2016 Edition 6

FARRAGO EDITION SIX • 2016

OLYMPICS • BURGERS • STEALING

COMIC BY HARRY McLEAN

CONTENTS

PAGE 42

PAGE 60

PAGE 53 PAGE 28

PAGE 39 4 • NEWS IN BRIEF 5 • CALENDAR 7 • BLACK AND BLUE • CAPPED PLACEMENTS 8 • FACING THE MUSIC 9 • EQUAL REPRESENTATION 19 • PASSING NOTES 10 • FREE SPEECH IN ACADEMIA 11 • FAIR PLAY 12 • FAILURE TO RESPOND 14 • CHRISTMAS IN JULY 15 • OB REPORTS 19 • GOING GREEN WITH ENVY 20 • COUNSEL IN COUPLETS 21 • UNDERGRADUALISMS (COMIC) 22 • WHO RUINED MY UBER RATING? A MODERN TRAGEDY 23 • A STIMULATING STORY 25 • THE FEMININE CRITIQUE: WOMEN IN SPORT 27 • TONY ABBOTT AND YOUR SEX LIFE 28 • COCKTAILS FOR EX-LOVERS 29 • GARDEN SHOPLIFTING 30• FOR & AGAINST: THE OLYMPICS

31 • WHY DO WE GET DÉJÀ VU? 32 • RIO & EVIE (COMIC) 35 • MEAT THE FUTURE 36 • THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING 38 • ONE OF US: CULT REVIEWS – THE BARD 39 • TITANIC TODAY 42 • LANGUAGE SWAP 47 • BUTTON MASHING ALL MY TROUBLES AWAY 48 • THE ‘OTHER’ VAMPIRE (INTERVIEW) 50 • HOPES FROM ACROSS THE SEAT 51 • WHEN I RIPPED MY PANTS 52 • GREEN BULB 53 • XMA 55 • TOY 56 • STATIC 57 • PYROMANIAC 59 • NOTES FROM THE WEIRD SIDE: THE GLADE 60 • SUNLIGHT AND CITYSCAPES (PHOTOGRAPHY) 62 • BIRD LEAVES 63 • CLICHÉ 64 • FLASH FICTION: POST-APOCALYPTIC

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 1

THE FARRAGO TEAM

EDITORS

Danielle Bagnato Sebastian Dodds Baya Ou Yang Caleb Triscari

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 SIX

CONTRIBUTORS

Alexandra Alvaro Bella Barker Iryna Byelyayeva Chihyu Chou Frances Connors Nicole De Souza Martin Ditmann Hayley Franklin Amie Green Otis Heffernan-Wooden Paloma Herrera Marley Holloway-Clarke Candy James-Zoccoli Annabelle Jarrett Rose Kennedy Jack Kilbride Jack Langan Trung Le Hannah McKittrick Harry McLean Claire Miller Jack Francis Musgrave Clara Ng Mary Ntalianis Monique O’Rafferty Simone Pakavakis Sophia Panther Jesse Paris-Jourdan Alessandra Prunotto Seth Robinson Jo Rosochodski Ella Shi Linus Tolliday Jean Tong Peter Tzimos John Wardle Architects Laura Wilson

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 Kathy Audrey Sarpi Ella Shi Bonnie Smith Ellen YG Son Sophie Sun Aisha Trambas Jialin Yang Reimena Yee

Ben Clark (Online) Gabriel Filippa Thiashya Jayasekera Kerry Jiang James Macaronas Nick Parkinson Adriane Reardon 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

Bonnie Smith

APOLOGIES In the Edition Six piece ‘Under The Knife’, we did not acknowledge Vanessa Di Natale’s assistance in collecting information and we wish to express our gratitude for bringing this topic to our attention.

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 superlative 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

I

EDITORIAL

f you’re reading this, it’s because we made it back from Splendour In The Grass in one piece. We’re a bit sore from running up hills and dancing in the dust, a little worried that we’ll never see a line-up that good again and just beginning to realise that no liver is meant to process gallons upon gallons of gin.

Our festival story is largely uneventful – quite a departure from the agonising lead-up. Probably the most difficult experience happened before we’d even taken flight.

We got a call in the food court from our radio team, who were hosting an O Week listening party for UMSU’s Winter Festival. (Thank you so much to Monique, Lachy, Sonny and Oli for holding down the fort! And to everyone who turned up to help them out.)

It was Sonny, his normally calm radio-producer voice tinged with panic.

“Sebastian, the panel isn’t working.”

“Okay, okay – shit.”

After trying to talk through the problem, we turned to FaceTime to see if Sonny’s blurry phone camera would help to shed some light on the issue.

“Have – have you tried turning it off and on again?” Sebastian asked, half-joking.

“I’ve tried literally all of the idiot-checks I can think of.” Sonny replied.

“I just... Fuck. Danielle?” Sebastian’s hands grabbed and prodded an imaginary panel.

“Are all the plugs in?” Danielle offered.

“Literally all of the idiot-checks.” Sonny repeated.

“Wait, what’s that button?” Sebastian pointed at a tiny red button on the panel. Of course, Sonny couldn’t see him pointing, so we spent several moments describing where one red button among many was hidden.

A moment of silence.

Then, sweet music.

“It was on mute!” Sonny laughed. We laughed. Then we caught our flight. O Week was saved.

Things went smoothly after that. We stopped off in Byron Bay to buy supplies and fill 20 small yoghurt pouches with what was definitely not contraband. As it turned out, our efforts weren’t necessary. No one, at any point during the festival, checked us for yoghurt. We met up with old friends, made some new ones and came home feeling tired but excited to get back to working on the magazine you’ve got in your hands right now.

And isn’t it a beauty? From Jack Kilbride’s dissection of lab-grown meat (page 35), which acts as the inspiration for Bonnie Smith’s vibrant front cover, to Clara Ng’s explanation of why we love stories so much (page 36), this edition takes the things you thought you understood and makes you think again. Read up on the lasting myth of the Titanic (page 39) or the impact of politics on your sex life (page 27). If you feel like a trip down memory lane, take a peek at Candy James-Zoccoli’s universal story of unrequited crushes (page 56). We’ve even got an interview with Reimena Yee, one of Farrago’s own graphics contributors, about her astounding webcomic (page 48). Lose yourself between these pages and see yourself through to the middle of semester.

From us in the office: we hope you’re hitting your stride in these early stages of semester, we hope you’re surviving the last dying gasps of winter and we hope you’ll take occasional study breaks to spend time laughing with the people you love.

Dance your goddamn heart out, Danielle, Sebastian, Baya and Caleb.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 3

CAMPUS

NEWS IN BRIEF WOMEN IN HIGHER ED

8–12 August is Women in Higher Education Week run by the UMSU Women’s Department.

Events will include panels, social events and a trivia evening.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The University of Melbourne has reported that the new Master of Entrepreneurship will be tripling its intake and has called on Malcolm Turnbull to continue its innovation agenda.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATION A report from UMSU Advocacy has criticised the new special consideration procedure implemented by the University of Melbourne.

The report mentions the ‘Kafkaesque’ quality of the procedure and expresses concern towards the extended waiting periods between applying for special consideration and receiving a response.

UMSU Advocacy believes this is due to a “lack of resources”.

NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION

A National Day of Action has been called for 24 August by the National Union of Students to protest proposed cuts to education funding and the partial deregulation of university courses.

EUREKA MOMENT

A team from the University of Melbourne have reached the final round of the prestigeous Eureka Prize for their work on drug resistance in malaria parasites.

FREEDOM TO EDUCATION

LABOR CABINET CHANGE

UNIVERSITY DIVERSITY

A University of Melbourne report has drawn a link between a 13 per cent decline in drug crime rates and access to publicly funded vocational education and training in 16-44 year olds.

The Australian Labor Party has faced a cabinet reshuffle following their failed attempt to form government.

Race Discrimination Minister Tim Soutphommasane has noted that all Australian university vice-chancellors have an Anglo-Celtic or European background and has called for more diversity.

MERGER CANCELLED The University of Sydney has announced that it will be cancelled the proposed merger between the Sydney College of the Arts and the University of New South Wales School of Art and Design.

The proposal lead to significant backlash from students, staff and alumni from both universities.

However, it remains unclear as to whether university staff will still be made redundant under the initial plan.

4 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

Deputy Labor Leader Tanya Plibersek has replaced Kim Carr as Shadow Education Minister, who has moved to the portfolios of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

Universities Australia, including the University of Melbourne, has welcomed this new appointment.

GOVERNMENT BACKLASH The Group of Eight, of which the University of Melbourne is a member, has criticised the Federal Government’s proposed system in which universities can charge extra for flagship courses.

INNOVATION

A joint study between the University of Melbourne and the National Australia Bank has found that Australian business scores 67.6 on the NAB National Innovation Index.

STOP 2

After a substantial period of time, students will now be able to enjoy regular events at the Student Bar in Union House. ‘Stop 2’ will be run weekly on Thursdays from 5-10pm.

DAY OF THE DEBT Reports from The Age have shown that there is growing support for the Federal Government to collect higher education loan debt deceased estates. Student unions generally remain opposed.

CARBON NEUTRAL UNI

LOAN FEES

Charles Sturt University is the first university in Australia to be classified as carbon-neutral. The University of Melbourne has yet to pledge to divest from fossil fuels despite multiple campaigns.

The Grattan Institute has called on the Federal Government to quickly make changes to the Higher Education Loan Programme and set a universal loan fee of around eight per cent.

NOTICE OF UMSU GENERAL ELECTION The University of Melbourne Student Union general elections have been called for 5–9 September. All students at the University of Melbourne are eligible to run for a position within UMSU or vote for candidates. Nominations close 12 August.

For more information, students can visit: http://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/elections

PERFORATED FOR YOUR PLEASURE

UMSU

SEPTEMBER CALENDAR WEEK FIVE

WEEK SIX

WEEK SEVEN

WEEK EIGHT

MONDAY 22

MONDAY 29

MONDAY 5

MONDAY 12

1pm: Activities – 5 Minutes of Fame and free BBQ, North Court 5.15pm: Environment – Documentary

1pm: Activities – Portraiture Paint Off and free BBQ, North Court 5.15pm: Environment – Documentary

5.15pm: Environment – Documentary

5.15pm: Environment – Documentary

TUESDAY 23

TUESDAY 30

TUESDAY 6

TUESDAY 13

12pm: Disabilties – Neurodiversity Collective 1pm: Women of Colour Collective 1pm: Bands, Bevs & BBQ 2pm: Basement Comedy 5:30pm: Environment – Play With Your Food 6PM: DISABILITY & JOURNALISM PANEL

12pm: Disabilties – Neurodiversity Collective 12pm: Free Life Drawing 1pm: Bands, Bevs & BBQ 2pm: Basement Comedy 5:30pm: Environment – Play With Your Food

12pm: Disabilties – Neurodiversity Collective 1pm: Women of Colour Collective 1pm: Bands, Bevs & BBQ 2pm: Basement Comedy 5:30pm: Environment – Play With Your Food

12pm: Disabilties – Neurodiversity Collective 12pm: Free Botanic Drawing 1pm: Bands, Bevs & BBQ 2pm: Basement Comedy 5:30pm: Environment – Play With Your Food

WEDNESDAY 24

WEDNESDAY 31

WEDNESDAY 7

WEDNESDAY 14

10.30AM-2.30PM: RADIO FODDER AT THE FARMERS MARKET 12pm: Women of Colour Collective 1pm: Queer Lunch, Queer Space

10.30AM-2.30PM: RADIO FODDER AT THE FARMERS MARKET 1pm: Queer Lunch, Queer Space

10.30AM-2.30PM: RADIO FODDER AT THE FARMERS MARKET 12pm: Women of Colour Collective 1pm: Queer Lunch, Queer Space

10.30AM-2.30PM: RADIO FODDER AT THE FARMERS MARKET 12pm: Women of Colour Collective 1pm: Queer Lunch, Queer Space

THURSDAY 25

THURSDAY 1

THURSDAY 8

THURSDAY 15

8:30am-10:30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1pm: Disabilities Collective.

1pm: Creative Arts Collective, Arts Lab

8:30am-10:30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1pm: Disabilities Collective.

1pm: Creative Arts Collective, Arts Lab

8:30am-10:30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 1pm: Disabilities Collective.

1pm: Creative Arts Collective, Arts Lab 7:30pm: TASTINGS – Guild Theatre.

8:30am-10:30am: Welfare – Free Breakfast 12pm: Women’s & Disabilities – Disability & Feminism 1pm: Disabilities Collective.

1pm: Creative Arts Collective, Arts Lab

FRIDAY 26

FRIDAY 2

FRIDAY 9

FRIDAY 16

6-9pm: Disabilities – Listening Party 7:30pm: TASTINGS – Guild Theatre

ARTWORK BY EDIE M BUSH

FOR MORE INFO VISIT UMSU.UNIMELB.EDU.AU

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 5

mixcloud.com/radiofodder

radiofodder2016@gmail.com

radiofodder.com

6:00PM Spectrum

6:00PM Sexless in the City

@radio_fodder

/radiofodder

A show run by the Economics Student Society of Australia HOSTED BY: Tom Crowley

7:00PM Nominal Interest

Spinnin’ the freshest tunes that’ll get you grooving, jiving and vibing.

HOSTED BY: Ethan & Venkat

HOSTED BY: Sonny & Oli

Fun, laughter, unprofessionalism, celebrites & personal secrets.

HOSTED BY: Billie, Kit & Trung

Featuring music from Bandcamp sadboy ditties to ya boi’s fire Soundcloud.

5:00PM Local Produce

They’ll take you to musio-spatiotemporo-physical transcendence.

HOSTED BY: Aiden & Callum

5:00PM Snags ’n Satellites

7:00PM Jazz & Other Sounds

The meditating sounds of jazz, funk, fusion and soul.

HOSTED BY: Thomas McIntire

Audio sketches wedged between witty banter & crab noises.

HOSTED BY: Jacob, James & Ben

4:00PM Mudcrabs Radio

A Jewish-themed discussion and comedy show.

HOSTED BY: Jacob Sacher

4:00PM Schmoozin’

6:00PM Pinky Rings

Nothing better than a couple of pasty white boys chatting about rap.

HOSTED BY: Max and Campbell

Mapping sonic astral bodies by bumping naughty tunes.

HOSTED BY: Sebastian Hughes

3:00PM Bastronomy

Music charts with a sociological twist.

HOSTED BY: Barbara, Geoffrey, Ashley & Signe

2:00PM Socbites (Monthly)

5:00PM The Magoos

Showcasing progressive Japanese music from the ’70s to today.

HOSTED BY: Brad Knight

2:00PM Japanese Bathhouse

Dodgy panel management, dodgy song choices & dodgy vibes.

HOSTED BY: Tosh Blakley

12:00PM The Apartment

A weekly update with the creative arts at Unimelb.

HOSTED BY: Harriet & Guy

11:00AM Creative Arts News

A comedy game show with three contestants from three faculties.

HOSTED BY: Anokhi Somaia

10:00AM Faculty Feuds

Wednesday

A premier sports program to satisfy all your sporting needs.

HOSTED BY: Aaron & Jack

The late night banter at a sleepover – games, bitchiness & throwback music.

HOSTED BY: Trent & Monique

1:00PM Snappy Hour

4:00PM Colour Contest

A wild selection of local releases and international oddities each week.

HOSTED BY: Charlie Lempriere

Featuring everything about East Asian culture.

HOSTED BY: Yusang & Kexin

12:00PM Melb Mulberry

2:00PM Time For K-Pop

Fall deeep into the rabbit hole of the Korean music industry.

HOSTED BY: Nicole de Souza

Brought to you by the UMSU Queer Department.

HOSTED BY: Frances Connors

11:00AM Queerly Beloved

1:00PM Shindig!

One hour dedicated to music from the ’60s – think soul, folk and rock.

HOSTED BY: Holly, Finbar & Leah

Brought to you by the UMSU Disabilities Department.

HOSTED BY: Christian & Jess

10:00AM Network Disabled

12:00PM PhD

Probably Heavily in Debt brings you interviews with antisocial academics.

HOSTED BY: Finbar Piper

Tuesday

Monday

RADIO

HOSTED BY: Cassandra Lutzko

Exploring themes in metal & sometimes featuring a fellow metalhead.

5:00PM Heavy Metal Hour

RADIO FODDER now playing at the Farmers Market every Wednesday from10AM - 2PM, Concrete Lawns.

PARTY

LISTENING PARTY LISTENING

Over-analysis of Pop Culture using critical & literary theory.

HOSTED BY: Tiffany & Eveleen

6:00PM Pop Culture Disorder

Tune in each week for fifteen minutes of phantasmagorical fun.

HOSTED BY: James Macaronas

4:00PM The Mr Ghost Show

Introducing dancers, artists and awesome vibes each week.

HOSTED BY: Luke Lu

3:00PM Cypher Session

It’s like Farrago but you can listen to it. Farradio.

HOSTED BY: Jesse Paris-Jourdan

3:00PM Farradio

There’ll be insights, comedy, interviews, music & to quote Oliver, “more”.

HOSTED BY: Danny Glattstein

1:00PM Curiosity

Brought to you by the UMSU Indigenous Department.

HOSTED BY: Emily & Wunambi

Your weekly fix of pop culture, news, reviews and discussion.

HOSTED BY: Felicity & Jess

11:00AM Spoiler Alert

Friday

12:00PM Biggest Blackest Show

9:00AM The Democrat

Deconstructing the current state of democracy from around the world.

HOSTED BY: Julie Carli

Thursday

FODDER

CAMPUS

BLACK AND BLUE

CLAIRE MILLER CLAIMS THAT UNIMELB WAS ROBBED OF THE GOLD

R

epresentatives from the University of Melbourne enjoyed both social and sporting success at this year’s National Indigenous Tertiary Education Games.

The Games were held at Australian Catholic University in Brisbane and were the biggest in the competition’s 20-year history. Twenty-five universities from around Australia attended the four-day event, held from 26-30 June. Thirty-three teams competed and approximately 450 students participated.

This year was important for the University of Melbourne team, who fielded their largest ever group. A contingent of 30 students were divided into two Blue and Black teams. The teams were led by UMSU Indigenous Office Bearers Wunambi Connor and Emily Kayte James. The groups competed enthusiastically and were rewarded with a third place finish. Queensland University of Technology came first.

This result adds to the University of Melbourne’s impressive track record at the Indigenous University Games. Having only competed since 2009, the University has placed in the top three teams for six years in a row. This year, the Black team defended

CAPPED PLACEMENTS

ALEXANDRA ALVARO EXPLORES A NEW SOLUTION TO DEMAND

T

he Group of Eight (Go8) universities have called on the Federal Government to impose a limit on undergraduate placements, which would turn back the clock on the Coalition Government’s decision to uncap undergraduate placements in 2012.

The Go8 encompasses the leading universities in Australia, including the University of Melbourne (U0M). In its statement, the group said it believes that whilst the demand-based system has succeeded in increasing participation in higher education, Australia must now focus on a sustainable funding policy.

Vice-Chancellor of UoM, Glyn Davis, proposed a ‘cap and trade’ model, which would solve the issue of overcrowded and overfunded undergraduate programs. Davis cites this as the cause of the current oversupply of graduates in areas such as teaching.

Despite the changes made back in 2012, undergraduate placements are still financially capped at UoM. In an exclusive deal, the government has allowed the University to instead strengthen its post-graduate programs.

Non-Go8 universities expressed concern over the statements.

Andrew Dempster, Head of Corporate and Government Affairs at Swinburne University of Technology says Swinburne University supports the current funding system.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARLEY HOLLOWAY-CLARKE

their volleyball title for a third year in a row after a tense semifinal. The Black team were also runners up in basketball and advanced to the semi-finals in netball.

“The Black team was the more competitive team, whilst Blue was the more social team,” Connor said.

On an individual level, University of Melbourne Masters student and Indigenous Games veteran Verhonda Smith was named Most Valuable Player in the Women’s category for both basketball and volleyball at the Closing Night ceremony.

Connor and James endeavoured to provide an opportunity to the largest group possible. Out of 70 applicants, 30 students were selected from various year levels.

“The people you go to Indigenous Games with are friends that you’re going to know for life. You can’t deny it, it happens,” Connor said.

University of Melbourne students made connections with players from other universities on and off the field at themed social nights held throughout the week.

“There’s a lot of connection at the Games,” said Connor.

“Students were able to meet up with friends from different universities, as well as seeing family members.”

Next year, students will have the opportunity to enjoy the sense of connection and celebration more locally, as the Indigenous Games will be held at Deakin University’s Geelong Campus.

“Just a few years ago Australia had the major problem of unmet demand for higher education, with too many applicants and not enough places,” he said in an interview with Farrago.

