UQ Sport censors student / p. 5
Learning how to protest / p. 7
A fairer way to compare students / p. 4
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Edition 4, 2019. Since 1932. Free.
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Acknowledgement of Country Semper acknowledges the Turrbal and Jagera peoples as the traditional owners of the land on which this newspaper is created. We pay our respects to elders past and present.
Editor’s Note Contents Well, you’ve made it through another semester, and if there’s nothing else to be thankful for, then at least the past six months are now behind you. This edition is about the semester just passed. Check out pages 12 and 13 for another deep dive into the Ramsay Centre’s proposed major in Western Civilisation, and have a look at pages 5 and 15 for some thoughts on this Schonell debacle. If you’re looking for just the news, thanks, I can’t recommend enough the story on page 4 about the university’s discussions to give you an additional statistic about your achievements in your degree. I’d also like to highlight just how much I owe this edition to everybody but myself. With extreme thanks to Ruby Green for helping edit articles, Rebecca Kilpatrick for writing, and our publisher Georgia Millroy for staying on my fucking back about Semper taking so long to produce. Together with the moral support from Nilsson Jones and Raphael Wixted, you’ve all helped me stave off the black dog for one more semester, and I can’t thank you enough. - Rowan
News 3 Respect 6 Women’s 7 Tear-out Poster 8 Puzzles 10 Regulars 11 Union Pages 12 Comedy 14
I am the UQ Poet In my books you can trust If you love indigenous culture This book is a must Title: Indigenous Australia Author: Mark Riordan Available: amazon.com.au Please search title and author
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Our Team Editor in Chief Rowan Evans Editors Raphael Wixted, Ruby Green, Rebecca Kilpatrick, Tim Gardner, Nilsson Jones, Thomas Wiltshire, Isabella Scattini, Tiarni Miller Art Shreyas Shet (cover), Rebecca Kilpatrick, Google Images -> Tools -> Usage rights -> Labeled for reuse Printer Print on Demand, UQ St Lucia Publisher Semper is published by the UQ Union President, Georgia Millroy, but she respects our editorial independence. With Thanks Ruby Green, Adam Piggott, Peter Adams, Annie Kate Bradley, Drew Pavlou and all the boys down at Runcorn 4113 Disclaimer
The views expressed in this publication are the personal opinions of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or the views of UQU. All articles are to be considered opinionative in nature. All articles remain the intellectual property of the authors.
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Letters to the Editor On History Books TIARNI MILLER - Semper Editor Why are all the books in the Humanities library slowly being purged into a warehouse at Gatton? I don’t know about you but if I saw a humanities student in the regions, I’d be concerned - most of us don’t drive. History is to UQ what Hermione is to Harry Potter; crucial to its survival yet severely underappreciated and rarely formally acknowledged. It’s time we stop evaluating the practicality of a discipline by the tangibility of its output. Skills adapted from an education in history hold cross-disciplinary, existential advantages. The day we stop thinking independently is the day humanity and all we have built will collapse. Critical thought lay at the centre of all historical analysis, equipping students with a crucial framework of which will inform all future decisions, far beyond academia. Its absence has welcomed the greatest historical injustices humanity has seen. In the banality of human nature, history is not just memory, it’s hindsight. It’s our responsibility to protect this power to the best of our ability.
On Red Room Opening Hours ALFRED K. HOLIC - Real student I for one think that it is an absolute disgrace that classes are able to start as early as 8am, but the campus bar remains closed until 11. This matter, which I consider to be of the highest importance means that students are forced to choose between coming to campus at all, or diverting their journey to the casino or airport for an early drink. Hypothetically, say you have a tutorial that ends at 9am. And suppose as well that you meet a nice bird at the same time. You are forced to stick around and make awkward conversation for two hours before being able to get on the piss. Last week, I had to take a girl to coffee. I don’t even fucking like coffee.
On Star-Crossed Lovers Dear Editors, My boyfriend is a Sagittarius. What do I do? Response: Cleanse him with sage, take some me-time, and most of all, focus on your studies!
On The Way Way Back RUBY GREEN - Semper Editor For far too long, students have suffered without to our time-honoured duty of informing the student reviews of the toilets on campus. I enclose one that body of the amenities on offer? Please consider. appeared in Semper in 1992. Surely we should return Response: Let the people decide.
