Empire Times 42.8

EMPIRE TIMES YOUR STUDENT MAG

42.8 it's Free!

FUSA NOMINATIONS OPEN MON 7TH - MON 21ST SEP STUDENT COUNCIL NUS DELEGATES EMPIRE TIMES EDITORS

W !

O N E T A N I M O N

FUSA.EDU.AU/ELECTIONS

- Editorial -

Hey hey hey!

I want to take some time and reflect on what has happened in my life during the last 12 months. Exactly a year ago I was sitting in my new dorm room half a world away, scared out of my mind, thinking that I would have to eat some crazy concoction of a meal, hate it, and then starve to death for the next six months.

You see, I am a *fairly* fussy eater. Sure, I eat every vegetable and most fruit known to man, but my general philosophy and motto when it comes to food is, anti flavour, anti spice. Plain and boring is the key to a happy Laura.

This really only became a problem when I started travelling and realised pretty quickly that I would miss out on some really cool things if I stayed in my boring comfort zone when it came to food.

The moral of the story? In that moment I put on my big girl shoes and promised myself that if I was offered a *different* food I would at least try it. I could still say I didn’t want more, but at least I would give it a go. The result? I had the *pleasure* of eating Mexican in Budapest (don’t even ask), a German tort cake that was to die for, and something called a Banoffee Pie! In a world of rampant consumerism and a smoregasboard of food available, don’t be afraid to try something new—you might even surprise yourself.

Congrats! In picking up this magazine you’re not only procrastinating from your studies, you’re also supporting a variety of students including us as editors!

‘Consume’. When the word is uttered, my mind instantly goes to all things edible. This includes, but is not limited to, a whopping great dish of nachos (if I was to have it my way it would be trough-sized), chilli-anything, and the delicious chocolate brownies available at the Tonsley campus. The latter treatie, heavenly in both taste and texture, was bought for me recently by one of the loveliest teachers I’ve come to meet here at Flinders University. I was lucky enough to chat with Romana Challans, voted Best Teacher by students, who features in this issue of ET. She is a delightful conversationalist and dedicated academic whose passion clearly lies with her students as well as technology and learning.

While on the topic of hidden gems, I’d like to do a shoutout to some of the artists we have working on the magazine.

In particular, Sheydin, Amber and Hannah have all been such reliable and consistent creatives. While they have brilliant articles to draw to, it is their illustrations and digital paintings that bring life to the writing of our authors and encourage students to pick up the magazine. So kudos goes to you guys!

Much love and thanks, Jess

Love Laura

Sup? Life is all about consumption. We consume food, air, information, natural resources and ill-advised sex tips. It’s impossible to exist without metaphorically sucking in everything around us, much like a black hole with no will power. To live is to consume, and no amount of super-veganism or evolvingbeyond-a-physical-existance-into-a-ballof-pure-energy will change that.

So what do we do when the world is full of 8 billion conpulsively-all-consuming monsters? How do we continue to exist without destroying the very thing sustaining us? The answer to that is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing to achieve: sustainability.

Agriculture was the first means of sustainably obtaining food, but that itself drains on other natural resources such as water and soil quality, to survive. Energy wise, we’re only now moving into sources which aren’t finite (although certain governments are really dragging their feet on that one). And land wise, well, with rising sea levels we’re actually losing habitable land.

Quite frankly, we’re terrible at sustaining our own consumptive nature. For too long we’ve been shovelling coal and beef and fresh water into our metaphorical gobs, saying “pft, that’s the future’s problem”. We can only hope the future will find a way out of this destructive consumer spiral.

Simone

TOP PICKS FOR THIS ISSUE

TOP PICKS FOR THIS ISSUE

TOP PICKS FOR THIS ISSUE

p. 20 p. 14 p. 26 p. 30

p. 12 Openly Sexual p. 17 The Truth About Fur p. 32 Adam Goodes p. 37 Playing With Plastic Is Not So Fantastic

p. 10 p. 11 p. 34 p. 38

E-Books We Need To Talk About Best Teacher #chompergate

Equality The Sweet Truth Dumpster Diving Do Not Go Gentle

1

OH HELLO there.

CONSUME ISSUE

EDITORS Jess Nicole Laura Telford Simone Corletto

Issue 8 Vol 42 September 2015 empire.times@flinders.edu.au www.empiretimes.com.au Advertising: stephanie.walker@flinders.edu.au

SUB-EDITORS Jess Miller Tamsin Alexander Kayla Gaskell Liam McNally Anupol Bordoloi Riana Kinlough Justina Ashman

COLUMNISTS Emma Cresdee Jonno Revanche Emma Sachsse Kaisha Wyld Eleanor Danenberg Karen Smart Kelly Guthberlet Kevin Clark Aden Beaver Bethany Lawrence

ILLUSTRATORS

Empire Times is the student publication of Flinders University. All work within remains the property of the producers and may not be reproduced without their consent. Empire Times reserves the right to republish in any format.

Empire Times would like to acknowledge the Kaurna people who are the traditional custodians of the land Flinders University is situated on. We would also like to pay our respects to the elders past and present of the Kaurna nation and extend that respect to other Aboriginal peoples.

‘The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors, Flinders University, or Flinders University Student Association. Reasonable care is taken to ensure that Empire Times articles and other information are up-to-date and as accurate as possible, as of the time of publication, but no responsibility can be taken by Empire Times Magazine for any errors or omissions contained herein.’

Sheydin Dew Aden Beaver Hannah Everett Amber Hall Benjamin Hall

FRONT COVER

CONTRIBUTORS

Benjamin Hall

James Vigus Latoya Rule Grace Hill Kayla Gaskell Cass Teunissen Sarah Barrett Jack Harrison Hannah Beadle Ali Roush Jack Harrison Liam McNally Ali Roush Tamsin Alexander Amy Manners Amelia Hughes Jess Miller

Sheydin Dew

BACK COVER

FUCK YEAHS • • •

Nominations for Student Council & Empire Times are open!

The influx of student responses to Bjorn Lomborg The editors are going to National Young Writers’ Week with their beloved FUSA Media Officer Steph!

WITH THANKS TO Student Council for providing us with all their pages!

Much love for their involvement with ET (and also the free pizza that comes with their meetings) #consensus

Index INTRO

FEATURES

CREATIVE

1

EDITORIAL Words from the Editors

17

THE TRUTH ABOUT FUR The fur industry & animal cruelty

38 FICTION Do Not Go Gentle

5

PREZ DISPENSER A message from the President

18

WE SEE WHAT WE WANT TO Eating disorders, body standards & self-love

COLUMNS 8 10

POLITIK Do We Even Care?

EQUALITY Shared for Likes: Using Violent Images to Spread Awareness

11

GET SMART The Sweet Truth

12

OPENLY SEXUAL Sex and the City: Take Once Daily?

13

FEMINISM The Blue Hammer is for Boys

14

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT Blue Stocking Week 2015

16

TECHNOLOGICA Caffeinated Consumption

46 FOOD REVIEW Hanuman 47

GAMES & MUSIC Toys to Life + HEALTH // Death Magic

45 EVENT REVIEW Speakeasy @ the Wheatsheaf

20

E-Books By any other name would smell as sweet

21

CONSUMER CULTURE Alcohol, fast food & fine dining

22

#STOPLOMBORG Protesting against the Consensus Centre

24

VOX POP Voice of the (clubs) people

26

BEST TEACHER Romana Challans

30

#CHOMPERGATE The rise & fall of Bronwyn Bishop

32

ADAM GOODES A leader for a team, a leader for the nation

34

DUMPSTER DIVING Collecting Rubbish or a Real Alternative?

36

PLAYING WITH PLASTIC IS NOT SO FANTASTIC The realities of kids and consumerism

22

FUN STUFF 43 CROSSWORD Win movie tickets!

48 QUIZ What kind of consumer are you?

what kind of Consumer are you? 48

32

20

vox

pop

24

41 FILM REVIEW Me Earl & the Dying Girl

18

21

3

WHAT’S GOING ON OCTOBER

MONDAY

TUESDAY

28

29

5

6

FUSA Says Relax 102pm, Medical Centre

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

30

1

7

8

Health Sciences Students Happy Hour, 4-6pm.

DeCafe (every Wednesday!)

Criminal Justice Students Assoc Quiz Night 7pm

FRIDAY

2

9

Flinders University Vollyball Club Pubcrawl 8pm Thinking CAPS Pubcrawl 8pm

12

FUSA ELECTIONS

13

FUSA ELECTIONS

14

FUSA ELECTIONS

26

FUSA Free Brunch 1012pm, Main Library

20

27

16 FUSA Says Relax 102pm, Anchor Court FUSA Ball, Hotel Richmond

21

22

23

FUSA Free Brunch 10-12pm, Main Library

FUSA Free Brunch 10-12pm, Tonsley Campus

FUSA ‘Ice Ice Baby’ Semester 2 Pub Crawl

29

30

28 FUSA Free Brunch 10-12pm, Main Library

Saturday 31st: Gamelan Performance, Flinders Pendopo, 7pm

FUSA ELECTIONS

FUSA Says Relax 102pm, Tonsley Campus

VGen Club Movie Screening, email flinders@vgen.org for more details

19

15

FUSA’s Relax & Brunch Days are free events for students. For more information on FUSA events, go to fb.com/ FUSAssociation or call 8201 2371. If you’d like your Flinders University event in the calendar, contact us at empire.times@flinders.edu.au.

FUSA Free Brunch 1012pm, Sturt Campus Speakeasy at the Wheatsheaf hotel 7pm - 10pm

Prez Dispenser

The Student Council President (“Prez”) is the official spokesperson of students and the Student Council. They make representations on behalf of students to the university, media, government, and external organisations.

James Vigus Consuming knowledge—is that what universities are about? It’s contested ground, especially when the manner in which we are educated has changed so much over the years. Thankfully there is an enduring sentiment amongst most people that universities are considered communities of learning, concerned with seeking truth, knowledge, scholarship and the advancement of social development. But with the ascendency of free-market ideology there are now loud competing ideas which echo in the corridors of academia and power.

Unfortunately, higher education in the age of neoliberalism has never been further away from the worthy ideal of a university as a scholarly community. Universities are regarded, and increasingly modelled, more like high-tech knowledge and research factories, which churn out a mass product of certificates, degrees, graduates, theses and research papers.

The university managers, themselves, seem to consider students as little more than consumers of these products, with a particular dollar value attached to each of us and each educational commodity. Whilst enrolments grow, and Flinders continues to be the fastest growing university in South Australia, government funding (in real terms) continues to decline as such that Australia now has the lowest level of university funding in the OECD. The commodification of university life—the reduction of us all to product consumers—has paved the way for a situation where students are paying for the funding shortfall through higher HECS rates and the exploitation of international students, who pay some of the highest tuition fees of anyone in the world.

Considering the main benefactors of the higher education system are industry and the state—for which the ranks of the educated are a replenishment labour force—it is outrageous that universities have not joined with students to oppose feehikes and rip-offs. Instead we are told a university education is for private benefit, in an effort to justify why students should increasingly pay higher fees. However, the idea that university guarantees you a leg-up is increasingly recognised as a fallacy and ever-greater numbers of graduates are joining the rising percentage of young unemployed, under-employed or tenuously employed.

In a Universities Australia report entitled A Productive Country: the contribution of Australian universities to national productivity (2011), the peak body for Vice-chancellors promotes the idea that the main aim of higher education is to promote economic productivity. In essence they contend that research and scholarship should be subordinated to the task of making the Australian economy more internationally competitive. It is with little wonder that the apparently uneconomical humanities and social sciences are increasingly on the chopping block in the Australian higher education system.

How outrageous that researchers need to justify their research in market terms. Rather than being based on the advancement of humanity and a better society, the main criteria is whether research programs can attract funding and be attractive to industry, regardless of how ugly that industry is from a humanist point of view. Research is bought and sold as a commodity and if a conservative and (thankfully) deeply unpopular government wants to use the academy’s name for its own political prerogatives then that favour can be bought as well. The ironically titled Lomborg School of Consensus rings a bell here.

The impact of shifting the costs of higher education onto students has a negative impact on society in a number of ways. Another Universities Australia investigation—this time into student poverty—found that 16.5 per cent of full time undergraduate students worked at least 20 hours a week in order to support their study. Another study showed that 80 per cent of undergraduates work for some time to support their study, on average working 16 hours a week.

When students graduate, after years of impoverishment, they have increasing levels of debt hanging over them. Many people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and women (because of the gender pay-gap) face HECS debts that can take a life-time to pay off, whilst their skills are producing profits for Australian industry. Like all consumers under capitalist production, students in our new roles as consumers of education commodities are getting thoroughly ripped off.

- James Vigus, Student Council President

5

INDIGENOUS OFFICER

Latoya Rule On Wednesday 5th of August, Flinders raised the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) flags alongside the Australian, State and University flags on the Bedford Park campus for the first time in history. As part of the wider annual student-run NAIDOC at Flinders event, the day included a range of prominent guest speakers such as National NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement award winner, Elder Tauto Sansbury, performers, stallholders and other ATSI Elders and community members.

Aboriginal students cooked traditional foods and a BBQ, which collectively raised over $500 for the Riverland Aboriginal Youth (RAY) group—a not-for-profit group that focuses on Aboriginal youth’s social and emotional well-being. In such a significant display of recognition and respect for ATSI peoples and culture, this event brought together students, staff, Vice Chancellor Professor Colin Stirling and the wider South Australian community, and allowed them to think about the broader issues that affect First Nations peoples’ education and futures.

Recognition of ATSI peoples and culture has been highlighted of late in media and community discussions, especially with the development of the federal government’s campaign to recognise ATSI peoples in the Australian constitution. For some ATSI peoples and many non-ATSI peoples, the relocation of funds away from important areas of Aboriginal peoples’ wellbeing such as land rights, health and housing, to be directed in support of such a campaign, is rational. However, for many ATSI peoples it is hard to comprehend how being included in a colonial document, that does not mention any sovereign or cultural rights that ATSI peoples continue to maintain and fight for today, can produce any practical or meaningful outcomes.

The representation of the ATSI flags, featured prominently on the hill of the main campus surrounding Ring Road, was achieved out of initial discussions had between the Indigenous Students Officer (myself) and Vice Chancellor Professor Colin Stirling. This way of bottom-up planning

is important to recognise, as the raising of the ATSI flags came from a student to the Vice Chancellor, and that the Vice Chancellor listened and acted. I commend Professor Stirling for his ability to act swiftly in a grassroots fashion by openly engaging with the student community on the issue of Aboriginal representation.

The flags were erected and Flinders was brought into a space of respect and engagement with ATSI students and staff, who may not have seen to such an extent previously.

The future of Indigenous education and representation of ATSI peoples at Flinders University is much brighter because of the trust and respect that has been further established from this event.

The issue with many programs and policies that affect ATSI peoples in Australia is the lack of proper consultation with ATSI Elders and community. You can count the number of ATSI federal government representatives on one hand and unfortunately, wider Australia looks to people such as Langton, Pearson and Mundine for answers to ATSI issues. However, wider ATSI communities across the many nations in this country do not subject themselves to the representation of these Australian leaders. The split-opinion on the Recognise campaign on constitutional recognition is a result of this lack of unity and understanding of representation by both the nonATSI and ATSI communities.

It is positive to see Flinders University unifying their community by recognising ATSI peoples, culture and sovereignty in both the symbolic way of flag raising, and also in their commitment to teaching Indigenous studies in particular degree areas. I remain hopeful that this will expand over the coming years. It’s time we listen to ATSI communities and it’s time we have proper representation of the First Nations peoples of this country.

- Latoya Rule, Indigenous Officer

INTERVIEW WITH COUNCIL: GENERAL SECRETARY

The General Secretary is responsible for all monies, maintaining financial records, minutes. They also chair the Clubs & Societies sub-committee.

Grace Hill Why did you run for Student Council?

What is the one issue you’d really like to tackle this year?

Because it’s critical for people with socialist politics to be running our student unions at a time when the government is on the attack against students. Abbott and Pyne have launched one of the biggest attacks on students in decades, in the form of fee deregulation.

The fact that it’s been prevented so far has been due to the intervention of socialists in the student unions.

Historically, when we’ve seen big attacks on students, and students have fought back, that fight has been sold out

by Labor student politicians. Take the campaign against VSU for example, which was wound up in a campaign to vote for the Labor party. Labor didn’t end up reversing the policy; they upheld it. I ran for student council because it’s critical that the politics of stifling student struggles in the hopes that Bill Shorten will be elected aren’t allowed to dominate campuses unchallenged. I’ve done well over the last two years on student council, organising campaigns against the Liberals, including the excellent protest last year when Abbott attempted to visit our campus. I’d love to be able to keep this going through FUSA in the future.

The racism students experience both on and off campus.

It’s unsurprising that students are dealing with racism, considering that racism is now the policy of both major parties in parliament. Both parties have a commitment to scapegoating Muslims for the problems people face in Australia, and have pledged to commitment to locking refugees up in concentration camps offshore.

The consequence of this is the emboldening of racist extremists and even Nazis, going under the banner of Reclaim Australia and the Australian Defense League, who have organised rallies around the country against Muslims and other migrants. It’s critical that student and worker unions take a strong stand against racism, and I am proud to say that after being elected to this position on an anti-racist platform, I was able to coordinate with the NUS State Education Officer to organise the counter-rally to the racist Reclaim Australia rally. We outnumbered the racists and sent a clear message. Unfortunately racism will continue to be an issue impacting students, but I’d like to be able to continue to tackle it head on for the rest of the year.

What kind of issues does the General Secretary handle?

How can people help out?

Lots of stuff to do with clubs! If you’re a student with a club, or have an idea to start one, get in touch. I can help with affiliations, funding issues, events, and all the boring technical stuff to do with your forms and constitution. I also campaign on other big issues which impact students.

For example, the fact that our fees are set to rise due to government plans for deregulation, and that nursing students will wait ages for placements in part due to the deregulation of university places and the State Labor government’s ‘transforming health’ plan which will see the Repatriation Hospital close.

