Close Menu
Honi Soit
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Trending
    • Antisemitism review puts universities, festivals, and cultural centres under threat
    • Macquarie University axes Sociology, cuts more jobs & courses
    • UTS elects new Chancellor
    • Out of the Deep: The Story of a Shark Kid Who Dared to Question Fear
    • Prima Facie: Losing faith in a system you truly believed in
    • Jason Clare seeks replacement for ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop after $790,000 expense report
    • ‘If you silence someone or shush someone, you can get out’: SISTREN is an unabashed celebration of black and trans joy. Is Australia ready?
    • Mark Gowing waxes lyrical on aesthetics, time, language, and his new exhibition ‘This one is a song’
    • About
    • Print Edition
    • Student Journalism Conference 2025
    • Writing Comp
    • Advertise
    • Locations
    • Contact
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok
    Honi SoitHoni Soit
    Saturday, July 12
    • News
    • Analysis
    • Culture
    • Opinion
    • University
    • Features
    • Perspective
    • Investigation
    • Reviews
    • Comedy
    • Student Journalism Conference 2025
    Honi Soit
    Home»Perspective

    When social justice becomes ‘just us’

    By Eric GonzalesApril 13, 2016 Perspective 4 Mins Read
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    From the moment you step into law schools around Australia, you are subtly engineered towards a corporate career. Facebook photographs of clerkships depict a lavish lifestyle of cocktail mixers and dress up parties, the precursor to a 70-hour working week embellished with bonding trips and myriad extra benefits. It’s ironic that the corporate world has such a bizarre fixation on the ideal curriculum vitae being loaded with volunteering, community engagement, and proof of a social conscience.

    One of Sydney University Law Society’s social justice portfolio programs is the Juvenile Justice Mentoring Scheme, where law students interact with young inmates on a fortnightly basis.

    Upon first entering the centre, volunteers must sign a contract agreeing to its strict terms, which prohibit inquiring into personal stories and sharing last names. If inmates persisted, we were advised to diffuse the situations with a smile, and repeat our first name instead.

    The regulations are there for the inmates’ safety, and they make total sense, but it also means the students attending only ever learn a snippet of the experiences they are there to understand.

    Each subsequent visit further illuminated that while the visits revolved around the inmates, they were designed for our benefit. Weekly volunteer-made program plans aimed to foster ‘trust between the girls and visitors’ or inspire ‘reflection about future goals’.

    Yet the aspirational cliches sugarcoated what was essentially origami paper-folding and paddle-pop scaffolding. Celebrity heads and charades similarly fell short of life-changing epiphanies. That there are so few activities that accord with the rules didn’t alleviate the sense of infantilisation. But to law students who enter the program expecting to step outside their bubble of privilege, injustice seemingly lies in the girls being subjected to pitiably boring time-fillers. While its simplicity lessens the load for a volunteer, the initiative prohibits those precious insights that could humanise them beyond a first name and a uniform, even whilst maintaining crucial privacy boundaries. Otherwise, the whole process resembles observing subjects of a study behind a two-way mirror. And at the end of it all, the noble altruist ticks a box, convinced that they have done their bit.

    Therein lies the problem. For at least some of the volunteers, social justice isn’t one their core values. It’s an extra line on their resume.

    What deters volunteers from proactively engaging with other local community causes is that the initiative conveniently kills two birds with one stone. First is the absolution of guilt-hued privilege. The other, an extra curricular activity that provides prime material for society-climbing and CV stacking. One LinkedIn user vouches for their “recreational, personal development and mentoring experiences” under the program. On another profile, the program occupies a sizable box under “Volunteers Experience & Causes”, where the member describes himself as “a positive role model”. In other words, spiel that speaks volumes about their conviction in a cause, pandering to corporate law’s obsession with extracurricular volunteer work as an ironic precursor to representing the privileged elite.

    But the underlying aspirational value of the program shouldn’t be discounted too easily. The Sydney University Law Society has fostered an opportunity where students overwhelmed by the faculty’s ubiquitous corporatism can engage in social justice activities. It has been the role of the unpaid law students that hold the Law Society together to compensate for this hole in our learning experience, one that other university faculties such as the University of New South Wales take more seriously in supporting legal centres through their on-site Law Precinct.

    The program becomes problematic when we believe one initiative to be an adequate substitute for broader community engagement. In truth, it isn’t. It becomes another case when social justice is just for us. The moments with inmates that prompt a law student to reflect on their own privilege are important and valuable. Even though non-disclosure measures employed by the centre are undoubtedly vital to the privacy of both parties, the nature of the program and the students it sometimes attracts means these moments can be few and far between. Social justice must be more than the illusion of enriching engagement, but insofar as programs are dominated by students who care more about their LinkedIn profile than community activism, these programs will fail to live up to their potential as the fostering ground of compassionate lawyers.

    corporate law juvenile justice Law Society resume SULS volunteer

    Keep Reading

    Authenticating My Authenticity to Inauthentic Authenticators

    The Music of Memory

    Turn Away Your Mirrors and Close the Doors

    What Was Your Name?

    Do you dream with your phone?

    Red-Haired Phantasies: The So-Called Manic Pixie Dream Girl

    Just In

    Antisemitism review puts universities, festivals, and cultural centres under threat

    July 11, 2025

    Macquarie University axes Sociology, cuts more jobs & courses

    July 11, 2025

    UTS elects new Chancellor

    July 8, 2025

    Out of the Deep: The Story of a Shark Kid Who Dared to Question Fear

    July 8, 2025
    Editor's Picks

    Part One: The Tale of the Corporate University

    May 28, 2025

    “Thank you Conspiracy!” says Capitalism, as it survives another day

    May 21, 2025

    A meditation on God and the impossible pursuit of answers

    May 14, 2025

    We Will Be Remembered As More Than Administrative Errors

    May 7, 2025
    Facebook Instagram X (Twitter) TikTok

    From the mines

    • News
    • Analysis
    • Higher Education
    • Culture
    • Features
    • Investigation
    • Comedy
    • Editorials
    • Letters
    • Misc

     

    • Opinion
    • Perspective
    • Profiles
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Social
    • Sport
    • SRC Reports
    • Tech

    Admin

    • About
    • Editors
    • Send an Anonymous Tip
    • Write/Produce/Create For Us
    • Print Edition
    • Locations
    • Archive
    • Advertise in Honi Soit
    • Contact Us

    We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. The University of Sydney – where we write, publish and distribute Honi Soit – is on the sovereign land of these people. As students and journalists, we recognise our complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous land. In recognition of our privilege, we vow to not only include, but to prioritise and centre the experiences of Indigenous people, and to be reflective when we fail to be a counterpoint to the racism that plagues the mainstream media.

    © 2025 Honi Soit
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms
    • Accessibility

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.