Flags, solidarity and sleeping bags

BY TAMARA PEARSON 

BATHURST — Charles Sturt University's (CSU) solution to federal funding
cuts is to axe courses and fire staff. The students' response has been
to organise.

The students have been camping outside CSU management's office since
June to demand a reversal of funding cuts to the school of communications.
The students, who have named their campaign “CSU: Out of Order”, are receiving
support from the local community and trade unions.

The protest site is a collection of tents and rooms made of boards and
tarpaulins (filled with blankets, sleeping bags, makeshift seats, posters
and supplies of coffee). There are flags, banners and signs.

The campaign has included festivals, protests and sit-ins, daily stalls,
petitioning of the campus and local community, and the establishment of
an informative web site.

Kate Clugston, one of the activists, told Green Left Weekly that
students “are not getting the education they are paying for at this university”.
She said “subjects are being run outside the school of communications,
which is leaking funds from the school. There's been cuts to technical
and general support staff, which means that the practical component of
the course is not being as strongly managed as it used to be”.

Jess Beange, another activist, described the university's management
as being “blatantly corrupt”. In a media release, management claimed that
students had continually refused to participate in mediation and were disrupting
the “normal life” of the university. Clugston said that these claims were
untrue. She pointed out that the mediator offered by management works for
them.

Management cut power to the protest site (where temperatures at night
get below zero) after 43 days of occupation claiming it was for “safety”
reasons. Students were being refused permission to light a fire on the
basis that it is a potential environmental hazard.

Beange explained how the campaign started in June. Immediately after
the cuts to the school of communications were announced, a crisis meeting
was held.

“We organised a protest in 24 hours. We found some blankets and ran
around the dorms and the dining hall. We told everyone and got people involved
straight away. We made a little toilet-like contraption out of cardboard
boxes and got people to sit on it. As they sat, they told people on the
open mic why they gave a shit. It turned out a lot people really did give
a shit!”

The Out of Order campaign has received support from students, staff
unions, local shop owners and the local media. “We go down the to the pubs
with petitions. You should see how many drinks get bought for us”, Beange
quipped.

The students' parents have also been very supportive. One father stood
on the library lawn in the rain for half an hour holding up a sign which
said “Give my son back his education”.

“We all very determined. We're not going to leave this camp until we
get what we want”, Beange assured GLW.

Visit the Out of Order campaign web site at <http://proddieplanet.cjb.net>.

From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.

Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page. 

From GLW issue 504