Get in touch with me! If you’re keen to involve yourself in any of the big student campaigns this year, or if you want to talk clubs, I’d like to meet you. Send me an email, find me on Facebook, join in and help rebuild the culture of activism and leftism which this campus used to be famous for!

Best way for students to contact you?

Via email. general.secretary@flinders.edu.au

7

Politik

politics: do we even care?

We are now consumers of politics and politicking. Our politicians are in the business of branding rather than policy; and what role does the media have in how the public views the news and politics? The most important role twe have in our society is voting, and yet the rhetoric these days is that it doesn’t matter who we vote for because they’re all the same. Perhaps this is 23 years of continued growth kicking in and a general apathetic tide wiping over the nation. But politics for the sake of politics, is a product that people are no longer buying. During the 2013 election campaign I distinctly remember overhearing two grown adults talk about how compulsory voting was rubbish, and that politics didn’t affect them, so why should they have to vote.

As any good student of politics would be, I was shocked and confused at the level of ignorance this sentiment illustrated; unfortunately it wasn’t the first or last time I have heard it.

Recently a friend of mine who’d done everything in his power not to vote, by not enrolling, was forced into it because a new identification policy at betting agencies meant he needed to be enrolled in order to collect his winnings. If this is what it takes to get someone enrolled, then as a nation we are doing a pretty bad job of getting people inspired by politics.

It seems there is a serious case of voter apathy in this country at the moment, and it seems there are a number of reasons for this. When people don’t feel the pinches of a recession or aren’t faced with the consequences of politician’s actions day by day, or even in the immediate future, they tend to turn off. Secondly, it doesn’t help that recent political leaders have been anything but inspiring, adding to the growing sense of disillusionment within the electorate. Rudd’s rousing plunge into government and his strong leadership during the Global Financial Crisis showed a glimmer of hope. However, many argued that his manic behaviour in this role, and his push towards extreme centralisation of policy

and logistics, resulted in an ineffective leader. My question is, where are the Hawke’s and Whitlam’s, and Menzie’s and Deakin’s of this century? And, will it take a major recession or a systematic collapse of the system to bring them out of the woodwork?

Maybe as consumers of politics and the 24 hour media cycle, we should strive for more knowledge about how the system really works, something I’m afraid society does not encourage enough of. Here is a simple summary about the voting systems in operation when we elect federal representatives.

Preferential voting is used to select our Lower House representatives, and is also the system we use to decide the party that will hold government, otherwise identified on the green ballot paper. Just as the name suggests, preferential voting works by making voters preference all the candidates running in that seat. Once all the primary (or number one) votes are counted if one candidate does not win a 50+1% majority, then the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their second preferences (or number two) votes are distributed. This elimination of lowest ranked candidates happens until a candidate has 50+1% of the majority. Some people claim that votes can be thrown away even after casting a valid ballot. This is untrue.

One incredibly important fact about this system is that no vote is ever thrown away. Another, is that voting for a minor party or independent is NOT a waste of time, not only because you are voting for the people you most believe in, but also because your subsequent preferences are always counted should there not be a clear majority in the beginning, which is quite often the case.

Moreover, this system is sometimes called the two party system, for just this reason, as in most cases the remaining two candidates will most likely come from the two major parties.

The other voting system used to elect federal members is

proportional voting, and is used exclusively in the Upper House.

Unlike The House of Representatives where people vote for a single candidate per electorate (roughly 100,000 people), senators are elected en mass by the whole state or territory. Senators need to reach a certain quota of the vote, roughly 14.3%. Once they have attained that quota, they are elected and the votes are redistributed until the next senator is elected. Whilst that seems simple, this is where there has been a lot of contention, particularly surrounding preference flow and the election of minor and micro parties. The other issue with senate voting, is that candidates running for the senate in each state or territory is nearing 100, making for an extremely long ballot paper. Casting a vote to elect senators can be done one of two ways, and it is up to the voter on the way they prefer—either above or below the line. If you vote above the line on the ginormous piece of paper, then the individual parties decide where their preferences go.

Meaning parties will make complex deals with a lot of minority and micro parties in order to get reelected. This has resulted in candidates with as little as 0.5% of the primary vote, being elected into the senate, to represent the state for 6 years; a prime example from the 2013 election being the Motoring Enthusiast Party’s, Ricky Muir.

This is why politically minded people, including myself, believe it is so important to fill in every box below the line in order to see your preferences accurately reflected in the election of senators.

Preferences are still counted once the party or individual with the least amount of votes is eliminated and their votes reshuffled until six senators in the state are elected with at least 14.3% of the vote. Given the room for minor parties and individuals to make preference deals, more independents and minor parties are elected to the senate, and in some cases more accurately reflect the primary votes of the people. Obviously this can also have the opposite effect and result in the election of people with very minimal electoral support. If you already knew all this then you are a legend.

When talking about proportional voting in the senate it’s so important to acknowledge the power and influence of the senate

in our parliamentary system. In other Westminster systems such as Canada and Britain, their upper houses are still made up of appointed officials, who get there through tradition, friendship, and favours. Our senate is elected by the people of their state and held accountable through elections. They do important work, such as reject dangerous and unfair polices from the government of the day including university deregulation and proposed medicare co-payment. Our senate is one of the most powerful in the world and contributes more to our politics than many others.

One frequently discussed topic is the way the senate is elected and whether there should be preferential proportional voting.

This would mean that if you vote above the line instead of only indicating your first preference, you would number every box preferencing by party, rather than individual persons. This was one argument that surfaced after the 2013 election result which saw—as previously mentioned—scores of minor and micro parties elected. The question being whether this accurately represented the will of the public. These are all important discussions to have because they directly affect our democracy and the outcomes of our parliament, but first we need to be informed, which is why we need to be engaged.

We have been pretty bad consumers of politics of late and while that may be influenced by the heightened levels of instant media, and the push for a 24 hour news cycle, it does not excuse us from stepping out of the conversation all together. One of the biggest problems is our reluctance and stigma in discussing politics, as it is often said that religion, politics and money should never be discussed at the dinner table, and I say that is rubbish.

The more we talk about the political issues and the institutions of government the better, because the more informed we will become. To all those who express a certain distain to politics, love it or hate it, it is the most impactful and influential aspects of life and shapes the world we live in, so get informed!

AUTHOR Emma Cresdee, 20, Bachelor of Arts The meal Emma most craves is pork and sage roll with chilli jam from Red Door Bakery.

9

- Equality -

Shared for likes: Using violent images to spread awareness Opinions by Jonno Revanche

The all-consuming influence of the internet is inescapable.

For some of us it provides a relief, a way to escape the humdrum of our lives and to find solace in the virtual neighbourhoods of the WWW. The internet is a great place for ​sharing awareness about different issues and connecting people to new ideas. It is a safe space for us, a haven, a way for us to find like-minded people and to feel less alone. Unfortunately, the internet also has a dark side.

After Mike Brown was unjustly killed by a police officer in the US last August, the black population of Ferguson rose up in protest, saying collectively: enough is enough.

These protests were well documented online and people saw how this lead to a worldwide push of support for these protesters. It is not unusual, even in places like Gaza, Palestine, Nigeria, and Sudan, for images of conflict, and its side effects, to be readily shared onto social media.

However, awareness campaigns aren’t always positive. In a time where violence is broadcasted online, there seems to be ​a side effect which goes unnoticed; the unintentional glamourisation of gore and violence. Specifically, it’s the way people online are sharing images of hurt ​and dead bodies, such as those of the recent bombings in Turkey and the victims of ISIS attacks. When images and videos of victims of racial, trans and homophobic attacks are shared, this creates another level of concern as it contributes to the dehumanisation that they often already experience, by removing their agency and turning them into a spectacle, a statistic, something without personhood.

Sure, ​people probably think this is simply a way of spreading awareness about a topic and to shock people into engaging with it. ​However I think it’s inherently disrespectful to victims and their families to share these images without thinking critically about it. It can also be triggering or deflating for other people of that minority group, and can make people feel worthless or remind them of the lack of care that most of society shows them. This doesn’t happen exclusively to black or brown people, or to trans people, but I see it happening much more to victims from these demographics. It can certainly be said that the perception about these people leads to them being represented in a different way when we’re talking about violence against them, in a way that almost feels like pity.

I wonder if this kind of approach is productive. Yes, I think the documentation should be necessary, but only to those who need to see ​it. When I’m browsing Tumblr and see videos of trans women being chased down the street by cops, though, ​or hordes of black bodies being shared around after a massacre (such as those by Boko Haram), I wonder what the real intention is. Although this is done by a great deal of people, when white activists specifically use these images to further their own agenda, it becomes it’s own form of white savourism. ‘​Look at these poor black

people. Like and reblog my post.’ This behaviour “others” the victims, shows a lack of connection to the issues that are being touched on, and is detrimental to public perceptions about the demographic of the victim, whether black, gay or trans etc. I began to realise this is usually not often done to victims who are wealthy, cis and white. The public simply would not allow it. Compare the reactions to the Boko Haram massacre in Nigeria, to the beheading of the English solider by ISIS—it felt like the death of one soldier was treated differently to murder of 2,000.

The media has increasingly desensitised us to images of violence, especially through the news and social media.

Videos of beheadings (most recently by ISIS) can be found online, as can the footage of dismemberment, people being shot and exploded. Although this doesn’t happen 100% of the time, much of this footage is captured in places like the Middle East, creating a dangerous kind of perception about how we perceive brown bodies. It contributes to the stereotype of developing countries of being intrinsically filled with suffering and violence, as their normal way of life, as part of their identity as a developing nation. This perception fails to recognise the many beautiful elements of non-western countries that we would never be able to understand from our limited perceptions.

Cultures are stereotyped like this in western countries too, such as the association of African Americans and gang violence. And when the perpetrator of the violence is white, the media will usually label him mentally ill, while a brown or black criminal is almost always called a terrorist, regardless of whether they’ve established any links to terrorist organisations. When these labels and images are used over and over again by the media, we start to see them as ‘normal’, and develop coded attitudes to the way we see certain people.

I wonder why so many of these ​ideas are internalised within us through society, ​and why these ideas are inherently racist or transphobic. I wonder when public perception will shift away from using shock value/gore to ​ justify spreading awareness, or to defend someone, when we should instead be talking about the victims’ lives, what made them human, their amazing qualities, and what will be lost now that they are gone. By removing this element, and reducing them to a body, we’re only enforcing the same violent principles that made them at risk in the ​first place.

AUTHOR Jonno Revanche, 23, Counselling Jonno most craves Halva: a delicious, vanilla flavoured, sesame based treat that now constitutes 20% of his chemical make-up.

- Get Smart -

THE SWEET TRUTH As I sat down in a booth in Flinders Laneway last week with my Myrtle & Mae latte, life giving nectar that it is, and a sugary brownie that whispered sweet nothings and promised a surge to my flagging energy levels, I realised two things.

Firstly whoever decided a hill was a good place for the Bedford Park campus, necessitating the eventual addition of seventeen thousand steps, was probably a sadist. My lectures and tutorials were spread from the Education Building down to Humanities and all the way up to Physical Sciences and my glutes were screaming at me by the end of the day.

Secondly, I’ve never been more grateful for a sugar hit and a soft tushie seat.

(Retrospectively, those two epiphanies aren’t actually related, but valid nonetheless).

Once upon a time, I used to be completely obsessed with the ‘right’ way to eat. Sugar was ‘bad’, gluten was clearly ‘evil’ and coconut oil—well, if we weren’t swishing spoonfuls of the stuff around in our mouths twice daily (known as oil-pulling), then we may as well be handing in our hipster healthnut cards and calling it a day.’

We’ve ruined food.

On one hand, in our industrialisation of food production over the last fifty odd years we’ve managed to bastardise food to the point of non-recognition. To illustrate my point, last year I set up a little experiment.

For four weeks, I collected data from the three main supermarket catalogues—Coles, Woolies and Foodland—by counting the number of advertised whole foods compared to highly processed ‘food products’.

Consistently, around three-quarters of the average big name supermarket catalogues were devoted to junk.

On the flip side, there’s a fair chunk of the population who grab at this type of information and pelt off in the opposite direction as fast as their skinny-jean-clad legs can take them. I was one of them (the Clean Eating Crusaders that is, not the skinny leg jeans thing—shudder).

Meals became a forced part of my daily life that I no longer enjoyed. Family meals were a chore to plan, boring to prepare, and soul-destroying to eat (has anyone actually enjoyed a 100% wholewheat, fatfree, sugar-free, chia-quinoa muffin?!) And ‘Wingman and The Kids’ declared a baked goods mutiny and basically starved until I promised to use—gasp!—white flour again.

These days, I’m far more relaxed about what I eat. I no longer give a damn about the effect of diet on my physical appearance. If you can’t look past a rounded, well-padded body and see the person within, then I’m not going to waste my time on you. I tell my daughter this frequently. I tell my sons too, because one day they’ll have wives and if they pass up an incredible woman because she’s soft and cuddly I will wring their necks.

Good food is a really simple concept to grasp and yet we make it so difficult. Eat whole foods, avoid processed products, and you’re probably three-quarters of the way there. You don’t need diet books or fads or programs or celebrity diet endorsers or even activated almonds. You don’t need to do penance for every doughnut.

Mind you, those Flinders stairs probably don’t hurt either.

AUTHOR Karen Smart, ‘On the flip side of 30’, Bachelor of Arts (History/Creative Writing) Karen most craves her warm bed and a steaming cup of coffee when she wakes up.

11

OPENLY SEXUAL one. It was like the end of Carrie and Berger’s relationship; he moves on and dumps her using a post-it note. In my case, the boyfriend ended up in hospital and didn’t tell me, a sign perhaps that he “wasn’t that into me”? I didn’t find out for three days.

Was this all the fault of a TV show? Or was it despite the TV show? Are we all doomed to learn from our mistakes instead of learning it all from watching television?

When SATC first came out it was ground breaking and shocking, but that was a long time ago now. Today, we have Girls—the younger, groovier, grittier, modern version of SATC. Girls is about another bunch of privileged white girls living in New York with the standard foibles and neuroses but, as you would expect, it is edgier and more self-aware. The protagonist’s anal sex moment, for instance, felt very real. It was excruciating to watch but also beautifully understated— very different to SATC’s ‘up the butt conversation’ in front of the taxi driver with all the fun puns. I can appreciate the lack of glamour and the more interesting camera angles and editing of Girls, but I miss the beautiful, luscious, loving shots of New York, its food and apartments from SATC. I don’t know where Girls will go in the future but I doubt the cast will ever get back together in their 40’s to make two appalling, irrelevant movies that everyone should just pretend didn’t happen.

Sex and the City: take once daily? with Emma Sachsse Watching Sex And The City (SATC) got me thinking about whether watching a program about a sex columnist was good or bad for me. Did watching a fantasy foursome of friends make me feel better or worse about my life? Would binge watching it affect my own writing? Are we all comparing ourselves to our favourite guilty pleasure shows?

For me SATC was something I used to make fun of and was in the same category as rom-coms—I wouldn’t be caught dead watching such dross. But my therapist prescribed a diet of Love Actually type movies and season six of SATC where Samantha learns to love. He suggested that I had commitment issues and problems with affection. The fact that at that time I completely related to Samantha and the episode where she broke her leg to get out of holding hands in public spoke to me, may mean my therapist was right.

For the first time in my life I stayed in a bad relationship. Worse than that, I went back after I broke up with him. Twice. Just like Carrie and Big. For the first time I was trying to make something work that was totally broken. After that disaster I returned to yet another ex-boyfriend, even though that was completely screwed from the start because of a long messy history (I may have hurt his pride a little). Here’s a hint, people: don’t let one lover overhear you tell another lover how thankful you are to finally be having good sex. I may or may not have broken his heart; he certainly no longer seemed to have

Right now, I am sick and stressed and studying so I am going to stick with the slick, beautifully shot, crazily costumed fantasy of SATC and not worry if it is bad for me. I still appreciate the looking glass aspect of TV shows that can alter or focus my perspective. But for the moment, they can just be for turning off my brain, relaxing and enjoying the fun.

Good shows to binge watch whilst sick/stressed/studying: Buffy: kick arse heroine with dodgy acting skills. It is fun to watch the excruciating moments when they make Sarah Michelle Gellar do the ‘actoring’. It is even more fun to watch her kick demon arse.

Game of Thrones: who doesn’t love a bit of sex, violence and misogyny when they are grumpy with life?

True Blood: pure sexy escapism with a message about intolerance if you want to justify the pure sex on a stick that is Alexander Skarsgård (he loves playing Scrabble if you didn’t already find him hot).

The Tudors: to the outside observer it looks like a proper historical intelligent BBC drama but it is pure sexy soap opera and will not tax the brain and will make you thankful that although your exes were bad, they couldn’t cut your head off.

Bad shows to binge watch whilst sick/stressed/studying: Orange is the New Black: too interesting, exciting and dramatic to relax to. This is one I am saving for after my exams.

House of Cards: intricate, intelligent and intriguing, not things my brain needs when overwrought. Compelling but complex.

Breaking Bad: such a brilliant show but again the amount of tension is not something you need more of right now but maybe it can give you some ideas about how to support yourself once you graduate.

AUTHOR Emma Sachsse, 42, Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) Emma most craves are good health and no stress. And excellent chocolate.

- Feminism -

The Blue Hammer is for Boys The Impact of Gendered Toys Words by Kaisha Wyld

It seems almost normal now to have everything in pink and blue, even if the product is so removed from gender roles that the colour makes no sense. We have become accustomed to his and hers scissors, razors, and pens that we seem to have collectively forgotten the colour of the product rarely affects its use.

In August this year, Target America announced it would stop dividing its toy section by blue and pink, and instead display all of its toy stock together in harmony.

This is a welcome announcement for many advocates of non-binary child rearing, feminists, and parents, and it is hoped that this step will be continued by the manufacturers and other companies (even if people mistakenly think it will force children to be genderless).

