2016 Edition 4

FARRAGO EDITION FOUR • 2016

PIZZA • SHARKS • COCAINE

COMIC BY HARRY McLEAN

CONTENTS PAGE 35

PAGE 50

PAGE 45

PAGE 53 4 • NEWS IN BRIEF 5 • CALENDAR 7 • SPOT THE DIFFERENT • NEW UMSU PRESIDENT 8 • GOOD DEED OFFENDS 19 • THE OTHER ELECTIONS 19 • REPRESENTING RACE 10 • A FOSSIL FREE FUTURE 11 • NO NAPPING FOR NAPTHINE 12 • BURSTING THE JD BUBBLE 14 • THE RISK OF THE ASTERISK 15 • OB REPORTS 19 • SUNRISE IN MYANMAR 20 • STUDY TRICKS – THE EXPLAINER 21 • YOU CAN CALL ME DADDY 22 • COUNSEL IN COUPLETS 23 • UNDERGRADUALISMS (COMIC) 24 • LAMENTING THE LOST ART OF THE PROTEST SONG 27 • THE FEMININE CRITIQUE 28 • PERIOD DRAMA 29 • UNFAIR & LOVELY 30 • EATING CLEAN TO THE EXTREME 31• WHY DO WE SLEEP?

PAGE 22 32 • RIO & EVIE (COMIC) 35 • BANNED BOOKS 36 • THE FATE OF OUR BELOVED BOOKSTORES 37 • IS KANYE KANYE? 38 • ONE OF US: CULT REVIEWS – THEY LIVE 39 • FOR & AGAINST: PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA 40 • KING OF THE JUNGLE 41 • DISEASES WITHOUT BORDERS 42 • PLEASE DON’T FEED THE SHARK 44 • COCAINE CATAPULT 45 • SHE MADE ME LOOK TWICE 47 • BUTTOM MASHING TO THE VOICE ON THE OTHER LINE 48 • UNDERGROUND, OUTER SPACE 49 • MY MOTHER WROTE POEMS ON A GREEN TOILET DOOR 50 • ROOFTOPS OF BARCELONA 52 • SHADOW 53 • MERCY IN THE UNDERGROUND 56 • LOST / FAKE SMILE CREDIT / ’TIL DEATH DO US PART 59 • NOTES FROM THE WEIRD SIDE: THE SOCIETY 60 • DROWNING SONG 61 • BIG HEAVY THINGS 64 • FLASH FICTION: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 1

THE FARRAGO TEAM EDITORS

Danielle Bagnato Sebastian Dodds Baya Ou Yang Caleb Triscari

CONTRIBUTORS

SUBEDITORS

Bori Ahn Ayche Allouche Alexandra Alvaro Natalie Amiel Jordyn Butler Cara Chiang Ben Clark Jess Comer Gareth Cox-Martin Nicole de Souza Simone Eckardt Simon Farley Jessica Flatters Hayley Franklin Amie Green Ashleigh Hastings Paloma Herrera Emma Hollis Annabelle Jarrett Audrey Kang Rose Kennedy Jack Kilbride Eliza Lennon Jack Francis Musgrave Jeremy Nadel Kathleen O’Neill Emily Paesler Jesse Paris-Jourdan Alanah Parkin Evelyn Parsonage Elena Piakis Finbar Piper Ed Pitt Lara Porczak Lotte Ward Jenny Van Veldhuisen Dzenana Vucic Matthew Wojczys Jessica Xu Yan Zhuang

2 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

Alexandra Alvaro Lucy Andrews Britt Baker Bella Barker Ben Clark Caroline Clarke Colbran Jacob Debets Danial De Santos Martin Ditmann Katie Doherty Kyra Gillespie Ilsa Harun Mishell Herdandez Paloma Herrera Marley Holloway-Clarke Carolyn Huane Darby Hudson Annabelle Jarrett Thiashya Jayasekera Rose Kennedy Cambell Klose Maddy McCormack Harry McLean Pippa Mills Jack Francis Musgrave Mary Ntalianis Jesse Paris-Jourdan Rebecca Poynton Stephanie Riordan Jacob Sacher Amelia Saward Thea Stephenson Alexander Tashevski-Beckwith Ellie Taylor Caleb Triscari Peter Tzimos Erica Williams Yan Zhuang

COLUMNISTS

GRAPHICS CONTRIBUTORS Edie M Bush James Callaghan Lynley Eavis Amie Green Tiffany Y Goh Adam Joshua Fan Taliza Ho Anwyn Hocking Carolyn Huane Lucy Hunter Jasmin Isobe Emma Jensen Kerry Jiang Tzeyi Koay Han Li Mabel Loui Eloyse McCall Lilly McLean Sam Nelson Dominic Shi Jie On Katia Pellicciotta Anais Poussin Ella Shi Bonnie Smith Ellen YG Son Sophie Sun Aisha Trambas Jialin Yang Reimena Yee

Ben Clark (Online) Gabriel Filippa Patrick Hoang Thiashya Jayasekera Kerry Jiang James Macaronas Nick Parkinson Adriane Reardon Kit Richards (Online) Eliza Shallard Felicity Sleeman (Online) Lotte Ward Xavier Warne

WEB OFFICERS

Sorcha Hennessy Lucie Greene Allen Gu Kim Le

SOCIAL MEDIA

Jack Fryer Ilsa Harun Monique O’Rafferty Lachy Simpson

COVER

Tiffany Y Goh

FINE PRINT Farrago is the student magazine of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the Media Department. Farrago is published by the General Secretary of UMSU, James Bashford. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editors. Farrago is printed by Printgraphics, care of the transcendent Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This collection is © Farrago and Farrago reserves the right to republish material in any format.

ARTWORK BY KERRY JIANG

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hoy!

EDITORIAL

A week into laying out Edition Four, we’d done a total of five pages and decided it was a good time to take a group excursion to Dejour in search of some perfectly-tailored denim. Two jackets and five pairs of jeans later, we came out with matching double-denim outfits and our inevitable merge into one human being was finally complete. Phase One was achieved in Week Five when Caleb couldn’t get Subway for lunch because Danielle wanted pasta. Phase Two came shortly after when someone asked Baya how she was going and she replied: “We’re good, thanks!” It was only a matter of time before we started dressing like a boyband and walking in unison. Welcome aboard the good ship Farrago, we are your Captain now.

With this Edition we’re setting sail for the last time before the end of Semester One. Six months in and the Media Office has become something like a port city tavern, full of students swearing like sailors and near-constant, heavy drinking. It’s been an absolute blast of a semester – we’ve received and published some of the best writing the magazine has ever had, we’ve decorated the pages of Farrago and the walls of our office with enough eye-watering art to sink the hardiest cargo ship, we’ve reported on issues facing students and what UMSU is doing to combat them. Perhaps most importantly, we’ve grown from four inexperienced, clueless first-time editors into four somewhat experienced, still somehow clueless and incredibly stressed-out editors. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that we never make any progress if we’re too afraid to keep dipping the oar into the sea and continue pushing away from the known.

As we sail headlong into winter, the storm above appears to be growing. We’re all working frantically on our mid-year assignments and exams, while also preparing our sister ship, Above Water, to set out on her 2016 voyage. It’s going to be a choppy ride but we know we’ll clear the worst before too long. To those of you reading this edition as a reprieve from study: we promise you’re going to be just fine, you have the skills you need to climb the rigging and set the sails of your success against the winds of stress that’re beginning to blow. Harness your nerves and burn them as fuel to keep warm. If all else fails, we’ve plenty of rum in the hold.

In this brief calm before the storm crashes o’erhead, take a moment to dive below the waves with us as we explore the ethical dilemma of ecotourism in Katie Doherty’s piece (page 42) that inspired Tiffany Y Goh’s beautiful cover and look back at the success of Fossil Free Melbourne University’s ‘Flood the Campus’ campaign with Yan Zhuang (page 10). If the water’s not for you, leave it behind as you discover the sad truth behind the Juris Doctor with our mates over at De Minimis (page 12) or spend some time underground with Danial De Santos as he presents his wonderfully-pulpy ‘Mercy In the Underground’ (page 53). If spending time in the darkness of alleys and in the tunnels of mole men sparks your need to escape, come run across the rooftops of Barcelona with Caroline Clarke Colbran’s sweeping photography (page 50). At the end of all that, if all you want is some lighthearted bants to keep your mind off exams, we have the mother of all For & Against debates for you: PINEAPPLE. ON. PIZZA. (page 39). We think this edition is the perfect piece of procrastinatory bliss – a muddled-up mixture of seriousness and levity, proudly flying the technicoloured flag of the University’s students.

Before we sign off, we’d like to take this brief moment to say thank you to all of you who’ve helped keep our hands steady on the wheel and our eyes on the horizon so far this year – it means more than you know to have such a supportive crew behind us. We can’t wait to continue the voyage with you in Semester Two. Just keep swimming, Danielle, Sebastian, Baya and Caleb.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARY NTALIANIS

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 3

NEWS IN BRIEF IYSSE BITES BACK

The International Youth and Students for Social Equity group have distributed another open letter to the UMSU Clubs & Societies Department claiming their denied affiliation is “political censorship”.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT The pilot of Ronny Chieng’s comedy, International Student, has aired on the ABC. The pilot was predominantly filmed at the University of Melbourne in early 2016 and has been well-received.

NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION The second National Day of Action was held on 11 May. The protests organised by the National Day of Students aimed to express their opposition to the measures outlined in the 2016 Federal Budget.

INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRY A new study has found that international education in Australia is verging on a $20 billion industry. Experts have said that viewing international education as a commodity could be detrimental.

STUDENT BURGLARIES

CENTRELINK ISSUES

The amount of police patrolling around the University of Melbourne Parkville campus has increased following the high number of burglaries targeting international students in the past months.

Reports have surfaced that students may have been forced to withdraw from courses nationwide after an administrative fault with Centrelink’s student payment scheme.

UNI NOT-SO-SUPER Tertiary education superannuation firm, UniSuper, is under fire for publicly expressing opposition to a royal commission into banks.

In a media release, UniSuper CEO Kevin O’Sullivan states “UniSuper has confidence in the current regulatory environment that applies in the financial services sector”.

The National Tertiary Education Union have pressured Unisuper into refraining from commenting further.

4 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

As many as 30,000 student payment applications may have been “auto-rejected” by a technical failure.

Student groups nationwide are criticising this activity, claiming that delayed payments are causing students to drop out of university.

RAD SEX & CONSENT

Week 9 was Rad Sex and Consent Week. A range of workshops and panels were run, some with the aims of providing the sex education students may have never received in secondary school.

DRUG TRIAL

The largest drug trial of its kind has commenced in the hopes of combatting early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. The University of Melbourne is spearheading the Australian branch.

NUS PRES PREVAILS President of the National Union of Students, Sinead Colee, has continued term despite uncertainty over whether she could continue after failing to submit three consecutive reports to the National Executive.

DON’T BE A PRICK

Just weeks after racist remarks were found chalked on the Parkville campus, similar messages were found inside Union House in late April. Police have eyewitnesses and images of the culprits.

STUDENT PRECINCT The University has opened a student precinct “engagement space” opposite Tsubu on 10 May, with the intent of exploring what students might want from an all student-focused precinct.

UNI CASUALS

A report from the Department of Education has found that the casualisation of university staff has reached an alltime high at 16.5 per cent of all full time staffing arrangements.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

The Federal Budget was released on 3 May. The Budget presents significant shakeups to education and welfare funding.

A number of higher education reform proposals were tabled.

One proposal involves implementing a fee on the Higher Education Loan Program between five to twenty per cent.

Another proposal was to allow for ‘partially deregulated’ courses, in which universities can selectively abolish the cap on certain degrees.

The University of Melbourne Student Union has generally condemned these proposed education changes which would inevitably see students paying more for their courses.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING Through the magic of People Power™, a Special General Meeting of the University of Melbourne Student Union has been successfully petitioned for Week 12. The SGM will be held at North Court on Tuesday 24 May at 12.30pm.

All University of Melbourne students are eligible to attend and vote. Proposed constitutional changes include the establishment of a People of Colour Department and increased affirmative action policies.

PERFORATED FOR YOUR PLEASURE

JUNE CALENDAR WEEK ONE

WEEK TWO

WEEK THREE

WEEK FOUR

MONDAY 6

MONDAY 13

MONDAY 20

MONDAY 27

Melbourne International Jazz Festival (All Week)

Queen’s Birthday

Melbourne International Animation Festival (All Week) Refugee Week (Federation Square)

TUESDAY 7

TUESDAY 14

TUESDAY 21

TUESDAY 28

Emerging Writers’ Festival Reading Room (1000 Pound Bend until 24 June)

WEDNESDAY 8

WEDNESDAY 15

WEDNESDAY 22

WEDNESDAY 29

THURSDAY 9

THURSDAY 16

THURSDAY 23

THURSDAY 30

Mine Craft Club (Beaumaris Library)

Australian Burlesque Festival (Until 12 June)

FRIDAY 10

FRIDAY 17

Asian Street Food Weekend (The Food Truck Park)

SATURDAY 11

SATURDAY 18

Legally Blonde Jr Musical (Wyndham Culture Centre)

FRIDAY 24

FRIDAY 1

The Blues Brothers (The Astor)

Melbourne Web Festival (Federation Square)

Carlton Harmony Festival

Canada Day

SATURDAY 25

SATURDAY 2

Technology & Gadget Expo (MIT)

SUNDAY 12

SUNDAY 19

SUNDAY 26

Legally Blonde Jr Musical (Wyndham Culture Centre)

Winter Winefest (Omaru Alpacas Open Farm)

WWI – A Jazz Reflection (Shrine of Remembrance)

Above Water Submissions Close (11:59pm)

Melbourne Design Market (Federation Square)

Melbourne Design Market (Federation Square)

ARTWORK BY AMIE GREEN

SUNDAY 3

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 5

Listen now at radiofodder.com

SEMESTER ONE SCHEDULE TIME

MONDAY

10.00 11.00

TUESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Japanese Bathhouse

Curiosity

Time For K-pop

Problem Solverz

Faculty Feuds

JAM Stuffs

Campus

The Sesh

Schmoozin

Ne News

Networked Disabled

TRAINING

Creative Arts News

12.00 1.00

WEDNESDAY

Shindig!

2.00

TRAINING

Grrrl Hour

Sharp at Two

3.00

Biggest Blackest

Bastronomy

Silver Screen Sync

The Magoos

Hip Hop History

4.00

Talk About It

Colour Contest

Simone & Mindi

The Mr Ghost Show

The Apartment

5.00

Time Ghost

Mudcrabs Radio

Local Produce

Snappy Hour

Heavy Metal Hour

6.00

Pinky Rings

Sexless in the City

Spectrum

Pop Culture

The Sensitive Adult

7.00

Sound of Science

Nominal Interest

THE SESH

PROBLEM SOLVERZ

LOCAL PRODUCE

JAM STUFFS!

Tune into The Sesh with Farah for a curated one hour selection of quality tunes. We like to keep things interactive so every week you can be sure to hear a mix of our own favourites with your top picks for the week (coupled with a shoutout of course).

Every week the Problem Solverz team aims to make your life a little better by helping tackle some of life’s greatest mysteries. From relationships and study-life balance, to making both money and friends while at uni, tune in from 11am Friday, to see what Problem we’ll Solve next.

Local Produce is a weekly local music show brought to you by Sonny and Oli. You can expect to hear plenty of local tunes, fresh releases, artist interviews and let’s not forget quality banter and mildly entertaining segues. We like to spotlight artists here from Melbourne Uni, so if you are a musician we want to hear from you!

JAM = Japan, Anime and Manga! A show that’s reviewing your favourite anime and manga for you while playing anime soundtracks and Japanese songs. If you love anime and manga, tune in to JAM Stuffs every Thursday at 12pm.

TUESDAY 11AM

Recordings at: https://www. mixcloud.com/seshhh/

FRIDAY 11AM

WEDNESDAY 5PM

To find out about each show, visit radiofodder.com/shows/

THURSDAY 12PM

CAMPUS

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE NEW UMSU PRESIDENT JESSE PARIS-JOURDAN ON THE BREADTH OF BCOMM CHANGES

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standing committee into the Bachelor of Commerce has approved recommendations to change the structure of the course over the next few years.

The changes would see a reduction in the maximum number of points students can get from breadth subjects, from 100 to 75 points.

The reduction of breadth points is to allow for two more core subjects: Accounting Reports and Analysis and a new subject, Principles of Finance, which will replace Finance 1. The aim of the course is to better prepare students for the workforce.

“The changes were guided by employers’ feedback,” explains Mason Zhong, the student representative on the committee.

“For example, the proposal to make Accounting Reports and Analysis a core subject was motivated by the fact that employers found Bachelor of Commerce graduates from non-accounting or actuarial backgrounds lacking the ability to interpret financial statements.”

The changes are largely welcome. For some, however, the reduction of the breadth maximum due to complaints that graduates lack technical knowledge only highlights a common concern within the University: a tension exists between the Melbourne Model and the demand for courses to be geared toward employment.

“The importance of graduates being industry-ready cannot be understated,” says Paul Sakkal, UMSU Education Academic Officer.

“However the move towards less breadth study is one of some concern. It is crucial that students be included and consulted with in order to reach an outcome that adequately balances vocational skillsets and the students’ well-roundedness.”

The breadth reduction may also cause problems for commerce students planning to undertake a Master of Engineering, since taking this path requires undergraduates to get their full 100 breadth points from engineering subjects.

But Professor David Shallcross at the School of Engineering is working on an alternate bridging method for commerce students who wish to go into engineering.

Accounting Reports and Analysis went through an overhaul this semester, most notably in a reduction in the amount of content covered. This scaling down happened in response to the subject receiving overwhelmingly negative reviews for several years.

The committee has also recommended making the final exams for all core subjects in the course a hurdle requirement.

There are also likely to be changes to the core subjects for students majoring in economics and finance, in addition to the changes to core subjects for the Bachelor of Commerce in general.

ALEXANDRA ALVARO REPORTS ON THE CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP

F

ollowing the UMSU Students’ Council meeting in late April, Tyson Holloway-Clarke has been elected as the temporary President of the University of Melbourne Student Union. His appointment was unanimous and cross-factional, and follows the resignation of James Baker on 23 March this year.

Holloway-Clarke will most likely be in office until the general elections in September of this year. In his self-submitted nomination, he revealed his nomination had been “supported and championed” by his peers in the Indigenous collective.

Holloway-Clarke stated that his election would lead to a “stronger union” stressing the importance of unity during this time of political uncertainty, underpinned by issues such as the reshaping of academic programming and the indefinite future of Union House.

“Our potential to serve the students of this University has been stymied but it is my firm belief that we can work together to reignite our drive and lead students,” he said.

Speaking after his election, he said he believes a successful term will be indicated by “a good SSAF deal, sustainable business practices and world class facilities”.

UMSU received legal advice recommending a by-election in Semester One. Calling a by-election however would warrant insufficient notice because the legal advice was received late. The Student Union is looking into having law professionals on retainer should similar situations arise.

Holloway-Clarke acknowledged an election would have been a “preferable democratic solution”. During the council meeting, there was strong support for the notion that an election would have been a more desirable outcome in order to maintain accountability within Students’ Council.

Holloway-Clarke said that he would be leaving his role as Indigenous Officer should his nomination be successful. He is also certain he would be leaving his role as Indigenous Officer in capable hands of a team that are “capable of achieving excellence.”

Holloway-Clarke thanked Acting President James Bashford for taking on both roles during the casual vacancy, and the entire UMSU team for “stepping up”.

As he steps into his new role, Co-Indigenous Officer Emily James will be the sole Indigenous Office Bearer.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM JOSHUA FAN (LEFT) & MARLEY HOLLOWAY-CLARKE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 7

CAMPUS

GOOD DEED OFFENDS PETER TZIMOS TALKS THE CHALKING OF ANZAC MEMORIAL

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n event aimed at sharing positive and inclusive messages of diversity was held on Thursday 14 April in response to the spread of Islamophobic messages across campus in the previous week. Yet defacement of an ANZAC memorial has mired the event in controversy.

Islamophobic phrases such as “Ban All Mosques” were found written in chalk across campus on the morning of 8 April. The #ChalkForDiversity campaign sought to counter the previous week’s hate speech with chalk messages celebrating multiculturalism written by students, facilitated by stations set up at various locations around the university. The event followed the success of Respect Week in Week Four and encouraged students to “colour the campus” in celebration of student diversity.

However, the decision of some students to write on the base of the ANZAC Cenotaph outside the Old Arts precinct has caused backlash, with complaints filed to the University and UMSU. Complainants argue the chalk messages were offensive to Australians with a military service background and called upon the University and UMSU to publicly condemn the actions.

The official response from UMSU states that students were not seen to have engaged in activities that were “treasonous”, or were deliberately discriminatory to the memory of the ANZACs. However, complainants claimed that UMSU was effectively endorsing the defacement of the war memorial by funding the event and not publicly condemning the text. Some urged for punitive action to be taken against students involved and an official apology to be issued to the student community.

A motion for UMSU to donate to ANZAC charities was moved at a Students’ Council meeting on 21 April as a gesture of support for the ANZAC movement. Two donations of $100 each were sent to Legacy Australia and the Phoenix Australia Centre for Post-Traumatic Stress in order to give direct support to victims of conflict.

