Macquarie Uni attacks free speech

Macquarie University has shut down a Socialist Alternative club stall that was petitioning for same-sex marriage rights and promoting the national protest against government funding cuts to higher education.

Campus security harassed and attempted to intimidate the students on the stall, despite the fact that Socialist Alternative is a registered club at Macquarie University.

Although this sort of behaviour has been encountered at Macquarie University before, security on this occasion forcibly removed petitions, signs and material from the stall.

They asserted that the material was “found property” and attempted to hold it at their office as “lost property” until members of the club threatened to go to the media.

Additionally, security continued to harass students after shutting down the stall. “I was followed to class by campus security guards and made to leave the university under threat of police arrest”, said Tom Harman, one of the students staffing the stall that day.

“This is not the first time that I have been harassed by campus security for expressing a political opinion”, he said. “Last semester I was confronted by several security personnel and forced off campus for posting National Union of Students material on a public notice board, which guards promptly tore down.”

Part of the reason that security at Macquarie University has been emboldened over the last few years is due to the fact that the administration dissolved the student union.

This has left students with no representation on campus, and more importantly, no body through which they can organise against the administration and the government’s attacks on higher education.

There is an increasingly repressive culture on campus which goes along with the increasingly corporatised nature of the university.

The incident highlighted the need for independent, active student unions which can fight for students’ rights – including the right to free speech and free association on campus.