The money or the box!

The money or the box!

SYDNEY — University of NSW students and staff, incensed at the vice-chancellor's decision to spend nearly $500,000 on a corporate box at the Olympic Games at the same time as crying poor, protested outside the Vice-Chancellor's Forum on June 1.

The UNSW administration has severely increased the ratio between staff and students, cut courses offered and services provided, and continually hiked fees. UNSW is also resisting overdue staff salary increases and improved working conditions.

The National Tertiary Education Industry Union believes UNSW has the capacity to address legitimate staff demands and offer more than the 1% per annum now on offer.

Students held a mock Olympics on the Library Lawn, with events such as champagne sipping, a competition to see how many students can be crammed into a lecture room, the performance-pay high dive, the raising productivity high jump, the 70-hour week marathon, and the on-your-bike, one-way redundancy race.

Hundreds of academic staff held a two-hour stop-work meeting and filed into the forum to express their anger.

From GLW issue 364