Socialists to make a splash

BY LISA LINES

ADELAIDE — While students at the University of Adelaide will note the usual suspects — Labor left, Labor right, "Independents", Liberals — running for office in elections to the students' association and union, the first Socialist Alliance ticket to ever run on the campus is sure to make one of the biggest splashes.

The Socialist Alliance's platform for the elections, which run from August 27 to September 1, focusses squarely on activism: campaigning for free education, fighting "corporate tyranny", backing freedom for the refugees.

Activists involved in the ticket also want to see a students' association radically different from the existing one, which they say is apolitical and bureaucratic, and are advocating the association create the position of international solidarity officer.

"We want to involve and organise students in struggles for massive social change," one spokesperson said.

The Socialist Alliance activists are running candidates for women's officer, education officer, environment officer, National Union of Students delegate, and president.

They will launch the ticket on August 27, with a demonstration for women's reproductive rights, and will ask students to sign a banner petition for free, safe abortion. It will then choose a different theme to campaign around each day, including free education, no nuclear dumps and international solidarity.

Activists say they will seek to use different and creative methods to get their point across. In protest against the nuclear industry, activists will wear gas masks and cover their clothes with green, "radioactive" paint; to demonstrate solidarity with peoples' struggles in Indonesia, they will set up a cage, containing several activists, on the lawns in the middle of campus.

From GLW issue 462