You don’t need to look far to see how damaging stereotypes can be when applied to children from birth through advertising and the gendered-marketing of various products. Your newborn can already be a pretty princess or a macho superhero with the abundance of gender-stereotyped baby and children’s clothing. Although some argue this is too early to have any realistic imprinting upon a young child’s mind,

“

To Parents: The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls. It’s imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.

A lot of boys like dolls houses. They’re more human than spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They’re more exciting than dolls houses. The most important thing is to put

I argue the trends the parents set when a child is young, is what they will encourage and continue later in life when the child is more susceptible to external influences.

Toys are often marketed to either boys or girls, and often the type of toy is telling of stereotypes which, may have long term consequences on the child’s decisions. Lego and Mechano are all boys’ toys, with the recent female equivalents being more ‘pretty’ than mechanic. Baby Borns are often dressed and packaged in pink, and even Moon Sand (a type of sand you can mould and shape almost like Play Doh) is advertised differently for boys and girls (boys get the joy of building, while girls get to simply decorate).

Many will ask what real effect toy stereotyping has on children. ‘It’s only childhood’ and ‘children choose the toys they play with’, yet it seems not many people are aware that children rarely choose the majority of toys bought (and thus available) for them. A child whose relatives only buy pink toys for them will only experience whatever joys the pink toys bring, and will be unaware or unaccustomed to the joys of blue toys, which may provide different experiences. If a child has never had the experience of joining blocks together to make a replica fighter jet, they will never know if they enjoy it, and thus may never explore that field of engineering, in the schoolyard or classroom and perhaps later on at university, and thus in the workforce.

The experiences you have as a child can largely shape what you enjoy and what choices you make later in life—from their choice in career, role in relationships, to believing that having a child of one gender is inferior to the other. Providing a child only with stereotyped products because they are filed under the correctly gendered colour will narrow the potential wealth of experiences the child will become familiar with.

I welcome the neutral shelves Target America has introduced, and I only hope it will extend to cookware, beauty products, and hardware sets.

the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them.

- LEGO, 1973

AUTHOR Kaisha Wyld, 22, Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) Kaisha most craves cheesecake and accomplishment.

13

“

- Feminism -

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT Bluestocking Week 2015 Raising awareness and celebrating progress; Women in higher education.

by Eleanor Danenberg Bluestocking Week is an initiative of the National Tertiary Education Unions Women’s Action Committee and ran this year from August 10th-14th. The term ‘Bluestocking’ dates back to 18th century England, when women began organising literary societies and started to campaign for women’s access to university, and equality in the workplace and under the law.

In the 19th century, the first generation of women entered university, and not everyone was happy that women were leaving the domestic sphere behind to better educate themselves.

‘Bluestocking’ began as a derogatory term aimed at these women to dismiss their achievements, but to the horror of their opposition, these women proudly wore and embraced the title.

As Bluestocking Week celebrates women in higher education, universities all across Australia host events in recognition and celebration each year. At Flinders University this duty fell to FUSA Women’s Officer, Riana Cermak, who made this year’s Bluestocking Week celebrations bigger and better than last year’s.

On the first day, Monday the 10th, there was a ‘Women in Higher Education’ seminar, where female speakers from different faculties across Flinders University came together to share their stories. This was perfectly in keeping with the theme of this year’s Bluestocking Week, ‘Storylines’. The frankness of all the speakers made for a very inspiring event, which explored the different roles women have in our university, and also brought awareness to the struggles these women have faced to get to where they are today.

The first speaker was Christine Bennetts, a Flinders University graduate, and also the first woman in her immediate family to have a university degree. Christine said that she embraced feminism when she had her daughter; her family and friends doubted her ability to balance single motherhood and university, but she decided to prove everyone wrong and defy the notions of what women, and mothers, should and shouldn’t do. In the midst of juggling breastfeeding, babies, and books, Christine was given the wonderful opportunity to study abroad in the 10 week Washington Internship Program. She told the audience that her instant reaction was to feel selfish for straying from the ‘selfsacrificing, martyr mother’ that all women are pressured to be, but ultimately she refused to give up that facet of her life and her academic passions. Christine proved to us that through balance, we too can achieve the promise and rewards of determination; she completed Honours in International Relations, is currently a PhD Candidate, and she once completed an oral presentation with her baby daughter strapped to her back.

The second speaker that day was Romana Challans, who teaches and researches in the IT department at the Tonsley campus. As

a single mother, Romana studied IT at Flinders University 20 years ago, and she is currently completing her Honours in the same field, and is planning her PhD. Nine years ago, Romana was in a car accident that collapsed her spine and left her disabled.

As a disabled single mother, she was generally viewed as ‘nonemployable’, but despite this, Flinders saw promise in her and gave her the opportunity to work, and travel with work. Romana identifies that there is a serious problem with the male-dominated field in which she has succeeded; as an example, out of 110 students in a certain topic, only six of them are female. While young women breaking gender stereotypes in male-dominated sectors of education undoubtedly is progress, Romana viewed six women out of 110 students as a ‘heartbreaking celebration’. She asked the questions, ‘Where have we gone wrong? Where are we failing our young women and what do we do about it?’

Next was Dr Robyn Davidson, who is currently a senior lecturer in financial accounting at University of Adelaide, and she certainly has come a long way to be where she is today. Robyn failed year 12 and within a few years she ran away from home, leaving her homeless at the age of 21. The only way she could raise money was to collect and recycle cans for scrap metal money, earning about $20 for 2000 cans. Robyn began taking whatever work she could find, which took her all over Australia; she worked in shearing sheds, in a pet food factory, as a traffic/parking officer, as a teacher’s aide at a school in a remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, as a scuba diving instructor on the Great Barrier Reef, and as a bookkeeper—just to name a few!

Something about numbers stuck with Robyn, and she pursued it further as she undertook an Advanced Diploma of Accounting at TAFE in Adelaide. She then studied a Bachelor of Commerce (in Accounting and Computer Science) right here at Flinders, and was asked to do Honours, which she completed part time while she also lectured in accounting. Robyn obtained a scholarship to do a PhD, which she successfully carried out, all the while in the middle of a divorce and raising her son as a single mother. To write that Robyn has come a long way, and that her talk was inspiring, would be two huge understatements. Robyn’s final touching messages to us were: ‘Persistence pays off’, ‘Find opportunities and grab them with both hands’, ‘Build a good network of women around you’, and ‘Let people help you’ Another speaker was the Associate Professor of Law here at Flinders, Tina Dolgopol; she is originally from the United States, and grew up under the US poverty line. However, she was fortunate enough to grow up near New York City at a time when the city had a free university scheme. The experiences of Tina and her classmates at university taught her that ‘you don’t have to be a white, middle class person to succeed’. Tina developed a

L-R: Genevieve Danenberg (NUS SA”s Women’s Officer), Julia Ray (Women’s Collective Member), Riana Cermak (Women’s Officer), Eleanor Danenburg (Women’s Collective Member), Alison Taylor (NUS National Disability Officer).

passion and interest in social justice issues through witnessing the New York slums, and going to school with children of Holocaust survivors and hearing their tales. Tina has had a fascinating career which has transported her from USA to Switzerland, to Tokyo and Adelaide, and throughout this career she has been one of the Chief Prosecutors for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, and she has worked with the Law Society of South Australia on submissions concerning human rights and asylum seekers. The advice that this impressive academic gave the women of Flinders University was: ‘Don’t take no for an answer.’

Dr Tanya Lyons was the next speaker, and she revealed her infamous ties to Empire Times Magazine; she was part of the 1992 all-female editorial team who put a picture of a silhouetted erect penis on the cover of one of their issues. This resulted in so much outrage and drama that Channel 7 news reported on the ‘incident’, and the police were involved too! Over 20 years later, Tanya is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Studies at Flinders, and her area of speciality is African Political History.

Tanya originally undertook a Bachelor of Arts at Flinders, before studying Honours at Adelaide Uni; she went on to study a PhD, completing a year of study in Zimbabwe. Tanya is one of the many people proving that the Bachelor of Arts degree can result in wonderful achievements and academic notoriety. Today she is the President of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific, the Editor of the Australasian Review of African Studies, as well as a Senior Lecturer here.

The final speaker for the day was Professor Margaret Davies, who is currently an academic in the Flinders Law School.

Margaret originally studied Law and English Literature at Adelaide University, before heading overseas (over many seas actually); she completed a doctorate in critical legal theory at Sussex University (England), before working as a visiting scholar at Birkbeck College (England), UMEA University (Sweden), UBC (Canada), University of Kent (England), and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). Margaret spoke to us about how the strength of a university lies in its diversity, and her credentials and experience

prove that she knows what she’s talking about.

The next day, Tuesday the 11th, the Women’s Officer and members of the Women’s Collective volunteered their time to give out free donuts to students and staff in the name of gender equality. Of course, the donuts were blue, and they spelt out: ‘Bluestocking Week: Celebrating Women in Higher Education’*.

We also raised awareness about the Flinders University Women’s Collective, an inclusive feminist collective that aims to protect and promote the rights of female students on campus. The Women’s Collective meets for formal meetings, informal discussion groups, and even social movie nights—anyone who supports gender equality is welcome, simple as that.** Ultimately, Bluestocking Week is an especially inspiring time to be a woman in higher education. It is a reminder that the basic rights that we take for granted today, like education or the vote, once had to be fought for by brave women and allies who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Unfortunately, women across the world are still fighting for this cause today, but these women are only getting tougher and more determined; even a bullet in the head didn’t stop Malala Yousafzai from getting on her school bus.

Happy belated Bluestocking Week, and make sure you keep your eyes out for the Bluestocking Week celebrations on campus next year—they will be bigger, better, and bluer. * Yet another shoutout to Brighton Jetty Bakery for supplying these delicious baked goods! 10/10 would eat and support the cause again. ** If this interests you, check out the ‘Flinders University Women’s Collective’ page on Facebook. Email the Women’s Officer if you have any queries: womens.officer@flinders.edu.au AUTHOR Eleanor Danenberg, 20, Bachelor of Arts (High Achievers) Eleanor is constantly craving a peanut butter flavoured drink from either Gloria Jeans or San Churros…or both!

15

technologica Caffeinated Consumption

by Kevin Clark

Everything is running out.

Well, everything except Tony Abbott’s flag supplies. As always, my recommended solution to all of the world’s problems is robots and coffee.

Asteroids have large amounts of resources which we cannot currently access, however there are already private companies looking at getting there before anyone else. Planetary Resources is one such company, which already has its eyes set on three near-earth asteroids for their metals and water.

This is where the coffee comes in; engineers and programmers are machines that can turn coffee (or their preferred hot beverage—although I don’t get why anyone would not choose coffee) into finished pieces of technology.

Space Entrepreneurs are currently looking at tapping into what is developing to be a trillion dollar industry, which is revolutionising everything from materials to communications, in a bid to make money with the side benefit of helping humanity. However, being able to get even more resources from outer space is likely only going to worsen our pollution problem, unless we can find a sustainable and cheap way of sending that out there too.

Much closer to home, scientists and engineers have developed some organic logic gates—the things that make up much of the electronics, and every computer around you. They do pretty much exactly what their name promises. Give them a specific number of inputs and they give a specific output based off of a predefined rule (for example, a NOT gate simply does the opposite of whatever the input signal was).

So why is it exciting that organic logic gates can be consumed? Imagine building an organic robot—not the mildly creepy/sexy kind I talked about in a previous issue—but the kind that could be deployed into the environment for chemical and other waste processing (or

dropped into the oceans, or any number of other environments). These robots could potentially both fuel and repair themselves in the process, and when they do finally break down, they will naturally decompose. Unfortunately they are currently a long way off from this—currently you can give a very small circuit a true or a false and they can tell you what you didn’t give them, and not a whole lot else—but it is still worth getting excited over for the future.

The downside to both of these developments above, driven by our desire to consume, is that they do require energy to produce (even if they could be sustainably powered once launched).

Every time a powerful leader talks about the future they speak optimistically about great challenges we are going to have to overcome as a species.

One that consistently ranks a mention is energy.

As we continue to innovate in every field, we continue to find new and better ways of doing most things (even stick-figure art underwent a mild revolution when Randel Munroe got involved).

I too am optimistic, but for a much less lofty reason than ‘inherent greatness’ and ‘innate curiosity’. No, rather I believe the real drive for world-changing technology will come when engineers and other innovators all realise that the last chance to have access to the fuel of new ideas is close to running out.

Yes, I understand that some people might be after the fame, the money, or simply the idea that helping save the planet is kind of cool, but can any of those ideals amount to the intellectual motivation of saving an environmentally threatened cup of coffee?

AUTHOR Kevin Clark, 21, Bachelor of Engineering (Software) All Kevin secretly craves is a regular sleep-in.

The

Truth

about Fur

Warning: Graphic content regarding animal cruelty

The other day I was talking with one of my animal activist friends about the fur industry. I’d never done research into the topic before and the extent of my knowledge was as broad as having watched 101 Dalmatians when I was a kid.

She told me about how, in China, they skin animals alive. It turns out that China has no animal cruelty legislation and humanely killing animals first is not a cost effective idea. I was absolutely (and rightly) horrified by this discovery so I did what any inquisitive student would—I googled it.

In 2010 PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) released a video showing inside a fur-farm in China*. The video displayed the horrendous conditions of the farms and the tiny cages which small animals like dogs, rabbits, cats and minks are kept in. According to Animals Australia, around 85% of the world’s fur comes from animals raised in batterycages where they are deprived of any kind of quality of life and subsequently driven insane1. The animals in the video are agitated and jostling to get out—there was not enough room and no escape. This film has sound. You can hear the terrified screeching of the cats and dogs and other small animals as they try to escape—some even still had collars on, proving they’d once been beloved family pets.

The video contained footage of dogs being skinned alive. They were handled roughly and taken to a table designed for the purpose of paralysing and skinning.

The process began with paralysis; a pole coursing with electricity is shoved into the anus to paralyse the dog. The skinning then takes place, starting at their legs, moving up to the torso and eventually the head. Once the pelt was cut away, the sore, red husk of a dog is thrown into a pile of naked, writhing dogs. They then have an expected life-span of ten minutes.

Watching the video I was reminded of sheep being shorn—but the cut was much too close and they’d never be shorn again.

I tried to argue with my friend about humane alternatives—killing the animal first before taking its skin. She quickly assured me that it wasn’t a ‘cost-effective’ practice and the risk of the blood damaging the pelt was too great. I suggested giving them a lethal injection, breaking their necks or

using a gas chamber. Skinning animals alive isn’t the only process used, but it is a common one in China. Sometimes animals are gassed, clubbed to death or caught in bone-breaking traps which maim but don’t kill2. The recurring theme throughout testimonies is that skinning is easier while the animal is still warm. But really, with no animal rights legislation in place, why would a thriving business waste the money on killing humanely? Unfortunately it isn’t a China-exclusive process; countries like Norway and Poland have also been known to skin animals alive.

One thing I found that surprised me is that fur products are often mislabelled. Most people don’t want to purchase cat or dog pelts. It reminds them too much of their own loving pet and nobody wants to be Cruella De Vil. What fur-buyers may be unaware of is that much of the fur that is ‘made in China’ actually belongs to cats, dogs and rabbits. There are no labelling laws in Australia that enforce species of origin to be specified. The importation of fur from domestic dogs and cats has been illegal since 2004, but it hasn’t stopped.

The fur of domestic animals can infiltrate the market as deliberately mislabelled faux fur3. Often the fur used for the trimming of cheap garments in Australia comes from rabbits bred for their pelts4.

of Australia’s fur is imported5. It takes anywhere between 12 and 100 skins to make a fur coat. Most of these animals are bred and raised in small cages and have next to no quality of life. Next time you’re out shopping and you see fur, just remember it was probably processed in shocking conditions and ripped from an animal that still needed it. As a result of learning this, my animal activist friend has progressed to becoming a vegan. Although I haven’t taken such measures, I’ve found it increasingly confronting seeing fur or fauxfur products sold in stores.

Over 50 million animals are killed annually for their fur and more than 90%

Kayla most craves dark chocolate. Otherwise a nice hot day so she can go for a swim!

1. animalsaustralia.org/issues/fur.php 2. unleashed.org.au/change_the_world/go_faux_ yourself/fur.php 3. news.com.au/technology/environment/ australian-government-refuses-to-ban-furskinned-from-live-raccoon-dogs-for-ugg-boots/ story-e6frflp0-1226159080875 4. abc.net.au/news/2013-10-01/watson-thetrue-face-of-the-fur-trade/4991790 5. animalsaustralia.org/issues/fur.php

*To watch the PETA video mentioned in this article, visit https://youtu.be/G6gBWXZU74g

AUTHOR Kayla Gaskell, 19, Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing)

17

We See What We Want To Trigger Warning: Eating disorders If I ask you about the things you love, you’ll likely have a list. You’ll tell me that you love your boyfriend, your job, the colour blue, sunny days, roast chicken, dancing, swimming - but how long could you go on before you tell me that you love yourself? Most people go a lifetime.

When we look in the mirror we are no longer seeing what we want to see.

We are seeing more and more of what society expects us to see. We are told to look this way, to present ourselves like this, to say certain things, to be a certain person - and with each and every blow or hit to what we once were before society found us, we lose a scrap of self-worth and self-love until there is absolutely nothing left.

Take yourself back to when you were in primary school, when you were seven or eight years old, and the world hadn’t quite hit you yet. You got up each morning excited for the day, being with your friends and having fun. You relished days at the beach, without makeup, skinny jeans, or hair styling. You didn’t care what you looked like, your mum dressed you, and as far as you were concerned, life was simple. Now, think back to when you were fourteen. You’ve hit high school and you suddenly realise that kids can be mean. You realise that, for some unknown reason, your hairstyle matters. You have pimples and that’s not okay. You’re too fat, too slim, too tall, too short, you’re all wrong. It is

here, in the formative years of our life, that the damage is done. We begin to look in the mirror and see ourselves not through our own eyes, but through the eyes of the media.

When I was nearly sixteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

Somewhere in my brain, I had calculated that being 5”2 and 55 kilograms was wrong. I had seen the girls in the magazines, with their perfect flat stomachs and their thigh gaps, and I decided that I wasn’t good enough. My first school formal was coming up, and my dress made me look like a whale. I was sure.