8 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

UMSU General Secretary James Bashford says the Union’s decision to donate money to charities is not a consequence of the complaints issued to the University.

“I don’t think it was particularly related. This is a motion that comes up every year,” Bashford said.

Bashford stood by the event and UMSU’s efforts to counter Islamophobic sentiment on campus.

“This just reinforces the message we were putting out there, that this is a university community that embraces diversity.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIALIN YANG

CAMPUS

THE OTHER ELECTIONS

CALEB TRISCARI PREPS US ON THE GRAD STUDENT ELECTIONS

T

he elections for the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and UMSU International have now closed, with the results from both elections expected to be called soon.

However, concerns have been raised over the sufficient notice of the UMSU International elections. According to many international students, no notice of the general election was given directly through email or post. Instead, notice was given indirectly through social media channels, the website and the student portal.

In comparison, the GSA has given notice of this year’s general election via both email and post. Last year, UMSU gave notice of the general elections to all University of Melbourne students via email.

Furthermore, the returning officers of the election, officials hired to regulate the election fairly and independently, include the incumbent General Secretary and Vice President (Cultural and Social) as opposed to an external company as used in the UMSU and GSA elections.

General Secretary of UMSU International, Divyaa Jayakumar, explains that the need for independent electoral scrutiny within UMSU International is unnecessary.

REPRESENTING RACE

PALOMA HERRERA ON A NEW PEOPLE OF COLOUR DEPARTMENT

C

onstitutional changes have been endorsed by the governing body of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) to establish a department aimed at representing students of colour on campus.

In early 2016, the UMSU Students’ Council passed funding for a People of Colour Collective at the University. The People of Colour Collective’s aim has been to engage students of colour and ensure their interests are represented and advocated throughout the University. Currently there are talks which could conclude with the opening of a permanent People of Colour Department within UMSU. In order for the People of Colour Department to be established there will need to be a Special General Meeting held, at which point students will vote whether to amend the constitution to incorporate the Department. Due to the lack of an existing autonomous department, the Welfare Department has so far been pivotal in establishing the collective. However, if the motion is carried following a student vote then it will become an autonomous and permanent department within the Union.

According to the definition put forward at Students’ Council,

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIALIN YANG

“Unlike UMSU, we do not play a political role in the University.

Instead, we play more of a social role, ” she says.

UMSU International regulations also require the returning officers to be current or past members of the central committee.

In 2015, the GSA general elections had a voting participation rate of 3.56 per cent, a disproportionately low number in comparison to the UMSU general elections which are usually between 10 and 12 per cent.

Nevertheless, the 2015 GSA electoral report requested that the use of electronic voting be continued for 2016 for easy access.

“The use of electronic software provides an enormous cost saving to the GSA over the previous method of conducting the election – by postal vote. Additionally, it is more accessible for students generally and allows for the result to be instantly published.”

In addition, general manager of the GSA, Simon Napthine, has told Farrago that there had been a stronger attempt at raising awareness of the election. This has included postering and working graduate groups to advertise the election. Early feedback from the returning officer has predicted that voter turnout is expected to surpass the previous year based on the participation rate so far.

This year, there were 28 nominations for the GSA’s governing body, 10 more than in 2015.

‘people of colour’ refers to “people who identify as African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Latinx, Arab, Multiracial or other non-white background”.

As outlined in the proposed constitution, it is hoped that having a department for People of Colour will actively increase visibility and awareness about issues faced by students of colour. If the department is successfully established, the People of Colour Students’ Representative on Students’ Council must also identify as a person of colour.

With multiple Departments that are dedicated to providing similar services for all, some attendees at Students’ Council expressed concerns over whether or not this is simply a ‘token’ department. However, others argued that race can play a large part in a student’s life and many students could benefit from the continued advancement of the collective into a department.

“Increasing the representation of people of colour on campus has been incredibly important in the last two months,” said UMSU President Tyson Holloway-Clarke, referring to recent hate-inciting chalkings on campus.

“This is absolutely an area for growth within the organisation and an opportunity to increase our capacity to represent students”.

The proposed changes were taken to a constitutional working group in which students discussed the establishment of the department for the near future. However, a student vote will be vital for whether the People of Colour Department is established.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 9

CAMPUS

A FOSSIL FREE FUTURE YAN ZHUANG REFLECTS ON THE THREE-DAY ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST CAMPOUT

D

IVEST was spelled out in big cardboard letters on Raymond Priestly lawn during the Flood the Campus campaign. To the casual observer, it might have seemed oddly reminiscent of the massive block letters that often mysteriously appear around campus, either to remind people of the name of the university they’re attending or inspire them through single word slogans like BELIEVE. But this time, the letters had a real message behind them.

Started by Fossil Free Melbourne University (FFMU), Flood the Campus launched on 15 March, after FFMU had campaigned for the University of Melbourne to divest from fossil fuels for three years with little success. FFMU gave the University exactly one month to divest from fossil fuels. The deadline was reached on Friday 15 April and since then, FFMU launched a continuous series of public actions pressuring the University to divest.

The first of these kicked off on Monday 19 April. Overnight, a tent city sprung up on the lawn outside Raymond Priestly, to the surprise of bleary eyed students on their way to morning classes.

Intending to camp out as a method of protest, FFMU erected up to 20 tents, as well as banners and a stall. This was to be their base for the week, where they ran workshops and connected to students and supporters.

Tuesday saw their most public stunt, when nine students got naked and stood on the roof of the Old Quad building, spelling out “Drop Your Ass-ets” on their backs. This referenced their demand that the University freeze new investment in fossil fuel companies and divest from direct or partial ownership of public equities that include fossil fuels within five years.

Rife with metaphors, it catapulted their campaign to national prominence, being covered by both the ABC and Nine News.

Activist Angus Dowell was one of the students who laid down the ‘bare’ truth about the University’s ‘bum’ deal.

“We showed a bit of cheek, but also wanted to be courageous and show the University that this has been an issue for three years. We want them to be as courageous as we’ve been.”

For Angus, it was a nerve-wracking and empowering experience.

“From our position — it went straight up to the administration building — we could see all the administration people staring up, looking at our bare bums,” he said, laughing.

The tipping point of the campaign came on Wednesday, when they shut down the Raymond Priestly building for the day. FFMU activists chained themselves to barrels filled with concrete placed in front of doors to the building, blocking all entrances except for

10 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

the fire escape. As far as they are aware, no members of university staff entered the building that day.

According to FFMU activist Anastasia Gramatakos, the lock-in was about demonstrating the influence and power students have.

“Business as usual cannot continue the way it’s going. If we continue as business as usual, we will reach catastrophic climate change extremely soon. We need to change the way we invest our money and do business.”

During the more than twelve hours they were locked in, they were asked to move by security guards and at one point, told by police that they could be arrested for besetting and trespassing.

University staff agreed to negotiate at around 6pm that night.

After five grueling hours, they came to an agreement.

In exchange for FFMU campaigners packing up their tents, the University made several concessions. A meeting was arranged between Allan Tait and Robert Johanson to discuss divestment.

Allan Tait is the University’s Chief Financial Officer and Robert Johanson is a University Council Member. It is also notable that Robert Johanson is the Independent Director of Bendigo Bank, which divested from Coal and Coal Seam Gas in 2014. After speaking with FFMU, Tait and Johanson will present the case for divestment to the University Council.

The University also agreed to send FFMU all of their perceived barriers to divestment a few days before the consultation takes place. FFMU explained that in previous negotiations the University maintained the upper hand by introducing new reasons against divestment during their meetings. This time, FFMU hope they will be able to plan solutions for any problems with divestment that the University might raise.

Although Anastasia doesn’t think the week has made university decision makers change their minds about divestment, it made it clear how many students and staff support the issue.

“If after all of this they turn around and don’t divest and don’t give us a good reason to, it’d justify our ability to keep this up and build on what we’ve just done.”

While the cardboard letters spelling out DIVEST have now disappeared, nearly as mysteriously as the block letters of the University, the divestment campaign remains as powerful and polarising as ever. Are the arranged meetings just another diversionary-tactic to prolong taking a stance on a contentious issue? Or have FFMU’s fearless efforts finally moved the University to take strong action on climate change?

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAMBELL KLOSE

CAMPUS

NO NAPPING FOR NAPTHINE S

MARTIN DITMANN, FOR ONE, WELCOMES OUR NEW CORPORATE OVERLORD

imon Napthine is set to take over as CEO of student organisation MUSUL Services, which faces major issues on multiple fronts.

MUSUL provides a range of corporate services to student organisations, manages Union House and runs several businesses.

It is currently locked in an open dispute with the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) and faces a period of change relating to a potential new student precinct.

MUSUL has faced years of criticism from student and staff Union officials. Napthine’s appointment could be a turning point for the organisation.

Simon Napthine will start his time at MUSUL in July, taking over from Trevor White. White has held the job since late 2011, following the resignation of his troubled predecessor, Clemens Unger.

Napthine is currently the General Manager of the Graduate Student Association, following a successful career in the wine and consulting industries. He is also a former Labor federal candidate and the brother of former Victorian Liberal Premier Denis Napthine.

Napthine says he is excited by his new role.

“I’m very excited by the challenges this role is going to present and looking forward to working with all the stakeholders,” he says.

Ross McPherson, the chair of the MUSUL Board, praised Napthine in a staff memo.

“In appointing Simon as CEO, the board was impressed with his broad management experience, his business acumen, his strengths in leadership and his warm, interpersonal style,” he said.

MUSUL is a University-owned subsidiary, the board of which consists of a mix of University staff and student representatives. It receives over $700,000 from the Student Services and Amenities Fee money every year.

The organisation provides UMSU with behind-the-scenes corporate services, from finance to informational technology support. But UMSU officials have long expressed frustrations with MUSUL, both formally and informally.

Tensions came to a head this year. At a March meeting, UMSU Students’ Council passed a motion expressing a major lack of confidence in MUSUL. The motion raised the option of terminating the formal UMSUMUSUL relationship, governed by the Facilities & Services Agreement (FSA).

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIALIN YANG

Another option UMSU pledged to consider was “identifying alternate models of corporate service provision”. That could render a large part of MUSUL’s existence irrelevant.

Since then, a working group report to UMSU Students’ Council has also made the recommendation that UMSU establishes a corporate services division responsible for managing services MUSUL currently offers, such as human resources, finance, IT and OHS. “Further contact has been made with MUSUL in relation to the request to ‘show cause’ as to why the FSA should not be terminated. No formal response has been received from MUSUL,” said a report to a late April Students’ Council by UMSU General Manager Justin Baré.

In March, MUSUL revealed that “accounting irregularities” were found at the organisation, with money lost and a staff member subsequently ceasing to work for the organisation. It was the latest in a string of issues around its governance.

A number of delays, miscalculations and errors in MUSUL’s financial services to UMSU drew ire from Union officials. Most notably, MUSUL twice miscalculated UMSU’s 2014 budget by tens of thousands of dollars. Other areas, including HR and infrastructure, also saw delays. In addition, MUSUL was accused of failing to keep on top of key issues and documents.

The FSA process has resulted in significant tensions. The negotiation process itself featured delays, disagreements and public criticism.

MUSUL has also repeatedly been taken to the Fair Work Commission by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

In 2011, MUSUL was taken to the commission by the NTEU over previous CEO Clemens Unger’s proposals to cut jobs and services.

In 2014, MUSUL again faced action over its use of fixed-term contracts, with their handling of the matter leaving the NTEU “surprised and disappointed”. Both times saw MUSUL reach a settlement with the NTEU. Any prospective new MUSUL CEO will face a period of change in the University more broadly.

Current proposals circulating around University management could see UMSU relocated to a new student precinct, Union House demolished for apartments and food decentralised around campus. These changes, if finalised and implemented, could see MUSUL’s other roles made redundant.

The MUSUL Board and new CEO Simon Napthine will provide strategic direction around many of these issues.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 11

BURSTING THE JD BUBBLE JACOB DEBETS ON THE HARSH REALITY OF UNIMELB’S GOLDEN CHILD, THE JURIS DOCTOR

“Y

eah, I’m doing the JD at Melbourne Law School.”

“Oh wow, you must be super smart. You’re going to make a lot of money. Just like Harvey Specter, eh?”

We’ve all had this conversation.

Often with a stranger at a party while you’re in the line for the toilet or speaking to an old family friend at your cousin’s birthday.

It’s validating, to say the least. The eyebrows raised in deference, the assumption of intellect and future material wealth, the fact that you get to talk about yourself and not your annoying cousin who won’t shut up about turning nine.

Now that I’m nearing the merciful end of the JD, however, I’ve started reflecting on how my reaction to this generic response has changed and how the assumptions underlying it have long since departed from reality.

In first year, I remember reacting with a modest smile: “Thanks,” I’d manage, trying to repress my dormant egotism that had never been nurtured as an Arts student (more like, “Oh wow, you must be super good at making lattes.” AMIRITE?!).

In second year, I was more reserved.

“Well, I’m told that the market out there is pretty tough. But the Melbourne name goes a long way,” I’d say, unable to repress a smile but feeling noticeably less secure than I did in the heady days of Obligations.

At the outset of third year? My response is a little more jaded: “Actually, Steve, the JD as a graduate degree isn’t nearly as valuable as some would have you believe. Whilst the alumni and facilities of Melbourne Law School (MLS) speak for themselves, and Melbourne is consistently ranked as the best law school in the country, the massive over-supply of law graduates and a contracting legal market puts myself and my peers in a precarious position – notwithstanding that our position relative to other law schools is favourable.

12 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

There are a variety of stakeholders to blame for this state of affairs, Steve, but I’ll give you a brief rundown on the main culprits.

First and foremost are the universities themselves, more and more of whom now offer law degrees. The variables underlying this increase are complex, but – at risk of oversimplifying the matter – there are two interrelated rationales that keep this jurisprudential train on track.

First of all, legal education is remarkably cheap to provide relative to other masters degrees and given that post-graduate qualifications are uncapped, universities (including MLS) can charge up to three times as much as a Bachelor of Laws degree costs at a comparable university – though in fairness MLS’ own mini-campus does make up for some of the added cost. At the same time, universities offering law courses are invariably perceived to be more prestigious. Furthermore, with the added cash, they can increase their research output. This places them in a better rankings position, giving them something to market the flip out of, thus generating more enrolments (and more, and more, and more. See: Deakin University).

The best part? The excess money that doesn’t go into marketing goes to subsidise more resource-intensive faculties – like Medicine — whilst our support services, like the late Student Centre at MLS (and most of its employees), are stripped down and sold for parts. In 2014, there were 12,000 law graduates for only 60,000 lawyer roles in the entire market – that’s a 100 per cent increase in law grads since 2001! That’s right, Steve, the entire legal profession would need to retire in the next five years to absorb my compatriots and me. So I’m not so much concerned about being a rich and successful lawyer as much as I am about being a lawyer of any kind at all.

The proliferation of law schools isn’t as much to blame as the way they conduct themselves. For example, MLS, no doubt

CAMPUS

at the behest of Glyn Davis and the all-powerful marketing department, has consistently refused to publish statistics of its graduate outcomes, impeding incoming students from making an informed decision about whether they should undertake a $115,000 investment. Equally, the fact that law schools do not sell law degrees as ‘generalist’ qualifications almost certainty discourages students from exploring alternate career paths until they absolutely have to (that is, after being rejected for a multitude of graduate jobs and fast approaching the $12,000 Practical Legal Training course). Most importantly, a consistent admission that many, perhaps a majority of law students will not acquire graduate jobs straight out of the gate, would combat the toxicity that descends on students in their second year, when many students’ entire identities are defined by clerkship outcomes.

Now to your point about Harvey Specter. The institutional push to herd students towards jobs in commercial law – expedited by the infiltration of law schools by large law firms through sponsorship arrangements, such as those which gave Melbourne University Law Students’ Society (MULSS) over $150,000 last year – explains why I didn’t correct you in first and second year.

The reality is, however, that law firms offering clerkships will employ only seven per cent of all law students, and grad intakes have largely remained modest since the Global Financial Crisis.

If you do the maths, you’ll see that the chances of becoming a name partner at a big firm are about the same as winning the heavyweight championship of the UFC. Sure, maybe this consideration could be taken more seriously by our elected student representatives. That’s not to say they don’t facilitate inroads into other legal areas. However, I can’t help but feel that, given the context I’ve just described, it’s skewed pretty heavily towards an unrepresentative class of (law student) consumers, with little net return for the broader student body.

ARTWORK BY ELLEN YG SON

Before I finish I’ll make a few honourable mentions and then you can finally use the toilet or attend to your screaming child.

First up is neoliberalism, which has shifted the paradigm of education from a universal right under Whitlam to a market commodity under Keating. It was this school of thought that turned Vice Chancellors into CEOs and students into dollar signs – and is largely responsible for the less than favourable circumstances faced by law students. I’ll also throw a cheeky shout out to John Dawkins, the Labor Minister who oversaw this transition is the ’80s and ’90s, and just between you and me, Steve, Glyn Davis for his stellar job of evoking fear in his tireless and talented employees and despondency in the students he’s supposed to be educating. Of course, I could also blame popular culture for creating archetypes like Mr Specter to begin with but considering how much Rake and Crownies I watch, and the fact that respect from strangers is about the only return some students receive from investing in a law degree, I’m going to leave that one alone.

Steve, it’s been great chatting but I better get out of here. I think I’ve gone so far as to show that my decision to do the JD might actually be evidence of my lack of intelligence. It will certainly undermine my ability to accrue material wealth in the short term and, for the reasons outlined above, I’m perhaps as likely to end up as a defendant in court than an advocate.”

This piece was originally published in De Minimis, the (unofficial) official newspaper of the Melbourne Law Students’ Society.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 13

UMSU

THE RISK OF THE ASTERISK MARY NTALIANIS EXPLAINS WHY WOM*N’S SHOULD BE WOMEN’S

T

he UMSU Wom*n’s Department have proposed several constitutional changes that they are hoping to implement before the next election cycle. The changes, including affirmative action policies, endeavour to make the Department more inclusive and accessible to women of colour and transgender women.

The proposed changes were determined by constitutional working groups within the Wom*n’s Department and the Wom*n’s Collective. They proposed the constitutional changes with the intention of making the Wom*n’s Department more representative of the student population.

“We hope these changes will better reflect what our department encompasses by enabling all women students to access and be represented by the Wom*n’s Department” said Wom*n’s Officers Adriana Mells and Hien Nguyen.

The first proposed constitutional change recommends affirmative action to increase the number of women involved in the University of Melbourne Student Union as Office Bearers, student councillors and committee members. Affirmative action and quotas have been used to create equal opportunities for women by UMSU in the past.

The Wom*n’s Department has suggested implementing a quota upon how many women should be elected as Office Bearers in UMSU Departments. The changes involve requiring at least one Office Bearer to be a woman in any department with more than one officer. This change is aimed at establishing a student union in which women are represented across all departments.

Additionally, the proposed changes also involve increasing the number of women required to be elected on the Students’ Council and on Committees. Women make up 55 per cent of University enrolments and the changes seek to make the Students’ Council and UMSU committees more representative of that student population. The current policy requires 50 per cent of members rounded down to be women. The proposed policy would amend this to be 50 per cent rounded up. If passed, the changes would require women to make up at least eight of fifteen general representatives in Students’ Council and at least four of seven voting representatives in committees.

The proposed changes to the definition of ‘woman’ and the removal of the asterisk in the UMSU constitution endeavour to

14 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

make the Wom*n’s Department more inclusive of transgender women. The current definition risks excluding transgender women by specifying that the woman’s gender must be evidenced in University enrolment records.

The proposed definition, ‘a person who identifies as a woman regardless of gender assigned at birth, including but not limited to trans women, cis women and intersex women’, will allow women whose enrolment records are not reflective of their gender to vote for Wom*n’s Officer and run for positions within the Department.

Additionally, the constitutional changes also involve the removal of the asterisk which has long been associated with trans exclusionary second wave feminism. The Wom*n’s Department emphasise that this change is intended to disassociate the Department from the highly politicised and exclusionary second wave women’s movement.

“I think it’s extremely important that trans women are able to vote for positions in the [Wom*n’s] Department” said one trans woman at the University.

“And moving away from the asterisk is a positive step because, as a trans woman, I associate the asterisk with the radical feminist movement and especially with trans women exclusionary events like the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.”

The Wom*n’s Department is also proposing changes aimed to increase the number of women of colour in leadership positions in the Department in order to represent the large number of women of colour on campus. This will involve requiring at least one of the Wom*n’s Officers to be a woman of colour and requiring at least half of the Wom*n’s Committee to be women of colour.

Historically, the Wom*n’s Department has been dominated by white women in leadership positions and women of colour have been neglected. The primary concern is that this is not representative of the University population. Furthermore, women of colour face multifaceted challenges that white women in leadership positions cannot speak for, address or comprehend.

