Attending the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council (SRC) meetings is an absurd experience. Every month, the elected Councillors and members of their respective factions gather to debate motions and primarily determine the SRC’s stance on political issues, and any further action points relating to these motions.
However, rather than being productive space, Council meetings are frenzied and raucous. Not unlike the worst of Question Time in Parliament, Councillors exchange insults and shouting matches abound. Most of the meetings this year have been over five hours and gone late in the night. A lot of ordinary life is easily categorised and we make sense of experience with reference to what is familiar, but the delirium one feels as the meeting room literally heats up — and factions shout at each other for the hundredth time — is truly unique.
Apart from a creeping sense of nihilism I try to stave off, it got me thinking — what is the point of this? What do these people shout for? Who does this serve?
In theory, it is simple. The SRC is meant to be a form of representative democracy, where students vote for elected representatives to represent their views in Council in determining the student union’s collective direction. However, it is clear that this does not hold.
The main issue is that only a small percentage of students vote in SRC elections. Student unions have been choked by Howard’s voluntary student unionism (VSU) policy, which this paper has reported on and analysed endlessly, so even pre-COVID a healthy percentage of voting students would sit at around 10%. The underlying issue is that most students are politically disengaged. There are certainly structural reasons for this — such as the pressures of the cost of living crisis, the ongoing impacts of VSU, and the corporatisation of universities — but on the ground there is a general sense of apathy. The easy, default condition where ordinary life hums along, and university is just another part of this process. Engagement with politics is not viewed as a moral imperative, and is more dependent on disposition. For instance, some people do not care for the humanities, and our education system is not structured to facilitate political engagement as part of daily life.
This means that partaking in student politics and attending SRC meetings is a campus niche, rather than a place where student democracy actually takes place. In that case, what does it do?
Though there is no doubt that there are representatives who primarily engage in student politics for personal, and often selfish, reasons — whether it be a future in politics, or some deep psychological need — it is uncharitable when student politicians are framed as purely self-righteous megalomaniacs. Even if they partake in politics for “selfish” reasons, it is likely that they partake in student politics on the basis of beliefs which are sincerely held.
Hence, the SRC is, at current, an arena for student politicians to test their worldviews against each other and to spar on political issues. It is a simulation of meaningful discourse — a spectacle of competing beliefs and clashing personalities. Councillors deliver speeches which are either met with applause or disdain depending on whether other Councillors agree or disagree with what is being said — though they are always heckled at. People rarely, if at all, change their minds due to a speech from a fellow Councillor, and Councillors usually cheer for people in their faction. The whole exercise is not dissimilar to a sport or a game which student politicians collectively buy into. Even the Liberals, who try to distance themselves from the activity by building their personas around irony, clearly get a kick out of delivering a speech they think takes the Left down a notch and, on occasion, even deliver sincere speeches advocating for their vision of the SRC.
Obviously, there are ways which Council meetings do have material impact but it is fairly marginal. For example, motions have action points attached to them, the most common ones being endorsing a protest campaign, or actioning to publicise a protest on social media. These activities are not distinct from the work that SRC collectives do. Hence, excluding these instances, motions mostly indicate the Council’s symbolic endorsement or opposition to a political cause or event. At this year’s RepsElect, Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist faction on campus, spent most of the evening criticising Grassroots, a progressive faction which sits on the left of the Greens Party, for not participating in activist building. Regardless of which faction was correct, this discussion would be better had in an open and honest space, without the symbolic baggage which necessarily comes with a space like RepsElect.
Put plainly, Council is not the frontier where the world changes. I do hope Councillors would approach meetings with a bit less tribalism, because what happens in SRC Council meetings has minimal impact on the world outside of it — even activist organising itself. Regardless of the quips thrown around at Council meetings, when a protest comes around, the factions which are actually involved in activism paint banners together, design social media posts, and attend protests in joint USyd contingents. Rather than arguing extensively about the dimensions of a political issue at Council, they would be better off expanding discussion on building movements together, and how to do that (if it is even possible).
The average student watches their lectures (sometimes), sees their friends in between work, and goes home to watch Netflix. It will take more than shouting they never hear to get them to hit the streets.