University of Sydney (USyd)

Students from the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) began occupying the campus's administration building on August 22. Resistance members have been involved in the occupation and the campaign leading up to it. Bronte Nicole Scott, Resistance member and a future SCA student, explained why she is part of the occupation to save SCA in a August 22 Facebook post. * * * Right now I am occupying the office of the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) administration because it is absolutely criminal that the arts are always the first up on the chopping block.

First Nations activists Raymond Weatherall and Ken Canning have sent solidarity messages to the students occupying the Sydney Arts School (SCA) in protest at the University of Sydney's corporatisation plans. * * * I am Ngarr Birriwa Galimaay, I am Gamilaraay, Goonal Goonal clan. Through my uncles I have started my cultural journey and have begun to learn how important art is for expression, story telling and empowering ourselves and future generations.

On Tuesday August 16, the University of Sydney will experience the most exquisite celebration of love as the Rainbow Campus campaign unites rainbow couples to show Australia what it is missing.

Several hundred students and staff of the University of Sydney marched on July 4 to oppose moves to close the Sydney University College of the Arts (SCA), and amalgamate it with the University of NSW. The students then surrounded a meeting of the University Senate, demanding the university administration end its threat to the arts college. The university officially informed students and staff of the move to dismantle SCA, in the historic Kirkbride campus at Callan Park, Rozelle, and merge it with the UNSW Art Design and the National Art School in Darlinghurst, on June 21.

Sydney University's College of the Arts (SCA) is nestled in a section of Callan Park, Rozelle, overlooking the Parramatta River, with expansive grounds resplendent with hundred-year-old trees. The college has many buildings and spacious grounds. All undergraduate students receive a studio space.

Students gathered outside the Wesley College gate at the University of Sydney on May 16, with their mouths taped shut, demanding the names of the editors of the 2014 Wesley Journal, which included a page called the “Rackweb”. The “Rackweb” featured in the journal as a spider diagram of intercollegiate campus “hookups”, complete with the full names of students who had reportedly had sex with other students, and referred to women named in it as “Biggest Pornstar” or “Best Ass”.

Sydney University is attempting to downgrade the status of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS). A university spokesperson said they were “currently considering the possible transition of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies from a centre into a department”. The spokesperson claimed the move followed an external review of the viability of the centre, raised because of a decline in student numbers.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Education Action Group (EAG) of the University of Sydney Students Representative Council (SRC) have called a joint rally for Wednesday March 16 at 1pm in opposition to management's restructuring of Sydney University.

The University of Sydney has found no grounds to dismiss Associate Professor Jake Lynch as director of the university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, following its investigation into possible breaches of its code of conduct. Lynch will keep his job and has been cleared of serious misconduct after an investigation into a campus protest left him facing dismissal. This follows an announcement by the university in April clearing Lynch of accusations of anti-Semitism.

Activists, students and academic staff met at the University of Sydney on April 29 to discuss the university’s recent attacks on those involved in a protest against a lecture given by an Israeli colonel on March 11.

The University of Sydney has ramped up its bullying of students and staff who interrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli colonel last month. Several students who took part in the protest were sent “show cause” letters on April 15. Others had been summonsed to interviews about the protest. Mia Sanders, one of the students who took part in the protest action, told Green Left Weekly: “Vice chancellor Michael Spence is, once again, showing contempt for the university’s own charter by trying to silence dissent”.

Sydney Staff for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions sent this open letter to University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence on March 25. The letter is in response to Spence’s email of March 19, in which he claimed anti-Semitism was the trigger for the university’s investigation into the student protest at the March 11 lecture by Colonel Richard Kemp and its sequel. * * * We are compelled to write to you to register our serious concern about the concerted campaign being conducted against Palestine activists at the University of Sydney.