Honi Soit operates and publishes on Gadigal land of the Eora nation. We work and produce this publication on stolen land where sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney is a colonial institution. Honi Soit is a publication that prioritises the voices of those who challenge colonial rhetorics. We strive to continue its legacy as a radical left-wing newspaper providing students with a unique opportunity to express their diverse voices and counter the biases of mainstream media.
In This Edition...
God? Where you at?
The Holy Books
Campus Cathedrals
Losing Faith
Loss and Love
Cultural Cults
SRC Casework
Puzzles
I find that when you are in the middle of the very thing you once prayed for, you forget to appreciate it. Instead, you are already praying for the next thing. That is very much what this edition feels like to me. An intense labour of love, from the Honi team to you, but also a labour of my faith and my devotion, which I have allowed to go unappreciated in this busy year.
When I first started at university, everything was intimidating. I would walk past the Honi stand in Fisher, terrified of pitching, never imagining that a few years later I would be editing. Yet, it is only now, writing this editorial on a random lawn somewhere, that time has finally slowed down long enough to remember that this paper has brought prayers to life.
This edition is about ‘faith.’ It is about finding ourselves in positions which we had only ever dreamed of. It is about devotion, not only to our Gods, but also to ourselves, to our communities, and to our writing. It is my whispered prayers from some years ago come true.
As you read these pages of laboured-love, I ask you to consider what faith means to you? Who do you inherit it from? How does it drive you? How do you hold it?
Within these pages, on page 16, Audhora Khalid goes looking for God to understand the phenomenon of faith. On page 12, Khushi Chevli unveils the history and truth of the buildings we romanticise on this campus, and, on page 17, Shayla Zreika finds the beauty in the everything little things. On page 14,
Companion Piece, Dana Kafina
My piece in this edition, on page 16, is about loss. It is a diary entry about all the people I miss, the people who I may no longer have but continue to exist within the truest parts of myself, my writing. It’s also about love. A letter to the people who have helped me heal, those who have made themselves at home in my heart. This edition is dedicated to those people, both who I have lost, and those I continue to love. I keep you in my prayers.
With love, Purny
This piece is probably the most complex art request I’ve ever received. Faith, to me, is diligence and discipline – and I really tried to practice this while creating this artwork. I drew inspiration from both Islamic architecture and architecture from Muslim cultures, where it feels as though two extremes, geometry and organic nature, are the two most prevalent themes, and tried to blend the two. Oftentimes faith isn’t one or the other, it is fluid, like you, and your spirit. And it is the most radical thing you can practice!
Editors
Purny Ahmed, Emilie Garcia-Dolnik, Mehnaaz Hossain, Annabel Li, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Lotte Weber, William Winter, Victor Zhang
Front Cover
Dana Kafina
Purny Ahmed, Anonymous, Sophie Bagster, Calista Burrowes, Khushi Chevli, Pia Curran, Avin Dabiri, Lachlan Griffiths, Dana Kafina, Audhora Khalid, Ramla Khalid, Grace Lagan, Ilham Qadri, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, Firdevs Sinik, Zayed Tabish, Marlene Walker, Will Winter, Simone Wong, Victor Zhang, Shayla Zreika
Artists
Avin Dabiri, Mehnaaz Hossain, Dana Kafina, Charlie Lewin, Imogen Sabey, Charlotte Saker, Lotte Weber, Victor Zhang
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Pia Curran reflects on the loss of religion and atheism.
UniMelb Palestine solidarity encampment attempted relaunch met with repression
Purny
Ahmed and Ellie Robertson report.
On 8th May, students at The University of Melbourne (UniMelb) attempted to relaunch the Palestine solidarity encampment, organised by the Coalition of Palestine and the Free Palestine Coalition Naarm. This follows the recent anniversary of the start of multiple encampments across Australia, including UniMelb, University of Sydney (USyd) and University of Newcastle (UoN).
The statement by the Palestine Coalitions states “the students refuse to be silenced and intimidated by the University’s illegitimate use of legislation and technology.”
The students honoured the memory of Mahmoud Alnaouq, a Palestinian scholarship recipient who was enrolled to study a Masters in International Relations at UniMelb. Alnaouq was “brutally killed by Israeli airstrike, along with 19 members of his family.” He was unable to attain his degree.
The Coalition states that Alnaouq’s “martyrdom” serves as a reminder that “silence, apathy, and inaction in the face of oppression is complicity.” The students condemn the university for their continued criminalisation of Palestinian voices and student-led Palestine activism.
The Coalition demands the following from UniMelb:
• Greater recognition and support for Palestinian students and academics on campus.
• Offer ‘Mahmoud Alnaouq Scholarship’ for displaced
and disadvantaged students in Palestine.
• Cut ties with Israeli universities illegally operating in the West Bank and occupied Palestinian territories.
• Complete disclosure of information regarding tires with any weapon manufacturers or organisations profiting from war.
• Public condemnation of the [Israel Occupying Force] and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
• Protect freedom of expression and assembly on campus.
• Rework definition of antisemitism to allow to legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and Zionist movement.
• Reverse punishment of protesters.
• Security stated that it was not a matter of trust, but of policy.
During the set up of the encampment, security was called to the University’s South Lawn. Those present at the encampment were advised that students and staff with identification would be able to protest on campus, external to any buildings. Under the UniMelb ViceChancellor Regulations, any person who is not student or staff, and protesting on campus grounds, is considered to be ‘trespassing,’ and may be referred to the Victorian Police. The students were then told to remove their tents, or otherwise risk arrest for ‘trespassing.’ When protestors challenged this request, Victoria Police were notified,
Free speech at UWA restricted as student activist faces disciplinary action
Purny Ahmed reports.
The University of Western Australia (UWA) has taken disciplinary action against a pro-Palestinian student activist for putting up posters accusing the university of preventing free speech on campus.
On the 12th of April, Student Guild (the UWA Student Union) representative Finn Penter, received a notice regarding the ‘student conduct and discipline process’. The notice reads: “Allegation 1: On 25 March 2025, you affixed copies of posters around the Law Building without approval.”
The six posters included statements such as “free speech is under attack” and “clubs are under attack.”
The university used CCTV cameras across campus to identify the student, with video footage being as long as 20 minutes. Penter stated that the university has treated him as if he were “a criminal.”
On his Instagram statement of the incident, Penter stated that he was instructed to stay silent, and that breaching confidentiality would lead to further disciplinary action. The notice states that the university “expects that confidentiality will be maintained.”
When asked by Honi about the process of disciplinary action by UWA, Penter responded stating that he was required to have an interview with the disciplinary committee, which was to remain confidential along with the notice. The university stated that this was standard procedure. Penter stated that “the university punishes students for activism
and then insists that they shut up and keep it to themselves,” calling it a “strategy of isolation and intimidation.”
Penter has not heard directly from university management at the present moment, despite his public post on Instagram. He states that the university’s actions can only be described as “Trumpian.”
This follows UWA’s pressures against free speech on campus, with the University’s management working to restrict students posterings, handing out leaflets, and making announcements at the start of lectures. Penter stated to Honi that ‘Students for Palestine UWA’ were threatened with potential disaffiliation from the university, due to painting a banner using the commonly-known ProPalestinian chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”
Across Australia, universities have been following similar patterns against freedom of speech and freedom of protest on campus. At the University of Sydney (USyd), management has implemented the Campus Access Policy, which disallows students from putting up posters, protest on campus, or hold bake sales, amongst other restrictions without prior approval.
Students on the USyd campus have also been faced with disciplinary action as result of these new restrictions.
Honi has requested comments from UWA. They have not yet responded.
Read full article online.
and approached the encampment. After packing up the tents, a number of protesters stayed on the South Lawn to continue showing solidarity for the case.
One student told security, “You have to understand that there is no trust between the university and the students and staff here.”
In Victoria, many of the Palestine solidarity encampments in 2024 were met with threats and violence from police and counter-protesters. Counter-protestors harassed students and vandalised the Monash University encampment.
On 9th May, the Coalition 4 Palestine posted a statement regarding the shutdown of the attempted encampment. The statement noted that “The events that occurred yesterday were a clear demonstration of the university’s draconian strategy of political expression.” The statement noted that the organisers are continuing to evaluate next steps for the movement.
A University of Melbourne spokesperson told Honi: “A small group of protestors assembled at our Parkville campus yesterday and put up two small tents. The University responded in line with our protocols and the protestors packed up the tents shortly after.”
Follow @coalition4.palestine and @freepalestinecoalition.naarm for future updates.
“Santos, no way! We will fight you all the way!” Activists and unionists rally against Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project Victor Zhang reports.
Activists and unionists rallied together on the morning of 6th May in support of the Gomeroi people in their Native Title Tribunal case against Santos’s Narrabri Gas Project in front of NSW Parliament House.
The Gomeroi people’s fight against fossil fuel development in the Pilliga forest and Narrabri plains has been an ongoing struggle. Last year the Federal Court delivered a historic ruling that new fossil fuel developments on native title land would have to take into account the effects of climate change.
Companies like Santos are required to negotiate with the Traditional Owners of the land but are not obliged to reach an agreement. Overwhelming, the Native Title Tribunal rules in favour of fossil fuel companies compared to Traditional Owners.
The Tribunal is expected to deliver a decision on 9th May.
Aunty Rhonda Dixon began the rally by delivering a Welcome to Country. She spoke to the environmental destruction she sees in the Sydney basin and affirmed her solidarity with the Gomeroi in their fight to protect their Country. The rally was emceed by Gomeroi man Bubbly who spoke throughout the rally about his deep personal stake in this fight.
Suellyn Tighe, a Gomeroi custodian from Coonabarabran, spoke about the ongoing fight indigenous people have had against the colonisers: “There has not been one
day in this colonised country of Australia, since the landing of the First Fleet, where there hasn’t been a tree cut down or someone’s country dug up.”
She reminded us that no matter the political leanings of the Australian government, they have maintained a “tradition of destroying [the] environment and [the] destruction of Aboriginal people’s rights”.
Tighe emphasised the importance of protecting the Pilliga which sits atop the Great Artesian Basin. She continued, speaking to the “deep sorrow” of the Gomeroi people caused by the gas extracted from their Country contributing to global emissions.
Despite the aforementioned historic ruling that Native Title Tribunals must take into account the effects of climate change when ruling on new fossil fuel developments, Tighe reminded us that the “Native Title and the Federal Court doubled down on the unimportance of cultural connection to place”.
Follow Lock the Gate Alliance to keep up to date on this campaign.
Read full article online.
Photography
by
Victor Zhang
Music festival strip searches class action begins
Imogen Sabey reports.
On 5th May, a class action on the legality of strip searches conducted at music festivals between 2016 and 2022 began.
The case is being led by Slater and Gordon Lawyers and the Redfern Legal Centre (RLC) against the state of NSW. It was lodged by plaintiff Raya Meredith.
This is a “representative proceeding”, which means that the action is being taken on behalf of all people who have alleged that they were unlawfully strip-searched for prohibited substances by police officers at music festivals in NSW between 22nd July 2016 and 22nd July 2022.
Meredith is being represented in the action by Kylie Nomchong SC and A. H. Edwards. The state of NSW is represented by Julian Sexton SC.
The hearing will take place over twenty days, presided by Judge Dina Yehia.
RLC Supervising Solicitor Sam Lee commented that “This trial is an important step in holding NSW Police accountable for the degrading strip searches that thousands of festival goers were subjected to. For decades, people have been humiliated, intimidated, and often left traumatised by these experiences, with police officers abusing their powers.”
He added, “This isn’t just about music festivals — it’s about everyone’s rights and the need for police to follow the law. Strip searches should never have been allowed
to become routine practice.”
Rory Walsh, the Practice Group Leader of Class actions at Slater and Gordon, commented that “Over three thousand group members have registered with our firm to date in respect of this proceeding.”
During proceedings, Nomchong has said that the state has failed to train police officers correctly in the rules around strip searches, and has knowingly deployed large numbers of police officers at music festivals.
Nomchong said that strip searches should only be legal “in the most extreme of circumstances” but that during the period between 2016 and 2022, police officers had been conducting strip searches “as a matter of routine”.
According to Slater and Gordon, strip searches have increased by 2000 per cent in a little over a decade, and should only be used “as a last resort”.
NSW legislation states that an ordinary search can be legally conducted when police officers reasonably suspect that a person has drugs or stolen goods. They can then conduct a strip search if they reasonably believe that it is necessary due to the ‘seriousness’ and ‘urgency’ of the circumstances.
Read full article online.
The Smallest Council That Ever Lived: May 2025 SRC Council
Purny Ahmed, Ellie Robertson, Imogen Sabey, and Victor Zhang report.
Ah, a balmy evening in May. It’s been a long one; between the USU Soapbox and election prepping, Council is one of the last things the Honi editorial team needed. So thank goodness it only lasted twelve minutes and two seconds. We started off with the low number of six out of 18 councillors needed for quorum at 6:24pm.
Julia, the Secretary to Council, received 14 apologies before the meeting began, which wasn’t quite enough to declare the meeting postponed, nor to be sure that it was going ahead. Theoretically, the Council could be quorate were the remaining Councillors to show up.
