Students, staff must Force change
UTAS staff and students who oppose the relocation should let the administrators know they are deeply unhappy about the move to the city and won’t be silenced.
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THE University of Tasmania is dysfunctional and its brand damaged. There are reports of high levels of staff dissatisfaction, strong resistance to the proposed move by the university to the city, and now student concern over the move to teach more courses online. It does not appear the university administration is handling these issues adeptly, to say the least. Surely it is time for students and staff to force change?
It is students and staff who are the victims of the university’s dysfunction. It is their interests that are being undermined by a university administration which appears hell bent of pursuing an online learning model and, of course, a deeply unpopular property development strategy which involves developing a petit bourgeois suburb in Sandy Bay while decamping to the downtown.
There has been a consistent stream of negative news about the University of Tasmania over the past three years.
We know that the university uses gag clauses and other mechanisms to silence dissent. As John Livermore, a former head of a department at the university wrote on these pages on July 30, “It seems incredible that UTAS requires staff to sign nondisclosure agreements to prevent those seeking redundancies from criticising their former employer”. In addition, as from February 2021, staff have been reminded of confidentiality clauses in their employment agreements to protect against “antiuniversity community sentiment”. Or as former philosophy head Professor Jeff Malpas said earlier this year: “What you have is an institution where people are no longer willing to speak their mind, and in which the institution does not want them to speak their mind.”
We also know that the university has no interest in changing its mind on a move into Hobart’s city in circumstances where it clearly has no social licence to do so. Despite the extraordinary negativity of the community towards this folly, vicechancellor Rufus Black’s response is to establish, perhaps on the advice from his PR consultants (how much are they being paid one wonders?) or maybe via his lieutenants in the university administration, an 80-person community panel.
No doubt this ruse is designed to show that the university is listening to the community, that it does really care what you think, so long as you go along with the flogging off of the Sandy Bay campus and the move into the downtown. Apparently this “phase of external consultation will run through until the end of the year. The community panel will meet regularly, with their sessions to be independently facilitated and publicly reported”.
Who are these independent facilitators? Who chooses them? Who decides who will be on the panel? If more than 80 people have thrown their hats into the ring to be on the panel, who and by what criteria are the 80 chosen?
And let’s face it, this panel is simply window dressing. It’s not really consultation because if it was the university would allow for debate about the move per se. No, this is simply a tick-the-box exercise so Prof Black and his colleagues can say, hand on heart, ‘we consulted the community’. Corporations undertake these sorts of consultations regularly if they are running a controversial project where there is much community dissent.
But it’s not just the move issue which is damaging this educational institution. It is the insistence, again despite large-scale dissent, on moving to teaching online, with the balance between that form of education and face-to-face teaching favouring the former.
This issue is driving students to agitate. On August 4, the Mercury reported on plans by some students for a students’ union that actually fights for them. Third-year economics student Josh Stagg is one of those pushing for a structured voice for students.
Mr Stagg told the Mercury: “My peers and I just find it very difficult to have a voice amid the university’s restructure. We have found that even though we are oncampus students for the most part, all of our lectures have been moved online. There’s no quality control sometimes they are recordings from
previous years.”
His own experience is telling. Mr Stagg says: “For third-year students we have one three-hour workshop every three weeks and that is our only interaction with our peers and professors. It’s pretty bad. I’ve personally applied for postgraduate interstate because there’s no difference to me studying distance at another university.”
The only way to get serious reform in the university is for there to be strength in numbers. Staff and students need to fight back. They need the administrators to know no longer will they put up with what is dished out by those who run the place.
Mr Stagg has had enough and has the courage of his convictions. Staff who oppose the move from Sandy Bay should join with the broader community and let the university know that they are deeply unhappy about the move and will not be silenced.
The only way to achieve real change in institutions is to take risks in opposing those who hold the power. This university is no exception to that rule.
Hobart barrister Greg Barns, SC, is a human rights lawyer who has advised federal and state Liberal governments.