La Trose University, 1967-72
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I.N. Capon, 'Effective Control of Academic Comput Arthur Koestler suggested that Western youth's ing', in Proceedings of the Eighth Australian Comput SOURCES OF STUDENT rebellion was a by-product of an existential ing Conference, Canberra, 1978, pp 381-391; 1. Ellis, A DISSENT: LA TROSE vacuum.s In other words, they were unprecedent Real Money Charging System, Computer Centre, edly affluent, but also unprecedentedly unhappy. University of New England, 1982; L Ellis and R.A. UNIVERSITY, 1967-72 Roszak and Keniston dealt with the same paradox Pearse, A Suggested Charging System for the UNE in speaking, respectively, of youth's 'immiseriza Computer Centre, Computer Centre, University of BARRY YORK New England, 1981; L. Goldschlager and AD. Payne, tion' and the contradiction between psychological Student unrest on university campuses in the late 9 'Computer Resource Rationing in Universities', in Pro adulthood and sociological adolescence. ceedings of the Third Australian Computer Science 1960s caught social theorists by surprise. Capital Conference, 1980, pp 173-184; H.S. Hancock, Control ism, after ail, was functioning as an efficient eco Other popular hypotheses of the time suggested of Computer Usage, Computing Laboratory, Mac nomic mechanism and cold war conservatism was that youth was naturally rebellious. The natura! quarie University, 1974; M.P.C. Legg, Control of Com winning against sqcialist alternatives. Moreover, rebel theory, however, failed to account for such puting Resources,' Preliminary Report, Flinders Uni the end of ideology was asserted to have occurred. phenomenon as the silent generation of the 1950s. versity Computer Centre, 1976; T.A. Reid, Discussion The campuses were silent. Then, suddenly, in 1964 Bruno Bettelheim blamed student unrest on the Paper on Charging for Computing at U. WA., Univer students at Berkeley University launched their free alleged self-hatred arising from permissive child sity of Western Australia, 1982; and University of speech movement. And by 1968, nme magazine rearing, liberal schooling, and subsidized univer Queensland, Report of the Vice-Chancelfor's Com was speaking of 'the biggest year for students sity education. 1D Yet are we to believe that all mittee to Review the Provision of Computing Servi ces, 1980. A major work in favour of pricing is D. since 1848'.1 Student uprisings were taking place student rebels, from Paris to .... Tokyo, were so Bernard et al Charging for Computer Services: Ptinci from Argentina to Yugoslavia. reared?11 pIes and Guide-lines, Petrocem, New York, 1977. A helpful bibliography has been prepared in Western These movements were often revolutionary in that Conspiracy theories also assumed a certain vogue, Australia -- Western Australian Computing Centre, they sought the overthrow of existing ways-of-life. epitomized by Van Maanen who traced all campus 12 Select Bibliography of books and journals and Nourished by intellectual sources which were unrest to Moscow. Altbach's work, however, indi articles (on computer charging), 1982. traceable to Marxism they were sometimes re cated the extremely limited nature of international garded as dangerous to the very fabric of Western student co-ordination.n Moreover, there is abun 2. Staff are requested to include a computing cost, society Indeed, they tended to function outside of dant evidence of Soviet opposition to left adventu where appropriate, in their requests for outside institutional politics. rist students, be they in Prague, Poland, or Paris.14 research funds. The problem confronting theorists was how to Finally, it is worth mentioning the derivative 3. We have not attempted to discuss in detail the eco nomic theory behind charging for computer services, explain the advent of essentially similar student hypothesis; namely, that students here were which has already been carried out (e.g. A.D.J. rebellions, occurring at roughly the same time, merely keeping up with the rebellious Joneses Flowerdew and C.M.E. Whitehead, 'Charging for throughout the Western world. The student move 'over there'. Australian student movements cer computer facilities in universities', in University of ments of the advanced capitalist societies simply tainly adopted some of the terminology and tech Kent at Canterbury, Studies in Quantitative Social did not fit the existing theoretical models. One of niques of their American, Japanese, and European Science and Management Science Discussion Paper, the most perplexing factors relates to what Hannah counterparts. One could say that they were being 50, 1982). The issues are not, however, unique to Arendt has described as their 'almost exclusively sensible in applying tested tactics, and internation computer charging and have been widely discussed moral motlves'.2 Generally, there was little self-gain alist rather than imitative. However, the copy-cat in the literature of economics. for the student in the objectives of student move hypotheSis begs the question: why were students 4. It should be noted that