new worlds and remind the audience of dreams they’d forgotten they had. The lives of such people are plastered across magazines and websites so that others may step into their shoes and find out what it’s like to have such a career. But there is an entire second group of people whose lives are kept a little more secret and a little more undiscovered: those hiding behind the scenes. If they’ve done their job properly, a lot of the time you wouldn’t notice that these people had been there at all. If the costumes fit well and the set stays up, you may be so spellbound by the cast that you don’t give much thought to the rest of it. After all, you don’t see the production team building and painting the set into the small hours of the morning during bump in. You don’t see the

calendars full of rehearsal schedules, the charts of blocking, the lighting tracks, the sound effects list or the carefully arranged props table. You don’t see the director’s breakdown because the tech run went so badly or the marketer’s six poster drafts before they even get to the final version. From the audience, the stage is supposed to look effortlessly constructed, as if that’s exactly how the world has always been. In this way the theatre is wearing its own mask, hiding all these people and processes. In my own time in the theatre, I’ve been both on the stage and behind it. I started out as an actor, because I thought that was the only way to put yourself out there. I wanted to be brave and I thought standing directly beneath a spotlight was the only way to do it. And I definitely did get on that stage – I played a whole series of roles unlike myself, including a pregnant woman, a cancer survivor and a dancing napkin in an elaborate Be Our Guest number. But I soon realised that acting wasn’t the only way to do that. Putting your ideas out on a stage is much more terrifying. I may have felt nervous wearing that fake pregnant belly, but that was nothing compared to how I felt standing side-stage of a production that I was responsible for blocking, from start to finish.

I realised that I was still up there on that stage. Instead of putting my body and voice on the line, it was my ideas. Everything that made the play tick had come from me. I had breathed life into the characters through nights spent pouring over the script, finding their intentions and figuring out how to bring them out in other people. That’s what I find so magical about directing – instead of getting to become or see part of another world just for a little while, I get to create

it. I get to be that invisible voice behind the stage, pulling all the little strings. I get to craft another universe entirely out of my thoughts and see what this world thinks of it.

(Actually) Looking at Art Text: Jasper Lindell

It only took a quarter of an hour for them to start questioning everything. They declared that their heads had started to hurt, brows were visibly furrowed – they scraped their fingers on their scalps looking for answers. No longer was anything certain. It took precisely the same amount of time for me to know that we had embarked on a highly successful trip to the gallery. Art is contentious. It’s hard to say quite what it is. Most people know what they like and most are quick to pass judgement on what they instinctively deem as trash. And what is most often deemed as trash? Modern art. Relationships have been known to falter as the brave ignoramus of the pair stands in something modernist – something that isn’t just a pretty picture of a landscape or some vaguely attractive people – and boldly declares: I could paint that at home. Luckily, the young couple with me at the gallery would face no such fate – I was there to steer them in the right direction.

Galleries can be intimidating. All those white walls and couples in their sixties with greying hair looking ponderously at seemingly unintelligible messes of paint and colour. They nod and mutter to themselves about the ‘clarity of vision’ and move to the next picture, which you are certain is trying to say something but you have no idea what. And this is why the young couple asked me to take them around the National Gallery. ‘Because you’re not interested in all that usual art bullshit.’ So they followed me tentatively, three steps behind, as I darted about, painting to painting, making utterly outrageous statements about their merit, worth, meaning and value. Soon enough – after an entree of Hockney, Rothko, Warhol, Krasner, Kandinsky, Duchamp and Dali – we came face to face with the main event: Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles. ‘But what is it a painting of?’ I was asked. ‘What isn’t it a painting of?’ I declared in a voice noticeably too loud for a gallery, where an artificial hush belies the passion hanging on the walls. ‘It’s life, and feeling, and raw emotion, and colour, and uncertainty, a dash of

randomness – maybe of hope and optimism and despair too. Just don’t think about how much it’s worth – that’s when it dies as art.’ It’s easy to forget, looking at a preserved canvas hanging in a gallery, that a life shaped it; no paint goes near canvas without emotion and no emotion happens without people. Why make art if you feel totally content in life? Which is why, if you leave an art gallery feeling totally content with life, you haven’t actually opened your eyes. The mistake too often made by people stepping into a gallery for the first time of their own choosing, without any obligation from school or family, is they head in expecting answers, some grand meaning. They look for the key that’s going to unlock the artist’s intention and they forget to feel anything. We are taught to judge art before we get the chance to look at it. Some things are masterpieces, other things are rash, there’s some stuff in the middle, and then there are so-called ‘great works’ we just don’t get.

It is perfectly OK if you see something renowned – the Mona Lisa, say – and it does absolutely nothing for you. Don’t be tricked into appreciating it because you are told it is a ‘masterpiece’. An enigmatic smile on a mysterious woman who happens to be rendered in paint with lifelike brilliance from yonks ago doesn’t do it for you? Good, that’s a sign you’re actually looking for yourself. So, go to the gallery, ignore the usual gallery-going crowd and open your eyes. See what you feel and question everything. There is no hidden meaning that you’re missing. As we staggered back out into the warm afternoon, my gallery-going companions for the day were still nursing their very sore heads. One said, ‘I don’t think I know what art is anymore.’ Excellent, I thought. It meant that had actually looked at some art for a change.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Culture // reviews

Our Finest Diplomats: Client Liaison at Academy Text: Ruben Seaton

It’s hard to know where to start when describing Melbourne-borne Client Liaison. Would you begin with their aesthetic, pulled straight from a bad fashion magazine in the 1980s? Or, perhaps, with their infectious brand of funk-laden synthpop, spilling at the seams with seductive energy? And how can you describe their debut album, Diplomatic Immunity, other than as a socio-political satire of Australian culture and music? The band’s concert at Academy Club answered these questions and more. It was strange to see the Bunda Street nightclub relinquishing some of the overly commercialised seediness that attracts to a certain Thursday night crowd. As a matter of fact, the three jumbo-sized disco balls suspended from the roof seemed re-appropriated for a throwback to a bygone funk and

pop era. Below the sparkling globes frontmen, Harvey Miller and Monte Morgan pranced the stage and spread their narrative. It is, loosely, a story of Australia’s dark political underbelly, where the backbenchers retire each night to their hedonistic fantasies. For Triple j listeners, the band’s bass player may have provided a familiar face: Tom Tilley, of the famed Hack news program. It became alarming as I realised that every time I hear his silky newsreader voice in the future, it will be accompanied by an image of his sweat-drenched cream shirt. The band has embedded itself so deeply into its satirical manifestation that it flows through every vein in the quartet’s lifeblood. This extends to their merchandise: perfect if you’re short on stress balls, sunglass holders, or lapel pins. And the band doesn’t let up on stage décor either. Standing inconspicuously on either side of the stage were oversized glowing water coolers. During the set, a conveniently placed landline phone buzzes and Harvey receives a call from

the ATO; it seems Client Liaison Ltd. is wanted for tax fraud. The band launches into their single ‘Wild Life’ in response; such is the commitment to the 80s aesthetic. Client Liaison’s conceptual obscurity is ironic considering how inviting they are. In their music videos, Monte and Harvey often look directly into the camera while lip-syncing over-emphatically, inviting their audience into their satirical socio-political world. Of course, this worked best with the Academy crowd with the set’s opener, ‘Canberra Won’t Be Calling Tonight’. Many Canberrans are familiar with the often farcical face of Australian politics, so it’s a joy to hear these pseudo-diplomats proclaim, ‘While the taxpayers sleep, destiny unfolds!’ The performance in itself was fine-tuned and orchestrated to a T. The nature of Client Liaison’s song structure – a string of cliché verse lyrics building up to an irresistible chorus – is routinely satisfying. This is amplified by a commanding stage

presence, down to choreographed dance moves and four costume changes. Subtle changes to their most commanding songs, such as a slow tempo introduction to ‘Wild Life’ or an extended outro to ‘Feel the Rhythm’ added an extra treat for devoted fans. Fleshing out the gaps in the set-list was a series of bulletproof electronic pop songs. ‘Off White Limousine’ snaps along with the attitude of Parade-era Prince, while ‘The Bravest Beginnings’ is a smoky example of the band’s most cohesive songwriting. The latter also featured one of the many excellent lead guitar solos from Geordie Miller. Saved for the encore, the band’s breakout hit ‘Queen’ again proved itself to be the pièce de résistance for fans – a cathartic and emotional conclusion to an excellent set. When the music faded and the house lights turned on, it was back to another chilly night in the quiet city of Canberra. Whilst other taxpayers slept, those still enveloped in Client Liaison’s fever dream lived their fantasy late into the night.