The proposed constitutional changes will be voted on at a Special General Meeting later this semester. The Wom*n’s Department and Wom*n’s Officers encourage women at the University to come and support these changes.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MABEL LOUI

UMSU

PRESIDENT TYSON HOLLOWAY-CLARKE

I swear my face is all over the place these days. You can read about my plans for President in Parkville Station, how it all went down in this Farrago and online and the specifics of day to day on the President’s Blog on the UMSU website. We have a huge rest of the year ahead of us that includes a Federal election, planning for the Student Precinct and the constant growth of the Union. Speaking of, keep an eye out for the new People of Colour Department coming later this year, championed by a group of exceptional students. Between now and then I want to wish you luck in your upcoming assessments and exams and want to remind you that the Education Academic Department and UMSU’s Advocacy services are here for you if it all hits the fan. If you ever need anything, UMSU can help.

GENERAL SECRETARY JAMES BASHFORD

“There is no such thing as being non-political. Just by making a decision to stay out of politics you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.” ― Joan Kirner.

An election is weeks away, yet hundreds of thousands of young Australians aren’t enrolled to vote. We can all gripe about the uninspiring nature of politics, but if we don’t even bother to engage, it will never change. The Liberal Government’s policies are disastrous for young people in Australia. $100,000 uni degrees, a $500 million divisive plebiscite on marriage equality and half of them still don’t believe in climate change. So please, enrol to vote, and whoever you vote for, put the Liberals last. aec.gov.au/enrol

ACTIVITIES

BURNLEY

MEGAN POLLOCK & ITSI WEINSTOCK

We’ve had some BBQs and a comedy competition and stuff, but we’re fairly sure that no one reads these so the rest of this report is just going to be shit jokes. Did you know that if you put male ants in water they float? It’s because they’re boy ants. Why do birds fly south for winter? It’s too far to walk. Why was the broom late for work? She swept in. I just found out the guy who stole my diary passed away. My thoughts are with his family. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the ugly guy’s house. Knock knock. Who’s there? The chicken! I have an EpiPen. My friend gave it to me as he was dying. It seemed very important to him that I have it. Did you know that if you got your small intestines and stretched them out end to end, you would die?

ERANTHOS BERETTA The leaves are browning as the semester grows to an end and Burnley just celebrated a historical moment education. If you missed it, we just had our 125th Birthday, celebrating the longest running continuous horticultural education in the world! We had our festival day on 30 April with food trucks, music, tours, soil speed dating, plant and pest ID sessions and garden health clinics, just to name a few!

With BSA reps and student volunteers helping out all in all branches. On 6 May those keen beans from UMSU Activities came down to our campus to run a BBQ and the Wom*n’s Department has kindly donated a wide range of sexual & sanitary health products so we have set up a little booth on campus. You wont be-leaf what end of semester events are growing in the (potting) mix so keep your ears to the grapevines.

DAVEY CLUBS & SOCIETIES RYAN & YASMINE LUU Oh hey there! We didn’t see you under the MASSIVE PILE OF WORK WE’VE BEEN DOING! Besides from the usual grants, payments, lockers and gunter – we’ve started a policy working group, slowly finishing up the executive handbook, and started planning general welfare training again! General welfare training will be run by your friendly OBs and will cover all things about running a club successfully, from tasteful advertising to intra-club disputes. Committee have also been working exceptionally hard every fortnight to go through HUNDREDS of grants clubs have put forward. Committee have passed a whopping 368 motions to date. We are also very excited to start seeing the inaugural general meetings for new clubs, a total of 18 clubs are pending affiliation! Lastly, we thank YOU reader for going to club events and supporting our amazing campus culture. This week YOU are Gunter’s Choice! In Clubs Online we trust.

ARTWORK BY THE OBs

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 15

UMSU LYNZAAT CREATIVE ARTS JOSH & JEAN TONG

If you’ve ever wanted to have something you made in two hours exhibited in public for free, CREATIVE ARTS COLLECTIVE (Fridays, 1-3pm, Food Co-op) is working towards an exhibition in the experimental gallery spaces on Level 2, Union House.

Drop in any time for as long as you want! Free LIFE DRAWING continues every other Tuesday alternating between 12pm and 6pm, so make it to at least one a month depending on your schedule. It’s a good time. ABOVE WATER is now open for business! Get your creative writing published by us and the Media Office (and judged by COOL PROFESSIONAL JUDGES), or your artwork immortalised in an incredibly high quality annual anthology. TASTINGS applications open soon for performance-based works — get a professional mentor working with you to develop your works for presentation! It’ll be fun. ALSO ARTS GRANTS. Apply to us. Art is expensive; we got you. Email us at arts@union.unimelb.edu.au

KAPUSCINSKI-EVANS DISABILITIES JESS & CHRISTIAN TSOUTSOUVAS Auslan classes have been very popular and we will be running the next level class in Semester Two. Anxiety Support Group and the film screenings are also going well.

We sent a student to the consultation about food outlets on campus and Christian and I attended a similar consultation about transport and mobility both to and from, as well as around the university. We are yet to debrief with the student who attended the food outlets consultation, but can briefly report back that the transport and mobility one was underwhelming in terms of bringing student issues to the attention of representatives from the university. We will be having one or two guests on our radio show Network Disabled next week to coincide with Rad Sex and Consent Week at Melbourne Uni and the release of the Federal budget.

CROWLEY EDU (ACADEMIC) TOM & PAUL SAKKAL Since we last spoke, our Department has been busy dealing with the implications of Cadmus, the new software being developed by the University to get on top of plagiarism. We’ve been meeting and discussing with the University the possible ramifications of the program and the best way to work together going forward.

We’ve also been engaging in the University-wide debate on the role of lecture in the future of the University’s pedagogical framework. We both spoke at a forum, attended by staff and students, about the merits and vices of the lecture; this forum reached no broad consensus, but it certainly laid the groundwork for a constructive debate to ensue. We’ll keep you updated on all matters Flex-Ap related, and we’ll soon be rolling out out Flex-Ap survey to hear your thoughts on all the relevant issues.

EDU (PUBLIC)

AKIRA BOARDMAN & DOMINIC CERNAZ We’ve been super busy over the last few weeks in the Education Public department!

The government has released its budget that is determined to attack students, including their persistence to deregulate university fees. This will result in eroding the accessibility, affordability and quality of our tertiary education system. We held a budget speak out the day after the budget, to spread the word to students about what measures were included. On 11 May, we held an ‘UMSU Breaks Down the Budget’ event where all departments explained how these budged measures would affect different groups of students. Followed by that, we attended the National Day of Action in the city, which was a great way for students to congregate together and show our disappointment with the Liberals continuing attack on students!

ROGERS ENVIRONMENT ANISA & ZACHARY POWER The Environment Office is very busy! The amazing protest in Week Seven by Fossil Free Melbourne University showed the power of civil disobedience when all other formal channels have been tried and the group is now getting ready for its meeting with the decision makers coming up at the end of May. The Sustainability Plan consultation is underway and Anisa is working hard to get strong student working groups together to co-design the different parts with the Sustainability Executive, next meeting: Thursday 12 May. Students are getting very excited as a permanent space for the bike co-op is looking likely to open in May, so planning for it has begun. Play With Your Food is drawing bigger crowds and the Doco Nights are going very well. We are also planning an event for World Environment Day (5 June) so stay tuned!

16 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

UMSU

INDIGENOUS

EMILY KAYTE JAMES The Indigenous Department has changed a fair bit since we last spoke, Emily is temporarily riding solo as Tyson has moved on to conquering all of UMSU, the office is going to feel empty but Emily’s sure Tyson will still have his say. The UMSU Indigenous Committee will instate a new co-office bearer within the fortnight and are looking forward to seeing all the bigger and better things we’ll be doing in the near future! Nominations are open to fill Indigenous Office Bearer positions. We’ve been busy in the last few weeks with training sessions for the National Indigenous Tertiary Games, which take place in June. Under Bunjil our biannual publication is well underway and we’re excited to be publishing a new and improved creative edition of Under Bunjil for Volume Three. Getting very excited for our next social event Koorioke happening in Week 9, its sure to great fun.

QUEER

FRANCES CONNORS & LOTUS YE Hello all! We hope you’ve all had time to attend some workshops during Rad Sex and Consent Week. Now that Semester One is drawing to a close, we’re gonna focus on running our weekly events consistently; our collectives, the Queer Lunch on Wednesdays and Thursday fun times. We are also working hard to communicate with the university and ensure gender neutral toilets for the new proposed student centre complex. To keep update on what we’re doing, check out our facebook page at UMSU Queer or email us at queer@union.unimelb.edu

VCA VAN RUDD

WELFARE

The NUS National Day of Action on 11 May against the Turnbull Government’s attacks on higher education would have already passed at the time of the printing of this report. Hopefully it was an angry and defiant protest after the release of the May budget. No doubt more student protests will come, as fee deregulation is still high on the Liberal’s agenda. Also, keep a look out for solidarity campaigns and actions for refugees in response to the #BringThemHere campaign.

At the VCA we’ll have events coming up such as a seminar in late May during Indigenous Reconciliation Week featuring an Indigenous activist talking about Indigenous struggle in Australia and Palestine. We also have coming up in early June, the popular VCA Spoken Word event featuring some of Melbourne’s and the VCA’s punchiest poets. All students are welcome!

SARAH XIA & YAN ZHUANG

MELLS WOM*N’S ADRIANA & HIEN NGUYEN

ARTWORK BY THE OBs

We hope everyone enjoyed Rad Sex and Consent Week, which we ran with UMSU Women’s, Queer and Disabilities Departments; and Stress Less Week! Stress Less Week was a success and our Stress Less Carnival and dance classes were the highlight of the week. It was great to see so many students engaging with UMSU, so thank you all who stopped by! Our regular events have also been running well and are a great way of getting involved. Our Monday Mingle and Conversation Partners Programs run alternatingly every week and are a fantastic way to meet new friends and have some fun. As always, we’re holding free breakfasts every Thursday 8:30-10:30am, so come grab some food! Most importantly, we’re here to help you with any wellbeing issues you may have. We have a wide range of resources available and are always happy to talk, so shoot us an email or drop by our office on Level 1, Union House.

Email: welfare@union.unimelb.edu.au Facebook: facebook.com/UMSUwelfare The Wom*n’s Department has been extremely busy this semester – with our regular events being held each week in the Women’s Room. We have also been working on some constitutional changes which we hope will be brought to the next UMSU SGM, to better reflect the department in its current state. We have also been working on Rad Sex and Consent week, which is in Week Nine of semester one which is a collaboration between Women’s, Queer, Disabilities and Welfare this year. Looking ahead we are looking at subsidising people to go to NOWSA, taking place in July this year as well as getting submissions of Judy’s Punch – our annual Wom*n’s Department publication.

Contact us: womyns@union.unimelb.edu.au Like us on Facebook: ‘UMSU Women’s Department’

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 17

CREATIVE

SUNRISE IN MYANMAR

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ILSA HARUN

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 19

CAMPUS

BELLA BARKER PRESENTS

‘E

xams’ is a powerful word. It can make even the most confident student shudder and scramble to find notes, all with sweaty palms and a racing heart.

How do we overcome this nightmare? Some of us need to employ some revolutionary study techniques (read: last-ditch attempts to salvage marks). Tried and tested, here are the keys to the door of endless H1s.

Context cues: Basically, our brain really likes to make associations. You can devise your own memory cue by doing something while studying and doing it again while taking the exam. For example, chewing gum while studying and then also during the exam can boost your recall! Gum is also really nice (but don’t be annoying and chew loudly in the libraries). The same concept applies to the environment you’re in – if you’re close by, study at the REB or near Wilson Hall.

Emotional cues: The same thing applies with the way we feel, as our body uses internal as well as external cues to recall information. So when studying for your exam, imagine it’s the real thing, and you will probably start to feel a bit nervous. Harness this feeling and study away! That way, you will be able to better retrieve that information from your memory even if you’re a bit nervous during the exam. This is an important tip for those who suffer from exam-related anxiety – you can actually harness this feeling to enhance recall, rather than it detracting from your performance.

20 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

Rockin’ that grandma scent: Ever smelt something and felt the influx of memories come rushing back? One scent particularly associated with memory recall is rosemary. However, scents in general play a powerful role in terms of what remember. Why is this? The olfactory bulb is located super close to the brain’s limbic system (in short, where the memory-making happens). If you train your brain to make an association between a particular smell and content using that olfactory bulb, you’re good to go! One easy way to do this is wear the same perfume/cologne while studying and taking the exam.

So easy you can do it with your eyes closed: Sleeping is the brain’s prime time, when it is hard at work processing and consolidating the day’s information. The neural connections are all getting strengthened and you don’t have to lift a finger! Try reading your notes just before you go to sleep and as soon as you wake up to reinforce this process. Also, if you don’t get a good sleep and try to study the next day, your study is not going to be very effective.

Find yourself in your readings: For those lucky ducks with take-home exams, my advice to you is warm up those fingers and get ready to Ctrl + F on all your readings to find key words in your topic! Make sure you’ve still revised your content though, so you have a nice framework to start with when answering essays/questions. I could say ‘do all your readings’ – but that would mean I’d have to take the ‘tried and tested’ part of the introduction out.Good luck everyone and may we all receive H1s this semester!

ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN

CAMPUS

YOU CAN CALL ME DADDY PETER TZIMOS SATISFIES HIS SWEET TOOTH

I

really shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw that uni students had started to employ sugar daddies as a means of financing their degrees. As someone who has seriously considered paying someone to date me, I can understand the appeal of being a sugar daddy. But having one? There was something unsettling about dating a predatory, sleazy father figure. In my mind, sugar daddies were shrivelled old men with equally shrivelled penises, an offshore bank account and an almost admirable divorce history.

However, this stereotype seems to be wrong on most fronts.

It seens some people just get a kick out of being caring and supportive. Maybe I’ve become disillusioned with relationships, but it’s nice to know that there are people out there who expect nothing but your company in return for their generosity.

A bit of research on seekingarrangement.com led me to realise that these men (and women) are kind, caring professionals with nothing but good and wholesome intentions. With this in mind, I dug deeper. Interviews, anonymous surveys, subreddits: the whole shebang. This is empirical data, I swear.

It turns out that basically everyone asked would give it a shot. If nothing else, you make a new friend. What is there to lose? Your life, maybe, but the free stuff is worth it. The general consensus, however, is that he has to be a sugar daddy, not a Splenda daddy.

You want to be wined and dined, not goon sacked and Hungry Jacked. Make sure he has the funds to treat you well.

In the same vein, this process only made me realise how little money I have. I once met a taxi driver who had paid for his sugar baby to visit a friend overseas while simultaneously financing their degree. I can’t compete with that. Date me and all you’ll get is ice cream when it’s on special and the occasional home-cooked meal – all at the low cost of listening to my eternal sorrows, day in, day out. I know which one I’d pick.

It seems that a large number of sugar babies have actually formed supportive, mutually beneficial arrangements with their sugar daddies. However, make sure to lay out any ground rules and let the other person know what you’re looking for. It’s still a relationship, so it’s good to be open and honest about your intentions. If your sugar daddy does eventually come to meet the

ARTWORK BY TZEYI KOAY

family, make sure you know his real name in order to avoid confusion at the table.

Along the way, it’s probably best to learn first aid, how to cut up food into small pieces before it gets cold and the Heimlich manoeuvre. You never know.

Pro: You get free shit – all the time. No more two-minute noodles and hand-me-down threads; you’re gonna be pulling in the big bucks. Expect fancy dinners with matching wines, Prada on your arm and Calvin Klein on your arse.

Con: Trial and error. The selection process is one requiring patience – who knows how many creepy dates you have to sit through before you find a suitable benefactor. Be ready for awkward conversations about what Snapchat is and steer clear of any mention of memes.

Pro: He’s probably not a fuckboy. Chances are, he’s an educated professional who knows how to be mature and supportive. He also knows where the clitoris is and how to talk dirty without embarrassing himself. It’s a win-win.

Con: Someone might mistake him for your literal father. Once that bridge is crossed, there’s no going back. Cut the rope and let him fall into the river; the awkwardness isn’t worth it.

Pro: You get the seniors discount.

Con: You end up eating dinner every Tuesday at an RSL. Pro: You can put Certified Aged Carer on your résumé.

Con: He could die literally anywhere at any time.

Pro: Sex. Con: Sex. Honestly, the only thing I really found was that unsurprising amounts of people now have a daddy kink. I kinkshamed all of them in efforts to get them to date me instead; it didn’t work.

Alas, I am left only with the all-important question: is life sweeter with a sugar daddy? Or are they bound to leave a bad taste in your mouth? I’m not sure that I’ve found a definite answer but if any of you see me at dinner with an older, bearded fellow just chuck me a sly wink and pretend that you never read this.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 21

COLUMN NICK PARKINSON PRESENTS

COUNSEL IN COUPLETS A COLUMN OF POETIC PROBLEM SOLVING FROM: JAFFY MCGEE Exams are in a few weeks and I’ve watched a total of four lectures and still don’t know any of my tutors’ names. I’m stuck in a vortex of late-night Game of Thrones binges and can’t bring myself to study for what will be my first ever uni exam period. How do I get in exam-mode without wanting to chuck a Bronywn and helicopter myself out of this mess?

So you’ve nearly finished semester one of your first year here, You’ve got glandular, forgot your ATAR and had too much beer.

You still wear Kathmandu puffer jackets and Nike caps, Roll your jeans above your Rosches and wear Herschel backpacks.

You’re yet to distinguish Redmond Barry and Raymond Priestly, You’ve no idea which wing’s which when it comes to John Medley.

But you no longer believe you’ve enrolled at Hogwarts And you’ve come to accept you won’t join any sports.

What’s worst of all is that you actually have to study!

Who knew uni required work beyond singing in Glee?

Yet your mind is off sailing like good old Gendry, Why watch lectures when you can rewatch GoT? But, dearest jaffy, you still have time to turn things around, In that take-home essay you can write things profound!

Be productive and work with a study buddy, Find inspiring people and be their understudy.

Seek academic advice from a student advisor, Compared to yours truly, they’re infinitely wiser.

The library has past practice exams and damn good computers, If you’re really lost make sure you contact your tutors.

Indeed, Game of Thrones can wait ‘til after your exams, Put it off for a month: stick to your study plan.

After all, why watch it if it makes you feel guilty, Like the shame bell’s tolling and you’re Cersei.

Nah, in my eyes it’s far better to wait, The fruits’ll be great: don’t procrastinate.

But what should you do the day of the exam?

Arrive there with time to spare: catch an early tram.

Don’t forget to bring your student card, Take a toilet break if things get too hard.

Try find out your seat number beforehand, Note which materials are allowed and those strictly banned.

If things go awry, like there’s an accident at your station, There’s no need to cry, you might get special consideration.

You’ll be fine, all will go well, The exam period doesn’t have to be hell.

So Jaffy McGee, winter is coming, But that doesn’t mean you can’t hit the ground running!

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DEVELOPED A WOE THAT WON’T LET YOU GO? SEND IT TO FARRAGOMEDIA2016@GMAIL.COM ARTWORK BY LUCY HUNTER

COLUMN

COMIC BY XAVIER WARNE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 23

LAMENTING THE LOST ART OF THE PROTEST SONG BEN CLARK WONDERS IF WE STILL BELIEVE THE TIMES ARE A-CHANGIN’

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generally can’t stand previous generations telling me, “They don’t make music like they used to”. Of course they don’t, times have changed. Paul McCartney is old enough to be Rihanna’s dad.

The music industry has always produced a lot of trash but there are still shining examples of musical innovation and integrity across the modern industry. However, I can’t help but agree with such nostalgic critics on one point – my generation has buried the protest song. The rise of Bernie Sanders, the upsurge in youthful progressive energy and the mammoth issues facing our planet are calling out for a soundtrack, yet most of today’s musicians are leaving an awkward silence.

The most prominent craftsman of the protest song, Bob Dylan, provided his generation’s soundtrack with ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’. “Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call,” he sung. ‘The call’ was a groundswell of youthful, progressive energy for peace, fairness and progress, a call which won battles from civil rights to the Vietnam War. Through Dylan’s nasal twang, a revolution was born and taken up by millions of young people.

Giving Dylan’s classic an overdue re-listen, it pains me to realise that ‘the call’ not only remains unheeded by the establishment but is largely unsung in modern pop culture. The stale and gridlocked state of politics across the modern Western world suggests the winds of change must once again “shake the windows and rattle the walls” of the establishment. Yet most of the world’s influential musicians, who have a huge platform to advocate progressive change are shying away from the big issues facing our world.

Against a socio-political backdrop ripe for inspiration, musicians seem to have forgotten about politics. In fact, it seems rather unfashionable to champion political causes through music, with the recording industry suffering from a pervasive lethargy, even dismissiveness, toward the world’s most pressing issues. Where Dylan looked outward and directly challenged the Senators and Congressmen he saw to be reticent to progressive reform, today’s music idols seem unresisting, even comfortable, with the status quo.

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Even the hippest fringes of pop culture, who pride themselves on being progressive and ahead of the pack, promote introspection over social commentary. Most indie music delineates itself from ‘mainstream’ music through adventurous stylistic, musical and production choices rather than the song’s lyrical message. In fact, the lyrics of songs played on Triple J and on Fox FM are often startlingly similar. The hipsters might be vegan, humanitarian social democrats in real life but the only thing you could deduce from their music is that they have a lot of feelings. It’s no longer cool to care.