President Angus Fisher (NSWLS) commented that “It’s good to see the two most serious factions here.” NSWLS and SAlt were the only factions at council with the remaining factions absent. Honi understands that Grassroots and NLS were absent due to being at a rally defending the Abortion Law Reform Amendment Bill 2025
The Bill was introduced by Greens Member of the NSW Legislative Council Amanda Cohn to mandate that NSW hospitals provide abortion access, introduced following the reports that public hospitals were refusing abortion access and that only two public hospitals in NSW were providing formal abortion services.
After some back and forth maths between councillors, Fisher calculated that the council would likely not meet quorum. Deaglan Godwin (SAlt) proposed to use his position as Chair of the SRC Standing Legal Committee meeting to rule that the council had met quorum, but was told by the Secretary to Council that he could not, in fact, make interpretations over maths.
Such a ruling would require a change in the regulations, which requires two weeks’ notice. In an attempt to manipulate the math of quorum and disprove math as a general concept, Godwin claimed, “Infinity is, like… very debatable.”
Jasmine Donnelly (NSWLS) announced that she wanted to say something (re: quorum count… maybe?) but didn’t want to be yelled at. Godwin responded “we would never do
‘No confidence in the University’s handling of racism’: UniMelb inaugural annual report into racism released Purny Ahmed reports.
The University of Melbourne (UniMelb) has published their inaugural annual report into racism at the university on 7th May. The report details the 62 complaints received in 2024 on matters relating to racism.
The report comprised of 33 complaints in breach of the Appropriate Workplace Policy against university staff, nine complaints in breach of the Student Conduct Policy against students, and 20 complaints relating to other behaviours regarding teaching and learning, and cultural responsiveness. These matters are regarding alleged racism, discrimination, harassment, or vilification on campus.
Of the 33 complaints against staff at the university, only two were investigated. One staff member was sacked for “serious misconduct” as a result of the investigation. The other complaint is still being examined.
13 of the remaining complaints against staff have been referred to UniMelb’s Human Resources team or to a manager. 12 of the complaints were out of scope and/or had insufficient information. One complaint has been withdrawn by the complainant.
There were 10 complaints about general behaviour not attributed to any individuals on campus. Rather, complainants described “feeling of being unsafe due to the presence of protest activity, use of stickers or slogans, or perceived racism of University statements/positions.”
Complaints describing their experience in 2024 related mostly either to the experience of Indigenous and international students at the University, or to concerns about individual’s experiences with antisemitism or Islamophobia.
In a section titled “Conflict on campus”, the report also detailed the impact of protests in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In 2024, the university received 39 complaints relating to what the it calls “the conflict in the Middle East”. 14 of these were directly related to allegations of racism, with “12 of them alleging antisemitism and two alleging Islamophobia”.
17 students involved in the occupation of the Arts West building, renamed by students as ‘Mahmoud’s Hall’, a Palestinian student killed in Gaza, were given formal reprimands. Four staffers were subject to performance and misconduct actions.
Many complaints related to posters, slogans, and stickers, during the period of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment and the occupation of the Arts West/ Mahmoud’s Hall building. There were complaints during this period about“feelings of discomfort over student activism, non-specific safety concerns, and discomfort over the University’s response to protest and/or activism.”
Challenges regarding under-reporting were also acknowledged through the UoM Lived Experience of Racism Survey
Of these responses, 29 per cent of students and 14 per cent of staff noted that they “did not know whom or how to report racism in the University.”
25 per cent of student respondents and 29 per cent of staff respondents felt unsafe reporting racism.
53 per cent of student and staff respondents expressed no confidence at all in the University’s handling of racism.
that”. This was met with giggles from all over the room, but no one would ever accuse a student politician of being a liar.
Yet, this did not stop Donnelly from taking the mic after council was dismissed and loudly expressing her individual goodbyes to the Grassroots representatives that were present via Zoom. Such a sweet moment of unity between the factions.
Fisher seemed frustrated by the lack of quorum. He commented, “I was looking forward to being brutal.”
In the meantime, Fisher announced that he got into his second round of RBA applications, which only Godwin was interested in. This led to a wholly necessary debate between Godwin and Fisher about said RBA application. Fisher made a ‘revolutionary’ argument: “I need a job, everyone needs a job, it’s economics.” I can’t believe we give up our Wednesday evenings for this.
A quorum count was held at 6:32pm — 11 councillors were present, meaning council was sadly inquorate. NSWLS quickly declared that they were off to The Royal, and did not wait for Fisher to catch up with them before heading off.
Though we weren’t able to hear from the councillors and speakers this evening, the motions on notice were important topics of discussion. Starting off with domestic violence and femicide, and moving to condemning the attacks on university education, the motions will likely be moved to next month’s agenda. Some of the events that would’ve been platformed in the meeting were important upcoming protests — please see those linked below. And until the next council, we’ll be at the back of the ABS room, waiting… and waiting… and waiting.
Check What’s On for upcoming protests.
by Dana Kafina
A Meditation on God and the Impossible
Pursuit of Answers
I grew up in a household where religion, faith, and God meandered in and out with whichever guests were over for brunch or dinner. I celebrate Eid with my extended family, but I do not know a single surah. I went to iftar invites, but I never fasted. I would watch the cows and goats being herded to the back of the farmhouse for Eid-Ul Adha, but I could never bring myself to eat their sacrifice. At funerals, I would cry, but I had no God to pray to.
My parents never really discussed religion, but I was surrounded by it regardless — such is the case when religion and culture marry. With strangers and relatives, I would echo greetings that began with ‘Assalamualaikum’ and ended with “Wa Alaikum-assalam… cha?”
I felt that it must be easy to say that faith need not be spiritual, but can just be the faith one has in the family and community around them — that should be enough to ground oneself and bask in the soft glow of familiarity and kinship. I remember when I was twelve, I asked my cousins to teach me how to pray. I asked because I needed to know; that should I find God, I should know how to communicate. They laughed, teased, then comforted me, and taught me how to perform wudu to cleanse myself, the surahs for each time of prayer, and the motions. I was in awe; how strong their faith must be for these rituals to be as known to them as their own name.
It went in one ear and out the other.
That seems to have been the way for me since childhood: an active participant in religious practices, not for faith, but to be with the people I love. The practice of faith has always been rituals of community. I learned that I didn’t need God to do any of that, that there is no harm in my pretending.
For me, faith has always been tied to religion — an idea I approached like a scholar, not a believer. It became an echo in the hallway, tempting me to steal A History of God by Karen Armstrong from our bookshelves and read it in my bathroom. I knew the rituals, the greetings, the smell of beguni wafting through the air before iftar. But I did not know the feeling my grandmother seemed to when she pressed her forehead to the ground.
God and Religion
The distinction between the idea of God and the institution of religion is where much confusion lies. Though organized religion is the most common way of recognising God, the divine, as a concept, is fundamentally separate from human attempts to define or institutionalise it. Religion may describe God, but it cannot contain Him. To confound scripture with truth is to mistake the human map for the terrain.
God’s connection to religion depends entirely on the meaning one assigns to God. God can exist without organised religion just as easily as God might not
exist within it — because we will never truly know. As philosopher Simone Weil wrote, “the mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.” Perhaps, then, the divine is not to be proven, but to be wrestled with.
If God is omnipresent, untouchable, and incomprehensibly vast then the human attempt to capture Him in scripture is necessarily imperfect. It may be the word of God, but it is still a word passed through centuries of human fallibility, power struggles, and institutional control. Thinkers like Karen Armstrong argue that religion was never originally meant to provide doctrinal certainty, but rather to cultivate a disciplined practice of compassion, awe, and surrender to the unknowable. If so, what we call “religion” may be more of a cultural performance than a path to metaphysical truth.
So then,what should be the basis of refuting God? It’s a question that presumes an answer must exist. But, perhaps the more radical stance is to question the question itself.
Why do we feel the need to refute or affirm God at all? Is it a demand for finality in an otherwise uncertain world, or a desire to understand how something so empirically unprovable could have such scale and depth of power?
Paul Tillich describes God not as a being, but as “the ground of being”; not an object among other objects, but
Audhora Khalid is lost in conversation with the unknown.
Art
the depth of existence itself. From that perspective, belief becomes less a matter of actual assent and more a way of orienting oneself in the world. You may not need a God in the doctrinal sense, but perhaps you are already living with a kind of God in the questions you ask, in the wonder you feel, in the moral instincts that feel innate.
So when you ask yourself, “Do I need a God?”, the answer may lie not in whether you believe, but in how you live with the not-knowing.
God and Science
But the question of God’s existence can’t be explored in isolation from the world we try to understand. So how do science and faith sit side by side?
One can argue that the belief in God does not preclude acceptance of scientific principles. In the philosophy of compatibilism (which suggests that determinism and free will can coexist), this can fall true. Compatibilists reconcile the determinism of God with human agency, saying that our free will is a test that is separate from the divine. Our agency is not our own, but rather given and limited by God. This allows us to invoke scientific inquiry while maintaining our belief.
Now, I would rather say that God and science can coexist, but not by overlapping in function. Rather, they intersect in the human need to explain, to locate meaning, and to belong to a story larger than ourselves. They are not solving the same puzzle. One seeks truth through observable cause, the other through meaning and moral consequence.
Science can provide invaluable insight through empirical observation and experimentation, however, it has its limitations when addressing our questions beyond the scope of the physical universe — or even ponderous questions within ourselves. But, as science operates within methodological naturalism, we are restricted to natural phenomena. It is one thing to analyse the psychology of being human, but something else entirely to use science to answer metaphysical questions of God, which we have been unable to do.
To me, attempting to analyse God and science using criteria appropriate only for empirical inquiry is flawed. When it comes to God, our scientific method does not matter. Since by definition, God is transcendent, then scientific methods, designed for the observable, are simply structurally unequipped to address God.
The desire to reconcile science and God may not come from compatibility, but from discomfort with fragmentation. We long to believe that truth can be whole, that we can hold the laws of physics and the mystery of spirit without contradiction. But perhaps wholeness isn’t about resolution. Perhaps it’s about accepting the dissonance.
The Cosmos, Human Meaning, and Finding God
I do not think the question of God’s existence is important. I think the question of understanding why God happened and why so many stopped believing is more important; the philosophy of God, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of atheism.
I personally do not care if God exists or doesn’t. If God exists, to me God is great in some ways, and terrible in many. I don’t understand God.
If they exist as an unlimited being, they chose what things happened to me, what things happen to people. I don’t like it being viewed as trials and tribulations to test my character for heaven or hell.
For me, God was never an answer.
I think we need to understand why God became necessary, and why, to some, God is not. Why did existence have to be reliant upon something so much greater to begin with? Perhaps language gave us the power to name things we couldn’t explain, and with it, the birth of Gods to explain what language could not. Perhaps the most provocative question is not whether God exists, but why we believed God must. What was it about the human condition that longed for something so large, so loving, so merciful to tether ourselves to?
This longing did not emerge in a vacuum. It was shaped by the conditions in which people lived, and over time, different societies produced different kinds of Gods; each reflecting their unique environmental, political, and cultural realities. Historically, many early civilisations practiced polytheistic religions. These civilisations were primarily agrarian, dependent on unpredictable natural forces such as rainfall and seasonal shifts, and so these cultures envisioned pantheons of multiple gods governing different aspects of life (sun, water, war, fertility, love, etc.) — a structure that mirrored their own societal organisation.
Monotheism became a powerful ideological tool, capable of unifying vast empires through shared law, that is,a reflection of evolving state structures. In Persia, the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) taught devotion to one supreme creator, Ahura Mazda, which was adopted as an imperial creed, explicitly to legitimise kingship and impose common moral order across diverse satrapies. In each case, state centralization and the need to unify ethnically varied subjects encouraged the belief in a one true God.
Still, beyond social necessity and historical pattern lies a different kind of question — one not of society, but of existence itself. There are some propositions that create a feeling of definitive confirmation for the existence of God.
One such thought experiment is fine-tuning. Finetuning is the idea that the conditions required to create and sustain life are so precisely constructed that it must be by design rather than happenstance. One may look at the elegant interplay of physical constants and see the beauty of mathematics, physics, biology where others see the divine. But, improbability is not impossibility. There was a time when black holes were deemed fantastical, and yet we came to accept them as natural consequences of cosmic evolution.
Yet for many, the fine-tuning argument is not a scientific claim at all, but a gesture of awe: a recognition of mystery that exceeds that language of physics. Scientific disproof does little to shake such faith, not because it is irrational, but because it arises from a different impulse — not investigating causes, but finding meaning. As Rudolf Otto might put it, it is the response to the numinous: an encounter with “the wholly other” (das ganz Andere), marked by a feeling of awe, reverence, even dread. This frames the structure of the universe as a site of metaphysical intimacy where what appears as scientific observation is felt as a sacred gesture. In that light, the appeal of fine-tuning lies not in its evidentiary power, but in its resonance with that numinous experience — a whisper of the transcendent in the language of physics. It becomes less of an argument for God, and rather a reflection of the human longing to feel that existence is not accidental, but significant.