Review: A Date for Mad Mary at the Mardi Gras Film Festival Text: Hannah Wolfhagen

A Date for Mad Mary (2016), shown at the Mardi Gras Film Festival this year, is a beautiful, dark, coming-of-age comedy about a young Irish girl just out of prison and determined to restore a lost friendship. The characters are three-dimensional, occasionally unlikeable, but undeniably real. It is not often a movie can make you genuinely laugh, and at other moments, move you to tears. The movie was presented by Queer Screen, at the National Film and Sound Archive in their intimate and beautiful Arc cinema. The film opens with Mary’s release from prison, after six months of incarceration, as she is suddenly confronted with her old life. To Mary’s surprise, things have changed. Her best friend Charlene is

getting married, her favourite club won’t let her in the door, and her disinterest in finding a boyfriend is beginning to raise suspicion. Saddled with the work, but not feeling any warmth as maid of honour, Mary is confronted with her changing role in Charlene’s life and decides to take action to avoid it. This film is a portrait of the experience of growing up and growing apart from important people in your life, a very poignant and relevant experience to many people in their twenties. Mary acts as we all would, refuses to let go, and pledges to find a date for the wedding in the hope that Charlene will regain interest in her life. Some very funny dating montages and drunken mistakes later, Mary is coming to terms with having genuine, unplanned feelings for a woman. While coming of age lesbian films have

been done before – and often badly (Bloomington or Lost and Delirious anyone?) – this story feels distinctively new and fresh. The storyline is original, Mary doesn’t die, and it’s not all about falling for the best friend or forbidden love designed for the male gaze. This movie is complex and subtle without taking itself too seriously. It leaves you wanting to discuss the characters and events: why did she do that? Why was she crying in that scene? Why would Charlene say that to her best friend? These questions that serve to build upon the film after it has stopped rolling, as provocative and important stories aim to do. Particularly outstanding in this film was the dialogue, written in a way that felt uncomfortably realistic. Confessions of love made over voicemail won’t be

Hollywood scripted or won’t ‘win you back the girl’ in the real world; they are more likely to be drunk ramblings that make little sense. Mad Mary’s dialogue shows this reality and more. The awkward lines make the characters feel familiar, mirroring lived experiences rather than portraying some glossy and out of reach form of the every day. I am so grateful that in this post-Moonlight age, queer movies can be fantastic films, not just desperate grasps for representation. A Date for Mad Mary fits this bill, immersing the viewer in Mary’s hot-headed and self-conscious world whilst presenting a piece of beautifully filmed and acted cinema.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Culture // Reviews

Review: The Lego Batman Movie Text: Alex Unikowski

learns a few lessons about working together and letting people in.

Fans of The Lego Movie and the Batman franchise can all breathe easy: Animal Logic’s cash-in spin-off The Lego Batman Movie does your favourite films justice, and then some. Set in the same universe as its predecessor, The Lego Batman Movie opens on the new, sassy and ever-cool Bruce Wayne (Will Arnett) as he battles to defend a ‘Lego-fied’ Gotham City from a who’s who of classic Batman villains. Batman’s sophisticated yet lonely lifestyle is interrupted when he accidentally adopts a teenage orphan (Michael Cera), who is eager to prove himself as Batman’s sidekick. Together with the new police commissioner (Rosario Dawson) and Wayne Manor’s trusty butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Batman and his crew fight through onslaughts of pop culture’s worst supervillains – while Batman

This is a fairly paint-by-numbers film in terms of story. While it’s nicely shaped, even for a kid’s movie, it’s fairly easy to guess the entire plot ten minutes in. This lack of storyline is compounded again by some rather glaring plot holes and moments of conflict resolution that are just far too easy. In any other film this would be a real letdown, but it’s clear that the story in The Lego Batman Movie is just a blank of canvas on which to paint an hour and a half of witty one-liners, farcical comedy and pop culture references. All of which are set to Animal Logic’s signature stop-motion animation that made the original Lego movie such a visual success. The Sydney-based studio has pulled out all the stops, rendering everything from explosions to rivers of water in perfect digital replicas of Lego bricks. The detailing of textures on the individual

! ’ n i p p a T t e g o t e Tim Come along and try out tap dancing! • Every Sunday @ ANU Sport gym • 11:00am Beginners & 11:45am Continuing • $10 at the door, drop in any time! www.savoydance.com.au/classes

mini-figures is astounding and Animal Logic has seemingly one-upped themselves on their previous Lego Movie efforts. This film really is best seen on the big screen, if for no other reason than to properly appreciate the attention to detail in this visual smorgasbord. The Lego Batman Movie’s real strength, however, lies in its comedic writing. Studios like Pixar are often credited with making an art out of writing for kids whilst still throwing a bone to the accompanying adults. In assuming that children will find ample entertainment in the simple, feel-good story and the overwhelmingly busy animation, it seems that The Lego Batman Movie unburdens itself of having to write comedy for children. Instead, it provides a masterpiece of consistent, quirky comedy for all ages. While the humour won’t be to everyone’s taste, my late-evening screening had the exclusively adult crowd in stitches from start to finish. The movie never takes itself too seriously, poking

fun at everything, not least of all the last 50 years of Batman films. The Lego Movie was funny because of its alternatingly dry and silly tones of comedy. The Lego Batman Movie has aimed even higher than that in offering comedy that is smarter in its use of references and satirical social commentary. There is plenty of Lego slapstick for the kids, but the comedic range of The Lego Batman Movie is unusually wide and delightfully consistent. This movie thrives on the fact that it was self-aware before the writers even put pen to paper. Nobody could have seriously expected a proper, gritty, action-style Batman film animated entirely in Lego, and what makes the film so strong is that it doesn’t try to be. The Lego Batman Movie seems far more content doing what Lego does best – creating crazy worlds and providing a fantastically good time along the way.