Nothing exemplifies this disappointing trend like Triple J’s Hottest 100 in recent years. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Chet Faker or The Rubens (I’ve seen the latter in concert three times). They’re great at what they do and not all music needs to make social commentary. I just struggle to name songs in the Hottest 100 that make any disruptive or controversial statements about the world.

As musicologist Tim Byron recently wrote for Junkee, “The kids listening to Triple J these days generally prefer chill music to chill to, rather than angry music to rage against the machine to. Which is to say that there’s little in the average song by Chet Faker or The Rubens that demonstrates any particular frustration with the status quo of mainstream society”.

Recent Australian releases are starting to challenge this trend, however, providing hope for more musical responses to the trials of our torrid times. Firstly, let us look to Missy Higgins’ ‘Oh Canada’, a touching tribute to Alan Kurdi, the drowned boy whose photo drew the world’s attention to the plight of Syrian refugees.

Higgins’ lyrics are mostly a tender narrative of the Kurdi family’s perilous journey, with achingly painful simplicity reflecting the innocence and vulnerability of people fleeing their homeland.

While Higgins’ approach is not directly confrontational like Dylan’s, simply penning a song about asylum seekers in Australia is an inherently dissident act and Missy is not afraid to ridicule the double-speak and platitudes of the political class. “There’s

COMMENTARY

a million ways to justify your fear. There’s a million ways to measure out your words,” she sings audaciously. “But the body of Alan being laid upon the sand, tell me how do you live with that?”

In a less reverent but even more incisive protest song, comedy singer Tim Minchin skewered embattled senior Catholic George Pell in ‘Come Home (Cardinal Pell)’. In typical Minchin style, darkly sarcastic lyrics are layered over a bright and bouncy piano pop tune. Minchin lashes the Cardinal, who has been accused of ignoring and covering up child abuse committed by paedophile priests in the Catholic Church, calling him a “pompous buffoon”, “a goddamn coward” and “scum.”

Needless to say, the song provoked a strong backlash from the defamed Cardinal, the Church and religious apologists everywhere. However, is that not the point? Ruffling the feathers of a conservative, secretive institution that has shown callous disregard for abused children is a feat which few non-comedic pop songs can even aspire to.

Another Australian artist going against the mainstream with a distinct political influence is Courtney Barnett. While her songs are rarely concerned solely with politics, she weaves political concerns throughout her honest depictions of suburban Melburnian life. Bemoaning the degradation of Australia’s environment in ‘Kim’s Caravan’, Barnett spitefully snarls, “The Great Barrier Reef, it ain't so great anymore. It's been raped beyond belief, the dredgers treat it like a whore”. Even the quirky ‘Depreston’, a tale of house hunting in lower socio-economic suburbs, sits jarringly against the currently overblown housing market, which is leaving young couples trapped in the rental cycle with little prospect of competing against speculators negatively gearing their seventh house.

Barnett adds another important layer to political discourse – contradiction. Much new-age ‘identity’ politics tends to focus not on governments or institutions but on individual actions, taking formal politics as a lost cause and seeking to effect micro-level change. The question is not often “Why is the exploitation of

ARTWORK BY LUCY HUNTER

workers’ rights tolerated?” but “Why don’t you buy ethical coffee?”

Yet, despite the supposedly puritanical virtue of some particularly self-assured hipsters, living ethically in a society plagued with manifold issues is hard work.

Barnett’s ‘Dead Fox’ skewers these contradictions, singing, “Never having too much money, I buy the cheap stuff at the supermarket but it’s all pumped up with shit.” The line, sung with Barnett’s signature laid-back lethargy, depicts the modern consumer’s disenfranchisement and apathy when choosing between the affordable and the healthy/ethical. For a cash-strapped young Melburnian like Barnett, being an ethical consumer and paying exorbitant prices for rent are two irreconcilable demands. Reflecting on the staggering scale of big business through an anecdote about a delivery truck, Barnett ponders the inability of individuals to affect meaningful change in a world so large and so fucked.

Perhaps things are finally starting to change. Beyoncé recently used a provocative video clip to push for greater awareness of racial divisions in the US. Kendrick Lamar did the same with his performance at the Grammy Awards. Kanye is running for President. Okay, I know that last one doesn’t really count but still… Even Nickelback is endorsing Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Presidential candidate, which may of course be more of a hindrance to his campaign than a helping hand.

Despite this, it just seems that such political statements from musicians are too few and far between. With such an influential megaphone and so many pertinent issues to champion, it is high time that more musicians stepped up. Yes, your girlfriend may have left you and taken your favourite sweater with her. You might have to do another Savers run. But there is a big wide world out there and a severe dearth of musicians critiquing it. A new generation of artists need to heed ‘the call’ and proclaim it loudly.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 25

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COLUMN

THE FEMININE CRITIQUE: WOMEN IN COMEDY

ADRIANE REARDON CONSIDERS THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN COMEDY WITH ASPIRING COMEDIAN EMILY WEIR AND FOUNDER OF COMEDY TROUPE SMILING POLITELY, PATRICK GREAVES.

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s the Melbourne International Comedy Festival comes to an end for another year, I’ve discovered that laughter isn’t necessarily the best medicine, especially if that laughter is at the expense of a woman on stage.

Aspiring comedian Emily Weir has been forced to reflect on the “boys club” that is comedy since she began participating in male dominated stand-up competitions at 19.

“I entered a competition a few years ago where I was the only woman on the bill. My competitors were older men who would chastise me by making comments like ‘Get your tits out!’ It really shocked me that as a woman I could threaten them,” she says.

Weir explains that women in comedy reflect pre-conceived feminine characteristics of modesty, passivity and fragility in the public space. This notion is challenged by contemporary female comedians. Some of the most successful women in comedy are able to defy the traditional typecast and speak openly about their sexuality and independence.

American comedian Amy Schumer regularly explores sex, masturbation, marriage and body image during her stand-up routines. When accepting the Trailblazer of the Year award at the 2015 Glamour Awards, Schumer famously and unapologetically declared, “I’m 160 pounds right now and can catch a dick whenever I want.” These themes, which are also featured in her sketches and film cameos, have resulted in her being labelled as a ‘sex comic’ by the media and her wider audience. It’s a term she has openly criticised, suggesting that if a male told the same jokes, they wouldn’t require the same label.

According to Weir, comedy can be used as a vehicle for women to identify double standards and redefine gender norms.

“I’ve always noticed that male comedians, at some point, would always talk about their willies. But if I got up and spoke about my vagina, it would be inappropriate,” she says.

“During gigs, I noticed that men would often make crude comments relating to sex and women being sluts. A comedian can change what we think is funny. I think women in comedy can allow us to move on from sexual stereotypes, because they’re just not funny anymore.”

The importance of providing opportunities for women in comedy presents further questions surrounding intersectional differences for women in comedy. Women of colour, age, ableism and sexual fluidity are further disadvantaged when it comes to opportunities in comedy.

“I was isolated as a white woman in comedy. But it is much harder for women of diversity to get up on stage when they are already devalued in our society,” says Weir.

During the 2015 ARIA Awards, comedian and Triple J presenter Matt Okine pointed out during his acceptance speech that there were no women nominated in his category for ‘Best Comedy Release’. Okine’s recognition of the underrepresentation of women in comedy was not broadcast that night. This assumption that entertainment and comedy constitute sexist behaviour

ARTWORK BY ELOYSE McCALL

cushions concerns surrounding the lack of diversity and gender representation in our society.

A recent article in The Age revealed that of the 559 shows in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, only 19 per cent, or 107, are solo shows presented by women. According to comedian Patrick Hargreaves, there is no excuse for one of the world’s most popular comedy events to avoid responsibility for closing this gap.

“I don’t think the Melbourne Comedy Festival really tried to bridge the gender gap. 20 per cent is ridiculous and clearly shows that comedy is failing to provide adequate opportunities for women.”

Hargreaves is the founder of Smiling Politely, a stand up room based in Northcote that has been running for just over a year.

Their organisation actively encourages female comedians to participate in stand up via their Facebook page.

“We need female voices in a show. One of our headliners, Danielle Walker, just won the RAW Comedy competition supported by Triple J. When we work with women, we try to provide them with more than just a five minute gig but put them first as the headliner. This will encourage the norm for women to share the stage with men in comedy equally.”

Hargreaves acknowledges that comedy is a male dominated industry but rejects the idea that there are not enough female comedians to support line-ups. He says the only things lacking are opportunities for women to perform on stage.

“There are plenty of female comedians out there. I’ve noticed that men are far more confident in their place in comedy and women are pushed aside. Unfortunately, to get noticed in comedy, you have to be a bit of a prick, which comes more naturally to men.”

As suggested through the experiences of Weir and Hargreaves, women are not only socialised to reject the privilege of being on stage but also to accept that their appeal is reduced purely to a female audience.

“When a female comedian is performing, people assume it’s only for a female audience. Women provide different perspectives and experiences in comedy that are valuable but unfortunately are usually rejected in comedy. Male comics never face that barrier.”

Opinions, worldviews and experiences are humanised and understood through humour. It is a talent to coordinate a crowd in comedy and a right for those oppressed in society to have the opportunity to share their voice.

The issue lies not in the lack of female comedians but the necessity to recognise intersectional disadvantages in comedy and the need to absolve double standards in stand up. Weir believes that the sooner these disadvantages are addressed in the industry, the more creative, diverse and inspirational comedy will become.

“I love comedy that makes you think. There needs to be more opportunities for women of diversity to participate in comedy. It will allow you to watch comedy and leave thinking you’ve learnt something new. I wish to see those women on stage next to me.”

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COMMENTARY

PERIOD DRAMA

AMELIA SAWARD ISN’T TALKING ABOUT HER UTERUS

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hen I’m not working on my thesis you’ll often find me binge watching a period TV show. They’re history right? That counts as study?

I love period dramas, but I was tiring of the big name shows and their representation of women as merely love (or lust) interests lacking agency. Mad Men has this problem. Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) has a career in the misogynistic ’60s advertising world and the show deals with workplace sexism, but the male perspective is prioritised and she’s patronised by Don Draper (Jon Hamm). In short, her character is a tokenistic addition to a masculine driven show.

Searching for shows to satisfy my cravings, I found some great shows with women characters who have interests outside of their love life. Yes, it’s possible!

One of my guilty pleasures is Downton Abbey (2010 – 2015), which chronicles the Crawley household. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is outspoken, fighting for the future she would have if she were a man, making remarks like: “How many times am I to be ordered to marry the man sitting next to me at dinner?”

Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) becomes a ‘modern woman’ by running a magazine and the kitchen maid Daisy (Sophie McShera) successfully pursues an education. I love the pomp and ceremony, but its success is probably more because of its surprisingly relatable portrayal of family life.

One of my favourites is Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012 –), which centres on the enigmatic Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis), a witty, adventurous and fashionable ‘lady detective’.

She’s a thoroughly modern woman, proclaiming marriage and babies aren’t for her and taking many lovers, with the help of contraception (it’s set in the 1920s!). She stands her ground with her pearl-handled pistol, taking down many a man in her way – including members of the constabulary. Her right-hand woman Dorothy ‘Dot’ Williams (Ashleigh Cummings) is the opposite, Catholic and introverted but headstrong, which makes the pairing work a treat. It also creates moments for Phryne to school Dot on life’s most important issues, like the feel of silk underwear: “A woman should dress first and foremost for her own pleasure… If these things happen to appeal to men, well… really that’s a side issue”. Each episode costs about one million dollars to produce – probably why the clothes are amazing!

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There are also some great period shows set in the ’50s – which happens to be one of my favourite decades! British drama Call the Midwife (2012–) revolves around a group of midwives and nuns in poverty stricken East London. There are a lot of babies and birth scenes, but also a humorous side. Uniquely, it almost exclusively focuses on women’s stories told through a woman’s eyes. Masters of Sex (2013 –), is an American drama about Dr William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), pioneers of research into sex. It makes you feel like today’s sex education is so progressive. The show also discusses sex from a woman’s perspective, as Virginia encourages using their research to investigate the female orgasm.

Then there’s Love Child (2014–), which deals with the sexual revolution of the ’60s. Nurse-turned-doctor Joan Miller (Jessica Marais) assists the women at Stanton House, a home for unmarried pregnant young women whose babies are forcibly put up for adoption. Despite this, the women fight to make their own choices and stand up to those with authority. It also stars Miranda Tapsell as Martha, a young indigenous woman and portrays her struggle to reconnect with her mother, having been forced from her as a child.

Usually reserved for masculine narratives, wartime drama and women are not a common duo. However, surprisingly there are some great examples. Anzac Girls (2014) is an Australian miniseries following nurses during the First World War, which was good but too romanticised. The Bletchley Circle (2012 – 2014) tells the story of four women code breakers from World War II who are trying to readjust to post war life, but instead take it upon themselves to solve crimes. Land Girls (2009 – 2012) follows women in the British Land Army and Bomb Girls (2012 – 2013) is a Canadian drama on women workers in a munitions factory. They follow the difficulties these women faced being taken seriously in a ‘man’s’ job, as well as the positives of new independence.

It’s encouraging to see more period shows with feminist tones, however the representation of a more diverse group of women’s stories, from different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds, needs to be the next step in creating a well-rounded genre. Luckily, there is plenty to keep my procrastination going in the meantime, and unsuspecting friends and family receive a little dose of feminism whenever they ask what tv shows I’ve been watching.

ARTWORK BY ELLA SHI

COMMENTARY

UNFAIR & LOVELY ANNABELLE JARRETT LOOKS AT WHITE BEAUTY STANDARDS IN ASIA

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first became aware of China’s obsession with skin colour during my first few days in Beijing. I am extremely pale and aside from an obligatory ‘Le Tan’ at my senior formal, always have been. Two women approached me in an electronics store.

In thick Beijing accents, they began comparing their skin to mine. A mix of compliments and harsh words flew back and forth. I became aware of the dichotomy here – I was ‘white’ and they were ‘black’. What was also clear was the not-so-subtle coding used: ‘white’ was equated with purity and cleanliness (a sign that you didn’t work in the fields). Black stood for dirty, poor and most importantly, inferior. This was by no means a sole-standing experience. In addition to my pale skin, my blue eyes, light hair and big nose ensured that I always stood out in Beijing. Friends and I would have competitions to see who could get asked for more photos in busy tourist spots. Trying to ‘not see race’ was not an option.

In China today, skin lightening creams line store shelves, while women outside hold up parasols to protect their skin from the sun. Slang for the ‘perfect woman’ (baifumei) lists pale as the first criterion, ahead of wealthy and beautiful.

Eyelid tape is an equally popular beauty tool available in every supermarket and on popular online stores like Taobao. The tape works to counteract the epicanthic fold prevalent in many East Asian people’s eyes in order to achieve the widely considered Caucasian double eyelid. On the more extreme end of the scale, double eyelid surgery, along with nose and chin reshaping, is becoming increasingly commonplace. In fact, South Korea has now overtaken Brazil to boast the highest number of plastic surgeries per capita – more than 4,000 clinics a year will nip and tuck around 650,000 people.

How did we get here?

Colonisation swept across the Asian region from the 15th Century, bringing with it all sorts of Eurocentric ideals. Soap companies were able to capitalise on new markets by drawing parallels between darker skin and poor hygiene, being forthright in the racial hierarchy they were creating. Similarly, racial science, the practice of using pseudo-scientific practices and ideas to reinforce racist ideals, saw so-called ‘scientists’ ranking the purification of the races. This worked to further the notion that ideal proportions of beautiful bodies and faces were those of Caucasian and white people.

ARTWORK BY TIFFANY Y GOH

Fast forward to today and outside of a Colonial context, even the most far-reaching corners of the globe can’t escape globalisation’s clutches. Sociologist George Ritzer’s ‘McDonaldization’ concept outlines the economic and cultural omnipotence of the United States on a global scale, thus creating a homogenous global culture centred on Western standards.

Beautiful white bodies and faces grace TV screens, product advertisements and clothing store posters across Asia. Skin lightening treatments in particular are widely popular across Asia as a whole, with dangerous skin bleaching practices being recommended. Popular skin lightening cream Fair & Lovely is sold and used widely across India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Pakistan in particular, occupying 80 per cent of India’s fairness cream market. Ironically, Fair & Lovely are owned by Unilever – the same company that owns Dove, famous for their campaigns for real beauty and positive body image. Maybe it’s time for them to practice what they preach.

Where does this leave us?

It’s all too easy, for me as a white woman at least, to take this situation as a kind of tragedy narrative and to pity and victimise men and women with darker complexions. But to adopt this sort of White Saviour complex is to oversimplify the situation, not to mention ignore complex structures of agency and self-expression.

No, South Korean women dying their black hair a lighter shade of brown isn’t an attempt to adhere to Western beauty ideals, no more than Chinese women wearing lighter contact lenses is. That said, there is some colourism going on and there are some very cool people getting out and talking about it.

Recently, students at the University of Texas have created ‘Unfair and Lovely’ to call out exactly this. Taking their name from the aforementioned India-based skin lightening product, black student Pax Jones photographed Sri Lankan sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah to highlight their shared experience of this colourism and basically kick some arse. The campaign has grown to invite everyone to take to social media with the hashtag #unfairandlovely. People are coming together to combat these unfair beauty standards and start a conversation about what it means to be beautiful in today’s world.

And whether you’re dark skinned, pale white, tan, blue eyed, brown eyed, a boy, a girl, or somewhere in between, this is a conversation that we can all afford to be a part of.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 29

SCIENCE

EATING CLEAN TO THE EXTREME

BRITT BAKER INTRODUCES ORTHOREXIA, AN UNRECOGNISED EATING DISORDER

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elbourne, a city famed for its cuisines and culinary culture, has wholeheartedly embraced the clean eating phenomenon.

Clean eating, which promotes food with as little processing, refinement and interference as possible, has recently had a spattering of trendy new organic cafes and eateries erected in its honour. Whether you’re Paleo or raw vegan, Melbourne’s got you covered. Yet in the age of the superfood, an overexposure to healthy living mantras can have damaging consequences. Orthorexia nervosa, an illness that remains relatively obscure, is one of them.

Orthorexia is defined as an obsession with righteous eating.

Though the concept and term was introduced in 1997 by Steven Bratman and is understood by many in the medical profession, the term ‘orthorexia’ hasn’t yet been accepted by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). As a result, it is difficult to find reliable statistics on the subject and due to the enigmatic nature of the disease, many patients risk misdiagnosis.

Sufferers can feel empowered by the perceived ‘purity’ of their food and often socially distance themselves to control what foods they eat. Not only is orthorexia as psychologically distressing and isolating as any eating disorder, it can ironically result in serious nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition. Extreme ‘clean eating’, predicated on notions of health and healing, actually makes the patient psychologically and physically ill.

Orthorexia can develop inconspicuously with small dietary changes. Ellie*, a second year commerce student at Melbourne University, cites a sugar ban as the catalyst for her orthorexia.

“I cut sugar out of my diet and initially felt great,” she recalls.

“It was challenging but I was proud of curbing that addiction. I lost a bit of weight but that wasn’t the point – I just felt way healthier and happier. And it was more than that – I actually felt victorious and started thinking about what other changes I could make.”

Artificial colours, flavours, preservatives were soon off limit, along with anything genetically modified or inorganic. Eventually, Ellie decided to go vegan and adhered to a strict, plant-based, raw diet. Her decision to go vegan would have been a safe one had she been getting sufficient protein and iron elsewhere, but Ellie had few foods to choose from. She alternated between feelings of euphoria, guilt and anxiety and found herself lacking the energy to study or socialise.

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One of the characteristics of orthorexia is the sense of superiority patients have about their diet. Ellie realised she had a problem after running into a friend at a supermarket and mentally comparing the contents in their trollies.

“I was secretly appalled by [my friend’s] groceries and unjustifiably proud of mine. Afterwards I remember thinking, who am I to judge her food? The funny thing was, her groceries weren’t even what most people would call unhealthy. She was this happy, interesting successful student with a good social life and then there was me – [an] anxious, lonely wreck, in no position to judge.”

Ellie is currently undergoing treatment for depression and has managed to develop a more relaxed approach to food. Treatment for orthorexia is complicated; as well as not being formally recognised in our health-obsessed society, an orthorexic might think they're healthy, even as the disease takes over their life.

Treatment for orthorexia typically involves therapy, education, behaviour modification and emotional management. Worryingly though, self-appointed health gurus are increasingly regarded as authorities. Even the most well-meaning, high-profile figures are giving advice they're not qualified to give, sometimes advocating dangerous pseudoscience.

There’s nothing wrong with caring about the food you eat but it seems clear that the clean eating trend can pave the way for disordered eating. When diet dominates your life, results in anxiety or self-loathing or creates a ‘nutritional pedestal’, there’s nothing healthy about it. The underlying logic of clean eating is reductive and damaging, because it divides food into two camps: good/bad, healing/harmful, clean/dirty. Contrary to the message zealous Instagram fitness ‘gurus’ seem to perpetuate, a good diet doesn’t equal a good person, nor is food the sole key to success or happiness. We need to raise awareness about orthorexia and we as a society we need to assess our discursive framing and promotion (or righteous denouncement) of certain foods and lifestyles. We need to reiterate that diets do not determine self-worth or define a person and that food is an essential, but by no means the most important, part of life. *Name has been changed at the request of the subject.