“In days past, higher education was a privilege that was extended only to the elite students. This is the 21st Century. We need to broaden educational opportunities if Australia is to be an innovative, high-wage economy.”

UMSU Education (Public) Office Bearer, Akira Boardman, says that whilst keeping placements uncapped is best, it seems to be incentivising high levels of enrolment for universities regardless of individual student needs.

“I do not advocate for a cap on places to return at all, but the current system must be met with a much larger government contribution of university funding.”

She is also concerned that the uncapping of placements will once again leave students of disadvantaged backgrounds out of the higher education system.

Provost at UoM, Margaret Sheil, agrees that the most important issue universities would face is the maintenance of strong access programs for students of disadvantaged backgrounds.

Sheil told Farrago UoM is committed to its Access Melbourne program, which supports students who may face a number of barriers, including financial disadvantage, under-representation and disability.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 7

CAMPUS

FACING THE MUSIC

JESSE PARIS-JOURDAN ON THE MUSIC FACULTY RELOCATION

A

IF YOU’RE A SCIENCE OR BIOMED GRAD, YOU CAN SKIP CLASSES ( TWO YEARS’ WORTH )

coming from the state government. The state is also providing a long-term lease of the land to the University.

The remainder of the cost will be funded by philanthropy, including the Myer Foundation and Ian Potter Foundation, and the University. It is not clear what proportion of the cost the University will shoulder, and a spokesperson declined to comment on this issue.

The new conservatorium forms part of an ongoing redevelopment of the Southbank campus. In 2014, the University refurbished its Grant Street Theatre and launched the new Lionel’s Lounge. Another project, worth over $40 million, will involve the redevelopment of the Dodds Street stables at Southbank into a visual arts wing.

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FIND OUT MORE Come to our information evening Time: 6.30pm Date: Monday 12 September Location: Cossar Hall, Monash Parkville.

Register at monash.edu/pharm/gradentry *QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016

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new conservatorium building worth $105 million is set to be built at the University of Melbourne’s Southbank campus. The three-way joint project between the University, state government and local philanthropic organisations will begin construction in 2017 and be ready by 2019.

Premier Daniel Andrews has been building hype on his Facebook page. “It’ll be the world’s best training ground for musicians of every instrument and every discipline,” he said in a post. “And it will create 2,000 jobs.”

From 2019, all music students enrolled in the Bachelor of Music, Master of Music and PhD programs will be based at Southbank. They will complete their studies at the new Conservatorium and the current building on St Kilda Road.

The Diploma of Music and music-related breadth subjects will continue to be taught at Parkville.

Music students are welcoming the addition, which will relieve pressure from the crowded spaces in which they are currently working.

“The students at the current Conservatorium of Music at Parkville are running out of space,” says Rosemary Howarth, a music student. “This is due to the increase in students being accepted into undergraduate and post-graduate courses and the recent moving of contemporary music students from the Southbank campus to Parkville.”

John Wardle Architects won a competition to design the project.

The same firm co-designed the Melbourne School of Design at the Parkville campus.

The new conservatorium will include a 443-seat auditorium, a 200-seat studio and a number of rehearsal studios, plus spaces for teaching, performing, recording and research.

Who is paying? The only information students have been given is that the building will cost around $105 million, with $3 million

MONASH PHARMACY AND PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES

CAMPUS

EQUAL REPRESENTATION PASSING NOTES PALOMA HERRERA RECAPS THE PEOPLE OF COLOUR CONFERENCE

BELLA BARKER LOOKS INTO THE PRACTICE OF SELLING NOTES

he first national student run People of Colour Conference took place from 23–24 July at the University of Melbourne.

The conference was an opportunity for students who identify as a person of colour to congregate for workshops, panels, discussions and talks. With several universities and states represented, a range of diverse discussions of contemporary issues took place over two days. From the increasing prevalence of Islamophobia in Australian society to the representation of people of colour in the media, the Conference was an opportunity for students to consider issues affecting young people of colour in Australia today.

Open to all tertiary level students who identify as African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal, Indigenous, Latinx, Arab or multiracial, the conference topics were reflectively diverse.

On the first day, a panel of four, including broadcaster Namila Benson and stage designer Eugene Teh, discussed the representation of people of colour in the media and the arts.

Benson explained the need for young people of colour to be represented by an “authenticity of voice” in the media and encouraged attendees to “be the change you want to see”.

Co-panelist and writer Jean Tong discussed the need for an increase in the representation of people of colour in the arts and the importance of mentorship. Student run workshops continued these discussions and more, tackling cultural appropriation, multiraciality and principled nonviolence.

Keynote speakers included Marita Cheng, an alumni of the University of Melbourne and 2012 Young Australian of the Year.

Cheng shared her personal account of growing up Chinese in far North Queensland. Other keynote speakers included Jennifer Yang a previous mayor of Manningham and 2016 Senate candidate who advocates for greater representation of Australia’s cultural and racial diversity to be reflected in its parliament, and Alice Pung an award-winning novelist and editor of the collection of short stories Growing Up Asian.

“I couldn’t necessarily relate personally to all of the things discussed over the two days, but its been eye-opening and given me a greater understanding of the issues facing people of colour in Australia today,” said a student from the University of Melbourne who attended the conference.

A constructive and authentic platform for students of colour to discuss issues affecting the Australian and global community, the newly annual conference will continue to attract students from across Australia.

ou pay for your subject, your laptop, your textbook. Would you pay for someone else’s notes?

Note-selling websites such as StudentVIP and NoteXchange are becoming increasingly popular, with StudentVIP featuring enticing promises of ‘download and learn’ and ‘upload and earn’, and NoteXchange’s homepage showcasing several testimonies of success.

The main benefit of selling notes is quite obvious: recouping the time and effort spent labouring over them throughout the semester, in the form of a monetary return. Conversely, student Ellie Lockard found her purchased notes to be ‘invaluable because [she] had something to compare and cross reference [her] own notes to’, saving her a significant amount of time. She has prepared for the upcoming semester by buying “summaries to help [her] understand topics better throughout the semester rather than just at the end”.

When it comes down to it, attending uni really is about two things: contributing to a wider body of knowledge, and being financially challenged while doing so. Selling notes allows students to not only gain some extra cash, but also help others in terms of subject content and confidence.

However, potential sellers should realise that while moderators may check the accuracy of the notes, it is difficult to protect from misuse once they have changed hands. For example, even though notes are sent as PDF files, anyone who receives them could reproduce its contents and profit themselves.

If you intend to sell your notes, two things should be kept in mind. The first is accessibility – as Ellie points out earlier, a reason for purchasing someone else’s notes is to be able to see the bigger picture of the semester’s work. The second is plagiarism – sold notes should be sufficiently original in content. As StudentVIP explains, “as long as the subject notes are a mixture of your research and thinking from multiple sources (e.g. lectures, textbooks, private research), you are legally the author of a new work and have the right to sell it”. This is good news, since Dr Sarah French and Professor Gregor Kennedy of the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education recommends that students ‘synthesise’ for effective note taking – that is, join the conceptual dots with your information, rather than writing or copying word-for-word and scrambling to keep up.

Note passing has certainly evolved from the good old days of fluro Post-its to your primary school love interest – but it is important to engage in this practice responsibly.

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Y

ARTWORK BY MABEL LOUI (LEFT), JIALIN YANG AND JOHN WARDLE ARCHITECTS (PAGE 8)

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 9

CAMPUS

FREE SPEECH IN ACADEMIA PETER TZIMOS FREELY SPEAKS ABOUT SPEAKING FREELY

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ver the last few months, there has been an increase in debate surrounding free speech and the conduct of university academics. This follows the suspension of academic and Safe Schools co-ordinator Roz Ward from La Trobe University in June this year.

Having posted on her private Facebook profile that the Australian flag was “racist” and should be replaced with a red Socialist flag, Ward’s suspension has spurred questions about how academics behave in the public sphere, and adds to ongoing discussion surrounding how university institutions hold power over their staff.

Victorian Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Dr Colin Long condemned Ward’s suspension as part of an ideological campaign by La Trobe management, who “seem to think that political views should be a criterion for employment”. Despite the controversial nature of Ward’s statement, freedom of expression is seen as a deserved right of academics, and the NTEU views her suspension as a direct attack on this right.

However, the University of Melbourne recently drafted a new “Appropriate Behaviours Policy”, which includes a section on Academic Freedom of Expression. This policy proposes changes to protections that allow University of Melbourne staff to enter public discourse and engage with politics uninhibitedly, and holds staff members accountable to a list of criteria which includes demonstrating courtesy, values of the University and respecting the beliefs and opinions of others.

The NTEU, in response, has stated that freedom of expression does not fit under “behavioural issues”, and claims that this policy will dilute the few protections that staff members have to speak freely. Furthermore, the University of Melbourne is one of few universities to explicitly create policy that allows their staff members to speak without fear of institutional consequences, should they cause offence.

In founding the Safe Schools Coalition, Ward has positioned herself as a public figure who is no stranger to controversy, with debate surrounding the anti-bullying program that has been drawn out for months. Her Marxist views, which do not affect the outcomes of the program, are a right she has to express, alongside her already controversial advocacy for the LGBTI+ community.

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A healthy promotion of ideas is a herald of universities, with clear distinctions being made between fruitful debate, causing offence and causing harm. In this case, Ward, through a private platform, is entitled to an expression of political opinion, yet her dismissal only indicates the increased power of institutions in the realm of public relations.

Freedom of speech has long been a stronghold of conservative commenters in justifying bigoted and vitriolic sentiment, but their voices were expectedly unheard in justifying Ward’s right to express far-left political views.

Alternatively, despite the far-left movement promoting Ward’s reinstatement, some activists have attempted to silence academics themselves in the past. In 2014, a first-year University of Melbourne politics lecture given by former MP Sophie Mirabella was interrupted as protesters accused her of denying the Stolen Generation, and resulted in police escorting Mirabella outside in fear of violence.

It is this hypocrisy that has become most prevalent in the aftermath of Ward’s suspension. The right to freedom of speech is too often promoted selectively, and is ignored when the views being expressed are unpalatable. Censorship on the part of academic institutions in this vein only gives them unwarranted power to select what they see as favourable, and dismiss those who step out of line politically.

However, the role of university students has been brought into question alongside this debate, with trigger warnings and content warnings becoming more common in lecture theatres and classrooms. Content that may be traumatising for some students remains free to explore for students who choose to participate, yet there is debate surrounding the validity of these warnings as some see it as hindering progression in the classroom.

It is the distinction between causing harm and causing offence that is most interesting in this debate, as the safety of staff and students within an institution remains paramount. While censorship of information is a cause that educational institutions inherently oppose, and freedom of speech encourages the promotion of ideas, the importance of staff and students’ mental wellbeing should ensure these ideas are both safely explored and readily available. The power of institutional censorship is what remains unclear in the future as discussions are still underway.

ARTWORK BY ELLEN YG SON

CAMPUS

FAIR PLAY

JACK LANGAN LOOKS INTO MU SPORT’S FUNDING MODEL

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s a student at the University of Melbourne, 19 per cent of your Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) goes to MU Sport, a semi-autonomous body responsible for professional management of the University’s fitness, sports and recreation facilities. That’s about $58 a year per student. But many students are not aware of how this large portion of SSAF is being spent.

Thankfully, MU Sport is fairly transparent. Although their website isn’t the most accessible or up-to-date, financial documents, board minutes and contact details are available online. An annual report is also open to the public.

“I think our transparency is superior,” says Tim Lee, the director of MU Sport.

“We are able to demonstrate our impact and return on investment pretty well.”

Yet a large proportion of students aren’t aware of the MU Sport facilities and programs that are on offer.

“It never ceases to surprise me how sometimes students will get to second or third year and go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know [MU Sport] was here,’” says Lee. “So clearly we’re not doing something right.”

There are 41 MU Sport-affiliated clubs, which service around 3,400 students at the University. Of course, not every student will be interested in taking part in sport. But the SSAF is a compulsory fee paid by all students. So is MU Sport doing enough to allow the majority of students to reap the benefits of their SSAF? Andrew Gillies, the previous student representative on the MU Sport board, thinks that engagement could be improved. “[Students] have to pay the SSAF regardless,” he says. “At least if they knew where it went and what it was doing… then they’d understand and get their money’s worth.”

Student representation is central to the idea of engagement.

Therefore student representation in positions of power should be a high priority, especially for an organisation receiving such a large portion of the SSAF. As it currently stands, there is only one student representative on the board who is not elected by the student body.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIALIN YANG

Lee says the composition of the board is out of his control.

“Are we a representative body? No. We’re not,” he says. “But that’s not for me to decide whether that’s the right model or not… There are students on committees, there are student team managers, there are students who work in the organisation. We’ve got 400 student volunteers right through the organisation. So we have that commitment in a different way.”

But there may be a disconnection between the clubs, which are mostly student-run, and MU Sport as an administrative body. One 2016 sporting club president told Farrago, “I feel like our club could get more support and funding”.

There are suggestions that MU Sport does not allocate funding evenly, preferencing certain sports. A summary of funding from last year reveals that cricket, rugby union, soccer and volleyball account for almost a third of all funding for the 41 clubs. But these sports only have seven per cent of the clubs’ student members.

Nevertheless, MU Sport has a strict budget and a large portion of their SSAF funding is needed for maintaining facilities and equipment both on and off the Parkville campus.

MU Sport has some significant projects coming up.

“International students are a real focus,” says Lee. “One of the big issues is they want to have that beach experience, which is just full of danger. So if you can’t swim and you don’t understand surf, rips … One of the things for us is, can we provide them with a water safety program that includes learning to swim?”

MU Sport is also looking to upgrade and expand, hoping to provide access to facilities south of Grattan Street. The goal is to diversify the places where activities happen.

“The University is better now at cafes in laneways... But we can also do that for sport and recreation. So you can have outdoor chess sets and basketball hoops – things where people can walk out of their lecture theatre and engage in an activity without getting changed.”

This type of project would help immerse casual students into utilising the MU Sport facilities and making the most of their SSAF contributions.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 11

CAMPUS

FAILURE TO RESPOND

MARTIN DITMANN, MARY NTALIANIS AND PETER TZIMOS LAMENT ON THE EPIDEMIC OF SEXUAL ASSAULT IN UNIVERSITIES Content warning: discussions of sexual assault, rape and failure of institutions to respond.

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his story could start with just a single, shocking anecdote of sexual harassment at a university campus.

It could start with the 2009 St Paul’s College incident, where students ran a ‘pro-rape’ Facebook page. Or the ongoing Defence Force Academy scandals, which involved multiple rape allegations. Or the 1992 Ormond College scandal, which featured sexual assault allegations.

But this isn’t a story of isolated incidents of sexual harassment and assault at Australian universities.

It’s the story of the repeated, systematic failure of Australian universities to act.

So, this is not just about individual incidents – it is about a broader framework of failure. With that in mind, it is still important to shed light on exactly what has been happening at Australia’s universities.

Perhaps the best place to start is the latest incident at the University of New South Wales’ Philip Baxter College, only a month ago.

It was pitch dark – the camera captured no more than a flash of coloured light – but a group of male residential college students were very audible.

“I wish that all the ladies were little red foxes, and if I was a hunter I’d shoot up in their boxes,” they chanted. “I wish that all the ladies were buns in the oven and if I was a baker I’d cream them by the dozen.”

The student holding the camera would upload the video online, sparking a flurry of media headlines, denunciations, and ultimately, apologies from the perpetrators. But perhaps most prominent was the University’s response. It promised it would work to make sure such incidents never happened again.

After the St Paul’s College scandal broke at the University of Sydney in November 2009, a closer media investigation found that students from the all-male college had set up a ‘Define Statutory’ Facebook page. The page described itself as ‘pro-rape’ and ‘anti-consent’. It had been up for over a year.

12 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

Kaitlin Ferris, the 2009 National Union of Students (NUS) National Women’s Officer, had been arguing all year that universities needed major change around sexual harassment and women’s safety.

“I hate that it was such a disgusting occasion which brought the issue to the attention of the wider community,” Ferris said. “But it meant that people, media and universities had to pay attention to what we’d been trying to get through all year.”

Vice Chancellor Michael Spence promised change but the only major piece of policy work immediately delivered was the extension of the University’s sexual harassment and assault policy, applying it to all colleges.

But it didn’t work. A 2012 initiation hazing incident at neighbouring St John’s College saw a young woman hospitalised, after fellow students made her drink a dangerous alcoholic cocktail. Both Cardinal George Pell and Premier Barry O’Farrell promised action. The University again promised to continue reform, and 32 students were suspended.

Although St John’s did undertake some cultural change work, tighten its liquor supply procedures and make all students agree to a new anti-harassment policy, there was no University-wide anti-harassment campaign. Nor did they introduce any easy-toaccess reporting mechanisms.

Student unions and women’s activists have been arguing for years that serious change is needed.

“Many of these university residential colleges are bastions of the worst excesses of Australian masculinity,” wrote Alison Vaughan, former NUS Women’s Officer in a 2005 report to the NUS. According to Crime Statistics Agency figures, reporting rates of campus-based sexual harassment and offences are shockingly low.

There were five reports of threatening behaviour or harassment at Monash University over the last decade. Eight at Swinburne. Nine at the University of Melbourne.

“What’s at play here is, without a doubt, problematic reporting regimes and cultures, not safer campuses,” says Yan Zhuang,

CAMPUS

Welfare Officer and Women’s Collective member at the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU).

The National Union of Students (NUS) has placed a large focus on seeking change on the issue. In 2010, in the wake of the St Paul’s College scandal and others, the NUS launched the Australia-wide “Talk About It” survey, examining the safety of women students. The survey wasn’t a scientific survey – even at the best of times the NUS has limited resources – but it nonetheless struck a nerve with universities.

Over 65 per cent of students said they had experienced unwanted sexual encounters but only around 5 per cent had reported them.

The recommendations and guidelines by both the NUS and Universities Australia covered everything from training to reporting to lighting on campus. The recommendations received wide support from students and staff. “Most of their recommendations are spot on,” says Zhuang.

But universities have given a limited response. In 2012, the University of Melbourne introduced a new ‘Safer Community’ unit to address these issues. In 2013, it launched a UniSafe app, which included various emergency services, notably including access to night security escorts on campus.

The much-touted app received a lukewarm reaction. Criticisms small and large surround it. The app’s buzzer, student unionists complain, is way too soft. Take-up rates from students were only about 10 per cent. Security escort take-up rates rose but only by five call-outs a month.

And the University failed to commit serious resources beyond that. They didn’t put the same money into Safer Community that they did for other things, such as external relations. Spending on anti-harassment or pro-reporting campaigns was limited, and none were delivered in partnership with grassroots student bodies, such as student unions.

Zhuang says universities in particular often have unclear or outdated reporting procedures.

ARTWORK BY ELLEN YG SON

Likewise, she says, they do little to reach and train student clubs around reporting and responding to such issues.

The University keeps arguing things are getting better without the statistics or reports to back that up. “We’re able to shine a light on attitudes that we previously couldn’t and whilst it’s very uncomfortable, it’s wonderful to see strong responses,” declared the University’s Deputy Provost, Sue Elliott, in April.

Over 65 per cent of students said they had experienced unwanted sexual encounters but only around 5 per cent had reported them.

Yet the University still has not conducted a single public investigation, survey or campaign into the state of sexual harassment on its campuses.

But the latest incident – the one detailed at the start of this story: the “I wish that all the ladies…” chants come from the UNSW Phillip Baxter College scandal, which broke on 11 April.

Fifty-nine days earlier, Universities Australia had launched its “Respect. Now. Always.” Campaign. The campaign represents universities’ long-awaited response to campus sexual assault and harassment.

It will accompany a national student survey on the issue, and will also promote university support services.

Elizabeth Capp, Director of Students and Equity at the University of Melbourne said that the Respect Working Group “will help plan the Respect Week program for 2017 and [sic] well as the development of local communications materials that support the Universities Australia nationwide survey of student experiences of sexual harassment.”

However, what is missing from campaign’s material is any admission of past failure from universities.

How the campaign goes and whether universities commit to it fully remains to be seen.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 13

UMSU

CHRISTMAS IN JULY CHIHYU CHOU RECAPS THE MID-YEAR WINTER FESTIVAL

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n order to welcome new and returning students, the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) organised the Winter Festival, including an array of events, programs and activities around the Parkville campus from 20–30 July.

“Our main goal is to use O Week as a means to show new students that university is much more than just classes,” said Ryan Davey, UMSU Clubs & Societies Officer.

O Week was an opportunity for new students at the University of Melbourne to learn about clubs, societies and facilities and make new friends on campus. Staff at UMSU were working on the Winter Festival since April and the preparation started in late June.