Contribute to Woroni! Send articles, stories and ideas to write@ woroni. com.au

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Culture // life & Style

Your Guide to Bullet Journalling

Bullet Journalling: A How To

Bullet Journalling: Why You Should

By Laura Perkov

By Shani Horii-Watson

The beauty of the bullet journal system is its flexibility. No matter what your lifestyle is, you can figure out a spread that works for you. Meticulously decorated journals on Pinterest and Instagram can make them seem super complicated but, in its simplest form, the bullet journal is a collection of to-do lists in a notebook; all you really need is a pen, a notebook, and some stuff to organise. With exam season just around the corner and major essays piling up by what feels like the dozen, here’s a quick and easy guide to the different types of bullet journal spreads: how I use them, and how you can change them to suit your needs. Most bullet journals start with an index that lets you know where things are. Because my spreads are only relevant for that particular week, I don’t find them particularly helpful – if I need to refer to a page multiple times I mark it with washi tape. And just like that, I have already altered the bullet journal formula to suit my own needs! The next spread after an index is a future log, where you write down the events or due dates for the next three, six, or even twelve months. I start a new journal each semester, so I use a six-month spread with regular calendars, and relevant dates under it. You can also create a list, with dates and events written vertically down the page. If you’ve checked out #bulletjournal on Instagram, you might have seen monthly logs. Monthly logs are an expanded version of the future log and are helpful as an overview of the coming weeks. This can take the form of a calendar or

list and also include to-do lists for tasks that need to be completed that month, habit or progress trackers, or notes. Depending on your needs, you can then have weekly logs, daily logs or a combination of the two. This is where experimentation comes into play – finding out what works is a lot of trial and error. I use a weekly spread with elements of daily logging: events and to-dos on the left under days of the week, and a list of readings and tasks to complete on the right. In addition to using this system to organise tasks, you can create spreads for budgets, realising goals and resolutions, and tracking progress in assessments – look online for inspiration, or just get creative! Try not to be intimidated by other people’s Insta-ready journals, however, and remember that your journal is just that: yours. It can be as messy, decorative, colourful, or minimalist as you like. So, find one of those empty notebooks you have stashed in a drawer somewhere, and get writing – it might just grow into something you can’t live without.

Most of us are overcommitted and over-exhausted students who strive to be stress-free, more productive and always in control of our lives. But let’s be realistic. Unless you’re a new superhuman brand of student, you are probably regularly running late with a cup of coffee in one hand and your phone, laptop and three different planners balanced in the other.

In my quest for productivity, I think I’ve tried every app, Kikki-K diary and mindfulness playlist out there at least once. I started off my journey to productivity by trying out a variety of listing making apps such as wunderlist, anydo and todolist. Despite my best efforts, I never lasted more than three weeks with any of these apps. No matter the format, I always ended up at the point where I would become too overwhelmed by my never-ending lists and either give up or start listing things such as ‘eat breakfast’ and ‘shower’ to make myself feel better. My next phase in my quest for productivity involved apps that help to keep you accountable such as nowthen, coldturkey, freedom and forest. Nowthen acts as an ongoing colour-coordinated stopwatch that calculates how many actual hours you are spending on each task, taking out the time you spend on social media or procrastinating. Coldturkey and Freedom are fantastic apps that block your access to Facebook, Slack, emails, etc. until you realise that, even though they are definitely a distraction, you definitely need them to move forward on many projects. My next solution was to stop using technology all together. I started to wade my way through countless different

journals, Filo Faxes, planners and premade to-do lists. Regardless of the planner I used, I felt like they were a burden to keep up to date and they often made me more stressed – just another responsibility. It wasn’t until I found bullet journaling that I found my one, true productivity love. Over the last nine months, I’ve realised how beneficial it has been for improving my well-being. I would be lying if I said I was now completely stress-free, but for a complete stress head like me, even the smallest changes have made the largest impact. The biggest way bullet journaling has helped me is just letting me unload my brain onto the pages, so I only need to focus on one thing at time. It feels flexible and accommodating; If you forget to bullet journal for a day or two, it doesn’t matter because unlike other journals, there are no awkward gaps to remind you. Everything has its place in my bullet journal — if something doesn’t have a place, I can make space for it. Unlike my experiences with other productivity fads, bullet-journaling is, for me, realistic and forgiving. It shows my progress and how I have changed and grown. It has taught me that imperfections are a part of life and that I don’t need to hide them. Most importantly, my habit trackers help me to understand why I might not be doing okay and make sure I’m doing all the important life things outside of work – the ones that are easy to forget when you get ‘productive’.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Culture // life & Style

Dear Woroni

Dear Woroni: Moving out Text: Mary-Anne Nolan

Dear Woroni: How do I deal with moving out of college, and living in my own home? A few months ago I moved out of college into a house in North Canberra with friends. As much as I liked to think that I was prepared, after living out of home for two years, I definitely was not. Managing uni, work, and a social life while also having to cook and clean for yourself, on a budget of $100 a week, is not as easy as people make it seem. But it’s not the end of you. Here are a few things I have learnt since moving out that have been imperative to my existence. I know we’re all low-key foodies, but seriously, lower your food expectations! It was only after buying $900 worth of perishables on my first individual shop at Harris Farm Markets that the sad truth dawned on me: I cannot afford to be eating the foods I grew up with. I was ignorant to the real-life expenses of a diet consisting of avocado, feta and sourdough bread. With a food budget of less than $50 a week, I find myself eating mi goreng daily and a whole lot of pasta with olive oil and salt. I am still adamant, however, about buying the best butter on the shelves of Woolies: Lurpac. It is true that I might still need to take my own advice, as I do currently have -$180 in my account. We are uni students – we need to act like them, and eat like them for that matter.

Make a routine, or risk watching TV in your pyjamas all day. Without any real obligation to get out of bed in the morning, and no one watching your back on a daily basis, when living out of home you can find yourself lying around a whole lot more than you should. Find a reason to get up in the morning – whether that is for a walk, to go get a coffee down the road or to head off to uni. Just make it happen. Otherwise, you will find yourself still lying in bed at 3pm watching Netflix.

Believe in cleaning karma – what comes around goes around. Admittedly – and my housemates can testify to this – I still haven’t really found my groove yet when it comes to cleaning the house properly. Living with three other friends means that every time you make food, you absolutely must clean up straight after, because no one wants to walk into a dirty kitchen – it’s just not fair. Do everything in your power to not only clean up after your own mess but to do things for the household as a whole. This could include vacuuming once a week, spray-and-wiping the bathroom or putting a load on for your mate. No one wants to be labelled a grub, and no one likes living with one.

Give your housemates space. It can be hard to detach yourself from spending time with the friends you live with, but people need their own space,

and you need to respect that. A good chat never goes astray – neither does a good household binge watch of Keeping Up with the Kardashians – but maybe not when your mate has an Admin Law take-home due the next day. Invest time into your housemates when you can, but not so much that you become overbearing and stop people from getting their work done.

Mi goreng is not sustainable 24/7 — try to cook one proper meal a week. Experimenting with food can really serve to spice up a dull week in the ‘Berra. Play a little bit in the kitchen and you will be surprised how much you have picked up from mum and dad over the years. Even better, learn to cook so you can impress your family when you go home. You might even fool them into thinking that you cook every night. In our sharehouse, everyone assumes a role. Everyone has an identifier that they have become known by. We’re a family – we have the mum who keeps us all in check, the chilled dad who lets you get away with anything, the teenager that’s never around, and me (a little bit of all of them). Whatever your role, this is your home now, so make sure that you aren’t labelled as the hopeless grub. All in all, living out of home is great fun and I can’t even imagine a world where my real parents were around all the time. Don’t underestimate its value. Having no money, and occasionally feeling hopeless as you figure out how to organise your life – it’s what uni is all about.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Culture // life & style

