Occupying the Senate

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Hi all, have just got access to the net during day 6 of occupying my University's Senate building. Living on-campus usually I'm fortunately able to shower, but aside from that the Senate is home sweet home. I love it, it's one big fat student commune in a really cushy environment. Those Senators really have a good deal going here...
Anyway, I've got to go put a banner on the roof of the refectory, so I'll see you all later.

[CM]

Why were you occupying by force i hope the college senate?

[Georgi]

Hey Odie, glad to hear you're doing something useful at uni...

Beware though. According to some random old guy who lectured at me and my friend in Sydney, people only protest because they have dysfunctional families. And university is for losers.

[C Elegans]

Hi Ode, nice to see you - and like CM I wonder why you are occupying this Senate building? I hope you are doing well, anyway, in life, at uni and with the occupation

Quote:

Originally posted by Georgi According to some random old guy who lectured at me and my friend in Sydney, people only protest because they have dysfunctional families. And university is for losers.

Obviously this guy was old since he hadn't left the 1960's...

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

So far force hasn't been necessary, if the uni tries to kick us out and call the pigs then things are likely to get more interesting...
While my parents' divorce is going through at the moment, so I sort of am from a dysfunctional family, that's not why I'm occupying the Senate. It's in protest over the Senate's passing legislation allowing for the introduction of full up-front fees for undergraduate students. If this decision is implemented then we'll be seeing rich dumb kids just being able to buy their way into university at the expense of poorer students who worked to get in. I don't want to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn't that bright, but whose daddy could afford to send them to Uni, so I'm here protesting.
Besides, if I let the opportunity to occupy my university's Senate in my first year pass me by I'd regret it the rest of my life.

[Georgi]

Quote:

Originally posted by das_hermit If this decision is implemented then we'll be seeing rich dumb kids just being able to buy their way into university at the expense of poorer students who worked to get in.

Welcome to the olde worlde. Anyway, I think your idea of protest is far better than ours... When I was at uni, the NUS's idea of a protest about tuition fees was to get students to go on strike for a day. Students skipping lectures... wow, that's something the establishment's really going to sit up and take notice of.

@CE you are spot on. I think he even alluded to being a war veteran...

[Tamerlane]

Give em hell Ode. If things go down badly on the main campus, I'll stir up trouble on the sister one.

Vive La Revolution!

[Gwalchmai]

Quote:

Originally posted by das_hermit It's in protest over the Senate's passing legislation allowing for the introduction of full up-front fees for undergraduate students. If this decision is implemented then we'll be seeing rich dumb kids just being able to buy their way into university at the expense of poorer students who worked to get in. I don't want to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn't that bright, but whose daddy could afford to send them to Uni, so I'm here protesting.

Eh? Wouldn't the rich kids still have to pass the classes that they take? I don't see the big problem here.... but then again, I'm not familiar with your University system.

[Lazarus]

Protesting fees for the university? God forbid anyone actually pay for services rendered. And did I just see the use of the term "pig" to indicate police?

[Kayless]

Quote:

Originally posted by Georgi According to some random old guy who lectured at me and my friend in Sydney, people only protest because they have dysfunctional families. And university is for losers.

You should always listen to your elders... Unless he's a hippy.

[Sojourner]

Quote:

Originally posted by das_hermit If this decision is implemented then we'll be seeing rich dumb kids just being able to buy their way into university at the expense of poorer students who worked to get in. I don't want to be operated on by a surgeon who wasn't that bright, but whose daddy could afford to send them to Uni, so I'm here protesting.

Eh? Could you clue us in as to where this is, how fees normally work there, and what they mean by full up-front fees? Obviously, the uni system works differently from country to country ( and from state to state in the US).

[CM]

No force That aint good....need my help?

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

That's right @Laz, we are protesting the introduction of full up-front fees, on the basis that not all of us poor students have a spare few thousand dollars every year lying around to pay full up-front fees for their degrees.
Re. my use of the term pigs, what would you rather I call an armed force that habitually uses violence to crush dissent in Australia, theoretically a democratic country?
Does 'thugs' suit your tastes better, or would you prefer 'hired goons'? How about 'rock apes'?

The way the system works here is that at the end of high school students sit a Tertiary Entrance Exam for whatever subjects they've taken, and based on their performance get an overall Tertiary Entrance Ranking out of 100. If a student meets the minimum TER required for entrance to a Uni course they are offered a place, though students with higher TER scores naturally get priority over those with lower scores. Higher demand courses have higher TER requirements, and most universities have a cut-off TER score below which students will not be accepted. Universities offer places to students in 3 rounds, depending upon how quickly courses are filled.
Students who cannot afford to attend university but who have the academic merit to be accepted can apply for a HECS-funded place, basically a loan from the government, which students pay back by having it taken out of their salary as soon as it gets over about Aus $20,000. I don't know what the US-Australian exchange rate is at the moment, so I can't offer the comparative amount in US$, but it's not a great deal.
What my uni is trying to do is increase the number of full up-front fee places to 50%, rather than the current 25%, and to allow students of lower academic merit to gain access to Uni based upon their ability to pay. In some cases the accepted scores for up-front fee paying students will be below the minimum TER requirement to get into Murdoch Uni in the first place, and while the Vice-Chancellor claims that students with more than 5 points below the minimum TER for courses will not be accepted, a number of other universities in the Eastern States have said the same thing before introducing full up-front fees, and are now offering first-rounbd places to full-fee paying students whose TER scores are 10-25 points less than the minimum. Furthermore, staff in these universities are pressured to pass up-front-fee paying students to keep the funds rolling in.
This is just the bare bones of it all, if Tam sees anything I've left out then he can fill it in, he probably knows as much as I do.

[Tamerlane]

Quote:

Originally posted by das_hermit This is just the bare bones of it all, if Tam sees anything I've left out then he can fill it in, he probably knows as much as I do.

Nah... I try to stay away from all this, its pretty messy. I would of posted earlier but I wanted to see what you had to say since your protesting about it and all. Basically the rich kids will get precedent over the poorer ones.

The problem however stems from the fact that there aren't enough places going around, the universities (or lack of) around here are the toughest to get into in our country and probably our immediate region also. If the worse case scenario comes around, then prospective students would just have to head overseas. I have friends who have travelled across the country or overseas because the requirements are simply set too high here because of the huge demand and lack of placings. Its a shame really...

[Georgi]

Quote:

Originally posted by Kayless You should always listen to your elders... Unless he's a hippy.

I think his problem was that students are hippies... damn them all, wanting to get a decent education... treehuggers.

I got the impression that there are quite a lot of foreign students at Aussie unis... kind of strange if they don't even have room for their domesctic students... yet wholly understandable when you consider how much more they probably charge foreign students.