UMSU President Tyson Holloway-Clarke told Farrago about his expectation of O Week.

“My hope is that our presence and effort during orientation surprises people and makes them excited for the year ahead.”

UMSU’s Carnival Day kicked off a series of programs to be held during the Winter Festival. There were stalls hosted by different departments and organisations at Union Lawn, which offered various activities and freebies. Students waited in long queues to play games expecting to win the exciting and surprising prizes.

“It’s my first day around the campus. I am so excited! So excited for everything. I just got a bag of popcorn and lots of greetings from the friendly staff of each stall,” said Sabrina Zhu who is studying the Master of Global Media Communication.

“But to be honest, it’s a little bit messy. I am afraid that I might lose some important information or cannot get something meeting my requirement accurately.”

On the Carnival Day, the UMSU Women’s Department held the ‘Winter Fest Women’s Picnic’, trying to help students make new friends. Students were having conversations under a marquee with beanbags, blankets, cheeses and snacks.

14 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

UMSU Women’s Officer Adriana Mells said “any woman or person can join us! It’s a mini activity encouraging people who come along and making them feel comfortable.”

Another eagerly anticipated event of O Week was Clubs Day. There are over 200 clubs and societies for students to explore and get involved in at the University.

“The Clubs Day is the best part of the week. It’s not only the busiest event year in, year out. The event is consistently rated as the highlight by new students who provide feedback about O Week,” said Davey.

On 21 July, the stalls of various clubs and societies took up Union Lawn and tried their best to attract new members. To many, the life of University is not just about studying hard and getting excellent marks. The much more important thing is that you make friends from different areas but with similar faiths or hobbies. Through clubs and societies, students learn many skills outside of textbooks and lectures and gain practical experience.

“Our main goal is to use O Week as a means to show new students that university is much more than just classes. That if they make the most of their time here, university will be the best years of their lives”, Davey said.

There were heaps of activities, workshops, parties and events during the Winter Festival such as a movie night, food adventure, bike co-op opening party and Creative Arts Collective. There will be free BBQ and beverages, events and gigs around the campus throughout the semester.

As Davey advised to every new and returning student, “When it comes to clubs, dive straight in. Join as many as you can, go to every event you see advertised that interests you and don’t just come to class then go home.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY UMSU COMMUNICATIONS

UMSU

PRESIDENT

TYSON HOLLOWAY-CLARKE I’m coming to you from a time where Pokémon Go has taken over our lives. I literally chased two Dragonair through the University on my scooter at 10:30pm the other night. I am pretty sure Glyn plays too, I could see him with a team of luxurious Persians Giovanni style. All that aside I’d draw your attention to the election going on around us all and encourage you to vote for the student that best represents you. Additionally take to the internet and check out the UMSU website, we will be developing a new page for Student Precinct updates and information about the ambitious project. While many of you will not be students when it is completed it is still important that you have a say and help inform what will become the heart of student life at Melbourne.

GENERAL SECRETARY

ACTIVITIES

BURNLEY

JAMES BASHFORD Because of Farrago’s deadlines I actually had to write and submit this report a month before it’s even being published. In fact, I’m writing this before the report before this one has even been published. So, inevitably, it’s going to be pretty drastically out of date. For more up to date info about what’s happening in the Union, the best source is always Students’ Council. Council meets every fortnight during semester and all Office Bearers are required to report to each meeting. Every student is welcome to attend and you can also ask questions and make suggestions directly to OBs at the meetings. You can find out when meetings are by visiting the Students’ Council section of the UMSU website and even subscribe to emails to let you know when meetings have been called and what the agenda is. The website also has the minutes for previous meetings.

MEGAN POLLOCK & ITSI WEINSTOCK If you are reading this then that means that the Activities Union House House Party has already been. Sorry if you missed it, photos will be up soon. But don’t worry we still have More Activities for you! This Semester we have some amazing bands coming to North Court such as British India, The Smith Street Band and Arts Vs Science! We also have swell trivia nights, weekly pub nights and comedy gigs and everyone’s favourite Oktoberfest! We’re pretty excited for this semester and hope you’re all ready for the volume of Activities coming for you!

As always keep updated on our Facebook page or you can also pick up one of our rad Semester 2 guides from the stands around Union house (they’ll be the ones with an elephant on them). Lots of love, Megan and Itsi. P.S for all those worried Megan finally got her wisdom teeth out.

ERANTHOS BERETTA

CLUBS & SOCIETIES

If you didn’t get a chance to have a getaway in the mid year break, rug up and come down for a walk through our gardens to get your slice of serene green anytime during semester. While there will be events coming over the first few weeks, its also great to just enjoy the gardens, have a warm cuppa and indulge in the new mini magazine library we have. That’s right! Thanks to the great folk at the Rowdy, our campus now has our own little collection of various non-study related periodicals.

That is on top of the huge array of plant books, journals and magazines available in the Burnley library. This editions plant tips: Did you know the only difference between green and red capsicums and green and black olives is the stage of ripening? So don’t freak out if your produce hasn’t reached its desired colour yet!

RYAN DAVEY & YASMINE LUU Look, we’re not going to Raichu the best report, actually this one might be a bit Oddish, but we were asked Furret so here we go! We tried Seaking out a new way to show the Exeggcute Handbook, but it’s going really Slowbro. We think it’s going to be a Wiki! How Farfetch’d is that? Awards night is coming along, where some clubs will be crowned the Machamp of the Clubs world. All our clubs will have the Chansey to participate in Clubs Carnival too, which should be a real Hoothoot. Club welfare trainings Arbok this semester, it’s Onyx-ceptable to not go, so Wynaut get on it? We took a Pikachu-r grant and can’t Bayleef that we have processed so many! We can’t wait to Diglett the new events you’re throwing!

Wobuffet.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 15

CREATIVE ARTS JOSH LYNZAAT & JEAN TONG

We’re gearing up for our biggest events of 2016! Next month, keep an eye out for MUFFEST, the inaugural Melbourne Uni Film Festival, and TASTINGS, a performance season of original short works in the Guild Theatre. September will be an explosion of artwork for students, by students!

Until then, we’ve got your back with weekly CREATIVE ARTS COLLECTIVE meetings, fortnightly LIFE DRAWING and BOTANIC DRAWING sessions, and 2 more rounds of GRANTS. And let us not forget the launch of ABOVE WATER, the annual publication of student creative writing.

There is so much to make and do this semester. Fear not. Love your mistakes. Get creative! Check our website for all the details!

DISABILITIES JESS KAPUSCINSKI-EVANS & CHRISTIAN TSOUTSOUVAS We are going to hold a stall at mid-year O-Week. We will be doing much the same thing at this as at the one in first semester. We have confirmed most of the things in preparation for our Disability and Journalism workshop. We are seeking people who may want to speak at our Disability Feminism panel, and are keen to hear ideas of things that students with disabilities would like to see run. In response to concerns raised that we were not adequately representing students with mental health conditions, we will be running Neurodiversity Collective, as well as Disabilities Collective in semester two and our Open Your Mind posters will go up in week one. We are seeking ideas for speakers for a Disability and Education panel to be held later on in the semester. Finally, we are looking into screening one or more of the X-Men movies and having a listening party as some fun events throughout the semester.

EDU (ACADEMIC) TOM CROWLEY & PAUL SAKKAL As usual, our recent days here at Ed Ac (in between solid sessions of Pokémon Go) have been jam-packed. Having encountered Cadmus and calculators in Semester One, we’re now trying to burst a thought bubble from University Services about moving to a preference system for timetabling. At the same time, we’re pushing for a large-scale review into the impact of academic programming on student wellbeing. We’re also involved in discussions on breadth, assessment feedback, digital technology, semester structure and exam scheduling, with the people who will actually determine how these things change into the future. The stakes are high, and the consequences will be felt by us all. So, as always, we want to be shaped by your thoughts! If you have ideas/gripes about any of this stuff, hit us up! educationacademic@union.unimelb.edu.au, or our office on level one.

EDU (PUBLIC)

AKIRA BOARDMAN & DOMINIC CERNAZ In the Education Public department, we had a busy week at the NUS Education Conference 2016. At the University of Sydney over three days there was a variety of discussion regarding the future of Higher Education in Australia. Over the conference we attended workshops, talks and panels that covered an array of topics.

Also meeting with other Education Officers from around the country which was a valuable experience, sharing ideas.

In the lead up to the election we helped out on the NUS ‘Put the Liberals Last’ campaign, both door knocking and handing out flyers. This was due to the Liberals atrocious record on Higher Education which included their proposal for full University deregulation and cuts to University funding. We continue to see a lack of direction for Higher Education. With the formation of a new Coalition Government we must remain vigilant and prepare for more attacks.

ENVIRONMENT ANISA ROGERS & ZACHARY POWER

We enjoyed O-Week and starting semester two here at the Environment Office! The sustainability plan continues to be a topic of much discussion, and we’re looking to hear from as many students as possible about what the university should be doing in the sustainability space. There will many more opportunities to contribute to this conversation, so please get in touch if you would like to find out more about sustainability on campus. The weekly Bike Co-op and Play with your Food programs are set to start back in week one of semester two, so come along and check them out. Environment Week will take place from the 15th – 19th of August, and we’re planning some fantastic workshop, forums and activities – so look out for all things Enviro Week!

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UMSU

INDIGENOUS

QUEER

EMILY KAYTE JAMES & WUNAMBI CONNOR We’ve got a lot of exciting things happening at the Indigenous Department this semester. Our fortnightly social events are going to be bigger and better than ever.

We’ve got a joint movie night with the Environment Department which you can find details for on our Facebook page. We’ve also got exciting events such as a trip to the comedy lounge for a laugh and Trivia in the Union House bar. Under Bunjil Volume Four is in its early planning stages and we’re still looking for submissions.

We love reading the diverse range of poetry, art and commentary that Unimelbs Indigenous students come up with. We have lots of exciting things happening on our social media platforms as well. You can find us at @umsu_Indigenous on Instagram and UMSU Indigenous on Facebook.

FRANCES CONNORS & LOTUS YE We’re hoping you all have had a great start to semester two! Queer Department has been enjoying seeing you all at our Queer Lunch (run every Wednesday, 1pm, in our Queer Space on level three of Union House), as well as our regular collectives.

Our tickets are out for our Queer Ball in September so make sure to get in quick so you don’t miss out on the gayest night on your social calendar. We also have some exciting talks happening on topics such as Racism in the LGBT+ community. For exact dates make sure to check out our Facebook at UMSU Queer and to sign up for our newsletter to get queer updates straight to your email. As always make sure to drop into our Queer Space to grab everything from a cup of tea to safe sex supplies and enjoy our comfy couches to chill out on.

VCA VAN RUDD Van didn’t submit a report for this edition.

Which Pokémon would Van have on his team?

WELFARE

1. _____________________

4. _____________________

2. _____________________

5. _____________________

3. _____________________

6. _____________________

SARAH XIA & YAN ZHUANG We hope that everyone has had a great first week back! If you’re new to the university and are still finding your feet, we’re here to help. Pick up a copy of our Welfare Handbook to find out about all the services offered by the University, or drop by our office to learn about how you can use our vacuum hire or pick up some free household goods.We are also teaming up with UMSU International to host the Big Bazaar on Thursday and Friday of Week 3 this semester, where students will be able to sell off their old clothes, books, homeware, and more! Stay tuned for more information.

Above all, the Welfare Department exists to help students with any wellbeing issues they may have and we are always happy to chat. Feel free to shoot us an email or drop by our office on Level One, Union House.

Email: welfare@union.unimelb.edu.au Facebook: facebook.com/UMSUwelfare

WOMEN’S

ADRIANA MELLS

At the moment we are running our Women in Higher Education events for the next two weeks! The weeks involve things like panel discussions, a trivia night and networking opportunities. We are also working on Judy’s Punch, the annual Women’s Department publication and heading towards our week 10 release date.

Applications have now closed and the editors are extremely excited about the level of interest in being a part of Judy’s Punch. We hope this next edition will be our best yet! We are still working on our ‘Safety on Campus’ campaign and sexual assault guide. There is also a new survey run by the Australian Human Rights Commission looking at safety and experience on campus which will be released this semester, which we hope people will participate in. If you want to get into contact with the Women’s department, our details are listed below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/umsuwomens/ Email: womens@union.unimelb.edu.au

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 17

ELECTIONS

IT’S VOTING SEASON. TIME TO ACT ON THOSE SWEET, SWEET DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS. BETWEEN 5-9 SEPTEMBER, HAVE YOUR VOTING HAND WARMED UP AND YOUR BALLOTCASTING SHOES SHINED. WE’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU AT THE BOOTH. NOMINATIONS CLOSE AT MIDDAY ON 12 AUGUST. YOU CAN GET SOME MORE INFO AT UMSU.UNIMELB.EDU.AU/ELECTIONS OR SEND AN EMAIL TO THE DUDES RUNNING THE SHOW AT RETURNINGOFFICER@UNION.UNIMELB.EDU.AU

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CAMPUS

GOING GREEN WITH ENVY ALESSANDRA PRUNOTTO COMPARES UNIVERSITY SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES

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ou might’ve heard that the University of Melbourne released its Sustainability Charter earlier this year. The Charter is a document that outlines the University’s “high-level principles” regarding sustainability. The Sustainability Plan, to be released in October, will turn these broad and ambitious principles into tangible initiatives. The Sustainability Plan will be in its consultation phase until the end of August, meaning that students are welcome to provide input. Clare Walker, the Principal Advisor on Sustainability, assures us that “student voices have already and will continue to have an enormous impact in shaping the Plan”.

To get your creative juices flowing, I’ve compiled a list of inspiring initiatives from other universities around the world.

Sustainable transport, Université de Sherbrooke (Canada) Students and staff at this institution travel free on public transport under a scheme financed by the university and a mandatory student contribution. This incentive to use less emissionsintensive transport has decreased congestion in the surrounding suburbs and has even meant that some of the on-campus carparks have been converted into green spaces.

Cool Campus Challenge, University of California (USA) For ten weeks every year, UC’s campuses compete to see which one can be the most sustainable, raising awareness of environmental issues and providing the impetus to change habits.

Individuals and teams make pledges to reduce their consumption through the Challenge’s website. They include simple actions such as turning off lights, carpooling and eliminating disposables.

The impact of the pledges is calculated and displayed online so that individuals can see the combined effect of individual actions.

Indeed, if the 19,000 participants from 2015 maintain their new habits for a year, they will be saving greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving 2000 cars for the same period of time.

Waste and recycling, University of Nottingham (UK) Between 2005 and 2012, this university’s comprehensive waste management program increased its recycling rate from 5 per cent to 85 per cent of all waste. They have a general mixed recycling program that is similar to Unimelb’s, but in addition they have schemes to recycle batteries, clothes and bicycles, as well as to compost all organic waste from food outlets. They also

ARTWORK BY SOPHIE SUN, PRAVEENA பிரவீனா AND CHRISTIE LIU

maintain an online portal for swapping unwanted possessions and collaborate with on-campus builders to reduce construction waste.

Intelligent Building Management System, Plymouth University (UK) In 2013, the University of Plymouth installed the world’s first smart Building Management System (BMS) that was integrated with their existing ICT network. Servicing 95 per cent of their buildings, the system monitors and controls operations such as power, lighting, ventilation, plumbing, security and fire alarms.

The BMS optimises the supply of energy to meet demand and can send alerts when the energy usage becomes unnecessarily high.

For instance, it adjusts lighting depending on how much daylight is already in the room, and turns on boilers according to the external temperature. In the first two years after installation, the system saved the university an astonishing £300,000 (around AU $550,000) by avoiding energy wastage.

On-campus farming, Shenyang Architectural University (China) After enrolment numbers at this university ballooned, the campus was moved from the city centre to the outskirts. As it was relocated onto prime agricultural land, a section of the campus was designed to be integrated with rice and buckwheat crops. Engaging with agriculture has become an important part of the university’s culture, with students and staff planting and harvesting the crops on designated days each year. This allows the land to stay somewhat productive whilst being used as a learning space. The direct interaction with agriculture also enables the architectural students to gain an appreciation of food production’s role in the context of an increasingly populous and urbanised country.

According to Walker, although it is important to learn from other institutions regarding sustainability, each one is uniquely influenced by “various factors such as geographical location, research-intensity versus teaching-intensity and student culture”.

While this may be true, it shouldn’t stop us from peering over our borders and feeling a healthy kind of jealousy – the kind that can inspire us to do our own version of sustainability, but just as well.

An orchard on South Lawn? Anyone?

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 19

COLUMN

NICK PARKINSON PRESENTS

COUNSEL IN COUPLETS A COLUMN OF POETIC PROBLEM SOLVING FROM: ZACHARY MY BEST FRIEND RECENTLY GOT A NEW GIRLFRIEND AND THEIR DISGUSTING HAPPINESS HAS SHATTERED MY ILLUSION THAT EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT AND THAT I’M A STABLE HUMAN BEING WHO’S OKAY WITH BEING SINGLE. HOW DO I MANAGE THE FEELINGS OF NEGLECT AND ENVY THAT TWIST MY OTHERWISE INNOCENT HEART? “Oh, to be young and feel love’s keen sting”, Dumbledore muses while adjusting Marvolo’s ring.

He’s certainly right, feelings are fickle things But to your infatuated friend, it’s joy love brings.

First and foremost, if there’s anything pop music has shown us, You can “still get jealous”: that’s not just for Nick Jonas.

It’s normal to feel neglected like a Pidgey in Pokémon, And to waste away nights playing Lonely by Akon.

While these emotions may be unavoidable it’s how you act on them that counts, So your first point of call’s being supportive — that’s paramount.

You never know: this friend’s new gf might become the Hermione to your Harry, She’ll save your ass from danger and you’ll be the best man if they marry.

Use your friend’s preoccupation with this lass to branch out and try new activities, You could meet your Ginny at Friday bowls: the world’s full of possibilities.

And if you’re still feeling more overlooked than Idol’s Shannol Noll, Open up about your loneliness: sharing thoughts brings control.

As for the envy, that’s something harder to fix.

We often want what we can’t have — I want flying broomsticks.

So time for real talk, you need to do you, You’re not a half seeking half but a one seeking two.

You’re not Voldemort, left with a seventh of your soul.

You, Mr Zac, are one hell of a whole!

So even if you feel you’re not, as you say, a “stable human being”, Remind yourself that thought’s a misguided fiction: naught but a dream.

So let your Oddish evolve into a Vileplume, Slam the door—walk out that waiting room!

Be happy with yourself and you’ll be okay being solo, No longer bitter in your friend’s enamoured glow.

So dear Zac, support this friend. But most of all find peace within you.

Ignore the acrid envy that’s battling to break through.

After all, as Dumbledore astutely concludes before sending Harry back to bed, Don’t “dwell on dreams and forget to live”: love’s found outside the mirror of Erised.

DEVELOPED A WOE THAT WON’T LET YOU GO? SEND IT TO FARRAGOMEDIA2016@GMAIL.COM 20 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

ARTWORK BY LUCY HUNTER

COLUMN

COMIC BY XAVIER WARNE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 21

COMMENTARY

WHO RUINED MY UBER RATING? A MODERN TRAGEDY OTIS HEFFERNAN-WOODEN GETS TAKEN FOR A RIDE

I

have been betrayed by an Uber driver, which is a thoroughly modern concept. I am a five-star Uber customer. This is a fact.

Yet, to my astonishment, I have recently discovered my rating has dropped to 4.7. There are four possible suspects. These are their stories.

Abdullahi - $8.89 It was 3am when I jumped in Abdullahi's Hyundai, and he immediately began an interrogation. Family? Yes. Friends. Yes. University? Yes. Friends at University? I eat lunch alone every day.

"Why would you go to university when you could drive Uber, my friend? At the end of three years, I have $100,000 and you owe $100,000!" He cackled.

Every time he laughed he shook his head softly, like he was always on the verge of muttering, “The Gods must be crazy”.

He dropped me at my cousin's flat in Brunswick. As I walked away, he wound down the window and called out, “Good luck with debt, Uni Boy!” He drove away, his laugh echoing down an empty Sydney Road.

My confidence destroyed, I gave him five stars.

Janice - $19.27 Janice looked like a Muppet had come to life and began voting for the Nationals. I was waiting in front of a local scout hall when she skidded up in her Prius. I could hardly fit in the front seat, as it had been pushed all the way forward.

I asked her if I could move my seat backwards a little. She shook her head, explaining that her cat got claustrophobic. On cue, a meow emerged from the back seat.

She slowly tapped my destination into her GPS, and we set off. I told her that it was taking us the long way but she demanded that we follow her path. She drove ten kilometres under the speed limit the entire time, accumulating a seething convoy of cars behind us.