Tusk: Bar Rochford’s Women in Hospitality Takeover

Text: Georgia Leak Photography: Lean Timms

Charlotte Stevens is a woman on a mission. In her fourth-year of International Relations and Asia-Pacific Security, she is also highly skilled in the male-dominated field of cocktail bartending and works as a manager at Canberra’s award winning Bar Rochford. Now, determined to bring awareness to the gender-based disparities that exist within the hospitality industry, Charlotte has found herself as the leader of a female takeover of Bar Rochford – all in the name of charity and gender equality. According to Charlotte, what started off as an event that would run alongside a regular Thursday night Rochford service has now been backed by so much widespread support and positivity that it has transformed into a four-course ticketed dinner, followed by a party that will carry on into the wee hours of the morning. ‘The response has been really positive so far. It’s been almost overwhelming, really. I think women in the industry is a really hot topic at the moment; there are some really strong women in the town and in the country who are making waves at the moment, and I think that everyone’s on board to get behind it.’ Inspired by women in the hospitality industry collectives around Australia, like Paige Aubert’s Coleman Academy and Alex Ross’s What Women Drink, Charlotte wishes for all proceeds of the event to go to both the White Ribbon Foundation and the starting up of Tusk – a guild for Canberra’s women in the hospitality industry. ‘It’s so interesting because in regular pub bartending it’s about a 50/50 distribution between men and women. But as soon as you go into cocktail bartending, it’s about 90/10 to men. I’ve been in Canberra for four years, and a cocktail bartender for four years, and the thing that I’m so sick of hearing is: ‘I would hire women if they were around. It’s such an excuse. I’ve decided

these things like Coleman Academy and Women in Drinks are happening in Sydney and Melbourne, so why not bring them to Canberra? After the Rochford takeover, I’d really love to use Tusk to run events like cocktail training nights for women, and events in which we have an equal distribution of men and women. I’ve even been thinking about running events in an art gallery – just going places that people don’t even expect – to really get the word out there for women in the industry.’ Although Tusk’s night at Bar Rochford will be staffed entirely by women, Charlotte emphasises that she does not wish to exclude men. ‘It’s really not a pussy power event. It’s not for women by women – and I can’t stress that enough. It’s an event that is for everyone, by women.’ According to Charlotte, the number of women working in cocktail bartending in Canberra is so small that she knows most of them and was able to ask them to join her in making the Rochford event a reality. ‘My staff are all going to be women from a variety of venues around Canberra who I have either worked with before or highly respect, and the entire night’s cocktail list will be designed by these talented ladies. Good Content is the female DJ group that will be playing on the night, and I asked them because they have a very similar mantra to what we’re going for – not excluding men, just saying hey, we’re here and we can do it too! Finally, I’ve asked for a lot of the artwork in Rochford to be rehung to display

the work of some amazing female artists hailing from Canberra.’ In choosing the staff that will help her pull-off Tusk’s takeover, Charlotte really spent a lot of time considering who would benefit the most from being a part of such an empowering atmosphere. ‘There’s a lot of importance in catching women early on in the industry – I had some pretty shitty experiences when I first started bartending in Sydney. I used to work in a venue that had two different bars and I found that if I ever had any issues with customers being sexist, I would have to move to the other bar. It instilled in me from early on that it was my job as the woman to protect myself or remove myself from the situation rather than calling out the man. Some of the members of the team are quite new to hospitality because I think it’s really important for young women to recognise they don’t have to be treated poorly and that they can stand up for themselves and hold their own position.’ Alongside creating such a positive environment for women in the industry, Charlotte also sees the Rochford takeover as a great opportunity for a dialogue to be started about sexism that emanates both internally from within the industry itself, as well as externally, from customers. Although she admits that she is hoping there will be no instances of sexist behaviour on the night, Charlotte sees any negative occurrences as an opportunity to educate rather than to shut anyone out. ‘If anything does happen

at Tusk, I don’t want anyone to feel unsafe or unwelcome. What I would like to see is a dialogue started – like why did you say that, why do you think that? It’s important to remember that moments like those are moments of ignorance, and you can deal with ignorance in two ways: you can either teach the person something, or you can put them down. If you put them down they’re never going to learn, but if you teach them and explain something to them it can create a safer experience.’ Check out Tusk’s Bar Rochford takeover on Sunday 30 April, with dinner starting at 6pm and the party lasting all the way through the night! Tickets can be purchased at tuskcollaborative.com

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Culture // life & style

Doing You

The Industry Filling Holes Text: Phoebe Hamra Forest’s mom always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’ I say, ‘Sex is like ice cream. There’s something for everyone.

It’s no secret that the details of sex are still taboo in mainstream discourse. They are censored, euphemised and scandalised – all to the detriment of tolerance, and the benefit of ignorance … as well as the porn industry. Not talking about sex silences positive sexual discussion, creating a gaping hole in our knowledge and understanding of the topic. And we all know how good the porn industry is at filling holes. The obvious dissonance between what we are taught about sex in school and actual sexual encounters is, perhaps, one of the largest reasons why people turn to porn to fill gaps in knowledge. My high school sex education consisted of labelling anatomical diagrams of reproductive systems, brief reminders to use condoms (without ever showing us one or how they worked), lectures about the side effects of the pill (apparently there aren’t any other forms of contraception) and viewing graphic images showing the worst-case scenarios of sexually transmitted infections. In fact, the only time I saw what a real vagina looked like was when a baby’s head was coming out of it in a very painful home birth. It’s not hard to see that these scare tactics served to clearly point us to the message: ‘Don’t have sex, it’s not worth it.’ I’m sure some kids had it much better than I did, but I don’t doubt some had it much worse. So with the crudest understanding of genitals, condoms, the pill, STIs and childbirth, I was supposed to enter my independent adult life not knowing what vaginas look like – I mean, was mine normal? How would I know if something was wrong with it? Or how sex actually worked, let alone sex not between one man with a penis and one woman with a vagina? How much should it hurt? How would I know when I’m ready? What kinds of circumstances should I have sex in? What should I feel before, during and after? Porn has answers to all of these questions but the answers porn gives are saturated with perfectly beautiful, large penii and deliciously smooth, tight vaginas. It answers with women enjoying painful sex; people having sex with strangers at the drop of a hat (or fix of a tap); and overtly flirtatious preludes followed by 30 - 40 minutes of intense, loud sex featuring a broad repertoire of positions that conclude with a cum shot. This is a wildly inaccurate representation of relationships and sex, and, honestly, I can identify how every single one of these things had shaped my perceptions

of bodies, sex and relationships – these have not, overall, been healthy effects.

In the words of Annie Sprinkle, a feminist pornstar,

Seeing as 80 per cent of Australians over 18 have watched porn, and the Australian school curriculum does not provide comprehensive sexual education, it’s a fair assumption that a significant number of young Australians have had a similar experience learning sexuality from porn. This is increasingly likely considering we now have access to the internet’s infinite content younger and younger.

‘the answer to bad porn isn’t no porn … it’s to try and make better porn!’

While we avoid talking about sex in schools and in the community, we leave a gaping hole in our sexual education that porn fills with a skewed reality. The only way to fix this is to offer broad and comprehensive information about the realities of sex, including sexual pleasure for people of all genders and sexualities. Pornography in the age of the Internet is also very good at providing a diverse range of scenarios. Although the sprawling nature of the porn industry allows for really creative and unique sexual experiences that can be a lot of fun to watch, it also means that more extreme and, often, violent or illegal depictions of sex are easily accessible. These are subsequently informing, as well as encouraging, certain ideas about sex in the people who watch this content. On the other side of the screen, a number of ethical issues pervade the industry in the production of porn. The free content on porn websites rarely verifies their means of production – meaning you don’t know whether the scene was legal in terms of consent, age, fair pay and working conditions. So, if you want to watch porn but don’t want to have a guilty conscience, you’re going to have to pay for it. In the same way that you pay musicians and producers for their music through Spotify, or film and TV creators for their talent through Netflix, you should be paying those in the porn industry for their work. Check out the Feminist Porn Awards (and don’t be put off by the name) for videos and companies showing diversity, real sex and real pleasure – all created in fair working conditions. Or if you’re interested in some freaky stuff that probably shouldn’t be done between humans, you can always read about it, guilt free – Literotica is great for that.