The Butterfly Foundation: 1800 33 46 73

ARTWORK BY AISHA TRAMBAS

COLUMN THIASHYA JAYASEKERA PRESENTS A COLUMN ABOUT THE BIG QUESTIONS IN SCIENCE

Y

ou curl up in bed and dream a little or not, snore a bit or a lot, and eventually wake up well-rested, but most often not.

As another hectic semester begins and your alarm clock chides you awake once again, it’s likely you’ll find yourself complaining in a halfconscious drunken slumber. Whether that’s because you’ve pulled an all-nighter or gone on a four-night bender, most of us (or perhaps just the less organised of us) spend at least part of our semester somewhat sleep deprived.

Sleep is the first thing to go in the 21st Century, where incadescent light bulbs, smartphones and laptops are on far past our biological bed time. Thomas Edison, a man who believed his light bulbs should never go out – and a self-loathing power napper, wrote that “sleep is a criminal waste of time” and “there is really no reason why men should go to bed at all”, a notion that rings right along the lines of ‘sleep is for the weak’.

You’ll probably spend more than a third of your life asleep, assuming that you’re not a chronic insomniac. But the fact that we spend so much of our lives in this semi-comatose state, we hardly give it a second thought. If the average person spends 32 years of their life in repose, it’s obviously kind of important.

Whether you see it as a necessary evil or dream of living the burrito life, the question remains: why is it necessary? When we’re sleep deprived, we go a bit crazy, get a bit cranky and struggle with the most menial of tasks.

What exactly is going on when you’re sprawled across your mattress, one foot out from under the cover, socks displaced and mouth agape?

Not much, it would seem to the casual onlooker.

There are a whole host of theories floating about as to why we sleep but scientists have yet to reach a consensus (as with most things).

One fairly convincing theory is that we sleep to conserve energy. Whilst that sounds logical it’s not at all the case. By getting a good night’s sleep, it’s estimated that you save yourself a whopping 110 calories. That’s the equivalent of a slice of bread.

A more convincing theory is that we sleep to restore what was lost during waking hours. Neuroscientists have recently discovered that there are genes that only switch on during sleep, these are associated with restorative pathways such as muscle growth, tissue repair and protein synthesis. Scientists from Surrey University conducted a study in which volunteers were separated into two groups – one which slept for less than six hours a night for a week and another which slept for ten hours a night. By studying blood samples from both groups, they found that sleep deprivation altered the function of 711 genes – whose functions ranged from regulating metabolism to immunity and stress. But rest assured, a week’s worth of normal sleep was enough to reverse this genetic short-circuiting.

The theory that memory consolidation is a function of sleep is gaining traction within the scientific community. Results of several studies suggest that sleep allows us time to reconstruct our waking experiences. When mice were trained to work their way around a maze, their brains showed the same pattern of activity during sleep as when they carried out the task. You may have experienced this yourself – have you ever played so much Tetris that you continued to play it in your dreams? I (shamefully) can say that I have.

Jan Born and Ulrich Wagner, a neurobiologist and neuroscientist respectively, posed a relatively complex math problem to a group of people.

It seemed an arduous task, but by the use of an abstract rule, there was a very simple solution. A few of the participants were able to spontaneously solve the problem on the first attempt. The rest were re-tested eight hours later – some of the group had to remain awake, whilst others were allowed to sleep. Less than a quarter of the sleepless group figured out the quick solution but sixty per cent of the participants who had slept gained the insight into the shortcut.

The insight rate had more than doubled amongst those who had spent the eight hours sleeping. This is just part of the surmounting evidence showing that sleep plays a vital role in replaying, processing and learning.

Sleep also plays a more vital housekeeping role in our bodies. Recently, a group of scientists led by Professor Maiken Nedergard at the University of Rochester found that when we sleep, the brain gunk – like toxins and unused proteins – that accumulates throughout the day is cleared out.

As Professor Nedergard says, “You can think of it like having a house party. You can either entertain the guests or clean up the house, but you can’t really do both at the same time.”

So why do we sleep? When I asked my mum the same question, she responded indisputably: “We sleep because we get sleepy”.

As of now, that’s probably the most conclusive theory we have.

ARTWORK BY REIMENA YEE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 31

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COLUMN

COMIC BY KERRY JIANG

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COMMENTARY

BANNED BOOKS

MARY NTALIANIS DOES NOT LIKE THIS CENSORSHIP AND BAN

G

reen Eggs and Communist Propaganda… I mean, Red Flags and Ham. No that’s still not right. Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham was banned in the People’s Republic of China in 1965 for being a “portrayal of early Marxism”. The ban on this book, an act of censorship implemented by the Maoist government, wasn’t lifted until 1991.

Green Eggs and Ham, if you’ve never read it, is a whimsical children’s book that encourages kids to try new breakfast food.

At first I couldn’t possibly fathom how this could be communist propaganda. I’ve heard some ridiculous conspiracy theories in my time but the Marxist analysis of Green Eggs and Ham takes the cake. Then cuts the cake into evenly-sized pieces and distributes it equally.

Although the Chinese government never elaborated on the reasons behind the ban, popular internet conspiracy theories are here to fill the gap. The theory states that the main character Sam’s initials stand for the Socialist American Militia. But it doesn’t end there: apparently the ham in the illustrations is shaped like Russia. The mouse in the house represents all the little people converted to communism, who, in a Marxist state, will all have a roof over their heads. The goat represents the agricultural benefits enjoyed under a communist regime and the flag on the boat is red, the colour of the communist brigade. Even the breakfast itself is a metaphor for communism. Once you try it, you’re guaranteed to like it. However, the Chinese government didn’t like this portrayal of communism at all, resulting in a 26-year-long ban on Green Eggs and Ham. Whether or not this book is actually communist propaganda, banning children’s books that can be weakly tethered to socialist theory is not only ridiculous but also a little bit scary. I do not like them Sam-I-am, I do not like this censorship and ban.

The banning of books is not all that uncommon. In the last century, thousands of books have been banned by governments around the world for reasons such as political, legal, religious or moral censorship. Bans on books don’t usually last forever and are often overturned during periods of political and ideological change. Despite this, any sort of censorship by governments is undeniably dangerous.

Books are most commonly banned under radical political regimes. In the 20th Century, the Nazi regime in Germany were heavily involved in the censorship of books. Nazi Germany banned over a hundred authors including Franz Kafka, Karl Marx and Ernest Hemingway. Actions against “un-German spirit” saw the burnings of Jewish pacifist, socialist and communist books during the Second World War. Book censorship happens in Australia too. However, the most common reason for book bans by the Australian government was actually “offensive obscenity”. Ulysses was banned in Australia from 1927-1937. Hundreds of other titles including The Kama Sutra and Lady Chatterley’s Lover had bans lasting until the ’60s and ’70s. Unsurprisingly, sexually explicit content is a theme in many governmental book bans. In Malaysia, Fifty Shades of Grey is still banned, along with many other novels with Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi stating: “Distribution and ownership of the books listed in this schedule that could be a threat to morality are banned wholly throughout Malaysia.”

Books aren’t only banned by governments though. Schools and institutions also have the power to ban books, usually under the guise of protecting students from sexual content, but these bans can have political and religious motives too.

ARTWORK BY TALIZA HO

Green Eggs and Ham was not the only Dr. Seuss book to get banned for being subversive. The Lorax was banned by a California school district in 1989. In the not-so-subtle fable, the eponymous Lorax protests the cutting down of trees by the evil Once-ler. The Once-ler, who is driven by money and capitalism, destroys the environment to sustain industry and eventually pollutes and destroys the entire land.

But the story wasn’t banned for depressing students with its negative outlook on the destruction of the environment if industry continues to go unrestricted. The reason given by the California school district was actually that The Lorax “criminalised the foresting industry” and would encourage children to oppose logging.

Religion and moral censorship takes book bans to a whole new level. In 2010, the 10th edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary was banned in California schools because it included the definition for “oral sex”.

Alice in Wonderland was banned in New Hampshire for sexual references and promoting drug use. Maybe Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole was an entirely different kind of ‘trip’ than the one you imagined when you were ten years old.

Can you imagine what possibly got Winnie the Pooh banned in America? No it wasn’t that one Winnie the Pooh Nazi propaganda film from 1943. Trust me, it has nothing to do with it actually.

Winnie the Vocally-Subversive-Pooh was banned in 2006 because it features talking animals, which in some parts of United States, is considered an “insult to god”. Charlotte’s Web was banned in Kansas in 2006 for the same reason.

“I do not like them Sam-I-am, I do not like this censorship and ban.”

Most of the books discussed in this article, however, are no longer banned and all of them are currently available in Australia. This is partly to do with a resolution passed in 1935 by the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, opposing book censorship.

However, the banning and censorship of books is not something from the past. In July 2011 the University of Melbourne banned the writing of Abdullah Azzam, a self-proclaimed jihadist whose Islamic-themed books, Join the Caravan and Defence of the Muslim Lands encourage readers to fight “non-believers”.

However, at the time, academics argued that the banning of books would result in limitations being put on researchers.

I don’t know if the ban still exists today or if the books are restricted access. However, searching through the University of Melbourne library catalogue, I was unable to find either of them.

As students we are taught first and foremost to be critical of everything we hear, watch and read. Students should have access to content, whether it’s deemed appropriate or not, and should be trusted to have the critical skills to engage with it. In fact, students and academics actually need access to this sort of subversive content for research and teaching purposes.

So what can we do to fight censorship and exercise our right to information? Well, read banned books of course! And read books in general. Stay in school, kids.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 35

COMMENTARY

T

he smell of books is one like no other. Some could describe it as dusty mothballs or cleaning product mixed with sawdust but for us book-lovers, we generally opt for the word heaven.

There is nothing quite like the experience of a bookshop – the ongoing sea of shelves that surround us, the feel of the paper, the excitement of a riveting blurb and the very possibility of walking away with a whole new collection to add to your very own bookshelf. Despite this undeniable euphoria, the question of how bookstores can possibly survive in this modern era still looms.

Bookstores have been facing the guillotine for decades now but we are yet to see that final cut. In 2011, Nick Sherry, the Minister for Small Business, predicted that bookstores would be long gone by the year 2016. Pffft is all I can say to Mr Sherry because here we are in 2016 and I can still head down to my local bookstore whenever I feel those bookworm senses tingling. But could it be that Nick Sherry was just a little off with his calculation? Are bookstores here to stay, or is their downfall inevitable?

The Great Depression could well be the greatest contributor to the survival of bookstores so far. During this period, booksellers faced the real possibility of extinction. With everyone pinching their pockets and books becoming bottom of the shopping list, publishers proposed a different model of purchasing books. By allowing bookstores to only pay for the books they actually sold, publishers were able to ensure the distribution of their stock while keeping bookstores afloat. Somehow this model stuck and the bookstore-publisher relationship remains the same today Managing Director of Readings Mark Rubbo suggests, however, that there are many flaws in this system. “It is inefficient in many ways. There are so many books published because publishers want to offer a variety of books.” The reality under this old system is that many of these books will be sent back to publishers and be doomed to sit in a warehouse indefinitely – wasteful in money, time and space. Perhaps the best job to have at the moment is a truck driver that distributes the books. With all the back and forth action that this model entails, you’ll never be short of work.

Facing continuing challenges from the entertainment industry, the book has been thought to have seen its final days many times.

With its easy access and affordable prices, the internet is the latest in a string of competitors that have spanned since the advent of the television in Australian homes in the 1960s. Of all the major print media forms (newspapers and magazines included) however, books have coped the best with digital media. The greatest threat to print media saw advertisers move to online spaces – namely because they were cheaper and offered a more targeted reach. Books, on the other hand, have never faced these problems because they do not rely on advertising for revenue to begin with.

Even though books survived these challenges from competitors in the past, it begs us to ask what the future for physical bookstores might be. Why do we need bookstores when we can simply buy ebooks online for a fraction of the price of hard copies?

Michelle Calligaro, Digital Manager at Text, suggests that one of the downfalls of bookstores is that they “are not usually open when you can’t get to sleep at 2am and just really need something new to read”. She certainly makes a compelling point. According to Calligaro, it wasn’t just bookstores that felt the burn of the internet. “The internet has presented a challenge to all sorts of

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retail, not just bookshops. Busy people are increasingly comfortable with the convenience of browsing and buying online.” With the development of the internet enabling more and more people to access books, it is hard to turn your nose up at what ebooks are achieving: offering both convenience and accessibility. They have made texts available to those that do not have access to bookstores.

As Calligaro explains, Text’s ebooks “are available to people in Brazil or Japan or Outback Australia with a few clicks of a mouse”.

Perhaps we can attribute the hard copy book’s survival to those with a reminiscent heart and an inability to let go of the feeling of a fresh new book in their hands. I have spent my entire adult life resisting the dreaded screens of the ebook. But then again, with Amazon, Booktopia, Book Depository and the like, you can find the best price and ship it from anywhere in the world… in hard copy. These sites not only hurt bookstores but also the publishers and authors. Amazon, in particular, is notorious for pushing down the percentage of sales going to the publisher due to their enormous consumer reach – this is why they can make the prices so cheap. With such competitive prices how have our poor little bookstores made it this far already?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 15 years, you will know of Amazon’s global monopoly on online book sales.

Despite their global reach however, many items from the Amazon site will not ship to Australian addresses and, for those that do, include costs of approximately AU$8 to ship a book. Because these shipping costs are so comparatively expensive, Australians have never bothered with the book giant but it’s difficult to deny that they know how to run a company. Late last year, Amazon opened their very first physical shop front in Seattle. Yes, an actual bookshop. And with the obvious success from the first store, they have opened a second in San Diego. There is no arguing that Amazon understands market trends. Amazon’s worth is currently sitting somewhere at US$265 billion, which is kind of a lot.

Large, monopolising companies aside, are our bookstores in Melbourne simply surviving ? This year, Readings will be opening two more bookshops in Melbourne. Two more! Rubbo gave us a little insight into why Readings has been doing so well even in this digital landscape. He describes himself and the rest of the staff at Readings as “curators” of the books ensuring that customers are getting recommendations from real people. As Rubbo explains, “you need to offer something that people will pay more for”.

Customers like to walk into a bookstore and have “lots of options” and “from what people tell us, it is the experience and that they get to interact with other readers and staff… it’s a place where people can discover new things”. By jumping onto the internet bandwagon early, Rubbo claims that Readings has been able to further promote both books and local writers. Calligaro also spoke about how “bookshops also have the potential to use the internet to their own advantage and reach a wider community of readers”.

Though prospects may seem bleak from the surface for the good ol’ bookstore, those that have stuck around are proving quite the contrary. So will there always be a place for bookshops in the Australian market? If you’d asked Mark Rubbo that question five years ago, he may have given a very different answer. But today his answer stands at a solid “yes” we really do need our bookstores. And that’s enough for us book-lovers.

ARTWORK BY HAN LI

COMMENTARY

IS KANYE KANYE?

ALEXANDER TASHEVSKI-BECKWITH WONDERS IF YEEZUS IS ALL JUST AN ACT

T

here is but one truly serious question in pop culture and it is embodied in the puzzling figure of Kanye West: is he really that ridiculous or is it all an act? This goes to the question of what determines success in the entertainment industry. Is success due to talent or is the industry all business and success the product of image and celebrity?

There’s an especially telling line in ‘famous’, a track from Kanye’s new album, The Life of Pablo: “feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, Why? I made that bitch famous”. Here Kanye references the 2009 VMA incident in which Kanye tore the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech and declared Beyoncé more worthy of the award. The incident generated controversy, the controversy generated media attention, the media attention generated exposure and the exposure generated albums sales. With these lyrics, Kanye identifies the link between media attention and success in the entertainment industry – not just in Taylor’s rise but inadvertently in his own career as well. The VMA incident is probably the most notorious of many controversies surrounding the singer/rapper/producer/ voice-of-a-generation, lending to his heavily-satirised image of being an egomaniac – a walking deficit of humour and selfawareness, clad in designer shades. But I would argue the opposite: Kanye West is an incredibly self-aware artist who has enlarged the most abrasive aspects of his personality in order to generate the media attention that guarantees his albums will sell.

This tactic rests on the principle that once music reaches a certain threshold of excellence, listener enjoyment becomes sufficiently subjective such that artistic improvement bears little relation to audience appeal. At this point it becomes impossible to predictably increase sales through any further alteration of the music. However, while the proportion of people who like and buy a song will remain at, say, a stubborn two per cent of total listeners on average, you can still increase the number of sales by increasing the total number of people exposed to the song. This can be achieved through practices such as payola (paying radio stations to play your music). But it can also be achieved much more cheaply and legally by generating controversy around the

ARTWORK BY CAROLYN HUANE

album or the artist, which in turn increases overall listenership and therefore sales.

The more arbitrary the value of a product the more control institutions have in determining that value. Like a diamond, music has no intrinsic value. The reason we pay money for it it is because it has personal value to us as consumers.

The practices described above happen to some extent in all industries but in a market where the product’s value starts and ends with “how it makes us feel”, there is more scope for value to be determined by outside factors.

Kanye’s phenomenal sales can therefore be linked to his ‘controversy rich’ public personality. But this doesn’t mean that said image is artificial. An alternate narrative is one of a tortured genius spinning his soul into sick beats. This is corroborated by the absolute dedication Kanye has shown to his work from the beginning – at the age of 13 he cut his first ‘record’ in a dingy basement studio, of which his mother once recalled: “the microphone was hanging from the ceiling by a wire hanger. But he was so excited, I couldn’t say no”. It is further evidenced by his public reworking of already-released tracks, in an attempt to perfect them and the fact that ‘egotistic’ Kanye is consistently critical of his own music. All of this points toward the image of a man who truly cares about his art. But when taken with a persistent focus concerning the sales of his albums and the number of accolades won at high-profile award shows, we see that Kanye measures the value of his work not through some internal metric but through their reception by the public and critics.

From Kanye’s evident awareness of the threshold phenomenon described above, we begin to see a picture of an eccentric artist who has taken the more abrasive aspects of his personality and accentuated them in order to ensure the success of his work through the only measure he values. In the ballad of Kanye, the music industry is stretched before us. Success is not the deterministic by-product of hard work. Once a certain threshold of excellence is reached, the measure of value becomes subjective enough that an artist’s personal eccentricities and the industry itself determines sales. To Kanye, this is success.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 37

COLUMN

LOTTE WARD PRESENTS

ONE OF US: CULT REVIEWS

ALIENS, ABS, ANTI-CAPITALISM: THEY LIVE AND THE CULT OF THE CONSPIRACY ‘DOCUMENTARY’

“T

he world needs a wake-up call… we’re gonna phone it in.”

Ever wondered who the “they” in “that’s what they say!” are? You might’ve, if you’ve ever read a Larson cartoon, but if you’ve seen John Carpenter’s 1988 classic They Live, you know that they are blue skull-faced aliens hiding among us and controlling Earth’s citizens by making them buy things.

“Sometimes when I watch TV, I stop being myself,” says a woman (on TV) in the film’s opening scenes – and isn’t there something of that in the dressing up, the queuing up outside midnight cinemas, the yelling of perfectly memorised lines of dialogue in unison with a crowd of strangers seated in rows?1 John Carpenter would probably have you think so.

Following very closely in the footsteps of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pre-Matrix Cartesian sci-fi counter-culturesatire-action-horror They Live opened at number one in the box office but rapidly declined thereafter. Its eventual profit was a relatively modest $10 million. Writer-Director Carpenter humbly offered the explanation that “People who go to the movies in vast numbers these days don’t want to be enlightened,” an attitude keenly felt throughout the film.

It’s “the golden rule”, this film pointedly tells us: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Set in an America where “the poor and the underclass are growing, racial justice and human rights are non-existent” (so, pretty much whenever), They Live follows John Nada, known only by his not-at-all-symbolic surname, an untrusting drifter just trying to make a buck in this godforsaken world. After falling in with Frank, an inhabitant of the local shantytown, Nada observes a series of suspicious goings-on in the neighbouring church. When the area is violently evacuated (read: bulldozed) by police, Nada escapes with the contents of the church’s fake walls: a box of really fly sunglasses. He puts them on – and watch out, you’re about to get woken up! While wearing the sunnies, Nada sees the world as it really is: full of “reaaaal fuckin’ ugly” aliens posing as humans and hypnotising the entire populace with commercialist, dictatorial messages translated subliminally through advertising.

They Live is a decidedly heavy-handed take on consumerism and conformity – you can feel the likes of Banksy and Shepard Fairey milking it for inspiration – but its campy visuals, over-thetop dialogue (“mama don’t like tattle-tales!”) and the occasional actual joke save this film from mere pretentious pessimism. By managing not to take itself quite as seriously as its now-rabid conspiracy-lovin’ reddit-postin’ followers do (exemplified by the fact that for its Serious Action Hero, producers hired “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, the most Canadian wrestling star you can envisage)2, what could easily have been preachy and depressing pans out to a thoroughly enjoyable 94 minutes.

