AULSSIO

Having stayed behind a little later than normal for a Thursday night to finish an assignment, Henry started the trek to his bus stop from the Law Library. As he reached the ground floor of the Ligertwood building, however, he was almost knocked over by a figure who emerged from the elevator holding a brown package, sprinting to the exit. Before he could process who this was or why he was in such a hurry, two figures in dark trench coats dashed down the stairs from a higher floor and crash tackled him just outside the building.

After hearing the commotion and with curiosity taking control, Henry stepped outside the building and watched as one of the figures placed a hessian LSS tote bag over the mysterious figure’s head while the other used a rolled up LSS Rugby top to tie the figure’s hands behind his back. The pair then frogmarched the figure back into the building.

Before he could fully process what was going on, someone tapped him on his shoulder. It was Cameron, the LSS Competitions Director.

“Sorry you had to see that mate. You’re Henry right?”

“Yeah” Henry replied warily.

“Well, I’m sure you’re wondering what that was. Basically that guy was responsible for selling scalped Law Dinner tickets. We’re just seeing that justice is enforced by preventing their sale.” “Oh, look we deal with all sorts of quasi judicial enforcement around the Law School” replied Harry.

“We handle everything from scalping tickets and courses, preventing cheating in exams to blasphemous comments about Frank De Zwart, Dale Stephens, Cornelia Koch, Peter Burdon, David Plater” Cameron paused, brows furrowed slightly. “Actually come to think of it, most of what we do is fight blasphemy about lecturers. Anyway, that’s what we do”.

Henry, having recovered slightly from the shock of the chase, now started looking Harry up and down sceptically. “Oh yeah, where do you operate then? You can’t possibly enforce these things throughout the entirety of the law school.” “Ill show you.”

Henry followed the Director to the room adjacent to classroom 1.10, where the St Raphs cart is stored during the evenings. After feeling around on one of the walls inside the room, Cameron pushed a section of the wall which caused the entire wall to swing aside, revealing a staircase down.

Mouth agape, Henry followed Cameron down the stairs where he was met with the sight of a cavernous room, lined with computer banks, smaller rooms and packed with people.

Words by: felix eldridge

“Welcome to AULSSIO” said Cameron, “The Adelaide University Law Students Society Intelligence Organisation or ‘AULSSIO’, is the Law Students Society’s intelligence arm, we enforce the law of Liggy, keep tabs on the student population, promote the LSS’s positive image, monitor and address threats and we do all of this in utter secrecy.”

“All the portfolios have a place here at AULSSIO” said Cameron, who was guiding Henry down the central path of the room, gesturing to people as they passed them.

“We’ve got the Communications portfolio” he gestured to the group intently staring at screens with headphones on. “They’re responsible for monitoring conversations in and out of the law school. The whole building is bugged so we get news about everything”.

“You’re joking. That can’t be true” replied Henry.

“Oh really” smirked the rep at the closest monitor. “Why do you think there are a whole load of ‘Asbestos, do not renovate’ signs up across the Law Building? There’s no asbestos here, it’s all to cover up the hidden microphones everywhere.”

Henry didn’t’ know what to believe anymore. He never questioned the presence of asbestos in Ligertwood as the building remained unrenovated for as long as he could remember. He didn’t know what to believe anymore. portfolio is responsible for influencing external organisations, particularly in elections, so that they ‘cooperate’ with the AULSS’ operations. For instance, there was a commerce student who was planning to run on a campaign of ‘abolish the Law School’ on the Faculty of Professions Board and due to our efforts, he didn’t.”

“So, you convinced him to withdraw from that election?” said Henry, amazed. “Well, it was more so that the 4 broken ribs he got from ‘falling down the stairs’ forced him to pull out of the race” A rep answered in a deadpan voice. “And another year when a rogue candidate for SRC President was running on an anti-law platform, the AULSS hacked into the online election system and cast several hundred new votes which meant that the candidate did not win.”

Almost a third of the way across the room, Cameron pointed out the next portfolio. “We’ve got Careers. They’re there to conduct our physical intelligence. You know, follow people around, observe from benches, tall buildings etc, just keep an eye on trouble spots etc. You might notice sometimes that some people in LSS branded trench coats, wearing LSS branded sunglasses and sipping coffee out of LSS branded Keep-Cups are watching you. That’s just the careers portfolio keeping tabs, don’t be alarmed at all.”

“Then we’ve got Activities, they’re there to raise the funds that we need to keep this operation going. They work with Careers and Social Justice to source funding via... various methods. If you thought the Iran-Contra scandal was

“You may have believed that the Hilarian is a satirical magazine, that its purpose to entertain the law students. You’re wrong. There’s subliminal messages everywhere, whether through patterns in graphics, the spacing between the letters, designed to hypnotise law students into not dropping out”

“We’ve got Education. They’re there to educate people about the ‘right’ way of thinking about certain issues and people. You don’t think that a course like Refugee Law was actually popular. No of course it wasn’t. But Education very tactfully persuaded the Hilarian editors not to print anything bad about it and after hacking into the system, deleted all of the negative SELT reviews about the subject, and as such the Law School thinks it’s great”.

“Last we’ve got Competitions, my portfolio. Their job is to enforce the law of Ligertwood, they’re the muscle that’s there to support other portfolios in their operations, especially to catch rule breakers, like that one we got earlier. Hey, you can watch some of the questioning if you’d like.”

Cameron stopped the tour, and opened the door to the small room where he could see the mysterious figure from earlier sobbing into his hands at a desk as a refreshed looking postgraduate student leered down at him. little suspicious here huh. Don’t want to talk, that’s fine mate. My lectures are all online tomorrow, I’ve got a family sized lasagne in the microwave and a sleeping bag in the office. Your move.”

“I want to speak to a solicitor” sobbed the man at the table.

“I am a solicitor!” yelled the rep, pulling out her GDLP certificate and slamming it on the table. “Now tell me, where did you get the tickets from!”

“Well, I think we’ve seen enough here.” Cameron gently pushed Henry out of the room, closing the door behind him. “So there you have it. That’s AULSSIO for you” Cameron stated, while he led Henry up the stairs and back into the foyer of Ligertwood. “Well, have a nice night.”

As he was leaving, Henry turned around and called out to Cameron. “Aren’t you worried that I’m going to tell someone about this?” The Director laughed. “No not at all. After all, who would ever believe you?”

The next day Henry marched up to the room, and felt for the panel, but after spending over 50 minutes looking for it, he gave up. Was that whole thing a dream? It seemed too vivid to be a dream. Just as he was about to head off to his next class he caught a glimpse of something in his peripheral vision. A tall student in an LSS branded trench coat, with LSS branded sunglasses, sipping coffee from an LSS branded keep cup was sitting at the foyer tables facing slightly towards him, reading a Hilarian, eyes unmoving.