I started counting calories, cutting back on meals, and being so conscious of every single thing that went into my mouth that I was scared of standing near people that were eating fatty foods.

The crazy part is, I was thin. And I think somewhere, deep in my mind, I knew that. But it had been drilled into me, both through backhanded comments from bullies and from the media itself that I wasn’t. I was no longer seeing what I wanted to, I was seeing myself as others wanted me to.

Unrealistic body standards that had been hammered into my psyche had taken away the beauty of my own body. I was on 300 calories a day and weighing less than 45 kilograms when I realised I needed help. I assure you, there is nothing easy about recovering from an eating disorder. And it’s not

something that can be forgotten or dismissed. Body dissatisfaction has been identified by the Mission Australia Youth Survey in 2013 as being one of the top ranked issues involving young people.

And it’s not going away. The number of people suffering from an eating disorder has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, and it is only going to get worse as the media throws images upon images of size 0 models walking the catwalk. As youths of today are bombarded with what we supposedly want to see, apparent perfection, we are quickly losing our grip on our own beauty. I’m proud to say that since my diagnosis, I have gained upwards of 12 kilograms. I will happily sit down to KFC with my friends if the situation calls for it, and I won’t pass up a second helping of apple crumble. But for others, it is not as simple.

In January 2004, Brazilian teenager and aspiring supermodel Ana Carolina Reston was told during a modelling casting call that she was ‘a little too fat’. Two and a half years later, Ana passed away from mass organ failure and septicaemia as a result of anorexia and bulimia. She was 21 years old, and weighed less than 40 kilograms. She became a cover story, but for all the wrong reasons.

Where we once looked in the mirror and saw what we wanted to, and saw who we really were, we now look in

"

We live in a culture obsessed with shrinking, where confidence is controversial. Where a women's magazine will tell you to love yourself for who you are then on the very next page give you 16 sure-fire ways to lose that extra weight. When did it suddenly become more attractive to have less of yourself?

"

AUTHOR Cass Teunissen, 18, Bachelor of Law & Legal Practices & Business (Advanced Leadership) Cass most craves dinner and a sneaky glass of wine at the local pub with her partner who lives in England!

ARTIST Amber Hall

the mirror and see ourselves as a means to impress somebody else. We live in a culture obsessed with shrinking, where confidence is controversial. Where a women’s magazine will tell you to love yourself for who you are then on the very next page give you 16 sure-fire ways to lose that extra weight. When did it suddenly become more attractive to have less of yourself?

When did the size of our waist suddenly become proportionate to the size of our worth? We cannot continue to let what others think about us define who we are.

And it’s time to change.

There’s no certain path to self-confidence.

I can’t give you a step-by-step guide. But the key to loving yourself does not come from those around you, it comes from deep within yourself. I take you back to the list of things you love, and how you were not on that list. I encourage you to take the time to rendezvous with yourself in the mirror. Look at yourself. Look yourself in the eye and say ‘I love you’. Do it every

night, over and over, no matter how awkward and strange it feels. Pause for a second and say, out loud, the things that are beautiful about you—the little things.

And eventually, you’ll once more see what you want to, and you will be happy. You will mean it when you say ‘I love you’.

Marilyn Monroe once said ‘Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person that you are’. If you go about your everyday life acting in order to impress those around you, you will lose yourself. It is not your responsibility to be beautiful for others.

You are not alive for that purpose. Your existence is not about how desirable others find you. It’s time for us all to take a step back, and look in the mirror, and to start doing things for ourselves. This morning I put on eyeliner and lipstick for myself. I dyed my hair, for myself. I choose to be beautiful, for myself, and I choose for that beauty to satisfy me and nobody else. If you distance yourself from the negativity of what society wants to see, beautiful things

can happen. You can take it a step further and pay it forward. Look at those around you and see their beauty too—see that that lady is totally rocking that skirt. See that your mum has the prettiest eyes. When you start seeing everyone as beautiful, at some point you realise that you’re everyone too. It’s time to look in the mirror and see what we want to, and love it. *Eds note! If you need help, please contact: Eating Disorders Association of South Australia (EDASA): Email: info@eatingdisorderssa.org.au Website: edasa.org.au Butterfly National Support Line & Web Counselling Service: Phone: 1800 ED HOPE / 1800 33 4673 Website: thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/webcounselling Lifeline Australia: Phone: 13 11 14

19

E-Books... by any other name would smell as sweet of cultural and social connections, it provides human interaction when deciding on a book, and it allows for casual browsing with like-minded individuals—something that you just cannot do in an online setting. Bookstores also often hold events like book clubs and meet and greets with authors. To see these things disappear is to see a little piece of our cultural heritage disappear.

Browsing in a bookstore is an important part of the book-buying and book-reading process and, although it can be cheaper and more convenient to turn to the internet, local bookstores are needed to bring the personal element back to reading. There is something about a book that just cannot be matched by an electronic device. I believe that the physical relationship you develop with a text is important and, even though this concept sounds a little strange, an actual book allows for a certain level of interaction between yourself and the novel. You can turn the pages, quickly thumb through the novel until you find a certain page that you might be looking for, you can breathe in the smell of the book, you can stain the pages with your tears, and throw it in frustration—all things that you cannot do when using an e-reader. You become detached from the text—the process of reading can become sterile and monotonous. Sharing eBooks is also not easy, and there is just something about being able to write an inscription in the front cover as you gift a book to a loved one that cannot be matched in a digital world.

The days of local bookstores are dying. In fact some would go as far as to even say that they are dead; but I am not quite ready to make that statement just yet. The way we consume literature in modern society has changed rapidly, particularly over the last 20 years. The introduction of the e-reader, and wide access to internet shopping through sites such as Book Depository and Amazon, has completely changed the game and, unfortunately, this leaves little room for the independent bookstore.

Recently, Amazon released a statement saying that the sales of Kindle eBooks are outnumbering the sales of printed books, and it is not that difficult to see why. E-Books can be downloaded instantaneously, are cheap and something like a Kindle has the potential to store hundreds of books on one device. It has only been five years since Amazon first released the Kindle (in the UK), but in that short amount of time, sales have skyrocketed as people are embracing the technology in place of the more traditional paperback.

According to the Booksellers Association, a UK based organisation, ‘the number of independent booksellers fell to 1,094 by the end of 2011, down from 1,159 in 2010 and 1,289 in 2009’. Unfortunately, these numbers keep getting smaller and smaller, both in the UK as well as around the world. But is there something to be said for the local bookshop? A bookshop provides more than just a place to buy books. It can be a place

In my bedroom alone, I have three fairly large bookcases, all of which are overflowing with books from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare and everything in between. They are a source of comfort, they lift me up when I’m feeling down, they represent every phase and every aspect of my life so far, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. When I was younger I wanted my own personal library, and I am well on the way to achieving this; but wouldn’t it be simpler if I could just access these books on an e-reader, all in one place, easy to find, easy to access? Probably. My life would be a little less cluttered, a little less expensive, but a lot less fun. My books are a part of who I am and, at least for now, while I can still buy physical copies of novels from my local bookstore, I’m going to keep collecting and adding to my treasure trove of memories that books have provided.

AUTHOR Sarah Barrett, 20, Bachelor of Teaching (Secondary) and Bachelor of Arts The food Sarah most craves is sweet potato fries.

ARTWORK Sheydin Dew

Consumer culture When I hear the word ‘consumption’, I immediately think of alcohol. Alcohol is, however, far from the only thing that humans consume.

In society today, it is very easy to obtain what we desire in a food and beverage sense. When I was a kid I remember hardly ever having take-away food. Take-out was reserved for special occasions—like birthdays—and nothing else. Having dessert was also a rarity; a special treat when a friend was around for dinner on a weekend. Now however, every night when I work with my friend, we go to Maccas on the way home. Even just the other day, on the way to my house to make stir fry for dinner, we called past Maccas to pick up some fries for the five minute car ride.

For myself and many of my friends, fast food is something that we regularly have and it is exceptionally easy to get a hold of. A part of this is because we have the money to pay for it ourselves, and the other part is because we are no longer kids, so we get to decide what we eat. We also have our own means of transportation so we don’t have to rely on our parents when we want to get something. However, the other reason why ease of access is so simple is because fast food is more available and less frowned upon. Fast food is no longer seen as the rare treat of birthdays, although these businesses now have to evolve to keep up with the health craze that has become so popular.

In my opinion, fast food isn’t the only food industry to have expanded. In general, people appear to eat out more and eat in, as a family, less. When I was younger, my family always had dinner together at 6:30pm every night. Even now, with two of my brothers having moved out of home and the third currently in Canada, my parents and I sit down at the table to have dinner together when we can. Due to the nature of my work and my dad’s State Emergency Service participation, however, this doesn’t happen very often. When one of us isn’t going to be home for dinner, it is easier to just say ‘we’re doing help yourselves for dinner tonight, so eat whenever you want’. This prevents food being made that will inevitably be thrown out since no one is there to eat it, which, ironically, happens every night I’m at work.

Hospitality is an industry built on consumption and while eating is a fundamental human function, it is also a commodity. We sell people what they need to live and charge them more money for it depending on the restaurant’s reputation. In going to restaurants, we consume not only the food and drink available, but also the service of the people who work there and we measure the restaurant’s worth by the quality of its food and its staff. Despite being made for consumption, however, every night at work I see bucket loads of food thrown away, both off of customer’s plates and from the kitchen. The contradiction of our world is that we have a consumer culture—not just in food, but with fashion, brands, and media as well—and yet, at the same time, we also live in a throwaway society. We do not keep our leftovers or mend our broken items; we simply throw them away and get new ones.

One thing I find that doesn’t get thrown out at work very often, however, is alcohol. People would rather throw out the rest of their $40 seafood dish (our most expensive meal) than the rest of their $34 bottle of wine (our cheapest wine). At the restaurant I work at, and many others like it, it’s quite rare to get a table that comes in and doesn’t have at least one alcoholic beverage.

Drinking goes hand in hand with going out for lunch or dinner, and even more so when it’s fine dining. This isn’t quite so unusual when you consider that one of the most well-known aspects of

Australian life is its drinking culture. In Australia, unless you are the designated driver, you are often given questioning looks if you don’t drink. There is an unspoken agreement that when a group of people get together, either to go out or to go to someone’s house, drinking will be involved. We specify on invitations whether alcohol will be provided or you must bring your own, and when you go to a restaurant you will always be given a wine list. Alcohol is everywhere and there is always pressure to drink and keep up with the group, or risk being labelled as a ‘pussy’ or a ‘lightweight’.

In our society we consume everything, not just in the literal sense, but also in the passive sense. We take in everything we see and read, and incorporate it into our daily life, often without even being aware of it. This consumption culture isn’t always a bad thing though, as it can help us to stay up to date with what’s going on in the world around us. Sometimes, however, we need to learn when to stop and just appreciate things without having to have another drink, or own the latest technology, or wear the latest fashion. Sometimes we need to stop worrying about what everyone else is consuming and just consume life. We need to stop filling ourselves with alcohol and fill ourselves with the knowledge of the world. But sometimes, just sometimes, we need to consume a good meal and delicious beverage to go with it.

AUTHOR Tamsin Alexander, 20, Bachelor of Behavioural Science The drink Tamsin most craves is Tea, lots of hot tea but a side of Maccas hashbrowns wouldn’t hurt either.

ARTWORK Sheydin Dew

21

ORDINARY COUNCIL

JACK HARRISON

#STOPLOMBORG It was fantastic to see students and staff united on Thursday 6th August to protest the proposed ‘Climate Consensus Centre’ linked to the infamous Danish academic Bjørn Lomborg. There was a great turnout and we heard from a range of speakers, from parliamentarians to Flinders alumni Secretary of SA Unions Joe Szakacs, to academic staff including Fran Baum, all talking about the negative repercussions Flinders University, the students and staff themselves will see, if the university goes ahead and accepts the ‘centre’.

So if you didn’t attend the protest, you’re probably wondering what’s with all the who-ha? Who is this Lomborg guy anyway? And what’s up with this centre?

Well, Lomborg isn’t the kind of person you would want at your university. He is quite controversial for a number of reasons including his questionable academic integrity; with literature including essays written by scientists, published regarding his work’s factual incorrectness and the low use of his work in other reputable academic papers. His work centers around the idea that climate change is real,

but that it’s not a big deal, and we should be focusing on other things instead, such as foreign aid. Although this idea is controversial in itself, that is not the main objection by students, staff, FUSA and the State Government. The main concern these groups have is the lack of due process the university has engaged in with staff and students and what appears as deliberate secrecy and avoidance of scrutiny. Furthermore, the fact that Lomborg does not have degrees in the areas of environment or science, adds to his questionability as an individual who can legitimately and competently comment and research on climate change.

Despite Lomborg’s incredibly poor academic standing, this has not stopped the Abbott government offering $4 million to any university in Australia that will take him and his ideas, in the form of a ‘Climate Consensus Centre’. This centre previously operated in Copenhagen but had its funding cut by the Danish government, and now operates in the USA with unknown donors keeping it afloat.

Abbott and Pyne’s attempt to set up the centre in Australia, began with the University of Western Australia accepting the federal government’s money. There was enormous backlash from staff, students and the public, that UWA gave the money back to the government and refused to house the centre.

You might be thinking, ‘yeah yeah so what if Flinders takes

this guy? What has this got to do with me?’

The answer is: this could have negative affects on this university, on you, and on your degree and your employability post graduation.

Flinders faces having its reputation tarnished, by taking the money and everything else that comes with it. This could include Lomborg being appointed as an adjunct professor here, which considering his academic standing would be laughable and an obviously politically based appointment. It could also include a rumored contribution from Flinders of $9 million presumably to build the thing and to pay for the proposed speaking tour. It does not take a genius to realise having Lomborg speak as a member of Flinders staff, in front of Flinders logos, speaking on a topic he has no training in, with his arguments thoroughly discredited, is going to make our fine university a laughing stock. Do you think people are going to take your degree seriously if it is from a university so quick and willing to appoint staff regardless of their academic standing?

Now you may have noticed I used a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’.

I wish I didn’t have to.

At the time of writing, the conduct of the university in dealing with this matter has been absolutely disgraceful.

There has been near zero transparency in relation to this matter and next to no consultation with staff and students.

The only consultation that has occurred was very limited and only occurred after it was revealed by the media that the university had contacted the government for more information about the centre.

The handling of this by the university resembles that of a stealth operation. They have cunningly avoided any form of scrutiny by avoiding bodies within the university, such as the academic senate (whose job is to ‘advise Council on the University’s academic activities, including: the quality and integrity of its academic programs and operations’) and shutting down debate at University Council (the governing body of the university). The obvious conclusion, without further information, is that this is politically motivated and

has no legs to stand on academically, which is why it has been treated in such a way.

Currently the university denies there will be a centre or even any research. If that is so, what will this collaboration look like?

If this is merely a scare campaign by ‘left wing students’ and based on ideological grounds, then why not open this up? Why be so secretive? Why not tell the university what has been discussed with the federal government?

VC Colin Stirling said ‘The role of the academy is not to suppress or evade controversial issues; rather we must tackle them directly through critical analysis, rigorous debate and thought leadership.’ If this is so, why is the university not dealing with the matter in this way? If Colin and other faceless university officials are so confident of this is then open up the process. A blog run by the VC Colin Stirling and the DVCA Andrew Parkin talking to an empty lecture theatre and limited consultation with hand picked schools is not transparency and Flinders’ students and staff deserve better.

Consultation with hand picked school bureaucracy is not brave and research and grants based on misinformation and Abbott’s political agenda are not experimenting; it is borderline propaganda for a government blatantly in denial of climate change.

To be clear, this is not about censorship or the fact that Lomborg does not have mainstream views on climate change. This is about the concern of staff and students that the university is taking money from the government that is pushing a political agenda and skipping all the scrutiny and proper process that normally occur.

We should all endeavor to make Flinders the best university it can be, through protests and taking the fight to the administration itself, by making the case in committees and meetings. Let us show the university administration that we all value academic integrity, we all value attending a university with a great reputation, and we would all be proud to be a part of a university that is #BjornFree.

- Jack Harrison, NUS Delegate, Ordinary Council Member

23

VO Q.

1. Lasagne

2. Korfball; probably watching a Eurpoean game

1.IF YOU HAD TO EAT ONE MEAL/FOOD FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULD IT BE? 2. YOU CAN’T SLEEP, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? 3. FIRST OBSESSIVE CRUSH? 4. FAVOURITE CONDIMENT OR CONDIMENT COMBO? 5. WHAT WOULD YOU TRADE YOUR SOUL FOR? 6.KEEP CALM AND...?

1. Ice cream 2. Pug dogs

3. Boy bands

3. SpongeBob and Patrick

4. Chicken salt/lemon pepper seasoning

4. Nutella

5. A korfball hoodie 6. Play korfball

Alicia

(bachelor of science)

5. A pug dog 6. Pub crawl

Celeste

(bachelor of health sciences)

1. Schnitzel with creamy garlic prawn sauce

2. McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy 3. McDreamy

4. Garlic aioli

5. Everlasting money 6. Watch Netflix

anthony

(bachelor of laws and legal practice)

2. All the things I haven’t done in life 3. Addiction to Vegemite when I was three years old 4. Pancakes with whipped cream, strawberry jam, lemon juice, sugar, golden syrup and ice cream 5. Money

6. Spike away

Stephanie

(bachelor of education and bachelor of arts)

1. Lasagne

pop

X O 1. Chicken parmy and potato bake

2. My inability to sleep 3. Batman

4. Peanut butter and honey/cheese

1. Chicken nuggets 2. Ultimate frisbee

5. The chance to become Dr Manhatten

3. Ultimate frisbee

6. Like us on Facebook: ‘Bachelor of Health Sciences Student Association’

5. Mad hucks

Ashlee

(bachelor of health sciences)

4. Salt/O’Reilly

6. Play ultimate frisbee

Scary

(bachelor of education) 25

ROMANA CHALLANS Romana Challans is one of the hidden gems within Flinders University. Both a member of teaching staff within the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics and current student of the uni, she was voted by ET readers as one of the best teachers our university has to offer.

