... and ain't I a woman?: Less, not more choice on campus
In the six years that the University of Western Australia guild (student representative body) has been operating under "voluntary student unionism" (VSU), thousands of dollars have been cut from the women's department budget, as well as from all other areas of the guild.
The impact of VSU is very concrete: the department has a lot less money than it did before. WA guilds have lost millions of dollars since state VSU legislation was passed. VSU means the women's department can put out fewer posters and organise fewer events. It can no longer contribute money to off-campus organisations, and there are more limits to its ability to buy resources like books and magazines. At the same time, to attract more students, activists have been asked to "market" the department — not to make it "too radical".
The student unions of Western Australia have by and large been trying to deal with VSU by selling themselves as service providers or as representative bodies, rather than as political and active, student-based organisations fighting for student rights.
The argument (not just from student bureaucrats but also from some campaign activists as well) is that we can't be too political, or we run the danger of alienating people. In fact, the situation for the majority of women — on and off campus — is getting worse, so there is even greater need for women's departments, and student unions generally, to be more political and more active.
There's as much reason as ever to keep campaigning for complete reproductive rights for all women, for increased child-care, for women's safety and for an end to the commodification of women's bodies. Women's collectives can play an extremely important role in organising other students to defend and extend women's rights. They can distribute information on a range of feminist issues, and they can help women students to gain skills and confidence through collective organising.
Feminist organising on campus is already difficult enough. If all the activities that women's collectives are involved in are undermined and restricted by VSU, fighting women's oppression on campus becomes still more difficult.
Women fought long and hard for women's collectives, women's officers and women's rooms. These gains of the powerful feminist movement of the 1970s are now coming under attack.
These collectives should continue to be political, and should continue to organise against the government's attacks on women's rights, including VSU legislation.
Despite the government hype, VSU isn't about choice. It's about trying to stop a potentially powerful student fight back against government attacks on the rights of students, women, migrants, Aboriginal people and workers. VSU aims to prevent collective organising by students — or at least to ensure that any such organisation has no funding.
Student unions can be an important means of collectively furthering the demands of all oppressed groups on campus. Student activists, including feminist activists, need to expose the government's lies and doublespeak about "student choice". VSU means a lack of choice for students, preventing us collectively organising to defend and extend student rights.
VSU can be defeated, but only through determined and active opposition from student unions and through organising and mobilising the student population.
By Trisha Reimers
[Trisha Reimers is the UWA guild's women's officer and a member of Resistance.]