Nevertheless, the message and political metaphor is clear and quite literally plastered all over the film: OBEY. NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT. CONSUME. MARRY AND REPRODUCE. CONFORM. WATCH TV. SLEEP. BUY. OBEY. OBEY. OBEY. The more nuanced commentary takes place when we’re barely paying attention, in the quieter moments of the film. After a climactic alien police chase, Nada forces a (human) cop who apprehends him to put down his weapon and flee.

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How? He’s got the bigger gun. After a narrow escape, Nada implores his reluctant getaway driver Holly that They are controlling everyone, as she finds herself a hostage in her own home, unable to disagree with him because he is a much larger male with two firearms. When Nada tells her to “have it [her] way,” she reminds him, “It’s not. It’s your way.” “You’re in charge.”3 In another scene (counted on more than one ‘Top __ Best Fight Scenes’ listicles), Nada tells Frank, “I’m giving you a choice”: do what he says and try on the alien-tinted glasses, or Nada will beat him up and/or down. Money, social conformity and commercialism are equalled in coercive power only by violence in this film; take the skinless aliens out of the equation and human beings still have plenty of ways to peel away each other’s agency.

Sadly, the film makes sure this interesting subtext bubbles up to the surface and points a big, alien finger at it: “Maybe they’ve always been with us, those things out there. Maybe they love it, seeing us hate each other. Watching us kill each other off. Feeding on our own cold hearts.”

Subtlety isn’t this film’s point.

What very well could be the point is that there are ways now, three decades on, to find even more frightening parallels to the world in which They Live. There’s something eerily timeless in one of the opening scenes in which a black preacher, warning a crowd about the “masters” controlling and monitoring them, is approached by white cops; the same cops (aliens) who later tell Nada, “It would be easier if we don’t have to splatter your brains.”4 Featuring other Modern Day Horrors™ as drones (you don’t know they’re there, but they know you are), climate change and the One Percent, They Live is a film that will continue to spur YouTube comments along the lines of “this is a documentary!” for as long as we’re a predominantly capitalist world.

This is the film’s legacy, along with one of the best, most ridiculous (and most frequently emulated) lines of action cinema history: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m aaaall outta bubblegum.”

“Hey, what’s wrong, baby?” goes the film’s famous final line.

— Oh, just everything in the world. But at least They Live ends with a sex joke instead of a mournful fade-to-black, whereupon we’d be left, staring at our own newly-visible reflections in the glossy MacBook (CONSUME) screen, wondering: how much of that was Independent Thought?

1

Y’all haters corny with that illuminati mess.

2

“Sawry!” he manages to pipe out once every hundred machine-gun rounds.

3

Later, they share an unreasonably sexually charged exchange (unreasonable

because Holly – ostensibly the main female character – has at this point had about one full minute of screentime; she doesn’t get much more, either) which is interrupted by an explosion and a barrage of gunfire, all of which is bright pink. Pink explosions, pink smoke – I’m forced to conclude that either everything in the ’80s was pink, or it’s the aliens’ favourite colour. I’ve misplaced my point.

4

“You look just as shitty to us as we do to you,” one of the aliens tells him, a neat

little metaphor for cop-populace antagonism.

ARTWORK BY AISHA TRAMBAS

COLUMN

FOR & AGAINST PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA

BY THEA STEPHENSON

Y

ou know what it means if you don’t like pineapple on pizza?

It means you never developed an adult palate. You have underdeveloped senses. You cannot fully comprehend the glory that is a juicy piece of the tropics amidst a slice of magnificent cheesy goodness. The mixing of sweet, fruity wonder with the savoury delight that is cheese demonstrates an unparalleled level of flavour interaction that cannot be rivalled by any other.

If you dislike this delightful combo, consider that Hawaiian pizza (perhaps the pinnacle pizza of pineapple) is the most popular pizza in Australia, accounting for 15 per cent of all pizza sales. So you may indeed be missing out on the best flavour ever as well as missing out on a key part of Australian pizza culture.

I myself grew up eating Hawaiian pizza. It was my most beloved meal (closely followed by a burger which had to feature both pineapple and cheese to be good enough).

However when I became vegetarian I had a tough fate to confront. I had to leave behind my Hawaiian days – no more being transported to a tropical paradise of bliss (and cheese).

I found solace soon after in the knowledge that the majority of vegetarian pizzas feature pineapple as a key ingredient and those that didn’t could quickly be fixed for an extra dollar.

As a vegetarian, pineapple is the closest thing I get to a juicy piece of ham or pepperoni on pizza. Pineapple is the thing that breaks through the flurry of saltiness that is olives and cheese.

Pineapple is indeed my little slice of heaven on top of the slice of heaven we call pizza.

If you cannot appreciate the role that pineapple plays in the lives of the many, then you are a cruel and unjust being. One who does not fully acknowledge the full spectrum of flavours in our world, one who cannot appreciate the salvation that is pineapple and one who does not deserve their meat lovers deluxe or any pizza at all.

ARTWORK BY KATIA PELLICCIOTTA

BY PIPPA MILLS

I

t’s without a doubt one of the first heated discussions we ever engaged ourselves in as a child, that introduced us mini humans to a world of critical debate. Do we like pineapple on our pizza?

It’s bound to trigger endless, passionately expounded disputes today, among our sophisticated, young intelligent selves – just as it did when we swung vigorously on the primary school monkey bars, desperately trying to convince our fellow classmates that PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA SUCKS! Pineapple is the kid in your group assignment who doesn’t have any other friends, so your tutor pitifully tosses him in the mix of H1 students Tomato, Mushroom, Cheese and Ham. Pineapple brings the team down.

Why is that we feel the need to make amends to an already existing delicious, rounded doughy piece of heaven? Do we not trust our Italian buddies, who spent centuries mastering the art of pizza-making? Is their passion for food not convincing enough for us to trust that a sour, ulcer-inducing lump growing on the trees of Hawaii shouldn’t be integrated into the pizza topping family?

Pizza is a meal best served at 3am. Trying to get my own two feet to walk in the same direction is enough of a difficulty for my brain to manage at 3am, let alone distinguish two disparate flavours. If I order a “ham and watermelon pizza” you’d tell me to “go home, you’re drunk”, so why this any different?

Allow me to conclude by contending that there is a reason the expert chefs of the cooking world decided to separate dessert from the main meal in the first place. Pineapple on pizza negates the sweet and savoury divide, which I’m sorry to say to all you Master Chef aficionados, is a very delicate combination which only the Heston Blumenthals of the world can create in a laboratory kitchen. It is not enough to simply smack a lump of sour fruit onto a pizza and call it a “masterpiece”.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 39

COMMENTARY

KING OF THE JUNGLE

MADDY McCORMACK ON HUMAN SUPERIORITY IN THE JUNGLE BOOK

O

h, the things we can learn from Walt Disney productions.

Befriend that stranger you met in the woods, accept apples from creepy geriatric women and never forget that dalmations have a higher rate of success in their love life than you.

After watching Jon Favreau’s 2016 reimagining of Rudyard Kipling’s classic text The Jungle Book, it seemed so clear to me that many of these fundamental life-lessons Mowgli has us swallowing are actually pivotal mirrors of our current, exploitative reality in disguise. This particular adaptation entrenches modern dominance of humans over the animal kingdom and inadvertently illustrates our tragic separation from a world of which we were once a functioning part.

The film depicts a small man cub, Mowgli, seeking security and inadvertent preeminence in a jungle he was not born into, accompanied by a variety of welcoming and musically gifted animals.

Staying true to the anthropomorphism of Disney’s beloved 1967 Jungle Book animated film, Mowgli is able to communicate in clear American-English with his adoptive wolf-pack family and later his confidants Baloo and Bagheera. Even his omnipresent archnemesis, Shere Khan, is characterised by a voice of velvety caution.

However, it is interesting to note which of the animals in this earthy, thriving jungle are not personified by language or given the voice of a famous actor or actress.

Elephants, birds, wild buffalo and smaller, simpler primates are all reduced to either insipid squeaks or complete silence, despite Bagheera’s narrative classification of all animals of the watering hole as ‘people’. Coincidentally, these voiceless animals are often neglected by actual society, with monkeys and elephants playing an enormous role as props in the tourism industry, while gazelles, buffalo and bright, rare birds are hunted for human leisure.

Conversely, typified and favoured Animalia who either omit danger or display behavior resembling that of humans are depicted as superior within this twisted jungle hierarchy.

It would seem that despite the tropical forest being representative of the natural, wild world, animals only deserve a solidified role within it if they can show a cross-species maternal instinct, humanlike ulterior motives or the ability to vocally rectify wolfy political codes like Akela and his pack. Although it is repetitively threatened throughout the film, Mowgli’s place in the jungle is autonomously legitimised by the fact that he is a human and therefore has the power to choose the ground he steps upon. This is compounded by the idea of the coveted ‘red flower’, a repeated motif of fire and destruction available exclusively to the world of man.

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So when Mowgli heroically bounds through the forest, harboring at long last the revered ‘red flower’ of human control and in turn the ability to end the ceaseless grudge of his heavy, striped enemy, it comes as a nasty surprise that the battle takes a tragic turn and the entire ecosystem becomes viciously emaciated. As the jungle’s foliage burns red and black and Shere Khan falls into a hot and certain death, the audience is relieved that Mowgli’s illegitimate home has been fortified and he will live another day in a world that does not belong to him.

But this kind of interaction between human pride and natural resources in the real world has only ever shone light on the fact that the end rarely justifies the means. As a plague of deforestation and destruction riddles its way through South-East Asia at a terrifying pace, Greenpeace estimates that areas of jungle the size of a football pitch are lost to logging every two seconds.

Yet in Favreau’s The Jungle Book, all is forgiven when Mowgli sits atop an elephant, a ‘wise, creator of the forest’ turned submissive chariot and creates a quick-fix for his error by flooding the river and extinguishing the terror of his accidental treachery. The world’s obsession with an unrealistically easy way out is vividly depicted here as the superior animals who survived the ordeal rejoice in their wormy, green grove and Mowgli uses an exuberant footrace through hastily rejuvenated forestry to prove himself faster, better and stronger than all of them combined.

It is intriguing to consider how differently the story would fare had it been told from the burnt amber eyes of Shere Khan, a fierce and indigenous protector displaying foresight and wisdom despite his vilified and fearsome portrayal. Indeed, every cataclysm depicted in Favreau’s The Jungle Book could have been avoided entirely had Mowgli been returned to the small patch of earth owned by humans, thus minimising interference. Yet Mowgli’s taunting repetition of “I’m not afraid of you” is all it takes to waver the monstrous and magnetic big cat towards defeat in his own home, as he remembers that a human is not a human without its lethal ‘tricks’.

Had the wisdom of Shere Khan been favored above Mowgli’s innately human sense of righteousness, Disney may have delivered a life lesson carrying a little more poignancy than their usual pragmatic take on claiming what’s yours and indirectly terminating any plausible opponents.

The only way to protect the bruised hearts beating in the trees is to leave them be and it isn’t difficult to see that the range of people ignoring this concept are not limited to uninformed characters with dirty hair and red-loincloths in story-books.

ARTWORK BY REIMENA YEE

SCIENCE

DISEASES WITHOUT BORDERS THIASHYA JAYASEKERA ON A BETTER APPROACH TO GLOBAL HEALTH

O

utbreak after outbreak, from Ebola to Zika to Swine Flu, the media highlights groundbreaking biomedical innovations as the solution to our global health concerns.

Mosquitoes for mosquito-borne disease, genetic modification, development of antimicrobial vaccines – these are the marquee solutions when it comes to combating modern-day disease.

But are these really the solutions that we need? Or do we already have the means to solve these issues at hand?

Prior to the advent of modern medicine, when there was little understanding of the biological basis of disease, major Western cities tackled illness through preventative strategies. Before the discovery of biological cures, there was no alternative but to do so. In 19th Century London, cholera and tuberculosis were rampant and there was no way of treating them, much like our current predicament with infectious diseases such as Zika, Ebola and HIV/AIDS. The 1854 Soho outbreak of cholera was devastating, killing 500 people in just 10 days. Whilst no biological cause for cholera was known, physician John Snow came to the conclusion that it originated and spread through a shared water pump. He did so by meticulously mapping each case and monitoring the progress of the outbreak. These conclusions were met with scepticism but, in time, Snow’s discovery led government officials to invest in sewage and sanitation systems to protect a rapidly growing urban population.

This snippet of history illuminates how urbanisation and population growth can lead to the spread of disease, and the importance of political intervention and non-biological prevention in combating such diseases. Just one of his many contributions to the field of public health, John Snow was able to show the effectiveness of epidemiological studies in combating disease.

The importance of data surveillance has been made evident more recently in the West African Ebola outbreak. The areas which suffered most were those which lacked infrastructure and surveillance systems. As a result, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was slow to recognise and declare Ebola a public health emergency and afterwards it was difficult to direct resources to where they were most needed. This tragically illustrates the importance of data surveillance and also reflects the inability of international organisations such as the WHO to adequately respond to and manage global emergencies.

As stated in the report, ‘Combating Emerging Infectious Diseases’, the WHO recognises the “importance of strengthening global surveillance mechanisms”. However, as Chairman of the Review on Antimicrobal Resistance, Jim O’Neill, notes, the lack of a universal surveillance system, especially in developing nations “deprives us of the key insights and early warnings that we need to mount an effective response”.

Consequently, whilst biomedical fixes are important, they are band-aid solutions. The causative agents of these diseases can be identified and we can statistically monitor their prevalence in mortality rates, disability-adjusted life years and incidence rates. Apart from these biological causative agents – parasites, infections or whatever it may be – there are important (perhaps even more important) non-biological agents at play.

ARTWORK BY KATIA PELLICCIOTTA

Shockingly high prevalences of preventable diseases in the developing world are proof enough that biomedical solutions alone are not effective.

Take diarrhoea as an example.

According to the WHO, diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death in children under five globally and kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. As UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman stated, “it is a tragedy that diarrhoea, which is little more than an inconvenience in the developed world, kills an estimated 1.5 million children each year”. What’s more shocking is that standard diarrhoea treatment – oral rehydration therapy – is simple, inexpensive and life-saving. But despite this, only 39 per cent of children in need of this treatment receive it and there has been little progress since 2000.

However, perhaps rather than treating the symptoms of such diseases, more focus should be placed on tackling the causes.

The causes of diarrhoeal deaths can be superficially laid down to the biological causative agents – to rotavirus, shigella virus or E. Coli bacterium. But ultimately, the causes of these deaths stem far beyond the biological agents, down to issues of poverty and inequity, manifested in the forms of malnutrition, lack of sanitation and poor access to healthcare.

A 2009 WHO/UNICEF Report, Diarrhoea: Why Children Are Still Dying And What Can Be Done outlines seven recommendations for combating diarrhoea – five of which are preventative. These measures include: providing access to potable water, improved sanitation, hand-washing with soap, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, good personal and food hygiene, health education and rotavirus vaccinations.

The same report suggests that such disheartening statistics are partly due to other global health emergencies taking precedence. As UNICEF Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Clarissa Brocklehust stated, “Other diseases have come in and caught the spotlight. What [this] means is that spending on the ways to reduce diarrhoeal diseases is completely disproportionate to its impact”.

This brings about the question of how we should equitably allocate resources and funding. Should we operate within a purely economic framework and monetise lives? Should we invest our money in that which brings us the greatest marginal return in terms of lives saved, and quality of lives improved?

Or should we allocate our resources to the areas of greatest need? And if so, how and where we should direct our attention, resources and money?

It needs be understood that diseases manifest from social conditions – poverty and inequity – and so our solutions must address both the biological and non-biological causes.

Any biomedical solutions to global health issues must operate alongside sociopolitical interventions. And by tackling disease through tackling issues of infrastructure, data, sanitation and equity – we can systematically combat a whole host of diseases without having to direct our effort to any one specific disease.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done, and such changes are slow and difficult to enact. But when it comes to our global health, by no means is there a quick-fix.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 41

PLEASE DON’T FEED THE SHARK

KATIE DOHERTY ON HOW TO BE A RESPONSIBLE TOURIST

N

ingaloo Reef runs along Australia’s west coast, a long way from anywhere. There are a few small towns dotted along the coast but between them are great swathes of basically nothing, just termite mounds and scrubby desert plants.

We were staying in Coral Bay, which boasts a population of fewer than 300 permanent residents. There are a number of things which draw people to the area, including the gorgeous beach, snorkelling and fishing on the reef. We, like thousands of other visitors every year, travelled there in search of the whale sharks.

For me, ‘ecotourism’ always comes with a touch of guilt. After all, tourists? Not the best for the environment. Just look at the baby dolphin that washed up in Argentina earlier this year – it died as a result of the enthusiasm of a crowd of beachgoers. Even in less extreme cases, tourists crush plants, disturb animals and bring rubbish, weeds and excessive infrastructure.

In the Coral Bay general store, warnings had been posted everywhere, telling boaters to look out for wildlife. Accompanying the message was an image of a manta ray’s wing, lacerated by a boat’s propeller.

Still, Ningaloo’s doing pretty well on that front. Australia has strict legislation to protect our environment. In particular, there are a lot of rules about the sharks.

Diving with them is an utterly extraordinary experience. They are out deep, where even in the extraordinarily clear water, we would look down and not see anything but dark blue. It’s a highly coordinated affair. Only 10 swimmers are allowed in the water with the whale shark at a time, so while one group was in the ocean, the other would line up on the back of the boat and be dropped off further ahead of the animal. Our shark swam fast enough that it took a bit of effort to keep up, but we hardly noticed. He seemed so calm and gentle and we were captivated.

People aren’t allowed to go closer than three metres from the body of the shark and four metres from the tail. They aren’t allowed to swim in front of the animals, not for fear of being harmed – whale sharks are filter feeders, they don’t even have teeth – but to avoid startling them. No one is allowed to touch the whale shark. Without these rules serious harm could be done.

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In the Philippines, tourists can also swim with whale sharks.

Certain things I had heard about the process there didn’t make a ton of sense. Namely, they guarantee seeing a shark. Always.

This isn’t really something you can do with wild animals. The tour companies in Ningaloo try their best, offering a free trip out if a whale shark isn’t spotted on the first one, but they can’t do much more than that. It’s not a zoo, as one of the tour guides told us. If the animals aren’t there, they aren’t there.

We asked if any of the crew knew what went on with the sharks in the Philippines. They did.

Turns out, the staff there feed the whale sharks every day, in order to encourage them to stay in the same place. This is problematic on many levels, as it disrupts the natural behaviour of the whale sharks and affects the ecosystem surrounding them.

Prue, the photographer on our tour, told us that while she herself had not been swimming there, she had seen the whale sharks and they all appeared skinny – hardly surprising when you think that people would have to provide enough plankton for animals that weigh literally tons. In attempting to do so, another crewmember told us, they also take a lot of food out of the ecosystem that other species rely on.

Obviously this is terrible but the situation surrounding ecotourism is deeply complicated. Because if the choice is between the natural environment being imperfectly preserved or destroyed altogether, then there is no question which option is preferable.

Flores, an island in Indonesia, has exceptionally beautiful coral reefs. The name of the place means ‘flowers’, which should give some idea of the stunning variety of shapes and colours that occur. But the people of the island are very poor. They are primarily subsistence farmers, surviving on what they can grow and catch. The forests are eerily quiet, birds having become rare as a result of hunting, so it’s a wonder that the reefs haven’t been stripped as well.

But the thing is, they are very popular with tourists. There is surprisingly little traffic from Australia but many Europeans travel there. Therefore, the reefs are profitable and worth keeping the way they are.

ARTWORK BY AMIE GREEN

COMMENTARY

However, there isn’t enough regulation to keep them perfectly maintained. For example, in Ningaloo, there are permanent anchors so boats don’t need to drop their own. While snorkelling in Flores, I swam past our boat’s anchor, which was sitting by a particularly beautiful bit of coral. It was sheer luck that the coral wasn’t damaged when the anchor was dropped.

For the Indonesian reefs to remain in their current condition, more regulation of the area is desperately needed. But as damaging as tourism can be, it is also part of the reason the reefs are still there at all.

The proposal to dredge near the Great Barrier Reef is in part monstrous because we as a nation don’t need to do it – it’s an example of short-sighted greed. In economically developing nations, however, the situation is not always so clear. If a community living in abject poverty sees an opportunity to make money from an activity that harms the environment, we in richer countries can hardly judge them. But it’s certainly a hell of a lot better if the environment can be made profitable as it is. It’s great for us here to talk about preserving ecosystems for their own sake and for the sake of future generations but given that not every community has that luxury, an economic approach might be the best we can do for the moment.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 43

COMMENTARY

COCAINE CATAPULT LUCY ANDREWS GOES ON A TOUR WITH CRAZY DAVE

A

s I watched cocaine fly over the walls of the San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia, it occurred to me that I would never have gotten into this situation in Australia.

Drugs didn’t fly over prison walls and land in the middle of the street in broad daylight in our modern Western country. It just didn’t happen.

Twenty minutes earlier, my boyfriend and I were innocently wandering in San Pedro Plaza, where idle old men occupied the park benches, chewing on bitter coca leaves for altitude relief.

Around them, little kids ran around spraying foam at each other in celebration of the Carnaval de Oruro – one of the many annual Bolivian festivals.

