Campus axed
By Jonathan Strauss
SYDNEY -- The St George campus of the University of New South Wales is to be closed, with the loss of four schools (Teacher Education, Applied and Performing Arts, Sport and Leisure Studies and Wool and Animal Science), 24 courses and 113 jobs.
This cost-cutting decision by the university council is a result of the Liberal government's funding cuts to education combined with Labor's earlier forced mergers of tertiary campuses.
The decision was made despite a concerted campaign by St George and other UNSW students and staff, including a rally last month, a 6000-strong petition, letters and community representations from the St George area. No representative of the campus community was allowed to address the council meeting.
Susy Freitas, a primary teaching student, told Green Left Weekly that students and remaining staff "are the ones who must deal with being uprooted from our community (moving to the distant Kensington campus), stripped of purpose-built facilities, left without high quality lecturers, denied subject choices and crammed into a campus that has no space for us".
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