Honi Soit: Week 3, Semester 2, 2019

Honi Soit

FIRST PRINTED 1929

WEEK 3, SEM 2, 2019

4-5: NEWS

National survey on student sexual assault confirmed Universities Australia (UA) has announced that a second national survey on university sexual assault and harassment has been funded for 2020, and is to be conducted by the Social Research Centre (SRC), in partnership with RMIT violence

prevention expert Dr Anastasia Powell. A UA press release indicates that efforts have been made to ensure the second survey is carried out using ethics-approved methodology.

Full story on page 4 >>>

12-13: FEATURE

When the far right believes in climate change

A fixture almost as notable as low taxes, climate change denial or doubt has long formed a constitutive ideological role within the political right in Western liberal democracies. Yet, with the last five years being the hottest on record,

there inevitably comes a point at which one starts to sweat — the contradiction between conservative’s claims and a changing climate becomes too great.

Read more on page 12 >>>>

Acknowledgement of Country This paper is organised, published, and distributed on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. Its editors, writers and readers all benefit from the violent dispossession of this land from its original custodians. This process is both historical and ongoing, making it incumbent upon all settlers to acknowledge this injustice and seek to redress it in whatever way possible. Writing in his seminal book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe reminds us at various times of the profound obligation to land found in Indigenous cultures. There is no distinction between the sacred and the non-sacred — all rituals have religious purpose and significance, he writes. When considering the topic of this week’s feature — environmentalism — we would do well to defer to the 60,000 years of knowledge that sustained this now colonised land if we harbour any intention to preserve it for any longer. Always was, always will be.

Contents

Please direct all advertising inquiries to publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au. The editorial team does not have control over the ads that appear in this paper.

Writing in the current edition of The Monthly, climate scientist Joëlle Gergis explained the moment she was faced for the first time with the terrifying reality of the climate crisis. She compared it to the moment she found out that her hospital-bound father’s death was imminent, that there was “nowhere to hide from the terrible truth.” Barely a few weeks later, Scott Morrison once again illuminated Australia’s less than concerned attitude towards the climate crisis when he pushed back on Pacific Island states’ demands that coal be immediately phased out. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack justified this patent neglect by reminding everyone that Australia’s supposed benevolence — allowing Pacific Islanders to “pick our fruit” — negated any duty to prevent their total submersion. Buttressing these headlines in the news this week were warnings of the growing likeliness of a US-led recession resulting from the US-China trade war. Local headlines drew attention to the rising tensions between proCCP campaigners and pro-democracy protesters reflected in clashes at Martin Place and in Melbourne. Everyday, the task of preparing for adult life seems more and more difficult; more and more futile. At times, studying often feels like an existential absurdity — what point is there in preparing for a future which, if

presence!” I exclaimed. “I must say, it seems no more than a blink of an eye since I last heard of your electoral aspirations, and yet, here you are again! Is it so, dear lady, that you are turning your attention to that dastardly rag Honi Soit this year?” “That infamous rumour mill has rendered me a disservice many a time before, my amiable lady, but it appears this time it hath dispensed a veritable truth! Indeed I am. Joining me in this perilous ordeal are none other than Chuyi Wang, Grace Johnson, Madeline Ward, Matthew Forbes, Momoko Metham, Nina Dillon Britton, Rameen Hayat, Ranuka Tandan, Shao Qianyu, and Zhiquan Gan.” Madeline Ward? I thought to myself. Isn’t she an editor of Pulp? And Momoko Metham? A General Editor of ARNA, unless I’m quite mistaken. “Dear me! What a comprehensive list,” I replied. “Prithee, dear lady, hath thee any further goss on this matter?” “Well, unless I’ve been led astray, those who would call themselves our

competitors are numerous but yet to be finalised. The candidacy of some is already well documented — I am referring, of course, to Viscounts JP Baladi and Anthony Segaert. Joining them will apparently be Ladies Brooke Salzmann, Kate Scott, and an unconfirmed member of Panda.” “Oh my,” I pondered, “Oh my indeed!” “And what’s more – oh you wouldn’t dare believe, Miss Burnte – Duke Dane himself has meddled in the affairs of our opponents. Indeed, he was found to be lurking in the inbox of a certain Lachlan Finch, telling him to ask Nick Parker to persuade his fair lady, Miss Metham, to run with Viscount Baladi!” By golly, I thought. Brooke Salzmann is none other than the President of the Arts Society! And Duke Dane is none other than the Vice-President and master puppeteer of the ninety-first Student’s’ Representative Council! I bade Lady Sonnenschein adieu and meandered past the quadrangle towards Eastern Avenue.