She leaned across to me and smiled.

"I hope you know how important five star ratings are. I've lost my accreditation before because people think it's a joke and kept marking me down. You'll give me five stars, right?" The cat meowed again.

In front of my friend’s house, Janice bade me farewell and reminded me about rating her highly. I desperately wanted to mark her down but I'm a weak man. Five stars.

22 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

Rajthilak - $13.27 Rajthilak picked me up from Lilydale train station late one Saturday. I'd bought two cheeseburgers at Southern Cross Station, eaten one and stashed the other in my jacket pocket. It was to be my treat for making it home.

He was a timid Uber driver and barely responded to my standard Uber passenger questions.

I wondered why he was so quiet. Perhaps he was depressed to find himself in Lilydale so late on a Saturday night. Whenever I tried to find myself in Lilydale, I also ended up depressed. I sympathised with him. I'd had too much to drink.

In the silence of Rajthilak's Toyota, it soon became apparent that every few second he took a few sharp breaths through his nose, like he was sniffing. Either he could smell my pocket cheeseburger or he had a shocking cocaine habit.

This was an easy rating. If he could smell my cheeseburger and not say anything, he deserved a high one. If he was an addict, he needed to keep this job because cocaine is expensive. Five stars.

Rajnish - $22.18 Rajnish picked me up at one of my lowest points, crawling out of an over-28s nightclub on a Tuesday night. Having just booked a holiday, I had New Delhi on my mind. I asked him where he was from originally, emphasising the last word like all of us socially conscious racists do.

To my delight, he replied ‘Punjab’ and I quickly showed him how cultured I was by listing off every Indian city I knew. I was so happy with myself – I'd proved to this Uber driver that I was a true international statesman.

Mere minutes later, my reputation was shattered in a McDonald's drive-through. As I was handed my food, I looked the poor girl at the window up and down.

"Sorry, aren't these fries meant to come with your phone number?" I shot her a toothy grin that no doubt smelt like an open bottle of Jack Daniels.

Surprising no one, she declined and Rajnish mused that he should get me home quickly. Great guy with great travel tips. Five stars.

Any of these four could be my Brutus but when in doubt, pick the cokehead. Fuck you, Rajthilak.

ARTWORK BY AISHA TRAMBAS

COMMENTARY

A STIMULATING STORY MARY NTALIANIS’ TALE OF SEX TOY DISCOVERY WILL LEAVE YOU IN HYSTERICS

T

he first time I was introduced to the idea of sex toys, I would have been about 13 years old. I was sitting on top of the monkey bars with my friends, exchanging urban legends. We were trying to outdo one another by telling the weirdest, grossest and most exaggerated story.

“Did you hear about that girl in Year Nine,” my friend giggled, “who used an electric toothbrush?”

The rest of us gasped.

“And put it in her…” she gestured downwards.

“And then she got, like, herpes or something because she’d brushed her teeth when she had a cold sore.”

“Ewwww!” we screamed, newly acquainted with the idea of STIs from the semester of health that was compulsory for all Year Sevens.

This grossly exaggerated or entirely made up urban legend circled the playground for several weeks in my first semester of high school.

Fast forward a few years to the first time I made acquaintance with a sex toy in real life. You’re probably imagining some BDSM-type situation at a fetish club, or worse, but it was actually in my lounge room. I was about to head out for the night with some friends when suddenly, one of the bags on the table started to buzz.

“Do you have to answer that?” I asked innocently.

Someone giggled. My friend’s face went red. “Yeah I’ll um… get that in your bedroom” she said, disappearing down the hall.

I followed her to make sure she was okay when I spotted it. A glittery purple vibrator that she was aggressively trying to pull apart on my bed.

The vibrations didn't stop. I tried to hide my laughter, handing her a screwdriver from the cupboard so she could pull out the batteries without touching the glittery, rubbery item in her other hand. What are friends for?

After this experience, I continued my journey into the world of sex toys with a simple Google search. I clicked on the first link and read through the subheadings. Vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, wands, dongs, strap-ons, fleshlights, cock rings, handcuffs. I closed the page and deleted my internet history.

With a plethora of sex toys on the market and little to no personal experience, I turned to my friends – also known as my Sex Toy Research Focus Group, to find out what the kids are using nowadays. The overwhelming response was in favour of the vibrator.

Vibrators were invented in the early 19th century to cure women diagnosed with a rampant illness called ‘female hysteria’. Hysteria had such a long list of potential symptoms that at one point it was estimated up to 75 per cent of women suffered from the affliction. Symptoms included loss or increase of sexual appetite, fatigue, anxiety and mild

ARTWORK BY ELLA SHI

depression. These ‘hysterical’ women were treated by doctors who prescribed a ‘pelvic massage’ intended to cause ‘hysterical paroxysm’, more commonly known today as the orgasm.

While this ‘pelvic massage’ was presumably successful in getting women off, the doctors performing the procedure began to suffer an array of unwanted conditions – from wrist and hand pain to carpal tunnel syndrome. In order to save doctors from the painstaking and laborious process, the vibrator was invented.

The first vibrator was an electromechanical steam powered device invented by Dr Joseph Mortimer Grayville called ‘The Manipulator’. It was about the size of a dining room table and included a steam powered engine that was located in a separate room. The first battery-powered vibrator wasn’t introduced into households until 1899, becoming enormously popular and reducing the rate of women visiting doctors for ‘pelvic massages’ for good.

By the 1930s, vibrators began appearing in pornographic films, establishing dirty and morally dubious connections to the vibrator for the first time. This made it increasingly difficult for doctors to include vibrators in their practices and for women to convince their husbands that purchasing one was a good idea.

But that wasn’t the end of the vibrator. Thanks to the sexual revolution of the ’70s, the vibrator resurfaced in liberal feminist texts where it was promoted as a symbol of female sexual freedom, expression and identity. In the decades since, the vibrator has emerged as not only one of the most popular sexual tools but also as a symbol of female sexuality.

To continue my journey into the world of sex toys, I decided to take a look at the contemporary vibrator that can be purchased not only in sex stores but all over the internet. Me and my Sex Toy Research Focus Group got to Googling – this time on incognito mode. We browsed through several websites selling vibrators and discovered that the devices, on average, ranged from 50 to 500 dollars.

We stumbled across a $15,000 vibrator advertised in the top corner of one of the websites. We clicked into it and scrolled down to read the reviews.

When you first insert this gorgeous pleasure rod into your hoo-hah, one review began.

My friend snorted, “If you're spending $15,000 on a sex toy you'd think you'd be past using the word ‘hoo-hah’”.

Searching in store for vibrators was even more interesting. As one sales women informed us, vibrators have an array of uses.

Most importantly though, I learnt that the best use for a malleable vibrator is in fact to massage your feet after a long day in heels.

So I will attempt to leave you with something that isn’t just a history lesson. Why not try out a vibrator? I have been assured, it’s worth it. Oh and if I have learnt anything along my journey, please for the love of god do not use an electric toothbrush.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 23

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COLUMN

THE FEMININE CRITIQUE: WOMEN IN SPORT

ADRIANE REARDON DISCUSSES WOMEN IN SPORT WITH HANNAH MANASSAH AND JULIE ANDERSON

I

n 2016, the sporting world has demonstrated how tough it is for women to participate in a field dominated by men. From Novak Djokovic’s claim that male tennis players deserve to be paid more than female counterparts to Eddie McGuire telling Triple M listeners he’d like to drown sports writer Caroline Wilson.

The subordination of women at a professional and commercial level isn’t simply produced from thin air, it is the result of discrimination and a lack of representation for women from a young age.

Hannah Manassah trained as an AFL umpire for eight years in Perth. She struggled to participate in a sport where being a woman made her a minority.

“I quit umpiring at 15 because I was the only girl,” Manassah said. “When I heard another girl had joined two years later, I decided to pick it up again. I thought it would be easier having each other there.”

Throughout her teenage years, Manassah worked as a goal umpire for the West Australian Football League. She quit at twenty when she decided to move to Melbourne and study at Deakin University.

“I did umpiring for the love of it,” Manassah says. “But I was often patronised by the older men in the sport who called me ‘honey’ and ‘darling’ off the field. That stuff never happened to men.”

Manassah’s experience shows the discrimination women continue to face in a male dominated industry.

The AFL, for one, is all too conscious of this reputation. It was only this year that the AFL appointed their first female field umpire. More recently, it planned to launch a female league with up to ten clubs. This progressive announcement was followed by the AFL’s appointment of Indigenous rights campaigner Tanya Hosch as the league’s head of inclusion and social policy from August this year.

According to Julie Anderson, the Vice President of the Australian Womensport and Recreation Association (AWRA), progress for women in sport is long overdue.

“Change has been typically slow,” Anderson says. “We’ve just reached 36 per cent in terms of representation of women among nationally recognised sporting groups. Our goal is 40 per cent, and has been for some time.”

The AWRA has become a prominent advocacy group involved with some of the most well-known cases of gender inequality in sport. This includes the campaign surrounding equal rights for Australia’s women’s basketball team, the Opals, who were flown economy class to the 2012 London Olympics, while the lowerranked men’s team were flown business class.

Anderson has been the Vice President of AWRA for two years.

She grew up in a family of six girls and two boys. Unlike a lot of other girls growing up, Anderson was encouraged by her parents to pursue sport, no matter her gender.

“I wasn’t trained to sit at the back of the bus,” Anderson says.

“My parents spent equal time in my athleticism – as much as

ARTWORK BY ELOYSE McCALL

our brothers. It’s what taught me to become the strong, assertive woman I am today.”

Anderson says advocacy for gender equality in sport has taught her not to accept change at face value. After years of observing double standards in the sporting industry, she is understandably critical of developments for women, including the AFL’s recent appointment of Tanya Hosch as the first Indigenous women on their executive team.

“It’s just a start,” Anderson says. “It’s all well and good to appoint a strong and confident Indigenous woman to the board but has she really got a seat at the table? Has she really got a voice?”

She makes a good point – female athletes experience inequality in the sporting world but it’s executive, board and leadership roles that require equal consideration.

In 2007, the AWRA found that women make up half the number of active participants in organised sport but hold only seven per cent of leadership and governance positions.

The advancement of representation and opportunity for women in Australian sport concerns the legitimacy surrounding gender equality. It begs the question, are sporting industries like the AFL simply ticking the box? Manassah takes a harder line.

“It’s one hundred per cent tokenistic” she says. “It’s great that there is more visibility surrounding women in sport but the agenda behind it isn’t authentic.”

Based on her experience as an umpire, Manassah says the opportunities for women to participate in sport compared to ten years ago have increased but change needs to be taken a step further.

“There isn’t enough diversity in the sporting world. Inequality in sport concerns anyone that isn’t a white male” Manassah says.

The opportunities for people of colour, age, ability and the LGBTI+ community are further limited because of intersectional disadvantages. The publicity surrounding women in sport is a reflection of media and social trends but the other minorities should also be acknowledged by leading sporting industries as a priority for change, especially when individuals are still young.

“It is most crucial that encouraging participation in sport occurs between the ages of 15 to 17 years of age,” says Anderson.

“That period is a major point of development where individuals must be supported to participate in sport for the sake of their character and confidence.”

This suggests that as well as focussing on the representation of successful female athletes, a more effective and authentic focus will lie in the encouragement of the female athletes of tomorrow, and minorities, from the beginning. Individuals are most vulnerable to social judgment and scrutiny when they are young.

A true change will see the encouragement of a young woman to join a team not simply for the love of the game but for themselves.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 25

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COMMENTARY

TONY ABBOTT AND YOUR SEX LIFE SIMONE PAKAVAKIS FACES BEDROOM QUESTION TIME

W

ithout warning, he pulled away from our kiss and looked into my eyes. "Who do you vote for?"

I froze. Maybe, I reasoned, revealing our political preferences could be lustful – a rousing cue to our clear linking of spirit. But honesty might also have the power to end everything between us with a single utterance. I would never look at him the same if his hero was Cory Bernardi.

Sensing my hesitation, he smiled mischievously. "Obviously, I always put the Sex Party first." I grinned.

"Obviously." I made to lean in but he lingered, blue eyes dancing. "I don't know, um," I said. I did know. I'd known since I was 12. "Probably the Greens or Labor. I'm a leftie," I remember trying to say it in a playful sing-song voice but it came out like a self-conscious half-whisper. Smooth. We resumed kissing, softly.

Then, again, he stopped us. Deadpan, he said in a low voice, "Just so you know, I vote Greens."

There had been only one other time that I was similarly direct to a potential dude about issues of politics. The risk was small. He called everyone 'bae' and took shirtless gym selfies; our brunch date was already looking uncertain. As such, the Girl Squad had encouraged me to wear my feelings on my sleeve. Be bold.

Text message: "Any opinions on Tony Abbott?"

"Yeah bae. I like that he's into fitness and stuff."

Credit to myself, I still did go for brunch. It didn't go very well. Figures.

Recently at work, I had an in-depth discussion with my coworker about ways to figure out political loyalties without being too confrontational. We happened to be lifting up a stack of newspapers onto the stand, as per Saturday morning routine. My fingertips were stained black from the ink.

"This is exactly what should be on your Tinder profile," my co-worker said seriously. He lifted up a Murdoch newspaper and tapped his finger over the words 'illegal immigrant'. “If you read The Australian, please don't swipe right." We laughed for ten minutes.

Perhaps naïvely, I even tried it a few times.

"Sorry," said one Tinder match when I asked him which newspaper he reads for my Important Investigative Dating Purposes. "I just, like, read the news online, like on Facebook and stuff." Like a normal person, he seemed to mean.

ARTWORK BY AMIE GREEN

Is my ex-Arts student, politics major brain confusing an innocent 22-year-old's search for connection? Or is connection all about finding people with the same core beliefs as you?

I posed these questions to my friends over dry chardonnay and pasta with rich, creamy sauce. After two glasses of wine, we decided that in the future we would use the rowing boat emoji in our text messages to describe our dating ventures.

"We're just girls on boats, rowing out in the rough waters of the dating sea, trying to find an island of paradise." I was quickly informed that my analogy sucked; I agreed.

"It sounds like you have boxes on your boat," one friend told me, eyebrows crinkled. What type of boxes?

"My girlfriend smokes, and I would normally put smokers into a box," she shrugged. "But her smoking could never stop my love for her."

Maybe she was right. Boxes would weigh me down, prevent smooth sailing. I resolved to throw them all overboard. When I got home, I watched Q&A on iView and drank peppermint tea.

No stereotyping or generalisations, I promised myself before a Real Tinder Date. I listened to Taylor Swift on an empty tram, wondering if I was, if I could be, a New Romantic. At the cafe, my date told me he didn't really care about politics because it was all a load of crap anyway. I reserved all judgment and nodded. When I mentioned my being vegetarian, he nearly spat out his latte.

"Holy shit! That's weird as. Are you trying to make me not like you?"

Election weekend. I strolled down to my local park, humming.

I opened The Age app on my phone, checking for political results.

The jury was out, votes still being counted. Beyond the trees, soft orange hues were poking through the clouds. It was Pride and Prejudice-esque; the sunset scene where they almost, almost, kiss at the end of the film. I was here with my dog.

Maybe dating is like voting, I texted The Girls, watching my dog wriggle around in the grass. You're out in the dating ocean in your little crappy boat. You're seasick. You peer through your binoculars, searching for dry land. On your little map, you've got your preferences down, below the line – Greens 1, Pauline Hanson's party 60 – all you can do is row and hope for the best.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 27

COMMENTARY

COCKTAILS FOR EX-LOVERS ANNABELLE JARRETT MIXES DRINKS FOR YOUR MIXED-UP LOVE LIFE

W

hen failed romance and Tinder disasters inevitably leave you feeling bitter, sour or with a bad taste in your mouth, there will always be a drink to match. Here we have taken six flavours of disappointment and crafted the perfect cocktail recipe for each to help you wash away their memory in style. Lock away your phone and computer in a safe for the night, give the key to a much bigger friend in case you feel the urge to claw it back later and enjoy responsibly.

The one that you thought you would marry back when you were 16. Years later there is still a lingering embarrassment as you remember how you would cry over, drunk text and listen to some sad indie folk that reminded you of this one, and repeat. Some things do not get better with age. Pack it full of ice-cream to stuff your face while The Notebook plays in the background.

2 shots vodka 2 shots grenadine Lemonade to top Chocolate ice-cream Combine vodka, grenadine and lemonade in a Pina Colada glass. Scoop chocolate ice-cream in as needed. Garnish with your tears.

Three hours of meditation in the morning, followed by musings on the most recent trip to India. Hemp clothing and insufferable opinions optional.

1 shot tequila 1 shot triple sec 1 shot fresh lime juice Plain organic Kombucha to top Ice Himalayan rock salt for the rim Honey to taste Serve in a Mason Jar. Salt the rim, combine ingredients and use honey to taste. Consider keeping it non-alcoholic for an appropriately unsatisfying finish.

28 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

Nobody patronises like this kind of guy, known to say things like: “Oh, you’ve heard of Bright Eyes?” Catch this guy penning sonnets in his brown leather Moleskine at any Brunswick café. Sip on this cocktail to help you sit through his mansplaining of any David Lynch film as you hold in a scream.

2 shots spiced rum (top shelf is a must – try Kraken or Papagayo) 2 shots cooled black tea Cold-pressed lemon juice to top Cinnamon stick Ice Lemon twist to garnish

A tall, handsome European stranger and a whirlwind romance – for a few weeks at least. This particular recipe is served Austrian style – it’s packed full of alcohol to help you ignore the thick accent and the fact that his grandparents were probably Nazis.

2 shots peach schnapps 3/4 cup apple juice Austrian beer (try Stiegl) Peach slices Add juice and schnapps to a stein. Pour beer to top and garnish with peach slices.

Gesundheit.

Combine ingredients, garnish with lemon twist. Serve in a highball glass, accompanied with a holier-than-thou mentality and some Nietzsche.

Upside: has money and a car.

Downside: his successful life may bring on an existential crisis when compared to the tenuously held-together shambles of your own situation. Complete with a vermouth as dry as his stories about work.

Constant craving, calls and Facebook messages, always needing validation and compliments and getting passive aggressive whenever you go out without them. A sickly sweet taste that just won’t take a hint.

2 shots rye whiskey 1 shot dry vermouth Few dashes bitters Maraschino cherry

1 shot lychee liquor 1 shot vanilla vodka 1 shot peach syrup Apple juice to top Ice Peach slices to garnish

Combine whiskey and vermouth before adding bitters and the cherry. Serve in a martini glass and try your best not to add any Coke.

Combine ingredients, garnish with peach slices. Serve in a highball glass. Sip away while blocking their number.

ARTWORK BY TIFFANY Y GOH

COMMENTARY

GARDEN SHOPLIFTING MONIQUE O’RAFFERTY GETS HER INGREDIENTS FROM YOUR FRONT YARD

G

rowing up on a farm, exploring has always been in my nature. When I was young this involved foraging and turning various plants, berries and flowers into inedible but nonetheless aesthetically pleasing replicas of meals I'd seen in my mum's cookbooks. When I moved to Melbourne, gone were the fields to roam and explore, replaced instead by rows of houses clustered unnaturally close together with gardens overflowing with fruits, vegetables and herbs ripe for the picking.

The idea of garden shoplifting first came about when I realised that I didn’t have any rosemary to accompany the roast lamb I was making for dinner. Upon arrival to the supermarket, I was shocked to find it would cost me three dollars for a few measly sprigs. I’d always gotten what I needed from our herb garden at home, so there was no way I was paying that much. I left emptyhanded and sad that my dish wouldn’t have that same herby tang and I was walking home when I happened to peek into my neighbour’s garden. Right there, bursting through the white picket fence was an overflowing abundance of rosemary. I stared at it for a good two minutes, contemplating the decision forming in my mind and after quickly checking both directions for potential witnesses, I yanked off a few stems and ran home.

Eventually, this progressed to a casual hobby involving weekends spent wandering neighbourhoods, developing quite a comprehensive list of ingredients. Making lists and writing down the exact location of every ingredient you locate is the most important step in the process of garden shoplifting. There is nothing worse than planning a lovely meal around a cluster of mint you found peeking out from the front yard of a house in Fitzroy, only to wander back to the area and not quite being able to remember down which street the house was.

Different ingredients have different value based on availability.

Lemons, limes and rosemary are quite common and easy to find, due to their tendency to overhang and protrude through fences.

Less common are plants such as mint and mandarins, which can still be found in multiple locations but will take a lot more exploring to locate. Lastly, there are the elusive and hard-to-find ingredients such as cumquats, chillies and, most recently, a kaffir lime tree that left me dreaming of Thai green curries.

