BY JAL NICHOLL & SAM KING
ADELAIDE — While students may have been embracing anti-corporate activism during university orientation weeks, the official festivities have often become appalling mixtures of apoliticism and corporatisation — they certainly were at Adelaide University this week.
The central focus of O'week has traditionally been on student clubs. This year, however, they were sidelined in favour of corporate promotions and the military.
The student union even sought to make money from O'week: $30,000 was their target. Stalls were opened to the highest bidder, with no criteria of student relevance applied. For example, yoghurt manufacturer Yakult had a stall, in an attempt to expand its market from the 40-60 age bracket to the 18-25 bracket.
All indications are, however, that the campus clubs affiliated to the union will see none of this money. Nor will it be used for campaigning around important social and political issues either — since the incumbents' main claim to fame is their apoliticism.
The student union is dominated by the Independents, a nationwide faction in the National Union of Students who run in elections on platforms promising "great parties" and "we are not a political party". Their main "opposition" is the right-wing Labor student faction, Unity, which hides its political position in the obvious belief that students are overly thrilled with the Labor Party.
These "apolitical" student politicians set to work during O'week, to consolidate their reputations as sausage-sizzling car smashers. They spent student union money on a car — to be smashed by students — but then forgot to remove the battery or drain the petrol, with predictable results.
In opposition to all this, the left is beginning to rebuild on the campus. The Resistance club, for instance, has plans to organise campus contingents to the International Women's Day rally and M1, in an attempt to channel some of this car-smashing aggression towards the corporate rich and their institutions.