In events not seen since the anti-war protests of the early 2000’s, Monash University’s Clayton Campus Centre echoed the clapping, pot-banging stamping and chanting of 100 students, protesting the $2.8 billion cuts to higher education by the Gillard government.
The message was clear: “They say cut back! We say fight back!”
Students reject the $48 million cuts to Monash alone, which – as history has shown us – will result in cuts in staff and units and services offered. Worse still is the scrapping of “Startup Scholarships”, which effectively change around 35% of Centrelink payments into loans – further putting the financial burden of education on the shoulders of the student.
These attacks are damaging for us to have an affordable and accessible education; in particular students from low socio-economic backgrounds and working class students.
We, as students, reject the rhetoric of our parliamentary luminaries. The idea of cutting higher education to fund primary and secondary education is absurdly illogical. What’s the point of getting a good primary and secondary education, if you can’t go to university? The cuts are clearly a divide-and-rule tactic pitting one sector of education against another, undermining our right to education.
Let us look at the basic figures. Ed Byrne, Vice Chancellor of Monash University is the second highest payed VC in Australia with a salary of $1.1 million a year. He happily gives token opposition to the cuts, but he is not prepared to take a cut from his own wallet. Even the $48 million could be covered by last year’s $93 million surplus of the university and its assets.
The protest represented the growing sentiment among students, at Monash and around the country, that universities are becoming little more than degree factories. The inspirational protests of students in their hundreds of thousands in Quebec last year and all around Europe should serve as motivation for us all.
For us at Monash, this is just the beginning of the campaign. We face the challenge of rebuilding Monash’s title as the most active of the country’s student population, rebuilding the traditions of radicalism and resistance of the 1960’s and 70’s.
The National Union of Students (NUS) has called a national student strike for May 14th. Victorian students are encouraged to skip their classes and attend a demonstration at RMIT University at 2pm. The importance of students taking the campaign seriously, showing cross campus solidarity and waging a unified fight against the cuts can’t be stressed enough. You can’t get 1000 until you get 100.