ARTWORK BY JAMES CALLAGHAN

Another vital tip for garden shoplifting is having an appropriate place to store your stolen goods immediately after the crime has been committed. Having four large lemons bulging from your jacket pockets is not a subtle look, believe me. A backpack is ideal but a tote or plastic bag will do just fine.

For those wishing to learn the art of garden shoplifting, there are a few key rules to abide by in order to ensure anonymity and success. The first is that YOU MUST NOT BE SEEN. Much like looking both ways before crossing a road, you must check in every direction for possible witnesses. This includes activity both inside and around the targeted house.

Secondly, you must be prepared for the worst-case scenario: getting caught. About a month ago I was twisting a lime off a kaffir tree when, out of nowhere, a car pulled into the driveway. In a fight-or-flight situation such as this I’d usually drop everything and run but we're talking about a fruit in the rarest category here and I needed one to cook dinner that night. I swallowed my pride, yanked at the fruit, accidentally pulled a whole branch off the tree and sprinted down the road, leafy branch flailing behind me, the homeowners watching in horror. I have never been back.

Other rules to shop by are that there must be more than one fruit/stem on the tree. You don’t want to take someone's only lemon, leaving them lemonless. That would just be cold-hearted.

The majority of ingredients you take should be overhanging the footpath because they are technically public property, right? If not, and the garden in question has an abundance of produce, allow 10 to 20 centimetres inside the fence line. Lastly, never go back to the same location more than twice a week, especially in peak time when people are leaving or returning from work. Lunch and mid-afternoon are primetime, as well as dusk when you are cloaked in darkness.

Whether it’s a few stems of rosemary for your lamb roast you need, or like me, you seem to require a whole branch of kaffir limes, garden shoplifting is the solution to your problems. Don’t forget to give a friendly nod to any other shoplifters you might encounter in your travels but remember, discretion is key. If you don’t tell, neither will I.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 29

COLUMN

FOR & AGAINST

BY JACK FRANCIS MUSGRAVE

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THE OLYMPICS

itius, Altius, Fortius, motherfuckers. Fire up the fauxpatriotism and start memorising the names of our 100metre sprinters, because four years has come and gone and it’s time for the greatest spectacle of the human form: the Olympics. I fucking love the Olympics. In spite of the constant doping dramas, economic disaster and at its worst, murder, there’s this naive joy that comes around every olympiad. Forgetting all our woes for less than a month just so we can all enjoy the pole vaulting. The Norwegian curling team putting on their specialist curling pants without using their hands. This is the Olympics: just pure fun.

Hoping for Australia to win for the first two days then pretending like you never cared when we get overtaken by Egypt. Being able to pick any random sport and support some kid from Launceston ’cos he’s wearing the Green and Gold, or choosing some Eastern European country you assume is the underdog ’cos anyone but the Yanks. You don’t even need to enjoy sport for it to be fun.

Who doesn’t love the four straight hours of nationalistic wank that is the opening ceremony? Or, if you’re that bit more cynical, this year you get to enjoy watching the total collapse of a country in realtime. To me though, the Olympics is the last bastion of weird-arse sports. The only time I can watch my fencing on Australian TV, at five in the fucking morning. Timezones: the greatest Olympic villain this side of the former USSR. One of my favourite sports is the 50km racewalk, where over the course of four hours you get the honour of watching people walk funny, shit themselves and collapse. When else are you ever going to watch European Handball? Or some 50kg dude clean-and-jerking 250 kg? The Olympics is for the weird. This whole thing is for the weird kid who did taekwondo while you were fucked off your face on Cruisers at some mate of a mate’s shed. That kid who did table tennis and was just a bit too into Japan. The girl who had to part-time highschool so she could cycle 50km every day. After the Olympics, you will never think of them again. But this year? They will hear the roar of the world.

They say that in 2020, Japan is creating an artificial meteor shower to chuck in the sky at their opening ceremony. It is possibly the dumbest, most unnecessary thing I’ve ever heard suggested. And I can’t fucking wait. Now if only Australia could get around bribing the IOC to bring it back down Victoria way just once before I die.

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BY FRANCES CONNORS

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he Olympics serve as a neoliberal wankfest for countries to compete over who can sport better while also screwing over all the poor people in whichever ‘blessed’ city gets to host that year.

In the lead up to Brazil’s 2016 Olympics, ‘suspicious’ individuals in Rio were arrested and relocated. Mostly this involved a systematic targeting of homeless people but even having a house can’t protect you from Olympic devastation as bulldozers raze through residential areas to make way for sporting infrastructure. In this scenario, not only do the most vulnerable people in the city lose their homes but billions of dollars are spent developing stadiums that will mostly serve as a grim reminder that your city cared more about having a group of foreign people run around a track, swim laps or throw a pointy stick in front of other foreigners instead of you.

Cities that host the Olympics rarely make any money on the massive sporting event and hosting it seems to purely be for bragging rights. For countries like China, Brazil or Dubai (who also bid for the 2016 Olympics), it is often seen as a way to prove your country can compete with Western powers and participate in all the same posturing that helps create empty vacuous statements like “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”.

This statement is part of the Olympic charter and the Olympics have certainly held true to their dedication to peace, such as the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by Adolf Hitler or the Moscow Olympics in 1980, held just as the Soviet Union was invading Afghanistan.

I’m not totally anti-sport but the Olympics has turned into a weird capitalist monster more interested in building fancy stadiums to serve as an international pissing contest rather than celebrating the physical and emotional accomplishments of athletes. The price to pay for this nationalist cockfight is literally people’s homes and ability to exist in their own city.

Plus, Australia always has terrible opening ceremony outfits and if you don’t believe me, check out the 1992 abomination featuring cream socks and khaki shorts even your dad would think twice about wearing.

ARTWORK BY KATIA PELLICCIOTTA

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

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here’s a 23-year-old British man who is trapped in time. Whenever he does something – anything at all – he gets an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. And then he gets déjà vu of the déjà vu. Over and over and over again. He’s entered a never-ending abyss of time. He’s stopped reading newspapers, watching television or listening to the radio because he felt as though he had encountered it all before. He’s healthy, young and aware – but his history with depression and anxiety suggest that mental illness could be a potential cause of his chronic déjà vu.

This man’s case is an extraordinary one but more than two thirds of us experience an episode of déjà vu at least once in our lifetime. You may be having a conversation with a friend when suddenly that jarring, fleeting feeling that this has all happened before hits you. But you know that it hasn’t, that this is just another strange case of déjà vu. But despite it being such a common experience, it’s a poorly understood one.

Many theories exist, spanning from the paranormal (past lives and precognitive dreams) to memory errors and wish fulfillment (an unconscious recognition of dreams).

Dr Akira O’Connor, a psychologist from the University of St. Andrews, believes that déjà vu is caused by a momentary misfiring of neurons in the brain. O’Connor states that this is supported by the association of déjà vu with temporal lobe epilepsy. Some epileptic patients consistently experience déjà vu before seizures or between convulsions. Epileptic seizures are caused by alterations in the electrical activity of the brain and déjà vu may be caused by a similarly dysfunctional electrical discharge.

But this pathological déjà vu could be very different to the typical déjà vu experienced by healthy individuals. Some researchers, such as Professor Anne Cleary from Colorado State University, speculate that déjà vu in otherwise healthy individuals is a result of a memory error.

Cognitive psychologist Bennett Schwartz spoke of how he experienced déjà vu while touring a castle in Scotland. At the end of the tour he saw photographs of the castle taken from a movie which he had seen five years earlier. Until he saw them in the gift shop, he was unable to place the sense of familiarity he had experienced.

Schwartz’s experience of déjà vu is not uncommon – and fits with Professor Anne Cleary’s theory that déjà vu is the result of seeing something genuinely familiar in a novel situation, even if we aren’t able to place it. In order to test this theory, Professor Cleary and her colleagues created a virtual reality program, ‘Déjà Ville’ to consistently elicit déjà vu.

‘Déjà Ville’ incorporated 128 scenes divided into pairs that, unbeknownst to the participants, had objects (such as chairs and tables) in the same position on a grid to create identical layouts in space, in an attempt to elicit that uncomfortable familiarity that characterizes déjà vu. As expected, participants most frequently experienced déjà vu when they encountered new scenes, which were spatially similar to previously encountered scenes but when they could not consciously recognise the resemblance.

Professor Cleary’s findings from ‘Déjà Ville’ show that déjà vu commonly occurs when people have knowledge from their memories, without being able to retrieve the memory responsible. We have a pretty good memory for objects – we can easily recognise a familiar object in an unfamiliar setting, for example if your friend has the same set of china that your parents have. But we’re not so good at retrieving memories based on the configuration or placement of objects. If you’re in a new place, in which unfamiliar objects are set up in a similar layout to something you have experienced before, you’re likely to get a feeling of familiarity without knowledge of the memory source. As Cleary says: “One reason for the jarring sense that accompanies déjà vu may be the contrast between the sense of newness and the simultaneous sense of oldness – something unfamiliar should not also feel familiar.”

It makes sense. A feeling of familiarity when encountering new places can indicate how you should act and what you should do next.

Déjà vu is an incredibly unpredictable and personal experience, so it is nearly impossible to study in controlled conditions. There is no simple explanation as to how or why déjà vu occurs and more than one of the dozens of theories that do exist could be right. But perhaps part of the strange allure that déjà vu has is that it is inexplicable – a kind of remembering where we feel as though we’ve returned to a place we’ve never been.

ARTWORK ARTWORKBYBYREIMENA REIMENAYEEYEE

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COLUMN

COMIC BY KERRY JIANG

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 33

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SCIENCE

MEAT THE FUTURE JACK KILBRIDE ON THE CLIMATE OF CHANGE IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY

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icture this: you’re sitting in a classic American diner – you know, chequered tiles on the floor and a jukebox in the corner.

A few kids from the local school are sitting at the counter slurping the dregs of a vanilla milkshake. You’re waiting for your burger to arrive. Your stomach is rumbling in anticipation as burger after burger floats past you, carried by a young waitress wearing a red apron and loudly chewing gum. Each time she leaves the counter you pray that this time you will be lucky, only to be let down as she makes a turn and delivers the meaty package to another customer.

Then it happens. You’re looking at your phone, checking Facebook, when you hear a tray hitting the table in front of you.

Your eyes slowly start to rise. It’s a classic burger. A large and juicy beef patty with cheese oozing out the sides of a greasy sesame topped bun. Fresh lettuce and tomato sit perkily atop the meat and you know there’s a pickle in there somewhere waiting to surprise you. Ketchup and mustard complete a scene of perfect harmony.

You catch yourself dribbling and wipe your mouth with a serviette. But that’s when you see it. On the next table there’s a newspaper and on the front cover there is a headline that makes you stop. It reads: “65 billion animals killed each year to feed the world”. Accompanying the headline is a picture of a calf, its big wet eyes pleading for a better way. “Perfect,” you think. “Now I feel bad about eating my burger.” However, you love eating meat and wish there were a way you could eat meat but not have to kill animals to do so.

Eating meat is a way of life. Where would we be without Sam Kekovich yelling at us to eat lamb for Australia Day, the weekly trip to the pub for a Pot n’ Parma or that kebab on the way home from a night out? But it’s hard not to occasionally feel guilty as you dig into a steak or a plate of ribs.

This is a problem that one particular scientist, Dr Mark Post from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, believes he has solved. He has created a burger using stem cells.

First, he takes a small piece of muscle tissue from a cow, extracts stem cells and grows them in small containers in his laboratory. The cells are fed a serum extracted from foetal calves, which contains the nutrients they need to grow. After three to four weeks, when the few original stem cells now number in their millions, Dr Post splits the cells into different containers, binding them together to form muscle strands that are about a centimetre long and a couple of millimetres thick. To make more protein in the muscles and improve their texture, he frequently shocks the strands with electricity. From here, he and his team layer and combine the strands into a patty, adding flavouring, nutrients and colouring to make the burger as close to the real thing as possible.

Dr Post says that from a single cow he can make about 100 million burgers, whereas currently a cow only yields about 100 patties of meaty goodness. What’s more, he says that the process can be replicated with any animal that he can extract the right stem cells from, with pigs, fish and chickens also on his to-save list.

ARTWORK BY SAM NELSON

As with any new project these days, combating climate change is on the cards. Studies have found that around 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from farming livestock. Partly because, on average, cows release 70kg to 120kg of methane per year, which is the equivalent of four to five tons of carbon dioxide or the annual emissions of a family car. By minimising the need for farming animals like cows and pigs in high quantities, lab grown meat could be the key to solving the climate change problem.

Then there is the inevitable water issues of the future. Each year, nearly half of the water used in America is on farms raising livestock for the food market. Cutting this could provide much needed water for dry areas and countries struggling through droughts. Studies have shown that almost 30 per cent of the world’s land mass is used to raise, slaughter or grow food to feed livestock. With overcrowding becoming a growing problem in cities around the world and with the space used for farming animals being tightened, suburbs could start to spread to ease the strain on inner cities.

“By minimising the need for farming animals like cows and pigs in high quantities, lab grown meat could be the key to solving the climate change problem.”

For Dr Post, however, all his hard work and the potential positives are for naught if the burger tastes bad or has an unappetising texture. He says that the burger has got to be juicy, dense and meaty, with that familiar taste that we have grown fond of. His team includes burger aficionados, nutritionists, chefs and food sculptors all working together to perfect the ultimate ‘Frankenburger’.

Unfortunately, they haven’t quite got there yet. All reports say that while the burger tastes ‘close’ to meat, has some intense flavours and a ‘good bite’, it still lacks the density and juiciness of your regular quarter pounder. But Dr Post thinks that they aren’t far off, stating that by 2020 his burgers will be on the market, saving animal lives and changing the world.

So let’s go back to the restaurant: it’s now the year 2025 but everything else is the same. Your burger has just arrived, looking as sexy as ever, delivered by a waitress wearing a red apron. Only difference is this time, there isn’t a sad calf on the paper next to you and you don’t get that guilty feeling any more. The front page, instead, reads: “Donald Trump to become president of Earth”, but at least you can enjoy a guilt-free burger.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 35

THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING CLARA NG ON THE HUMAN INSTINCT TO TELL STORIES

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e will die but our stories won’t.

Storytelling is a quintessentially human trait. Through stories, we simulate human conflict, sorrow and joy, breathing life back into our own existence.

But how do stories begin and how do they grow? Why are we so eager to listen to and tell them? Perhaps the explanation is simple: as a species, humans like seeing things in narrative. We make things into stories, which help us understand the world and ourselves.

Say the last line of The Great Gatsby out loud and notice how its rise-and-fall mimics the ebb and flow of waves upon a shore: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

It has a lilting cadence that hovers between resignation and hope. Almost a sigh, it carries a sense of loss. Fitzgerald’s novel is about how one tells – or fails to tell – a story; how the story itself ruptures amidst a disintegrating American dream. The narrator, Nick Carraway, struggles with his own story even as he enacts it – his inconsistencies and biases reveal sharp fissures in his narrative. This allows us to see him as an unreliable storyteller; a tinted lens through which we read the events of 1922. This closing line suggests a recursive process of mourning but also the faint possibility of renewal. It strikes a minor chord as one of the most memorable lines in modern literature.

Stories are not a superfluous indulgence or a way to simply pass the time. The universal nature of myth suggests that storytelling might have even been essential to our survival. Given the gregarious nature of our species, stories have been said to be a way of seeking recognition and status: storytelling, commanding attention, honing creativity and cognitive dexterity. As well as transmitting important information – where to hunt and forage, where to avoid – stories helped to warn against potential threat.

They were crucial then, perhaps even necessary.

The Aboriginal Australian practice we call ‘Dreamtime’ means to see and to understand the law. Dreamtime denotes a

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psychic space that is not bound by time. In this space, spiritual connections are formed with ancestors of the land, creators of animals, plants, rocks as well as natural contours. These spirits determine the dynamics of kinship between groups and individuals, as well as their relations to the land, the animals and other people. Aboriginal mythologies thus encompass religion, history, geography and cosmography. They are maps that infuse the local landscape with meaning.

A few years ago, Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought cheap trinkets from various thrift stores and garage sales, paired them with original stories and posted them on eBay. The reason? To find out how much stories are worth today. The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece, sold for nearly $8,000 in total. The Significant Objects project showed that stories can confer objective value on things previously discarded as worthless. We relish the prospect of possessing someone else’s world – tchotchkes become treasures once they are infused with someone else’s meaning.

Stories don’t just give things meaning of course – they are inherently valuable. We are drawn to good stories. Through image and the written word, we build stories around other people’s lives.

This is why Humans of New York is so popular – it chronicles surprising, intimate encounters with people we would probably sidestep on the street. Reading a Humans of New York post on Facebook is like falling into conversation with a stranger – part of its appeal lies in the serendipitous, ‘chanced-upon’ nature of a true, undiscovered tale.

According to the narrative model of identity, the individual is their own protagonist in a lifelong journey. They face the challenges of intimacy and autonomy, expressed through archetypal characters, turning points and varying outcomes. Such a personal narrative can situate us meaningfully in society and culture, providing unity to the past, present and future. Narrativebased psychotherapy helps people ‘re-author’ their identity and rewrite their story based on newly-acquired knowledge, beliefs,

SCIENCE

skills and values. Changes in one’s personal narrative predict improvements in mental health, an increased sense of agency and better trauma recovery. Anchored in narrative, our stories about ourselves can uplift, guide and influence our lives. We become the stories we tell – here, the message is the medium.

But what role do stories play in the architecture of our minds?

Perhaps we live our way into our stories. We perceive and filter information through cognitive frameworks called schemas. Like a narrative frame through which a story is told, schemas help us interpret our lives, slotting into place various characters, relationships and dynamics of conflict and resolution. Schemas are remarkably stubborn – they endure through our emotions and behaviours. For instance, people struggling with depression often have schemas that insist ‘I’m a failure’ and ‘I will never get it right’. In this way, we are constantly constructing a story – we notice things that fit into our narrative frame, distort other things to fit and discard those that cannot. Like any good author, we meet our own narrative expectations.

Often science itself takes the form of story. In quantum physics, for instance, we use narrative frames to explain wellknown phenomena: Which slit did the photon go through? Was the electron behaving as a wave or a particle? Did the act of viewing the experiment disturb it? Such stories superimposed on science raise more questions than they answer but it is through them that we understand something of the world. What, then, can science say about stories? We know about meter, rhyme and rhythm – what makes Dr. Seuss enjoyable to read aloud and your toaster manual tedious? But can we quantify narrative using cold, hard mathematics? It turns out that there is, in fact, a formula to narrative greatness: statistical analyses of famous works of world literature revealed a surprising symmetry in sentence length variation.

Physicists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences found that many of these texts – including the works of James Joyce, Julio Cortazar, Marcel Proust and Umberto Eco – are governed by the dynamics of a cascade, where each fragment of the story is a replica of the whole. The fractal organisation of one genre turns out to be an exceptionally complex stream of consciousness. Astonishingly, the novel Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce showed a structural pattern virtually indistinguishable from ideal, purely mathematical multifractals.

This coincides with recent findings that the brain itself is, in fact, a

ARTWORK BY ANAIS POUSSIN

fractal feedback loop – fully symmetrical, self similar and recursive – which is crucial to our processing of information, words and music. If the structure of the mind is fundamentally complex, the literary realisation of subjective consciousness might reveal deeper insight regarding the relationship between language and thought.

Which takes precedence? Do we think in natural language? Or is language merely a vehicle for central cognition? Stories, then, set out to deceive but they might show us something that we don’t already know. They are a medium, a mirror, through which we can investigate the very nature of attention and perception.

Story begins with perception – the words on the page trigger neuronal firing and the scene embeds itself in memory. Letters arrange themselves into meaning. Your left hippocampus tells you what’s going on, while your right hippocampus processes broad, overarching themes: love, life, death. Are you one of those overly involved literary types? It is your amygdalae that produces this emotional resonance. The right amygdala grounds you in contextual reality – if you’re reading a thriller, it reassures you that there’s no immediate threat. Your left amygdala gives you perspective – a vantage point from which you can observe the unfolding of events. And you might find it easy to locate yourself in a story. This is an essential element of empathy, which is mediated by Theory of Mind – the ability to understand what someone else is feeling.

It is clear that stories impinge on our humanity and human instinct is tied to narrative. Focusing only on empirically verifiable ‘truths’ would lead us away from a rich repository of knowledge in which we find a common history. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” To read a story is not just to skim a page or a passage: metaphor, analogy and symbol arrange themselves into significant patterns; a narrative texture against which you make – or find – your own meaning.