But even if life is an accident — the inevitable result of an infinite universe — does that make it any less meaningful? Albert Camus, in his ruminations about the absurdity of a silent universe, argued that significance is not handed down from the cosmos, but created in our defiance of its indifference. Our lives do not require divine authorship to matter. The miracle is not that we exist under such rare conditions, but that we can
recognize it, reflect on it, and live as if it matters. The search for significance, then, need not rest on whether the universe was made for us or if we were created to witness it, but on the astonishing truth that we are here within it.
At the end of it all, it would be a cosmic shame for the Big Bang or God’s creation to go unwitnessed, for consciousness not to rise to meet it.
We ponder human existence while our cats sit on our lap, we coexist without ever knowing each other’s minds. I wonder if our relationship with the universe is the same. We are here, a small part of something bigger, but invaluable because we get to share ‘experience’ itself.
Sometimes we liken that cosmic weight to something we can hold: a metaphor of God. A way of draping form over formlessness. A weighted blanket for the soul. It makes the whole idea of existing more comfortable.
We are not separate from the universe that is so beyond our reach. Once you reconcile that the unknown to you is as unknown as you are to it, one can find peace in understanding that God does not need to exist for one to exist.
To Reflect…
Somehow I have found friends that are agnostic, or atheist — this not brought up in discussion, but just a silent consensus that rings clear with living life by one’s own charter. We indulge in whatever life can give, with the boldness and care of entering our mid-twenties: young, yet old enough to grip the pumping arteries of adulthood that pulse between freedom and discretion. It is this learning, experience, and control that instills faith within myself and for those I love. That in the face of loss, grief, and pain, I was able to recover with or without God. I simply overcame it.
I would not declare myself as agnostic. Nor an atheist. Nor spiritual. I find the contestations and adorations of God entirely indifferent to my existence.
That being said, we are all, in some way, responding to the same ache. Whether you believe, disbelieve, or dwell in the in-between, you find yourself asking the most human questions. Why are we here? How do we live meaningfully in a world like this? What is my purpose?
To the believer, God is a presence that orders the chaos, the writer of a history that explains the skies that cry to the water we drink. To the atheist, God may be a construct — a story told to soothe that chaos. To the agnostic, God is unknown and at the same time, beckoning.
To the indifferent, like myself, the question of God does not feel necessary, for life’s metaphysical weight is carried in other ways: in art, in love, in death, the unfolding of the world without push or pull. I may not call it God, nor do I care to name it, but I too, live with the unspoken.
Regardless of where you stand, there is meaning that you are creating in our perpetuity of unknowing. This act of seeking, rejecting, pausing, intellectualising, submitting is the act of being.
At their most honest and primal, these ways of living are not enemies. They are different ways of keeping company with the vastness of the unknown, and the serendipity of existing. And maybe, in the smell of beguni or in silent reflections, this human ache hums — not for answers, but for meaning.
Analysis
Capitalism Won’t Save You
Capitalism won’t save you; your skincare routine won’t purify you; your Google Calendar won’t give you absolution. You’re flipping through your New York Times bestseller Hustler’s Guide to Success for prayers, and you’ve left your soul at the door.
Capitalism has morphed into a spiritual framework. Success isn’t just nice to have, it’s salvation. Productivity is virtue. Discipline is holiness. “Rise and Grind.” “Good Things Come to Those Who Hustle.” “No Days Off.” These aren’t just slogans, they’re psalms.
And when you falter, when you hit snooze instead of waking up at 5am for your ‘power hour’ of journaling, meditation, and HIIT, you haven’t just been lazy, you’ve sinned. In the religion of capitalism, failure is a moral weakness.
That’s the trick of it all: capitalism doesn’t just demand your labour anymore. It demands your soul. It wraps itself in the language of self-care, mindfulness, and wellness. It tells you that you’re just ‘investing in yourself’. But scratch beneath the surface, and it’s clear: you’re investing in the system. The skincare companies need you to never feel beautiful enough. The wellness gurus need you to never feel balanced enough. The productivity apps need you to never feel efficient enough. Your dissatisfaction is the engine that keeps them running.
Capitalism thrives when individuals see themselves as projects to be managed. The promise is seductive: if you work hard enough, schedule efficiently enough, and believe in your ability enough, success will follow. Our lives are no longer measured by meaning but by momentum. When success becomes a personal moral obligation, community becomes a threat because it reminds us that our struggles are not individual failings but shared conditions. The system relies on keeping us hyper-individualised, because isolated people don’t unionise, don’t strike, don’t organise. Community fosters resistance; it exposes
shared struggles and builds collective power. However, if we’re taught that asking for help is failure and that every outcome is earned alone, we’re easier to control. We don’t challenge the system, we challenge ourselves. So we stay tired, competitive, and compliant, never turning to each other long enough to realise the problem was never just personal.
The effect of this relentless performance is exhaustion and existential depletion. When every act is filtered through the lens of utility there is no room for rest, joy, or even true reflection. This creates a self-reinforcing loop of guilt and inadequacy, where failure is always personal, never systemic.
This is where the political consequences emerge.
individualisation of struggle fractures solidarity.
It makes it harder to see the bigger picture. We stop holding systems accountable because we’re too busy holding ourselves to impossible standards. If someone fails, it’s because they didn’t hustle hard enough, not because the system is designed to burn us out. That erodes empathy. It creates a society where we silently compare calendars instead of checking in on each other.
This fragmentation of collective consciousness is dangerous. It diverts energy that might otherwise be used for organising, protesting, or demanding structural change, and redirects it into personal improvement projects. Instead of asking why rent is unaffordable, why climate policy is stagnating, or why systemic racism persists, we’re told to meditate more, manifest harder, or
‘pivot’ our attitude. We’re offered a soothing vocabulary of self-help, while quietly discouraging structural critique.
In this way, capitalist routines strip us of the very things we need to enact political change: clarity, energy, connection, and rage. They keep us tired, isolated, and invested in our own performance. In a moment of escalating political urgency — where climate collapse, authoritarianism, rising inequality, and the erosion of civil rights loom large — this spiritual depletion is not just personal, it is profoundly political.
We need our souls intact for this political climate. The kind of clarity and courage required to challenge systems of power is actively deterred by daily checklists or productivity rituals. It requires something deeper: the ability to step back from the machine, to reconnect with one another, to recognize that the world is not something we can optimize but instead change.
Routines are not inherently harmful. Structure can provide care, rhythm, and grounding. But when routines become rituals that reinforce capitalism’s most isolating myths, they turn capitalism into a saviour, and we stand ready to sacrifice ourself and our soul. The scriptures and preaches of this religion are not neutral. They are extremist and they are a direct threat to our humanity — personally and as a collective.
If we are going to fight for a liveable future, we cannot do it on our knees at the altar of productivity. We cannot keep offering up our time, our bodies, our attention, and our souls in quiet sacrifice to systems that do not love us back.
Art by Lotte Weber
From Critique to Care: Rethinking Our Faith in Our Youth
In recent years, public discourse around Gen Z and younger generations has grown increasingly cynical and discouraging. The media commonly portrays youth as “screen-obsessed” or “mentally fragile” with many individuals creating satirical Reels and TikToks, airing alarmist news segments, and contributing to the cultural narrative that today’s youth are apathetic, directionless, or even doomed. But what happens when a developing generation internalises this portrayal? And more importantly, how accurate or fair is this judgment?
The widespread critique of Gen Z says less about young people themselves and more about a broader societal failure: the failure to support, guide, and adapt to the evolving needs of younger generations. Rather than ridiculing young people for their perceived flaws, we must examine the new systems and factors shaping them and, crucially, examine our own role in those systems.
The Myth of the “Hopeless Generation”
Labelling youth as “lost” is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, older generations have expressed concern or disdain over changing youth culture, from hippies in the 1960s to punk kids in the 1980s. But today’s context is different. We are in the digital age. Gen Z and
younger generations are coming of age amid a global mental health crisis, rising economic insecurity, ecological collapse, and digital overconsumption. Instead of responding with institutional reform, society has often responded with derision. Ironically, the same adults who created or ignored the roots of these crises are now blaming young people for struggling under their weight.
While this crisis has many complex causes, one factor that cannot be ignored is the overwhelming role of technology in the daily lives of young people. Our digital environments shape not only how we communicate, but how we cope, connect, and view ourselves.
In my travels to countries like Egypt and Indonesia, I witnessed a striking contrast compared to more developed nations like Japan and Australia. Despite facing severe poverty, many of the young people I met were socially confident, emotionally expressive, and full of warmth. I remember visiting an orphanage in rural Indonesia that didn’t even have a single toy ball, yet the youth were lively and eager to connect. Their curiosity and positivity were deeply moving.
In contrast, in wealthier nations where technology is more deeply embedded in daily life, I’ve observed growing emotional
Firdevs Sinik critiques how we talk about young people.
fatigue, isolation, and a troubling rise in mental health issues among young people. Why are depression and suicide rates disproportionately high in countries with so much material wealth? I believe part of the answer lies in the design of our digital environments. Social media platforms are intentionally built to be addictive, flooding our brains with dopamine and disrupting our natural emotional rhythms. When access to stimulation is constant and effortless, it can dull our sense of meaning, connection, and real joy.
What is often interpreted as apathy or detachment may instead be a response to disconnection, from meaningful adult relationships, from a sense of purpose, and from institutional trust. A study conducted by ReachOut in 2022 found that only 49 per cent of Australian youth felt confident about their future, and less than half believed their voice was being heard by those in power. This suggests that the core issue is not laziness or nihilism, but disenfranchisement. Adults often ask why young people aren’t more involved in community or civic life, but how often are they invited to contribute and be heard in meaningful ways?
From Criticism to Care
Rather than viewing youth as problems to be solved, we need to see them as
partners in progress. This requires a shift from criticism to care, a recognition that the wellbeing of younger generations is a shared responsibility for all of humanity. It also requires faith, not through superficial flattery, but in the form of practical investment: in education, mental health resources, mentorship, and platforms where young people can develop the skills and confidence to lead.
Similarly, passionate and educated teachers who build genuine relationships with their students, rather than relying on outdated, authoritative methods, often find that respect is reciprocated and that engagement naturally follows.
If we are serious about creating a hopeful future, we cannot afford to give up on those who will inherit it. The current rhetoric around Gen Z and future generations breeds resentment, alienates the very people we should be empowering, and ultimately delays the systemic reforms necessary for collective wellbeing.
What today’s youth need is not moral panic or judgment, but more effort, guidance, and sincere love. And we, as educators, parents, policymakers, and global citizens, all share in the responsibility of shaping that future together.
Read full article online.
Ramla Khalid spits at the Gospel of Grind.
Losing Faith in Traditional Literature
At the core of literary fiction lies empathy, the human need to understand perspectives that differ from ours. Yet today, with the rise of short-form content, you can access millions of perspectives faster and more conveniently on your phone. From podcasts and web novels, to even storytimes on TikTok, digital media has revolutionised storytelling. At the same time, it’s raised familiar concerns about whether literary fiction still holds primacy in our culture.
I’ve never fully understood why the perceived ‘death of the novel’ is so often linked to the rise of digital media and the decline of print.
If the traditional novel truly offers something digital media can’t replace, then it should only enforce the novel’s irreplaceable place in our culture.
Why, then, do we keep theorising over the doomed end of traditional literature?
A lot of the literary theorists who engage with the discourse surrounding the ‘death of the novel’, as Liesel Schillinger writes
in the New York Times, “yearn to find in contemporary literature the strong resonance they felt with the books that shaped their first sensibilities”. This sense of nostalgia, which Schilinger refers to as a yearning for a pre-digital era represents a hopeful return to the ‘golden age of literature’ or the reemergence of classical literary aesthetics. The dangers of romanticising classical antiquity aside, realistically, such a revival is impossible because novels, like all art forms, naturally evolve with technology and cultural shifts.
who can now gain exposure and recognition for their work.
Ilham Qadri turns the page.
Literary trends now mirror the same algorithmic formulas social media prioritises: it’s why we see the same ‘airplane novel’, usually written to be read in one sitting with a profitable, bitesized narrative structure, accustomed to our mass consumption of short-form content.
“I was trying to see into the modern chaos”.
In 2023, Irish writer Paul Lynch was interviewed about his novel Prophet Song after winning the Booker Prize. The first half of the interview focused on his writing practice, almost cautiously hovering at a superficial level, before he was abruptly posed with the question, “was it inspired by any real-world events?” His response: “modern chaos”. Though set in a dystopian Ireland, Lynch incorporates a “high degree of realism” in the familiar characters and setting. A suburban home with a picket fence; the gossip mill of a tight-knit neighbourhood; teenage self-discovery and rebellion. However, the unsettling relevance of the novel is more than its aesthetic. The inefficient processing of migrants; the anxiety of technological panopticism; the subtle and slow creep of military power. The novel’s issues are immediate.
Regarding the current resurgence of dystopian sci-fi fiction, particularly after the release of Suzanne Collins’s Sunrise at the Reaping, there is a clear spectrum of immediacy in dystopian worlds. On one end, exemplified by Lynch, there is a deep sense of ‘this could be us’. The process of reading is like peering into the near future. On the other hand, we see high modernist and radical utopian projects under extreme governmental control, violent and unassailable authoritarianism. Often ending in a successful revolution, these worlds are categorised as firmly fictional.