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How to Fix GPAs RAPHAEL WIXTED - Academic Issues Editor
UQ mathematics lecturer Dr Adam Piggott wants to fix GPAs. The Grade Point Average system is to students what water is to fish. If you’ve spent your whole academic life surrounded by it, you’re unlikely to even notice that the system has problems. For instance, the benchmark for entry into Honours programs and the threshold for keeping some scholarships is a GPA of 5.5. That would only make sense if we can confidently say that a GPA of 5.5 in every set of courses is the same as a 5.5 in every other set. But Dr Piggott says that’s not a realistic conclusion to make. “One of the things we worry about in mathematics is that because you use some mathematics, people think it’s now rigorous and scientific, and GPAs suffer from this,” Dr Piggott says. “We take an average of something, and now suddenly people think it’s redolent with meaning. But they have to be viewed with a critical eye like with all information. “If we’re going to compute a GPA, but we know that the grading outcomes vary significantly across the university, then we should perform the same computation with something which measures grading outcomes as well as GPAs to provide some context,” he says. Note that the problem here isn’t that some courses are easier or harder than others. It’s just the case that their ‘grading outcomes’ are higher or lower. That’s Dr Piggott’s way of saying it’s statistically more likely that a student would receive a higher or lower grade. “Whether the course is easy or hard, or whether it’s serious or not serious, or rigorous or not rigorous, that’s not the same as the grading outcomes. The reality is that grading outcomes vary significantly across courses,” Dr Piggott says. So what needs to be fixed is that some students can get better overall GPAs just by looking for courses with higher grading outcomes. And it’s not just the students on scholarships and Honours tracks, but anyone who wants to graduate. Eloise Martin is a first-year Agricultural Sciences student looking for an easy course in semester two. “I’ve decided to pick up a fifth subject next semester in politics or economics, so that I can garner some context and relevance from outside my degree,” Eloise said. “Given that I’m overloading, I’m looking for a fairly easy, introductory-type course,” she said. Now, it’s not a bad thing to do this, per se. But normalising the strategy of using easy courses to boost your GPA could incentivise some people to pick courses for the wrong reasons. After all, shouldn’t we be picking out courses that will best equip us for future success, not just those that have immediate payoffs? “For the students who were making decisions for the right reasons, the question was ‘oh, are they missing out on something here? What’s going on?’,” Dr Piggott says. “We realised that some students really were having to do more, having to outperform their peers, by even more, just to get something that looked like an average GPA.
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They weren’t telling the story,” he says. So, here’s how it works. Instead of just showing you your GPA, you’ll also have the opportunity to see what your GPA would have been if you’d achieved the same as the middle-ranked student in each course. This is called the GPA of Medians (GPAM for short). “One of the important things about GPAM is that we’re not proposing at this stage to put it on transcripts. We’re proposing to give it to students, and if a student doesn’t want to use that as part of the way they market their accomplishments, they don’t have to,” Dr Piggott says. Now, you might ask here: “Why not just put everyone in a course on a bell curve?”. This is not an uncommon suggestion, but it’s one that Dr Piggott says is difficult to achieve, as some courses are just not built for a seven-point scale of grade variation. “Maybe in a skills-based course, [the instructor has] to know that a student who’s going to be a surveyor has to be able to use that machine, that machine, and that machine. Can they do it? Yes they can,” Dr Piggott says. “That course is a different beast from ‘Let’s tease out the subtleties of foreign policy in Australia in the 70s’, where you can take students into great depths and probe their abilities and so on. “So different courses are built in different ways and they accomplish different things, yet there’s only a couple of different ways we can put their grades into a structure,” he says. He is also concerned that mandating low grades in some courses can harm people in programs with professional accreditation bodies that require a high GPA. “So what would it mean if some proportion of your students were graduating from your program, and [their instructor] thought they were doing quite well, but their grades were too low to be that thing they trained to be? And they can’t fix it. It’s pretty hard for students to fix,” he says. The big win here is that every student gets to back their claims up with data. If you try your best on a few courses with lower grading outcomes, you’re not out of the running for that big firm, because now you can show them how you did overall compared to your peers. Students also get a better idea of their own achievements. Which is important, because every study group has that one kid who’s on the Dean’s List every semester, but still thinks they aren’t doing well enough. This is an opportunity to show them the data on how well they’re really doing compared to the rest of us. “The principal reason for it is to help some students understand and market their accomplishments,” Dr Piggott says. “It’s not about diminishing the accomplishments of students who have performed very well in courses that may have high grading outcomes. I think those students are going to be just fine,” he says. Eloise says that if a GPA weren’t the only number to watch out for, it might change her style of picking courses as well. “I think it’s important to take classes that don’t necessarily improve your mark but they’re challenging and interesting,” she said. The program is already in place at Dr Piggott’s previous university, Bucknell, a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. We spoke to the student government there about the initiative. “Last year, Bucknell Student Government received a presentation from the two statistics professors that were some of the primary developers for the metric,” BSG President Kip Hallagan told Semper. “GPAM was recently rolled out this semester and has received mostly positive feedback. “It has allowed for a greater perspective on academic performance, especially when comparing between different colleges (engineering, management or arts and science),” he said. Dr Piggott expects the committee investigating the GPAM will finish their work mid-semester two.