The porn industry and consumers can do a lot in terms of maximising the reach and accessibility of ethical porn. But this doesn’t solve the problem of the lack of sexual education driving young people to answer questions about their sexuality via pornography in the first place. For a more holistic solution to the negative impacts of porn, implementing comprehensive sexual education in our schools remains vitally important.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Learn // environment

Socially Conscious Consumerism: A Strip Mall of Brand Anxiety Text and Aesthetix: Victor Wang

A relatively new phenomenon of the 21st century is the embedding of consumer social responsibility into popular culture. At first an object of academic study in relation to corporate social responsibility, consumer social responsibility concerns itself with consumer decisions and ethics. For example, are you morally responsible for buying Nike Airs made with the fresh, tiny hands of an Indian child? The decline of Nike in the early 2000s as a result of a brand image associated with poor labour conditions suggests that a growing number of consumers wanted to make ethical purchases. Since then, an alternative capitalism around ethical consumer goods has grown to fill the lowest common denominator markets. Enter the era of the KeepCup. To find out what ANU students thought about the issue, we hit the campus for some on the ground reporting. ‘My newfound confidence comes in my exquisite cork KeepCup. It’s a pro-environment fancy, which mostly carries coffee, and sometimes my hopes and dreams for the direction of mankind – plastic free, garden cities, climate change resolved. Before I had my KeepCup, I felt really bad and ugly because of the damage I was doing to the environment. Now, when I pick up my coffee to drive in my RAV4 whilst carrying my slave labour Louis Vuitton bag and 2400 watt touchscreen laptop, I know my sips are righteous.

Look, I know it’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but until the government decides to finally take action, I’m just doing what I can as a student and an individual. I’m definitely a better person now.’ – Faith Viper, Law student, originally from Neutral Bay, Sydney, enjoys Riesling. ‘When Patagonia ran that ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ ad, man, I just had to cop one. The whole message of reducing consumption, questioning the nature of consumer demand, fashion as signification and all that – that’s who I am, you feel me? After taking this political philosophy class, I realised that I’m against the whole oppressive white supremacist capitalist structure and like I really think we could fight it all grassroots like starting from what we consume. If we get enough traction, we could really do some good. I’m supporting Patagonia because they just feel me. I’m real passionate about the environment so I picked up a brand new Patagonia polar fleece jacket in cerulean – the colour of the salty waves and my beautiful eyes.’ – Thom Iscariot, postgraduate student at the Fenner School, staunchly Tasmanian, owns a longboard. ‘One problem I see with socially conscious consumerism is with the focus on replacing one consumer good with another less problematic one whilst supporting the same mode of consumption. The KeepCup forces us into a false dichotomy: continue using disposable coffee cups thus

being complicit in bringing the planet to ruin or switch to a KeepCup to save the world. Meanwhile the global reduction of disposable coffee cups due to KeepCup ownership is a trivial fraction of total disposable coffee cups (approx. 0.00044% according to the KeepCup website). In reality, we should be acting in ways to subvert and disrupt the structures of capitalism which lie at the roots of our contemporary environmental and social problems. Compared to socially conscious consumption, political action may not have immediately visible effects but will marginally increase the probability of dismantling these unjust structures. Furthermore… .’ – Based Flowers, Professor of Over-explaining Art and Poststructural Basket Weaving, born in Connecticut, USA, owns three cats. Ultimately, socially conscious consumption is still consumption. We live in times of mass differentiation. Instagram is essentially a consensual hallucination – a hyper-reality consisting of curated and phantasmal representations of real people, products, and lifestyles now disconnected from the real physical world. So virtual spaces act as simulacra of real world markets within which a previously top-down marketing structure has become decentralised, absorbed, and propagated by consumers to other consumers. This applies even for lowest common denominator goods, from toilet paper to coffee cups. Demand is increasingly dominated and generated by a desire to consume particular images and signs. Since this desire cannot be satisfied by physical products, a possibly infinite chain of products can be

marketed to us. In the case of socially conscious consumption, the site of consumption involves replacing particular goods with another that possesses an image of being more ethical. Consumer goods can be infinitely differentiated and so our identity of a socially conscious consumer is never complete. Replacing one good with an eco-friendly one temporarily satisfies us until the next site of consumer environmentalism is encountered. Certainly there are socially conscious alternatives that have non-trivial impact, such as Tesla Powerwall, which is efficient enough to allow one to live ‘off the grid’, or switching to an electric car and vastly decreasing one’s carbon footprint. Yet most options which are financially available to university students fall short. Consider ‘Who Gives a Crap’, which offers eco-friendly toilet paper and sends half of their profits to sanitation projects overseas. Instead of paying a dollar a roll, why not buy regular rolls of recycled toilet paper and at the end of the year, donate the money you would have saved to the charity of your choice? Charities are evaluated to make your choosing even easier at givewell.org. Better yet, why allow ourselves to believe that in order to help ‘save the environment’ our options are limited to replacing one particular good with another claiming to be more environmentally friendly? The law follows culture. France banned the use of disposable plastics; will the KeepCup have a future in France?

Learn // environment

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Greener Economy

Food Smart Text: Lydia J Kim Lydia is just a city gal hoping to make the world a greener and fairer place! Her column ‘Greener Economy’ will talk about some of the economic and political solutions that will help create a more equitable society as well as more liveable conditions for current and future generations. Stay tuned!

Only once we were actually at a Korean barbeque restaurant did my friend tell me she didn’t eat red meat. I knew that Millie wasn’t vegetarian, so when I asked the reason, she replied: ‘Because the way they produce meat just isn’t sustainable – all the methane, carbon dioxide, water … It’s never sat right with me.’

cut in consumption is necessary for the much-needed shift towards ethical eating – particularly with beef. The Australian beef and cattle industry was worth $17.87 billion last year, with the average person consuming 25.4kg, making Australia the 6th largest consumer and the largest exporter of beef worldwide.

She’s right. The way our ever-growing population consumes food isn’t sustainable.

Though a Quarter Pounder may seem appealing post-clubbing, note that it uses enough fossil fuels to drive a small car more than 32 kilometres. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that the meat industry is accountable for 51 per cent or more of global greenhouse gas emissions – much greater than the transportation industry. Further, livestock is accountable for 37 per cent of methane emissions.

There are two sides to the discussion on sustainable food consumption: overconsumption in developed countries and destructive methods of production. According to DoSomething’s campaign FoodWise, Australians throw out $8 billion worth of food yearly, which equates to about five average size fridges per household. At the same time, over two million people seek food relief at some point every year in the country, with such demand rising despite overall national economic growth. Unsustainable production and post-production methods are one of the leading causes of environmental degradation around the world. Pesticides used in agriculture, ineffective irrigation methods and destructive land clearing are only a few of the problems. For our economy to progress and understand the true cost of food, it is important that we all make some changes to our lifestyles – many of them only small.

Eyes as big as your stomach The easiest step towards sustainable and economic eating involves being realistic about portion sizes. Making sure to only put on your plate as much as you can realistically eat is crucial. Approximately 40 per cent of household waste is made up of food remains, and it is estimated that an average family throws away $1,036 worth yearly. An average Canberran spends $91 a year on waste management according to 2010-11 government figures, with organic waste being the second largest generator.

Less is more Meat production is one of the driving causes of global warming. A general

Global consumption will increase by a shocking 76 per cent by mid-century at current rates, according to research by Chatham House and Glasgow University, making the UNFCCC’s goal to keep the increase in global temperatures under two degrees Celsius almost unachievable. Even by eating vegetarian three days a week, however, our population would have a much smaller impact on climate change.