Though many of us long for a pre-online era, when reading held a more identifiable place in our culture, we can’t deny the accessibility that digitalised literature grants us. Unlike the times of print media domination, authors no longer need to rely on traditional publishing to share stories. The myth that younger generations have permanently traded novels for doomscrolling sessions is misconstrued; the rise of digital media has only expanded literary engagement, particularly among Gen Z readers, just in ways we aren’t used to recognising. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have formed subcultures like ‘BookTok’ which have become accessible tools for promoting literature, even aiding independent writers, once underrepresented,
This challenges us to consider whether literary critics are truly concerned for the diminishing cultural role of the novel, or if they have a hesitancy for change due to digital media’s increasing popularity. These theorists often have a classical perception of authorship potentially rooted in the fear of reinvention and a similar nostalgic yearning Schilinger described. The latter aligns with the theorists Schillinger describes as nostalgic, who often retain a classical notion of authorship that rejects newer forms. Theorists who, unlike many of us, wouldn’t consider a tweet as literary genius.
Modern Chaos
In its most common use (think, sections in a bookstore, tier lists on BookTube), the dystopian genre is typically characterised by technological advances, surveillance, a post-conflict society, and the illusion of a utopian socialist state. Its academic and political origins diverge slightly from this specific representation. In his 1868 parliamentary speech, John Stuart Mill coined the term ‘dystopia’, intending to criticise the impracticality and naivety of the English government’s Irish land policy. Its literal etymology, ‘bad place’, and the influence of Thomas More’s concept of utopia have political roots.
A dystopian state is one with impractical and fallible policies, and a disregard for its civilians. Interestingly, Mill also mentions the term ‘cacotopia’, meaning the worst possible place. (One wonders, if it had been as catchy a word as dystopia, whether that would be the genre lining teenage bookshelves…) However, in the 20th century the genre gradually became defined by an oppressive state acting under the pretence of utopia. Usually, the plot culminates in the shattering of this grand illusion or the attempt to dethrone this government — the best kind of novelistic climax.
The lack of subtlety that most dystopian stories have is their most detrimental characteristic.
Digital culture calls for a group consciousness and fast-paced connectivity, misaligning with the novel’s need for solitary introspection and slow-paced narratives.
As much as we’d like to blame it on phones or our gradually declining attention spans, the novel has been declared dead or slowly dying by notorious literary critics for almost over a century. Despite its state of survival, the cultural decline of reading literary fiction has resulted in an anxious anticipation for its end. This nostalgiainduced anxiety in turn produces the urgency needed to preserve literary values. The threat of the erasure of literature is what I believe will ultimately keep literary fiction immortalised, as we recognise how irreplaceable the traditional novel is.
Defining a dystopian state as such an aesthetic category fails to convey the urgency of current injustice and oppression. Though these worlds share similarities with the surveillance and systemic inequality of our own societies, they still seem fictional — a distant future, an extreme. It is hard not to notice how people obsessively consume Hunger Games media, excited for the premise of another year’s games, as if members of the Capitol itself. It’s ironic and funny at times, but ultimately unhelpful in a time where people willingly remain ignorant of current political and social issues.
I was feeling a little demoralised until I borrowed this random Irish book from a friend. Prophet Song’s narrative of a family escaping military authoritarianism was not unfamiliar. It made me rethink what technically constituted a dystopia. And then, while that was still floating in the back of my mind, I happened to buy an unassuming novel from a second hand book fair. The blurb of It Would be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo described a “real-life dystopia”. Like Lynch, Borgo describes a mundane character, one of many trying to flee an unstable and violent reality. The political dynamics of the fictional Venezuelan conflict are never really clarified, but it doesn’t need to be. At the heart of the novel,
writes.
it is about a person going to desperate measures to survive. To escape. That’s where the novels converge.
‘Modern chaos’ is funnelled into the lives of these mundane and relatable characters that are changed irreparably. There is no exceptional sense of being the ‘chosen one’ or leading the revolution, roles easily consigned to other people. Instead,
Defining a dystopian state as such an aesthetic category fails to convey the urgency of current injustice and oppression.
readers are confronted with the present issue of refugees needing sufficient funds or familial connections to flee. Right now, many Palestinians primarily rely on crowdfunding to escape the bombed and decimated living conditions of Gaza. There seems to be no other way. More than exposing our own complicity, these novels demonstrate how quickly a situation can flip and destroy all that we know.
If dystopian fiction is supposed to act as a warning or a call to action, the genre should move to incorporating this ‘high degree of realism’. Because in many ways, we already live in a dystopia — we just need to recognise it.
Simone Wong
Art by Lotte Weber
I Have Read Little, and Understood Less
Preparing for this article, I found myself rereading a passage from Proust’s Swann’s Way. The narrator, first encountering a favourite novel, observed that the prose gave him joy “in some innermost chamber of [his] soul.” I put the book down and hastily underlined it. For a moment, the soft quartet of beauty reflected back from the page.
Reading for its own pleasure as a student during the semester is one of the most wonderful things you can do. The teetering pile of assigned work hangs miasmically. Choosing to rustle unrelated pages instead is a chance to claw back some vague autonomy from the capsizing sailboat of life.
By this point of the semester, I’m normally trying to get in control of my reading list for English. Said texts live in a spot at the bottom of my bookshelf, piling up in some dazed system as I fill them with underlines to convince myself I’ve understood the point behind Shakespeare or a novel I really should have focused on. It is a perennial irony of the English student that many of us go into our degrees desperate to read more and find that the assigned readings don’t excite us as we expected.
Reading for pleasure outside class is the surest way of broadening one’s worldview. English classes, for example, tend to deal mainly with British or American literature. This limits the opportunities for broad reading amongst undergraduate
courses. Even if students were to take a mix of classes from English, Comparative Literature and Classics, they would probably still only get a light dusting of the panoply of world literature owing to the lack of alignment between the number of classes being run and the distinct specificity of those classes.
Reading outside this means that for the three years of student life, one won’t simply read things written on two corners of the Atlantic, but encounter highquality writing regardless of its genesis or apparent critical import. Critical reading is valuable and fascinating, though it is only one method and motive of reading.
The great stumbling block of an English major in particular is that the class offerings are very specific, though budget constraints prohibit the faculty from offering enough classes for such specificity to be reflected in a textual variety. This makes reading for pleasure even more essential: you can run a quasi parallel curriculum, reading what you like, when you like. I have tried to pad out the unavoidable limitations that come with doing an English degree through a program of wider reading. You should too!
Of course, this observation does not ring true simply for those doing English degrees. Fundamentally, reading for the fun of it brings colour to life. Let us do away with the snobbish pretensions of those who claim some books are better than
others. Indeed, casual reading is probably of the greatest benefit to people who study degrees totally separate to the humanities — if future doctors, economists, or office drones have a wide and warm cultural soup to dip their mental bread into when the occasion arises, ours will be a flowering and robust society. Pick up a book!
Reading for its own sake is a tool of selfeducation. It is a way of broadening your literary intake outside the tenuous fustiness of a ‘canon’ or the expected texts that unsurprisingly arise in reading lists.
Pleasurable reading during term is essential for it is reading outside academic or analytical parameters. One third-year English student I spoke to felt that literary enjoyment during term time let him “train their brain” to not simply associate the “act of reading” with class. Reading for the fun of it reclaims the act from analysis. The humor and beauty of language stands on its own. A poem is a poem as much as it is a seed of discussion. It removes literature from the instrumental realm of assignments and instead sees it as a thing that ought to be celebrated and enjoyed for its own sake.
To read for its own sake is to be washed over by a sea of text. Sentences and clauses flow out like a lighthouse beam amidst the darkness of ignorance.
This reading for experience rather than analytic interpretation is the central value of reading for pleasure. After months
Your Therapist is Not Your Messiah
Hi there. How are you feeling today? What’s going on with you? Everything okay?
In the best of times and in the worst of times, therapy can be vital for coping and recovering. There is nothing wrong with needing someone to talk to or to have someone help work through your issues or fears. I go to therapy. And although it makes me cringe, I know deep down that I am getting better through it. There is not an issue with therapy. But there are issues in making therapy into a religion, a dogmatic faith that is espoused as the be-all and end-all for recovery and mental health. The reality is that therapy is like a map, not the destination. Your therapist is not your Messiah, and this mindset is detrimental not only to yourself but to your very ‘saviour’.
Therapy is the means to an end, not the end itself. This is not to say that once you are ‘cured’ you should abandon therapy; it is to say that the goal of therapy is to learn how to overcome or cope with your emotions and life and not to be consumed in them. For many, it can feel like the one time someone sees them or listens to what they have to say. As such, it can feel as though therapy is your one place where you can take the mask off and breathe. This is good in the short term, but you will not be in your therapist’s office forever. Learning to find comfort and peace
Lachlan Griffiths reads widely.
of scanning latin hexameters or trying to understand why Orlando chiseled poetry into Rosalind’s tree, it is a blessed relief to not have to hair-split. There is nothing like “the simple rhythm of mental absorption,” as Nabokov’s Kinbote saw it when stumbling into his neighbour’s hedgerow.
The most valuable reading experiences are those that burrow into the soul.
To read for its own sake is to be washed over by a sea of text. Sentences and clauses flow out like a lighthouse beam amidst the darkness of ignorance.
Memorise a poem. Write silly notes in margins that you’ll laugh at twenty years from now. Let the books fall apart with underlines and bent pages. Weep on train carriages in the fading light, for literature’s great power lies in the way the inner lives of characters and ideas are bodied forth in language. Last week I walked around Fisher for a while late at night, reading a poem over to myself in my head. It almost felt far more educational than any classroom.
beyond that room is just as important, if not more so.
In her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy goes into excruciating detail about her experiences with therapy. Unpacking a lifetime of abuse and exploitation is a painful process that she, understandably, wants to avoid discussing. Eventually, she learns to open up, first in her therapists’ offices and then in the real world, working through her trauma and experiences. Therapy is a gradual process, not a miracle solution, and McCurdy’s experiences put this on display. She appreciates the presence of a supportive person in working through her pain, however, she also realises the importance of autonomy and a sense of self beyond therapy, something she was not afforded as a child star.
Therapy can be a key part in becoming a more autonomous person and in finding a sense of self and purpose, however, it alone cannot do this. It is one part of a network of experiences and actions that contribute to bettering your mental health or healing. This applies to everything from phobias to depression. Relying on only one action or one person will not help you. Building a support network, whether
Calista Burrowes cancels her appointment.
it be of friends and family, helplines or help groups, is a key part of therapy which ensures that there is always at least one avenue of support when you need it.
Putting the crown of thorns on your therapist, making them your one and only saviour, is not only to your detriment, it’s also to theirs. Those in the mental healthcare sector are often overworked and underpaid, and not properly supported by their employers and the government. They are humans just as we are, meaning that just as we all have periods of struggle, they do too. Putting the label of the Messiah on them is a big responsibility. Making anyone that person is an immense weight to carry. If they do not live up to the expectations of a Messiah, then what happens? Have they done a bad job? Most likely not. But the weight of potentially being the only place for an individual to find some safety and support is a big responsibility, one that they willingly take. However, this does not mean that they will be a completely perfect well of knowledge and guidance.
In an interview with The Atlantic in 2024, Richard Friedman — a professor of clinical psychiatry — addressed a statement he made earlier that year, saying that many people could
quit therapy. He says that a therapist is like a personal trainer, and for the majority of people in therapy, their job is to become their own personal trainer: “it’s designed to give you something: selfunderstanding, better relationships… And then you can generalise it and take it out, meaning I thought of therapy as you become your own trainer, in effect.” This doesn’t apply to everyone, Friedman remarks, but it does apply to many people who see therapy as ingrained and permanent in their life, when in reality, they can learn to internalise the lessons they learnt and move on.
Therapy is not a religion, it is not a total way of life. It is a place to learn and grow to eventually live without it. The Sufi poet Rumi once said that “the wound is the place where the Light enters you” and healing that wound is not easy, but therapy can be one strand in a complex tapestry of healing. Everyone is entitled to seek out therapy but it is not the be-all and endall. Your therapist is not your Messiah. No one can grant you total salvation, but they can offer you a path forward.
I’m so glad we had that talk. I’ll see you next time.
Art by Lotte Weber
Time machines: The archiTecTure on campus
Khushi Chevli turns the timeturner.
The campus trees have changed into their autumn colours, burning red and orange — the university’s speckled sweater. Students nestle by the walls, coffee cups warming their hands, pink noses buried in plaid scarves. A girl waits in line at the Courtyard Cafe, thumbing through a copy of Madame Bovary (in the original French, of course). It’s the season of wool sweaters and tortoiseshell glasses. Of warm drinks and museum visits. Your friends annotate their readings and stuff them, loose, in their bags. You run through sandstone halls to make the next class, leaving the candelabras swinging by their chains. It’s romance, it’s academia. It’s the reason many of us chose this university.