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UQ Sport Censors Student ROWAN EVANS Editor-in-Chief
Semper editor Raph Wixted told us in this year’s second edition that he had tried to register a dodgeball team in UQ’s social sport using two team names “Peter Døj and the Vice Chancellors” and “I showed you my Døjballs please respond”. We’re not saying this is an outrageously funny joke. But what we also don’t consider a laughing matter is that this came just a week after the real Vice Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj, whose name is pronounced ‘hoy’, told ABC Radio that he would not censor students in the replacement Schonell Theatre. Specifically, Professor Høj said that “in this day and age, we are very keen to secure freedom of speech and freedom of expression at our university venues, and I don’t recall, certainly in my tenure, any time that we have stopped the students from saying what they want to.” “If the students are critical of me, they don’t take refuge in the Schonell Theatre and be critical of me, they will do it when they feel like it. “I’m again very hopeful that the University will remain a space that people, without fear, can put forward an opinion, even if it’s different from ours,” he said. And keep in mind, this was all while pointedly avoiding making any comment about whether the University would take over control of the new theatre. He wanted these comments to be heard as the University being trustworthy when it comes to protecting free and uncensored speech, even when it criticises the Vice Chancellor. Which is why it was so baffling that a week later, a University organisation prohibited the use of even the simplest of jokes about the Vice Chancellor. UQ Sport told Raph and his team that their chosen names were “too closely associated with the Vice Chancellor’s name”, and therefore couldn’t be used.
Raph thought this was surely a mistake and sent an email to the Vice Chancellor himself to clear up this error. Being the busy dear leader that he is, he did not reply directly. But a reply email came from his executive assistant, and reiterated that “our Vice-Chancellor’s name is Peter Høj so maybe your suggestion won’t work.” I could forgive his executive secretary for perhaps not having heard his promise to ABC Radio listeners that the University is a venue for the free and open exchange of ideas no matter how critical. I assumed that this error could only have happened if the Vice-Chancellor had not seen any of these emails or even heard of the error on the part of UQ Sport. So I sent a follow-up email, letting Vice-Chancellor and Professor Peter Høj know that people were acting in his name, but not acting out his values of free speech. A response came back from his office which baffled me. “Hi Rowan – the Vice-Chancellor has asked me to respond to you on your query about the social sport team name,” it began. At least, finally, I had proof that Professor Høj had read this one. “The captain of the team asked Peter for permission to use his name, but the intended pun - Døj - didn’t make sense as Peter’s surname is Høj.” “I want to assure you there was never any censorship intended.” Let me reiterate. The Vice-Chancellor’s office claims they didn’t “intend” to censor students. But they still refused to “grant permission” to a joke that they didn’t understand. This leaves several questions open. Why do jokes have to make sense before they can be used as team names? Why does the Vice-Chancellor (or his office) have final say over the which jokes are understandable? If the joke doesn’t make sense, wouldn’t it only embarrass Raphael and his team, not the Vice-Chancellor? Isn’t it our inalienable right as undergraduates to make dumb jokes and learn from them in our own time? If the upper brass of the University are taking the side of UQ Sport on a joke as simple as this, what happens when someone wants to make a bigger, genuinely challenging joke at a theatre that the Vice-Chancellor controls?
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Random Acts of Respect As told to AK Bradley So much of the conversation around sexual assault and harassment is about self-control or the victim-blamey advice on defending yourself. But it seems to us here at Semper that what’s so often misisng is the advice on how to intervene when you see it happening before your very eyes. So that’s what this column is for. We want to ask regular people how they’ve stepped in when they see something going on. We hope that these accounts of everyday heroes will embolden readers when a critical moment arises.
GRACE (pictured) So I was at a club in the valley on a Saturday night, and I can’t really remember how, but this guy came up to me. And he kept on talking to me and my friend. And I was like “Can you seriously go away? Cause you’re like-” cause he was like, you know, getting in there. And then, I was like “can you seriously leave us alone? Like we’re not interested, blah blah blah.” And he was like “Oh, ok,” but then he touched my butt as he walked away. And I looked at him, and he looked back, and I gave him the worst look possible and I was like ‘whatever’. And as he was on his way back, I went into the venue and saw my other friends, and went over to them, and suddenly someone grabbed my butt really aggressively. And then I was like “Oh,” and I turned around and he had already disappeared, but I knew he’d walked into this other little area, so I went over there. And I was like “what the hell did-“... I’m not going to say the swears that I said but I was like “what the hell did you just do?” And he was like “What? What?” And I was like “I know what you just did! I know you just grabbed my ass!” And he was like “No I didn’t, no I didn’t.” And I was like “You literally did.” And I was like “If you ever do that again we’re going to have a serious problem. I’ll call security.” But I said- Ha well there was a lot more swearing than this so I’m not going to say it. So yeah, I just had like a massive, massive go at him. And I said, “If you touch me one more time, we’re going to have a serious problem.” And that’s it. But he was a lot more aggressive, I swear, I’m not an aggressive person. If someone harasses me, I’m an aggressive person. If you’re in a safe environment where there’s people around and there’s no chance of you actually getting harmed by the person who’s harassed you, then I think you should stand up for yourself. Just so they know that, like, that’s not ok. And maybe having your friends there to back you up. But if it’s like in a situation where you could, like if it’s just you two or something and you feel threatened, you should probably just call the police and maybe leave it alone.
