This Protest would not be possible without your USU
Andrew Quah on protests
Andrew Quah
On Wednesday 10/8, our student organisations participated in a National Day of Action. I was there to cover the event, and to further my study of the practices of our student organisations, so that I may continue to formulate policy relevant to students. (At least that's what I tell people. I was actually there for the free lunch. It serves me right - the damn thing made me sick.)
The Wednesday protests represent the determination of a significant number of students to fight the move towards Voluntary Student Unionism. For them, it would mean the death of student services on campus, and a move away from a focus on "progressive" causes including feminism, queer rights and the environment towards a user-pays environment devoid of political life.
But the protests also represent everything that most people detest about the student movement. We're loud, we're disruptive, we don't give a shit about anybody else, and we'll screw over who we have to to get what we want. Far from building public support, the Wednesday protest reinforced the public perception that VSU is the way to go. And the fact is that most people do support VSU. I don't, but I certainly understand those who do.
How can we expect to gain public support when we do not behave in a respectable manner? Our protests piss off the Government - but our protests piss off the Australian people, and piss off our fellow students.
Our leaders dream of the glory days of the protest movement, during the 1960's and 1970's, and they act like we're still back in those days. But the reality is that the protest movement has become a farce, a cliche. Nobody respects protesters anymore, and if students want to achieve their goals, they will have to do so through respectable behaviour and logical arguments, behaving with virtue.
The worst part about this is that our representatives do not even see this issue as a student rights issue. Students do not respect these protests, because they are not anti-VSU protests. These protests respect and represent any number of political causes over the issue of student representation.
Student rights, and student protests are just an excuse for our representatives to promote their political ideologies. Calls that "Women's Rights are Not Voluntary", "VSU Kills Queers", and that we are "Trespassers on Aborigine land" quite frankly do not belong at a student rights protest. There are appropriate avenues of protest for these issues - and a student rights protest is not one of them.
Most students and I believe that our student organisations should put student issues first. Unless our representatives make student interests their first (their ONLY) priority, NOTHING they do will have any meaning for the students at our university.
The below two comments were attached to this article, and have been appended during the 2006 site upgrade for historical reasons
Submitted by Jon Kok on Mon,
To say that Women's Rights, Queer Rights and Indigenous Rights are not valid parts of the arguments against VSU and are not student interests is specious and shortsighted, not to mention rascist, sexist and homophobic.
From you, not really surprising.
Nonetheless, I will clarify on the point of the VSU KILLS QUEERS banner that you took photos of by citing just one of the many connected issues in this.
FACT 1: Student Unions and Representative Associations provide advocacy and welfare services for students, including support groups and counselling services.
FACT 2: Owing to homophobia, Queer Students are between 6 and 16 times more likely to commit suicide. If you want, I'll look up the studies that proved that.
FACT 3: Each year, at Sydney Uni alone, over a dozen borderline-suicidal Queer Students are found and referred to those support/advocacy/welfare services. These students lives are quite literally saved by those services.
FACT 4: As has been demonstrated by implementation of VSU elsewhere, such support/advocacy/welfare services do not have the ability/resources to continue effectively under VSU.
CONCLUSION: These four facts form a simple causal link between VSU and Queer Student deaths. Thus implementation of VSU increases the number of Queer Student deaths, ergo VSU KILLS QUEERS.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the Advocacy Services and their role in removing sexist, racist and homophobic course content.
"Everything is connected to everything else" - Lenin
Believe it or not, that happens to be true. You say "Women's Rights are Not Voluntary" doesn't belong at a student protest, when sexism is still prevalent in
You rail against the SRC and policital agendas and rascism, but I remember when YOU ran for SRC last year, and YOU were using rascist arguments to try and get yourself votes.
"My electoral defeat does not lie in ideology, but in economics and corruption."
When you said that, I almost died laughing. After all, your political ideology has to be some of the most bigoted and self-serving I've ever seen. But then I stopped and thought about it. Maybe people had already decided against you before they heard your ideology, maybe they voted againast you because you're a dick.
Submitted by Andrew Quah on Tue,
Throughout the election, and throughout the five years the Quah Report has existed, I have attempted to avoid ideological debate. Not because I don't have a stance on issues, but because ideology inherantly counters pragmatism. In terms of SRC & Union, this means that the ideological stances of the SRC & Union prevent said organisations from devising policy that can continue them to provide the essential services that most students associate with the
Which leads me to Queer rights and Women's Rights. I'll deal with gay rights here, and Women's Rights at my own site.
Gay students on campus already have MANY organisations to turn to for assistance in regards to their preferences, including the Gay and Lesbian Counseling Service (NSW DoCS), the Sydney Pride Centre, and the University's own Student Services. These organisations are much better equipped to deal with gay issues than our SRC/Union, and it is my belief that instead of trying to duplicate their function on campus, these organisations should be invited onto campus to continue their work outside the politically charged environment of the SRC/Union. Whether or not you believe gay issues are political or not, it doesn't mean we should continue to politicise them on campus. I'd like to think that such issues go beyond individualist politics, and that we should work to remove the politics from such issues.
The issue of the Queer Collective alienating Gay students is another. When there are gay students telling me that they think the Queer Collective is harming (not helping) gay-identifying students on campus, and yet others telling me that they take offense at the term "Queer", there is obviously something that needs to be done. My suggestion remains that rather than our student organisations trying to take on Queer Rights, it should liaise (and yes, even support) organisations that are actually designed to deal with these sorts of issues.
As for the women's rights debate, the following links to my own site should be of interest to you. Many of the points you have raised are currently being discussed there.
AQ: The Wheels of the SRC Go Round and Round:
http://www.andrewquah.com/arch
QR: The Blame Game
http://www.thequahreport.com/a
(But our Feminist Representatives are from Uranus.)
http://www.thequahreport.com/a
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