Uni students challenge military recruiters
Max Menyhart, Sydney
9 March 2007
Some 40 Sydney University students held a speak-out outside the army recruitment stall during orientation week on February 28, drawing attention to campus anti-war sentiment. Sydney University anti-war activists passionately poured their knowledge of the wars criminality into the megaphone and the action was a spectacle of peaceful dissent.
The army recruitment stall is just one of the many ways in which the war on terror is creeping onto campus. Another is the proposed US propaganda centre (the US Studies Centre) to be opened in 2008.
O-days are intended for prospective students to find out about campus collectives and perspectives. However, their vibrancy is threatened by voluntary student unionism legislation, which impacts on the ability of students to organise around issues such as the war.