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ANONYMOUS in the Red Room So, I was in a club with one of my friends, oh, actually a few of my friends. It was after a birthday party. We had all had a few drinks, I was dancing. And I just saw one of my female friends... She was getting, you know, touched by a completely random stranger. We had no idea who he was. He was getting pretty handsy. And ummm. You know, like, w-when I saw that, you know, it made me, like, it made me pretty angry. So, I just, you know I just went over. But, you know, I made sure that he wasn’t like hurting her. And I definitely took… I took her out of the situation. And that was pretty much it. Yeah it’s definitely not right, you know… even if you’re drunk, whatever’s going on with your situation in life, you know, you shouldn’t just start, you know, touching random strangers just like out of nowhere. That’s not right. So, yeah. Obviously it was one of my friends so it made it a lot easier to go and confront the guy and get her out of that situation. But if she had been a stranger, I don’t know what I would’ve done in that situation. But I reckon it’s definitely important that we all look out for each other and we all, you know, play our part and definitely like, do something against harassment. Cause it’s, yeah. It’s wrong to do it.
You can help create a positive culture of sexual conduct. Research shows that students are more likely to tell other students rather than uni administration about an incident of sexual violence, and that the attitudes they experience on first disclosure have a huge impact on how well they recover. If anyone ever discloses to you. Try to remember the following phrases: 1. “I’m sorry this happened to you” because what they hear is “I believe you” 2. “What happened is not your fault” because what they hear is “you are not to blame” 3. “I’m going to do what I can to help you with this” because what they hear is “you are no longer alone in this”
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The Art of the Petition REBECCA KILPATRICK - Women’s Editor
Content note: This article describes sexual assault and rape. Some time ago, I encountered a UQ alumnus from the 80s who challenged me on the ‘safe-ness’ of student protest on campus. “Students here don’t care enough about things to protest; they’re too safe”, she stated, as we stood in front of Peter Milne’s Ludic (2010) artwork in the UQ Art Museum, where I work. For context, this artwork is a collage that reimagined Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen receiving an honorary degree in what is now the art museum. In the protests that followed the depicted event, several students – including my conversation partner – were arrested amid what was then a culture of student protest on campus. As this cordial exchange was on work hours, and the past protests I’d been involved in were indeed lacklustre, I blankly commented that police records restrict job opportunities and left it at that. The guilt of this comment marinated for two months before a Facebook event for a protest appeared on my radar, via a friend of a friend. The event was called ‘Consent Law QLD - Letter Writing Campaign’, and it was designed to gather interest in opposing a ‘loophole’ in sexual assault/rape laws which allows for the defence of a ‘mistake of fact’. That is to say, an accused can defend themselves by saying they mistakenly thought they had consent due to the victim being intoxicated, instinctively freezing, being mentally incapacitated, or being on the other side of a language barrier. The organisers were Bri Lee (author of Eggshell Skull and qualified lawyer) and Professor Jonathan Crowe (a legal philosopher from Bond University), and together they gave insights only possible through their shared fifteen years of research into Queensland’s rape laws. “One of the most concerning aspects is how the defence allows defendants to rely on outdated rape myths to escape justice. For example, they can argue that because the complainant was intoxicated, flirted with them or went with them to a private location, they mistakenly believed she was consenting to sex with them… We believe the mistake of fact defence should be inapplicable to rape and sexual assault charges. At the least, defendants should not be able to rely on it where they didn’t take positive steps to find out if the complainant was consenting, or where they or the complainant were seriously intoxicated. We have drafted legal amendments that could easily be adopted to remove or limit the defence,” Professor Crowe writes on the Consent Law QLD website. For the purposes of this protest, the chosen method of pursuing law reform was petitioning the government. And you might think that petitioning is the safest form of protest -- I know I did. But since getting involved in the process, it’s shocked me to realise what I’ve had to say to gain the majority of signatures: “I am a person that you know, and I have been sexually assaulted by three people, one over a six month period, please sign this petition to aid people able to take their cases to court and receive a
fair trial”. I’ve realised for myself how few young people are involved in this discussion. When I got involved, there were only 100 submissions to the Queensland Government on this issue. In my efforts over the past month, I have collected another 30. I started out as an interested initiate, and within a month, I’ve developed the confidence to pursue signatures from big names around the university, like those of Merle Thornton (famous for a protest at the Regatta Hotel as well as being a UQ Women’s Studies founder), and her distinguished daughter Sigrid. The era of #metoo has helped so many people to hear about the impacts of sexual violence. Here I am, one of many under this umbrella of trauma, exposing my rotting wounds to scream for change – to ears that, I hope, won’t drag me like all the people I left behind to heal. But it’s not enough to just hear. Not when people are getting away with sex crimes. Assault and rape are not gendered acts. They are almost always premeditated, and they will have a lifelong effect on the victim regardless of whether or not they go through legal proceedings. We must remove the myths that surround sexual violence from Queensland law. And the only way to do that is to prove to older generations that young people haven’t lost their protesting spirit. Over the next semester, I hope to set up an event with the UQU Wom*n’s Collective to run an event on this issue. However, in the meantime, here is a link to the petition. Go sign it. https://www.consentlawqld.com/emailqld-gov
If you or someone you know is or has been experiencing issues, help is out there: Lifeline: 13 11 14 Student Help On Campus: 3346 3400 https://www.uqu.com.au/student-support UQ Counselling: 1300 851 998 https://www.uq.edu.au/student-services/ counselling-services Contact 000 if you are in immediate danger.