3

LETTERS

Editors

4

NEWS

6

ANALYSIS

8

PERSPECTIVE

Baopu He, Pranay Jha, Amelia Mertha Jessica Syed, Liam Thorne, Nell O’Grady, Carrie Wen, Joseph Verity, Annie Zhang, and Alan Zheng

9 MULTILINGUAL

Writers

12 FEATURE

Mark Bosch, Emma Cao, Vivienne Guo, James Newbold, Anh Nguyen, Lara Sonnenschein, Iris Yao, and Donnalyn Xu

14 CREATIVE

Artists

10

LONG READ

16 CULTURE 18

SRC REPORTS

20

WRITING COMP

Olivia Allanson, Amelia Mertha, Lauren Moore, Ludmilla Nunell, Annie Zhang Cover Artist: Olivia Allanson

22 PUZZLES 23 COMEDY Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Directors of Student Publications (DSPs), who are elected by the Students’ Representative Council (SRC). The SRC provides space and administrative support only, which is financed by the University of Sydney. The current DSPs - Laura Glase, Brandon Hale, Jinwei Luan, Kedar Maddali, Sean Perry and Jiaqi Shi - are the publisher of the print editions and online materials of Honi Soit. All expressions on Honi Soit are not to be regarded of the SRC, unless specifically stated. The SRC accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained in Honi Soit, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions.

CHAPTER I ‘Twas a temperate afternoon, towards the end of winter’s reign, when walking across the quadrangle lawns, a softly lit silhouette did emerge in my vision. What an ominous sight it was! I began to approach, and upon doing so, was met with the realisation that the figure who stood before me was none other than Lady Lara Sonnenschein. But of course! I thought. I knew she looked familiar — she had lent her attention to an ill-fated presidential campaign not twelve months earlier. “Lady Sonnenschein, how blessed am I to stumble into your reputable

2

Editorial climate scientists are to be trusted, may well fail to exist? Even if liberal optimists are to be trusted and the planet is not subject to imminent and irreversible destruction, it’s still difficult not to feel as though undertaking a liberal university education in 2019 is an exercise in anachronism. We are sheltered in an institution built on ideological principles that are rapidly disintegrating around us. The free market is patently unprepared to tackle the threat of the climate crisis. International liberalism is trampling the rights of island nations to preserve the ground they stand on. Democracies around the world are threatened from the inside and out. This week’s feature by Lara Sonnenschein paints a picture of where these issues may be leading us. It’s a well-researched dissection of two issues that aren’t often thought of as overlapping, but, like all crises, have the potential to compound and exacerbate each other. There is also a host of other wonderful work in this edition, including some beautiful art (the cover included), and a beautiful perspective piece from Emma Cao. I hope that this edition can provide some form of comfort or distraction to you.

Joseph Verity CHAPTER II After barely a minute spent with nought but my ruminations for company, another roaming luminary of the stupol scene wandered ‘pon my path. ‘Twas none other than capital fellow Lord Liam Doon of Grassroots Manor. “Good day fair sir,” I said. “By any account, thou art a prolific politicker, but SRC Prez? Hath it been officated in writing — are nominations afoot?” I asked. “Their submission is imminent!” Lord Doon replied momentously. “And thou shalt politically parry with Josie Jakovac?” I enquired. “Indeed it is so,” Lord Doon confirmed. “This is well documented, is it not?” “‘Tis,” I replied. “But we hath nothing of note to put in the gossip section this week, and so we have resorted to recycling old content in novelty prose.” “I see. What a waste of time,” Lord Doon replied. “Get fucked,” said I to he.

L E T T E R S

Letters

An open letter from the Hong Kong Students’ Association

Nani?! Someone uwueads our comedy?

Dear Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor,

Dear Honi,

The University of Sydney Hong Kong Student Association is concerned by the attack on freedom of expression on campus recently. We are writing this letter urging the university to take affirmative actions regarding the dismantling of the “Lennon wall” and the related issues.

