l week three semester two 2013 Look below the surface honi soit honi UniGate is back pg 4 What’s getting a Brazilian like? pg 7 Daily Telegraph, calm your farm pg10 It’s a nice day for a Chinese wedding pg 11 R Kelly is a Goddamn genius pg 14 DISCONTENTS Glasnost and Sydney University When you reflect on the University of industry and you find the thousands of badly needs. When you consider the UNIGATE Sydney, on what it is as a place and an international students being abused by falling ratio of education funding to 4 Seriously. So much institution, it feels almost too appropri- landlords, employees, and their class- student numbers, it’s not hard to see UniGate. ate that a sandstone Quadrangle comes mates. Take away the rhetoric about the how this mentality has come about. But to mind. It’s an icon and an image the ‘student experience’ and you will hear it doesn’t have to be this was. It’s time GOING BRAZILIAN University consciously promotes. Pri- the stories of students forced to do lit- for glasnost. It’s time for the University 7 Anonymous mary school students dressed in pri- tle more than work, study, and sleep, to to dump ‘public relations’ and have real mary school colours are taken on tours help them afford living in the city where conversations, arguments, and fights through its well kept facade. Glossy their chosen university was built. with its students and its student media. 9 HIGH IN PERU brochures adorned with the building’s This is essentially what the job of a It’s time to talk about the faults and the Andre Fenby image and words like ‘opportunity’, student newspaper should be. We are challenges rather than bury them in ‘experience’, and ‘leadership’ are mailed here to help you tear away topsoil and obscure committees that don’t take min- TERRIBLE TELE to seventeen-year-olds sweating through see what really holds this place together. utes or visitors. It’s time smash the sand- HSC nightmares all around the country. stone surface and see what lies beneath. 10 Madeleine King But it’s a job made more difficult by the At rowdy Inner-West house parties old smothering instincts of an institution high school friends one-up each other supposedly committed to the prolif- RED with boasts of their new intellectual eration of knowledge and information. 12 WEDDING homes, and one inevitably brags about The University has become a carefully Patrick Horton the building they know their UTS and managed and heavily centralised PR UNSW friends can’t match. A sandstone machine. It becomes only too obvious THE Quadrangle is an easy object to mythol- every week when we try to interview a 14 CHURCH ogise. But the real reason a Quadrangle member of staff, or a Senate Fellow, or Jeremy Elphick is an appropriate image for the Univer- a head of department. All these people sity of Sydney is because it is all about know that speaking to us candidly about NEW SKINS the surface. the current state of the University and 15 Sean O’Grady When you look beneath the surface the success and failure of its policies is – of the building and of the Univer- not possible. Instead, we are referred to sity – things get complicated. Inside the carefully worded PR releases, always to CIV 5 sandstone Quadrangle itself are over- be attributed to “a University spokes- 16 John Gooding crowded lectures taught by academic person”. staff who a recent study revealed to Forced to constantly sell itself to the be some of the most dissatisfied in the world, the University of Sydney has THE SOIN Max Chalmers 21 country. Dig a little below the boasts become closed off, for fear that some- made about Australia’s University export thing might offend the customers it so Editor-in-chief Editor-in-chief: Max Chalmers Editors: Rafi Alam, Bryant Apolonio, Avani Dias, Mariana Podesta-Diverio, Nick Row- botham, Hannah Ryan, Xiaoran Shi, Nina Ubaldi, Lucy Watson. Reporters: Jeremy Elphick, Andre Fenby, John Gooding, Lucy Hughes-Jones, Neha Kasbekar, Madeleine King, Stella Ktenas, Sam Murray, Sean O’Grady, Anjali Vishnathawan, Ezreena Yahya. Contributors: Georgina Bell, Patrick Horton, Michael Rees Cover Image: Alexandra Mildenhall WOULD YOU RATHER... Artists, Photographers, and Cartoonists: Mikaela Bartels, Cameron Caccamo, Patrick Horton, Stella Ktenas, Ezreena Yahya, Emily Woods. Puzzles: Dom Campbell and Eric Shi Have a guitar as a body? Ticker tape: The worst hits of those involved in the 2013 election Email us at [email protected] OR The editors of Honi Soit and the SRC acknowledge the traditional Have toasters for hands? owners of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Honi Soit is written, printed, and distributed on Aboriginal land. If you are reading this, you are standing on Aboriginal land. Please recognise and respect this. FAQ: Want to place an advertisement in Honi Soit ? Contact Amanda Can I strum my own guitar? LeMay & Jess Henderson [email protected] Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Yes, but we all know that makes you go 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 mad. Not to mention the hair growth on under the auspices of the SRC’s Directors of Student Publications: Clare Angel-Auld, Adam Chalmers, Bebe D’Souza, Brigitte Garozzo, James O’Doherty, Lane Sainty. All expressions are your palms. published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless spe- cifically 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. Printed by MPD, Unit E1 46-62 Maddox St. Alexandria NSW 2015. Is there a warranty on my toasters? Anyone can write for Honi Soit ! @honi_soit Email all letters and submissions to: Yes, as long as your parents kept it at http://www.facebook.com/honisoitsydney [email protected] birth. www.honisoit.com letters university and local community, the The Fastest Response Letter Ever camp will be able to cater for Sixteen & children. SOUND The Sony Foundation St Andrew’s Hi Cameron, College Children’s Camp allows the children to experience a great range of Apologies your article didn’t go to activities such as swimming, arts and fury print. We received two articles on a craft, a trip to the zoo, a jumping castle, similar topic and intended to combine visits from a fire truck and Santa! It is research from each article. We defi- not only an invaluable experience for nitely should have communicated better the children but also provides the fami- within our team, with you and with the lies of these children with a break in Angry at Evangelicals negotiations, including the $206 mil- other author, but did not censor you for the lead up to Christmas. The children lion difference between the suggested political reasons. have a fantastic opportunity to meet pay increases from each side, Spence’s I’m probably capable of writing a very new friends and gain a sense of inde- commitment to keeping staff the high- measured and thoughtful letter about Sincerely, Eds. pendence. Everyone who is involved est paid in the sector, and the massive how tired I am of evangelical Christians with the camp is truly passionate about premiums that would have to be borne spouting their rabid nonsense on cam- this program and about making a posi- by the University if to-and-from work This Email Came from an Address pus. I am, after all, a high-achieving stu- tive contribution to our community. insurance was covered through them. Belonging to ‘Rhys Pogo’. But we’re dent of the arts at one of the premier As well as increasing the number of The only thing missing from these sto- like 66% sure it’s not that Rhys… universities in the country. children at the camp this year, we are ries was a remark from an NTEU repre- also looking to recruit carers from the I could, if I had the energy, marshal sentative, which I was assured was being Dear Honi Soit, wider university community. The carer together a few good arguments from chased up by another editor. Socrates to Bertrand Russell, set it all plays the role of a guardian for a child It was to my great surprise, then, out nicely and explain why I’m not and throughout the camp, including cater- that I opened this article to find that I have a question of etiquette for your never will be moved by the idea that a ing for the particular child’s needs as this was not my article at all. This was readership. Just the other day, I was human sacrifice in ancient Palestine is required over a 24 hour timeframe per a totally different article, with a clear moisturising my vagina after some vig- the most morally salient event in the day for the duration of the camp. The pro-Union slant emphasised by liberal orous hair removal and heard a knock history of the universe, that this human role of a carer is difficult, tiring, often quoting of NTEU sources. None of on the door. I answered, panty-free with sacrifice has anything whatsoever to do frustrating but above all offers signifi- the important facts listed above made it skirt covering, expecting that the post- with me and the meaning of my life.