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Cryptic Crossword Authored by White Bishop
23. Here, there and ware, wear, we’re .... (10) 24. What old balding farmers do. (6) 25. Colour of the condition (24) when they sang about system start-up.. (8) DOWN 1. Bats about knobs (7) 2. Money, this one urinated like 30.48 metres (9) 3. Assignment for strong clear voice. (7) 4. What a haberdasher and a sailor in rough seas might be concerned with. (7) 5. Audition as Rascal frolics also without practice. (9) 6. Rim art initially frames drink best shaken not stirred. (7) 7. Soft Italian favourite dictator beheaded and chopped (7) 12. P or helmet. (9) 14. A factor of 10 above 2. (9) 16. The way a distillery wizard might search (7) 17. Confer with dignity the size of a gas. (7) 18. Err… rer … rre or one who creates trouble. (7) 19. Where the tuffet was, if Little Miss Muffet was heard balancing astride her bowl. (7) 20. When a saint looks at what is missing? (7)
ACROSS 1. Shoulder bag that is heard to support wolves (8) 5. Confide in the extreme, immediate and sure (6) 8. Stupid person like a cardinal with most of wage ending in crap. (10) 9. Do leave the orchid for a type of expensive food perhaps (4) 10. One who studies diseases spread by pied goose limit (14) 11. Protective covering when she is on heat. (7) 13. Type of illusion where one hundred is replaced by a thousand and becomes the best. (7) 15. Giveaway male citizen (7) 18. Lord of maths heard to have more than needed (7) 21. Attempted by people who take a chance, for example. (14) 22. A metrical measure of how this one is a worker. (4)
Easier Clues ACROSS 1. Shoulder bag. (8) 5. Confide (6) 8. Stupid person (10) 9. Expensive. (4) 10. One who studies diseases (14) 11. Protective covering. (7) 13. The best. (7) 15. Citizen (7) 18. More than needed (7) 21. Domination of the market. (14) 22. A metrical measure. (4) 23. All places (10) 24. Pull back. (6) 25. A neutral achromatic colour. (8) DOWN 1. Balmy (7) 2. Predacious arthropod. (9)
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Bring a completed copy of this crossword to the UQU Reception, and enter the draw to win a $5 UQU voucher!
The same crossword made simpler.
3. Assignment. (7) 4. Overturn accidentally. (7) 5. With little or no preparation. (9) 6. A cocktail made of gin (or vodka) with dry vermouth. (7) 7. Soft Italian cheese. (7) 12. Helmet. (9) 14. Another arthropod (9) 16. A jumble of things to be given away (7) 17. Confer with dignity. (7) 18. One who creates trouble. (7) 19. Street. (7) 20. Free of wrong doing. (7)
Previous Solution: ACROSS 1 fetishist. 6 bible. 9 oceanic. 10 Christy. 11 twang. 12 major-domo. 14 eye. 15 guerrillero. 17 predecessor. 19 dry. 20 extractor. 22 nomic. 24 stelene. 26 interim. 27 yield. 28 elemental. DOWN 1 flout. 2 teenage. 3 synagogue. 4 incompetent. 5 tic. 6 borer. 7 Bespoke. 8 etymology. 13 jury service. 14 expressly. 16 lorgnette. 18 esthete. 19 demerit. 21 amend. 23 camel. 25 eve.
Sudoku Easy
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Hard
From the Semper Archives Thanks to Duncan Hart for sending in this article from 1990, which was the year he started studying at UQ. Send us your favourites from the UQ Library website, and we’ll give you a shout out in Semper.
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Ramsay: A Semester in Review
Semester 1 of 2019 was the Ramsay Centre semester. UQ students mobilised over the university’s plan to create a program for Western Civilisation studies. Some mobilised in favour, many more mobilised against. We’re using these pages, which are usually reserved for informing you on student political activity to inform you on the arguments from both sides.