And so neurons fire. Glutamate is released. Synapses are activated. Engrams join. And as you read, your memory takes in events, plot, characters; your mind flexes and feeds back into itself. You string letters together, translate shape to sound, draw from knowledge and emotion, as perception is moulded to narrative. Words become sentences, setences become stories – story forms, you read on.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 37

COLUMN

LOTTE WARD PRESENTS

ONE OF US: CULT REVIEWS BASED ON THE BARD: THE ORIGINAL CULT CONNOISSEUR, CONSTANTLY ADAPTING

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ne of those anecdotes in which somehow everyone’s aunt/ cousin/friend-of-a-friend is the protagonist goes like this: a culturally illiterate person goes to a Shakespearean play and when asked their impression of it on leaving, responds, “It was okay but it was full of clichés.”

The point of this story is, of course, that Shakespeare didn’t use clichés; he invented them. The butt of the joke is the poor person who – somehow having managed to escape Year 10 English without guzzling annotated versions of Macbeth, Othello and other plays named after straight men with terrible judgement – doesn’t understand that Shakespeare is everywhere and everything is Shakespeare.

Beyond Baz Luhrman’s undoubtedly culty Danes/Dicaprio Romeo + Juliet and the most recent run at Much Ado About Nothing from Joss Whedon (everyone’s favourite problematic cult purveyor – like a creepy uncle you keep around for his famous Christmas pudding that, while never quite as delicious as it was in the ’90s, is still occasionally pretty good), there are films whose homage to Shakespeare is much more subtle. In the same way that one can get a good chunk of the way through Bridget Jones’s Diary to realise it’s essentially Pride and Prejudice (ditto for Clueless and Emma), some Shakespeare-influenced films manage to successfully camouflage themselves in the garb of a simple, modern blockbuster – if only because the stories themselves are so universal and so ingrained as to be simultaneously recognisable and anonymous. But fear not; by the end of this page you, much like the aunt in the (sub)urban legend, should be fully disabused of the notion that any pop culture is truly devoid of the Bard.

Forbidden Planet, 1956 Cult material in its own right, a revolutionising force in modern sci-fi (just look for all the bits and pieces emulated in later sci-fi classics, or shamelessly ripped off by Lucasfilm – I’m looking at you, signature space titles), and, perhaps most bizarrely, starring Leslie Nielson in a non-comedic role, Forbidden Planet is one of the easier films to know and love without sniffing a hint of Shakespeare. It is, however, and however loosely, based on The Tempest, where our stormy island becomes the eponymous planet. The isolated setting (and principal character roles: the father, the virgin, the captain, the servant, the malevolent other) is the most obvious comparison to be drawn but Forbidden Planet owes its sci-fi legacy at least partly to deeper motifs borrowed from Shakespeare’s final work. Technological advancement is thematically analogous to magic but over both, human hubris reigns supreme. Technology itself is not the danger on the forbidden planet, just as Prospero’s magic is not the island’s principal evil. The menace of both lies instead in the ability of these forces to make one less human, or rather, our inability to harness them without forfeiting some of our humanity. Good sci-fi, some fans will tell you, is about telling human stories in otherworldly (or other-timely) settings; this tradition may have begun with Forbidden Planet but the broader rule stretches back centuries: a true classic says something about the human condition that resonates universally.

10 Things I Hate About You, 1999 This is one of those films whose subject matter and characters (leading lady in particular) inadvertently become more relatable and pertinent with time. Kat Stratford is more a heroine for now

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than for the ’90s, yet her inspiration hails from the 1590s. While Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is perhaps the most overtly misogynistic of his plays, featuring Katerina, a headstrong female protagonist whose prospective husband “tames” her into subservience via psychological warfare, 10 Things pulls the rug out from the patriarchal dynamic and gives us stridently feminist high school senior Kat. Retaining the basic premise – Katerina’s younger, more pliable and thus more sought-after sister Bianca can only marry (date) after her older sister has a husband (goes to the prom with Heath Ledger), so a band of unlikely allies join forces to pair her up – but flips the rest on its head. What is so great about Julia Stiles’s Kat is that she is utterly untameable. She falls for the guy but doesn’t compromise her values or settle for being treated poorly; she goes to the prom but doesn’t undergo a conventional-beauty-standards-approved makeover à la She’s All That1. Her emotional vulnerability doesn’t make modern-day Katerina soft on anything important and the retelling of a love story riddled with obstacles in which the strong, ambitious girl emerges untamed is as feminist as Shakespeare never meant to be.

Also, I’m convinced that David Krumholtz was 30 years old in this film and has been 30 years old ever since.

She’s The Man, 2006 Less of the classic underdog cult variety, more of the Mean Girls-esque quotability era (in which the former kind is less and less feasible in light of social and digital media’s cardinal maxim: let nothing good or really, really bad go unshared), She’s The Man plays on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and gives it a kick2 of feminism, albeit more lightweight and rom-com friendly than does 10 Things’ shrew. Basically: Amanda Bynes refuses to accept shitty boyfriend, that girls can’t play soccer and that she and Channing Potatum can’t work it out even though he’s firmly of the no-homo variety of college boy and thinks that she’s his weird male roommate (namely, the twin brother she’s impersonating).

No shipwrecks or yellow tights in sight. Probably less gay than the original play.

Honourable Mentions: West Side Story, 1961 Based on the 1957 musical that is in turn (quite blatantly) based on Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story takes our star-crossed teen idiots from Fair Verona and plonks them in the middle of New Yoik gang tensions. Dispensing with iambic pentameter but gaining musical numbers, West Side substitutes sword duels with “rumbles” and, notably, doesn’t kill its Juliet.

The Lion King, 1994 Oh, man. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most popular, most lauded and most analysed tragedies and if Claudius murdering King Hamlet senior didn’t quite do it, Disney was there to make sure the human race shed a collective tear for his hand-drawn lion counterpart, Mufasa (“long… live… the king.”).

1 “Have you ever considered a new look?” her sister asks. “You could have some serious potential buried under all this hostility.” But at the prom, Kat’s signature tightly-pulled Hostile Girl Ponytail is intact, breaking from the well-entrenched tradition of girls literally letting their hair down in movies when they learn to loosen up, like men; see Sandra Bullock’s wavy Chill Girl Side-Part three-quarters through any movie.

2

Pun intended.

ARTWORK BY AISHA TRAMBAS

COMMENTARY

TITANIC TODAY

LAURA WILSON UNCOVERS THE SHIP, MYTH AND METAPHOR

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rowing up, I had nightmares about being in a small room on a boat, slowly filling up with water, with no way to escape.

The room was only dimly lit, so I couldn’t tell clearly what was happening but I knew that the water would keep rising and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, I always woke up before it got to that point. I don’t know why this particular scene carved itself a firm spot within my imagination from such a young age (let’s be honest, James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster probably had something to do with it). Whilst for me it was just a dream, many actually lived through this, aboard the famed ocean-liner, the Titanic. I am far from the only one who remains captivated with the ship, now over a century old. But what is it about the ship that continues to fascinate?

Since the sinking of the RMS cruise ship on 15 April 1912, the Titanic has continued to capture our collective imagination – evoking images of grandiosity and ambition, alongside suffering and destruction. Scale-wise, the incident is significant but not

ARTWORK BY LILLY McLEAN

astronomical – estimates for casualties vary from 1,490 to 1,632.

Conceivably, the sinking could have been overshadowed by World War One, which erupted only two years later – devastating the world and killing approximately 17 million people. But it hasn’t been – we still remember the Titanic, which has arguably gained iconic status.

The historical dent the great ship’s sinking has made is demonstrated through the myriad representations of the event.

Starting almost instantly with Saved From The Titanic, released a mere month after the disaster, there has never been a shortage of depiction or discussion about the ship. But with every film, story, interview or artefact, what is it that we are really engaging with? Sure, we love to swoon over Leo but how are we collectively engaging with the tragedy? Are we commemorating the lives lost or imagining ourselves aboard? What are the ideas buried amongst the disintegrating bulkheads of the ship?

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The values and structure of fin-de-siècle society – classism, racism, sexism One idea that is regularly tied with the Titanic is that of la belle époque society – replete with strict decorum, rigid gender roles and an entrenched class system, which were manifested to perfection aboard the Titanic. In his book The Titanic, Michael Davie suggests that the overt class structure is central to the Titanic’s ability to fascinate – Davie describes the ship as a “floating microcosm of society”, showing “social inequality at its most extreme and… most vertical, with… the richest visibly on top and the poorest visibly at the bottom”. The sinking showed just how real the implications of an arbitrary class system can be – with a 61 per cent survival rate in first-class and only a 24 per cent survival rate in third-class.

The sheer amount of wealth concentrated aboard the ship is another part of its myth. Much of the press coverage following the event focussed on the wealthy and famous passengers – the deaths of famous individuals, including Isador and Ida Strauss, Benjaman Guggenheim and Mr John Jacob Astor, received huge amounts of media attention. Some newspaper articles of the time almost read like gossip columns, expressing the amazement of the masses that these hugely wealthy individuals – veritable celebrities of the time – could be touched by death and disaster.

Even today, the name John Jacob Astor, the richest man aboard, is recognisable and perhaps epitomises the astronomical wealth on the ship (Astor’s estimated wealth in 1912 was over $20 million, making him the fifth-richest American of all time, according to Forbes.com).

To get a sense about what interests the public about the Titanic today, I spoke to Rod McNeil, who works for Museum Victoria and was part of the travelling Titanic exhibition which showed in Melbourne in 2010. He says the wealth and class are huge drawcards in the appeal of the Titanic as a morality tale. He describes the almost unbelievable disparity in wealth.

“The poor people suffered so much more [than the rich],” he told me. “While children in third class drowned, first-class passengers escaped with their… Pekinese [dogs]… and two fur coats.”

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The dangers of technological hubris The Titanic can also serve as a warning against arrogance and unchecked faith in technology. The ship has come to represent both the pinnacle of Industrial Age ambition and confidence in technology, and the repercussions of technology and ambition going wrong. Though at the time of its creation, the Titanic was certainly awe-inspiring, perceptions of the ship following its demise have become ever more superlative and grandiose. As Richard Howells says in his book The Myth of the Titanic, the ship “only really became ‘unsinkable’ after it had in fact sunk”. The lesson about the danger of arrogance and the limits of technology has been applied to the Titanic in retrospect, as the tragedy has become an iconic example of man taking on nature and suffering a fatal loss.

The bravery and heroism of the every-man Perhaps a direct juxtaposition to the warnings about extreme pride and arrogance is the celebration of the ‘everyman’, those passengers aboard the Titanic who helped others in small ways and are often framed as the real, unsung heroes of the tragedy.

Examples include Mr Harold Lowe, the only person to take a lifeboat back to find survivors in the water and the orchestra, who continued to play to the passengers as the ship sank into the Atlantic, breaking all our hearts every time we watch the film.

One recent story to emerge is that of seaman Robert Hopkins.

Hopkins was posthumously recognised this April for bravery during the escape. Hopkins prevented the potentially fatal collision of two lifeboats, which were being lowered into the water, preventing the loss of up to fifteen lives. These personal, largely unknown stories all add to the broader Titanic story, says Stephen Frazee, a member of the Titanic International Society, and give us hope for the good of humanity in an otherwise bleak tale.

Although I cannot deny the Titanic’s association with ideas like classism, technological arrogance and heroism, I have to wonder about the nature of our engagement with them. Frazee says the ship will remain relevant because it encapsulates “universal and

COMMENTARY

human struggles”. He regales me with tales of his great uncle, Weston Frazee, who almost bought tickets to accompany his friend George Wright (Wright was subsequently killed in the disaster).

Weston Frazee, who instead travelled aboard the Laurentic, apparently sighted 20 icebergs within the ice-field on his journey to Halifax. Following the disaster, Weston Frazee joined the committee to oversee the recovery, identification and burial of the victims. This personal connection has clearly made an impact on his great-nephew Stephen, who remains actively involved in ‘perpetuating the memory’ of the ship. He says remembering the Titanic is important because it cuts through divisions and speaks to us on a fundamental, human level. “Anyone who reads the story of Titanic can almost picture themselves aboard this luxurious ship on the fateful night… wondering if they would have been a survivor of the sinking… or not”.

It would seem that this personal connection and the projection of ourselves onto the ship, is central to our fascination. Perhaps more than an interest in the passengers themselves is a use of the disaster as a backdrop to examine our own lives and imagine how we would respond in that situation. Rod McNeil, who helped organise the Melbourne showing of the internationally touring Titanic exhibition, says that this personal connection is fundamental to how people engage in the story.

The exhibition, which showed in Melbourne in 2010, attracted approximately 484,000 visitors, making it the most visited exhibition in Australia when it closed. One notable aspect of the exhibition was the handing out of boarding passes with the details of a real-life Titanic passenger to each museum-goer at the start of their trip. McNeil said this element of the museum was “extremely popular” and really helped forge a connection with the ship on an emotionally resonant level. I certainly remember my experience with the passenger cards at the exhibition – my three young children and I all died on the way to meet their father in New York, leaving me distraught for weeks (seriously). One particular event McNeil recalls with a chuckle is when a punter received a passenger card with the same name as his, a coincidence that “totally freaked him out” and took the idea of personal and emotional connection with the event to another level.

ARTWORK BY LILLY McLEAN

McNeil reflects on the nature of people’s engagement with the Titanic, recalling how so many people had loved getting their photos taken on the grand staircase – one of the key elements of the ship itself and James Cameron’s film. “We even had people get married in the exhibition and take their photos on the grand staircase,” he tells me. “You couldn’t say that it’s commemorative of… people on the ship, it’s definitely an emotional and personal connection.”

This self-referential (even narcissistic?) engagement with the Titanic seems to be the norm – and I have to ask if this is where it should end. Have we mythologised and romanticised the era to the point that any lessons we could learn from it are also relegated to the past? Are we more concerned with debating whether Leo could have fit on that door with Kate than we are with understanding the disaster, unpacking why it happened and ensuring that we prevent them from repeating themselves?

Although we may feel disbelief at the idea that wealth and class could determine one’s survival, or scoff at the arrogance and unshakable faith that technology could overcome all, can we really claim to be so different? I’d argue that although it appears different, our society now isn’t hugely different than back then.

Class divisions may be less overt and dispersed globally, rather than existing on one ship but it would be naïve to suggest that we’ve achieved equality. And certainly, our technology has improved but our reliance on it has also increased and we are far from immune to the risks. So, although the personal connection and grappling with one’s own mortality are a valuable part of remembering and imaging the Titanic (and other disasters), our engagement shouldn’t stop there. These tragedies should serve not only as a window through which we look into another time and congratulate ourselves on our progress but also to hold a mirror up to today.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 41

LANGUAGE SWAP

BY NICOLE DE SOUZA

I

t was towards the end of the summer holidays when I started to get restless. After three months of not being distracted by uni, my mind was beginning to wiggle in the bony seat of my skull. Faced with the monotony of nothing but a casual job, I was thirsting for a new occupation. After staying up till 2am watching Korean singers from my favourite band, BTS, my sleepy mind latched onto an idea. I should learn Korean.

I didn’t have any pressing reasons for it. I wasn’t going there for a holiday anytime soon, nor did I see myself living in South Korea in the immediate future. Nonetheless, it was an idea I liked.

Besides, after studying French for six years in high school, Korean seemed like the polar opposite to me. It was new. It was refreshing.

3am. I fell down a Google rabbit hole from which there was no escape, migrating from exchange programs to language schools.

All of which cost money that I didn’t feel committed enough to pay. Until – aha – I noticed an interesting little thing in the search results called a ‘language swap’. I clicked the link and found an abundance of personal ads from people in Melbourne.

WANTED. MY ENGLISH/SPANISH FOR YOUR JAPANESE. YOUR LANGUAGE FOR MY ARABIC. HELP!!! NEED A FRENCH TUTOR. As I filtered the search to give me only Korean results, I wanted to leap out of bed and dance for joy. Free tutoring in another language and the only payment I had to make was with my English? It sounded too good to be true. I read through ad after ad, trying to gauge whether the person was suitable for me from their short little bios.

Eventually, I chose Thomas. He appeared nice enough and there didn’t seem to be much pressure about English lessons: “If anything, we can just be friends :)”.

As it turns out, a desire for friendship in an unfamiliar place is a key factor for those looking to share their language. Take Hyun-Soo for instance, a twenty-three-year-old traveller here in Melbourne for a working holiday. I also found him online after he posted an ad. He wrote that he had terrible luck with previous partners but he wanted to give language swap one last shot. He liked having people to talk to. “I was mostly lonely,” he tells me.

When he first arrived in Melbourne, he was busy working two jobs. “It was difficult meeting new people or even just making friends with my co-workers.”

But arranging to meet people comes with its own challenges.

“I’ve texted with maybe twenty people,” Hyun-Soo says, “but I’ve only met one in real life. I remember this one girl and she used me like an answering machine. Like she would ask a question and

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CREATIVE

as soon as she got an answer, she would say, ‘Oh, okay’ and then leave. She told me we should meet but then, suddenly she said she wasn’t available until July because of uni stuff. I also spoke to this other guy and he only wanted to meet at his house or my house.

He kept talking about sexual stuff and he didn’t ever want to meet in a public place.”

The idea of stranger danger was on the forefront of my mind as I began making arrangements with Thomas. We agreed to meet at Melbourne Central – a public, neutral place – for a quick gettingto-know-you session. On the train to the city, I began having flashbacks of all the high school seminars about cyber safety. I sent my friend a blurry picture of the boy in case he kidnapped me and the police needed to identify the suspect.

Turns out, that blurry image wasn’t very useful. I ended up squinting suspiciously at every Asian boy that walked past me, mentally comparing their faces to the low-quality image on my phone. Finally, I saw a tall boy standing underneath a clock. He looked like he was waiting for someone.

“Excuse me, are you Thomas?”

He shook his head and pulled out his phone. Whoops. I backed away and turned to see an older boy approach a girl with dark hair.

“Are you Nicole?” I heard him say.

“No.” I lunged forward. “Thomas?”

He looked up, saw me and smiled awkwardly. “Nicole?”

“Yes.” “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

We both looked at our feet. He had nice shoes.

“You…ah…your hair was like hers.”

“Well,” I said, jerking my head towards the boy under the clock, “I thought that guy was you, so…”

“Ah.” More silence.

“Do… you like cupcakes?” I asked.

He seemed to chew the word around in his mouth. “Cup… cake,” he said, savouring the sounds. The p’s and k’s made delicious popping noises, almost becoming an extra syllable. “Yes, I like them.”

We moved away to a nearby café. As we ate cupcakes, we cautiously sized each other up. I wanted to trust him and I believed that he wanted to see if I was really keen about this whole language thing. He won me over the moment he started gushing about his dog and the more he spoke, the more comfortable I became. He had a habit of looking away when he smiled. It was a shy, fleeting smile with white bunny-like teeth.

ARTWORK BY TALIZA HO

Why did she bring up the idea of romance? It reminded me of all those teen movies, where the girl pretends that she needs tutoring in order to spend time with the older, attractive boy. Soon enough, whenever I met Thomas, I began to wonder in a detached sort of way what it would be like to date him. After my friend planted that seed of romance in my head, meeting up began to feel like casual dates and little actions that Thomas made became reinterpreted in my head as something more.

Cultural differences changed the way we interpreted each other’s actions. Whenever we went out to get food, Thomas, despite my protests, would always pay for me.

“Back home,” he told me, “the older person always takes care of the younger person. I would feel uncomfortable if you paid for my food.” But whenever he paid for my lunch, I could see the person behind the register assessing the two of us and smiling at me knowingly.

We would sit together and he would painstakingly show me the letters of the Korean alphabet, Hangul, one by one. “This symbol (ㅠ) is yu,” he would say. “Repeat it for me?”

“Yu?” “Yes, ah, exactly, good.”

And then I would draw it, over and over, bringing me back to the days in kindergarten when I first learned the alphabet.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 43

ㅠㅠㅠ “Yes, that’s it. Now example. In a word.” I watched his mouth as he pronounced, “Ooh-yu. 우유. It means milk.”

Thomas made it quite clear during our lessons that he was only interested in immersing himself in the Western experience. He even moved out of his first rented apartment, which he had shared with other Koreans, to live with two British travellers. “I want to speak as much English as possible,” he told me.

I spoke with Hyun-Soo about this a few months later and he told me that English was an important skill for the workplace, with English proficiency tests like TEPS (Test of English Proficiency) or TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) being used to help determine who gets accepted into university. “I’ve been learning English since primary school and I went to Canada recently to study it and be immersed.”

After a pause, Hyun-Soo gushed, “I hope to visit every Englishspeaking country. After my time in Australia, I’m hoping to travel to England.”

“So, let’s say I go to Korea for uni or a working holiday,” I began.