USyd’s architecture is the backdrop that ties together this scene — an atmosphere of prestige to some, of pretence to others. What value would your English degree have, if your classes weren’t in the Great Hall? How would you wear your Docs with pride, if you were walking through UNSW’s concrete geometries instead of our neo-gothic castles? How could one possibly romanticise studying for an otherwise mind-numbing test?
Unfortunately, the dark academia backdrop is exactly that: dark.
In the heart of the university, there is a cluster of time machines, scattered along the lawns. Enter any of these, and you’ll be transported to another time. The first one will transport you to an age of classics, class, and beauty.
Sydney University’s Quadrangle was built in 1854 by English architect Edward Blacket, designed to imitate the Victorian Gothic styles of Oxford and Cambridge universities. The Great Hall was the Quad’s first installation, built to promote the university’s connection to the great monarchs of England. The stained glass windows are perhaps the most extraordinary part of this building. They are particularly striking as sunlight filters through them in the evenings, shattering colours into a million beautiful fractals. These windows feature thirty-five depictions of significant men of ‘learning and invention’ (exclusively British). At either end of this building, two windows recall once more the universities of Cambridge (East) and Oxford (West), as well as stone carvings commemorating monarchs Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. As prestigious as this sounds, the ideological implications of these constant social comparisons mask the self-interest of a few elite. The Great Hall was initially intended to be constructed in a practical Elizabethan brick style. Rather than this utilitarian approach, Blackett convinced the board to move to a rather inefficient Gothic style to emphasise the university’s grandeur, as well as its ties to more ‘appropriate’ English architecture. The university’s Vice Provost, Sir Charles Nicholson, stressed that the Quadrangle consisted of a “suite of buildings” that would form an “ornament to any of the capitals of Europe [...] the influence of the university extends throughout the whole colony”. It was the architecture, not the academics, that upheld the status of USyd. And the population that could afford a university education consisted of elitist, highly-educated colonists who revered British culture above all.
Blacket, a proud member of the Anglican Church and previous ‘colonial architect’, extended the language of prestige into religion — a tradition maintained by the residential colleges on campus. The Gothic revival itself originated from the Oxford Movement, a religious revival campaign that began at Oxford University. The movement’s idealisation of medieval church traditions led to the widespread construction of Gothic architecture not only in religious structures, but in schools, libraries, and other secular buildings. Within the Great Hall, thirteen angel statues, each representing an arts subject, adorn the Great Hall’s roof. It’s evident the group of Anglicans that founded the University of Sydney kept theology at
arm’s length from the new institution. Furthermore, the university’s intention to provide ‘secular education’ was facing outcries from religious institutions, which ultimately led to the establishment of residential colleges. The colonial government’s Affiliated Colleges Act allowed the four main Christian denominations to establish colleges at the university, emulating the elite structures of Oxford and Cambridge (in the same neogothic style, of course). When we consider the university’s explicitly theocentric, Oxbridge mimicry, we can often contextualise current events. Notice the culture of colleges — increasingly exclusive, traditionalist, with scandals popping up day-by-day whilst other students struggle to find an affordable room on campus. It’s no wonder that public school graduates are making up less and less of new undergraduates, whilst Catholic school graduates are increasing. Note the pro-life ‘activists’ on Eastern Avenue, particularly the most recent comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Note the sheer existence of the Conservative Club, whose USU page lauds the ‘inheritance of the Western Civilisation’. Perhaps we’ve viewed our university life through something of a classical haze. But clearly, that’s not all that the university is.
Our history doesn’t end in the 1850s, though some elements of USyd seem not to have moved much. Let’s move to our next time machine, perhaps our funkiest.
Cut to Fisher. It’s post war, and there’s a hunger for renewal, for progress. The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ is number one on the charts. There’s a spirit in the air (or something a little more dope). Whilst the original Fisher Library (Now MacLaurin Hall) was designed to complement the Quadrangle, the new Fisher was a midcentury modern masterpiece that finished construction in September 1963. Featuring a functional design with bold horizontals, the building was modelled off the progressive universities in the United States. It was the first of its kind planned simultaneously, yet separately, for both undergraduates and senior scholars. It featured unique, student-centric spaces, including a music listening area and a rooftop terrace. The rooftop was the ‘place to gather’ — a place to study, to plan student marches, a place to protest. Highly functional, referencing Ivy league universities like Harvard, and increasingly focused on student activities, Fisher reflects Australian society’s desire to move forward post-war, a place encouraging diversity and acceptance. And wouldn’t you know, the library is still a place for students to protest. See the activists handing out anti-war flyers, and watch how students avoid them like they’re bees. See the common areas, the recording rooms, the wooden beams, the internal void connecting the third and fourth floor.
The architecture is what connects us to the past; it’s a thread linking contemporary Save Palestine student campaigns to Usyd’s antiVietnam War protests in the ‘70s.
Moving across City Road, we’ll see our next time machine, a concrete box — oh, wait. It’s a building. By the time the Wentworth Building completed construction in 1972, there was an evident student-centric progression. The building itself is characterised by its brutalism: raw concrete and bold geometry, it prioritises functionality, honesty, and social purpose over embellishments, a bold shift from the neo-gothic that once was. The building was created as a centre for the USU and the Women’s union, housing student kitchens, cafeterias, games rooms, accommodation for the SRC, Honi Soit, and clubs and societies. In their peak, between 1965-1980, these brutalist campuses were known for their progressiveness and their diverse student profile.
And finally, we move to the contemporary. The Susan Wakil Health Building, constructed in 2021, is the newest addition to the university. Opened post-pandemic, the
building is fittingly modern, consolidating three areas for teaching, research, and clinical practice. The building seems almost hypermodern with its universal, though perhaps generic, international style. There are panels and panels of glass windows, and floating rooms that edge out of the building, disrupting the continuity of the building plane. The language of the health building is decidedly modern, and a little confident, perhaps a response to the terror of COVID-19. The building’s design also addresses that which its predecessors did not.
Landscape architecture firm Arcadia attempts to honour the rightful owners of the land by integrating Wingara Mura design principles within the site’s layout, in which the building functions as an extension of the landscape. The building is located at the intersection of two waterways historically significant to the Gadigal people, and acted as a meeting hub. The design allows water to cascade from two water features: connecting Upper Wakil to Lower Wakil. The integration of indigenous artist Judy Watson’s dillybag sculpture, ‘Jujuma’, celebrates the weaving customs of the Gadigal people.
Furthermore, the structure is one of three on campus named after a woman. Susan Wakil, an Eastern European woman who fled to Australia to escape the Soviet government, was a successful businesswoman and philanthropist. She and her husband Isaac were active supporters for arts and education in New South Wales. Notably, they donated $10.8 million to provide the university with 12 scholarships a year, half of them to support regional, rural or Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. Later, they donated $35 million to unite the health disciplines in one building.
When we’re on campus, we often neglect the stories embedded in brick and mortar. Whilst the newer buildings may not have the dark academia charm that so many of us love about the university (hello, Hogwarts), they perhaps point to a more inclusive and brighter future for our students. See the girl walking out of the courtyard, leaves crunching beneath her boots — and perhaps, a book stolen from Wilkinson, tucked under her arm.
Art by Mehnaaz Hossain
Put The Rose-Coloured Glasses Back On!
Lately, simply existing has been feeling like a Sisyphean battle. The rock just keeps getting heavier and is possibly on fire. Whether your landlord has upped your rent (again) or you find yourself unable to sleep with the impending doom of a climate crisis weighing on your chest, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the upside. Each apathetic scroll through social media piles on the pressure, and people are tired. Jaded. Numb. It’s become easier to expect the worst than to hope for the best. Maybe the grass isn’t greener on the other side. Maybe it’s brown, scorched, or never even existed. However, even in this overwhelming sea of cynicism, a quiet shift is taking place. It’s not loud or obvious. It doesn’t provide salvation. This is something smaller, softer, and maybe more powerful. A movement that promises some faith: “hope-core.”
Hope-core isn’t an aesthetic or a trend in the conventional sense. It’s not about toxic positivity, nor does it ignore the state of our world. We have to process constant stress: going through a pandemic, a frightening global shift towards conservative ideals, media diets that drive loneliness and numbing content — no wonder we’ve all become a little cynical.
Think of hope-core like a small, radical act of deliberate optimism. A choice to find moments of joy, connection, and meaning in a world that often feels devoid of them. It’s videos of complete strangers offering to pay for another’s groceries. It’s a comment section of fathers offering advice to a young girl who’s just lost hers. It’s mutual aid posts on X, or random acts of kindness that remind us to have faith in humanity, even if it only spans a 30 second TikTok.
Sure, cynicism might protect you from disappointment, but it also keeps you from feeling much of anything at all. It can turn us into spectators of life instead of participants. We joke about not caring, we say “it is what it is”, and move on. We’ve watched politicians fail us, corporations exploit us, and systems designed to support us crumble under the weight of profit and power.
Gracie Allen waters the grass.
Hope-core doesn’t deny any of that. It just allows us to find comfort in the micro moments, and if enough ripples collide, they form waves.
This isn’t about ignoring reality. This isn’t about the rich influencers farming for morality points and views, trying to capitalise off this internet-movement of kindness, handing out food to those in need whilst the money in their creator fund ticks up. I’m talking about the small, genuine acts that make you stop and smile a little, temporarily distracted from misery-laden headlines on your news app. Think about hopecore as moisturiser (bear with me): it doesn’t fix the problem of your criminally dry skin and seemingly endless breakouts, but it soothes it for a while, adds a blanket over cold facts.
Choosing to see the good doesn’t mean you’re blind to the bad. It just means you’re not willing to give it all your power. In a time when nihilism feels trendy and despair is marketed as chic detachment, hope-core offers something different. It reminds us that feeling deeply isn’t a weakness, it’s what makes us human. Optimism isn’t foolish, it’s fuel. It helps us get out of bed when the news feels unbearable. It helps us reach out instead of retreating in. It encourages us to keep creating and connecting.
So, here’s an invitation. Put on the rose-colored glasses, just for a minute. Not to escape the world, but to see it in a slightly different light. To notice the people trying, the hands reaching out, the smiles exchanged between strangers. Let yourself believe, even a little, that things can get better. Not all at once, but in a hundred tiny ways. Maybe the grass is still brown and fighting for its life. But there’s always a little patch of green. You just have to let yourself water it.
In Defence of Diaspora Poetry
Diaspora poetry — or mango poetry, as it’s often called — is easy to roll our eyes at. It’s overwrought and heaving with the weight of half-baked metaphor and the same classic, essentially cliche, imagery: my mother cuts up mangos instead of saying I love you...I belong neither here nor there...I don’t speak my mother tongue properly… woe is me. It’s easy to see it as endless self-indulgence masquerading as self-exploration. Critics argue that diaspora poetry exoticises and others non-Western languages and culture. Edward Said’s Orientalism strikes again.
Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, has recently been lambasted online for the same thing. Vuong writes poetry and prose, often concerned with his experience as a Vietnamese diasporic writer with a mother fluent in Vietnamese and illiterate in English. He laments on the power of language, writing in his novel Time Is a Mother:
In my language, the one I recall now only by closing my eyes, the word for love is Yêu.
And the word for weakness is Yếu.
How you say what you mean changes what you say.
Cultural critic Andrea Long Chu, writing for Vulture, reviews Vuong’s writing as perpetuating the “romance of illiteracy”:
The reader, again presumptively white, is clearly meant to suppose that Vietnamese culture understands love and weakness as two sides of the same poignant coin. But in reality, yêu and yếu are just two words that sound meaningfully different and mean different things; they are no more esoterically linked than live, laugh, and love. The pathos here thus depends largely on the reader’s total ignorance of Vietnamese. To explain the basic facts of tonal languages would break the spell.
Chu deftly explains that Vuong separating language from its meaning, just to exoticise it through trite analysis, fails to be as poetic as he postures; I would argue instead that this illustrates the diaspora dilemma perfectly. The diasporoid lacks native understanding of their mother tongue, but holds a primal, innate connection to it nonetheless.
Vuong’s yearning for the fluency — and by extension, love, warmth, and understanding — of his mother is impossible to fulfil. And so, Vietnamese, in his novel and in his
mind, exists not as a coherent language but as an object of desire. It doesn’t matter what the words or tones really mean, it matters that Vuong will never quite understand the depth of them the way he does English.
Of course the diaspora writers’ desire for language is exoticised.
The same way people feverish with longing put their lovers on a pedestal, Vuong places his mother tongue in a realm of awestruck incomprehensibility. Although not mutually exclusive, he ends up articulating his own alienation from Vietnamese, not just pandering to illiterate non-native speakers. The very criticisms of diaspora poetry are, perhaps unfortunately, inherent and raw elements of articulating the diaspora experience. Chu proclaims that Vuong “mistakes his own naivete for insight”. But to me, Vuong’s naivete, the naivete of all diaspora writers and our Sisyphean attempts at articulating what we can never understand, is the insight itself. Woe is me.
Mehnaaz Hossain embraces naivete.
Does Grief Fracture or Fuel Faith?
Marlene Walker measures grief.