Flowerdew and Whitehead ments. They were, indeed, movements based on rebelling, in so many different places at the same op. cit., consider that the case for marginal cost pric 'human subjectivity in this, the era of the scientific time, in the first place? ing for computing is not significantly weakened by and technological revolution'.J non-marginal cost pricing elsewhere. A natural starting-point is the universities them There is, of course, no single master hypothesis. It selves; or rather, how the new technical and 5. ibid. is necessary to look for the specific concatentation managerial requirements of post-war capitalism of causes that combined in the post-war period to affected them. Tertiary education was encouraged 6. See Capon, op. cit We have couched this in semi economic terms; alternatively, we could simply have produce the 1960s phenomenon,4 and to locate to expand rapidly and, nourished by the baby argued that academic staff are responsible. To the student movements in their particular geo-political, boom, continued to produce society's profession extent that there are some who do undertake what cultural, and social contexts. als and Skilled workers, A new form of intellectual proves to be 'wasteful' research using computer labour was also required, however. social engi capacity, they need help rather than control. Lewis Feuer, possibly the most influential critic of neers, such as advertising agents, editors, fashion the late 1960s, is notable for his violation of both designers, and market researchers became the 7. See Goldschlager and Payne, op. cit., p.176, and methodological tenets. Feuer attributes student technicians of consumption and consent. 'The new Reid, op. cit. p.10. rebellion to oedipally-projected politics; that is, the devefopments of capitalism' were indeed making ideological acting out of the sons' subconscious 8. Goldschlager and Payne, op. cit. pp 180-181. education 'one of the crucial areas of change: 15 hatred of their fathers. s Feuer, however, fails to 9. Capon, op. cit. account for the fact that not every generation pro Australia's university planners, cognizant of our duces a radical core, even though presumably the second industrial revolution, found themselves 10. ibid, p. 384. parricidal urge is constant. G His reliance on student caught between two different models. On the one songs and poems as primary sources highlights hand stood the Newman ideal: the Alma Mater, the second methodological flaw, for it cuts across knowing her children individually, and lauding 'the historical as well as cultural lines. And empirical cultivation of the inteffect as an end for its own studies into the famiiial background of American sake: 16 On the other, the American model, epitom student activists contradicted Feuer's emphasis on ized by Clark Kerr's multi-varsity, in which the uni son-father antagonism. l versity became the main plant of a knowledge 20 21 'I I industry, serving national growth in the same way 'use music as some sort of a platform to bring nam is ciear as trle principal campaigns were Melbourne Metropolitan prompted by anti-militarist sentiment In 1969, for as had railway and automobile industries in a people together:" From 1965, when the pacifist MHR in bygone era. 17 lyrics of Barry McGuire's 'Eve of Destruction' had Home Residences example, a proposal to establish a campus Citi Year Working-Class zens' Military Force regiment aroused widespread, caused a sensation, to the early seventies, a politi (MHR) of Students 38 Such key strategists as the Murray Committee Suburbs cal protest trend is apparent in rock music. One Living at Home determined and successful opposition. And in (1957). the Martin Committee (1964). and the Aus I survey concluded that, in the late sixties, pop June 1970, a student movement was born in the tralian Universities Commission predicated their 1968 201 81 (40%) songs 'more than ever addressed themselves to a course of protests against Defence Department (33%) recommendations on the assumption that universi wide variety of social issues'.22 It is significant that 1969 182 61 use of the University's careers service. The move (43%) ties were not, and should not be, fundamentally the demise of rock's political tangent tallied with 1970 162 71 ment reached its peak in April 1971, when more anything other than a servant of national economic 1971 220 (42%) the demise of the youth protest movement. 96 than one thousand students gathered for a general growth. A conceptual stress between the two 1972 544 218 (44%) meeting, called by the Labor Club, and launched a models is apparent in Murray's Report. But it is all campaign for the resignation of the Chancellor, Sir but gone in the Martin Report, which concluded It is also pertinent to identify the political matrix of (Source: Registrar's Department) Archibald Glenn.28 that, the youth/student revolt. The baby boom genera tion were the first to be born under the cloud of the La Trobe University was literally born into the The student Left maintained that Glenn's position Education should be regarded as an invest atom bomb.