Hyun-Soo’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Are you?”

“Hypothetically speaking.”

“Oh.” “Let’s pretend I go there and decide to put an ad out for a language exchange. My English for their Korean. Would I be popular?”

His head bobbed emphatically. “You would be – there’d be no problems finding a partner over there. You’d never be lonely,” he added with a laugh.

My stomach plummeted like I’d taken a drop on a roller coaster ride. Lonely. Why did he have to say that?

“Why did she bring up the idea of romance? It reminded me of all those teen movies, where the girl pretends that she needs tutoring in order to spend time with the older, attractive boy” Remembering that this was supposed to be a language swap, not personal tutoring, at the time I sometimes doubted whether I was doing enough to help Thomas with his English. He was pretty damn good at it and in the rare moments when he asked me a question about his grammar or about Australian culture, I would oversupply him with information.

A magpie once hopped past us, close and unafraid.

“What type of bird is that?” he asked me.

The magpie paused, sharply turned its neck to look at him, did a twitchy-shuddery sort of movement with its feathers and abruptly took off to a nearby tree.

“That’s a magpie.”

“Mag… pie.”

“Yes.” Sensing an opportunity to teach him something, I hastily added, “They’re fine now but you need to be careful if you’re here in the springtime.”

“Why?” “That’s when they get very protective of their eggs. If they see anyone near their nests in the spring, they’ll swoop down and peck at you until you leave.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Mm-hmm, I got swooped once.” His eyes followed my fingers as I pointed to the side of my head. “I was walking through the

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park and I suddenly heard the rustle of feathers and felt a sharp pain. I didn’t even see it coming.”

He pondered that for a moment, then said, “Not so bad, in Korea, the magpie. They represent good luck. We call the Korean magpie kkachi.” On our worksheet, he drew out the symbols for me. 까치 Thomas was a good teacher and I liked to make him happy.

My stomach would do happy backflips whenever I pronounced something correctly and his lips would part to reveal those shiny, bunny teeth. He’d exclaim, “Ah, you’re a genius, really!” However, if I forgot something or I didn’t practice, he would cry out in exasperation and teach me the concept again until I got it. So I practised when I could. I downloaded an app that outlined the different Hangul for me, I read through the worksheets Thomas gave me whenever I was on the train and I tried to recognise different vowels and consonants in the lyrics of my favourite K-pop songs.

A few weeks after Semester One started, I messaged Thomas for our usual meeting. We were finally done with the alphabet and he said that we could move on to sentences, maybe watch a movie together – with the subtitles on of course. I wondered briefly about the logistics of it – would he bring his laptop outside so we could watch something in a public place or would he finally take me to his apartment?

CREATIVE

It occurred to me, as I took the train to the city, that we’d never mentioned a meeting place. But I brushed that thought aside.

Apart from one time, when he met me after class, we’d always met in the same place, in front of the big clock at Melbourne Central.

The shigae. 시계. He liked it when I used that word.

I sat down on a chair under the 시계 at around 2:50pm. I pulled out my phone. I waited.

Did I offend him somehow? Cross some cultural boundary that I didn’t know about? I waited a few weeks to give him some space then sent a quick message.

I doodled about on Facebook for a bit. At about quarter past, I felt concerned. Thomas was never late. The one time he showed up late – by about five minutes – was because of tram issues. Did he oversleep? He did work the night shift at a restaurant. It was one of the reasons why we always met in the late afternoon. Poor thing. He must have slept in.

Unable to sit there any longer, I decided to wander around the shops. If he was drastically late, at least I would be in the vicinity. Besides, I thought as my annoyance mounted, that would show him that I had other things to do besides wait for him all day. I wandered further and further away. I went into shop after shop. I was in denial for a very long time. But I had to accept it. He wasn’t coming.

Did something happen to him? I imagined him leaving work, in the dead of night and being attacked by a pair of drunkards. But a few days later, I saw the little green light appear next to his name on Facebook, so surely he must have been okay.

ARTWORK BY TALIZA HO

No response. There is nothing as frustrating as an unanswerable question. I’d never been stood up before and that irked me more than I expected. I was also baffled. In the few months that we’d known each other, we not only shared our languages but new experiences too. We tried out new cafes together. I was with him the day he had his first macaroon and the day he tried lemon, lime and bitters for the first time. I didn’t know any of his friends and he didn’t know any of mine. In our world, there was only him and me. And now he was gone.

I suppose the benefit of language swap programs, that it was free, was also one of its greatest flaws. In being free, there was no obligation to meet an attendance rate, no hurdle requirements.

It’s up to the participants to make the call and when someone doesn’t want to do something anymore, they can drop off the face of the Earth without any consequences. I considered other options for language learning but came to the same conclusion that I had months ago. I didn’t have the money for professional tuition and, having only learnt the alphabet, I wasn’t ready for the language conversation meet-ups that happen occasionally around Melbourne.

Besides, I had lost Thomas but had gained so much more. He gave me the building blocks of a language. I could now read out the syllables of instructions on my hair spray bottle. Sure, without any understanding of what those syllables meant, but at least I could pronounce them. When I look over the symbols, I hear his voice in my head and see the shape of his mouth move over the sounds. 우유. 까치. 시계.

All I need is someone to take me to the next step.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 45

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COLUMN

GABRIEL FILIPPA PRESENTS

BUTTON MASHING ALL MY TROUBLES AWAY

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

T

here’s this caterpillar crawling up my fence. Halfway down its body is a cocoon that looks like it’s made of bark and twigs. I figure that it’s fallen from its branch halfway through metamorphosis and it’s struggling to get back up.

There’s something about this caterpillar that terrifies me. It’s been there for days. Sometimes I stare at it and curse. I tell my housemates to burn it. I wish it away or demand that it completes its transformation.

I’ve been dreaming about this caterpillar among other things.

Like parasites, insects and microorganisms. It’s like they can smell my fear because I’m constantly attracting them. After visiting Thailand, I came home with a hookworm in my big toe.

I go out for dinner and a cockroach appears on my shoulder. I look in the mirror and there’s a spider on my crotch. Something is always biting me. Half my time is spent on all fours in my bedroom, searching.

I miss the days when I could pin all my fears on the supernatural. The irrational and impossible. Freddy Krueger once scared me. Pennywise the Clown luring children into the gutter with balloons. Girls with long black hair emerging from television screens.

But now I worry about other things. Like caterpillars. Or dying with a bunch of dirty porn on my laptop. I worry that my Xbox is watching me when I brush my teeth. I worry that one day I’ll wake up and I won’t know what you or anyone else is and that I’m part of some grand, simulated reality.

I can deal with Doom, Dark Souls and any kind of deformity born from Hell with my shotgun. But what really scares me is walking around in circles lost and confused. Like those people that walk into the same coffee shop ten times a day to ask what the soup is.

There was this game I used to play called King’s Quest – a point-and-click adventure game. I was stuck at one particular section of this game for about six months. I would traverse the desert, forests, walk into vans and across orchards looking for a

ARTWORK BY EMMA JENSEN

monk. I clicked on the same faces over and over again looking for a different reaction. It was insanity. On and on my character would walk, dutifully from the left to right of screen, back straight and a determined glint in his eyes. But I sat in front of him terrified.

Who the fuck am I? Why is no one helping me? Am I part of some larger, ascetic conspiracy?

Open-world, sandbox style gaming is very much the style right now but honestly, give me a little direction, some signage. Give me a fucking flashing arrow if you have to because I don’t want to end up like Ben Cousins, pointing three different directions at once on Canning Highway.

I need some form of clarity and linearity.

I mean, wouldn’t it be great if we all had our own ‘Navi’, the spirit helper from Zelda, to guide us on our path and dispense advice: Woah dude, don’t date that Catholic, her parents will put a restraining order on you... Forget art school in Elwood, those kids will hate you... That... that’s a man.

The new Zelda game shown off at E3, Breath of the Wild, is of course being promoted as a huge, open world. ‘Go anywhere’, they say. Great, so now I can head off into the snowy mountains and devote my life to side-quests: “Oh, dear adventurer! My Sherpa has lost her pelts, will you help me find them? Papa has forgot to set the clocks in his cabin, can you wind them? My feet are cold, massage them?”

Honestly, I’d just end up laying waste to them all, staggering from the mountains drunk on adrenaline and still half-looking for somebody’s misplaced hiking gear.

Because in a linear world, that caterpillar on the fence becomes a butterfly. It wraps itself in a cocoon, transforms and soon flutters from my life forever. But in my world, this halfmetamorphosed thing somehow ends up in my bed. And one day I wake up inside a hot, earthen tomb, cursing whoever it was that decided to build a world without signs or directions dictating the correct way for us to live.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 47

THE ‘OTHER’ VAMPIRE ELLA SHI INTERVIEWS FARRAGO ARTIST REIMENA YEE

R

eimena Yee is a student, illustrator and comic artist. Her freelance work has spanned from character design to game artwork and now she has created a series of original webcomics, exploring issues of Orientalism and representation in the media.

Tell us about your current project, your new webcomic called The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya (TCM).

The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya focuses on the backstory of a vampire named Zeynel, an important character from my larger body of work called The World in Deeper Inspection. TCM opens in 1680 Ottoman Istanbul. Zeynel is a socially nervous guy who wants nothing more than to remain ordinary and honest, be a supportive husband for his ambitious wife and to continue living his days until he dies a good person. All this he did very well, especially the last part – which he didn’t expect to come so soon. One night on his way to the Balkans, he makes the mistake of helping a lost soul.

Forced into an unfortunate and extraordinary circumstance, he must reconcile his identity with his curse and adapt himself to the strange new world that has opened up. To add salt to the wound, when an old enemy finds him a century later, he must also learn to come to terms with the vampire who turned him.

Aside from the setting, your illustration style seems to reference Islamic and Turkish art. Did you have any particular sources of inspiration?

Since comics are an entirely visual medium, I think it makes artistic sense to incorporate and highlight Zeynel’s heritage as a major part of the visual storytelling. Particular sources of inspiration were the miniatures in the Persian epic Shahnameh, Oushak carpets, various Ottoman muraqqas (albums), Iznik decorative arts and the Turkish bookbinding tradition. Animated films like The Secret of Kells and The Thief and the Cobbler, alongside Craig Thompson’s Habibi were also great things to study from.

Was it difficult to adapt these art forms into your style?

It’s difficult to quantify difficulty [laughs]. When I’m drawing TCM, even though it is heavily influenced by Islamic and Turkish art, I’m not looking to mimic it. It’s impossible for me to do so because there’s always going to be an element of unconscious interpretation happening and it will not do the original justice to claim otherwise. I would rather say my style is informed in its

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tribute. I did as much research as possible, not just for superficial appearances of the art but for its cultural history and influences, its relationship with other mediums and society, and the beliefs or symbolisms that might have informed the original artist and audience. But I also recognise that I can never emulate the style perfectly and there are going to be at least some blind spots.

There is a depth of artistic tradition which is currently inaccessible because of the separation of time (500 years), cultural bias in academia towards Europe, the slow obscurity of tradition in favour of modernity and the simple fact that each of us is limited by our own situated knowledge. The actual act of drawing is the easy part – it’s the planning, the research and the desire to respect which are the difficult tasks.

Something which struck me about TCM is the sympathetic character of the vampire. Traditionally in Western literature, the vampire often symbolises an unknown and archaic horror. For example, Dracula comes from the East and represents the illogical and bestial in contrast to the modern and scientific West.

Was this a conscious reference?

I wasn’t referring specifically to Dracula but I’m aware that modern vampires carry a colonialist history even if today we see vampires simply as cool and suave. But also: why are they so (racially) white? Vampires of the pre-modern type (jiangshi, strigoi, pontianak, ghul, werewolf, etc) were actually not about the dichotomy between East and West, they were instead a reflection of their society’s struggle with morality, death, liminality and tradition. There is a richness and complexity of the so-called ‘exotic’ vampire which often get shoved aside, purposefully ignored or vilified in favour of constructing the West as advanced, or to facilitate thoughtless appropriation – things which are still happening today.

This is where I want to turn Orientalism on its head. Centring the perspective on Zeynel as the hero, the person to be respected and beloved, who draws his strength and virtue from his heritage, who adapts to his surrounding culture yet still preserves his identity, who struggles sometimes with morality, death, liminality and tradition but also receives love, friendship and family... I want to focus on his inherent humanity, not in spite of his ‘Orientalism’, but as part and parcel of it. I leave the unknown and archaic horror to his sire, who is coded as the Occidental. These are all things I’m building up to.

The media seems to have become more conscious of representation over recent years. In 2014 Kamala

CREATIVE

Khan became Marvel’s first Muslim title character.

You also mentioned Craig Thompson’s Islamic themed graphic novel Habibi which was published in 2011. As an independent artist, what is your response to the increasing diversity in mainstream representation?

I think it’s awesome! I’m so tired of watching and reading the same thing over and over again – usually White, cis-male, straight and NORTH AMERICAN – that anything different is welcomed. But then again, there is a troubling undertone behind this phenomenon; while media is becoming more diverse, the people who create, publish and control the media aren’t. I don’t think they are pandering but mainstream media certainly know that diversity is where they can get the PR dollar and spotlight, at the same time they’re ignoring and underappreciating the contributions of diverse indie creators that helped paved the road they step on. And even without this, representation from comics and movies is still very American, informed by discourse and experience rooted in a North American or White-majority Western context.

I’m all for representation in fiction but I would like my actors, my publishers, my directors, my writers, my artists and all else to be diverse as well. I don’t want the majority of mainstream representation to be written by White, straight Americans. No. I need more diverse creators because despite the increase in representation, our voices are still missing.

In the essay Ottoman Orientalism, Ussama Makdisi states that “every nation has its own Orient”. It seems like these deeper issues and internal nuances are often lost because of East/West dichotomies. Thus while there is increasing representation of marginalised voices, do you think there needs to be more nuance in how writers and artists portray the ‘other’?

There needs to be more nuanced writing, even when writing a familiar character. You may be a person of colour but you’re still obligated to do research when you’re writing a religious, racial or geographical culture that you’re unfamiliar with. It’s more out of respect than anything else.

There also needs to be a broadening of the discourse; a lot of POC talk happening online is highly Western and many times when it encounters an event, conflict, culture or lifestyle that is not easily explained by Western concepts or terms, it falls apart. There of course are some practices and ideas which are harmful and unacceptable to human decency but things like framing the hijab as oppressive or barbaric – when they don’t blink an eye at nuns – or shaming foreigners for their weird or ‘cruel’ diets – when such

ARTWORK BY REIMENA YEE

diets are informed by a history of war or poverty – they need to be looked at more closely and ambiguously. So these are approaches to keep in mind when writing about the ‘other’ as well – what may seem odd to you is reasonable to them and what you’ve been exposed to about this culture may not be the full story.

Do you ever feel conflicted between wanting to engage with broader political ideas and just creating whatever you want to create? I suppose I’m kind of doing this right now but I find creators from ‘minority’ backgrounds are often burdened with representing a collective identity.

Haha! God, this frustrates me daily. The double standard is hilarious; when a White creator writes a non-White character (even superficially) they get fanfare and praise and progressive pats on the backs but when a non-White creator does the same, they either get silence or the dreaded questions: ‘Why isn’t there [insert another minority race/sexuality/gender] in your work? Why isn’t this character of X identity not 100 per cent relatable to my individual experience as an X person? Why isn’t this character X enough?’

AAAAAAHHH!!

I feel like we get this kind of pressure because of how little representation we actually have.

For example I don’t see enough Chinese characters be greedy, shrewd, party-going, intellectual, a cheerleader, conservative, queer etc. A lot of our experiences get cut off so it creates unrealistic expectations for the ‘perfect’ Chinese character that embodies ALL Chinese experience without being stereotypical.

I’ve got a Chinese friend who wrote a Chinese character and she is accused of not making this character ‘Chinese enough’, WHATEVER THAT MEANS. I don’t particularly care about ‘perfect’ representation, since that’s impossible. Respectful representation though... that’s what I want to see more of.

What role do you think fiction and art can play in allowing us to see from the point of view of ‘other’?

It allows us to see that we all share a common human experience – we want love, we want belonging, we desire and sin and fail and triumph – but it also shows us that we’re unique. We differ in our experiences and how we approach those experiences based on our history and culture and relationships. It gives explanations for why people are the way they are, it provides perspective. It transforms the ‘other’ into a ‘person’. But then again; fiction and art can be used to vilify and misinform. It has the power to choose the narrative and influence all future ones.

Read TCM here: http://alcottgrimsley.com/comic/cvicover

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 49

CREATIVE

HOPES FOR ACROSS THE SEAT

BY HANNAH McKITTRICK

T

he lady with the mechanical cog tattooed on her back sits with her left leg decisively crossed over her right. Her strategically worn scoop back singlet treats her fellow passengers to the fading ink between her shoulder blades. I hope she enjoys the sunshine today.

Across from her, the man with a melancholic expression looks out the window, his elbow resting assuredly on the frame. His aviator sunglasses shield his retinas from the meek mid June rays, rays that valiantly strive to warm the cold Melbourne commuters.

He is still in a hard and stoic way, and the shadows of rushing trees project meekly onto a face that doesn’t give much away to anyone sharing this morning with him. The aviators stay on even when the train enters the tunnel. I hope he feels safe enough to show his eyes today. I bet they’re nice.

Next to him the young boy in a kitsch tie-dyed muscle tee scratches the thin growth on his jawline absently. A logo on his chest declares a skate brand that I associate negatively with a dirty south side club but he has a solitary quietness about his forlorn stare that refuses to let his tacky garb taint him. He departs our carriage at North Melbourne but gets to his feet long before the train pulls into the station. I hope he is loved, wherever he is going.

Behind them, the lady with the florescent cycling jacket, doing a crossword on the seat of her Shimano palindrome speed bike, never looks up. She scratches letters onto her page and holds the front wheel brake, which ensures she doesn’t go sprawling onto the laps of the other passengers as the train pulls jerkily into Royal Park. She drops her paper just as I decide to write about her and shiny junkmail spills out across the floor. I hope it wasn’t my fault.

Narrowly avoiding her handlebars, the man with speed and time playing on his side leaps into the train just as the electric doors commence their warning bells, sliding together just after his blur of pinstripe business casual dashes in. A silent triumph

50 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

enters with him as he allows himself just a moment of contained euphoria before pulling out his headphones and facing the opposite doors. I hope that victory stays in his heart today. I think he deserves it.

A trench coat wearing a sighing man steps on with a tartan scarf wound meticulously around the wooden hook of his umbrella. He removes his backpack from his heavy shoulders but doesn’t place it on the ground, instead clutching it in front of him as he scrolls through his day with the his other hand. He suddenly looks up expectantly and unassumingly adjusts his glasses to better scan the carriage briefly before bringing the screen closer to his tired eyes. He has the face of an overworked and under-appreciated accountant but the posture of a Swedish Pilates instructor. I wonder if he always stands up this straight. I hope he has a Labrador or a warm fire to go home to.

The woman with coffee as black as her coat talks unconsciously loudly into her phone, spraying it with vernacular like ‘fruity’ and ‘hustle’ in a vaguely Eastern European accent, worn away by time.

When she hangs up, she smiles coldly at her phone for a moment as the contents of her knee-cup lose their scalding temperature. I hope she gets what she needs today.

The golden-skinned man reads from the Quran in the corner, his lips moving silently across script that feels like home. His physical location has been reduced to a simmer on a hotplate, as a hand goes up softly to cradle his face. He doesn’t have much room and his gestures of prayer are subtle on this crowded train, but they are there. I hope his faith brings comfort to his warm heart.

Look at us all swaying in unison as the train eats up the metal tracks in rapid, staggered gulps. The squeak of yellow rubber handles and tinny second-hand music from small earbuds reverberate around this metal transitory home, forming the momentary and circumstantial blend of our respective lives, our collective lives.

ARTWORK BY ADAM FAN

CREATIVE

WHEN I RIPPED MY PANTS

BY TRUNG LE

F

linders Street Station. I have to meet Andrew in half an hour so I’m throttling through the platforms. The butterflies of a first date are swarming as usual. A primal instinct to be loved (which is really code for ‘desperate’) keeps me going. My Myki card falls from my oily fingers so I squat down to pick it up. I’ve been doing Sh’bam dance classes where they teach you how to fully squat so people can see your colon if they look hard enough.

As my thighs spread, a continental fissure rips through my denim. A hole the size of a fist right where my crotch is. You could easily slide a chicken schnitzel foot long Subway in and out. I never cry in public but, in this moment, I nearly weep. They were my favourite black skinny jeans that gave the illusion of a Kardashian body.

Now, I look like a hyper realistic blow up sex doll carrying a lot of emotional baggage and needing to go on a diet.

