Honi Soit Week 11, Semester 2, 2020 / First printed 1929 Acknowledgement of Country Honi Soit is published on the stolen land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. For over 230 years, First Nations people in this country have suffered from the destructive effects of invasion. The editors of this paper recognise that, as a team of settlers occupying the lands of the Bidjigal, Darug, Gadigal, Wangal and Wallumedegal people, we are beneficiaries of these reverberations that followed European settlement. As we strive throughout the year to offer a platform to the voices mainstream media ignores, we cannot meet this goal without providing a space for First Nations people to share their experiences and perspectives. A student paper which does not acknowledge historical and ongoing colonisation and the white supremacy embedded within Australian society can never adequately represent the students of the institution in which it operates. We seek to resist colonial violence and the racist power structures that serve to oppress those who are Indigenous to this land. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Contents Editorial As the age-old adage goes: time flies when answering my 5am calls. To Angad, thank you Letters / 3 Editor in Chief: you’re having fun. By any sane person’s for returning my furtive glances and being such Chuyi Wang metric, this year has probably been one of the a beefcake. To Lara, thank you for being such most awful in recorded history, and yet time a wonderful, charming friend (and for teaching News / 4 has flown anyway. I’m starting to think it’s a me so much new vocabulary). To Ranuka, Editors: Nina Dillon Britton, property of time in general that it passes too thank you for being endlessly generous with Matthew Forbes, Zhiquan Gan, quickly. both your time and kindness. To Maddy, thank Analysis / 6 Robbie Mason, Angad Roy, Lara In Summer, we donned our gas masks you for always standing up for me and being Sonnenschein, Ranuka Tandan, against the bushfire smoke. In Autumn, we there when I needed someone to talk to. To Chuyi Wang, Madeline Ward, traded in our masks for new ones. In Winter, Iris, thanks for the succulent steak. To Murphy, Perspective / 11 Lei Yao our hearts broke in the privacy of our parents’ thanks for laying up Liam’s report. homes. In Spring, we emerged only to be cuffed As for the reporters and contributors to the Feature / 12 Contributors: Jazzlyn Breen, and beaten. At almost every point in 2020, I paper this year, be that in writing or in art, I Blake Falcongreen, Marlow could count on one hand the number of friends extend my deepest gratitude for helping us Hurst, Gabbie Lynch, Juliette I had that weren’t going through some kind of carry this publication through possibly the crisis. But time, like always, flies on. most socially isolated year of Honi ever. We Opinion / 14 Marchant, Angelina Nguyen, And now, with only a matter of weeks left quite literally couldn’t have done it without Shania O’Brien, Fabian in this horrible year, I’m waking up to a kind you, and we deeply regret never getting the Culture / 15 Robertson, Daany Saaed, Alice of serenity that continues to surprise me even chance to thank you in person. Sandner, Himath Siriniwasa, though it happens day after day. What can Finally, though the majority of this Pailey Wang I call this feeling? Joy is too strong a word, protracted and selfishly sentimental editorial is Creative / 19 optimism too naïve, and hope too pure. already about them, I would like to dedicate Artists: Lilly Aggio, Janina Let’s eschew the guessing and call it love, to my fellow editors the final verse of The Osinsao because that’s the best I can do right now with Dismemberment Plan’s 1999 album Emergency SRC / 20 my sleep-deprived brain. The one thing that has & I – a record which, much like this no-good, Cover artist: Haneko sustained me through the last twelve months awful, terrible year, is filled to the brim with Reviews / 22 (@PresidentLich) has been the unshakeable love I have for this tension, doubt and dissonance, but concludes paper, and the even stronger love I have for the quite suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, with a editors that produce it with me. In some ways, ray of hope: Comedy / 23 this catastrophic year has robbed me of so many opportunities and chances to be happy. And sometimes that music drifts through my car But, now that this is truly the end, I don’t think On a spring night when anything is possible I would have preferred it any other way. Sure, And I close my eyes, and I nod my head we could have had more deranged nights in the And I wonder how you’ve been Interested in reporting or making And I count to a hundred and ten office together, but at the end of the day: we art for Australia’s only remaining Because you’ll always be my hero were there. That was us. It happened. Write, create and weekly student newspaper? Email us Even if I never see you again at [email protected] or message To Nina, thank you for keeping my ego produce for Honi Soit us over on our Facebook, Twitter or in check with your constant riffing. To Matt, Yours truly, thank you for indulging my most bizarre Instagram pages. Chuyi Wang musical in-jokes. To Robbie, thank you for Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney.Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications: Maia Edge, Peiqing Fan, Nina Mountford, Roisin Murphy, Mikaela Pappou and Maxim Vishney. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. Please direct all advertising inquiries to [email protected]. Bring back cigs on campus! It’s watching the rising sun in your PJs mutual aid program doesn’t include CANCELLED Us here at Honi Soit yearn for the USyd after an all-nighter with a black coffee decks of Winnie Blue (Optimum campus culture of yesteryear. We miss in one hand and a dart in the other. Crush). The masses don’t want fruit CORNER turning up to shit boring lectures with That’s boss level spirituality. and veg. They just want a cig or two Robbie Mason goes straight to gaol, does a jug of beer sloshing in our stomachs, There’s nothing worse than an to ease the pain of being screwed by not pass go, does not collect $200. smoking under the ‘No smoking’ Economics professor (wanna-be cop) the capitalist system. It will also cull signs out the front of Fisher with our jumping off their bike to scold you and the rabid population of scabs who beg fellow comrades and heckling campus banish you to some far flung corner of you for a dart on Eastern Avenue. security from the Manning balcony campus. Yes, we know smoking is bad for (RIP). There is one magic ingredient Contrary to the common parlance you. We don’t live under a rock. But that will unite our student population ‘don’t shit where you eat’, students a bit of emphysema and a few lung and revolutionise campus social should be allowed to smoke anywhere diseases here and there is nothing life, and this one is legal. It’s called on campus: in the Fisher stacks, in compared to the soothing calm of tobacco, or baccy, or spin, depending your lecture, heck, in the middle of sucking on a cancer stick when you on the context. Yes, Mum, I fucking your biology dissection exam. But have 2000 words to write in four love durries. I’d go further: we shouldn’t be forced hours. The nicotine flows through True spirituality isn’t attending to trek off campus to get a deck. The your bloodstream. Warm orange yoga classes, hanging a few stones USU should subsidise cigarettes sold glows before your eyes. The filter is you found at Bondi Beach around on campus and invest in a few cig sweet between your lips. Oh what a your neck and frolicking naked in the machines: the uni student’s pokie. rush! mud at Pitch Music & Arts Festival. It’s an absolute travesty that the SRC 2 LETTERS Letters All we do is win to gain supremacy, it has sought to I love you, Chuyi Wang a name for myself out there in the big, create a monolithic narrative that wide, terrible world, I know I’ve meant something to you. Seeing you hold my Dear Sir triumphantly proclaims the exclusivity Dear Editors, of Hindu civilisation to be channeled life’s work in your soft, large hands filled me with inexplicable joy. I am writing to express our support for into 21st-century renewal of a Hindu I don’t really know where to begin. the excellent article “How a Nation of nation. It’s been a tough year, but we’ve made Mystics, Occultists, and Yogis became Now I’m sorry, I can feel myself In this vision, non-Hindus it.