I swear to fuck if any more weeb shit turns up in honi (see: the dependent) I will personally correct and/or eat every copy of honi on campus. Weebs out. Alternatively, if next edition is completely weeb I will get a tattoo of a hentai scene on my left asscheek and unenrol. The choice is yours honi, with great power comes great responsibility. I am a person of their word.

In the past two weeks, some students who wish to express their opinion regarding the recent social movement in Hong Kong organised “Lennon Wall”, a mosaic of sticky notes” with explicit instructions stating any opinion shall be respected. Two walls were built in the course of two weeks and both were dismantled. The second wall, built after the first was dismantled, was dismantled sooner according to reports, which perhaps indicates an increasing momentum of attack on freedom of expression. What is more concerning is that SRC co-education officers and student group members on the SRC were involved in these public attacks, the ones who ought to adhere to the university’s values. Taking reference from Australian National University, we hence have a few suggestions: 1. The university shall condemn the attack on freedom of expression. 2. The university shall reassert the core value of freedom of expression. 3. The university shall draw dedicated areas in the campus allowing expression of controversial topics; and that they would be divided into two zones, allowing them to express their own opinion without impeding on those of the other group. 4. The university shall discourage offensive, irrelevant and disrespectful material. 5. The university shall alert campus security of the issue and advise them to pay extra attention. In light of the similar incidents nationwide, we are deeply worried that if the university does not take affirmative action to preserve the freedom of expression, the core value of University of Sydney would be eroded.

Annual Elections Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney

It’s time to

VOTE! in the SRC elections

Anonymous

The phony war continues To whom it may concern, As a long-time student and staff member in our campus community, I am writing to express my alarm regarding troubling allegations against elected SRC representatives. At least one SRC official, Jingrui Xu (SRC Education Officer) has been filmed destroying peaceful political and artistic expressions of support for the people of Hong Kong. The assembly of Lennon Walls as a semi-anonymous avenue of political expression, is an artistic outlet for these frightened students, who otherwise feel forced to stay quiet. I proudly believe and know the University of Sydney and its SRC in particular to have a very strong heritage of student activism and political expression. from Charles Perkins’ Freedom Rides to the Graffiti Tunnel being set aside for Vietnam War protesters. I would like to ask what actions the USyd SRC can and will take too uphold continued freedom of expression for students in a peaceful manner? Furthermore, to this end, I am asking whether the SRC will adequately investigate these concerning reports, and either censure or take relevant disciplinary action against the involved elected student officials, whose express duties are to USyd students? Jason

2019 Polling Booth Times and Places POLLING

WED 25TH

THURS 26TH

LOCATION

SEPT 2019

SEPT 2019

Fisher

8:45 – 5.15

8:45 – 5.15

Jane Foss Russell 8:45 – 5.15

8:45 – 5.15

Manning

10:45 – 3.15

10:45 – 3.15

PNR Building

11:45 – 2.15

No polling

Cumberland

9:45 – 2.15

9:45 – 2.15

Conservatorium

9:45 – 2.15

No polling

SCA

No polling

9:45 – 2.15

Pre-polling will also be held outside the Jane Foss Russell Building, on Tuesday 24th September from 10am–3pm.

Sincerely, The University of Sydney Hong Kong Student Association

Authorised by C.Lu, Electoral Officer 2019, Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: srcusyd.net.au

3

N E W S

National survey on student sexual assault confirmed

Ex-SRC lawyer refused seminar

Liam Thorne

Alan Zheng

Universities Australia (UA) has announced that a second national survey on university sexual assault and harassment has been funded for 2020, and is to be conducted by the Social Research Centre (SRC), in partnership with RMIT violence prevention expert Dr Anastasia Powell. A UA press release indicates that efforts have been made to ensure the second survey is carried out using ethicsapproved methodology, will involve “strong student and survivor engagement in the process,” and will give more attention to how the report’s release will impact the community. This comes as a positive development following a period of significant uncertainty surrounding who would conduct the survey and whether the methodological errors of the 2016 national survey, conducted by the Australian Human Rights Council (AHRC), would be repeated. In June, End Rape On Campus (EROC) summated criticisms of the 2016 survey

and resulting 2017 Change the Course report, in their own inaugural newsletter, Blaze. Criticisms included the survey not following best practice by not having its submission questionnaire passed through ethics-approval, and only making questions available in English. Moreover, the 2017 Report was published without an impact plan in order to assist Wom*n’s and Queer officers — who are inevitably inundated with disclosures following the release of such a report — or ensure there was sufficient sexual assault reporting infrastructure prepared. The UA press release indicates that attempts are being made to rectify several of these issues. In addition, the UA website says that Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia were funded to provide first responder training to student wom*n’s officers in July 2019, and will do so again for them in 2020. USyd Wom*n’s Collective Convenors Layla Mkh and Jazzyln Breen said that they

