Honi Soit
FIRST PRINTED 1929
WEEK 10, SEMESTER 2, 2021
IN THIS EDITION
Students protest Gender & Cultural Studies merger and Future FASS CLAIRE OLLIVAIN / P. 3
Magpie mayhem! CLAIRE OLLIVAIN & SAMUEL GARRETT / P. 6
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he Australian magpie usually eats worms and insects, but during swooping season on campus there is only one prey that matters: students.
The case of the pink streetlamp MARLOW HURST / P. 7
Finding family SHANIA O’BRIEN/ P. 15
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have built a castle in my mind, and it puts Neuschwanstein and the Umaid Bhawan to shame. It stretches well into the clouds and its stained-glass windows trap sunlight within their jewel hues ...
Stucco: 30 years and still standing JENAE MADDEN & LEAH BRUCE / P. 10
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Stucco’s history re-imagined.
he conventional history of Stucco begins with the trite tale of an abandoned glass factory. A glass factory, turned squatters’ den, turned legitimate University of Sydney owned, but not operated, accommodation. It’s an interesting tale of successful collective student action, radical democratic self management and sticking the middle finger to an increasingly competitive rental market of the inner-city suburbs in its first waves of yuppification. And, yet this tale manages to say nothing at all.
But history told in this way reduces Stucco to its mere origins, and overlooks three decades of colourful residents and their ongoing allegiance to keep the co-operative alive. The Wikipedia page, reportage online and even the odd, fleeting mention in the Honi archives, all fail to articulate what makes Stucco so treasured to those who come to live within its walls. Unfortunately, as trite as it were, not everyone will come across the University’s co-op during their degree. We want that to change. So, before the tale is retired and rewritten, let us give the obligatory Stucco brief
history, and then tell you how, against the odds, it has managed to remain. Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader, and Tears for Fears plays in the distance from a Sony Walkman. On the top floor of the University of Sydney’s Manning Bar, a bunch of architecture students meet every second Monday as the ‘Sydney University Housing Co-operative’, later to be known as ‘Stucco’. They are drawing up the plans for a new, alternative type of affordable housing. The ‘co-operative’ model, as it were, imagined residents as shareholders, working for