Tag: stupol

• So, You Ran in ANUSA Elections. Now What?

  September 22, 2020 6:09 pm Comments Off on So, You Ran in ANUSA Elections. Now What?

  Elections are finally over, and I think we can all give a collective sigh of relief. If you ran and weren’t one of the 38(ish) candidates who got elected, you’re probably disappointed with the result. You may have put a lot of work into developing detailed policy that no one read, or spent hours campaigning and joking that you’re now a “stupol hack” instead of studying. If you weren’t jaded and disillusioned with ANUSA already, chances are you will be when elections roll around next year and you see the same policy proposals paraded. Between bitterness and burnout, it’s no surprise that few student representatives run for re-election.
  The good news is that there are many different ways to make meaningful impacts on student life without winning elections. Instead of plotting to take over Clubs Council, here are a few ideas to get active on campus.
   
  Residential Committees
  The recent Interhall Committee campaign Who Pays the Price? has demonstrated how different residential communities can coordinate to force student issues into the public consciousness. If you live in a hall of residence at ANU, you have the opportunity to get involved in your residential committees and organise activities and campaigns. There is a tendency for many candidates to run for “first year” positions and few for senior roles. 
  As with any of the ideas on this list, you shouldn’t run just to enhance your CV, get an honorarium or prepare for next year’s student elections. If you have the skills and passion necessary to contribute to residential life, go ahead. If not, there are plenty of other opportunities.
   
  ANU Committees
  What do meetings of ANU Council, the Academic Board and a bunch of University committees have in common? Students can attend as observers. Many of the big decisions of ANU are made in these obscure bodies and you have the ability to see how this happens. You should give notice if you plan on attending (check each board’s charter for who to email), but there’s nothing stopping you from keeping an eye on the inner workings of the university. Except confidentiality. And a lack of info on the ANU website. And that time ANU Council met in Darwin for some reason.
   
  Lobbying Student Representatives
  Unlike taciturn student observers, many student representatives actually sit on ANU boards with full privileges, from the Undergraduate Member on ANU Council to the Student Experience Committee. Further, College Representatives have a direct dialogue with the heads of academic colleges. While you may not hold these positions, there’s nothing stopping you from lobbying your representatives to, in turn, lobby those with their hands on the levers of university power. “Consultation” is a term often bandied about during elections, but you can ensure your reps actually make an impact. Arrange a meeting in person, prepare and present your issue, urge them to relay your concerns to the board/dean and follow up on action taken. It’s simple, and many reps will actually be keen to listen to someone who can give them something concrete to bring up at their next meeting.
   
  ANUSA Working Groups, Departments & Collectives
  As a member of ANUSA, you can attend SRC, College Representative and general meetings, where you can question officeholders and move motions. However, you can also get involved in working groups, where discussions from arts funding to gender equality influence the activities of the student union. As these are often poorly attended, you have many opportunities to contribute. Be warned: some working groups are more focused and effective than others. Try a few out to filter out the white elephants. You can also get involved with ANUSA’s autonomous departments and collectives, which often take the lead on organising campaign and advocacy action. If you’re from a marginalised community group, meetings are regular and open. Just check Facebook or Department Officers for more info!
   
  Education Committee (EdCom)
  EdCom is the education committee of ANUSA, tasked with advocating for education issues as well as mounting campaigns and protests on topics such as fee hikes. While it has gained a reputation for being dominated by factional interests, it has gradually become more open in recent years. Combine this with relatively low turnout to meetings and a considerable budget for campaign activities and there is significant potential for keen, experienced organisers to push ANUSA’s advocacy forward. It remains to be seen whether next year’s EdCom will be an effective force for change. Nonetheless, if you and a couple of friends have an issue you want to ANUSA to campaign on (possibly with funding), then checking in with EdCom and the Education Officer is advised.
   
  Student Media
  If you’re looking to ask difficult questions to the ANU or publish essays on the student experience, student media is for you. With actual online readerships and topics ranging from changes to university degrees to wider university policies (not to mention detailed election reporting), ANU Observer and Woroni play an integral part in keeping the student body informed about all goings-on on campus. While reporter places are limited, Woroni is always on the lookout for online and print content from students. If you want to write opinion pieces on the student experience at ANU that people actually read, this may be an avenue for you.
   