Skip the avo toast this winter Eating seasonally, when a food is at the peak of its supply, helps cut down on food expenses. Put simply, basic economics dictates that the greater supply, the lower the cost. Seasonal foods also cost farmers and distribution companies less to be harvested and preserved, which conveniently translates to lower in-store prices for the public. Furthermore, out-of-season fruits and vegetables are usually drenched in pesticides before being imported from distant countries. According to Deloitte’s findings, more than 68 per cent ($17 billion) of Australia’s crops are produced using agricultural pesticides, while threatening human, animal and the environmental health. Approximately 200,000 people die yearly from pesticide poisoning, which is also linked to serious illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and birth defects. Some plants and insects develop resistance against pesticides too, eventually requiring larger

quantities of more toxic chemicals. The fewer pesticides we use, the less food and environmental contamination there will be.

Buy locally! Australian farmers only earn 18 cents per dollar spent at large chain supermarkets. If making the extra trip to a farmers market does not appeal, buying foods with an ‘Australian Made’ or ‘Australian Grown’ logo is the next best option. Not only does this help save local jobs and industries, but can save each household more than $10 a week according to a survey conducted by the Daily Telegraph. Research by the Industry Capability Network showed that every $1 million made from local manufacturing (including produce) generates $985,000 value-added, $95,000 worth of welfare benefits and 10 jobs. The financial and environmental costs of food miles is also considerable. An average basket containing any of the 29 most common foods will travel over 70,000 kilometres. Eating locally reduces the carbon footprint of your food. Canberra Farmers Markets, Carriageworks Farmers Market and Capital Region Farmers Market are some of the farmers markets in Canberra. The Food Co-op – located on 3 Kingsley Street near Lena Karmel – carries local, sustainable and affordable products as well.

Ignorance isn’t bliss There’s a great amount to be learnt regarding ethical food choices. Actively researching and being conscious of the origins of our food should be the norm. Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. and Gene Rosow and Bill Benenson’s Dirt! The Movie are inspiring documentaries that can help with this. Though I am not in the position to ask people to make drastic changes to their lives, I do ask that they consider making the small few mentioned above. One person can make a difference, especially if it engenders collective action – something we are currently desperately in need of.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Learn // Science

Fluency in the Language of Coding: The Future of Coding as a Skill Text: Patrick Paton Illustration: Julia Hammer

Ever since Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace created the first computer, they have been extremely useful in the completion of many tasks, particularly those which demand swift and precise calculation. Early on, computers were more of a calculation tool – akin to an Abacus – and a proof of concept, rather than anything that could do anything more that compute and calculate values. To tell the computers what to do, we designed languages that were easily understandable by computers. Languages in this context mean a set of instructions that the computer understands. The skill of coding is using languages to tell a computer what to do and how you want the task to be completed. Coding is how all applications you use on your phone or computer are created. Initially, these languages were directly related to machine hardware and effectively indecipherable to humans unskilled in the art of coding. We did this because we didn’t know how to have the machine understand human languages, so us learning the language of the computer was the next best option. Communicating in this alien language proved difficult for early coders. To solve this issue we abstracted upon our previous machine code. Abstraction in this sense means creating a unique instruction that is equivalent to multiple instructions of the language being abstracted upon. Abstraction allowed us to code in languages that better represented the languages and thought patterns of humans. Prominent examples of these abstracted languages are Ada, C, Haskel (which you use in COMP1100), Javascript and Python. The main differences between the languages we use today are the human thought patterns they are trying to emulate. Ada and C try to mimic normal human logic while staying as close as possible to machine code, and C is especially close while still being comprehensible to regular non-machine people. Java and Python work to be as close to English as possible, in that, if you were to tell someone to do something in Java or Python, they would easily be able to understand half of what you’re telling them to do. Haskel is completely different in that it’s an esoteric language that tries to replicate abnormal human thought patterns – more on that later.

Due to a combination of procedural abstraction and researchers trying to teach computers languages, abstraction has led to an increase in computers attempting to understand human languages and replacing humans in more complex tasks than simple calculation. Tasks like data storage and searching are now almost entirely done by computers, most notably at Google. Accomplishing this requires extremely fast data storage, retrieval and searching; due in part to how the data is stored. In some cases, computers can search through literally millions of objects and only need to check 14 of those to be certain it has either found the item it’s looking for, or the item doesn’t exist in the data set.

As such, the tasks humans can do are now limited to those that require creativity, intelligence, human ingenuity, or tasks that computers just seem uninterested in doing. This is the current issue with computers; they are now learning to emulate creativity and intelligence. If they are allowed to do this, humans will be put out of even more jobs, which would cause significant economic and cultural upheaval. To combat this, we have started designing esoteric programming languages; languages that are hard for computers to understand but comparatively easier for humans to piece together. This results in computers having to work significantly

harder to emulate creativity and intelligence, giving us humans a temporary respite. Examples of the current main esoteric programming languages are Intercal, Malbolge, HTML, Piet and MishMash. As such, the need for coders that can use esoteric programming languages is ever increasing, and companies around the globe are all recruiting people to command machines. Due to companies wanting the best coders to both increase their productivity and to hold off machine learning, companies are willing to pay top dollar for competent coders. You too can jump on this train, so why not sign up to COMP1100 today?

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Learn // science

Science Life

Discovered by Bob: Why Citizen Science is the New Frontier of Research Text: Imogen Brown Welcome to Science Life: A discussion of the weird and wonderful intersection between science and our day-to-day lives.

All of you space enthusiasts out there will be thrilled to know that just last week, four new planets were discovered. This in itself is exciting news, but what makes this discovery truly remarkable is that they weren’t found by an astronomer with several degrees and a multi-million-dollar telescope. No, they were found by mechanic and amateur astronomer Andrew Grey, who participated in the ABC’s Stargazing Live event (in collaboration with the ANU), along with thousands of other volunteers. These Exoplanet Explorers trawled through data, collected by the spacecraft Kepler, to look for signs of exoplanets among over 100,000 stars. Events like these are known as ‘citizen science’, and they involve sciencey keen beans collecting data or making observations in collaboration with trained scientists. Some might scoff at this notion; how can a non-scientist do science? But the reality is, a large amount of science is the ability to notice patterns and make educated guesses as to what they signify. Such a feat is beyond the realm of most computer algorithms, but perfectly manageable for any person equipped with a decent working brain. Sorry

science students, your strenuous and costly degrees are redundant. While some scientists are sceptical of the idea, many have actively embraced the citizen science movement. Physicist Brian Cox is one of several hosts of the Stargazing Live event that supports the work citizen scientists do. On the planetary discovery, he commented that ‘In the seven years I’ve been making Stargazing Live this is the most significant scientific discovery we’ve ever made.’ And most scientists will agree, the more science being done, the better. The growing movement of citizen science has its roots in the United Kingdom, where people participating in the extreme national sport of bird watching are collecting large amounts of data for scientists. The sheer number of people volunteering their time means that they can collect more data than a single scientist, even if they have an entire research team their disposal. It’s been demonstrated that, once a certain amount of experience is acquired, the observations of citizen scientists are just as trustworthy as scientists themselves. Citizen scientists are participating in more than just bird watching and stargazing. There’s an entire range of

activities – water sampling, archive transcribing and dung collecting are just a small sample of what is on offer. Local groups will often focus on resources readily available to them. For example, Canberra locals might check on the algae status of Lake Burley Griffin, while people on the south coast will monitor local fish populations. Technology is helping in these efforts. Stargazing Live used images transmitted from space to people’s computers. But even the humble mobile phone can be useful for people who want to find out what cockatoos do in their free time. Apps enable people to find, sign up and participate in projects of their choice; they are also used to send their observations to a data bank to be analysed. If you’d like to find out more, websites like the Zooniverse, The Australian Museum and the Australian Citizen Science Association are great starting places. The world is wide and the universe is endless, so who knows? Perhaps you will make the next big discovery that knocks everybody’s science socks off!