“hope that the SRC takes into account the critiques of the last survey provided by EROC and Women’s Collectives around Australia. Based on this year's reports of hazing at different USyd colleges, we don’t necessarily think the results of a new survey will be better regardless of the actions USyd has taken.” The 2017 AHRC report, the Change The Course: National Report on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment at Australian Universities recommended that the national survey be repeated every three years. Mkh and Breen added that, “while it is reassuring that the survey will be run by qualified professionals, it is disappointing to see a continued focus on surveying for statistics. We already know that there is a huge sexual violence crisis on campuses and that not enough has been done yet to stop it. We need more genuine action from universities and less administrative paperwork that makes them look like action is being taken.”

Former SRC Principal Lawyer, Thomas McLoughlin, refused to run a seminar on legal rights for the prominent China Development Society (CDS) in Welcome Week last year because of concerns of foreign interference, emails have revealed. “With the ongoing legal issues that international students are facing in Sydney every single year, we really hope to engage with the SRC legal department,” requested Reijo Wang who was vice president of CDS in 2018. McLoughlin declined, raising concerns over the independence of CDS from the Chinese Government and the need to maintain the legal service’s political independence and compliance with professional conduct rules. He offered a set of employment law guidelines instead. According to the preamble in McLoughlin’s contract with the SRC, the SRC Legal Service is to “participate in activities which improve the situation of students with regard to their legal rights and standard of living.” The service

"Sham consultation": Staff union criticises uni changes James Newbold Last Wednesday, union members on campus rallied against the recent slate of mismanaged changes across the University of Sydney (USyd) that are part of the Sydney Operating Model (SOM). Rally host and National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) member Alma Torlakovic explained that SOM encompasses hundreds of pages of change proposals from university management, aiming to cut costs by making staff redundant, all the while forcing remaining staff to absorb their workload. "The other thing [management] want with SOM is to make staff feel like it is their own individual responsibility," Torlakovic said, taking aim at the Employee Assistance Program that the University refers staff with employment issues to. Sophia Gluyas, the other host of the rally, explained the broader context of the protest, with reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, outlining the culture of corruption, bullying and

4

gaslighting perpetrated by management and embodied in the SOM. USyd NTEU Branch President Kurt Iveson took up a range of issues with the university in his speech, saying that while the University aims to demoralise staff, the union must instead not only democratise, but also decolonise, the university. For 165 current staff in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, the current change proposal fails to map the future of their jobs. Staff in student admin are monitored every second of their working day and even sent "mystery shoppers" to check on their dress and performance. Iveson claimed that fear, precarity and intimidation are being used against staff by a university management advised by corporate consultants Community and Public Sector Union USyd Branch President Grant Wheeler accused the University of suspending the conditions upon which a position can be made fixed-term. The University

rejects this. Robert Boncardo, from the School of Languages and Cultures, drew attention to the fact that 50% of USyd staff are precariously employed as casuals, and that even academics supervising theses, writing books and publishing two to three times the academic articles required of them are still being refused conversion to ongoing employment. He also took issue with universities, across the sector, abusing what few democratic processes they have left. Education Action Group activist Jack Mansell closed the rally by arguing that students see through changes, promoted as improving flexibility and efficiency, that are really about cost-cutting. He highlighted that staff had students' backs when education cuts were attempted in 2014 and 2017, and took shots at "corporate management and the governments that back them up," because in the neoliberalised university "students pay for it in the end.''

