News
Week 5, Semester 2, 2016
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The ANU’s 70th Anniversary: Reflections from the Roots In the week of the ANU’s 70th Anniversary, Woroni approached students from all over the university to reflect on what ANU is to them, their current difficulties, and their hopes for the future.
Anthony Cotter, 4th/Final-year BMus Student “The circumstances surrounding the ANU School of Music over the past few years have been less than ideal. With severe austerity measures instigated by VC Young in 2012, followed by a massive restructure involving a 50% reduction in teaching staff, this move has now seen the resignation of two heads of school (Adrian Walters in 2012 and Peter Tregear in 2015), and student enrolment has dropped from over 250 in 2012 to about 65 now. Although there has been improvement in the composition faculty this year (largely to assuage significant negative feedback from students), this has been at the expense of the Jazz department, which continues to be slowly poisoned to death.
However, since the appointment of VC Schmidt this year, he has assured students and staff at the school that he has a strong commitment to rebuilding the school’s image, instigating a highly involved, lengthy consultation process, and he has promised more funding for staff and programs at the school starting next year. The future image for the school looks to be quite different from both the school’s current image and that of its pre-2013 reputation. But will the impending restructure assuage the concerns of the student body and the greater music community? Only time will tell.”
Naijing Liu, PhD Candidate at CHL “I am currently a first year PhD student in CHL. I did my MA in ANU under the supervision of Dr Mark Donohue, who then became a chair in my PhD panel. Unfortunately, I was told several months ago that the new CHL would not see a role for him, which rendered my PhD candidature problematic from the third month. Although the CHL had tried to mitigate the consequences and to make the supervision sustainable, Dr Mark Donohue will no longer affiliate with ANU. Many of my fellow colleagues experienced low morale then, because not only Dr Donohue but a lot of professors and research staff were left with no choice but to leave the CHL. It seemed to me that linguistics as an integral part of CHL is indispensable for ANU. So far I have no idea about the status of CHL as I am not around, except that Dr Donohue continues to provide very encouraging and supportive supervision for my project in Kathmandu. My fingers are crossed for a dynamic, restructured CHL when I go back in September. Happy birthday ANU! I love this university and the people here. I sincerely hope that, after the rebuilding of
the CHL, ANU could still be the best place for linguistics students to learn the nature of things. I hope I can still hold my head up when I graduate and tell academia that I graduated from ANU.”
Supriya Benjamin, IR/PPE “ANU is an institution that I am extremely humbled to be a part of and on its 70th birthday, I cannot help but reflect my time at the university. The university continues to offer excellent opportunities to students academically and socially and I often find myself unconsciously praising ANU to friends and family. Personally, I have had the opportunity to get involved with various Clubs and Societies on campus as well as within ANUSA. These experiences have taught me that the university strives to ensure students can pursue interests (even the very niche – where else can you find a Wine Society?!) and continually support such services financially. However, what I admire the most is the spirit and enthusiasm of the students and staff here at ANU who continue to make the university experience dynamic and different. ANU is already in the midst of discussing ways to ‘flipping the classroom’ by engaging students through online modes of teaching. In addition to that, ANU is looking at enrolling new students without solely looking at ATAR and the introduction of such new and innovative ideas continue to make me feel humbled to be part of this institution. At times of financial and administrative distress within CHL and the School of Music, it amazes me how driven and united the student and staff become in mobilising and advocating to maintain the unique culture of ANU. This university has truly gotten better with age – inside and out.
Fred Hanlin, current Queer Officer “ANU was founded 70 years ago (and some parts of it are even older) with the intent of making a National University, with students all across the nation coming together to learn and research advances in all fields. I am personally very glad to be in an institution that has continued this diversity in subject matter, and can hope it continues to work toward positive inclusivity of all peoples to this university that we can all benefit from the broad and diverse experiences amongst our student body, as well as the diverse range of intellectual pursuits that drove us to come to this now 70 year old institution.” Raine Chiam Pei Yi, Psychology “University isn’t only about learning the stuff that we signed up for, preparing for assessments, or meeting given deadlines. University is about learning that the courses we thought would be dry or uninteresting can be brought to life by lecturers who— ironically— don’t lecture, but teach. University is about preparing the stone which paves part of our journey into the future; even if some of us have not the slightest idea of the path that lies ahead. University is about meeting our expectations for ourselves, not someone else’s. “Education is not the filling a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — William Butler Yeats May ANU continue to kindle flames that are transmissible and can never be quenched.”