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Learn // business & economics

Unpaid Internships: The difference between learning and getting exploited Text: Prachi Arya Illustration: Catherine Nacion

You have a sky-high GPA and ample extracurricular achievements under your belt. Yet, if your CV is missing that one seemingly ubiquitous yet elusive feature – the prestigious summer internship that most university students spend their penultimate year trying to land – you’re likely to be left lagging far behind in the maddening rat race that is the present job market. Amongst those who do manage to find employability on the back of their internship experience, however, differences exist between those who worked at a paid internship and those at unpaid positions. According to a study published by National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), only 37 per cent unpaid interns had internships that lead to a job offer, as opposed to the same statistic being a staggering 60 per cent for paid interns. For those who had no internship experience at all, the employability rate stood at 36 per cent, only one per cent lower than those who did unpaid internships. If done in a fair setting, the benefits that an internship entails for the intern are plenty. Other than pepping up their CV, it also helps university students put their theoretical knowledge to practice. Shadowing their supervisors and observing everyday operations at work adds to their skills, furthering their employability. Switching between different departments makes the learning experience more holistic, rendering the intern more aware of what particular role they might want to take up as a full-time job. The most sought after benefit of them all is the possibility of getting a foot in the door with a potential employer. But as the glut of internship seekers and qualified graduates grows, many employers take advantage of the demand-supply disparity in jobs, resorting to exploitative practices that help them cut employment costs, particularly in the lower echelons of the organisation. Often they assign menial and irrelevant tasks to interns – services that might otherwise be paid casual work. There are myriad instances of interns, desperate for work experience and glowing references on their resume, taking up an exploitative internship hoping to gain valuable work experience. Instead

of relevant training, they ended up being made to serve coffee, answer admin phone calls, stock up on refreshments and run petty errands for supervisors. Access to internships also serves to heighten income inequality. A month long internship in Sydney could cost anywhere between $3,000 - $3,500, after factoring in costs of rent, food, transport, etc. Those from wealthy families who can afford the same don’t just land internships, but also use it as a means

to an end and secure full-time employment. Meanwhile, those from poorer backgrounds, who cannot forsake their casual jobs, are left out of the loop entirely. The key to avoiding exploitation as an intern is to be well aware of your rights in the workplace and understand the distinction between learning and rendering services that the organisation could monetise. As soon as the latter occurs, the organisation is obligated to

remunerate the intern, in compliance with minimum wage rules. A landmark judgement from the Federal Circuit Court led to a $24,000 fine of Crocmedia after it was found they didn’t pay their interns, in spite of the fact that they worked like regular employees. If nothing else, it shows us that if we exercise our agency and take legal action, we can stop employers from exploiting interns.

Sport

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Burley Man Initiative Founder Not-so-burly After Running 2500km Text: Max Koslowski Image courtesy of the Burley Man Initiative

Last year, in late October, Joshua Dundas made a decision that would shape the next five months of his life. Starting off, he set up an innocuous Gofundme campaign entitled ‘Burley Man Initiative’, before creating both a Facebook page and an Instagram account in quick succession. Within the next six days, he had reached out to two charities – Cancer Council and Bravehearts – and was ready to go.

experiences, but he told me to hold on. Five months after he had started it, he was just closing up the ‘Burley Man Initiative’ Gofundme page, and we agreed to meet following the finalisation of his fundraising efforts. What followed was a chat with a man who is realistic with the troubles that face his community, but also beyond hopeful in its capacity to overcome them. Dundas is the everyman: chirpy, perpetually ‘stoked’, always kind, but with a keen streak of determination that sets him aside from others.

What was Dundas’ plan? He wanted to run. A lot.

That determination has turned people’s heads. Not just the hundreds that donated to his initiative, but to the thousands in the ANU community who saw what he was doing and were influenced by it.

The target was 2500km: that equated to around 15 km of running per day, or, when Dundas’ $5000 fundraising goal was taken into account, $2 per kilometre. He would update his social media pages with details on his progress. Alongside the running updates, he would promote the importance of both getting your skin checked and being aware of child protection issues. And he would also grow a beard – something that Dundas, who despised facial hair, could not look forward to less.

For Dundas, the first few weeks of the initiative were lonely and tough. Having not run long distances since his football days, Dundas gave it his all and ran 22 km on his first run. But that mentality wore him down. Just two weeks in, cracks started showing. After a particularly tough 10pm run from his home in Braddon up past Mt Ainslie and beyond, Dundas stopped, breathless and tired, and broke down crying. He was ‘so broken, so sore’, and felt like he could barely walk.

I texted Dundas to see whether he was ready to chat about his work and his

Dundas learned. He recognised that his physical threshold was probably not

much more than 13 km of running at one time, and so he split up his single run a day into three. After six weeks, he realised that getting people to come on runs with him proved motivational, and spread his message even more. It became Dundas’ all-in-one ‘socialising and meditation’ solution. And, after one life changing chunder, Dundas learned never to drink one and a half litres of choccy milk right after running. Slowly, the worth of Dundas’ running became concrete. Within two months, he had raised $2000 online. His beard was filling in. And people were getting their skin checked. ‘I had a mate close to me tell me he was going in and getting a skin check, and now he is having a mole removed next week,’ Dundas said. In fact, he pinned the number at around 20 people who had told him that they were getting their skin checked thanks to his advocacy. Dundas was reflective when I spoke to him. Despite the initiative officially closing up less than an hour before, he seemed nostalgic about it already. This was perhaps due to his tough run-in with injury in recent months. In mid-February, Dundas tore his left quad, which took him out of action for two weeks. Just as he was recovering, he ‘picked up peroneal tendonitis’, which made running long distances grating and painful.

Despite his best efforts, Dundas ended up just 350km short of his 2500km goal, resorting to walking hundreds of kilometres to try and complete that final stretch. But even while he wasn’t running, the donations kept piling in. Photos of a full-bearded Dundas filled the initiative’s social media pages, and events like the hilarious Budgie Run – in which 32 of Dundas’ mates ran 10km in budgie smugglers – raised the profile of the Burley Man Initiative to new heights. There was no doubt as to why Dundas was so chuffed when we chatted; he had just potted $9,700 – almost double his original goal – into the coffers of Braveheart and Cancer Council. When asked why he was doing all this, Dundas got serious: it wasn’t just a test of character for himself, but it was also a call to arms for all other everymen out there. Dundas was able to show, through the Burley Man Initiative, that ‘everyone else can do it as well’. Dundas has stopped running – for now. But rest assured he’ll be back, beard or no beard, and armed with his relentless determination and cheer. In these past five months, Dundas has not just raised money for charity, but has achieved something far more momentous. He has challenged all of us to not cheer from the sidelines while others run past.

Week 7, Semester 1, 2017

Dank Memes for Chifley Screens

MANet’s Gaze: Mind Over Meme post- (insert your pet philosophy, or -ism here), I don’t know how I could have let myself deny my socially conditioned hyper-sensitivity for so long.

Text: Elizabeth Harris Elizabeth is a Canberra native studying a very rarely seen degree at the ANU - LLB/Arts. Her column seeks to incorporate hard truths (common in the legal world) and dank memes. Not wanting her memes to be dreams, Elizabeth hopes to be a pioneer in the art historical study of memes.