Photography by Dr David Brophy

is also to maintain “political independence.” “I have not been asked previously to speak to a specific club or society and the SRC Legal Service may need to develop a working policy about that in relation to perceptions of any bias of present and future clients,” McLoughlin replied. Under the direction of President He — who held an executive role as Sponsorship Director of CDS in 2017 —the SRC sidelined McLoughlin in March this year and cohosted a seminar with private firm Longton Legal. Three months later, McLoughlin was dismissed. He denied that McLoughlin’s refusal to assist CDS played a role in the dismissal. In the past, Honi has asked students involved with CDS whether the club has consular connections or relationships with the Chinese government. In a 2018 interview with Honi, then presidential aspirant Jacky He confirmed no link existed. “[CDS] are not associated with the Communist Party in any kind of way.”

N E W S

Hong Kong protest cancelled, again Jessica Syed and Alan Zheng Hong Kong students cancelled a rally outside the Great Hall on Friday which was originally planned to coincide with simultaneous protests nationwide. The cancelled rally comes on the heels of the removal of the main Lennon Wall on Eastern Avenue. Another Lennon Wall installed in the Graffiti Tunnel was found binned just last week. This is the second time in two weeks that a Hong Kong solidarity protest has been cancelled. The first, advertised on USyd rants, never eventuated because it failed to specify a time and no organisers from any of the campus’ Hong Kong communities, including the Hong Kong Students’ Association (HKSA), were reportedly involved. The University’s response to campus activism has not been consistent. Last week, campus security directed a group of Hong Kong students to move on when they were reinstalling the Lennon Wall on Eastern Avenue’s notice boards at midnight.

“A group of people wearing face masks attempted to put up materials on campus,” a spokesperson said. “As they did not identify themselves, security staff asked them to move on to ensure the safety of our broader community.” “We continue to strongly support the right of all our students to express opinions and political views in a respectful way.” A similar Lennon Wall installed at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) comes with 24/7 campus security presence and closedcircuit surveillance, regulated by rules of use which prohibit the removal of posters and messages. A UTS spokesperson told Honi “the University has been impressed so far with the respectful behaviour shown by its community, despite the varied political views.” Meanwhile, also on Friday, hundreds of pro-Hong Kong protesters gathered in Martin Place. The rally was briefly interrupted by a dozen proBeijing students.

Law summer school pushed forward

SRC grows to 35 councillors as student numbers swell Alan Zheng

For nearly a decade, the SRC comprised 33 directly elected councillors, last increased from 31 in 2010. Now, 35 council seats will be on the market in this semester’s SRC race after a decision by newly crowned Electoral Officer (EO) Casper Lu. The SRC Constitution requires one Representative for every one thousand students enrolled in an undergraduate degree, or part thereof, rounded to the next odd number. The groundwork for the increase was laid last year when Honi revealed the Council had been undersized for more than five years while elections were being administered by EO Paulene Graham. In her outgoing report, 2018 EO Karen Chau recommended an increase to 35 seats for the term of the 92nd SRC due for election this semester. According to the University’s 2018 Annual Report, there were 35,351 undergraduate students enrolled. However, according to the latest enrolment lists obtained by Honi back in June, undergraduate enrolments sat

at the more recent figure of 37,146. In lieu of census data from Semester 1 2019, Lu relied on the report’s figures, citing Council’s acceptance of Chau’s report and a rigid ruling by the SRC’s Standing Legal Committee that Council should increase to 35 seats if enrolment numbers went above 33,000. “There is no language in the interpretation which refers to the specific condition (enrolment numbers) in the recommendation; merely accepting the report gives 35 Representatives it seems,” Lu told Honi. This decision leaves the lingering possibility of continued underrepresentation on Council until next year. Despite the increase in seats, the maximum number of Representative tickets for each brand remains capped at 17. Presidential aspirant Josie Jakovac (Moderate Liberal) told Honi that opportunities for engagement and leadership were important on campus. “It is really incredible to see our university continuing

to grow and welcome new international students and students from diverse backgrounds,” Jakovac said. Jakovac’s opponent, former Honi editor Liam Donohoe (Grassroots) also supported the expansion but expressed disappointment that Council had not increased to 37. “It’s pretty ridiculous that students have been underrepresented for as long as they have and will fight to have the number of councillors increased to 37 should I get elected,” Donohoe said. Acting President Caitlyn Chu (Panda) did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Editors Nell O’Grady, Pranay Jha and Liam Thorne are not involved in the 2019 coverage of the Honi Soit, NUS and SRC elections. Polling for the SRC, Honi Soit, and National Union of Students elections will take place between the 24th and 26th of September.

