On the ground floor of the Marie Reay Teaching Building, a mural tracks the history of student activism at ANU from the 1960s to the present. Each of these campaigns or protests (according to the website and mural) had a distinct target but references to how these protests failed or succeeded are often frustratingly vague. Though the university is happy to use the student activism of previous decades to improve its public image as a place of free speech and open debate, it’s unsurprisingly unwilling to go into much detail when free speech is directed at the university itself. 

I received dozens of emails last year, particularly when the pro-Palestine encampment was active, proclaiming ANU as proud of its long history of student activism and its long-standing commitment to academic and political freedom of speech. Predictably, none of them responded to the circumstances that had led to the protest in the first place, even though the objections of the encampment and the various other pro-Palestine actions last year were mostly clear: the university has direct financial ties to companies that are facilitating a genocide and continues to cut CASS courses while introducing degrees purpose-built to meet the industry demand created by the AUKUS deal. 

The apolitical language the ANU uses to describe student and staff activism frames the relationship between protestors and the institution they are fighting against as mutualistic. The university facilitates the freedom of political expression, and students and staff exercise those freedoms. The university’s ‘commitment’ to free speech enables the protests to take place and is framed as university management upholding their end of the bargain. Never mind why the protestors are there; the protest itself is political enough.

It isn’t surprising that the ANU is reluctant to translate the protest demands of students and staff members into policy or investment changes However, it’s still important that the link between activism and change is clearly drawn. The collective memory of the student body at ANU is relatively brief—an undergraduate degree is only three years, and Canberra isn’t the sort of place where most people settle down after they graduate. If we can’t learn from the campaigns of the past and demonstrate how real change is possible, we can’t be successful in the campaigns we need to fight now. 

2017 Sydney College of the Arts

In 2016, the University of Sydney announced that the university’s Visual Arts school, the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA), was in deficit and would be merged with the UNSW School of Art and Design. Students, alumni and faculty rejected this move as damaging the quality of education students would receive, as well as the specific advantages associated with the use of studio spaces at the heritage-listed campus at Callan Park and the major staff and course cuts that would be inevitable should the merger go ahead. At a rally held in August 2016, SCA students announced they would occupy the school administration’s offices at the SCA campus unless student demands were met by the following week. They were ignored.

The ensuing occupation was initially expected to last less than a week, but students ended up staying in the offices of the Callan Park campus for 65 days. Until last year’s pro-Palestine encampments, it was the longest-running student occupation in Australian history. 

The campaign resulted in several wins, though the Callan Park campus was closed 12 months later. The merger that would have effectively ended the SCA was quickly abandoned; there was a 50% reduction in job losses attributed to the cuts to the College, and all courses that would have been lost under the original proposal were preserved. 

1994 No-Fees Chancelry Occupation 

ANU has seen its own share of student protests opposing course cuts, fee increases, and other austerity measures taken by the university. In 1994, emboldened by the ALP’s recent deregulation of postgraduate course fees, the ANU introduced an upfront fee of $9000 for the Legal Workshop course, which was effectively mandatory for law students in order to graduate. 

Following the announcement, the law society organised a snap meeting, which rapidly drew broad support from students from other academic disciplines who recognised that the legal clinic fee was the first step towards up-front fees for everyone. On 15 September, around 500 students stormed the Chancelry and occupied it for eight days before the police evicted them in the afternoon of 23 September. Though the short-term outcome of the No-Fees campaign and accompanying occupation was unclear, there was an immediate compromise of a $4000 reduction in the fee for the Legal Workshop course. In the longer term, it led to a significant increase in political mobilisation across the student body, which enabled an effective fight-back against up-front fees when the ANU attempted to introduce them university-wide in 1997.  

2022 School of Art and Design Occupation

Campaigns employing similar strategies have also succeeded in more recent years. In 2020, due to COVID-19 staffing and social distancing limitations, Visual Arts students had their studio access hours cut by over 50%. Two years later, despite most other parts of the university returning to in-person teaching, Visual Arts students had yet to see a return to pre-COVID access hours. The delay was such that an entire cohort of Visual Arts students had nearly graduated without ever having full access to the resources they were promised when they commenced their degrees. In response, a year-long student-run campaign culminated in a four-hour occupation of the School of Art and Design Foyer in October 2022. A return to after-hours access was announced by the end of the week. 

Teaching Less

Last year, the ANU announced sweeping restructures in the face of a deficit of over $200 million. The plan, optimistically termed ‘Renew ANU’, is to reconcile the deficit by cutting $250 million in operating costs by the start of 2026. $100 million of that will come from ‘salary spending’—in other words, the ANU will cut $100 million worth of staff. The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) estimates this will amount to around 638 full-time-equivalent staff. Still, since many of the staff hours cut will come from part-time and casual staff, the actual number of staff who will lose their jobs might be much higher. The ANU employs around 4700 staff, many of whom are not full-time; at a minimum, Renew ANU, as it is currently being implemented, will involve the university shedding 1 in 8.

ANU has used the same slogan to justify its austerity measures as a necessary and positive step forward since at least 2022. Leaked slides from discussions on the 2022 degree cuts to the College of Arts and Social Sciences show that the University—trademark symbol included—framed the loss of 10 specialist CASS degrees with the slogan: ‘teach less, better.’ Eerily familiar was the phrase used by the Vice Chancellor last October when formally announcing Renew ANU: ‘We will do less, but we will do it better.’ 

But for staff and students at a Renewed ANU, what does ‘better’ mean? Not much, for the staff that have and will lose their jobs. Similarly, for students who have to deal with increased tutorial sizes, teacher-to-staff ratios, and cut or infrequently run courses, the mechanism by which the university is going to make good on the ‘better’ is increasingly unclear.

Regardless of who leads the university, ANU’s methods for dealing with its financial problems will be driven by the same corporate logic that has driven higher education for decades, in the wake of plummeting federal higher education funding and increasing reliance on the private sector. Rounds of staff and course cuts predate Genevieve Bell’s tenure as Vice-Chancellor and will almost certainly continue whether or not she continues to occupy the position. 

Neither the 1994 occupation nor the 2022 sit-in at the School of Art and Design occurred spontaneously. Both campaigns’ short and long-term successes were backed by open, democratic organising amongst the student body, in alliance with the NTEU and other unions. The concession the ANU council made last year to introduce a negative screen on investments in companies that manufacture ‘controversial weapons’ and civilian small arms—while inadequate, is recent proof that on-campus protest movements can make it more difficult for the university to implement the changes than to abandon them or seek alternatives. When we fight collectively, openly, and democratically, we can win. 

Michael Reid is a member of Save Our Studies, Save Our Staff ANU.