I’ve never been religious. Basking under the fragmented rays of an orange setting sun or feverish laughter drowning out an atonal chorus of cicadas are the closest I have come to genuine spirituality. I never really understood, or perhaps never tried to understand, authentic religiosity. I relished in the selfishness of my mundanity until my breath hitched over the dinner table as I was told that somebody I loved had died. In the desperate haze of the moment, the only coherent thought I strung together was, “Please, no.” This plea forced me to grapple with something I’d never considered within my staunch atheism: who was I talking to?
What does it mean for spirituality, to lose somebody? How does grief define our relationship with spirituality? Can loss push even the most devoted atheists to yearn for a higher power — some hope of reconnection? Or might it fracture the belief of the faithful, forcing them to question the reasoning behind such tragedy?
For those who do believe, grief may have paradoxical effects. Loss doesn’t always draw people closer to spirituality; it can drive them away. A lifetime of faith may be undone in a single moment of pain. A
study conducted by Waylor University found that two major patterns occur when religious individuals are faced with immeasurable loss: “positive religious coping”, when individuals turn to the comfort of faith within grief, and “negative religious coping”, where individuals denounce religion in bereavement, through “appraising God … spiritual discontentment, and disengagement from religious involvement.” It was found that loss has a commonly negative effect on the frequency in which individuals attend religious services and engage in religious practices. This suggests a quiet unravelling of faith against the tidal wave of grief. In his book A Grief Observed British writer C.S. Lewis detailed his jumbled fall from Christian spirituality after the death of his wife, asking plainly, “Where is God?” He described his loss of faith as if being deadlocked out of the comfort of a once warm and vibrant house. “There are no lights in the windows,” he explained. “It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited?”
However, grief does not always exile people from the house of faith. In Buddhism, the process of death is lovingly and faithfully ritualised, encouraging grief and faithful spiritualism to occur simultaneously.
The belief in samsara (the cyclical nature of individual consciousness gaining new life after death) understands death as a process of transition and continuation, rather than a final moment or a complete end. Instead of viewing death as a finality, it becomes a spiritual opportunity for growth and liberation. This understanding transforms the grieving process into one of compassionate accompaniment, where spiritual rituals such as chanting and meditation not only aid the deceased through their rebirth, but also provide structure, solace, and clarity for the living. When grief is not suppressed or denied, the impermanent nature of existence may be embraced, placing bereavement as a natural process in the broader journey toward faithful enlightenment.
Although, it may not just be a specific god or ritual that people turn to in the face of loss. Subtle, everyday reminders of the person you lost may turn into a sign of a higher existence, or proof of meaning after death. The date of a lost loved one’s birthday lazing gracefully on the end of a barcode number, the barista making your morning coffee wearing their name on a name-tag, the melody of their favourite song drifting through the speakers as you reach for sourdough in the Bakery Section
in Woolworths. It is in this intense grief that you may begin to believe in invisibility. Like the promise of a heavenly God or the transcendence of Nirvana, it lifts you gently and reminds you how to live. The warm hand of faith caresses the rotten hand of grief, offering the promise of eternal love even in the midst of perpetual, tear-stained darkness.
Whether it be a solidified higher identity, or the quiet acknowledgement of a beautiful life now lost, grief manifests paradoxically and incomprehensibly in the warm beating heart between our rib cages. It thrashes and bites and kisses and cries softly and begs for forgiveness. It is indescribable and turbulent, and so is fractured spirituality. There is not one ‘right’ or ‘common’ way to deal with grief. Your loved one is waiting for you with outstretched hands in some intangible place, beyond what you can currently see, or they have returned to the ground beneath you, and they raise the daisies you make flower crowns out of in spring. Whether they have returned to the stars of which they were created, or ascended the pearly gates, they are not lost if you believe in them.
My Name is Anonymous and I’m an Alcoholic
Content Warning: Includes discussion of substance abuse and addiction.
I do not recall the exact reason why I first went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). When I was at the bottom of the bottle, I did not believe that I would ever live a day without drinking. Perhaps, it was a morbid sense of curiosity that brought me to the doors of AA.
I remember then wanting to answer the question: what is an alcoholic? I wanted that question answered in a scientific, anthropological, and even spiritual sense. A curious investigation to embark on for someone who was drinking themselves half to death.
I asked that question so many times in my first year, drifting in and out of the room. It is fortunate that older sober members are much more well rehearsed in answering this question, and have far more patience than I did. Each time I asked, they told me that I was asking the wrong question. The question they asked me was instead: do you wish to be sober? A particularly cheeky older member told me that they would answer my question the next week, so I had better return.
I continued to drink, though I attempted to stop. While I remained a skeptic, I returned to the rooms that smelled of cheap instant coffee because I was so desperate to be part of something greater than myself. In the rooms, disparate strangers from all walks of life were united by a common desire.
Alcoholics Anonymous, and the more generalised 12step program, is a non-hierarchical peer support group for addiction recovery. AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio. Since then, it has spread across the world and retained its grassroots nature with individual groups eschewing hierarchy and centralised leadership. Groups are self-governed and defer to committees and the General Service Office only when necessary, usually for the purposes of purchasing AA literature, materials, and the coins given to members to mark milestones of recovery.
AA encourages newer members to stick with sober members, ‘sponsors’, who can guide them through their path to sobriety and participation in service, aiding groups in non-financial ways to give back to the community. It does not simply seek to be a program of peer therapy, instead it asks that you begin life anew.
There are a multitude of criticisms of AA, from its pseudoscientific nature, a lack of robust research into its effectiveness, and, depending on the group, a tendency to engage in cultish behaviours. I see these flaws clearly and would suggest anyone joining AA to exercise a sensible amount of caution.
I often hear in AA the term ‘program’ thrown around. The ‘program’ refers to the 12 steps and traditions of AA. This ‘program’ co-exists with aphorisms such as “there is no
Anonymous is an alcoholic.
one way to get sober” and “what gets me sober might get you drunk”.
The problem I find with AA is that I see all too often people replacing one addiction (alcohol) with another (AA).
AA becomes what subsumes their life.
We are told we have addictive personalities. Of course, an addiction to AA is preferable to actively drinking, to engaging in a slow form of suicide. We are told that there is life after addiction, but life is not just the confines of a church basement or a hospital function room.
For me, it is not a ‘program’ but the people who have gotten me sober. I am not a god-fearing person, I do not believe some entity has lifted the curse of addiction from me. I do, however, believe that something greater than myself emerges when I am with another person who shares the same goal that I do — to be sober. It is camaraderie that keeps me sober.
I put down my last drink in 2019.
AA is not the only way to get sober, but it is one that I am grateful for, because it has saved me.
Loss, to which I return often.
Purny
Ahmed builds a home.
At the risk of sounding cliche, a broken heart isn’t unknown to me. It is a homeland which I return often. I speak its language in fluent, un-stuttering phrases; an unwavering first-language. Before all else, it seems, I know loss. I know the way it lingers, the way the gaps between your fingers feel empty without something to claw into, the way your shoulder blades pain from standing upright through the hurt too often.
I had tried to swear off all the things which caused loss to hurt so deeply: love, affection, friendship. An addict claiming sobriety from the desire of wanting for someone to stay, someone worth staying for. I thought I would much rather have killed my lungs than I would let another person pass through my ribcage and make themselves at home. It was easier to accept a cigarette from a stranger than to allow myself a friendship which came too close, or a love which tasted too sweet.
Yet, I have found myself here again — placing my heart in another’s hands. I ask them if I can trust them with it, and ask myself if they can trust me with theirs. For someone so steadfast on building walls, I seem to throw open windows, allowing for people to crawl through. These people, unruly in their insistence to love deeply and care ferociously, have now set up a fort made of blankets in the deepest part of my chest, hung up fairy lights, put the kettle on, and are shouting out the dirtiest of jokes; they’ve made a home of my heart, and woven flowers around my ribs, insisting I heal. I can’t find it in me to evict them.
Unfortunately, this is the human condition. It’s a horrendous truth to accept.
To speak of love and to speak of loss; the two naturally go hand in hand. It is the reason we hold onto memories, through grief and, through misery. It is the reason we place flowers on graves, the reason we hoard photos in our phone galleries, the reason we write, even when in pain. I am a collector of all the parts of themselves which people leave behind. A photobooth picture of a group of best friends. A conversation screenshot of a confession. A glow stick from a party, or a concert ticket stub. An inside joke. A phrase. An achingly familiar laugh. A reminder of them in every place you go, haunting you as you try to walk through the streets without your mind drifting to the people you once had — those who once loved you, who you onced loved back.
Heartbreak, it seems, isn’t caused at goodbye. Mean words, pointed fingers, who’s at fault, and who’s the blame? It’s all meaningless. True pain comes after the goodbye; it’s rooted in all the goodness your relationship once used to offer. The pain takes root in the home amidst your ribcage. They’ve torn through the tissue, battled through the bloody mess, unwove the rotten flowers from around your ribs, pulled down the fairylights and the fort. The door they left through is wide open and bleeding out, unhealing.
In the aftermath, when you are left standing alone in a room that used to once be full of your people, it’s impossible to not think of that goodness amongst the hurt and the resentment. You miss them so much that it hurts, and it’s almost worth going through the pain
all over again to bring them back. You think of your past and future in a capsule; in an ideal world, you got everything you wanted. Those friends still dance at your wedding, your brother still walks you down the aisle. You still sit in rooms that were once your second home. You get to watch someone grow old, not at a distance, but by their side. No one is missing; they are all still with you, in this ideal world — it’s almost worth all the hurt.
It might not be worth it; it might be okay to lose what no longer serves you. I found that (again, at the risk of sounding cliche) love finds you when you are expecting it the least. Loss after loss after loss, and then love finds you in a busy club or at 11pm in the Honi office. Love that was always there makes itself known; your family, whether that be blood or choice, lifts you off the couch as you grieve, they put food in your mouth, and laughter in your throat.
Fortunately, the human condition is a beautiful one. We need love.
It is a comforting truth to accept, though you’ve spent your life running from it.
Think about those you’ve lost, all the goodness you had once held in the palm of your hands in those relationships, and now, think about who you have right now. All the goodness in your life you would not have had if you had run, shut your doors, built your walls.
In the aftermath of loss, I find myself rebuilding my walls. Anything to keep the cold out, or in this case, the warmth. Recently, I have realised I’m not much of a bricklayer; the foundations of my cage are weak and brittle. People keep finding themselves slipping through the cracks.
I’ve found that love finds me slowly, creeps up on me. It’s always a shock when you are standing in a room full of your people again, but they’re not the same people you once had. Surrounded by so much goodness the fear of losing them settles deep into your bones, yet not enough to stop the laughter which escapes your throat. I sit giggling on the office floor with new friends, spilling secrets, making promises, catching myself off guard by the closeness I have allowed myself with people who have infiltrated my heart so seamlessly. I wake up and fall asleep to a voice which is more familiar to me than my own, someone whose heart now beats in sync with my own, despite my trials and efforts to keep him out. I sit in grief and laughter with those who have seen me through all my loss, who have lived it with me, who have always made room for me in their chest when I needed a home to run to. Those who never evicted me.
I grappled with the fear of loss in every moment, in every promise made. Not only to break ups and fall outs, but to the grander miseries life might have to offer. Loss comes in too many forms, but at the heart of it it is love which makes it a worthwhile sacrifice.
These people, they set up a fort, hung up fairy lights, put the kettle on; they made a home of my heart, weaving flowers around my ribcage, again. They insist that I heal and I listen.
The Islamic Spirituality of Romanticising your Life
As somewhat of a romanticist, I believe we all seek beauty from the moment we open our eyes. From the radiant warmth of my mother’s embrace as an infant to the wondrous gazing up at the moon through the window of my childhood bedroom, I recall my entire being in constant gravitation towards the beauty of my own little corner of the world. Now in my early adulthood, I grow more enchanted by the beauty of familiar faces in unfamiliar spaces. I find myself entranced in the beauty of my grandfather’s backyard, as he lovingly feeds flocks of neighbourhood Cockatoos with Lebanese bread and honey.
I find all these disconnected wonders in life to be interlinked. Personally, I observe such beauties with a prayer whispered almost habitually: SubhanAllah. This unconscious act of praising the glory of the seemingly mundane draws me deeper into my faith. Through a personal journey of connecting with my Islamic roots, I came to realise seeking this beauty is a divine, spiritual act of faith in itself.
The concept of seeking beauty in Allah and His creation is known as Al-Ihsan, loosely translating to “excellence”. It was
described by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as the pinnacle of Islam in a fascinating reccount (Hadith 2, 40 Hadith an-Nawawi). Unknowingly speaking to Angel Gabriel (who was disguised in human form), the Prophet said Ihsan is to “serve Allah as though you could see Him”, and strive for excellence in all that you do — whether in a deep-focused prayer, or devoting oneself to doing good with tenderness and earnesty. Ihsan is to seek the best in our surroundings and to emulate goodness into our own lives and unto others.
However, I came to learn Ihsan also means “the act of seeking beauty” in a conversation I had with my father not so long ago. He reminded me why Muslims grow into the habit of praising our surroundings with accustomed phrases such as MashAllah, Allahu Akbar, and SubhanAllah — because the act of admiring the beauty of Allah’s creation is an act of worship in itself. The very act of acknowledging the wonders of life is an inner-manifestation of faith I was unconscious to.