Jessica Syed The University of Sydney Law School has restructured the way in which summer school units will be offered, effective from the end of this year. The major change involves the pushing back of summer school units so that they take place in December, as opposed to in January and February. In an email sent to LLB and Juris Doctor students last Monday, the School noted that “it is no longer practical to run units in January.” Dean of the Law School, Professor Simon Bronnitt, told Honi that, “to avoid the complications and inequities that would be generated by enrolling students after the release of results and before the end-of-year shutdown, we have decided to offer summer school units in December.” Honi understands, however, that students were already enrolling in summer school units before the release of results in previous years, with the annual cut-off date for enrolment being around late October.

According to Professor Bronnitt, the change also comes in response to alterations made to the University timetable, which mean that semester two finishes later than in previous years. Though teaching staff have expressed a preference for December teaching, the move may create a predicament for students who have little time to recuperate between the end of semester two exams – which often finish in late November – and the start of summer school. The email to students also explained that priority would be given to final year students in all units, despite many such units being preliminary secondyear subjects, such as Contracts. At this stage, there are no proposed changes to Winter School – which will be offered as per normal, depending on student interest and staff availability. Nor will there be any changes to the subjects that will be on offer for both Winter and Summer School in the law faculty.

Restaurante Mexicano 62-64 King St, Newtown easy walk from campus

Tuesday – Saturday 5pm til late New food, new cocktails, new wine list, new music. Same great value. HAPPY HOUR SPECIALS 5-7pm $10 Margaritas $7 Frozen Margaritas $6 Jalepeño Wings $5 Draught Beer & Cider 10% student discount 5

A N A LY S I S

Ode to the Ampersand Donnalyn Xu pays tribute to an overlooked symbol. The first line in Aracelis Girmay’s poem “&” begins with the symbol itself: “& isn’t the heart an ampersand / magnet between the seconds of days.” She relates the ampersand to a longing for connection. She calls it a mouth, a muscle. A highway. In an interview with The Rumpus, she revealed that the ampersand reminded her of the quickness in the Spanish “y”. As an Eritrean-Puerto Rican-African American writer, Girmay is a woman of many cultures. For her, and many other marginalised writers, the ampersand represents multiplicity within itself. “Greedy mouth, Hungry machine, time Machine. Round & plumish in its parts, beautiful animal whose limbs cross strange” My fascination with ampersands began with this poem. In my copy of Kingdom Animalia, a single blue sticky-note is eternally stuck to its corner, as a constant reminder of the colossal greatness in something small. I began to look at poetry as more than words, more than feelings. The lines of each stanza were little buildings rising out of the earthly spine: every ampersand, a window. They started to appear in poems of my own — first out of mimicry, then out of necessity. Adhering to literary conventions meant that the ampersand was absent in my formal writing. I associated it purely with poetry, where the words belonged wherever I put them, for whatever reason. Intuition. A gut-feeling: I liked how it looked in print. How it took its shape through softness, a fluid line dancing around twin curves. I also felt quite fond of conjunctions, as the loneliest words, always needing to connect. But there was more to this than an aesthetic choice, and I was drawn to its recurring presence in poems by writers of colour. In “&”, Girmay draws the link between our lives and the symbol that signifies closeness. The ampersand suggests either disruption or proximity: binding words closer together, while also disrupting the natural flow of letters. Its use remains heavily contested in contemporary poetry. As the only symbol in a line of letters, its effect is unsettling, and sometimes isolating. This feeling of displacement is explored in diasporic writing, often through the use of unconventional literary techniques by authors seeking to disrupt the traditional norm. Although the ampersand can simply be read as a tool of discomfort, its existence in poetry — particularly poetry from the peripheries — is much more layered and complex. The ampersand began as a character formed through two letters joined together, also known as a ligature. Another definition for ligature is the act of binding, or the thread used to stitch a blood vessel. In its very conception, the

