Sydney Uni Resistance activist MARINA CARMAN travelled to Canberra last week to participate in the ANU Chancellery occupation, and here describes its success in organising students to campaign against fees.
After the first few hours in the Chancellery, students realised what a great position they were in to build student opposition to the legal workshop fee and proposals for further postgraduate fees.
They quickly set about organising themselves for the stay. Desks and tables were pushed to the edges of the rooms as each section of the four-floor building was set up for a different purpose: sleeping areas strewn with pillows and sleeping bags; cooking areas; quiet study areas; even organised child-care on a rostered basis.
The fourth floor was set up as the campaign centre, making use of the photocopiers, faxes and computers which until recently had trundled out boring administrative letters, to churn out media releases, leaflets and posters.
This was certainly a case of occupation in the '90s as people wandered around on the one mobile phone which had been borrowed from a student and was often our one link with the outside world when the administration managed to disconnect the phone lines.
A recycling system was quickly set in place and some local media commented recently that it was probably the most environmentally friendly the Chancellery had ever been.
A number of different committees were set up to carry out police liaison, media work, trade union liaison, requisitions (food and toilet paper), filing and minutes from meetings. A propaganda committee, better known as "The Ministry of Truth", was set up to coordinate poster-making, leafleting in the city centre and on campus and other reach-out activities like visits to high schools to drum up support.
One of the posters which gave a clear indication of the political mood used a photocopy of a map of Paris, superimposed with recognisable bits of ANU geography and a graphic from posters used during the student revolt in Paris in May-June 1968. People wandered around covered in badges opposing fees and even one which simply read: "The People's Chancellery".
The meeting chamber upstairs was used for the two mass meetings held every day. Although the numbers at the occupation varied as people went out to leaflet, to attend and address other rallies around issues like privatisation and East Timor, or just went home for a quick sleep and shower, the numbers swelled around these meetings to between 150 and 200 people. As the meetings approached, students piled in to sit around the huge mahogany tables (covered in plastic to avoid scuffing) in the plush, green, high-backed chairs which until recently had accommodated men in grey suits.
Through these meetings delegations to negotiate with the vice chancellor were elected, the demands of the occupation were worked out, responses to the latest proposal from the administration were debated and the various committees reported back on the areas they had been assigned to carry out.
These were sessions of intense and occasionally heated political discussion and those chairing the mass meetings certainly underwent a crash course in meeting procedure.
The political seriousness of the occupants was evident in the debates and discussions held in these meetings and the level of organisation. The students clearly recognised that the agenda of privatisation of education was one which came squarely from the federal ALP government, although being imposed by various university administrations.
Realising that they were at the forefront of education attacks and had a responsibility to students nationally, the majority of the students understood their obligation to build a strong campaign. The occupation was never seen as more than a tactic to further the campaign, but the role that it played was an important one.
Important to the enthusiasm and strength of the occupation was the support of union delegates of workers at the university, of the drivers of the mail trucks who supported the picket stopping external mail, of Trades and Labour Council officials and of union organisers from the Community and Public Service Union who visited the occupation regularly after work.
Students could see the broad support the fight against fees had won, despite the lies spread by the university administration about the damage students were doing to the building and that they were trying to hack into computer files and so on.
Students, many of whom had never been involved in a campaign at all before, began to see the power of mass mobilisation and organisation. They were in control of a central building of the university and had forced the administration to come to them with proposals. People began to talk again of free education as a right and a possibility. They began to realise that organisation, boldness and big campaigns could win.
The overall mood was one of optimism and political ferment. Strangers were greeted warmly as they came and left the building. Students debated the latest development over bowls of porridge, in the lifts, over free pizzas sent in by supporters in the evening. People wrote in chalk graffiti around the building: "The spirit of Che lives on!" and "Reclaim more from the sixties than bad clothes and good music".