BY BRONWYN POWELL
In a crackdown on political activists at Sydney University, two people have been arrested and a Resistance stall shut down in the space of two weeks.
On August 25, Lian Jevey, an activist in Socialist Alternative, was arrested for sticking up posters at the university. Jevey, while not a student, was postering with a student activist at the time of her arrest. She was charged with malicious damage and assault after a security guard claimed she poured paste on him.
On August 28, refugees' rights activist and long-time socialist Ian Rintoul was arrested at a forum held at the university to discuss the deportation of asylum seekers.
The university students who organised the forum invited Rintoul, who is not a student, as a guest speaker from the National Anti-Deportations Alliance, along with Louise Newman, president of the NSW College of Psychiatrists. Such forums are held often at Sydney University.
Thirty-five people attended the forum. Ten minutes into Rintoul's speech, two police and three security guards barged into the room and told him that he was banned from the university and was under arrest. Rintoul attempted to continue his speech, but was arrested and taken to Newtown police station. He was charged with trespass.
Rintoul was banned from the university in 1999 following his participation in a sit-in of the university's finance office, as a protest against the introduction of up-front fees. His ban has been renewed whenever it has expired. He is currently banned until 2005.
On September 3, security guards hassled Resistance activists campaigning on campus. Some non-student activists were asked to leave the university. When they realised student activists intended to continue the stall, the guards told activists to pack it up because money was being collected (donations for Green Left Weekly), claiming this contradicted a clubs-and-societies guideline and university policy.
The activists asked the security guards to show proof of such policies, which was refused. The security guards then went away to check if Resistance was a registered club on campus, and on finding out that it wasn't, used this as grounds to shut it down. The stall was packed up when security threatened to pack it up themselves. The activists were told they needed to ask permission to hold the stall in future.
"They're targeting activists", Rintoul said. "The ban on me is a selective, political ban". Jevey pointed out that "people stick up posters in the same area [as I did] and nothing happens to them. They're cracking down on political groups."
The university's Campus Access Policy states that: "Staff members and students of the University are freely permitted to hand out printed materials, establish contact 'desks', place posters on notice boards, and canvass for their particular causes."
However, the policy also states that "authorised officers" of the university may seek to establish the "bona fides" of anyone attempting to do this.
"It should be that if you build a campaign, you should be allowed on campus", Jevey pointed out.
Students and others have worked together well in the past to campaign against the Vietnam War, education cutbacks and other social justice issues. Anyone should be allowed to set up a stall, stick up posters, speak at a forum and fundraise on the university. Anything less than this is censorship. Political activists already have to compete with businesses — which are certainly not students — that sell products on campus and advertise on notice boards.
Many clubs and societies events involve the collection of money — from selling political newspapers to film screenings, cakes, and ski-holiday tickets. If a club is to receive funding from the university union, it must have a membership fee of $5 or more — money that is usually collected on campus.
The university's policy (which overrides the university union) does not state whether or not money can be collected on campus. However, what activists are able to do will depend on the strength of student opposition to attacks on free speech.
Activists are planning to set up a mobile phone text message network, so that activists can quickly rally to the defence of any activists being hassled by security. Petitions, posters and statements against the attacks are being produced, while an action on campus to defy the restricted access of non-students is being planned.
Sydney University students and staff have a proud history of activism. This was reflected recently, as thousands of Sydney University students joined the August 27 protests to defend public education. If we are to defeat the federal government's attacks on higher education, we need the involvment of as many people as possible. An essential part of this is allowing anyone onto campus to help organise these campaigns.
To get involved in the campaign for free speech at Sydney Uni phone Karol on 0410 544 396.
[Bronwyn Powell is the president of the Sydney University Resistance Club.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 10, 2003.
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