As we passed a group of Cholitas, in their traditional Bolivian dress – colourful skirts, long plaits and a tiny bowler hat that doesn’t quite fit right – a distinctly American voice called out to us from across the square.

“Hey! You guys!”

My boyfriend and I looked at each other, around, behind, at the Cholitas. Us? We motioned. He waved us over to join him and two other tourists. They looked just as confused as we were.

“Guys, come join my tour!” He beamed a toothless smile at us and explained, “I’m giving a twenty minute tour of the prison – For free, totally free! I’d like to formally introduce myself, I’m Crazy Dave – You might have heard of me, Crazy Dave’s walking tours, the best unofficial-walking-tour in La Paz, I have a website, if you Google me my name will be there, I’m on TripAdvisor or something.”

He took his first breath for the entire spiel and held out his grubby hand for us to shake. It was surprisingly soft for an ex-conexpat currently living under a bridge in Bolivia.

He told us his life story, but it was written all over him. His faded American flag bandana confirmed that New York had once been his home. He wore ragged clothing that hung off his limbs and had bare, blackening feet. His greyish beard and sun-wrinkled face made him look slightly tired, but his dilated pupils gave him plenty of energy.

He told us about prison life, how bad the conditions are and how corrupt the guards are. He claimed that Coca-Cola paid out the other companies so it’s the only soft drink on offer and he recalled the time he witnessed a dwarf escaping with a school group.

His rambling stories included drug lords flying in Brazilian prostitutes, playing poker with stacks of American hundred dollar bills, living in condos inside the prison and bribing guards to let them out three or four times a week.

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When he called it to a halt 15 minutes in, the four of us were disappointed. He conferred with the only other tourists in the square, who had been loitering nearby.

“Hey, follow me everyone! I really want you guys to see this!”

Despite the fact that Crazy Dave definitely did seem slightly crazy and despite the fact he had spent 15 years in San Pedro Prison on drug smuggling charges, we all followed him. He led us across the plaza and down the side of the prison.

He stopped briefly at a specific street vendor who had a landline pay phone. He made a five-second phone call in Spanish and then he told us to wait on the corner of the street and “look up.”

It all happened very quickly – you could almost say professionally. I gazed up just in time to see little bags of white powder soaring through the air and landing conspicuously, with a delicate plonk, on the footpath across from the prison wall.

The seven of us, including the three who bought it, watched the scene with wide eyes and mouths hanging open. The words “cool”, “oh my god” and “holy shit” flew from our mouths.

Meanwhile, two women with a baby in a stroller passed by, unperturbed by Dave scuttling around them, whisking up the tiny bags.

I was impressed – I’ll admit that. It was, and still is, the most extraordinary thing that I witnessed in South America.

I glanced around at the people passing us on the grimy, cobbledbrick street. A group of white people waiting on the corner of San Pedro Prison could only mean one thing to the locals.

Their looks said it all. They were not impressed.

I wanted to stop them in the street and shout, “It’s not for me I swear! I don’t condone this! I’m not another ignorant westerner supporting the corruption that leaves 59 per cent of your population living in poverty! I don’t want to reduce your culturally rich country down to a drug-haven! I appreciate the Cholitas and the festivals and the many, many strange potatoes. I HAD ALPACA FOR DINNER YESTERDAY!” But I didn’t. The group of us, including Dave, didn’t respect the people or their laws in that moment. The three Australians who bought the drugs definitely didn’t honour the sacred and traditional use of the coca leaf.

Although it’s my number-one story from my trip, the unfortunate image of a chubby baby in a stroller watching little bags of cocaine land in front of him is also probably the saddest.

Dave met us on the corner and handed over the cocaine. “Let’s get out of here.”

He knew this wasn’t right.

ARTWORK BY JAMES CALLAGHAN

CREATIVE

SHE MADE ME LOOK TWICE MISHELL HERNANDEZ ON THE MYTH IN HER MIND

I

first noticed her eyes. They were hazel. The browns were mahogany, the greens were a burnt emerald. Her eyes seemed to have been rendered by the hands of a goddess. Her skin was a soft gold as if bronzed by the sun. I could almost smell the Mediterranean Sea breeze in her presence. Her hair was short; a soft bed of chestnut curls. Her voice – cool, easy, low. Her eyes drew me in with their blasé attitude. I could tell she was not easily impressed by a shopgirl like me.

That afternoon she came in looking for a navy blue Vince parka. A fit of giggles consumed me as soon as I entered the back stockroom of the shop. I was stunned, bewitched. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the parka but she ended up getting something else instead. I pulled up her account with us at the till and noticed her profile was incomplete. I was on automatic. I convinced her to provide us with her address; I still had a job to do after all.

Unsure of what I was expecting, I asked her if she’d be back.

“Yeah, I’ll be around,” she responded coolly. There was a pause.

Did she like me too or was I projecting?

“I’ll be here,” I said to her. Then just like that, she left. It was then that the panic began to sink in. What did I just give away?

Was I too obvious? Wait a minute, where was this even coming from? It was safe to say that I didn’t tell my boyfriend about my day at work.

Only after she’d left did a co-worker strut toward me with his usual sass (dressed in a coy smile) and said “If you want to talk about anything, I’m here for you.”

My childhood friends had always joked that I liked girls but that day at work was the first time I’d ever actually considered it. Could I be? No. The furrowed brows and the five o’clock shadow of a man, the sweat of satisfaction, his broad shoulders and strong thighs.

Men excite me too much.

Because of her I found myself standing in the middle of the sidewalk right outside of work. I looked left, then looked right, with a sense of urgency. Where was she? I didn’t feel silly. I felt stupid. Would I run after her to look deeply into her eyes and ask her to have lunch with me? The sounds of her breathy voice still reverberated in the hollows of my bones. I had to know her. Is this

ARTWORK BY LILLY McLEAN

what men feel? I get it. Only this time I was not the prey and he was not the predator.

Fearful of rejection but still unhindered by it, I eventually sent her a message on Facebook. She responded to my messages and even accepted my friend request. She was classy and polite in her responses. Unsurprisingly, she turned me down for drinks thrice, after which I backed out because ‘busy’ means ‘no’ and ‘no’ means ‘no’. Plus, I’d already violated my professional code of conduct at work by contacting her without her consent.

“My childhood friends had always joked that I liked girls but that day at work was the first time I ever actually considered it.”

Clicking through her photos revealed that she had a girlfriend.

As far as I was concerned, I was pretty straight. Still, she perplexed me in a strange and familiar way. She had a je ne sais quoi that clawed through the raw walls of my chest. Is it possible that Eros begs us to be indiscriminate with our lovers? Is the privilege of an erotic encounter with another person based on the possibility of a genderless, sexless, collision of energies that converge – not because of – but in spite of the vessels we call ‘man’ and ‘woman’, ‘male’ and ‘female’?

With a few sighs spread out over months henceforth, I let her go. The libido that should have been with my boyfriend slowly returned as I got over her. I also unfriended her on Facebook and unfollowed her on Instagram. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t meant to be had. Awe-striking beauty like hers was perhaps best admired. Such electrifying enthrallment was perhaps best enjoyed as a sweet memory on a cool summer afternoon. She’s been a myth in my mind ever since.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 45

COLUMN

GABRIEL FILIPPA PRESENTS

BUTTON MASHING TO THE VOICE ON THE OTHER LINE

BUTTON MASHING IS A COLUMN ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, VIDEO GAMES AND GROWING UP IN A DIGITAL WORLD.

I

went to a house party the other night. It was full of young professionals wearing red lipstick and suit jackets. There was white-collar punch and tapas. Nice heels. Aftershave. A girl I fancied in primary school told me she was working in investment banking. When she asked me what I was up to all I could think about was how my own suit still had cat piss all over it. About how I spent the last three days in my apartment killing ants with lemon, vinegar and chalk. My brother was there too. Telling people how to eat raw pasta in the shower. Telling them that when a dog humps your leg it’s actually an attempt at evolution.

No one was listening.

We were the token lefties. There to reassure everyone else that their lives made sense. It was awkward. I kept high-fiving people and positioning myself in front of the fire barrel all wrong.

I remember rubbing my sore eyes and cursing myself for not staying home to play Dark Souls.

You see, gaming was always my social mediator.

All those cords, buttons and whirring machines alleviated any kind of social anxiety. Me and whoever was next to me were building an experience to which small talk was irrelevant. We were dealing with the real shit. Like how to stop Trevelyan in Goldeneye. Or how to defeat Ganon in the Pyramid of Power.

Gaming was divorced from any socio-economic hierarchies.

It was a meritocracy. If you rocked up with a Mewtwo, no one cared what you wore, how you did your hair, or if your dad stunk like booze. I used to sit there mute at social events owning my opponents at everything. Tekken. Mario Party. Street Fighter.

Even obscure stuff like Matt Hoffman’s Bro BMX. But now the game has changed. Now we’ve all been sucked into a digital space where some disembodied voice is telling you they want to sleep with your mother.

I’m in a state of permanent and confused anxiety. I’ve got my headset on croaking demands to prepubescent boys. I’m telling them to push the checkpoint. To play the fucking objective. But no one listens. They’re all laughing.

ARTWORK BY EMMA JENSEN

I turn on the Wii U to find someone to play with but it’s disconcerting. Little Mii characters are streaming across the screen like ants along my kitchen sink. They sound like high heels hitting slate floor. I can see my character walking across this giant white space looking for reassurance but no one approaches him. Maybe this is some video game purgatory necessary before reaching fulfilment. A room of purification.

Or maybe it’s some wretched vision of Hell.

A projection of gaming’s future; thousands of dead-eyed characters all bumping into each other and smiling but never actually forming sentences.

A few years ago my friend got dumped for someone his girlfriend had met on Minecraft. She was getting drunk every night with him and roaming those great plains. They shared their resources. Built a home together. Defended it together. She would wake up hung-over but happy, scanning the horizon with her new pixelated, broad-shouldered companion. She moved to England to marry him. They had a child. But then the real dusk set. Who was this guy? Was he the same man that guided her through those caverns that night? The one who stayed up all night protecting her from the zombies?

Who was this guy doing beer bongs and sitting around in tracksuit pants all day?

I remember sitting by the public pool with Game Boy link cables, sitting close together so the cable wouldn’t fall out.

I remember watching the beads of sweat on my opponent’s forehead when I picked up the hammer in Super Smash Bros. I remember being able to lean over and hit the guy that chose to play as Oddjob in Goldeneye.

And now a friend of mine is linking me an article about virtual reality and the Oculus Rift – about how we’re all going to be buying them in October – and all I can think about is me sitting there with my pants around my ankles nervously trying to seduce a woman with someone else’s penis.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 47

CREATIVE

UNDERGROUND, OUTER SPACE

BY CAROLYN HUANE “Our music is like a punch in the face” “It’s good for you” They open the act and I sputter Laughter trapped in my throat People spill in Beer spills on the floor Don’t drink and dance My knees knock against the stage The barriers left To make room for us A red room flooded with people

Space filled with stale heat Underground, time is standing still Red and black and hot, hot Peel back a sweater In a busy cave The men all look the same Long dark hair and disco pants

A man appears on the stage Inches away Shorter than I expected but still I’d kiss him He calls to us Mel-Bourne We laugh with this medium-sized man Doc martens, sunflower blazer Tucking his hair behind his ear “I can feel your spirits filling the room” Alcohol, enthusiasm, both

I lost my head in the crowd With a girl Glitter in her mohawk like snow on Mount Buller Two headless girls twisting and shouting We’re on fire, underwater Sharing the same words Shouting the same breath Outer space in a hot room For two short hours

The comedown An irate taxi driver Count down the minutes Until the next night Hysteria, hopeless and Giggling over two pints of beer and Counting streetlights

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ARTWORK BY BONNIE SMITH

CREATIVE

MY MOTHER WROTE POEMS ON A GREEN TOILET DOOR

BY KYRA GILLESPIE my mother wrote poems on a green toilet door all the secrets buried in the halls of her chest stories hidden in walls and drawers and floors in a place no one looked, her words would pour black ink on green paint, a place to confess my mother wrote poems on a green toilet door on their street was a house – the shadow next door teaching Sunday school lessons for girls to undress stories hidden in walls and drawers and floors her father a man, a man of war with badges and medals strapped to his breast my mother wrote poems on a green toilet door her father a wolf, a great wolf of war three daughters no-one thought to protect stories hidden in walls and drawers and floors wolves hunt humans – children most of all the house as dark as a crow-feathered nest my mother wrote poems on a green toilet door stories hidden in walls and doors and floors

ARTWORK BY ANWYN HOCKING

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 49

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CREATIVE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAROLINE CLARKE COLBRAN

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 51

CREATIVE

SHADOW

BY ROSE KENNEDY Frosted grass.

Rubber feet.

An indented path to follow.

Head down, eyes up.

Violet white above stretches over housetops and the roofs of trees.

Air whitens around my face silvers and disappears.

Hollowed cheeks smoke a windpipe.

A steam train puffs billy-goat forms of pure fingers curl whisk in, and out and into the tiny wasted wreckages of things used up.

And I return to the shivering trail, light as a newly escaped eyelash resting on a cheek.

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ARTWORK BY LUCY HUNTER

CREATIVE

MERCY IN THE UNDERGROUND

BY DANIAL DE SANTOS

T

he door to the farm is up ahead. I creep up the steps and slowly open the hatch above me. I climb through the portal and find myself behind a restaurant. The stale, dusty smell of the city at night replaces the stench of the sewer underneath me, but I am not bothered by the stink; I rule the sewers. Everything below the city is mine. I sneak through the alley without making a sound, softening my footsteps in case I might meet someone or something.

Sometimes I run into raiders living in the bunkers outside the city, but they’re usually pretty weak. And I am pretty strong. Up here, there’s always the risk of meeting wild animals and mutants who try their best to survive. I am their relief. When I see their faces give up their last morsel of life, before I drink their blood and store their meat in my freezers, I feel they become a part of me.

The full moon is bright and washes the city in its pale grey glow. The day is not too different, since the sun struggles through clouds of acid to shine. I seldom go out during the day, it makes me uncomfortable.

In the alley there is no sound of footsteps, no danger. My feet pad softly on the ground and I assure myself there is nothing to challenge me. The grey bricks and stones of the laneway and the building walls remind me of medieval castles I read about as a kid.

I am the king here. For everyone else, I make this place their grave.

The supermarket is next to the restaurant. I don’t have to walk far from my sewer. If the restaurant was still in business and the city was still liveable, the owners would not have much trouble getting fresh ingredients. The thought amuses me. My home is under the supermarket, so I don’t have to go far for ingredients either.

A cockroach crosses my path. My tongue shoots out and I catch it: an appetiser.

ARTWORK BY DOMINIC SHI JIE ON

I sneak through the supermarket’s loading bay in the alley and creep towards the frozen food section. A couple of people from the bunkers are lying in front of the freezers. They are wearing bullet proof vests and carry some crude spears charged with electricity.

Both are men. It’s been a long time since they sent down women.

I haven’t seen one alive since I retreated underground. They were usually killed by my traps.

I wait a little there to hear if anyone else is coming.

I hear static. Then someone, a male, says “Peter are you there?

Please respond… we’re coming over.”

Quickly I grab the two corpses and carry them on my back towards the loading bay.

I hear barking.

When I am in the alley I see a dog come out of the supermarket.

I lay the corpses on the ground. The dog runs over. My arms reach out and coil around its neck like snakes and I kill it before it can make any noise. A clean kill. No blood around to leave any traces.

I carry it home with me along with the other two bodies. Tonight was a good catch. Still, I worry about being caught and seal the sewer door behind me. No one will be able to pry it open and follow me.

I creep past the generators I installed under the supermarket and thank myself they’re still working. I also thank myself I managed to avoid getting caught. I am the ultimate predator; all things are my prey.

At some point the cockroaches and the rats as large as cats become too easy. I even tire of the alligators people flushed down the sewers and the other creatures that make the underworld their home. They’re too easy. People are more interesting prey and far

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 53

tastier. They don’t taste of sewer as much. They remind me of bacon. I ran out of bacon when people raided the city for supplies, so now I stock my freezers with strips of their flesh instead. I provide for me.

Under the supermarket runs a sewer network. I carry the three meat-bags under my arms through the sour stench of their piss and shit. I am importing my own food underground. I am self-sufficient.

Through the sewers of ancient red brick, rusted walkways and broken lights I head to the underground rails. I used to take these to work. I can see in the dark as well as I used to in the daylight. I am the dark.

The train tunnels are dead. No electricity runs through them or anywhere for that matter except for wherever I have built generators. The trains have all been dormant in their depots for years or scrapped for parts by raiders and survivors. I find the station marked ‘Hope Street’ and walk through a maintenance tunnel leading home.

The nearest door to the right smelled of embalming fluid and coldness. I touch the freezing door and push. I am in a morgue.

I like to keep my food fresh and stored properly. It’s been twenty years since the hospital was in business and the smell of embalming fluid still permeates the air. The smell of the dead is stronger because this is where I keep my meals. I preserve and save.

I search and remove the crude armour of my prey and look at their wallets. I like doing that. Not that I care for them, I just like making up stories about the people I eat. It saves me from going out and meeting people. I figure if I just find some memorabilia about these people, I save myself the trouble of socialising.

Perhaps humanity fills a need by finding stories to live in. I am beyond that. I am the end of their stories usually. I don’t need to live. I just survive and kill. It’s very simple and logical; I am satisfied by that.

I like to find out the things people die for. Perhaps their wallets or the books they carried with them will tell me what they liked and believed in. Sometimes survivors carry bags with their personal bible or a book with them like the Tao, something

by Alan Watts, or Nietzsche, or the biography of someone they

54 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

looked up to. One time I found someone with the biography of Maria Callas, a soprano singer of some sort. She lived way before my time and reminded me a lot of my fiancée.

I strip the flesh of my quarry from their bones and keep their clothes, armour and weapons in the floor above the morgue. I store the meat for later in the morgue and eat the dog for a snack.

I cut some of the flesh into steaks. I make some into strips that look like bacon, in case I want something crispy.

I run up to the genetics department on the seventh floor. My old office is there and I keep a shrine there. First, I look into my mirror and thank myself for another good day hunting. I smile when I see the rows of teeth and two large fangs proudly standing in my muzzle. I lick and polish them. I pick up a brick and polish my horns and once I am satisfied, I retrieve a book from my shelves.

It has a black cover saying ‘Thanks for the Memories’ and I turn to a page showing my old body next to my fiancée’s. Our friend took that picture of us sitting in a café, the day after I proposed to her. That was the day we told everyone. She died a month later from the enemy virus. Her name was Mercy. That is the past.

I find another picture of her, this time it is a picture of her at a beach. She looks so luscious, with her wavy brunette hair and doe eyes driving me crazy. I lick my lips and masturbate.

I nap and wake up after hearing some motorbikes outside. I need to go out and explore. When I am on the ground floor, I see her. She looks exactly like Mercy and carries an assault rifle. I want her so badly.

I introduce myself, sprinting quickly and catch her rifle just as she points it at me. She screams. I take her quickly below ground.

I run through the morgue, opening the door to the maintenance tunnel. I run so fast and she passes out from the exhaustion of screaming. I hold her tighter. Down here, no one will hear her. I pray to myself no one will follow us. I am on the train platform and decide to take her somewhere nice to chat.

We are now in the parking lot of a large shopping centre. It used to be so popular and crowded and was one of many mega malls that grew all over the country. It was a crazy time. They were fun

CREATIVE places, usually filled with three different food courts because it took people an hour to get between each of them. People were fatter then.

We are six floors under the ground; three of them were for parking. Some cars are still here, but most of them I guess were used to evacuate people. The ones left here are probably broken. I go up to the third basement floor and it’s as large as two stadiums.

There is an amusement park here and it’s got some roller coasters and boat rides. It even has a submarine and I remember how popular it was. I never got the chance to go on it on account of the long queues but now the crowds are gone, I could use it, if I could just turn it on.

I open the hatch of the submarine still docked by its pier and switch some levers. I play around and hope something happens.

The machine stays asleep and I take my woman to the pier.

I wait by her side until she wakes up and we can talk. She’ll probably be disappointed I can’t start our ride. She’ll be angry and I will ask for her mercy.

She lies asleep on the pier and I decide she looks uncomfortable. A bed, that’s what she needs. I know it is still night time and the sun won’t be up for a few more hours so it’s safe for me to go up the mall and get a mattress for her. I’d carry a whole bedroom for her if she wants it. On the way I look for food she might like. She will be hungry and I must satisfy her. Her love is perfect. She is perfect.

Sophie is worried. It’s been two hours since she last saw Mercy.

She gave her orders to search the hospital for anything useful. By now, Mercy is supposed to meet her and the platoon at the mega mall. They are twenty-nine women minus Mercy. Sophie can’t afford to tell the bunker they lost someone in the city, they need all the people they can. She sends her best scout, Daisy, to look for her at the hospital and tells her to come back if she can’t find her. She doesn’t want anything to happen to Daisy too. If Mercy is missing, it could be that something caught her on her motorbike or even killed her in the hospital. Whatever the case, she wants Daisy to return as quickly as she can.

