Last year, students of Political Economy at the University of Sydney stood up to threats to merge their department into either a politics or straight economics department.
They protested because they believed in the value of learning alternative economics, refused to accept cuts in staff or subjects and believed students have the right to have a say in the institution at which they choose to study.
Geoscience students did the same thing in 2010, and now biology students are standing up. The subjects under threat may be very different but the reason for the threat is the same. Universities have moved away from a system where students are valued as community members – and education is an end in itself – to a model where balanced budgets and tidy bureaucracies reign.
By standing up and demanding to be heard, we managed to keep the Political Economy department intact and involved in the review process that would decide the fate of our departments and subjects.
The greatest moment of our campaign was 200 people marching through campus and occupying the thoroughfare outside the Dean of Arts office for a speak-out.
We had dozens of speakers, from first year students to postgraduates to people from other universities and staff that had been teaching for 30 years.
There were heaps of people I’d never seen before. It was inspiring to see so many people stand up for other people’s education and rights as well as their own. Thirty years ago, students used similar tactics to win a Department of Political Economy.
There will always be people who have no hope, or find rallies and occupations “disruptive”. But it’s important to remember that what we have now, at some point, was won through protests and struggle. And really, what’s missing a tutorial to attend a rally compared with a cut in subjects?
We won the campaign because we connected with students and the community on an issue that directly affected them. We managed to attract a broad group of people from outside the department because we connected our issue with the trend in universities and Australia towards neoliberalism, where dollars are more important than people.
It’s important to link individual issues to broader systemic problems because that’s the only way to build a movement that can actually fix the problems, rather than try for Band-Aid solutions.
Throughout the campaign, we frequently had people second-guessing themselves, thinking they didn’t have the skills or knowledge we needed. When it comes down to it, there’s nobody more qualified to run these campaigns than students themselves, and we can’t wait for other people to defend our education or give us a voice.
Never let anyone persuade you that you’re apathetic or that you can’t make a difference. The fight is worth it and these battles can be won.
To have a presence on campus, you’ll have to fight for space against the corporate sponsors, resident Liberals and legions of people who think that they’re the next great political powerbroker. Try to ignore — as much as possible — the Labor factions melodramatically knifing each other as they practice for parliamentary politics.
There is a saying that student politics is often so vicious because there is so little at stake. This is true only if you think that either we can’t win, or there’s nothing worth fighting for.
Refugee rights, the environment, workers rights and indigenous rights are all issues that directly affect students and should have a presence on campus. Unless we fight, we’ll keep on losing. So get involved and demand the rights you deserve.
