Renowned as a robust, strong, and ever-rambunctious student union, the Student Representative Council (SRC) at Sydney University has provided legal, social, and welfare support to students for decades, and is now funded by the infamous Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF). When the EIC for this edition prescribed the theme, “your SSAF at work,” a focus on the SRC’s past came to mind.
Not long after, I thought to contact Barbara Ramjan: SRC President of 1978, serving her term at the end of a decade marked by massive shifts in student activism: the Land Rights movement, anti-war sentiment and feminist action, as well as myriad campus campaigns, following monumental changes in the schools of Political Economy and Philosophy.
Barbara’s career has been underpinned by service to the community, in roles such as Guardian ad Litem in NSW Courts and Tribunals, and Co-founder of the Community Rowing Club and Balmain Para-Rowing Program. Her SRC tenure as the first woman elected president covered various issues impacting the community and students at large. She cited “uranium mining, land rights, gay rights, childcare, education, student support, sexism on campus, the colleges,” as some of the defining issues of her term.
- The SRC
When asked about the SRC in 1978, Barbara said, “Uni was so politically active in the 70s. You know, whether it was the Vietnam moratorium, whether it was land rights… It was a really interesting time of agitating for change, because there were so many areas to change.”
She noted that SRC Office Bearer roles were entirely unpaid positions, demonstrating how much the SRC has grown and shifted as a student union, with only the office staff and a legal aid lawyer paid by the SRC in 1978. Today, some Office Bearers receive a salary while Honi Editors split a stipend.
And as for the president’s relationship with Honi in 1978? “Well, there wasn’t censorship,” she said.
- 78ers
A defining moment while Barbara was president were the Gay and Lesbian liberation protests conducted in 1978, which attracted large contingents of Sydney University students, or as we now know this cohort: the 78ers.
“As the President, my responsibility was, and it’s probably the same with you, because I don’t think this part of the Constitution would’ve changed, […] was responsible for the undergraduate students, [and] their health and welfare.”
She told me that as President, “if a student was arrested, you were responsible for their health and wellbeing, therefore you would be bailing them out. And so I had, in anticipation of that happening, money ready, if it was needed, to bail the students out.”
“The question I always had to ask was, ‘are you a student at Sydney University?’ And if they said yes, then my obligation was to bail them [out].”
The 1978 protesters were frequently charged under the Summary Offences Act which was repealed in May 1979. Barbara spoke to how “the Summary Offences Act was still in place at that point, and there was a bit of a joke amongst students and unionists: you get arrested and you get what we called the trifecta: ‘resist arrest, assault police, unseemly words…’ Everyone got the three charges, and it was the trifecta.”
“The sergeant was really silly in many respects. “Well, well” he said, leaning back, arms crossed. “[The bail] isn’t going to be 25 a head,” which it normally was. “It’ll be 50.” And so I leaned forward with a bit of a smile and put my little paper bag on the counter. “That’s fine, I have 5,000, let’s go.” This standoff went to one o’clock.”
The saga continued until an older cop barged in: “What’s going on in my police station?”
“I say, I’m here to bail them out. Why isn’t the little girl able to bail them out? I loved it when they used to call me the little girl.”
“And then they started to let me bail them out.”
Barbara spoke of the brutality against protesters in 1978: “A very good friend of mine was arrested… really badly beaten, and the police wouldn’t release him from the cell… [Until] a particular doctor who was at RPA, who knew him, and knew the group, went down and said he needed to see him because of his medical condition, and they got him straight out in an ambulance.”
“He was brutalised, and even to this day, [he is] a very gentle man… He would never hurt a fly”.
- Reproductive rights
When asking about the push for reproductive rights, Barbara told me that “it’s really interesting looking back on it now, because it was so mild.”
Barbara spoke to the motion made by the Australian Union of Students (AUS), the predecessor to the National Union of Students (NUS) that we elect delegates to today.
“Being a member of AUS…all the universities and campuses had to vote on the policy. And every campus had to have a vote by a particular time. So at Sydney Uni, we held a front lawn meeting to vote on the motion. I don’t think you have Front Lawn meetings anymore, do you? (No, we don’t…) All the major meetings were on the Front Lawn. It was the largest I can recall from the time I was there. We had approximately 3,000 students.”
“It was a very difficult meeting, it was hard to keep control […], if there was too much cat-calling, if you couldn’t hear what was happening, I would adjourn.”
“Certainly the AUS motion passed, [and] Sydney University was in favour. And it was as, I don’t remember the wording of it but it was as mild as perhaps a woman’s right to choose. It was not a dramatic motion.”
- Student Welfare
In a time where campaigning looked like chalking on Eastern Avenue instead of election messages on Facebook, and events would be held at the Tin Sheds as opposed to the Lord Gladstone, the University had a long way to go in terms of student welfare, and support for disability and mental health schemes.
Barbara explained: “I remember being contacted by the doctor from Student Health in the early 70s who told me, we have to do something: I am sick of being called out to students that have committed suicide after exams or before exams, and we have to do something. We have to. And in those days, if you had an anxiety issue or, […] a physical disability where you could not write within the limited time, you had no alternative.”
The concessions for students with disabilities were abysmal. “There was nothing. There was absolutely nothing. You just could not get any recognition that there was that sort of need. And [student health] worked really hard.”
It seems Barbara and Student Health’s push for this support set the model for the current special considerations system we know today: “he wanted to set up a safe space where you could do your exam under monitored conditions. If the exam was one hour, then you would have one and a half or two hours.””
In the midst of the fight for student support, Barbara was at the forefront for pushing for accessible childcare for students at USyd, which saw the inception of a Childcare Co-op for the student community:
“…It was a different time. You didn’t have childcare, for example. The [student] union didn’t have any co-op, so we went to a union meeting, myself and two others, and the two others, had a child that needed some [care] because they’re both students.”
Barbara spoke to how the student union at the time struggled to see this as a tangible issue. “The union wasn’t really interested in looking at that,” Barbara said, due to a narrative that “you’re not at uni if you have kids.”
After these efforts, “there was a house discovered in Glebe that was empty and taken over, and it became the Shubunkin Children’s Co-Op… The parents there all did shifts, and so it kind of worked.”
There are now several childcare services advertised by the uni, but none akin to the community co-op system that existed in 1978. In fact, childcare services received $0 of SSAF allocation by the University in 2024.
When asked about what she thought to be the fondest memories or achievements of her tenure, she noted that she wouldn’t talk of her biggest achievements, and instead spoke to her “good memories [of] the small role that I might have had in helping to set up the childcare co op, the 78ers, stuff like that.”
As a new crop of office-bearers prepare to be picked in RepsElect this month, Honi hopes that principles of social justice, left-wing values and “[responsibility] for the undergraduate students, [and] their health and welfare,” are championed by our next cohort of leaders with the tenacity of Barbara Ramjan in 1978.