At this point it’s too late to turn home. I’d asked my date to order a bunch of Pad Thai before because I am nothing less than a demanding control freak. I rock up and show Andrew my crotch. To my surprise, he’s equally amused and turned on. His hands slide down my thigh as I shovel shrimp into my mouth. “Easy access,” he jokes.

What followed was some of the most incredible curry-induced bloated sex of my life. You know it was good because it sounded like two hands clapping. Stop reading and try it. Gross. And hot right? I honestly wasn’t expecting sex but the jeans changed everything. When I got home, my mum was horrified and offered to sew them up. She had worked in clothing factories her entire life so it was second nature for her to put a stitch in time. I told her not to worry because they were old and a new pair was on the way to replace them. I’d grown up watching The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants my entire life so I was no stranger to the power that denim could have.

Every date after, I would rock up wearing the same pair of sex jeans. I would use the same “I ripped them picking up my Myki” line. The guy would feel sorry for me and subsequently aroused (this is a recurring pattern of my love life). We would pretend to enjoy whatever Marvel movie we were watching. I would have passionate lie sex. And I would go to KFC to celebrate after. Even BJR (Before Jean Ripping), KFC would be my post-datedebrief. The tired Asian girl would give me my six wicked wings and I would call my best friend to gossip on the train ride home. This usually happened once every fortnight but was ramping up to once every couple of days.

The jeans made me feel sexy. Not like Dove-soapcommercial sexy. But like traditional-media-harmful-

ARTWORK BY CAROLYN HUANE

body-image sexy. It’s not like I was hideously bad-looking.

One time, an old Eastern European lady wanted to set me up with her daughter after I gave her my seat at the bus stop. But I wasn’t just the guy with a great personality anymore. It made me conventionally fuckable. Like in teen movies when the nerd girl takes off her glasses, I ripped my pants and was ready to disappoint my parents.

I had spent my entire life chasing love and this hole was the game changer.

Pit stop at North Melbourne station and I’ve already pythoned a Zinger burger. I brag obnoxiously on the phone about the amount of hand jobs I’ve taken part in.

My eyes wander around the train as my friend validates the shit out of me. As a writer and someone who is distastefully nosey, I love visual eavesdropping. Across from me is a Chinese couple holding grey grocery bags and holding hands. It’s the kind of intimacy that I’ve been searching for my entire life. I look back down at my own lap. The only things in my hands are a paper bag of fried chicken and a women’s magazine. A glaring hole right underneath.

A famous episode of SpongeBob SquarePants suddenly comes to mind. In the episode, he tries to gain the attention of his best friend Sandy. Nothing works – except ripping his pants. At first, everything is great.

He gets the Mark Twain prize for humour. But soon the appeal of the gag pants fades. He sings the Grammy robbed song, ‘When I Ripped My Pants’ and Sandy tells him that he just needed to be himself. I had been through the same experience – with a lot more gay sex and somehow a lot less fun.

The jeans found me what I wanted. Intimacy, immediate attention and chicken induced bacne. And while there’s nothing wrong with two consenting adults having safe sex, it distracted me from what that Chinese couple on the train had. The jeans failed to find me what I needed – love. That desperate fairytale dream that got me into this mess in the first place. If anyone has been able to strike a perfect balance between the two, please do not come up to me at a party to humblebrag about how well your life is going.

Flinders Street Station. A couple of months after I connect the dots between an animated children’s television show and my sex life. I lug a bag of groceries to make an unhealthy Italian dinner and maybe hoe it up later. My boyfriend’s hand is cupped in mine. It might not be a fairytale. It might not be forever. But it’s butterflies.

All inside my new pair of black skinny jeans.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 51

GREEN BULB

BY AMIE GREEN

A man leans out to spit thick raindrops stick and slide down glass.

A man’s legs are spread too close to your puckered goose skin.

A fat raindrop plops behind your lapel, a slippery finger beading on your nape wetting paper skin, it is cold.

A man has a too big bag stuffed with spring onions your sensitive eyes gloss water leaks from the plated aluminium roof the room glows a sickly fluorescent green.

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CREATIVE

XMA

BY AMIE GREEN

when will i shed this scaly muzzle x mark these scored sleeves when will i shake

the bloody plots of finger nails

the itch the picking claws that pull crusts when will i emerge

poking my shiny gizzards

from my dry dermis as succulent, pink pearl when ma smothers me in ointment i ask when will i shed this lizard skin?

ARTWORK BY KATHY AUDREY SARPI

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 53

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CREATIVE

TOY

BY LINUS TOLLIDAY

A

listlessness hung from the rising sun. Nearing midday, her eyes still hadn’t fully adjusted from oilblack darkness. Had they been kept pitched by the remaining willpower. Willpower damaged by flecks of that unbearable thought: defeat.

The line twitched forward, sweeping Ella with it.

She became conscious of her slouched shoulders, her stooped stance. She didn’t resist, the passive doldrums taking hold as if to say I have the confidence of an egg.

The swinging crucifix. Bent double over a wooden desk filled with testosterone-induced teenage fantasies, Ella could remember looking up and seeing all the expressions his face allowed. Maybe I could reprogram him, she thought, so his face could let out some affection now and then.

The emptiness of a daydream. The readiness of a fool. The surrender of a cynic.

Battered by reality Ella was inured to it. Now only gently fucked.

No surprises.

She had assumed the withdrawn role of Plaything. Of Toy. Warmed up leftovers from his last feeding frenzy. He who taught her functioning hierarchy, an imaginary concept in denial of meaninglessness. Nobody cares if you’re the boss; but he was still the boss.

I want more than this, she had told him, or nothing at all.

What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind? He responds, as always.

Ashamed, she would lower her head and flick peanuts from the lacquered table top, trying to distract from her apology.

Excerpts from the conversation generously distributed over a mechanical thought process. Her days since were marred by her uselessness to generate empathy. Even sympathy today. pwumm the room would say each time a uniform step was taken by the year level. With that particular pwumm Ella had reached the front of the line. Any minute they would call her name. Her label.

The good times, the sweet nothings came instantly to her. Like the time he had raced her home from the bus stop for reasons she had forgotten now. Laughter, joy, aching legs and a stitch.

Now her aching heart, cut swift and pegged to a clothesline like a goonsack with a tear. Drink my fucking love.

Then there was that time she said, Wanna race home from the bus?

He laid his dead eyes to rest in hers before, What are you, a fucking child?

He had won all sorts of rounds, games and plays. By the end he only showed genuine care notwithstanding lack of affection when he bent her over that fucking desk.

I love you, she called into the void many times.

Had his cheek not been pierced by a chrome lever, neck snapped as close to instantly as reality allows. Had he not decided to navigate that blind corner with the confidence of a much younger man, she might not have ended up alone. All the worse when the school was mourning the loss of their favourite Media Studies teacher.

ARTWORK BY ANWYN HOCKING

Did you know Mr Bennett? Her mother asked on the morning it happened.

No, Ella lied. Why? The news didn’t bother her, and that bothered her.

Next, a voice called behind the makeshift curtain.

Ella stepped through, breaking from the line.

Sit there, he directed, adjusting his lens. Next he approached her, moving her head with his hands, thumbing her chin, narrowly missing her eyes more than once.

Perfect, he muttered, moving back to behind the camera.

They had considered postponing the school photos to allow the students to recover from the news. The proposed date moved the photos from March 1st to April 1st, but this clashed with several Year 12 excursions. Next they decided to shift it back to March 25th, but the school musical interrupted the photo rooms.

Admittedly, they could have chosen several other dates, but that would have required reprinting all photo forms and a late cancellation fee. So March 1st remained.

Tilt your head slightly to the left.

He paused. No, he continued, my left.

The photographer’s upturned nose and constant wince reminded Ella of Him. Okay, he said flicking two buttons on the camera, not giving her even a remote possibility of eye contact.

Say Collingwood.

Collingwood, Ella mumbled from motionless lips, preserving her deadpan expression.

The photographer’s eyes dragged in a wide circle. Look, Elsie, how about this? his hand hung in the air, palm upwards, like he was asking for her to hand him something. Just say cheese.

The photographer’s hands fastened over the camera once more.

Again the deadpan, Cheese. Lifeless, stolid, like the pastel blue sheet hanging behind her.

Like Mr Bennett after he came; a rapid burst of juddering before collapse crushing the air from Ella. Stillness, which smelled like sex. The chrome lever entering flesh, stinging at first, easing into place. Thrusting, thrashing, collapse. Stillness. A peremptory grunt, the final signal of life, the wound too deep and severe to heal itself now. Semen and blood, holy vessels of life. Now in suspended animation.

All right, the photographer gave a clap, just smile.

Ella nodded and her mouth formed a crescent of sorts, the corners of her lips elevated. As they rose into place, her cheeks shook, strained. Her eyebrows rose slightly and the paint began to crack. A jagged square from her cheek broke off to the ground and branches sprung over her nose, mouth, eyes and forehead. A rusty whine whistled through her pores, and much like strings snapping from a tightly wound guitar, strands of paint peeled from the slowing machinery of Ella’s face.

Perfect, the photographer grinned, snapping the curtain open for all the denizens of the school to see. Eyes grew and melted overlapped in a tired haze. The photographer pawed for the camera unable to look away. He smiled. This is the best one yet.

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 55

CREATIVE

STATIC

BY CANDY JAMES-ZOCCOLI

I

watch as he lowers his terracotta mug onto the handmade table.

Between the cup’s set-down and the opening of his mouth, I think two things: wow, terracotta is an overused colour in literature and gee, how is a table made if not at some point in the process by hand?

“The TV’s broken.”

I look past his shoulder and stare into the TV’s polished abyss.

It’s like I expected it to have a hairline split straight through the middle or a collection of smattered bruising in the lower right hand corner. He must mean internally.

“Sorry to hear that.”

Condolences. Wow. Could I be any less my usual, acerbic self?

Not completely remiss, however, Lon spends more time with his TV than any other appliance.

Existential thoughts drown me during the next bout of silence.

What do we lose when we while away the time in front of moving images removed from our reality? Why do we even have clocks on the wall to stare at if we’re as lazy as the both of us are? No, Lon’s not that lazy. And really, if I were to face the day with more conviction, neither would I be. I figured we were used to this silence. I always liked it. It doesn’t mean I didn’t notice it, wonder about its being there, surrounding us, uninvited but not resented. Lon runs his hand across his scalp, stopping at a spot behind his ear. Dandruff dusts his faux-denim shoulders, powdered through the sieve of his palm. He smacks his lips and reclaims his mug, taking his tea in tentative, puckered sips, the kind with an edge of slurp.

“You’re making progress.”

“Hmm?”

56 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

I gesture to the backyard. The pile of boxes that was there last time has decreased significantly.

This is the second time I’ve been allowed in Lon’s house. The first time it was three in the morning and it seemed more practical and cost-efficient than hiking 50 minutes from the city in a cheaply air-freshened cab. I usually provide the transport. Every time I’ve driven Lon home, I’ve left my foot on the brake pedal and the car in drive just long enough to see if the offer to come in would be ripe enough. He’d thank me for the day, dart his eyes around and then get out, not even turning around for a final wave.

I’d linger for a few seconds, unsure of whether or not it was rude to drive off without witnessing an open door. I convinced myself he hardly needed my hovering.

Our silences have always occurred in previously designated venues. Silence in cafes, art galleries, on park benches. At times our forearms have bumped, mine frozen, against his running warmth. I think I’ve always felt an undertone of safety, comfort.

Like he would be there when I finally decided to confess to the torch I’d been holding for him under my collar.

A compilation disc of opportunistic melodies designed to placate anything akin to someone who would respond to her romantically plays on a loop in my car; lyrics composed with the intention of altering perceptions, morphing passive feelings, a tentative call to action. I don’t know why I don’t change the disc. Lon always shifts to the radio.

ARTWORK BY BONNIE SMITH

CREATIVE

PYROMANIAC

BY HAYLEY FRANKLIN Hold me in your hand naked, glowing going out just trying to exist at the tip of the matchstick waltzing so as not to fall or burn out.

Enjoy my warmth my pretty hysteria near crying embers for fear of dying out hold me closer between your fingers for just a minute or two, then blow me out

ARTWORK BY DOMINIC SHI JIE ON

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 57

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COLUMN

JAMES MACARONAS PRESENTS

NOTES FROM THE WEIRD SIDE NUMBER 206: THE GLADE

H

ow to describe Maude Wakefield? ‘Legend’ is the word many have used and when considering her achievements, it seems more than apt. Born in Colchester, in 1928, she climbed both Everest and Kilimanjaro before the age of forty. She mapped areas of South America and the Antarctic before going on to contribute to Project Omega – the highly classified research group commissioned by the British government to investigate the possibility of manned space exploration. The project was abandoned after the events of 1973 (see Note #65, Midnight’s Children) and Wakefield’s involvement in this and other government operations have, sadly, meant her contributions to her fields have often gone unnoticed by the wider populace.

However, those who remember her champion her as one of history’s great explorers, and rightly so.

But we are not here to examine Wakefield’s triumphs – we are here to examine her fears. What follows is a transcript of an audio recording made some months before her disappearance in 2010.

It concerns an area of forest identified only as being somewhere “north” of where the interview took place. It is difficult to ascertain the point of reference as it is not known where the recording was made, or, indeed, by whom, though many have presumed it is journalistic in intent. Whether the land Wakefield refers to still exists or not poses a similar challenge, as information is markedly hard to come by. Indeed, the following may be the only account of what transpired on that night, and, indeed, the only kind of clue as to where she has gone: “ – never liked rabbits. Funny, isn’t it? My sister had a pet rabbit and I can remember how awful it looked in the dark. But fear? Let me think – I would have been about fifty and I was starting to think about retiring from fieldwork. Yes, it was about then that I got the call. From Sir Robert Godwin, whom I’d met working on Omega. The man was insufferable but I could hear, over the phone, I could hear a very real… concern, I suppose.

Something had properly rattled his cage and it’s not often that happens to a civil servant, let me tell you!

“Anyway, it was about this forest – a fair ways north from here, I won’t tell you what it’s called – where people had been going missing. I told him the police should deal with it but he said they already had. And they hadn’t come back. He wanted me – among others, of course – to go and take a look. Said it would be “my sort of thing”, yes. Well, after Omega, how could I say no? Pretty soon, I was shipped up there with the rest of them.

“Decent lot, they were, about ten or so. I knew Fielding from Cambridge and Ward was there, of course. The forest itself seemed like any other you’d find in the countryside and there we were, carrying enough equipment to get us across the Alps! (laughs) Still, we’d been warned. A whole lot of people had gone missing, not just the police. Campers and the like… some poachers too, if I remember correctly. Funnily enough, the first

ARTWORK BY ELLA SHI

thing you noticed when you got there was no birdsong. Not a sparrow to be heard – only the quiet. And a kind of rustling in the undergrowth. “Just rabbits,” said Ward, and who were we to disagree?

“Our instructions were to hike to the centre and set up camp, observe, take notes, that sort of thing… see if we could find something to explain the disappearances. We had some old maps and a set of aerial photographs. That was the cause of our first shock, though you may think it only a little one. By evening, we had reached the middle of the forest and found ourselves in a glade, looking straight up at the sky. It looked to be a perfect circle. But when we looked at our aerial photographs, there was no such thing. Treetops all the way across. We shouldn’t have been able to see up. But we could. On the ground were scraps and forgotten things – a coat here, a map there. It all felt a bit… tawdry? Like a waste of time. Until dusk, of course.

“We’d set up camp when somebody screamed. I thought it might’ve been Jeffries mucking about but it didn’t stop. I forget the girl’s name but she was pointing right up at the sky. Two moons. You don’t forget that. One large and white – like milk – and the other, smaller, floating beside it. Two alien moons in the sky above our heads.

“And then another scream – Ward this time. He’d left the clearing earlier with Banning, gone to compare the area with an old map or some such. He stumbled out from between the trees and we realised he couldn’t see. His eyes were intact, you understand, but he was crying out – “I’m blind!”

“That was when we saw them. They must have followed him to the camp. Hunched over, with white hair all down their arms. Whiter than white, like the moons over our heads. And their fingers – long and pointed – scratched at the dirt and the leaves and the scraps of clothing. Ward panicked at the sound.

“Rabbits?” he asked, in a kind of scream. “Rabbits?”

At this point, the tape cuts. For a long time, it was thought that was all that survived of the interview but, only last year, some fragments of recording were discovered in a university collection. Small fragments, certainly, but there is enough to account for Wakefield’s trauma. “ – running like wild things. Jeffries fired a shot but it passed through them like a hand through smoke. We were outnumbered and there was Ward, eyes starting to gleam and – ” “ – fingers opening the skin and those little white hairs blossoming out of the veins – ” “ – burned the photographs of the – ” “ – suffice to say, I’ve never thought of rabbits in quite the same way.”

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places – H.P. Lovecraft, The Picture In The House

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 59

SUNLIGHT AND CITYSCAPES

BY SOPHIA PANTHER

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CREATIVE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 61

CREATIVE

BIRD LEAVES

BY ROSE KENNEDY

twist in the air call as they fall skeleton trees clutch remaining leaves twigged palms useless against the shifting winds of winter. flicking birds from their perch careless icicle finger. those that stay reveal how stark the limbs beneath the moulting bark poised above their fallen brethren in attentive stance these clinging scraps of birdlife frailty at a glance

62 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

ARTWORK BY HAN LI

CREATIVE

´

CLICHE

BY IRYNA BYELYAYEVA

Could you would you make something explode?

Start a fight smash a vase make me cry or at least send a

nasty text.

Because all I can do is sit and sigh and listen to bad hip hop from the 2000s.

Contentment is a curse

no one wants a verse written in

pink ink.

So, would you could you break my heart, or something?

I’ll be here waiting.

ARTWORK BY JASMIN ISOBE

FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX • 63

COLUMN

ELIZA SHALLARD PRESENTS

FLASH FICTION

WHEN EVERY STORY IS 100 WORDS, EVERY WORD COUNTS PROMPT 6 – POST-APOCALYPTIC: THE WORLD WE KNOW HAS ENDED. WHAT NEXT? SCROUNGING

BY ELIZA SHALLARD

T

he thick smog that covered most of the outer city was thin here but toxic enough that everyone had left. Stacks of debris littered most street corners. The perfect looting spot.

She zipped through each pile, glancing around for anything useful and light. She picked up any clothing never mind size but left the larger shoes.

Grabbed canned food but nothing that might rot.

Took batteries but not broken tech. Her makeshift backpack was soon stuffed.

As an afterthought, she picked up a few toys she saw on her way back toward base. She had to keep some fun alive.

THE FRITZ

BY SETH ROBINSON

T

he ‘Fritz’ of 2017 left Danny Dumont out on a limb. One day, all had been fine and dandy, .gifs kept the people laughing, memes summed up all worldly knowledge in a nutshell and Facebook dictated the course of history. Now, just a few short months after the great internet crash and the world had regressed. Danny had been forced to break out his wallet and his address book, no longer able to live through his phone. For the first time in years he’d stretched the muscles in his neck. His eyes widened and he gasped. He saw the sky.

LIFE AFTER EARTH

BY JO ROSOCHODSKI

S

ince the Earth exploded, being immortal has become rather dull. There are not nearly as many frightened peasants in the abyss of space as there were in Eastern Europe. I do spend far less time flapping away from toothless yokels shaking pitchforks but there are also no strapping youths or comely maidens for me to seduce and then juice. There is also an unfortunate lack of sinister castles and, so far, nowhere to lurk. All in all, I am not terribly impressed by the cosmos and I welcome the company of any surviving astronauts out there. Even the ugly ones.

64 • FARRAGO 2016 • EDITION SIX

SEEN BARDER DAYS

BY JEAN TONG

T

he end of the world has come and the cult of Shakespeare is finally dead. Overpriced reprints flaccidly fall apart at the spine and spontaneously combust. Spurts of fire appear between closed covers, resolutely crisping away the alphabetised lists of Anglo-centric names on reference lists. Rehearsal rooms collapse, crushing the hopes (and bodies) of actors working on yet another boring, all-white Universal Adaptation. Dregs of cold coffee boil and spill over onto the laps of directors pitching another definitive Radical Retelling. Listen: it’s the end of the world and unfamiliar words are whispering a newly liberated canon.

Listen: it’s beautiful.

– NEXT EDITION’S PROMPT – OUT OF THIS WORLD: E.T. IS A-CALLIN’ Submit your 100-word Flash Fiction response to farragomedia2016@gmail.com Due 12 August, 11.59pm

ARTWORK BY EDIE M BUSH

GOOD THINGS COME IN THREES. THE BEST THINGS COME FROM

FARRAGO

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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.