It’s not often that a student union election garners the attention of the Sydney Morning Herald, SBS and the ABC. But the election for the 88th University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council recently did just that.
Two hours into a representatives’ meeting, the first agenda item still had not been discussed because elected councillors had run out of the room after calling for a quorum count, the room had plunged into darkness as the electricity was switched off, and police and campus security had been called in an attempt to shut down proceedings.
These antics were the result of Student Unity (Labor right), SLS (one of two Labor left factions) and the Liberal students, who had signed a deal that failed to reach a majority on the council. Rather than lose their coveted positions in the SRC, they attempted to prevent the election from going ahead.
Despite the disruptions, the meeting finally went ahead, with a new council majority made up of NLS (the other Labor left faction), the Grassroots Left and Socialist Alternative. While there has been much talk of a successful broad left takeover of the SRC, it should be noted that this counter-bloc formed only after a deal signed between Grassroots Left and the Labor factions, which had locked out the socialist left, was reneged on.
Although the Sydney University Socialist Alternative club welcomes the commitment to an activist SRC in 2016, the Grassroots Left-dominated 2015 SRC should not be the template. For the most part, the office bearers were invisible to students and offered little support to the numerous progressive campaigns in Sydney, including the demonstrations against Reclaim Australia and for marriage equality. To the extent that they did campaign, it was primarily alongside university management.
Federal education minister Simon Birmingham recently announced that further attacks on higher education can be expected in 2016 – attacks which will be defeated only by the sort of mass mobilisations of students that twice defeated Christopher Pyne’s fee deregulation.
For this, we’ll need student activists who are more concerned with fighting the Liberals on the streets than crying over positions.
