On the cover is a small infant during her oral stage of development. Aside from the obvious connection to this week’s feature on breastfeeding on campus, the sucking baby provides for a greater metaphor.
As university students we are in an oral development stage of our own. Our brains are remodelling, our behaviours border on infantile at both parties and political meetings, and all while we suckle at the swollen teat of knowledge in lecture theatres and tutorial rooms.
At university we are rediscovering the rules of language through politically correct speech. We are making our opinions heard among the booming voices of baby boomers.
We are learning when and how to speak out against issues like the University restructure or the changes to the Safe Schools program. We are sharing our takes on multiple platforms, from the Letters page of this fine publication to the deep content mines of Twitter, that holy digital function of our own oral obsession.
Students want to be heard. This paper is our mouthpiece.
As always, Honi works hard to keep you abreast of the news. This week we bring you stories of self-proclaimed sugar babies, who milk their relationships with older men, first time operagoers and an analysis of University funding of SUSF facilities.
Pay fine attention to the little touches, the DJ Khaled horoscopes, the carefully curated playlist, the educational guide to PowerPoint presentations, the existential babies. We are forever in development stages after all.
While we grow, and crawl and learn to walk, we look to the university for nourishment and support. At the end of this all, we hope to learn skills that enable us to feed mouths when we are a little older. In the meantime, Honi will feed its stories to the newsfeed. So drink up.