Jess Nicole sat down with Romana in her quaint, brightly decorated office to get an insight into the world of this dedicated, fun-loving and down to earth academic.

Romana Challans is the Associate Lecturer for the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics based at the Tonsley campus and has been working here for over four years. Just prior to commencing her role, she worked alongside an old uni friend, Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen, on a research project called The Serval Project, a humanitarian endeavour focusing on making mobile telecommunications available within remote and rural communities.

Two years in, Romana was approached by Professor John Roddick (Dean of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics) who offered her a teaching role within the university.

Flinders University was not unfamiliar territory for Romana, however, as she had studied here 20 years ago—originally doing Philosophy and English but then transferring into IT. Oddly enough, she says, Philosophy and English were ‘great lead ins’, especially the former. She says that critical thinking and ethics is important in IT and she tries to teach her students the necessary role they play when using technology. During her uni years, Romana co-founded a not-for-profit organisation that is still running called ITShare SA. It involves collecting, recycling, refurbishing and donating unwanted

Following her studies she worked at the software centre Motorola, training software engineers for three years. Romana also reflects on her previous role as a Psychology Practice Manager which she says she ‘kind of fell into while updating [a friend’s] computer system as a favour.’ Romana worked in freelance web development and systems development, which she describes as ‘great fun’, but something that was growing and she ‘didn’t want to do any more growth’. ‘I didn’t want to manage people in that way, I didn’t want to have a business as such.’ During this time, Romana explains that some problems had arose as part of her disability so when Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen asked her to return to Flinders for The Serval Project, she thought ‘go play at the uni? That sounds like fun.’ So she did.

Romana is also a student here at Flinders University, currently wrapping up her Honours in IT. Her thesis focused on developing a social media tool that could train users how to use social media in a way that doesn’t get them in trouble. This is what is called ‘machine learning’. In teaching social networks and security, Romana is aware of the problems that can arise from using social media and a lot of the time these problems are due to ‘ignorance in how these things are used.’ She notes that people forget the huge element of permanency surrounding social networks and that these networks own any data that is uploaded by its users. In understanding these risks, Romana says people can avoid losing their jobs or costing their companies business.

When speaking with Romana, it is evident her students are offered a range of exciting opportunities. Last semester, Romana taught a new topic surrounding cyber security, which involved teams battling it out through hacking each other’s computer systems. Romana aims to teach her students the way she wanted to be taught. She says she doesn’t believe in ‘lectures as lectures’; ‘if you drone on to your students—I’ve done it a few times—and I hated it and they hated it.’ Allowing for different learning styles is key to reaching students individually, Romana explains. She caters to audio and visually inclined students as well as those who learn through thinking and talking about how things work. Ruthless in her endeavour to promote

participation and include all students and their learning preferences, Romana jokes that she ‘will do it in mime if [she] has to.’

Romana wants the best for her students and so it comes as no surprise that one of the most difficult parts of her job is when a student cheats. She says the ‘worst one is accidental plagiarism where one has copied another and you can’t discern who copied who. So you know somebody’s innocent.’ Seeing a student waste all their efforts and throwing it away for something like cheating is ‘so disappointing’ Romana says gravely. ‘We don’t want to lose any students. We want them to do well.’ She explains

“ I DON’T KNOW MANY JOBS WHERE YOU GET TO WORK IN IMAGINATION ALL DAY AND ACTUALLY CREATING IT…THAT’S THE MOST EXCITING THING FOR ME. WE DREAM IT AND WE BUILD IT.

“

hardware from industries and individuals so that low-income individuals in the community can have access to computing. ‘We have a great digital divide’ Romana articulates, where ‘people don’t always have as much money to get what they need…why put [hardware] in landfill when other people can use it?’.

She was involved in this organisation for 11 years.

that the teaching staff tend to pick up on any issues and try to reach out to students needing help however every now and then ‘you lose account of one or two people because they’re lazy or just under a lot of pressure.’ Romana makes a point of saying that you can’t pre-judge, and that students cheat for a number of reasons so it’s about keeping an open mind and seeing if there’s a way out. However, in the end, Romana states that ‘there are guidelines and we will abide by [them]’. As such, Romana wishes that students knew that her door is always open and that

27

she is approachable. ‘I’m here to talk to…when I say my door is open, physically sometimes it’s closed, but it’s not.’ She says it’s important that students come to her if they’re feeling adrift because it opens up a dialogue about the industry, where it’s going and conversations that may ‘trigger something that they’re interested in’ or ‘something that’s not being covered here that they’re really passionate about.’

It’s hard to give Romana a compliment without a modest response and passing the flattery onto other staff as well. In being voted Best Teacher, she says ‘I may have been voted but it’s actually a prize for everybody here. All the admin staff who get everything ready, all the way down to the cleaners who make things looks good, the security guards who keep the equipment safe, the IT guys and my colleagues who give me great advice.’ She says that she has amazing people behind her and that she’s ‘just the bit that [students] see at the lecture’.

Another important aspect, Romana notes, is that there is no ‘hierarchical nonsense’ since everybody she works with is dedicated to doing their best for their students and the passion that comes from them is inspiring and makes her ‘want to do better as well.’

Romana’s love of IT and technology is evident throughout our conversation—‘I work in the field of dreams.’ IT is about ‘imagining what could be, and creating it’, Romana says. ‘I don’t know many jobs where you get to work in imagination all day and actually creating it…that’s the most exciting thing for me. We dream it and we build it.’ While IT is mostly a male dominated industry, Romana says ‘I don’t like saying that we should have more women and

ROMANA IS A SELF-CONFESSED NERD AND TEA-LOVER. SHE SAYS HER TEA IS HOW SHE GETS PEOPLE HOOKED. SIPPING A VANILLA POD AND CINNAMON BLEND , SHE TELLS ME HER REAL CONFESSION IS THAT SHE’S ‘HOPELESS WITH FASHION’ BUT HER KIDS ARE HER FASHION GURUS.

less men, that’s ridiculous, I think everybody who likes it should do it because it’s great fun…I can’t think of a better topic.’ When asked about her love of technology and technological devices, Romana points to her Apple watch fixed neatly onto her wrist as an example of her ‘treating [herself] as an experiment for the internet of things.’ She elaborates that she wants to know what it’s like to be a person that lives with such devices and how viable they are and the issues that may arise. Given the prevalence of technology nowadays, which Romana says is a ‘wonderful, exciting tool’ that doesn’t necessarily have an ‘evil or good side’, one of her concerns is that we implement technology because we can, without thinking about the consequences or pitfalls.

When asked about her disability, Romana says she is ‘quite happy to demystify the whole disability thing’.

Due to a car accident 9 years ago, Romana’s spine is collapsing and is trapping her sciatic nerve, which causes her chronic pain. While she is still able to walk, it is only in small amounts and she saves that for when she is home with her children. Romana openly chats about her condition and says her students’ responses are ‘funny to watch’ at times, because they will watch her legs and say ‘I’m certain her leg moved. I know I saw it!’ She says with a smile that her ‘chariot reclines and zooms all over the uni…students used to beg for rides up the hill’ and in response she would say ‘Yeah, walkers!’ ‘Who’s superior now?’.

The Tonsley campus itself is incredibly disability friendly with open, flat spaces, an abundance of disability toilets, lifts that open on both sides, alarms

for both the hearing and vision impaired, and even a wheelchair chair charging room. ‘I would say this is probably the most disability friendly campus or building possibly in the Southern Hemisphere.’

Romana was part of the design committee for the construction of Tonsley and states that while there wasn’t a specific demand for disability accessibility, the Dean and Faculty showed a clear will to develop ‘something that would accommodate for every type of student’ and that she was ‘blown away by that will to create this place.’ ‘They didn’t see why it should be limited to able-bodied students. If you’ve got a will and a brain and an imagination, you’re welcome,’ says Romana of the Tonsley campus.

One downside, however, is the Flinders University’s loop bus that is offered free of charge to students travelling to and from the Tonsley to Bedford Park campuses. Unfortunately, the loop bus is not disability friendly which comes as a huge inconvenience and means that students and staff who have disabilities must arrange outside transport means to suit their needs. This means that they must travel across South Road, sometimes at night, in the rain and often through busy and dangerous traffic, to get to public transport. Even then, public transport is still unreliable and infrequent so it would be preferable that the loop bus be accessible to those with disabilities, therefore preventing them from facing the daunting process of crossing South Road and providing them with the opportunity to catch multiple, differently routed buses from Bedford Park.

Between studying, working, having a family and kindly fixing students’ laptops, Romana lists the ukulele as a one of her favourite pastimes. She is also trying to learn the mandolin but her ‘fingers hate it’ and it’s been on the back burner while she finishes her honours. On top of musical instruments, Romana takes delight in quilting, knitting, colouring in (a form of meditation for her) and her favourite sci fi show is Babylon Five—‘I will stand by that until my death, or their death, if [someone] argues with me.’ She also appears to be an avid Skyrim fan, citing that she recently found herself being chased by a butterfly in-game and that ‘it attacked me, I don’t care what anyone says, that blue butterfly attacks so you have to watch that sucker…it’s vicious…it will do you.’ When asked about her social life, Romana slowly repeats the words back to me in the form of a question. She says that she’s ‘heard of those things’ and wonders what they’re like but sometimes she thinks she needs ‘to pin a badge on that says Hi, my name is Mum.’ That said, her friends are very patient and she looks forward to exploring her obscure taste in music with them, planning to see the opera in the near future.

If this isn’t enough, Romana excitedly lets onto her desire to continue studying after her honours—‘the funny thing is, I’ve the urge to keep studying! I want to do a Dip Ed and I’m thinking about doing my PhD…God! Learning is exciting!’ In studying, Romana says that her ‘students win’ because the more she learns the more her students do and in understanding the pressures of being a student, it makes her a better and more informed teacher.

‘Studying is something more teachers should do even if they don’t’ need to. It’s really good for students

to work with us.’ She elaborates that students can then see their teachers as one them—‘we eat, we get dressed, we have the same weird ideas, hopes and fears and watch the same crappy sci fi shows as most students.’ That said, however, Romana says chuckling that she ‘tends to use more nerd references that most of [her] students.’

INTERVIEWEE Romana Challans Romana most craves tea and books. Tea, she says, is soothing and uplifting. The ceremony involved is simply boiling a kettle and filling a pot carefully with leaves—a feeling of alchemy and a reach into another, calmer world. The best books of all, she says, are cherished friends with the comfortable smell; new volumes that smell like potential; audiobooks with amazing voices and even ebooks. She says the language is what beckons like a siren.

HD

29

#Chomppergate

The Rise and Fall of Bronwyn Bishop

Its 2006, late on a Friday afternoon, Bronwyn Bishop has just packed her bags and is leaving for a lovely trip to attend her good friend, Sophie Mirabella’s, wedding. No, sorry, she is going for committee chair business, or was it a Liberal party fundraiser?

I am sure it has not failed to escape anyone’s notice the increase in helicopter memes circulating social media; these lovely memes are proudly brought to you by Kate Ellis; not directly of course. Kate Ellis, former committee member for family and human service, and minister in the Rudd/Gillard governments, challenged the claims Bronwyn Bishop had made, including, attending a suspicious committee meeting in Albany and why she used a helicopter to travel there. I am sure many of you remember a few years ago when former Speaker of the House, Peter Slipper, abused his travel expenses account on exotic taxi trips. The situation with Bishop is similar, her trip or trips racked up a glorious $5000 that she claimed on official travel expenses, and that is arguably just the tip of the iceberg. As a tax payer, I do not pay tax and subsidise parliamentary travel expenses so they can attend social events.

I do not subsidise travel expenses at the detriment of children’s ability to access education and healthcare. Furthermore, in no scenario is a helicopter a legitimate mode of transport to claim on travel expenses when the journey is only 90 minutes long and is accessible by car, train, bus or taxi; all used by other MPs at some point.

Other members of parliament attended Mirabella’s wedding, including Tony Abbott, and some of them used official means of transportation. However, these politicians later repaid their claimed expenditure. The subsidy on travel expenses is a scheme intended to make the accessibility to Parliament and Canberra equal to all members of parliament whether they live in regional Queensland or Western Australia. It is to cover the cost of travelling from their homes to Canberra and from their residencies in Canberra to sitting times.

The Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal says that MPs may also claim travel for official business only for ‘properly constituted meetings’. In other words, it strictly excludes taxpayers picking up the cab fare for their social outings. Bishop had claimed that her

visit to Albury was a part of official business as the chair of the committee for family and that children’s services and the wedding merely coincided with business that she had in the area. Were there a meeting, there would have been some kind of notes or minutes, claimed Ellis. Ellis went on to say that she did ‘not recall the Speaker getting any approval for travel [to Albury and she] struggle[s] to think of any reason why the chair would need to be there. But if she did, it will or, rather, should be recorded very clearly in black and white.’ When asked later to provide minutes on the meetings she supposedly attended, Bishop came up blank.

Despite Bishop’s later apology for palming the bill for her trip over to the average joe, her and her counterpart, Peter Slipper, demonstrate a trend that politicians can do what they like with taxpayer dollars until they get pulled up.

Regardless of whether Bishop’s story is true, the underlying problem is that a helicopter, unless being airlifted to a hospital from a mountain or on some kind of Black Ops mission, is not a reasonable form of transportation and should not therefore be claimable, unless you’re superhero Clive Palmer—in which case you have your own. Hundreds of families a year do the Melbourne to Canberra or Albury drive, usually in a car bustling with siblings that have been cramped in there for way too long, or they choose to fly by plane, with similar proximity issues. Not to mention the lovely Malcom Turnbull’s recent adventures on the V-line train which he regularly tweets and documents. There are other, more functional, modes of transportation that are cheaper and better for the environment. Regardless of their political leanings, politicians should always take the cheapest and most environmentally friendly form of transportation if they intend to claim it on travel expenses, given that it is being paid for by taxpayers. The ability for politicians to claim travel expenses for official business is intended to help them service the state, not for them to take a helicopter anywhere, let alone a wedding.

At the heart of this issue is that the federal government released a budget paper last year that aimed to de-regulate universities, make people pay more for basic healthcare and spent less on infrastructure—minus the NT. They claimed there was a budget emergency and we didn’t have enough money to fund education, healthcare or infrastructure, but they still found money to go on holidays at the expense of the people. Money meant for education, hospitals and roads is being abused while the government tries to deregulate universities and introduce a gp co-payment, taking futures away from thousands of children, so that they, politicians, can arrive in style. Many university students struggle to make ends meet, the government does try its best to make it easier, but getting sick is a student’s worse nightmare in the middle of the semester, and the prospect of having to pay to see a doctor and also take time off makes the whole scenario a lot less inviting.

A week before Bishop’s demise, Clive Palmer and Andrew Wilkie, cross-bench MP’s in the House, proposed putting forward a no confidence vote against the Speaker, if she did not resign before Parliament resumed. When Clive Palmer, who drives a bright red Ferrari to parliament, thinks that Bishop’s trips were to the point of excess, it is more than somewhat significant, given Palmers own collection of extravagance. When Peter Slipper was being investigated for misuse of travel expenses he resigned quite quickly, the ALP were also very quick to apologise to the Australian people and throw Slipper ‘under a bus’. That was not the case for Bishop; she remained at her post for much longer than some saw acceptable and didn’t receive the legal ramifications that Slipper did despite the Opposition calling for it.

Irrelevant of the distaste that some Coalition members showed towards her actions, there were those who saw that nothing was wrong, and many of them think that her later resignation was a mistake, including Mr Abbott himself. Bronwyn Bishop’s choice to take a helicopter anywhere is an abuse of travel expenses and as university students and people who get sick, we should not have had a speaker who is biased and mediocre at best, and someone abusing their parliamentary privileges. Much to Clive Palmer’s credit he is very keen to keep on top of those who break the rules, or maybe just those who pose a threat to his street cred as parliament’s gazillionaire.

All in all there are lots of politicians who do it right, (my mancrush Malcolm Turnbull among them), but there are those that take their liberties to the point of excess. Those that take it too far are ruining the relationship that many politicians before them tried to build with Australian taxpayers. While both sides of parliament have acknowledged that the overuse of the travel expenses allowance is an issue, the public is left to wonder who will propose a way to prohibit it when no one takes the Greens seriously. To her credit, Bishop’s resignation was a good decision and could not have come sooner, three weeks after the issue surfaced, but in that time Abbott was rather reluctant to do anything about it and it would seem from their PDA’s post resignation, there are no hard feelings. All that’s left now is to see whether travel expenses with take town the next Speaker, Tony Smith.

AUTHOR Hannah Beadle, 20, Bachelor of Arts The meal Hannah most craves is Laksa.

This level of unnecessary consumption by politicians is one of the reasons why people don’t like them in the first place and why there is no leniency for them. The ones doing it wrong ruin it for the rest of them doing it right. Abbott’s choice to introduce these harsh budget-cutting measures are arguably justified; deregulation would mean that universities would not need to rely so heavily on federal funding and hence would have more money for grants and infrastructure. The flip side is that as universities charge more, fewer and fewer people would have access to higher education. I don’t know about those of you reading, but I already struggle to pay for my degree and want to live in a world with more educated people, not fewer. It is beneficial for everyone to have a society that is educated, which is why universities originally got federal funding. To take away that funding is to take away people’s chance at a future and then where will we get our doctors when our students are sick and can’t even pay to go to university in the first place?

31

Adam Goodes: a leader for a team, a leader for the nation Adam Goodes finds himself at the heart of an intense social debate. His actions have proven extremely controversial and in some cases, very divisive. Comments are issuing forth from all angles. All these opinions have only obscured the core of the debate. The booing of Goodes at football games recently reached a fever pitch that saw him sit out a game amid fears we might have seen the last of him.

It was only after the crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground united in a nearly unprecedented show of support that Goodes was convinced to return the next week.