  Truth be told, the ANU doesn’t make it easy for students to affect university policy. Most of the big decisions are made at the executive level with little to no student consultation. Barring a sudden promotion to the Chancellery, you may have to broaden your scope outside of ANUSA and ANU to have real influence by finding organisations the university wants (or at least is forced) to hear. For instance, the Young Workers Centre runs a variety of campaigns combatting wage theft that you can get involved in through volunteering on their website. You could also try emailing ANU executives directly, and if their response is unsatisfactory, reply or write a letter to the Canberra Times.
  You can always run again next year, using your newfound insight into student elections. Chances are it’ll be easier, since you’ll know what you’re doing, have name recognition and have (hopefully) been keeping up to date with ANUSA and university news, rather than being thrown in the deep end. Maybe you don’t even need to focus on ANU; there are plenty of other institutions and problems out there needing to be fixed. All you can be sure about is that if you don’t do it, it won’t happen.
   
   
   
  Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

  Woroni Editor

• ANU and Ramsay Centre: Trading Academic Independence for Cash

  May 20, 2018 10:01 pm Comments Off on ANU and Ramsay Centre: Trading Academic Independence for Cash

  ANU loves to brag about its scholarships. Its brochures are plastered with smiling shiny faces of Tuckwell scholarship students reading books on green grass under blue sky, with dust and heavy industrial equipment from the nearby construction site neatly cropped out. But ANU – the thought leader that it is – is changing away from this, as it quietly releases piecemeal information and timidly defends its negotiations with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization (RCWC) over a divisive new scholarship and degree originally slated for 2019.
  Late last year ANU announced it was in negations with the RCWC to create a new Bachelor in Western Civilization for a cohort of 60 students, of which it would provide some 30 students with a $25,000 per annum scholarship. But this group doesn’t exactly have the same appeal as the kind-faced, generous Tuckwells, with their passion for education. No, RCWC is instead staffed by some of the most disliked politicians in Australian history and has repeatedly said it will use the degree to push its ideological beliefs.
  RCWC launched in November 2017 thanks to a $3 billion donation left by healthcare-magnate and top Liberal party donor Paul Ramsay. The group aims  to get universities to teach a positive interpretation of Western civilization. To achieve this RCWC turned to ANU, promising a fortune to the university if they establish a degree that adheres to the group’s goals.
  RCWC chairman and former prime minister John Howard described the degree as “an exercise in the unapologetic exposal of what Western Civilization has brought to mankind over the centuries.” There are three main issues with the degree: firstly, its politically biased approach; secondly, the ambiguity of RCWC’s control over the degree; finally, the involvement of sitting MPs and partisan political figures.
  Members of RCWC board and its CEO have repeatedly said that the degree will only address the positive aspects of Western civilization. Board member Tony Abbott said that RCWC is “not merely about Western Civilization but in favour of it.” Even when Howard acknowledged that western civilisation had “its share of moral failures”, he didn’t elaborate. Instead, Howard said people should look to the successes of western civilization, such as the defeat of Nazi Germany. Of course, Howard did not explain why Nazi Germany – a European nation-State influenced by Enlightenment thought, Christianity and Graeco-Roman culture – was not part of the West. Nor have any of the board members mentioned colonisation, fascism, autocracy or imperialism; governmental structures that characterised the West for far longer than modern democracies. RCWC will not address these issues. They are explicitly narrow-minded and have no intention of approaching western civilization with the complexity it requires. Such an approach is not only an insult to students, but also to those affected by the negative aspects of western civilization. 
  ANU and RCWC have both said they will respect the traditional course approval structures, but this hasn’t stopped RCWC officials from also saying the exact opposite. During negotiations, CEO Simon Haines said “we would not be wanting to hire somebody who is coming in with a long liturgy of what terrible damage western [civilization] had done to the world.” If academic integrity is respected, then a politically motivated third party should not get to have a say in the hiring and firing of staff. A similar stance has also been taken on the syllabus of the 16 new courses in the degree. RCWC said that they will choose the readings or “great texts” for the degree, while also saying that ANU will treat the courses like any other. These two things can’t be true at the same time. To drive home the strong arm tactics, Haines threatened to pull funding if the courses and teachers did not tow RCWC’s ideological line.
  There is also the issue of RCWC’s board members also being sitting politicians. On the board, there are both former MPs – Howard and Beazley – and, more worryingly, current MPs. Liberal Party parliamentarians Leeser and Abbott sit on the RCWC board and have a deep involvement with the new degree. A sitting MP – particularly an ideologically divisive one, such as Abbott – having input on the curriculum of a public university is extremely unsettling and goes beyond a simple philanthropic donation. With all these issues you might have thought that justifications for ANU’s deal would be stronger.
  The most common argument in favour of the degree is a version of: ‘well people can do Asian, studies major so why not a have a Bachelor in Western Civilization?’ The response to this is twofold. Firstly the Asian studies major is not funded by a group called the Xi Jinping Lord President for Life Appreciation Society. In fact, any whiff of political bias in any course is met with legitimate anger and concern. Courses at ANU are – or if the deal isn’t stopped, were – run by academics that have independent say over course material with the sole goal of educating students. As a result of this, the Asian studies major does not ignore negative aspects of said society or mislead their students to guarantee funding. Secondly, ANU already has a heavily Western-centric model for teaching the humanities – look no further than English, Ancient History and International Relations. And the best thing about these courses is that they don’t sell the education of their students to politicians for some extra cash.
  This extra cash will also come with its own cost. RCWC is not a charity: they are not donating, they are buying. RCWC is trying to make their own degree and is paying the university to turn a blind eye to academic independence to do so. The world will see this and treat the ANU accordingly. Secondly, there are MPs on the RCWC board. If they really wanted to properly fund universities they could do it the old-fashioned democratic way, not with the vast wealth of a political partisan’s estate. Finally, we as students also pay ANU, under the presumption that we will be given the best education possible. At a Ramsay Centre forum Rae Frances, Dean of CASS, was asked what the threshold donation for someone to create their own degree would be, she tongue in cheek replied “$50 million.” Well, we – the students – provide ANU with hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and we don’t ask for a degree that mimics our personal political bias. We just ask for the university not to sell our education to the highest bidder.
  Sam Brennan is an admin of the Facebook page ‘Keep Ramsay out of ANU’

