Socialist Alternative’s approach to student unions

Take a stroll through the halls of a campus student union office and you’ll likely find it half empty. And you’re much more likely to see an elected student union representative handing out a free breakfast once a week than you are to see them organising a political campaign. It’s no surprise then that socialists are sometimes asked why we would bother with student unions at all.

Despite their current state, student unions have the potential to foster campus activism, give important leadership to students on political questions and even sometimes to make an impact on Australian politics overall.

The first reason for this is students themselves. They are a critical social group drawn together on campuses and encouraged to learn about the world, interrogate the ideas of the system, and develop their capacity for critical thought. While this doesn’t ordinarily result in students being politically active, in exceptional times a minority can explode into protest activity.

Every significant social movement of the modern era has featured student activism—catalysing struggle in other social groups, leading youthful, militant and passionate demonstrations, and planting the flag for a different sort of society.

In Australia, student unions are at the heart of student politics and can be key to effective student campaigns. Campus-based unions, and the National Union of Students (NUS), have the authority to call demonstrations, the bank accounts to finance the necessities of activism and the affiliate structures and communication networks that can reach and influence tens of thousands of students.

They also draw together the different currents of student political thought and are often the centre of debates. Those student factions, some of which are intimately linked to Australia’s main political parties, have been the training ground for generations of political activists, both in the trade union movement and in federal and state politics.

So any serious socialist organisation needs a foothold on campuses and a presence in the political institutions of campus life if it has any chance of being part of the “real world” of Australian political life.

Over the last decade or so, the student unions, like the trade unions, have atrophied due to a declining activist culture, legal attacks and the approach taken by the mostly ALP-aligned representatives in the unions’ leadership positions. For the most part, the current student union leaders find various excuses to do little—citing the fact that many students are apathetic or that student unions rely on university administrations for continued access to funding. Campaigning against university management or encouraging student activism, it is said, would imperil the unions. So, under the leadership of these students, our unions mostly confine themselves to social events and food pantries dressed up as “mutual aid”.

University administrators are currently on a national spree of course and staff cuts and a campaign to suppress campus Palestine solidarity activism. Limiting the actions of student unions to what these managers consider acceptable—as has happened at the University of Melbourne, where the student union has been reluctant to stand consistently for Palestine, or at Western Sydney University, where the student union is voluntarily cutting its activist positions in an effort to safeguard its funding—is a road to nowhere.

The socialist approach is different. While we know we can’t simply wish a radical campus culture into being, we also know that if student unions took a lead on social justice issues, we could start to rebuild a more left-wing campus culture. Socialist students fight for their unions to take a stand on social issues, even if they are controversial, because doing so helps to win wider layers of students to a particular cause and gives them opportunities to become activists themselves.

Student unionism is also important for building the ranks of the revolutionary left. Students have always played a substantial role in revolutionary socialist organisations. Student unions can organise campaigns that draw more people into political activity and provide opportunities for debate with other political forces. Student revolutionaries have to both debate and work alongside students from Labor’s left and right factions, the Greens and coalitions of independents. This means gaining experiences that are invaluable for members of a socialist organisation—like running election campaigns, learning when to compromise or hold firm and dealing with obstructionist bureaucracies.

Student politics

Socialist Alternative is the largest and most active left political group in Australian student politics. Our organisation has maintained a consistent presence in the student unions for more than twenty years. Currently, we have more than 30 elected student union representatives across the country. There are Socialist Alternative clubs at twenty campuses, which has allowed us to become the second most powerful faction in the National Union of Students, after the Labor right. Over the last five years we have polled 21-29 percent of the NUS delegate positions elected on campuses around the country. This year, our members hold the NUS Education, LGBTQI+ and Vocational Education office bearer positions.

Socialist Alternative has a long history of pushing support for Palestine within the student unions. While student unionists from both Labor right and left have taken sponsored trips to Israel almost every year, our members have prevented the national union from adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and spent years arguing to the other student political factions that our default position should be a support for freedom of speech and democratic rights on campuses.

This year, through the NUS Education Office, we have organised an inquiry into censorship of Palestine supporters on the campuses, and a national student referendum in which more than 5,000 students voted in support of Palestine. The latter engaged many students in the Palestine solidarity campaign for the first time, with some becoming ongoing campaign activists.

For the last two years of the genocide, we have fought to drag our union into action. We have organised several student strikes for Palestine, in which thousands of university students have walked out of class for Gaza. In 2009, we established Students for Palestine, an activist campaign group. Last year, working with others in SFP, we organised student general meetings to vote on subjects like university ties to weapons companies and support for sanctions against Israel. These were the largest on-campus events for Palestine in Australia’s history, sometimes the largest meeting on any topic since the 1970s. In many places, the motions passed were required to become official student union policy.

We faced significant opposition from others in the unions. At Melbourne University, student unionists from other factions attempted to prevent the meeting by calling in a law firm. The meeting went ahead only after socialists made it clear that it would happen with or without the union. At Adelaide University, the hard-right international student faction running the union attempted to prevent the meeting by refusing to convene the union council, where the forms to call an SGM must be approved. Socialist Alternative members scoured the constitution and found they could go over the heads of the union—as long as they found 300 students to support their efforts. They did, and held Adelaide University’s largest student meeting in years.

In May 2024, with SFP, we brought the Gaza solidarity encampment movement to Australian campuses. After initiating the campaign at Sydney University, we organised solidarity encampments at Monash, RMIT, Latrobe, Deakin, Adelaide, Curtin, Wollongong and the University of Queensland. We refused to allow the inaction of our student union leaders to hold us back.

We also know that one of the most basic functions of student unions ought to be a defence of their members. Ten years ago, when a Liberal government attempted to raise the cost of degrees, the student movement, led by a Socialist Alternative NUS education officer, used the infrastructure of the unions to roll out a national campaign of protest. While doing so was not appreciated by the government or university managements, the campaign contributed to the defeat of the planned fee hikes, drew many students into union politics and raised the profile of the student unions to a height not equalled since.

We have led too many other campaigns to note in one article. But we do so because we know that activist, left-wing student unions can stop right-wing attacks, draw students into campaigns, build a culture of protest and inspire other social groups. However, this won’t happen if the careerism and conservatism currently dominant in the leadership of student unions go unchallenged. Someone needs to go in to bat for activism, social justice and a combative approach to the government and university managements that are more interested in making money and serving power than delivering a quality education.

This is why socialists contest student elections, attend student union meetings, fight to win positions in the national union and organise against conservative union bureaucrats.