Against Ramsay PRIYA DE In 1943 a terrible famine struck West Bengal, the part of India I’m from. The British Raj didn’t know or care for the local agriculture. They demanded huge outputs of grain for export and eroded the soil. As people starved, the colonial state diverted food aid to British soldiers fighting in World War 2. At least three million Bengalis perished. Winston Churchill said it was the Indian people’s fault for “breeding like rabbits”. You can understand why Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, quipped “It would be a good idea”. Closer to home, in Purga, thirty minutes West of Brisbane, absent is even a single plaque acknowledging that violent missions once operated amongst the rolling hills. Indigenous people were interned, forced to perform unpaid labour, brutalised and exploited. Many were separated from their families. These monstrous facilities were designed to ‘smooth the dying pillow’. This instrument of genocide, justifying ‘Terra Nullius’ post facto, is one pillar of Western Civilisation in Australia. The architects of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation don’t like that this history of oppression (and resistance) is (occasionally) taught at university, or anywhere. They’re battlers for the conservatives, racists and bigots in the culture wars. For years, the Liberal Party - the ‘brains’ behind the Ramsay Centre - has attempted to mould education to shape their political agenda. In 2014, then-Education Minister Christopher Pyne called a review into the national school curriculum. Pyne wanted students to learn more about ANZACs and the benefits of Western Civilisation, and nothing about colonisation. The Ramsay Centre is, conspicuously, trying this on at universities. In Tony Abbott’s words, their three-year program will be “not merely about Western Civilisation, but in favour of it…” to combat “the pervasiveness of Asian, Indigenous and sustainability perspectives… and absence [of] any idea that cultures might not all be equal, and truth might not be entirely relative.” Ramsay’s proposed degree might seem innocent at first glance. They’re crafting it around ‘Great Books’ - Plato, Aristotle, maybe some Mary Wollstonecraft to fill the “woman question”. You can study these texts, individually, in English Literature or Political Science already, and there’s no problem with that necessarily. What makes Ramsay’s a deeply racist project, with a deeply racist political ideology, is calling this patchwork of random books a full and coherent study of the West. Firstly and obviously, the racism lies in what’s not said. A study of ‘the West’ that does not talk about the plunder of wealth, dispossession of peoples, national liberation struggles, invasions and wars is dishonest and untrue. For Ramsay, it’s more important for students to learn about vending machines (according to their Facebook page, a token of Western genius), than the slave trade, Jim Crow segregation, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Agent Orange, or atrocities at Abu Ghraib. These omissions, taken together, leave Ramsay’s program a crash-course in Imperial propaganda. Secondly, Ramsay is taking a modern concept - ‘the West’, synonymous with ‘whiteness’ - and transposing it backwards on history. According to Ramsay’s narrative, a unified ‘Western’
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identity based around democracy, liberty and inventiveness has prevailed throughout the fractious and varied societies from Ancient Greece to contemporary Australia. This is ahistorical, academically discredited bullshit. Although couched in discussions of ‘culture’, Ramsay’s worldview is a 21st Century version of old-school biological essentialism: white people have been different (and better) forever and always, just because. It would be equally incoherent and racist to describe ‘the East’ in such terms. In fact, Hindu nationalists in India - arguably the largest far right movement in the world - are assailing the school curriculum there, to insist that an uninterrupted strand of superior Hinduism has prevailed since pre-class societies. These essentialist narratives help justify contemporary political agendas. For the Hindu nationalists, this invention of a pure, age-old Hinduism needs to be defended from Muslim subversives and invaders. That’s not too dissimilar from the active, racist political project that the Liberal Party pursues. As recently as 2015 their government moved to close down more than 100 Indigenous communities in Western Australia. They imprison refugees in gulags on Manus Island and Nauru, supposedly because ‘they don’t share our values’. They supported the invasion and destruction of the Middle East - where the overwhelmingly civilian casualties in Iraq number upwards of one million - on the basis of defending the West, and, absurdly, women (because what’s more liberating than a cluster bomb?). A lot goes into constructing this superior ‘West’ to justify why human rights should be damned in its name. Ramsay wants to train up some smarmy students to suavely sell racism in politics. That these goons can even get a hearing shows how corporatised our university system has become. I could not appeal to UQ to restore the gender studies major with the $37 in my bank account. But if you have $50 million, apparently, our academic integrity and any piddling sense of social conscience is up for lease. Racism is not abstract. Ramsay’s ideas - that Western civilisation is superior, and under threat - impact the lives of real people, in our classrooms, workplaces and of course, for many, our homes. Two months ago, an Australian fascist murdered 40 Muslims at a mosque in Christchurch, in defence of ‘Western Civilisation’. The Ramsay Centre champion violent, dangerous politics. It matters that we stop them. Priya is a Councillor in the UQ Union with Student Action. She called for students to vote ‘NO’ to the question: “Should UQ accept a deal with the Ramsay Centre’ in the student general meeting on May 29, 5pm at the Schonell Theatre.