There is a lot of history to this recent turbulence. The moment that most point to as the beginning of these events came on May 24th 2013, in the AFL’s Indigenous Round. Goodes’ team, the Sydney Swans, were leading Collingwood by a significant margin late in the final quarter. Goodes had played an excellent game. He ran close to the boundary line, stopped, and turned back. Something was wrong. He was pointing into the crowd and had attracted the attention of a nearby security guard. A young Collingwood fan was ejected from the MCG. The reasons were initially unclear and the Swans’ sizeable win suddenly became a matter of no significance.

The next day it became clear what had happened as Goodes called a press conference and explained that to be called an ‘ape’, particularly during a game in the Indigenous Round, was something he could not accept. He explained that

he had faced comments of that sort before on the football field and to find himself abused by a thirteen-year-old supporter only added to the hurt caused by the slur.

He called for no blame to be put on the girl. He thanked people for the support he had received but made it clear he believed the young girl should receive support more than him.

Following the game, Eddie McGuire, President of the Collingwood Football Club, came to the Swans’ rooms to offer support. McGuire later took to the media to speak in favour of Goodes but all this came undone on the Tuesday after the game. As a radio commentator, one of McGuire’s numerous jobs, he made a comment suggesting that Goodes should be signed up to publicise the theatre production of King Kong then visiting Melbourne. This connection to the ‘ape’ incident opened up old wounds and caused a dying controversy to be reignited.

Goodes played the next week and was met with a rapturous response from his home crowd at the SCG. In a moment of sportsmanship transcending the normal, he was also approached by Jobe Watson, the captain of Essendon, to shake hands.

The commentary around Goodes’ handling of the incident was almost exclusively positive, with most considering him to have been very fair. He reached out to the girl in question, explained his reasons for feeling as he did, and accepted her apology. The narrative has warped over time with some now suggesting that his behaviour was in some ways bullying and ignored the fact that Goodes put far more focus on her welfare than his.

This fictional narrative of Adam Goodes, the man who bullies kids, has been used as an excuse for incessant booing. This can be utterly discredited by viewing the original press conference. Goodes has not since harked back to that event, it is only those who excuse themselves for booing him who do.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment the booing began, but reports started to circulate about small sections of Victorian crowds booing the veteran player in 2014. When he ventured to Victorian grounds for away games, a booing could sometimes be heard. It grew over the year and became more prominent in the Grand Final when Hawthorn supporters could be heard abusing the then Australian of the Year.

This year has seen the situation reach ugly new heights. Different approaches have been tried with leaders of opposing clubs calling for their supporters to rise above the disturbing behaviour and not boo him. Jack Ziebell of the North Melbourne Football Club was particularly notable in saying that he believed North Melbourne supporters to be above the

behaviour. The booing still continued.

It was in a game Sydney played against Carlton earlier this year in the Indigenous Round that a new complication was added to this long and ugly affair.

Goodes celebrated a goal with what was dubbed an ‘Aboriginal war dance’ by commentators. The dance was directed towards the Carlton supporters.

Goodes later explained more about the celebration, stating that he had a different celebration planned in the event that he scored his first goal near the Swans supporters. He also explained that the action was not intended as a violent or particularly aggressive one. It was a statement of pride in a long heritage.

The problem came when football commentators tried to fill the time before an explanation was received with baseless supposition. Dermott Brereton, a former footballer turned commentator, criticised the action and described it as something done ‘between two tribes before they go out and kill each other.’

This is almost entirely false as the ‘war cry’ was developed by an Indigenous representative team around 2009, using the more traditional actions as inspiration. Brereton later suggested that Goodes should alter his actions to avoid the abuse of the crowd despite his own playing career being littered with offences, violent incidents and deliberate inciting of the crowd. Barry Hall, a former teammate of Goodes’, was in agreement despite the fact that he also has a history of violent on-field behaviour, including breaking another player’s jaw with a punch and holding someone else in a headlock.

Goodes pointed to the haka, a Maori tradition performed by the New Zealand Rugby Union team the All Blacks before a game as a similar type of event.

Others made the point that the haka is performed before the game and towards the opposition team, rather than the supporters.

Since the much-debated ‘war cry’, the booing of Goodes has become more intense and culminated in a game against West Coast in Perth when the booing became so fierce whenever he touched the football that when his Aboriginal teammate Lewis Jetta scored a goal, he responded by reprising the ‘war cry’ himself. Once again, it was delivered against the opposition supporters. This time, however, the action did precede a battle.

The week that followed saw all the debates and reasons for booing Adam Goodes return to the surface. Claims were made that he stages for free kicks or slides recklessly into tackles,

endangering the wellbeing of other players. Goodes has received an average of 0.7 frees per game this year, putting him equal 264th in the league for that statistic, equal with 76 other players. The year before, Goodes received one free kick a game on average, putting him in equal 114th. The statistics do not uphold the claim, and in that time Geelong captain Joel Selwood has finished with the third highest average of free kicks in 2014 and current highest in 2015.

Selwood does not receive booing from his first touch of the game but Goodes does. Similarly, Goodes has only received a report for the act of ‘sliding’ once, in 2012, and has not happened since.

The fact that Goodes receives booing from the outset of the game is an important factor as there is no other player in the league who receives this treatment, no matter what their reputation. This suggests that those who boo Goodes do so for a very deep-seated reason.

There are many players in the league who have a history far more deserving of public outrage, regardless of what one thinks of the way Goodes has gone about taking his political stand. Greater Western Sydney’s Toby Greene has encountered legal trouble due to assaulting someone outside the game. Greene is not alone, having company from Collingwood’s Marley Williams, West Coast’s Murray Newman, and Carlton’s Simon White.

Similarly, there have been noted drug problems among some players and North Melbourne’s Majak Daw has continued to play, even through accusations of sexual assault. Recently retired St Kilda player Stephen Milne has also been accused of sexual assault and using homophobic language on the field. These are players who set a truly negative example for those watching the game, suggesting that violence and sexual assault are not significant enough concerns to interrupt a player’s career.

Instead of condemning players with a violent history, it is Adam Goodes who has been demonised and subjected to an ongoing campaign of systematic bullying.

Arguments that Goodes is abused for his behaviour and not for the fact that he is Indigenous hold some merit. It seems that Goodes is abused not for being Indigenous but for being proud of his heritage and not accepting the status quo. Obviously, the Indigenous-themed round, complete with themed football and jumpers (which some clubs reprised in support of Goodes when he sat out one game) as a proud exhibition of Aboriginal heritage, draws condemnation from many. White Australia appears to accept its Aboriginal people only so long

as they don’t get too proud.

Adam Goodes returned to the field the next week after Sydney Swans and Adelaide Crows supporters joined in support of him at the game he missed.

The crowd erupted into applause at the third quarter’s seventh minute, marking 37, the number he has worn through his career. Several clubs reprised their Indigenous jumpers, other clubs wore wristbands in the colours of the Aboriginal flag. Upon scoring the match-winning goal, Melbourne captain Nathan Jones even tapped his wristband in support, celebrating with a salute to Goodes. Western Bulldogs captain Robert Murphy wore the number 37 (instead of his usual 2) at the coin toss before their game and his teammate Jake Stringer kissed the Indigenous jumper he wore after scoring a goal.

Goodes returned to the field the next week in Geelong, with the local crowd offering a respectful response and the two teams running through a joint banner. A great deal of planning had gone into the game, with the Geelong Football Club liaising with Sydney to ensure a better environment.

The expectations are that this year we will see Adam Goodes retire. After over 360 games, 450 goals, two premierships, two Brownlow medals (the honour awarded to the player judged best and fairest across a year in the league), three club best-and-fairest medals, four AllAustralian awards (an award given to the 22 players judged to make up the best team from all players in the league), and the only Australian of the Year position ever awarded to an AFL player, Goodes will retire with the most thorough set of achievements in history. It is up to the supporters to ensure that they deserve being witness to this great career. It is up to us to ensure we will not be ashamed of being part of a deeply troublesome time in Australian sport. Not all who boo Adam Goodes are racists, but many are, and those who are not find themselves sheltering the darkest side of Australian society.

AUTHOR

Liam McNally, 22, Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) Liam craves a Sydney Swans premiership or Haigh’s.

ARTIST Hannah Everett

33

DUMPSTER DIVING: FUN TIMES OR A NECESSITY TO SURVIVE? My first reaction to dumpster-diving, when a friend mentioned it, was mild repulsion. Dumpsters are filthy, smelly, gross places, filled with harmful bacteria and other unpleasantries. Plus, it’s illegal. But I was curious nonetheless. So when she asked if I wanted to give it a crack, I thought ‘why not?’ and my, was I in for an eye-opener.

Our plunder from that first night is still one of the best I’ve ever encountered whilst dumpster-diving.

To begin with, there were the fruit and vegetables— bananas, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, apples, carrots, watermelon, celery and avocados. Nearly everything without a skin was all conveniently wrapped in plastic—not that they were at risk of much contamination. In fact, all the fruit and veggies had been dumped on top of a bunch of cardboard boxes, not even touching the bin. Then there were the baked goods. Donuts, scrolls, lamingtons, cakes, you name it, all freshly baked that morning, and all still wrapped in the bakery paper. Some of the pies were even still warm! The quantity and quality of the food being thrown out blew me away; it would have added up to several hundred dollars worth of grocery bills just a few hours before.

Needless to say, I was hooked. Not because I really needed free food—I was living at home at the time and barely paying for it anyway (and all the pies and chocolate certainly weren’t going to do my health any good). And while there is certainly an adrenaline rush, this wasn’t the main reason I did it either. No, I became a regular ‘diver’ because I simply couldn’t

stand the thought of that much perfectly edible food going to waste. As an environmental student (and the daughter of two agricultural scientists), I have always been well aware of the issues facing society in terms of feeding our rapidly growing population, coupled with the severe damage such production inflicts on our environment.

Already we’re seeing signs of the looming Global Food Crisis. 2007-2008 saw a global spike in food prices, causing political and social unrest around the world.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the price of wheat rose 130% above what it was the previous year, while rice and maize rose 74% and 43%..

There is no doubt that a big player in this crisis is the growing population. Coupled with the loss of arable land, due to degradation, climate change and urban development, we’re facing a huge challenge globally, in terms of physically producing enough food for the future. However a lack of production isn’t the issue yet. FAO studies show there was enough food produced in 2007-2008 to feed the entire global population comfortably, and yet thousands starved that year. So, where did all the food go? 80% of food produced globally ends up feeding the wealthiest 20% of the population, also known as us. Of this 80%, an astonishing 30% never even makes it to our plates, most being thrown away somewhere along the supply chain. According to the FAO, this equates to about 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food being thrown away each year. This also means that 28% of our precious arable land and 250km3of fresh water are essentially wasted each year. It also costs the global economy about $750 billion annually. Here in Australia we contribute $5.2 billion of that waste. Furthermore, not only is the practice of throwing out food a monumental waste of resources, this organic waste also makes up about half of landfills—a major source of methane emissions, which, per weight, contributes 25% more to global warming than carbon dioxide. In fact, the 2013 FAO report found food waste was the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in both China and the USA. So what can we, as individuals, do against such a monumental challenge? Do we all start dumpsterdiving? While for me it presents an opportunity for personal peace of mind, knowing that I’m not contributing to the system, it certainly isn’t going to solve the world’s food crisis. It isn’t even going to make a dent. However, it’s not just the supermarkets that are wasting food. Each year in Australia, every household throws out on average $1,036 worth of food, or 245kg. This is enough to feed another household for a month. So there is certainly a lot we can do as individuals to minimise waste, just in terms of basic lifestyle changes. For example, don’t buy more food than you need, and plan your meals each week. Compost what scraps you do end up with and take home what you don’t finish when you go out to a restaurant. These are simple changes to your life that make a huge difference long-term.

What about the big picture? There are fantastic organisations around the world, including OzHarvest,

Secondbite and Foodbank here in Australia, working tirelessly to collect and redistribute as much food as they can. However, this clearly isn’t enough. An enormous amount of food is still falling through the cracks, and no matter how hard these organisations work, they simply don’t have the resources to solve , or even make a noticeable dent in the issue of food distribution. As a society, we need to come together and re-address and reshape the entire food production system. By reducing our waste here in Australia, we effectively reduce demand, which in turn lowers prices and makes food more readily available to the wider population, not just the richest 20%.

This is a huge task, and one that is without a doubt the predominant responsibility of the policy makers, world leaders and corporate heads, who have the power to make the final decisions. The power of grassroots campaigns should not be underestimated however, nor should we overlook how much power we, as consumers, voters and members of the public have. As voters, we have control over their policies and jobs via the ballot box. As consumers, we control the supply and distribution chain by how and where we choose to spend our money. Through our money and our votes, we can be the shapers of the entire system. Each one of us is personally responsible for what happens from now on.

So write or talk to your local politicians. Harass your local supermarket. Let them know that food waste is not okay. Recently, France passed a law banning supermarkets throwing out edible food. It’s time we did the same here in Australia! And most importantly, TALK! Tell people about the problem.

To find out more about what you can do to individually reduce your waste, or if you’re interested in getting involved in working to end food waste here in SA, check out: lovefoodhatewaste.nsw.gov.au/love-food/lovingyour-food.aspx thinkeatsave.org/ foodsouthaustralia.com.au/guide-to/production/ food-waste/ facebook.com/endthewaste ozharvest.org/ foodwise.com.au/foodwaste/food-waste-fast-facts/ news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2014/10/141013-food-waste-nationalsecurity-environment-science-ngfood/ AUTHOR Ali Roush The meal Ali most craves is a salad (I’m a rabbit!).

ARTWORK Sheydin Dew

35

Playing with Plastic is not so Fantastic The realities of kids and consumerism Our society is plagued by consumerism.

Nothing confirms this so much as the fact that every second, three Barbies are purchased. Mattel, the company responsible for the doll, claims that Barbie isn’t just a toy, but a ‘lifestyle brand.’

With her endless array of outfits, cars, houses, and accessories, Barbie embodies a materialistic lifestyle driven by crosspromotion and marketing. Barbie is, as Eric Clark points out in The Real Toy Story, ‘the plastic princess of capitalism.’

During the 19th century, childhood became idealised as a time of purity, innocence and sentimentality. The art from this period depicts cherub-like children frolicking through wild meadows with lambs and puppies. But today’s world of consumerism no longer treats childhood as an innocent phase removed from adult economic spheres. Today’s kids hold massive purchasing power in their tiny hands. Little ones are not only consumers themselves— spending their pocket money on sweets and toys—but also influence household purchases from toothpaste preferences to holiday destinations. Studies have shown that children will watch, on average, 40,000 TV commercials a year—many of which are directly targeted to them rather than their parents.

This is all because of an irresistible factor called ‘pester power’. In the marketing world this term represents sugar and spice and all things nice. Pester power is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘the ability that children have to make their parents buy something...advertisers know how powerful pester power can be.’ Julia Schor, in her eye opening book Born to Buy, notes that in 2004, American children aged four to twelve directly influenced $330 billion of adult purchases. When this study was conducted over a decade ago, this figure was expected to grow at an annual rate of 20 percent. Needless to say,

today’s kids are shaping parents’ buying habits in an unprecedented way.

With billions of dollars up for grabs, advertisers and marketers are ruthless in the rat race to be the first to capture the attention and allegiance of suckling babes. Clark states, ‘Marketers now grab babies as soon as they are born. Children can be locked into brands early—if you don’t capture them fast, someone else surely will.’ It is estimated that as early as six months old a child is forming mental images of logos; by two, he or she is asking for products by a brand’s name, and by ten that child has memorised up to 400 brands. No wonder Schor observes that contemporary kids and teens are the ‘most brand-orientated, consumer-involved, and materialistic generation in history.’ Unable to discern the manipulative psychology behind advertising, consuming children are like butterflies fluttering around the garden, unaware that big brands are spending billions of dollars weaving nets to capture them, and consume them into a material world.

Though Disney is a brand built around that classical 19th Century image of childhood innocence, in reality even Disney isn’t chasing wholesome practices. This multinational conglomerate, like Barbie’s Mattel, is chasing the dirty dollar. Disney is all about creating loveable characters: the kind of characters that are so irresistible they can make the company even more money through licensing agreements, which permit character images to be used in an array of merchandise. But in the documentary Mickey Mouse Goes to Haiti, Charles Kernaghan discovers that Disney character t-shirts, which sell in the US for $12, are produced for 7 cents. When Kernaghan, the director of the Institute of Global Labour and Human Rights, informed the Disney factory workers how much their products sold for in the US, there

were many tears. One mother revealed that her wages are not sufficient enough to meet daily expenses: ‘I am always in debt, on the days I get paid the children still go to bed hungry. I have no money to save.’

Clark in The Real Toy Story outlines a similar situation. He notes that ‘most of the world’s toys are made in China by migrants toiling for a few cents an hour. The monstrous gap between the selling price fuels the process to which toy companies devote themselves—marketing.’ The goal of Disney and other kid’s media companies is to capture the imaginations of kids on screen, so they will be enticed to consume anything and everything with their new favourite hero on it: lunch boxes, bedspreads, theme park rides, video games, and toys. But in 2013, with the phenomenal success of the film Frozen, Disney played it too good at its own marketing game.

With Frozen, Disney crossed the great gender divide. Though Frozen is essentially a princess musical, the film’s promotional posters featured a colour scheme of ‘boy friendly’ blue. Furthermore, the mascot in the advertising campaigns was not a ball gown, but a talking snowman. Frozen appealed to everyone and made over $1 billion at the box office, making it the highest grossing animated film of all time.

But Disney failed to predict the extent of Frozen fever. Disney licensed out the rights to produce Frozen toys to Mattel, but the orders sent to manufacturers were misjudged and therefore insufficient to meet consumer demands. The New York Post notes, ‘It’s official. Frozen fever has swept the world. The only problem is, the merchandise is sold out everywhere.’

