Beryl Rawson building occupied at ANU

A far cry from the Vietnam War demos of the early seventies in Civic when as a young teen I observed over 100 protestors being arrested for blocking traffic in city walk. Yes the plod piled them into two buses they had on standby.

A demo by art students… Break out the riot shields and tear gas, let’s break some heads….

…also re the number who made it in the building. The numbers I heard to day put it at 40-50 made it inside at some point, and that’s about what it looked like on the news footage. This talk of more than a hundred is wishful. There may have been that many at the initial rally, but stretching it later on.

Dude, I was outside the building right on 2pm. There were 23 students and 3 security guards.

The pics were from the rally in union court that preceded the ‘occupation’ and was widely advertised, while the ‘occupation’ was subsequent and not advertised.

The rally was controversial because they scheduled it in Union Court at the same time as a science week fair scheduled long before, no doubt to capitalise on the fact people would already by there. Very cheap tactic, and one that didn’t seem to work given the smallish crowd.

The only dishonest people are the people behind this rally, who as is so typical, are adopting a straight out ‘NO’ to any changes.

Yet the facts are quite stark.

First, CASS has kept tutorial groups smaller than many other parts of the Uni till now. 20-25 people in a tute is damn well the norm in law. When you factor in about a quarter to a third of people often don’t turn up each week, you actually end up with a decent number.

Second, tutorial attendee has been in decline and finding tutors harder (if not impossible at times).

Third, more and more students are demanding after hours tutorials to fit in with work, causing problems with scheduling.

Fourth, budgets are too tight for tutorials for all courses.

So when you add it up, there does need to be flexible options for tutes. I’d favour them going online, they already have done that for some courses and it worked great.

I don’t favour these merged lectures and tutorials because they’re unwieldy.

But just demanding the status quo be kept is a fast track to screw students over.

So…ahh…what’s it all about? I mean, why are they enraged? Can someone who is in the know deconstruct this, and elaborate on the subtext?

It looks like all 15 students attending the protest enjoyed themselves. I bet the rest were walking buy wondering why there was a crowd.

RBS said :

I believe members of staff also came in to talk to students, all of whom said pretty much nothing helpful at all. .

Apart from suddenly reversing their decision, what helpful words would you expect?

c_c You are so full of it. Photos of other parts of the Uni are just so dishonest. Stupid too when the pictures have descriptions next to them saying where they are (including different dates). You have now validated other comments on the numbers. I passed close to the Beryl Rawson close to 2pm and nearly wandered across to see what was happening.as I saw a large group of people – at least 50 – outside the building. Don’t know if there were still others inside. It would be nice to claim there were but then I would be in your league.

Typical of a degree course with such low workload that these idiots can jerk off all day at protests!

Here’s pics of the protest, though I’d say 100 students would be a stretch even at this point of the activities: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153179500375145.1073741835.399805615144&type=1

Actually, there were well over a hundred students inside the Rawson Building. Win News went inside to cover the protest. I believe members of staff also came in to talk to students, all of whom said pretty much nothing helpful at all. The protest march kicked off at 12:30, and at 1:45 there were still students inside, occupying.