SEMPER
For Ramsay DONNCHADH TICKER There has been a general problem in society as Humanities degrees become less important. It is apparent people have far less respect for the degree in comparison to previous generations. The typical Arts jokes and smears you hear are nothing new, jokes about McDonalds requiring an Arts degree or fast food being the only career prospect for humanities grads. It used to be the case that key Australian thinkers and influential people came to prominence, at least in part, thanks to their Arts or Humanities degree. It is precisely this critical thinking that sits outside some for the more conventional or vocational degrees (think engineering) that uniquely equips them, leaving us assured that when they sit atop boards or are directors of banks they’re not making decisions or being complicit with policies that end up charging dead people fees and service costs. It is evident to me that Humanities degrees need to reimagine their identity, and be adequately supported to return to the prominence it once had, we will be a better society for it. Professions such as teachers, lawyers, politicians, and journalists are better for the humanities and having graduates equipped with the critical thinking and ability to view issues and events through multiple lenses and perspectives. Financially, the humanities needs endowments to stay afloat and be impactful. We forget how easy it is for other degrees like engineering to monetise and receive financial support as their undergrad programs exist as pools for the corporate sector - who get a substantial return on investment for funding and improving their undergrad programs. In the sciences where research projects might not find a home with corporate partners, University companies like UniQuest can monetize the products of their research. The humanities is not so lucky. Private bequests like those left by Ramsay stand to fill the gaps in this increasingly corporatised education system. It seems that the main contention opponents of a Ramsay degree have is their belief that the Ramsay Centre is racist, that this degree is simply a mouthpiece designed by and for conservative ideologues, used to convert a new generation of graduates to being racist leaders. I have two responses to that claim. I don’t think it’s useful to investigate the Ramsay Centre’s motives, or if Tony Abbott sitting on the board actually makes all of the decisions they make motivated by the advancement of racism. I think, for UQ Students, what we should be considering is if the UQ Ramsay Degree will be racist, or create racist students. Firstly, if you had the slightest trust in the competency and self-interest of our university you would understand they would be ensuring the Ramsay Centre’s oversight or influence over course material would be minimal if not non-existent. A brief perusal over the proposed course material reveals that the course readings and topics covered are not regurgitated quotes from Churchill, or thinkers like Smith. The material extends toward reflections on the Bringing Them Home Report and the Mabo decision. These are topics that aren’t very easy to sell or paint as positive legacies of the west or pro-western. Very clearly UQ seeks, in its academic and employment independence to teach both the good and the bad, the advancement and the darkness that western thought and westernism has bestowed upon the world. The administration and staff signed a reconciliation plan with that in mind, declaring strongly that the University acknowledges violent colonization by Western Countries.
So when the academics from the humanities faculty, who acknowledge Australia’s black history are deciding what will be included and taught in these courses, they will be guided by the knowledge that violent colonisation did lay foundations to modern Australia, and that has to be taught in courses that analyse western nations and traditions - especially during the colonial era. I think those that wish to attack Ramsay, and attack a ‘Western Civilzation’ degree, conflate their ideological opposition to the ‘West’ as a concept, with this specific opportunity for UQ. These critical thinkers have no issue rejecting any analysis that resolve the West as a positive actor neither historically or in contemporary times. They talk about atrocities that have been carried out by the West and the ones specifically committed during the colonial era and how those things are terrible - but there’s nothing I have seen within UQ’s materials that promotes or justifies these events. I have no suspicion that people will come to the end of this degree with the conviction that colonisation, specifically the First Fleet was ‘on balance’ good for all Australians, as Tony Abbott suggested. Rather, students will be engaging with and criticising the mindset that encouraged the discrimination that drove our colonial past - viewing our first Australians as uncivilised and in need of saving - and rightly criticising some of the darker elements within the western tradition. These ‘great works’ that the late John Ramsay wished to revive will be critically engaged with and evaluated for their value in today’s world. Perhaps it is a good thing that these works which we have always taken for granted - without ever reading them will once again go under the microscope. UQ has been given this unique opportunity to raise a generation of academics who will, fresh in their memory, engage with these works and be able to incorporate them. What is likely the case is that we will be better equipped as a society to rebuke the problematic aspects of the west during that time period, and even conclude that these books, and their comparative works - aren’t so great. Secondly, some argue Ramsay will simply attack the academic freedom of UQ, and overrule the better judgement of our academics for their own motives. If we assume this was Ramsay’s actual agenda let’s acknowledge how likely this reality actually is. The Vice-Chancellor has declared publicly, multiple times, that for UQ our academic integrity is the red line in the sand that UQ will not cross. He’s trapped himself into rejecting any plan that removes UQ’s autonomy in controlling the courses it administers. We sit in a strategic position where Ramsay is desperate to get a deal with a Go8, having been rightly rejected by the ANU, and under extreme public scrutiny by Sydney. UQ has the chance to get a deal that is far more favourable to us than any corporate partnership we already engage in. I think this degree is both worth considering and the humanities needs a degree like this to exist and stay relevant. This degree is essential to the revitalisation, both financial and academically, of the humanities in Australia. The obsession over manufacturing a narrative of a think tank with racist motives is irrelevant. The truth is, UQ will deliver a degree, like all the others, applying multiple perspectives to history and engaging critically with problematic and difficult concepts. Donnchadh Ticker is a pseudonym, and also a riddle.