I find myself most in tune with my beliefs by exploring the art and history of my
Homesick Forever
There are two homes that exist within me. One which I carry in my heart, a distant memory of the homeland I was born in. Another that I can feel beneath my feet, a foreign soil on which I have learned to bloom.
My parents, however, exist suspended between these two worlds — tethered to both by a soft invisible string, yet never fully embraced by either. They live in a permanent in-between, carrying their homeland in their bones whilst charting a country that will never quite feel like their own. Australia has offered them safety, freedom, and opportunity. But the promise of belonging remains distant, never speaking the warm, familiar language of home.
They have no idea what it’s like, to lose home at the risk of never finding home again, to have your entire life, split between two lands and, become the bridge between two countries.
- Rupi Kaur
predecessors. Many centuries ago, was the foundation of the Islamic Golden Age, igniting the passion of Muslims in past civilisations to integrate their faith into all forms of creativity: Islamic architecture, scientific and arithmetic discoveries, literature, and even cuisine. I encountered this in the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, with my elbows sunken into the fine sand as I immersed myself in one of Rumi’s poetry books. Despite being grotesquely misunderstood in Western art culture, Rumi did not write his love poems to a mortal lover. In fact, Rumi was a poet mused by his faith and wrote about the beauty of God. He made the grandest proclamation of devotion one can ever make: a sheer devotion to Allah in the praise and admiration of His grandeur. The epitome of faith:
With my predecessors setting the greatest example, I have grown to channel the act of Ihsan by consciously seeking the beauty in the little and large fragments of my day. I have started to slow my pace as I walk underneath far-reaching branches and blossoms of the jacaranda trees. I admire the beauty of blossoming friendships as classmates lounge in the sun of the
spiritually homeless existence.
They live every day tethered to the memory of the home that they embraced for years and the lonely reality of a new land that will never truly fulfill them. Belonging to neither, suspended between both, they endure. And so, in our eagerness to celebrate the fruits of their efforts, we mustn’t forget the roots buried deep in unseen soil, carrying the weight of two worlds so that their children can walk lighter.
Sour surrender;
to trade a world where love arrives unannounced to a dystopia filled with nameless neighbours,
to call a land home that mispronounces your name even if it remembers.
Creation, I strengthen my connection with Islam. Because it is in this deep sense of inner-faith that I find encouragement to seek excellence in the special moments in my own little corner of the world.
SubhanAllah
Dabiri grows in the light of sacrifice.
of myself as a bit of a hoarder — maybe this is a trait I’ve learned from living in a house riddled with memories of a family I’ll never truly get the chance to get to know. Through my parents I’ve learnt to decorate my room as well as my soul and my heart by these memories. A ring I wear on my hand passed down from my grandmother’s wedding, the rug laid down on my bedroom floor that once covered my great grandfather’s living room, the paintings that hang on my walls — drawn by the frail hands of my uncles and aunts.
But for me, it’s different. For me, home is anywhere my parents are.
I have watched my parents backs bend and seen their spirits torn, I have held them and watched them mourn.
My mother says I carry all her light, I look at her and smile,
I hope I am everything she wanted me to be.
I hope I am proof enough that her sacrifice was worthwhile.
In our society, there is a great celebration of the children of immigrants: the bright youth, who weave their parents’ sacrifices into polished stories of triumph. Their achievements are held up as proof of perseverance, of a promise of opportunity fulfilled. But in this admiration, there lies a growing neglect as we turn away from the parents themselves, who have torn down and rebuilt every part of their lives for their children. Australia loves a good migrant story, but only when it shines — dressed in diplomas, TED Talks, and polished arcs of resilience.
We do not linger on the raw, unvarnished stories. The ones lined with calloused hands, broken accents, and the art of silent success. Success which manifests in ways that are much quieter, sweeter, and infinitely heavier; measured not in accolades, but in sacrifices. Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all of whom have submitted themselves to a
There are many quiet traditions that persist in immigrant households; small rituals rooted not only in culture but an overwhelming ache of loneliness. Loneliness that can only be hushed by the feeble attempt to latch on to anything that feels like home. And for our family, it’s no different.
My parents often immerse themselves in anything that echoes of home: food, film, music, dance, media. Every second day my mother’s voice cracks on a glitchy Facetime with her own mother, a fleeting attempt to bridge oceans through flickering screens. Their grief for the life they once lived hums beneath these rituals, as they seek out people and communities where they can still hear the song of their mother tongue, tender and familiar.
Our home is adorned by fragmented parts of a life once lived. I’ve always thought
by Avin Dabiri
Often, I find myself looking through my parents’ old family photos, faded windows into a life lived before me. Captured moments of my parents’ youth - a youth that slipped away from them too soon, traded for a better life. Tracing my fingers over these photos, I can almost see a golden hue that shines around them, a kind of light that belongs to memory alone. There, in those frozen frames, they are wrapped in a love that feels untouched by time. True warmth sacrificed for a better life. A life that has allowed me to speak, dress, act, and truly live as my heart desires. Freed from the confines they endured, but still shaped by the sacrifices they carry on my behalf.
My parents’ definition of home has always been different to mine. For them home is a place where the scent of saffron and chai swims in the air like an invisible welcome. Where Persian rugs sprawl across the floor, like a woven garden blooming beneath one’s feet. Where tables are adorned with dried fruit, sugared almonds, decorated glasses and rosewaters sweets. The walls are furnished by the delicate strokes of Hafez and Persian miniature carpets. The echo of Persian ballads and the laughter of family fills the rooms. This is what home will forever mean to my parents; a place of culture in the presence of their loved ones.
The loneliness of immigrant parents is a quiet sorrow that rarely asks to be seen, but one that we must learn to recognise. It is a raw sacrifice, so vast that words will forever fail to hold its weight. And yet, not once have I heard my parents utter a complaint, nor witnessed any flicker of bitterness in their eyes. They have carried their aches with dignity, threading beautiful lives filled with hope. I am living proof of their sacrifice, blessed with the full life they gave me, even if it cost them pieces of their own.
This to me is the truest meaning of love. To choose another’s happiness and comfort over one’s own, again and again, without expectation of recognition. Immigrant parents may carry their loneliness like a second skin, but within them burns a love so fierce, so enduring and so unconditional that it shapes generations — a quiet testament to everything they chose to give.
It is an honour, to feel a love so endless, it stills sorrow’s voice.
Avin
This Place Smells
Like Piss, Beer, and Macho Men
Content Warning: Mentions of rape, sexual assault, and gendered violence.
In the first iteration of my band, our singer/rhythm guitarist and our beloved friend, Cooper* roared out some lyrics over, and over, and over: “kill a fucking rapist”. With passion, I saw his spit flying from my spot behind the drum kit.
Cooper loudly made it unsafe for any rapist, creep, or assaulter in the scene. I distinctly remember him saying, “if X makes it to the next gig, I’ll make sure it’ll be their last.” He was everything you’d want in an ally. First to pack a punch (honestly, way too often), the last to leave you unprotected.
Less than a week later, it came out that Cooper had assaulted his ex-girlfriend. It was a ‘complicated’ situation, he claimed in tears. The relationship was toxic. We heard many versions of that story, but the crux of it remains: he assaulted his girlfriend. The same Cooper that we could count on to keep us safe from any way-toohandsy people in the pit, the same Cooper that carried me up the first time I went urbexxing, the same Cooper that so many looked up to and trusted.
The point of this story isn’t about Cooper. No, it’s the sheer hypocrisy of it all. In a counter-culture scene all about radical
politics — fuck cops, kill rapists, fight back against systems of oppression — there are way too many instances of this exact situation, and, no exaggeration, something like this comes out every fortnight. For a scene all about sticking it to the man, there sure are a lot of creeps.
“The drummer of that band dated a minor.” “The wvocalist of this band hit their partner.” “You know that person? Yeah, that metalhead — you know it came out that he assaulted someone? Crazy shit.”
Gendered violence in this scene isn’t as clearly defined as it was on Cooper’s end.
Let me first establish: I am no stranger to mosh pit violence. I’ve busted my nose, had multiple concussions, had head wounds, assorted bruises, random cuts I can’t trace the source of. So, I understand that the nature of moshing is often aggressive, regardless of generational differences.
Way too often, genuine foul play gets disguised as a stray casualty. Large, fully-grown men target ‘weaker’ bodies in the pit, repeatedly thrown to the floor, charging towards them with too much
force. If moshing is all about the rawest form of self-expression, it is quite telling that this unadulterated self-expression ends with oppressors causing intentional, targeted harm to whoever they consider ‘other’, ‘weaker’, or more ‘vulnerable’.
This doesn’t just happen in the mosh. Only last week at a local hardcore show did a man ‘floor two girls’ who ‘weren’t even in the pit’. On an Instagram story call-out, an attendee of the event pointed out “nobody did anything… once again women making the scene safe because they’re the only ones to call out violent male behaviour.”
We can have a burn book of all the harmful people who’ve come to shows. It’s a small scene. But this does nothing when people just accept these incidents as ‘side effects’ of going to mosh.
It’s on you to mosh responsibly. The nature of the pit is controlled chaos. Don’t get in if you don’t want to get hurt.
True disclaimers, but how much more cover can this give until someone takes it too far? If I want to mosh, I don’t want to worry about being dogged by a man on a power trip that he doesn’t even realise
Loathing the Glebe Markets
he’s having. They’re often thrown out too late. If I want to go to gigs, I don’t want to question if a band member has done something creepy before telling them “sick set”. How many more band members with allegations do we turn a blind eye to until someone dies? How many justifications are we going to give? Our politic is both co-opted to cover for doers of harm and used as an aesthetic. Values don’t mean shit anymore.
“This song’s about finding your local rapist, and beating them to death.” In the corner, a boy’s girlfriend stands, holding his drink. D-beat ensues. A femme tries backing out of the pit, angled elbow in front of their body. Gutturals. A person keeps getting floored by a disproportionately larger guy they don’t know. A breakdown. Someone falls and gets pulled back up by their bra strap.
In a DIY subculture all about creating and shaping the spaces we want, we have to actively intervene when we see harm. Perpetrating the same systems of harm you face, this time on your terms, doesn’t make you punk. It just makes you an asshole.
“Do you really wanna be like them? Do you really wanna be another trend?” Good Charlotte, The Anthem
“Why?” you might ask.
It’s quite simple, really. It’s a market disguised as an Inner West wet dream of trinkets and vintage clothing. But, in reality, Glebe Markets is stallholders up-selling fast fashion pieces that feel like plastic tarp. It is all your exhousemates and lovers reselling their Glassons purchases from a year ago. It is the stallholder, embarrassed, telling my best friend that she can just “have” that Fortnite shirt, and then charging my other best friend fifty dollars for another. It is vintage ‘curators’ making a living by selling you a 2010s emo tee from Target for an absurd amount of money because the safety pin tag says y2k. Plus there’s only one obscure book stall among the 200 artisan, vintage, second-hand, preloved, bought-last-month, copy-paste, ubiquitous, fashion girlie elitism. And… the dumplings are expensive. There, I said it.
The so-called epidemic of vintage shopping broke out post-Covid. Perhaps, if anything, the pandemic had bought us the instantaneous gratification of self-curatorship through the ease of online shopping. The accessibility of individualism, or identity, through cheap and unethically made clothing created ripple effects in our digital images. We could not see one another physically, and therefore, had to display ourselves through a code of certain visual semiotics in order to understand one another. Even the etymology of aestheticism lends itself to this, the Greek word for perception, to perceive things. Therefore, the visual representation of oneself, especially
through clothing, became an immediate indicator of personality. And so, postpandemic, the need to self-curate a code of specific semiotics is still an itch we long to scratch: one that we want to deem more “authentic” — so we op-shop.
still hunting and gathering. If anything, the skill of curation is pre-human. Think of the magpie, the bowerbird or crow who collects shiny objects to decorate their nests so they know it is theirs. The need to be individual is so innate to us,
judge upon the sheer common sense of accessorising.
When I turned eighteen, I deleted TikTok. When I was questioned as to why, I said that an app cannot bring me any more inspiration than what I already bring to myself, than what I can already conjure up in my mind. But, I must be honest, I am not an island. I am influenced by small fancies and large. I still peruse Newtown Vinnies on the way home from a yoga class under the guise of “you never know what you might find”. I have had my fair share of Glebe Market purchases: CD’s, boots, monstera plants, vintage slips, and overpriced corsets. I’ve spent way too much on vintage kitten heels that I screamed at my feet to fit.
waste of our time. It is as if we do not have the patience for the concept of the opshop itself: a shop for opportunity. It is a highly reproduced, post-humanist need to consume in order to be an individual.