ARTWORK BY DOMINIC SHI JIE ON

Daisy comes back and says, “She left her motorbike outside. I couldn’t find her anywhere. If she’s inside the hospital, I’m not looking in there myself” Sophie replies, “Smart call. We’ll all look for her.”

A black dog the size of a motorbike barks nearby and points to the front entrance of the mega mall. Other black dogs of the same size joined in until there were about ten of them baying and howling. Sophie runs up to them and the barking gets louder and angrier. “Everyone! Get your weapons ready, danger’s nearby. We’re going inside that shopping centre. Follow Cerberus and his pack.”

The platoon gets lively as plasma charged rifles whir and reload.

They burst in and follow the war dogs down to the basement.

Cerberus follows his nose and leads the platoon and his pack down three disability ramps to some amusement park. He is a special dog, his ancestors were hunters and he was bred, with a little tampering to his genes, to protect humans and hunt down what isn’t. Just now, he sensed something strange. It is very big, whatever it is.

Cerberus and his pack find what they sensed earlier. Its blood tastes vile and it’s strong. Not strong enough to resist the strength of a pack of large war dogs and a platoon of armed women with plasma rifles and electrified spears. The beast has horns, claws, a hunched back, huge fangs and a long, sticky tongue. The tongue goes for Sophie but Cerberus manages to bite the tongue cut it.

The beast is angry and charges towards Cerberus but his pack manages to pounce on it and take it down. Nine large descendants of ancient wolves is enough to take down even a mammoth. The beast dies when shots of plasma burn into its torso and head.

Sophie looks around and sees Mercy on the pier. She is sitting behind a king bed and her head is behind her knees and crying.

Sophie embraces Mercy and comforts her. “Everything is going to be alright. Medic, come here! Mercy’s alive!”

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 55

LOST

BY DARBY HUDSON When I photograph my cat, secretly I consider if the button-eyed, belly-up portrait is a perfect LOST/REWARD poster, just thinking ahead…

Now too, each photo of a loved one poses the question – is this a MISSING PERSON portrait? An OBITUARY photo?

“Face more forward please,” you never know…

A selfie – this is the one, it strikes a fine line, flattering yet recognizable, haunting page 17 of the newspaper three days after I was last sighted decomposing in a shallow grave in a picture-perfect country paddock.

56 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

CREATIVE

FAKE SMILE CREDIT

BY DARBY HUDSON

My real smiles are numbered, each day I run out, and when I run out I dip into fake-smile credit, to pay off that debt I go home and rest my eyes on my cat, while she naps under the TV, taking a few deep breaths.

’TIL DEATH DO US PART

BY DARBY HUDSON

Clear blue thoughts swim in familiar eyes, some mornings they say ‘I don’t know you anymore’, looking more closely in the mirror, they say ‘Get out of my face!’

ARTWORK BY ANAIS POUSSIN

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 57

COLUMN

JAMES MACARONAS PRESENTS

NOTES FROM THE WEIRD SIDE NUMBER 84: THE SOCIETY

F

or every government, people allege there is somebody else ‘pulling the strings’. For all the wild stories, a cry goes around that they were ‘covered up’. This is, of course, ridiculous.

Firstly: governments are not controlled by strings – they are powered by something immense, radioactive and probably homicidal. Secondly: not every strange and unusual event is swept under the rug – you just need to know where to look. Case in point: The Society.

In his seminal history of meta-human activity, Scars to Spandex (1988), Neal Morrison argues, “The Society are the definitive representation of the necessity for meta-human recognition.”

Up until that point, there had, of course, been individuals with peculiar abilities (see Note #39, The Burning Woman, and Note #63, The Forever Lion), but the establishment of The Society marks the first instance meta-humans had been gathered together with a specific purpose. As Morrison laments, “It is tragic that such a remarkable moment in the world’s history was geared toward its destruction.”

The Society was established in 1926 by Dr Thaddeus Lamniform; self-styled 7th Earl of Ashburnham. Lamniform had nursed a grudge for thirteen years against the British Empire ever since Bertram Ashburnham, the 5th Earl, died in 1913 and the title passed to his brother, Thomas. Lamniform protested publicly, claiming to be Bertram’s rightful heir. Parliament and the monarchy rejected Lamniform’s claims, citing his ‘deformity’ as an obvious hallmark of his illegitimacy. Having revealed himself to the country, Lamniform was decried as a monstrosity and forced to flee to Europe, his estate in ruins and his assets abandoned.

There is no visual record of Lamniform’s physical characteristics but the accounts of his contemporaries paint a vivid picture – “unusually muscular for an Englishman”, “a rugose quality to his grey skin”, “an immense row of teeth punctuated by tenebrous eyes”. A multitude of observers describe Lamniform outright as half-man, half-shark – because that is what he was.

In 1914, Lamniform was caught up in the horrors of World War I, where it is believed he met The Cabinet, a being carved from sentient wood and the alleged inspiration for Robert Weine’s Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). It was in the dark heart of postwar Europe that Lamniform and The Cabinet gathered together the other meta-humans that would make up The Society.

Thomas, 6th Earl of Ashburnham, died in 1924, and in 1926, a black envelope was delivered to all major international powers: Attention.

You are now at war.

Yours, The Society.

The outcry was immediate. Who dared to violate the sanctity of armistice? The attention was exactly what Lamniform wanted.

Within a month, attacks had begun.

ARTWORK BY ELLA SHI

The Clockwork Queen and her tin soldiers marched on rural Spain. The Vrykolakas carefully infiltrated the United States.

Lamniform himself hijacked an airship and enabled the rhopaloceri (‘ash-flies’ as the press called them) to descend on London, an attack compounded by the grandiloquent heists of the Glass Acrobats. Meanwhile, in the Berlin midnight, The Cabinet prowled, harvesting nightmares.

– Neal Morrison, Scars to Spandex.

In 1928, The Society issued a manifesto – The Empire of Unorthodoxy – declaiming superstition and prejudice the world over and calling for global surrender to “the other, the outré and the infinitely more interesting.” Critic Rehema Kirabo makes an important point in her 1994 article on meta-human relations: Despite their militant approach, the aggressive politics of The Society distract from a very honest cry for acceptance in the homogenous attitudes of postwar Western society. Even their choice of name echoes a desire to be a part of something.

Regardless of their intentions, governments the world over called for drastic action to be taken against what they regarded as a threat to newly established order.

Their heavy use of propaganda was The Society’s undoing. A degree of public support for their challenge to the ruling classes meant the printing press that distributed the manifesto was tracked down and from there, a base of operations was identified – the abandoned Slains Castle on the Scottish coast. Lamniform’s architeuthid allies foiled a 1930 raid by sea but an ambush from the air acted as sufficient distraction for ground troops to take the castle by force. The meta-humans that did not escape were killed and surviving members of The Society would later come forward to express regret that their actions had necessitated such a violent response.

But what of Lamniform? Nobody knows. A global effort to locate him was abandoned in the events leading up to the Second World War. The extent of his abilities unknown, it is plausible he still survives, having returned to his cloistered 19th Century existence.

After the Second World War, a great number of meta-humans emerged and built the community that exists today. The documents and artifacts that defined the reign of The Society have been, by and large, stored in highly secure collections – with one notable exception.

(To be continued in Note #114 – The Confusaphone) Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children.

– Danton’s Death, Geörg Buchner

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 59

CREATIVE

DROWNING SONG

BY ERICA WILLIAMS she swallowed the sea to keep her cells alive, my mother, her body of ocean the heavy ocean underneath her skin, and when she opens the lids of her eyes, it spills from the black pools there inside the space of looking my mother nearly drowns in her own self she cries instead of seeing and black waters choke her even as she tries – even as she tries to swallow them back inside once, I saw an orange fish slip over the edge of an ocular pool; it landed with a wet flesh sound on the wooden floors and drowned in the stuff that I keep breathing we only ate the fish because we were hungry, see it’s hard to find a job when you are drowning out of water I am not sure if eating the fish was at all like eating my mother or if the fish, inside my body, will start demanding water to clarify; I didn’t want an ocean for a mother. I wanted a person – a person in the right shape of a person to remind me that the shadows do not have flesh and bones like people do I said that eyes were not for fish and sadnesses to fall out of and bodies were flesh and should not bleed salt water she said my daughter, drowning and living are synonymous things. it was my first lesson in evading happiness now, I have rubbed myself dry, and if not, St Kilda Beach isn’t a real ocean anyway. since my life of aridness, I have begun to expect that one day I will see her through the window of a fish tank with the slits of gills on the sides of her face, learning how to breathe

meanwhile, a fish still swims inside my watery ribcage; the reason why I am so susceptible to pneumonia and sadness in winter

60 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

ARTWORK BY JASMIN ISOBE

CREATIVE

BIG HEAVY THINGS

BY JACK FRANCIS MUSGRAVE

E

ddy wanted to lift big, heavy things. The biggest, heaviest things he could feasibly lift as a human (though that wasn’t necessary). He’d eat shit if it meant he could bench 500 kilos.

Eddy vowed to pledge himself to whatever could help him lift the biggest, heaviest things.

Weightlifting seemed like the way to go.

He’d always been jealous of the big men lifting their big, heavy things in their big, heavy gyms. Subconsciously, anyway.

Eddy would never admit it. The big men would be ‘unnatural’.

Unnecessary for day-to-day life. Unable to run for more than a minute without crumbling beneath their own mass (but did you ever see Eddy on the track?). Maybe he saw these guys and gals dedicating themselves to a cause and not giving up two weeks in and thought fuck, I’m just gonna pretend they don’t exist.

There was an event, of course. There’s always something.

Something that stirs that caveman need to pick up big, heavy things. At the request of those involved, I’ve been asked to redact any details. I wonder, though. Were Eddy older, would it have ended this way? Was he simply too young and naive to handle it all?

Not really my place to say.

Eddy wasn’t too well equipped to jump into anything that required any type of strength. When school said he had to do sports, apathy said aerobics. Once school ended even that had been gone for years. There was that stint at ultimate frisbee in his second year of uni. That was put off when assignments got too pressing, but then that was put off when life got too pressing, so life itself was put off for a couple of years. It was here in this void that he found the big, heavy things.

At 185cm of lank and 66kg of corn chip malaise, Eddy’s first gym visit wasn’t quite the miracle he’d hoped it would be. He walked in, all graphic tees and jean shorts without even a water

ARTWORK BY SAM NELSON

bottle. At the counter of the YMCA was the chiselled jawline of someone just weeks from the finish line of their PT course.

After signing up, he was offered a free consultation and took it because he had no idea. After being asked a series of increasingly concerning questions – what’s your weight and height? Um, well.

What’s your diet like? Uhhh. How frequently do you exercise? Oh. Do you understand what that means for your health? Oh god. – he was left with a smile and a “I’ll send you what to do by Thursday.”

But Eddy didn’t want Thursday. Eddy wanted now. So he smiled and pretended to walk away, before turning back and running through the gates as though he’d broken some rule. Then, within sight of the big men, Eddy stopped smiling. He loitered around, staring at the steel and the mirrors and the skin. Feeling that mist of sweat. All it took was for him to walk into the room to look like he wasn’t meant to be there. Standing still wasn’t helping. So Eddy moved from station to station, looking like he wasn’t meant to be there, only this time with weights in his hands.

He stopped. He looked at a dumbbell. He picked up the dumbbell. He put it down.

Am I doing this right? He wonders.

He does it again.

Eddy feels like God. Small weights become slightly larger weights. He goes home and wakes up unable to move. He soaks in his bath of paralysis.

Once movement comes back, Eddy returns to the dumbbells and hopes that tomorrow he can move even less.

Soon, he’s starting to know what he’s doing. He’s bought namebrand shorts and he’s wearing a singlet, though really he’s not quite ready for that yet. Eddy is becoming smug, but he’ll move beyond that quickly enough, once he realises that he doesn’t need to talk to newbies to intimidate them. He’s a human fitness

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 61

encyclopedia. Maybe not even human. With no uni and no friends beyond his mum (who’s been on thin ice anyway for having the nerve to say he looks “too big” when he’s only got 16-inch arms), his days are spent between lifting weights and memorising new facts about weights. Knowing all the nutritional macros of a Whopper meal, every variation of every exercise, the pros of the Latvian Goblet Split and the wonders it does for the knees. Eddy can count the calories of a meal just by looking at it – or, by looking at it the night before and memorising numbers that he thinks will impress his stepdad (they don’t).

Slowly, ‘Eddy’ is becoming a known name. Known, at least, on every body-building forum on the internet as some prodigy – Arnold reborn, only far nerdier and hasn’t yet reached any of his potential. Whether the response is positive or not depends on where on the internet you go. At strongmen.org he’s essentially an admin, but if you dare even utter his name on liftapedia.com you’ll be hit with a lifetime ban and exiled from the sport entirely. He’s still an unknown at his gym. He’s held on to that initial fear of those big men for sentimental reasons.

So go his days for the next year or so. Lift big, heavy things. Read big, heavy things. Eat big, heavy things. Dream big, heavy dreams.

He’s not back at uni but he is on Instagram now, which is something. His body is chiseled, sculpted, the kind of piece that would give a contemporary artist an aneurysm. Eddy is on all the phones. More people have seen his abs than have heard him speak.

Yet something isn’t there. His looks are enviable, sure. But he just doesn’t care. He’s plateaued: his numbers aren’t climbing like they used to. He doesn’t give a shit about his abs anymore or monitoring his daily lentil intake. Big. Heavy. Things. Where it all started.

So he gets straight on the roids. Shocking he didn’t earlier, really. Going from Geek to Golem. His neck and body are essentially interchangeable. His balls have grown in on themselves. The fire, though. The fire is back. The numbers are going higher and higher.

Eddy doesn’t view it as cheating. He’s not deceiving anyone.

He’s not competing. He’s never claimed his body is all natural.

Roids are ancillary. How heavy can you go without them?

62 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

Eddy’s mum has a nervous breakdown. All the chicken and rice in the fridge. The getting stuck in doorways. Her son trapped in some muscle prison. His stepdad comforts her, but deep down he is finally impressed. Eddy doesn’t care much. He has internet mates now, with couches big enough to fit him.

Everything is going well. Then she comes back.

Uh oh.

FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKFUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK CUNT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK CUNT FUCK Eddy emerges sometime later, whether from a cave, a coma or just his home gym. He is weak. Outside, walking in the sun for the first time in months, scaring all the kiddies in the park.

There Satan comes to him, in the form of a magpie, as Eddy always knew He would. Satan swoops every child, cyclist and icecream bucket He sees, until he reaches Eddy and perches softly on his head.

“Warble warble, fuck-o,” says Satan.

“Who-” starts Eddy.

“Shut it,” says the bird. “You know who I am – call me whatever, Devil, Antichrist, Baphomet. I go by Lucy myself – and I know you’ve been waiting for me. So. What’s it gonna be, huh?”

The bird pecks at dandruff and loose strands of hair, its beak stabbing into the crown of his skull.

“I want to lift the biggest, heaviest thing.”

“Well then,” says Lucy. “Suit yourself.”

The bird leaves its roost and floats in front of Eddy. Then,

CREATIVE

shoves its magpie arse over his face. Before Eddy can scream, Satan shits an egg straight into his mouth.

The egg is blackened, cracked, but the shell is still intact when his jaws come down. Out comes blood, bile, something that he guesses ash must taste like. The more he chews the more his throat burns. Broken shards of human teeth. Four-day old milk. A thirty-year old chiko roll. Eddy’s gums are all cut-up and bleeding, his taste-buds are eroding, his stomach is fucked. But he’s going on. Maggots and cum and ah fuck was that a Bounty bar?

He swallows it all.

“Onya,” says Lucy.

So Eddy goes bush. He’s grown and now his clothes don’t fit so he’s naked – glistening with sweat and magick. His breath is able to send most small mammals into extinction. Footprints press deep into the mud and leaves.

He goes off track, scrambling over rocks and branches, down gullies and ridges until he can find The One. Then he sees it. Up a ledge, 200 metres or so into the blue of the sky. Not looking back, he scales the cliff-face, naked and gearless. The rocks cut his skin – blood forges a path down the rock. He reaches the top, battered but painless. There is the boulder – sun streaming through the edges of its silhouette.

Eddy bends down and pulls at the rock. Every vessel in his body pumping, ever fibre of muscle strained. The stone cracks as the faultline tears through the earth to the other side. Then, in one fluid motion, he lifts it above his head and screams. Triumph echoes down the valley. He throws the stone some hundred metres away, crushing two families of wombats and a wallaby in the process. He flattens the land and screams one word.

More.

There’s Lucy again, perched on a nearby bluegum.

“Figured as much. Well, you know what it’s gotta be.”

It’s over in moments. Eddy devours the thing with something like enjoyment. Chew four times and swallow. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. He smiles.

Eddy is not the Golem anymore, he is the Behemoth. Twelve metres tall, striding across the plains towards a big, heavy thing.

ARTWORK BY SAM NELSON

News’ copters hover at his brow like flies. Country police shit themselves. The roos bound away in the hundreds. Everyone is talking about him now. Everyone.

After four weeks of travel he sees that orange peak at the sunrise.

Uluru. Another Big One. Without a word, he reaches beneath the soil and pulls. The rock trembles. Five tourists fall to their deaths mid-climb. So, the Behemoth goes and hoists Big Red above. It smashes back down on the ground and Australia rumbles.

Once again he screams: More.

“More is it?” Says the bird on his shoulder. “Knew you’d come around to it” Behemoth feasts. Begs for seconds. Three, four, five eggs. Five eggs and his body begins its ascent to the stars.

He’s over five hundred metres tall now. His dick casts a shadow all the way to Launceston. Behemoth goes now and steps off the Earth – floating in space. Lucy flies beside him, warbling.

Behemoth makes his way to the bottom of the planet. Above, the Earth is screaming. Every military on the planet is scrambling for something, anything. The world screams fuck, I knew Australia would kill us.

Every big man in the world is banding together to do something, It’s not enough. Behemoth places his hands on the Antarctic and hoists Earth on his shoulders. Then, he throws it away. All life burns in a second. All that is left is a husk, a lifeless ball, gone away to leave havoc somewhere else. If a magpie could smile, Lucy would be.

Eddy turns to the sun and the sun says, “Go on, then. Try me.”

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR • 63

COLUMN

ELIZA SHALLARD PRESENTS

FLASH FICTION

WHEN EVERY STORY IS 100 WORDS, EVERY WORD COUNTS PROMPT 4 – THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: ONE MOMENT CHANGES EVERYTHING JUST A SECOND

BY ELIZA SHALLARD

S

he was laughing. Her dad was hysterical and she was laughing. The highway at night was a lights show, the kind of twinkling shit on postcards. She loved it. She was laughing.

Then she was standing on Ben’s doorstep.

“Naomi it’s 6am. Come in, crash on my – you okay?”

Naomi collapsed into him, mumbling about not wanting to crash anywhere.

“I closed my eyes… the truck was going so fast and my dad… dad, Ben…” The dawn light was aching and so was she. Through the tears, she was laughing. She was hysterical.

“Everything is going to change now isn’t it?”

PROPERTY, PAIN & PUBLIC TRANSPORT

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECTED BYJACOB SACHER

If I flap my wings harder. Will he notice me.

If I flap my wings faster. Will he touch me.

If I flap my wings sexier. Will he kiss me.

If I flap my wings lovelier. Will he love me.

If I flap my wings nicer. Will he marry me.

If I can flap my wings truer. Will he then care for me.

If I can flap my wings swifter. Will he stop hurting me.

If I can flap my wings better. Will he stop breaking me.

If I can flap my wings. Will I be able to fly away.

THE SCOURGE OF BLINDNESS

A

BY ELLIE TAYLOR

flash of a tiny pale palm glitters in the oceanic graveyard.

It was a famous summer afternoon, pale aunts lathering tanning oil on their arms, pot bellied uncles watching snags on the hotplate, elder cousins laughing and leaping from the pier into the swallow.

A lifeguard reclining in his perch, peeling tin foil from a cheese sandwich and flicking the crumbs from his breast.

A mother and father hiding out in the carpark, glaring narrowly, arguing about kindergarten waiting lists and the bloody life insurance.

A young couple who would no longer be parents when the hand descends underwater.

64 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION FOUR

A

BY REBECCA POYNTON

utomatic doors come to a close before your eyes. You slam your hand against the bright green button, but you know you’re too late.

The train pulls away from the station. Loose pages of your literature essay flap feebly in the cool autumn breeze.

You check the train schedule.

You check your watch.

You sigh.

You sit on a bench.

As you slump there, dread seeps from the pit of your chest down into every numbed crevice of your miserable, Monday morning limbs.

You think to yourself, “Damn PTV. Damn the English department, and damn their institutional mistrust of Turnitin.”

NEXT EDITION’S PROMPT – UNRELIABLE NARRATOR: A STORY FROM TWO SIDES Submit your 100-word Flash Fiction response to farragomedia2016@gmail.com Due 26 June, 11:59pm

ARTWORK BY EDIE M BUSH

JOIN US IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

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UMSU and the Media Office is located in the city of Melbourne, situated at the heart of Wurundjeri land.

A key member of the Kulin Nations, we pass our respects on to the Wurundjeri elders, both past and present and acknowledge the land we are on was never ceded.