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COMEDY
Speculator
St Lucia
UQ’s other news source since 1933
Peter Høj on maintaining your principles PETER HØJ, AC - Vice-Chancellor and President of UQ If there’s one thing that you must insist upon as the Vice-Chancellor of a world-class university, it’s a commitment to your principles. I can tell you one thing for certain, and that is that the University of Queensland hasn’t stayed in the Top 50 of global rankings by compromising! Instead, it has served for generations of Queenslanders as a beacon of hope; a shining light on the hill, if you will. The truth is that we are on a mission for excellence. A mission which is a lot like being on a diet. Because when you’re on a diet, and someone offers you a big slice of chocolate mudcake, that person is asking you to compromise. Maybe you will enjoy a few minutes of delectable, sugary goodness as you munch on that mudcake, but what will you lose? You are trading your long-term dreams — your goals of being a fitter, healthier you — for a short-term gooey chocolate treat, and I guarantee that you will feel bad afterwards. So when I step down in mid-2020, I want you to remember the example that I have set for you. Always stick to your principles. Unless of course somebody offers you a fat sack of cash in funding for the humanities.
Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Peter Høj, AC (MSc, PhD, Hon.DUniv Copenhagen, Hon.DUniv S.Aust., FNAI, FTSE)
Student Partners Wanted For Scuba Operation at UQ Lakes
This could be you!
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Did you know that scientists have yet to record the true depth of the UQ lakes? The University of Queensland Properties & Services division is searching for three brave undergraduate students to participate in a ground-breaking Student Partner project: an exploratory under-surface study of our UQ Lakes. Student partners will have the opportunity to contribute to one of the University’s most pressing research interests, learn to scuba dive, and uncover the secrets of the one place on campus even Vice-Chancellor Peter Høj would not dare to view with the naked eye. Beneath the layers of blue-green algae, rocky crag, septic runoff, and human remains, some say old treasures hide in these murky depths. Some whisper of those underwater caves that connect to the historic Hartley Teakle bathrooms. And some speculate that if you search it out, even the reason for coming to university can be found at the bottom of this dark body of ‘water’. No need to worry about safety! Our trained biohazard specialists will be waiting nearby. This disgusting reservoir needs someone like you to pull out its weedy secrets. This project is not eligible for the UQ Advantage Award.
COMEDY
UQ responds to fears of reducing student theatre on campus with Theatre Festival featuring no student theatre groups. In one of those situations where the jokes just write themselves, UQ hosted a Theatre Festival in the second half of this semester as a pretty ham-fisted attempt to respond to claims that they were set to destroy student theatre on campus by removing the Schonell Theatre. On this same page in edition two, we told you about UQ’s bizarre decision to partner with the Sit Down Comedy Club, whose target demographic is aged 30+. This time, the University has teamed up with Brisbane’s ‘Anywhere Theatre Festival’. The point of which is to appear ‘anywhere-but-in-a-traditional-theatre’. And any other year, that might sound like a noble, artistic idea, but in 2019, it’s obviously a bit of a slap in the fucking face from a University currently planning to leave students with no choice but to perform anywhere but their theatre. And while some of the student art groups on campus were invited to perform, this request came two weeks before they would have had to appear. A laughably short amount of time to actually prepare and rehearse a piece of theatre. Feel free to consider the broader Anywhere Festival on its own merits. It was, after all, held all across town. But you should think critically about why the University is holding these events in concert with third parties, and whether that’s a good thing. As with the comedy night, and as with holding satellite concerts for Big Sound and sideshows for the Ekka (as if it needs more of an advertisement), the decision to bring third party providers to campus comes at the direct cost of giving that space to stu-
dents. And yes, students are not expert dramatists or musicians, but that fact has never hurt Law Revue ticket sales. Although, as a side-note, I don’t really think Zen Zen Zo’s bizarro piece of street theatre hurtling down the main drag from the Great Court to the Union Complex voguing along to cello music was an artistic achievement. The reason that Law Revue, Underground, and so many others can draw such an audience is because they understand students. And part of understanding students means understanding that sometimes we buy into the kind of crass style of comedy that makes ‘CollegeHumor’ such an evocative website name. Undergraduate students are unique in their ability to provide intelligence and wit in the midst of unpolished and offensive bullshit — the same kind of offensive material that a University will never provide on their own, because it’s too But once again, the University seems all too willing to trade that off for an external provider to deliver polished morsels of pop art to an audience that probably isn’t attending this university. If at the end of this article, you don’t see the problem with the Theatre Festival, I genuinely do not understand why you are reading Semper. Because what is at stake is the uniquely-UQ culture that students try to develop by producing art for you, and talking about events, places, and people on campus. You simply don’t get that when the University carts out a troupe of actors for whom the names ‘Høj’ and ‘Teakle’ mean nothing, and expects you to be thankful for the crumbs of culture that come with them.
The UQ Advantage. For sale while stocks last. Students need not apply. 15
LOST My GPA Appears small and unimpressive. Answers to ‘five’ (short for 4.25) Last seen outside Heath Room five minutes before my final exam. Please call if you see it or my will to live, also recently misplaced.