By Angela Luvera
BRISBANE — Forty-one students have joined Resistance during Orientation Week at the University of Queensland (UQ), February 7-11. Many of those who joined were especially interested in feminism and socialism, and were concerned about the treatment of refugees in Australia and environmental destruction.
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) also held stalls. It joined five people and got many names on a contact list.
As Resistance and ASIET were demonstrating their radical politics to students, members of the student union and the university administration were exposing their conservative policies.
The student union did not allow the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) to set up a stall in the main stall area. The NTEU is campaigning to gain student support for its industrial dispute with the university over a new enterprise agreement.
The student union, currently dominated by the National Organisation of Labor Students, did pass a motion allowing the stall. However, when the administration vetoed it, the student union accepted that decision.
When the NTEU attempted to set up a stall, it was physically shut down by the administration. NTEU members and supporters remained to distribute leaflets.
UQ Resistance Club member Alex Robinson said, "Students campaigned last year to defeat 'voluntary student unionism' — the government's attempt to politically silence us. Now that the NTEU is faced with similar problems, parts of the UQ student union have failed to give solidarity. However, other left students, including Resistance, will continue to support the NTEU's campaign."