Bryson Constable (Liberal), Ben Hines (Libdependent), Julia Lim (Independent), and Grace Wallman (Switchroots) were elected as the new executive.
Author: Simone Maddison
Friday afternoon saw the University of Sydney Union (USU) board and executive complete their fifth meeting of the year in the Holme Building.
Following an initial meeting between the two parties on Friday last week, University management has pledged to “initiate a representative working group to investigate our research engagements and return recommendations to the University Senate by the end of this year.”
Since its inception four weeks ago, the encampment has demanded that University management “meet with us and answer our demands”, but not “behind closed doors” or through “secret negotiations.” Last Friday, protestors’ attempts to stage a ‘town hall meeting’ was ignored by University management and transformed into a public forum by guest speakers. At the time of writing, a petition launched by the encampment to hold a Student General Meeting with management is also 150 signatures away from meeting the 2,000 signature threshold.
The University of Sydney has modified the public opening hours of Fisher Library this week. As of Monday, the Library is now open to non-students and staff between 9am to 5pm, shortened from the normal 8pm closing time implemented throughout the semester.
The media is quick to bury their demands, management at the University of Sydney wants control of the narrative again, and students just want to graduate without blood on their hands. But we cannot forget what this is all for: an end to the genocide in Gaza, and a free Palestine.
When asked about the chant “from the river to the sea” heard at many student-led rallies and encampments around the country, Albanese stated that “if you asked those people chanting it, heaps of them… wouldn’t be able to find the Jordan River on a map.”
Georgia Zhang (Switchroots), Shirley (Zixuan) Zhang (Independent), James Dwyer (Unity), Ethan Floyd (Switchroots) and Phan Vu (Independent) were all provisionally elected.
Day 17 at the University of Sydney’s Gaza solidarity encampment saw participation in the Student Strike for Palestine and attendance at the National Tertiary Education Union’s (NTEU) Sydney Branch vote on a motion to “endorse the institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities, and to cut ties with the war industry.”
Why, as a leftist and educated young woman, did I let this happen? And if I had, how many people like me were doing the same?
