Jess Melvin, Sydney
The University of NSW Student Guild has launched a major attempt to ban students' freedom of speech by calling police onto campus to shut down campus bookstalls run by left-wing UNSW students.
Since campus started for the year, members of the UNSW Resistance Club, an anti-war socialist group, have been stopped from holding bookstalls at UNSW five times — on February 24 and 26 and March 1, 2 and 4.
Two of these times, the police were called by the guild to escort UNSW students off campus for distributing anti-war information. Police officers told the students that they would be charged with trespass if they did not leave the campus.
For orientation week at UNSW, the guild required groups wishing to have literature stalls to fill out an application form. Resistance filled out the form and returned it to the guild on time. Resistance was given verbal confirmation that it just needed to turn up on the day. But when we did so, we were told that actually that we couldn't have a stall.
A former UNSW Student Guild Clubs and Societies on Campus (CASOC) staff member, who was handling all CASOC phone calls, denied receiving the form. The police were then called to evict Resistance members from the campus.
CASOC director Tony Butler later admitted that Resistance's application had been taken and rejected by a "motion from [CASOC's] standing committee".
The Student Guild has also stopped the Greens from having their own stall and has tried to stop students from putting up posters produced by the National Union of Students (which all UNSW students are members of) advertising the March 20 anti-war protest action in Sydney.
Susan Price, the UNSW branch vice-president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which has endorsed the March 20 national day of anti-war protests, said: "University should be a place for freedom of expression. As a unionist I would be very concerned about that right being taken away."
Price has pledged to put a motion at the next NTEU branch meeting to condemn the anti-democratic actions of the Student Guild.
Resistance has launched a "Cops off Campus" poster campaign and is calling all supporters of free speech at UNSW to support this campaign. To get involved in the campaign phone Jess on 0421 404 138.
[Jess Melvin is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance and a student at UNSW.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 10, 2004.
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