I have now been writing to you all about memes for a while, but have realised that I have been doing so in a socially irresponsible manner. In a world of trigger warnings, SJW sensitivities, and

I have implied that it is alright to objectify any and all subjects of memes as the objects of your visual pleasure, all in the pursuit of academic advances in memetics. This was wrong of me. What I failed to forewarn you of was the millennial gaze. Just as the male gaze was used by MANet – isn’t the name just a slap in the face? – to place women as the objects of male desire and gratification, memes abduct popular imagery for the nefarious purpose of gratifying us millennials. While the male gaze relates predominantly to sexual desire, memes placate our cynical, nihilistic, and sarcastic desires. The inaugurator of the male gaze, feminist scholar Laura Mulvey wrote in 1975 that imagery responds to an inner-drive dubbed ‘scopophilia’: the sexual pleasure gained from looking. I don’t judge if memes get you off, but more generally, most of us gain a great deal of pleasure from being tagged in and looking at memes. Memes, objectified for our enjoyment, do not look back at us. We are the bearers of the gaze. Yet, the meme pictured – not well known, but bear with me – is self-referential in many ways. It acknowledges the millennial

gaze, evoking the male gaze with the trope of a woman being watched by a man. However, when faced with the chance to engage in the traditional activity of male-gazing, he opts for the millennial gaze. He just cannot detach himself from the lust-inducing premise of ‘trolley problem’ memes. The equal wickedness of this pursuit is alluded to by the darkened background, which progresses from light grey, to white, to black. However, this satiric take on the male gaze may be a way of subverting the millennial gaze. Again, we can turn to Mulvey, who notes that the male gaze turns a woman into ‘the bearer of meaning and not the maker of meaning.’ Through the self-aware placement of a meme in the man’s thought-bubble, the meme affirms its right as a maker of meaning. Similar subversion of the male gaze can be seen in the typically kitsch, youthful and witty pop art of Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein was renowned for his use of comic (as in Superman, not humorous) art, characterised by bold colours, thick outlines, and Ben-Day dots. Works such as Drowning Girl (1963) in which a young woman dismisses her impending death saying ‘I don’t care! I’d rather

Satire sink than call Brad for help!’ poke fun at the helpless female trope, with his satiric reproduction of it highlighting its inanity. The meme pictured clearly refers to Lichtenstein not only in its subversiveness, but in its similar use of comic book style. Although memes may be able to challenge our gaze, it is not given (#SJW) that they must do so! Millennial voyeurism must end. However, memery can be done ethically. Here are some tips for your next meme viewing: 1. Be aware of the millennial gaze, and highlight the potential for meme abuse each time you tag. 2. Join a meme activism group. It will look great on your CV! 3. Share memes as much as possible so as not to feel repressed. Remember that even though many of us may accept that eating meat is morally wrong, we still do. The same logic goes for memes. MANet’s gaze may endure in these times, and some might criticise it. But the millennial gaze is one we can close our eyes on. Bear that advice in mind, but also consider this: MANet’s gaze may persist, and so may the millennial gaze, but all you need to do is shut your eyes.

Five Secret Ways to Get a Park on Campus Text: Caroline Dry

It seems that the ANU has a bit of a vendetta against cars. This is perfectly reasonable, of course. Cars are driven by plebeians with ‘part time jobs’ who ‘can’t afford to pay $400 a week for a Unilodge room without a bathroom.’ The obvious way to remove these blights on the face of our campus is to take away the carparks, because that is how inelastic demand works. If you are one of the selfish people who insists upon being financially unable to live a reasonable distance from campus, then shame on you. However, you might also be interested in these handy tips on how to park your car, because honestly they’re the most realistic options you have left. 1. Pretend that your car is just another quirky member of the Pop-Up Village family. The key here is confidence. Drive right into the middle of Union Court and stick up a sign advertising ‘Artisanal $40 Paleo Coffee’ or something. If you don’t want to disappoint anyone who was actually hoping to get a drink, leave a bag of unground coffee beans and some cartons of milk on the ground and claim that your product is ‘a deconstructed experience’. 2. Rent an oval from ANU Sport for the entire rest of the year and use it as parking space. If enough people chipped in it might end up costing less than what ANU Parking charges. (Full disclaimer: this is only 86 per cent a joke).

3. Park on the lawns out the front of the Law School. Law students are to parking inspectors what garlic is to vampires. We have taken all of those lectures about human rights and applied them to our own white, suburban, Longchamp bag-carrying lives. No parking inspector is going to go within a hundred metres of us, lest their office get flooded with letters about ‘the violation of my liberty’ and ‘this ticket is discriminatory’. Parking your car on our turf will guarantee your safety. You might, however, get a nasty note from some kid named Maxwell who uses the word ‘thus’ in everyday conversation and is going to sue you because the glare of the sun reflecting off your car has ruined his eyesight. 4. Just convert all of Clunies Ross Street into an unofficial ANU carpark. The road that runs between the backyards of the colleges and Black Mountain has recently (thanks to construction work) become absurdly congested during peak hour. After I spent ten minutes moving forward by about six metres last week, I’ve realised that nobody would notice if we all simply parked our cars, ran our errands, and returned several hours later. 5. Park illegally, and then disguise your car by printing out hundreds of long letters protesting the demolition of Bruce Hall and pasting them all to the exterior. University officials are just going to act like they can’t see anything at all.

Issue 4, Vol. 67

Satire

Comic: Caitlin Setnicar

Sudoku: Sebastian Rossi

Cryptic Crossword: NWJ Woroni Cryptic

Solutions in next issue 1

4 6

8 9

2 4

11 12

2 6

2 17

Across

Down

3 Soft insect's trousers (5)

1 Revolutionary in a sports store (5)

4 Princess and a group of natives go on an angry rant (8)

2 Burial chamber 99 - the puzzle before you (7)

7 Precious metal, individual fastens fairy tale girl (10) 8 Preparation of cells enjoys music, painting and literature (7) 10 Drugged up fire starter helps make things more obvious (11)

3 Expert sees trekking supplies (10) 5 Famous gangster uses artificial intelligence to shoot an individual (2,6) 6 Build up a stock of current - get here, you are overdue they say! (10) 9 Rotate emergency room in Canberra suburb (6) 12 Tasty treat inside capsules (4)

11 Insert world leader (5)

13 Seice M.N! Wild politician from the 60s (7)

13 Moustache flower is sullen (6) 15 Understand the shelf, includes all information (9)

14 Amartya consumed the red house! (6)

16 Popular breath mint is turned around by a good strategy (6) 17 Blow up dusty revision of course material (5)

ACCUMULATE ALCAPONE CRYPTIC CULTURE DIATRIBE GLASSES GOLDILOCKS HIGHLIGHTER KNOWLEDGE MENZIES MOROSE PANTS PODS PROVISIONS PUTIN REBEL SENATE STUDY TACTIC TURNER

Woroni Last Cryptic editionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2 crossword solutions

Solutions in next issue

P C L E A N 5 E D 6 7 A L A P E N O S S L V E I E 11 U N I V E R S E A R N D 14 E D I T O R U 16 A S T A M 17 P S 18 L G U M T E A T E

H A N U S A N 8 D U C K O 9 10 C A M P U S I T Y K L U 12 T R E M B L E 1 D O P 15 S E G D T A I L K E R S P A C E R A K G R E R E E S T N N Y S T 4

Crossword Word bank

18 Gram and girls, they sit on your face (7)

Across

WORD LIST: ACCUMULATE ALCAPONE CRYPTIC

GLASSES GOLDILOCKS HIGHLIGHTER

MOROSE PANTS PODS

REBEL SENATE STUDY

CULTURE

KNOWLEDGE

PROVISIONS

TACTIC

pdfcrowd.com

Down

3 100 lack fat but aren't dirty (5)

1 Pander for soft rental agreement (6)

4 Our star is trapped by 2 articles from the student body - go back! (5)

2 Star Wars hero and a chicken spotted in ANU Library (7)

6 Pale onas vomits spicy food (9)

5 Remove a vital organ and send! (7)

8 Bend over bird! (4)

7 Radio command, six balls then a wicket (4, , )