Vanity Fair’s Katey Rich questions, ‘What horrible accident in the princess dressmaking factory left the world scarce of Elsa ball gowns?...How long can it really take to manufacture an extra 300,000 princess gowns and ship them? There are a

whole bunch of moms now bordering on psychosis to make their kids happy.’ In answer to Ms. Rich’s question, what has happened is this: Hidden in the princess merchandise factory, the labouring toy workers of China, Mexico, Thailand and Malaysia are toiling day and night on starvation wages, and yet they still cannot keep up with the fever of consumerism, mentioned by Ms. Rich. A global shortage of Frozen merchandise means somewhere in the world young migrant women are working insane hours in horrendous conditions with hazardous chemicals, thinners, adhesives and lead as they paint up to 4,000 Barbie (or Princess Elsa) doll faces per day: conditions such as these are poignantly recorded by Clark in The Real Toy Story.

world. The company states, ‘Giving back to the community is a part of who we are, and it is another powerful example of our commitment to bringing smiles to the lives of children around the world.’ Again, this is worthy of applause. But it’s time for companies like Disney and Mattel to actually practice what they preach, before it’s too late. Because if kids found out how their toys are really made, I don’t think they’d want to buy them anymore.

AUTHOR Amy Manners, 25, Flinders Alumni Amy most craves simplicity: laughter shared with loved ones around the dinner table, watching the sunset and the moonrise, introducing a toddler to the wonders of the beach, coffee catchups that dawdle on all afternoon... she craves priceless moments: the kind that can’t be bought.

ARTIST Sheydin Dew

Additionally, an investigation headed by Charles Kernaghan discovered that at China’s Dawei factory—which produces Disney toys—labourers are paid below the minimum wage and routinely work sixteen-hour shifts. If they arrive late it can mean three day’s wages docked, and during the peak season shifts can continue for 24 hours. Clark relates similar horrors from China’s Bainan Toy Factory, describing a young village girl who was a runner in the factory.

Clark writes: ‘She ran sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for two solid months without a day off. She was paid the equivalent of 12 cents an hour. She collapsed one night, bleeding from nose and mouth. She died before the ambulance arrived; she was just nineteen.’ Did you know, Ms. Rich, that the Chinese have a word for this kind of disease, the kind caused by the likes of Frozen fever?

The Chinese word for this deadly affliction is ‘guolaosi’: death caused by overwork.

And, overwork, Ms. Rich, is precisely what you are demanding of manufacturers—all so that a gown and a doll can be added to a child’s toy box, only to be forgotten as soon as the next blockbuster comes out.

Disney is king at reminding us of the old-fashioned magic of childhood. Through Disney’s world our imaginations are awakened, our thirst for adventure is rekindled, and we are reminded to cherish family values. All this is admirable. Similarly, in Mattel’s 2013 Annual Report the company informs shareholders that it donated $21 million dollars that year to help those in need around the

37

Do Not Go Gentle

Words by Amelia Hughes

I’m lying on a harsh edge that cuts across my lower back. It’s dark.

So purely dark that it’s almost a physical presence, at once forcing itself upon me and yet skulking in the corners of my mind. No matter how many times I blink, it’s as dark with my eyes open as it is when they’re closed.

My breath catches in my throat as I scrape my nails along my cage, searching for a weakness in the metal links or a catch in the smooth wooden boarding.

I wet my lips. ‘Maria?’ It’s barely a breath of air but it seems to echo in this fathomless space. ‘Maria?’

I claw at the wire, fingers scrabbling, trying to force a hole a bit wider. My body curls inwards as I lever pressure with as much of my body weight as possible, knees knocking at the walls. It does nothing. The holes are hardly big enough to press my fingertips through.

The sound of movement somewhere beyond my head grates on my ears. Like someone dragging a laundry bag along the tiles. I flinch. My hands fly in front of me but hit something. A ceiling.

I trace along the edges. There are wooden panels two hand’s width above my face, and when I stretch my arms out my elbows just brush a wall of what feels like chicken wire. It digs into my shoulder blades.

I’m boxed in.

Trapped.

Where the hell am I?

The cool of the concrete beneath me seeps through the mesh under my spine.

My forearms bump against the fencing, elbows digging into the edge of wood and wire. I gasp as it slices at my skin. The wooden ceiling rattles when I bang my knees against it. I kick out at the wire, but it absorbs my blows. My hair catches in the metal, yanking at my scalp. The strands snap as I jerk away.

I shriek, my legs jerking reflexively to my chest, but they whack into the wall. My limbs shiver as I brace them tightly against the sides, toes clenching in the wire, chest heaving.

‘I apologise,’ the frail voice continues. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.

To be frank, I’m glad for the company.’

‘What do you mean?’ Maria demands. ‘Can’t you let us go?’

‘My dear, I’m as trapped as you.’

A whine escapes my lips. Frantically, my hands run along the wood and wire, shoving at the constricting walls. A fingernail tears as I scratch the wood, but I can’t feel the pain as the blood thunders in my ears.

Dimly, I become aware of Maria speaking.

‘Sophie, Sophie! It’ll be alright Sophie, just listen to me. I’ll get us out of this. Take a breath, come on. Hand over your heart.’

Shuddering, I place a hand on my chest, the other still pressed to the wooden ceiling. My heart races beneath my thin shirt. I’m shaking, hand fluttering on my damp skin.

‘Just like when we were kids, yeah? Can you feel your heartbeat?’

I nod, the movement dislodging tears from my lashes, trickling down my cheeks and into my ears. I twitch my head to flick the salty water free.

‘Sophie?’

‘Sorry,’ I choke after a moment, ‘yeah. Yeah, I –‘ ‘Breathe in,’ she interrupts sharply.

I breathe. In through my nose, hold it. Out through my mouth.

The air tastes like fear: the tang of blood and sweat and dust.

‘It’s alright, we’re good. We’re safe. We’ll be okay, I promise.’ Her voice is steady.

‘Promises are such hopeful things...’ The other person’s voice trails off, hanging in the darkness between us. Male, I’m more certain now.

Oh, God—the last thing I remember—a man. His shadow following us as we turned down an alley on the way home from school. The smell of chemicals, my little sister— ‘Maria!’ I scream, my breath coming in harsh gasps. ‘Maria!’

‘I’m here,’ her voice croaks behind me. I thrust my hands towards her, grasping onto the fencing. I feel the tips of her fingers poke through and I push desperately at them.

‘Where are we?’ I whisper. If I speak any louder I fear my voice will break. ‘What’s happened?’

I twist onto my belly, shoulder scraping along the roof. I turn blindly to her voice. Her face is a pale moon, cut with strands of her black, wayward hair. Her eyes are dark pits.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’ve been screaming for hours.’

‘It won’t do any good,’ someone whispers from beyond my feet.

‘Shut up,’ Maria snaps back. ‘That’s not helping.’

I push my palm against the wire between us and Maria runs her fingers along it. The repetitive movement is soothing, her touch familiar. With my free hand I fumble at my scalp, dragging hair from my sticky face and tucking it behind my ears.

The air hitches again in my throat. I sniff forcefully, first with a knuckle to one nostril and then the other, and let the mucus run down my throat as I clear my sinuses. Determinedly, I draw more air into my lungs, then let it out in one slow stream.

‘How long have you been here?’ I direct the question to the man, my voice broken and nasal.

There’s a pause, and then his cage creaks as he shuffles about.

‘I’m not really sure,’ he says. ‘The lights have come on five times that I can remember, but I’ve no idea how often that happens.’

‘Lights?’ Maria repeats.

I swallow, the sound loud in my ears.

‘Mmmmm. Once in a while the lights go on, and one of us is taken.’

‘One of us? There’s more people here?’ Maria asks.

‘There were. I’ve been alone for… days, probably. In the dark.

39

You’re in their cages now.’

‘Oh, God,’ Maria breathes. I hear her struggling.

‘Why?’ I ask furiously, deliberately ignoring his last words. ‘Why are we here?’

‘I don’t want to know,’ the man replies.

He falls silent after that, and I wonder if the darkness is consuming him.

I turn on my hip, adjusting my grip to get better contact with Maria’s fingertips, refusing to shake out the pins and needles that are settling in if it means losing contact with my sister.

My stomach grumbles hungrily. How long was I unconscious for?

When the lights come on, it’s not like walking outside, adjusting from darkness to dim light to daylight. They’re fluorescent lights, a thick line of them just outside the walls of the cages. It’s so utterly blinding – I’m rolling around trying to escape it, covering my eyes with my wrists and then grinding my knuckles into the sockets. Tears stream down my cheeks and all I can hear is my own panting.

I blink sightlessly.

‘No!’ the man yells. They’ve come for him. ‘Please, please, no! I have money! Please!’ His voice is rising, words disintegrating.

Metal clashes violently. I raise my head, press my forehead to the wooden planks. Blurrily, I can see past my feet to the man’s cage, his body thrashing as someone drags him out, up and over the edges of the chicken wire walls. He has a bald patch on the back of his head.

‘We’re not going to get out,’ I whisper, my mouth dry. ‘We’re going to die here. We are going to die, Maria.’

‘Shut up! Don’t you dare speak like that! We’ve got each other, and we are going to make it.’

‘You always were an optimist,’ I say. I’d always hated that about her.

My heartbeat drums in my ears, thumping like footsteps prowling ever closer. It counts down the endless time in the darkness. I’m afraid for when it stops. It’s a steady reassurance that blood still pumps through my veins, that I’m still alive and not an empty withered husk in a coffin.

Pressure has been building steadily in my bladder and I fidget, squeezing my legs together and flexing my hips. I try to will away the sensation. I need to hold it in. I can’t lose it, I can’t.

I begin to hum, at first without pattern or rhythm. The darkness woos it, drawing the sound out lovingly until it falls in the oppressive silence, before hungrily gulping it down. It vibrates loudly through my jaw and nose. The tune develops into my childhood lullaby, the one my Mum made up just for me, singing it patiently after I woke from nightmares night after night. I did the same to my sister when I got old enough, to leave my Mum in the clouds of her dreams for just a little longer.

‘I haven’t heard that in years,’ Maria says quietly, so I keep humming.

If the notes are strangled, she says nothing. She just hums along with me, her voice strong as it dances with mine.

The lights come back on.

The man releases an inhuman wail, no trace of the calm in the darkness before. All that’s left is a wild, terrified animal. I can hear Maria sobbing and rattling her cage behind me. The whole structure shakes as the man screeches and clings desperately to his cage.

It’s so loud. I can’t think. I can’t—what if I’m next? I can’t let that happen. Take him and let us go. Take him and leave us in the dark.

He’s so loud.

‘Make it stop,’ I mutter. I grab at my ears, twisting away, but the man’s screams reverberate in my brain. My hands clench in my hair, tearing at my scalp. I bang my head back on the chicken wire in an effort to block him out. ‘Make it stop, make it stop!’

I thrust myself into a taut line against the wall of the cage, straining to be still and invisible yet desperate to flee. My elbows scrape the wire. I kick at the wood with my bare feet, grinding my hands into the sides of my skull, fingernails digging in. My eyes squeeze shut as the man is dragged away. The scent of his urine lingers in the air.

A door slams and the heavy silence is sucked back into the room.

My body relaxes minutely, wedged in a corner, chest heaving. My eyes flick about the cage. There’s blood smeared on the wooden roof, dark brown, old, cut into whorls of wood and the traces of fingerprints. My own is still fresh, bright red on the planks.

I look at Maria, catch sight of her black hair, and the lights go out.

She gives a shaky sigh.

Little spirals of colour dance in my vision, wistful for what was lost, before petering out and leaving me alone.

I wipe at my damp face.

As I lie, blinded and paralysed by fear, Maria screams.

‘No!’ she shrieks. ‘No! I’ll do anything, please!’

I throw myself at my cage. Shove at the walls with my body and legs.

‘Maria!’ I sob. I slam desperately at the wire separating us, bracing my knees on the sides. I rattle it, wrench at it. Sweat forms on my upper lip and prickles down my arms. It’s like holding onto a serrated knife. The wire shreds my fingers, bleeding ribbons, and they quiver when I flex them. I smell blood.

It does nothing, the metal only stretching like lungs filling with air.

I howl my sister’s name as I heave at my cage. I almost get my knees underneath me, ramming my spine into the wood, but it’s not enough.

In a final plea, I place my bloody hand to the barrier between us.

Her black eyes lock with mine and I feel the touch of her fingers behind the wire only briefly. She’s dragged from her cage, clawing at the insides. All that’s left are her torn fingernails, her blood freckled on the wire. My knees are caught, pressed against my chest, and my sister is gone.

‘Maria!’

My sister is gone, and the darkness devours me.

AUTHOR Amelia Hughes, 22, Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) Amelia most craves to write comics for marvel. Or Chocolate. She also craves chocolate.

title appears to inform everyone that Greg’s first fight is approaching. Throughout the film, the viewer becomes accustomed to having the fourth wall broken and upcoming events rather signposted, either through the use of these chapter titles or Greg directly speaking to the viewers.

The audience may be comforted by these warnings but it serves only to soften the audience up for the climax, when it transpires Greg did not always tell the truth. Watching this, you may feel like the film is holding your hand much of the time, but this is only to build up the power of its conclusion. The very final scenes hark back to events throughout the film and draw it neatly to an end with a very accomplished flourish.

There are two standout performances in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Nick Offerman delivers a comedy master-class as Greg’s father who is never seen without an alarmingly exotic dish (pigs’ feet, anyone?).

Offerman is the one point of the film in which the quirks are a strength and do not risk unnecessary distraction. The other is Olivia Cooke’s performance as Rachel, the titular ‘dying girl’. She delivers every scene of her performance with a power well beyond the range of most actors with a full career behind them. Even in the scenes where she has no dialogue, Cooke silently steals the audience’s attention, offering a compelling portrayal of a young person dealing with the prospect of their own untimely death.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is fundamentally a good film. It is surely not everyone’s cup of tea, and seems to rather rejoice in that, but is still a well-crafted film that delivers a more impactful ending than one would likely expect—despite the warnings. It is ironic, however, that for a film that enshrines individuality and trendsetters, it is itself, a trend-follower.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl belongs to that coming-of-age genre so populated by slightly artistic types who don’t quite fit into a niche of their own. The post-modern self-awareness of this film sometimes threatens to overburden the narrative with knowing references. Nonetheless a certain care for its characters is shown through the central narrative of a boy forced by his mum to spend time with a dying girl, which maintains an earnestness to it.

The ‘Me’ and ‘Earl’ of the title are two film buffs at the point of graduating who enjoy little more than making unusual retellings of older films. This opens up many chances to make references to classic movies, many of which are unlikely to resonate with the film’s target audience but serve to add a layer for older audiences. Watch out for references to Blue Velvet and The Conversation in particular.

The film does overplay its hand on occasion in an effort to maintain the ‘quirky’ quota, but the fundamental care it holds for its characters should allow the audience to overlook this weakness.

The story—centered around two socially awkward boys who enjoy watching Werner Herzog films in their ultra-cool history teacher’s office at lunch—could easily slip into self-parody, but whenever such a thing is threatened, the film manages to right itself by returning to its strengths. It is at its strongest when it relies most on the characters and least on the quirks.

The on-screen ‘chapter’ titles are arguably a misfire of the quirky style, but they certainly have their uses. Shortly before Greg, the protagonist, gets into his first (very brief) fight, a little chapter

ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

AUTHOR Liam McNally, 22, Bachelor of Creative Arts (Creative Writing) Liam craves a Sydney Swans premiership or Haigh’s.

41

Complete the crossword and send a picture of your answers to stephanie.walker@flinders.edu.au and WIN one of ten free double passes to Palace Nova!

ACROSS 3. A trilogy of drunken antics committed by a group of friends (2 Words) 7. A company produces the world’s most dubious food in this sci-fi classic.

(2 Words) 9. Murderer born with a superior olfactory sense 10. The tale of second chances set about Christmas (4 Words) 11. A priest does battle with an ancient demon possessing a young girl (2 Words) 12. A time travelling cyborg goes to 1984 with intentions to kill a woman whose son will one day save humanity (2 Words) 17. A young man is manipulated into turning to the dark side against his old friends and religion whilst a galactic ruler seizes control (4 Words) 18. A video gives its viewers a mere week to live (2 Words) 21. A group of chickens seek escape from their farm and a future as a pie (2 Words) 22. A man unable to remember creates a system whereby he can hunt for his wife’s murderer 23. ‘We’re going to need a bigger boat.’

24. A British drug dealer rises up through the ranks of the business (2 Words)

DOWN 1. A man discovers his life is not what it seems and that he is in fact the unsuspecting star of a show about his life (3 Words) 2. A group of children win the chance to explore the inside of a muchloved factory (5 Words) 4. The long-running American civil war epic (4 Words) 5. A young, female Swedish vampire is responsible for deaths within the town (5 Words) 6. A dystopian future civilisation has developed a barbaric competition (3 Words) 8. A young woman deals with her depression in the face of the world’s end 13. A writer struggles with the world’s worst writers’ block (2 Words) 14. The story of an infamous psychiatrist’s terrible beginning (2 Words) 15. An investigation into what happens when someone eats only fast food for a month (3 Words) 16. The true story of a very accomplished young con artist hunted and recruited by the FBI (5 Words) 19. Future looks bleak for humanity, trapped inside simulated reality created by sentient robots (2 Words) 20. ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’

25. A man and his dog travel a ludicrous distance for cheese (4 Words) 26. The friendship of a journalist and a congressman are tested following the murder of a congressional staffer in this adaptation of a British mini series (3 Words)

Crossword clues by Liam McNally

43

FUSA Notice of Election 2015 Polling Dates

International Students Officer ($3,000 per annum)

Monday 12th October to Thursday 15th October

Advocates on behalf of International Students, promote

Nominations Open at 9:00 am on Monday 7th September 2015 Close at 4:00 pm on Monday 21st September 2015

equality and opportunities of International Students.

Candidate must be enrolled as an International Student to be eligible for nomination.

Indigenous Students Officer ($3,000 per annum)

Student Council Positions

Acts as an advocate on behalf of students who identify

Student Council President ($28,500 per annum)

as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Candidate must

Responsible for the overall co-ordination and leadership

identify as ATSI to be eligible for nomination.

of the Student Council and chief spokesperson for SC. Environment Officer ($3,000 per annum) General Secretary ($10,000 per annum)

Acts as an advocate for environmental sustainability

Responsible for all monies, maintaining financial records,

within the university and broader community.

and minutes. GS chair the Clubs & Societies sub-committee.