  Woroni Comment

• Lost, scared and confused: Non-selective public-school kid finds himself in a Labor Left and Right mixer

  May 5, 2018 12:18 pm Comments Off on Lost, scared and confused: Non-selective public-school kid finds himself in a Labor Left and Right mixer

  From Kiama High in rural NSW and the the son of teachers, James wasn’t quite prepared for ANU. Engineering seemed to have been confused with computer science, no one talked to each other in class and everyone drank cocktails, not kegs.
  He certainly wasn’t ready for this bustling lakeside function room.
  Lavender-scented CMFEU t-shirts, outfits made up of an SDA hat and RM’s… seeing the political battlelines everyone had been talking about before had become a task of splitting hairs – or haircuts.
  He bumped and jostled around the feverish networkers, falling to the back of the room with little resistance, like a pinball in a machine without bumpers.
  Now and then he agreed to statements he didn’t understand, with a non-committal nod and an empty word. Warm, wine-ladened breaths whispered: “but, like, its not a trust fund, it’s a long-term deposit”; “they’re just talking shit, I’m not rich, the tennis court is in the front garden”; “a $50,000 gift every year from my parents isn’t really tax dodging, I don’t have the faintest idea where the bank account is. Besides, everyone does it”.
  The worst were the arguments. James couldn’t see clear thought, despite the apparent sea of “pragmatic hats” and “thinking caps”. The room was split chaotically on who the ‘real’ terrorists were but mainly divided on whether the Shiraz was better than the Sauvignon Blanc.
  A quick jog took him out of the room. That politics could never be for him became cognizant far before he’d found the door.
  Back in the kitchen now, after handing out the last of his tray, he felt at peace. Until he had to wash the functions glasses with Kenny at the end of the shift. No- one knows what Kenny did for the first 40 years of his life, and the missing pinkie finger and neck tattoos didn’t invite questions.

  Liam King

• 100 per cent Transparent Troglobitic Isopod Crustacean Finishes Up 30 Million Year Preparation for ANUSA Just One Month After Voting Closes

  October 19, 2017 9:16 pm Comments Off on 100 per cent Transparent Troglobitic Isopod Crustacean Finishes Up 30 Million Year Preparation for ANUSA Just One Month After Voting Closes

  This brave troglobitic isopod crustacean began its extraordinary campaign close to 30 000 millennia ago with one radical idea not yet implemented in student politics: achieve an entirely transparent form.
  This effort has come to a tragic end, due to a failure to account for minor shifts in the distance between Earth and the Sun, which occurred over the course of this little bug’s entire evolutionary span – what a fucking idiot.
  Inhabiting an underground cave system for the whole period of the species’ existence, it has evolved to be entirely transparent through a lack of exposure to light. This sort of strategy has never been employed before in an ANUSA election – although living in the cave that is the BKSS might certainly constitute a prerequisite to running.
  ‘Shit Happens’, an autobiographical post-mortem of the campaign will be released in two weeks. You can find it at all good bookstores.

  Will Fletcher