And yet, op-shopping is a skill deeply buried in our animus from when we were
curated, we all end up looking the same. The price of that y2k penny lane coat is bigger than a dollar sign babe, it is the price of individualism itself. It is a game. Who can be the most outrageously Pinterest on King Street? As if the contents of one’s mind is not decadently curated enough that we must
I’ve rummaged through the op-shops in my hometown as if searching desperately for a long-gone lover, only to settle when I’ve found some piece of him: some beaten leather jacket, some polka-dot teapot. Sometimes op-shopping feels Frankensteinian, wherein I am curating something other than myself but still of myself, from the loins of the small-town op-shop where you can still buy a dress for two dollars. When I am dressed head-totoe in parts of other people, other people I have no way of ever knowing, I feel somehow more myself. An amalgamation of found-objects. An art piece. A tartan jacket, a purple-knit scarf, a baker boy cap, and a pair of hiking boots. A hand from out of the dirt: it’s alive!
Dana Kafina is sick of creeps.
An air of Frogaccini
Will Winter reviews Sydney Comedy Festival.
Wandering into a red storage container in the Factory Theatre, obnoxious planes flying overhead, I was squished into a corner chair of the reworked performance area to witness the absurd whimsy and millenial wit of Charlie Lewin’s cabaret show Frogaccini. Transplanted from Melbourne for Sydney Comedy Festival, Lewin’s show is a self-described “part fairytale, part stand-up, all gay abomination”. It traverses the last two decades of Australian pop culture, some timely material regardingly the recently deceased Pope Francis (which, Lewin insists, was written last year, before the Pope “decided to pass away”), and several power ballads from the titular Frogaccini as he looks for acceptance and queer love.
Outfitted with a silken robe and handmade pink sparkly hat (which received multiple well-earned rounds of applause), Lewin begins the show as a princess in “the land of Italy, a fictional land much like that of Genovia from The Princess Diaries”. The plot of the fairytale, which bookends the show with musical numbers from pop icons and the musical Wicked, is a gayer and more on the nose reimagining of the classic tale of ‘The Princess and the Frog’.
The character name Frogaccini is inspired by Lewin mishearing the Italian homophobic slur frociaggine, which Pope Francis was accused of saying twice during Pride Month 2024. This character, outfitted in green velvet gloves hastily pulled on behind a back curtain, is a “homophobian in the confrogation” led by his Pope-like fictional father. Covered in silly puns and supported by Lewins’ enthused musical theatre vocals and bravado, the songs and this storyline are a fun and whimsical way to tie together some of the circular jokes of the show, and also inject some vibrant camp energy to the entire one-person production.
I personally adored his section on Moo Deng, and the comparisons of Moo Deng’s lessfamous and less-talented sister to Danni Minogue. The audience had a wide spectrum of ages and cultures represented, and I believe I was the youngest person present. It was a treat seeing the centre row, buffeted by a group of iconically dressed and vivaciously engaged older queers, be bewildered by comparisons of Moo Deng to Princess Diana.
Lewin also has an extended run of jokes about the Pope’s alignment to queer culture. Supposedly, during his run at Melbourne Comedy Fest, Lewin asked the audience every night to pray for Pope Francis to live until the end of his run. Pope Francis passed the day after his run for the comedy fest ended. It was fascinating to see how Lewin addressed the Pope’s recent passing considering how integral the figure is to the construction of the entire performance. He toed a fine line between some clear genuine emotional conflict with performing the material, and diffusing that feeling by blaming the Pope’s passing on his clear disdain for Sydney and our comedy festival. Hopefully Lewin follows through on his promise to write his next show about Peter Dutton.
I’d say that at some points in the show, mostly towards the end, the overuse of ‘fuck’ and the f-slur became a bit of a performance crutch, but that was forgivable for a certain well-executed punchline involving flight attendants being physically threatened by the aforementioned Veronicas.
Near the start of the stand-up set, Lewin inquired as to whether there were any Gen Z in the audience. After I let out a soft ‘woooh’, Lewin asked my name, and then asked if the show so far “was slay?” I said yes, “it’s giving”, and he said:
The songs are funny, smartly placed without being overwritten, and backed by an actually talented singer who uses his strong voice to empower the story, without displacing laughs to cheaper gags like faltered singing.
Beyond the glittery and vocally strong reworkings of our titular allegory, Lewin’s two stand-up slots are well-considered and frantically lucid observations on the pop culture artifacts of his time. He walks us through his love of The Veronicas despite their historically Brat-like reputations (“for you Gen Z in the audience, The Veronicas are like Australia’s Charli XCX, but one of them is gay”), his history of editing the Glee fan wiki, and a recent anniversary trip with his boyfriend to a dessert-less fancy spa.
Remember me
Zayed Tabish loves okta verify.
Dearest Okta, guardian of Canvas
You greet me each day with a hopeful sign
Remember me
a line with no malice
But, trust in you is fleeting by design
“See, Will and I, we’re just so young and virile that we just get it.” We really are, Charlie.
He later included a “Will thinks I’m slay” lyric in his middle number.
I can say confidently that the show was truly a slay. It was a green, leggy, froggy slay, which is the best kind.
By the time the final number came on, an iconic reimagining of a Chappell Roan song, you could feel how carefully all of the extended bits of the show came to a close, weaved into both the fictionalised Frogaccini and the general stand-up bits. Lewin knew how to draw the line between stupidity and sincerity, a balance which can be hard to strike in a medium as loose as cabaret. Considering the smooth execution of such a high-concept show, it will be a joy to see where Lewins takes his fasttalking and culturally precise skills next.
I beg, please keep my name. Do not forget
Let me go through
I beg you
I request
And let me pass, without your cold beget
Indeed, you have sent me on a cruel quest
Yet at a moment’s spur, you cast me free
A stranger once again, by your command
My imploring ignored, an empty plea
I take my phone, resigned to your demand
And in fifteen minutes, I close the tab
Only to return for a fatal stab
What is Special Consideration and How to Apply
If you (or someone you are the primary carer for) experience shortterm illness (physical or mental), injury or misadventure, that is beyond your control, that affects your assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration. If your illness was pre-existing, you will need to show an exacerbation of the illness.
If the University approves an application for special consideration they will give some flexibility in meeting assessment requirements, such as an extension or a further examination. They cannot give you extra marks. If you are still unwell, or experience another illness, injury, or misadventure, for a supplementary exam, you should apply again for special consideration providing new documentation. Where the faculty is unable to provide an additional supplementary assessment, you will be given a Not Examinable (NE) grade. This does not count as a fail, but you are liable for HECS/fees. If you have documentation to show that your condition was worsening, you may be able to apply for a Discontinue Not to Count as Fail (DC) grade.
Applying for special consideration
You must apply within three working days of the assessment deadline. If you apply late, you will need to have a documented, compelling reason as to why you were unable to apply on time. Late applications are not often accepted. Go to the Uni’s Special Consideration portal. Provide the appropriate supporting documentation, as
outlined in the portal. Medical documentation (e.g., Professional Practitioner’s Certificates from a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist) must be from the day of or before the day of the assessment. Ensure, also, that the dates of your documentation include the dates of your assessment. Appropriate misadventure documentation varies according to the situation. Where possible, get a PPC to show how you were affected by the misadventure. While it is possible to use a statutory declaration, it is generally not considered sufficient without other evidence or supporting documentation.
Rejected applications
You can appeal a rejected special consideration application, within 15 working days. In your appeal, address each of the problems that the Uni mentions. It may be helpful to get additional documentation. Seek advice from an SRC Caseworker.
False documentation
If you are caught using false documentation (e.g., a medical certificate that you bought) or alter a legitimate document, you will not be granted special consideration, and will most likely be found to have committed academic misconduct, and may result in your suspension or expulsion from the university. Some students have also found that the person they bought it from has tried to blackmail them into paying more and more money over time. The SRC strongly advises against the use of false documentation.
Ask Abe
SRC Caseworker Help Q&A Academic Honesty & Integrity
Dear Abe,
I’ve been told that I’m in trouble for plagiarism, but I don’t think I did anything wrong. The Turnitin report has highlighted a lot of my essay, but I did put references in. What should I have done?
Not Sure.
Dear Not Sure,
Plagiarism is where you present someone else’s ideas and words as your own. The Turnitin report highlights the parts of your assessment that appear exactly in someone else’s work, whether it is published work, an essay from another student, or one of your old assessments. Where you use someone else’s ideas, you need to give them
credit in your references. When you use someone else’s words, you need to paraphrase what they have written, and give them credit in your references. If you do not paraphrase you must use quotation marks and give them credit in your references. Each faculty uses a different style of referencing, so check your subject outline. The library’s Peer Learning Advisors can help you with this skill, or re-do the Academic Honesty Education Module on Canvas.
SRC Caseworkers are able to help prepare a response to the accusation of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism. Contact a saseworker via the QR code link below. Include a copy of the Turnitin report.
Abe
If you need help from an SRC Caseworker start an enquiry on our Caseworker Contact Form: bit.ly/3YxvDUf
Contract cheating or using AI in your assessment – Don’t risk it!
The University defines contract cheating as getting someone to complete part or all of your assessment (hand in or exam). This includes:
• buying an assignment from a tutoring company;
• having a friend complete some of your assessment;
• having someone coach you through an assessment;
• using a model answer from a tutoring website or social media (e.g., facebook or WeChat);
• uploading or downloading lecture notes, assignments or exams to an information sharing site, e.g., CourseHero, Github, CHEGG;
• getting someone to do your exam; or
• submitting an assessment which has been generated in whole or part by artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, where it was not authorised or correctly referenced.
‘Quick’ Crossword
Across
2 Triumphed (3)
4 Unmasks (5)
6 “What’s the latest?” (3,4)
8 Alcoholics ___ (9)
10 Serving of pizza (5)
11 Church instrument (5)
13 PR focus (5)
1 Like dad jokes (5)
2 Big name in Gotham City (5)
3 NASA’s underwater program (5)
4 (In)famous figure on campus (5)
5 Like 24-down (5)
6 Pixar specialty (9)
7 Make more palatable (9)
8 Annual fact book (7)
Week 9 Crossword Answers
15 Swiss resort hosting WEF (5)
17 Yemen’s capital (5)
18 Locked out at Waterfront in ‘98 (3)
19 Defies authority (5)
20 North Pole boss? (5)
22 Central Floridan city (5)
9 Loss-prevention button (4,3)
10 Ping maker (5)
12 Aristocrat (5)
13 Group of six schools in Sydney? (3)
14 Like the SRC but bigger (and worse) (3)
16 Watery expanse (3)
21 Comparable to a beet or rose (2,3)
23 Honi Editors deserve one (5)
25 Worker, briefly (5)
26 Having physical form (9)
28 Is unobliged to (4,3)
29 Homeowners’ documents (5)
30 File type for CAD?
22 Black-andwhite snacks (5)
24 Dueling blades (5)
25 Gearshift letters (5)
27 American playwright Clifford (5)
Across (by individual row): CPA, Paolo, Reprove, Wage Theft, Phils, Arfed, Paine, Holes, Prigs, Earls, Legal Duty, Retails, Debts, SOS
Much to our chagrin, the Papal Conclave remained closed to the public. We would’ve loved to have live tweeted from the Sistine Chapel. Waiting from outside (technically outside, we weren’t in St. Peters Square, we don’t have the budget for that), we learned that American Cardinal Robert Prevost has been elected to the supreme pontificate and has taken the Papal name Leo XIV.
How exactly are Popes elected? What are the numbers the Papal hopefuls have to do?
First, become a Cardinal. Cardinals are personally appointed by the Pope. In a move that would even make the faceless men of the ALP blush, 108 of the 133 voting Cardinals were appointed by the late Pope Francis.
Second, when a Papal vacancy occurs, don’t be over 80. Then just go to the Vatican to vote. No online elections, sorry.
Once you’re sequestered away, it’s time to do the numbers. To be elected Pope, a Cardinal would need to secure a two-thirds majority. Oh, I forgot to mention, there are no preferences. Cardinals vote once in the evening of the first day, and then four times a day every following day, until one Cardinal secures a supermajority of votes.
The then frontrunner Cardinal Pietro Parolin secured over 40 votes in the first round. Where Cardinal Luis Tagle secured the votes of the Cardinal-electors from Asia, Cardinal Robert Prevost had the votes of the American Cardinals.
Numbers were done, and by the fourth round of voting, Prevost’s votes surged above 100 elevating him to the Papacy.
Honi in the 90’s: Council Strikes Again
Will Winter delves into the archives.
Whilst it’s a trite saying, it is often true that history repeats itself. In a 1997 October edition of Honi, Andrea Sophocleous reviews a documentary on ABC about student life at the University of Sydney. Titled The (Ir)relevancy of Student Politics, Sophocleous cements the importance of student activism in uni life, defining student politicians as “the life-blood of student politics”, vital for guaranteeing students could defer their HECS payments to remain at uni. Here, we can feel the after effects of
such a history, but not necessarily a repetition.
The true repetition, then, comes from her critique of career stupolites who “often fail to attend council meetings… elected representatives [who] proclaim to be against politics and have not demonstrated any awareness or commitment to student issues”. Sound familiar? Let’s hope the next SRC Council and the USU election bodes well for a hefty and virile future of student activism.
Crossword
Pope Meow I
Art by Ellie Robertson
Seats at Council
Plenty to go around.
Special Buys Bad. Same.
Soaking Beds
Plenty of room underneath for your burly second cousin to shake the bed and jiggle your bits so you can stay pure before marriage.