Social Activities Officer ($3,000 per annum) Responsible for ongoing organisation and management

Education Officer ($3,000 per annum)

of FUSA social activities.

Responsible for the development, co-ordination and implementation of SC education campaigns.

Accessibility Officer ($3,000 per annum) Act as an advocate for students with a disability.

Women’s Officer ($3,000 per annum)

Responsible for running campaigns and working with

Acts as an advocate and spokesperson for women’s inter-

similar advocacy groups.

ests on campus. Candidate must identify as a woman to be eligible for nomination.

General Council Members x6 ($2,000 per annum each)

Welfare Officer ($3,000 per annum)

Act as an advocate for all students, assist office bearers

Acts to promote the welfare of all students and is

in the fulfilment of their roles.

responsible for the co-ordination of SC welfare campaigns.

Student MEDIA Positions Queer Officer ($3,000 per annum)

Empire Times Editors x3 ($10,000 per annum each)

Acts as an advocate on behalf of queer students, to

Responsible for the creation and publication of ten

promote and strengthen the rights of queer students on

editions of the student magazine over the course of the

campus and to combat discrimination. Candidate must

year. Empire Times editors are also responsible for any

identify as GBLTTIQ to be eligible for nomination.

content or activities required for the promotion of Empire Times. 20-30 hours expected per week.

Postgraduate Students Officer ($3,000 per annum) Acts to advocate on behalf of postgraduate students.

Candidate must be an enrolled postgraduate student to be eligible for nomination.

QUERIES Any questions concerning the Election should be directed to fusa@flinders.edu.au or 8201 2371. More information available soon at fusa.edu.au/elections.

Review:

Speakeasy @ the Wheatsheaf Picture your ideal night out. Does it involve short stories, possibly being performed through a microphone out the back of a pub?

Are you imagining pizza, cider, wine—the chance to both own a handcrafted zine and win some sweet books in a raffle? Are you, by any chance, picturing yourself at the Wheatsheaf Hotel?

both expressively written and painstakingly honest. Lise Van Konkelenberg gave a stunning, original performance about the Book of Creation, which was followed by our second postgrad reading: a hilarious rumination on life, death and bees, expertly performed by Piri Eddy.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you attended Speakeasy Flinders’ first public readings night for 2015. If you didn’t, I regret to inform you that you missed out—big time.

Our third and final set consisted of a first-year, an Honours student and a postgrad—a wonderful example of the talent existing across the Flinders Creative Arts year levels, which began with Richard Faulkner’s haunting tale of his Uncle at Gallipoli.

Justina Ashman’s excerpt from her short story ‘The Last Living Girl in Paris’ made us all desperate for more, whilst Mel Pryor, as our very last and esteemed postgrad speaker, wound together an intimate tale of her relationship with her father amidst a rural Australian landscape.

For those of you who don’t know, Speakeasy is a community which aims to support, bring together and ultimately celebrate Flinders undergraduate creative writers. We hold four events per year, which are jam-packed with creative readings, free food, raffles, and the selling of our newly resurrected zine. Though our reading gigs tend to focus on students enrolled in creative writing, the events themselves are open to everyone and their dog. (Dogs, surprisingly, are quite partial to a good turn of phrase).

We boasted a number of Wheatsheaf newbies this year, all stars at our campus event back in April, as well as many of our starstudded regulars and three marvellous postgrads taking time out from their busy schedules. The night began with Speakeasy stalwart Sean Stockham, who juxtaposed light-hearted and serious in two beautifully written pieces on bees, love and mythology. Next up was rising star Taeghan Buggy—whose poetry is just as fabulous as her performance skills—followed by postgrad Houman Zandi-Zadeh in the first interactive performance Speakeasy’s had in a long time. Houman’s piece exploring the treatment of women in Iran (performed along with our Speakeasy presidents Lauren and Alicia) was a wonderful, though-provoking way to cap off the first set.

A very special and enormous thank you must of course go to our Speakeasy presidents, Lauren Butterworth and Alicia Carter, and to our fantastic MC, Callum McLean. More thanks still goes to our Speakeasy zine team: Justina Ashman, Sean Stockham, Callum McLean, Riana Kinlough, Simone Corletto and myself. This event was made possible through their huge enthusiasm and hard work.

We roamed from Paris to China to Turkey to Iran; we laughed and drank and talked and we were merry. Most of all—and this, if nothing else, is why Speakeasy is so wonderfully important— we got to celebrate our undergrad writers. On a personal note, as the newly-elected President of Speakeasy, it is immensely exciting to see these fresh faces amongst the veterans. Speakeasy depends, after all, not only on the work of its leaders but also (and perhaps much more importantly) on the support of its speakers, contributors and audience.

After this event, I’d say the future is as bright as it has ever been.

The interim brought pizza and the chance to purchase a copy of our Speakeasy zine! Bursting with contributions from our lovely Speakeasy participants, from prose to poetry to reviews to comics, this collection of hand-decorated pages has it all. Do you get the feeling we’re proud of it? Because we really, truly are.

The second set brought a quirky, magical-realist mix of pigeons and French literary theory from Jess Miller, whilst Callum McLean’s anecdotal memoir of his experience in China was

AUTHOR Jess Miller, 21, Bachelor of Arts Honours (Creative Writing) Jess most craves the takedown of Putin--not for the sake of the world, but because Jermaine Clement has told her on Twitter that this is the price of a Flight of the Conchords Australian tour.

If you’d love to join the wonderful community, look out for the next campus event on Friday the 18th of September, and the next public event at the Wheatsheaf on the 29th of October.

45

FOOD REVIEW: Hanuman There is nothing quite like the taste and culture of Indian food. Their dishes, when done right, are a stampede of flavours to the senses—even the tiniest pinch of spice not to be gone astray. It is best enjoyed savoured, to fully appreciate just how much care and effort was placed into the firework of a mouthful.

My family and I decided to dine recently at Hanuman, an Asian/Indian restaurant attached to the Chifley Hotel on South Terrace, skirting the Adelaide CBD. Upon pulling up I was sceptical—the hotel had a ‘three star’ look about it—the type of hotel you check into because you plan on spending an all nighter drunk in the city. However, I’d been hearing about this restaurant for weeks, and when we entered the restaurant side of the building, it was a completely different story. It is a cosy, intimate setting.

Lanterns hang from the roof while the red colours and traditional Asian statues give it a touch of elegance. We’d planned to have one of their famous three course meals, known for the generous servings. And as the theme of this issue was ‘consume’, I got to reviewing it straight away.

After being seated and given time to glance over the menu, we all placed our orders in its entirety: our entree, main, and dessert, along with drinks, rice, and roti bread.

For the entree I opted for the kasmiri chicken tika, which came out as a plate of four or five plentiful chunks of tandoori chicken with a small bowl of green yoghurt. Each piece of chicken was cooked to perfection, easily falling apart when separated. The yoghurt provided a cool and almost sweet compliment to the taste of the tandoori, and when I had finished, I was stunned that such a small dish in appearance had managed to make me feel satisfied.

For the main I chose butter chicken, as my usual go-to for all crash-runs of Indian food (chicken tika masala) was not present on the menu. Butter chicken can be dangerous territory from restaurants in my opinion—it was invented by the British, and as such is not a traditional dish.

Therefore, sometimes the chefs can literally take the ‘butter’ part of the combination seriously, and you’re left

with an extremely mild-tasting curry. However, I decided to taste test, much to the jeers of my family who consider butter chicken a weak dish.

The curry arrived in a large bowl presented with cream laced delicately throughout. Again, the chicken was in marvellously large chunks, the sauce thicker than most curries I’ve come across. Upon tasting, this butter chicken is certainly more tomato based (to my instant relief) with a subtle handful of spices throughout. Enough to make me appreciate the heat and flavour, but not enough to have me madly scrambling for water. A lot depends on your own personal spice tolerance, but softie spice lovers—you’ll be okay with this dish.

I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t finish the main completely. The combination of the entree, rice, large cuts of chicken and the breads took its toll. Its rare to see a meal make me K.O, but that one succeeded. I kept dabbing my bread in the dish and nibbling away at it in defeat before it was removed from the table. Dessert was brought out, and thank god it was much smaller than the other meals, because otherwise I may have exploded. It was a small ball of gulab jamun, a dish I am not entirely familiar with, with a scoop of vanilla icecream.

In all honesty, I was not fond of the gulab juman, but the icecream was of good standard—definitely not the stuff that comes out a Neapolitan tub and gets priced a hideous amount of money like in many restaurants.

I think I’ve found a winner with Hanuman; the courses definitely live up to their name of being large and generous, and it is fantastic to see that quality does not diminish just because of the size. My only small complaint would be the staff as we were often kept waiting for our orders, but the place was packed when we visited, so it is a little understandable. Although it is a pricey venue, it is well recommended.

AUTHOR Bethany Lawrence, 22, Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) When asked what she most craved, Bethany replied ‘If my trail of Red Bull cans tell you anything, its normally sleep. My kingdom for 3 days of solid rest.’

level up

music

toys to life ,,

,,

it's alive! - Dr frankenstein

All my life, Spyro has been my favourite video game character.

For as long as I can remember, that badass little purple dragon brought joy to my heart. He can breathe fire, ice, acid, and more, with a cool little firefly companion by his side, and even better; he can fly (I highly recommend playing The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon on Wii, the free-flying mechanics are amazing). I’m also a massive fan of his darker now-sidekick, Cynder, she’s great.

So when Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was released back in 2011, I was all over that. You collected the figurines that have little NFC chips in them and interact with a ‘portal of power’ (essentially a platform that reads these chips to insert the characters into the game). It was excellent; I got to collect all these cool little figurines (the Cynder one even has a glow in the dark base, which is awesome) that became real characters in the game. And of course, different characters used different elements, so I made sure to get one from each element, and it turns out that when you die you can just swap a new character in so the game becomes easier the more characters you have.

This is consumerism at its best.

Skylanders is an example of a recently emerging genre called ‘toys to life’. It is joined by the Amiibos released by Nintendo and Disney Infinity, all games where you collect a series of figurines that unlock in-game characters, and occasionally different worlds and other mechanics. In Skylanders you can even get weapon figurines to use in-game. It’s not necessarily a new concept; back in the 2000s a game called UB Funkeys was released that featured alien-like figurines with magnetic contacts that connected to a larger dock, with the different figurines unlocking different characters and worlds. It didn’t quite catch on back then (I think I’m the one person in the world to still own the game), but now it’s becoming a huge genre.

Toys to Life is a big selling genre that brings in a lot of money for console gaming. It accounted for 10% of all software and accessory sales in the USA from 2014 to 2015, and is expected to hit $3 billion in sales this year, a projected 4 % of all digital gaming revenue. Disney Infinity is said to be releasing some Star Wars sets this year, which are bound to sell well.

However, a downside is that the Toys to Life genre is costly for consumers. Starter sets for the three main competitors range between $65 to $100 (containing the video game, the required platform, a couple of characters, and some other goodies), but to have a better gameplay experience you need a range of characters, which cost anywhere from $6 to $17 each.

So, if it’s such an expensive investment to build a world of characters with new areas and items and powers, is it actually worth it? Maybe; if these games are something that you can see yourself continually playing as much as any other big title, then go for it. The benefit of the genre is that the games are constantly expanding, and often involve internet connectivity for you to share worlds with others (for example Disney Infinity has the option to create race tracks and share them online).

You can spend as little or as much as you want, and I can tell you from personal experience that Skylanders, at least, is very fun.

HEALTH // DEATH MAGIC American noise-rock band HEALTH have returned with the first LP in six years since 2009’s GET COLOUR (three years if you count the very impressive Max Payne 3 soundtrack). This album has been worth the wait, believe me. The boys have put their best foot forward with thundering drums, howling guitars and aggressive synths and electronics, polishing their noise/industrial/tech sounds from the previous records, and even proving that they can attempt radiofriendly music.

DEATH MAGIC opens with ‘Victim’ where HEALTH play the suspense card incredibly well, as they begin the album with a booming synth build-up, guitar screech and drum kick. The second half of the track fades in with very controlled, melodic vocals, indicating that this album is something new entirely. The track instantly ends in a transition to ‘Stonefist’, which sounds just like getting hit by a brick wall. More interestingly, the track sounds like a rework of their earlier single ‘Tears’ from the Max Payne 3 soundtrack. The powerful electronics blast through over the catchy chorus (‘We both know/Love’s not in our hearts’).

The sonic arc only gets better as the album progresses, as ‘Stonefist’ transforms into ‘Men Today’. Primal drums course through the track’s veins as a frantic, angry electro beat pulses throughout. This track is my favourite purely because it’s so aggressive. HEALTH continue to ramp up the energy in the songs ‘Flesh World (UK)’ and ‘Courtship II’, and later in the album taking a “Death Grips Runway E” approach to drums in the track ‘Salvia’. The pop-friendlier cuts on the album ‘Life’ and ‘L.A. Looks’ take the same aggressive approach with club themes and synthpop riffs.

The focus on this new record is undoubtedly the electronics and vocals of lead singer Jacob Duzsik. The percussion has been all but stripped away on most tracks, leaving Duzsik alone with the distorted, reverbing guitars and software to sing some particularly grim vocals on the subjects of life, death, love and lust—‘It’s not love/but I still want you’ and ‘There’s no-one here to judge us/Do all the drugs/We die, so what?’. There’s an essay waiting to be written about the meanings behind the lyrics, I’m sure.

Overall, HEALTH have taken the time to polish and refine their noise-rock sound, and this album is all the better for it. It’s also worth mentioning that the music video for the lead single ‘New Coke’ should not be witnessed by those who can’t handle two minutes of slow motion vomiting. I’ve warned you—don’t blame me! DEATH MAGIC maintains a level of consistency as it thunders from start to finish.

This album is recommended with a good stereo, or at the very least, excellent headphones.

AUTHOR Kelly Guthberlet, 21, Bachelor of Science/Education

AUTHOR & ARTIST Aden Beaver, 18, Bachelor of Creative Arts (Digital Media)

Kelly eternally craves pizza, and love.

Aden craves more and more CDs to add to his shelves.

47

NATIONAL CAMPUS BAND COMPETITION The National Campus Band Competition is an annual Australian national band competition produced by the Australian Association of Campus Activities. The Flinders University Heat was held on the 13th of August at DeCafe (Sturt Campus). A bunch of you stopped by for lunch, a beer and to listen to some amazing local talent!

Congratulations to everyone who participated! The six bands who played were incredible! The top two bands, Chérie de Klerk (first place) and Babes Are Wolves (second place) will represent Flinders University at the State Finals on September 3rd at Fowlers Live!

first place Chérie de Klerk

(18) is a singer/ songwriter based in Adelaide. She’s been writing songs and singing since she was five years old and living in South Africa. Chérie moved to Australia when she was eleven and continued to use music to express emotions and write about her personal experiences. All grown up the artist found her sound and formed with a band in February, doing live shows around Adelaide and recording original works. Backed by the stellar line-up of fellow musicians they create the perfect combination of husky and angelic vocals, beautiful harmonic melodies with ambient guitar effects, drum rhythms and unique bass lines. Chérie de Klerk released a single ‘Dangerous Minds, Fragile Hearts’ with her band in August. The song is captivating and takes the listener on an ambient journey. It’s available on Soundcloud and Triple J Unearthed for a free download. The indie/alternative group is in the process of recording more music and hope to have a debut EP available by the end of the year.

second place Babes Are Wolves

hail from Adelaide, SA. Their love for Sean Connery and dirty jokes inspires these girls to make the moody catchy tunes they do, blending rock, grunge and dark pop into tunes that would romance your mum. New to the scene, they have already supported bands such as Axe Girl (WA), Hey, Lady! (NSW), Captives (Melb) and Tony Font Show (SA). Their debut demo release landed them at #22 on the ThreeD Radio Top 101 for 2014, and their first EP is about to be released on Oct 16th at The Jade Monkey. Listed as a ‘Band To Watch for 2015’ (Spoz’s Rant), Babes Are Wolves have big plans for this year. Members: Anna (The Villenettes), Zoe (ex-Gold Bloom, Ride Into The Sun), Casey (The British Robots), and Emily (Tamworth accompaniest and associated with acts such as Kelly Menhennett, Mary Webb, Courtney Robb).

what kind of consumer are you?

The best gifts are....

Store-bought.

Gardens are good for...

Ornamental status symbols.

Homemade.

Would you say your lifestyle is eco-friendly?

What do you think about drugs?

Fast-food companies?

The backbone of any good economy.

Prey on the vulnerable lower classes.

Eco-what now?

I catch the bus sometimes.

Get that mind-altering nonsense away from me!

I’m gonna pop some tags, only got $20 in my pocket...

You can feed a family of four with that.

Get a job!

Welfare is...

A leech on hard-working taxpayers.

Capitalist

Getting in touch with nature.

Producing your own food.

Greed is good and money is God. Nothing matters more than no. 1 and collecting wealth. Others may sneer and call you selfish or pure evil, but they’re just jealous of your new gold-plated Mercedes.

Large and everpresent in my daily life.

Necessary to ensure a just society.

Socialist

You believe in distributing the wealth equally, unlike those filthy capitalist pigs.

Everyone gets treated the same in your Egalitarian paradise. After all, we’re all equals.

Of course!

Drug laws are ineffectual. Let me decide what’s good for me.

I swear I’m just holding if for a friend!

You like your Governments...

Destroyed.

I believe in Freedom.

War, what is it good for?

Determining the survival of the fittest.

Survivalist

Of course you’re off the grid and grow all your own food.

No Government mind-control GMOs for you! Others call you ‘crazy’ or ‘paranoid’, but we’ll see how well they fare when the apocalypse hits.

Why must we always fight?

Hippy

You can't really ‘own’ things, man. We’re all just here to share in Mother Earth’s bounty. You don’t believe in ‘money’. Unfortunately that cafe is getting sick of you trying to barter poems for your soy fairtrade organic coffee.

49