6

ampersand evokes images of the heart and the living body. In its shape, it curls around itself. As Girmay poses, “the heart would rather die than keep its two arms all to himself.” The ampersand therefore represents the middle space between connection and duality. This notion of multiplicity is central to intersectional feminist theory. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa critiques the Western philosophy of a divided self that is manifested through hyphenating one’s identity. The opposing state is the new mestiza, a plural being with the tolerance for ambiguity. It redefines borders in the formation of a unified identity, encompassing culture, gender, race, and sexuality. The ampersand itself is a vehicle for hybridity, illuminated by the language of marginalised writers. It represents a shared feeling through the light of liminal spaces, with an almost unspeakable presence. In “Immigrant Haibun”, Ocean Vuong simply states, “Sometimes I feel like an ampersand.” Feelings and memories are expressed, not through words, but through a single symbol that is a paradox within itself. What does it mean to feel like an ampersand? From a distance, Vuong’s poems explore migration and collective trauma. A closer reading reveals phrases that are painfully stitched together with a tenderness for life and living. His poem “Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown)” unfolds on the day of the 9/11 Attacks, while also reflecting on the deaths and drug addictions of Vuong’s queer friends. He relates personal and public grief in a way that transpires intimacy. His lines are always sharp with impact in the quietest way, like the tension of a blunt knife pressing against skin that refuses to break: “I only earned one life. & I took nothing.” Separated by both an ampersand and a full stop, the two contrasting proclamations have a unique relationship. Repl ac i ng the ampersand with “and”

seems to imply that there is a thought and an action. I only earned one life, and I took nothing. I am this, and this is the result. However, the ampersand does not only allow unity in contradiction: it simply serves no contradiction. The two fragments on opposite sides of the ampersand exist through each other. It is not a consequence, or an action, but a very natural parallel between two individual concepts. The ampersand becomes both the bridge and the water. Visually, the words are placed closer together. Yet there is a feeling of separation in the heavy placement of the ampersand between “life” and “I”. There is the danger of collapse. Always, the danger of collapse.

As a queer woman of colour, my poetry often reflects images I associate with my own life — constructed through fragments and a constant desire to connect. Like the ampersand, we measure both distance and intimacy. The body becomes a site of conflict. Every word, an outstretched hand. Lonely in the most abstract ways. Sometimes, I feel like an ampersand. There are so many questions that follow this sentence. Maybe it answers itself. There is no finality to the ampersand; it is always open to what comes after. We try to make sense of a symbol with no sound, we fold it into language. You read it aloud and the meaning is lost. And, and, and, its lesser self. Sometimes, I feel unspoken. Sometimes, I feel like I am waiting for something that will never come. An unfocused image. No end, or beginning. Still, the running heart, the moving line. Twin lovers holding each other, arms sheltering myself.

Art by Amelia Mertha

A N A LY S I S

aviation subjugation Jessica Syed examines portrayals of gender and race in luxury flight vlogs. The YouTube video Naomi Campbell’s Airport Routine: Come Fly With Me resonated with me on an incomprehensibly profound level. I loved watching Naomi nonchalantly debate with herself as to whether she would buy Chanel lipstick or chocolate from the duty-free store (she settled on the latter). I relished seeing Naomi prance onto the tarmac in silk pyjamas to take photos of the plane’s grand engine with her iPhone – so big, she called it – before finally arriving at her first class seat, only to wipe the entire thing down with Dettol disinfectant wipes, zip-loc bag of sheet masks in hand. Though I will board any flight with a hefty dose of snacks, hand sanitiser and hydrating skin products, I can’t say that I have ever flown first class. But I do have a hobby in watching luxury flight review videos. This vlog genre consists of an individual filming every part of their experience on a flight: from food quality to leg-room. For me, it is a banal yet electrifying form of visual ASMR, perhaps best enjoyed after smoking a joint or two. How orgasmic it is to see a glimpse of the shower built inside of the Emirates A380, the humidified cabins in the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the unbelievable quality of the vegetarian bibimbap served on Korean Air, the fold-out double bed on Qatar Airways’ business class… If this particular flavour of commodity fetishism isn’t problematic enough, the

primary community of flight vloggers tend to espouse underlyingly sexist behaviours. For starters, the 10 most subscribed-to channels in the ‘flight reviews’ category on YouTube are all headed by men. Only two of them are men of colour, and only one is openly queer. A majority of these prominent men in luxury flight vlog production have overlapping interests in aviation more broadly, and would call themselves ‘avgeeks’ – i.e., they belong to a subculture of people who are fascinated with the particular parts and models of specific airplanes, beyond the services and products offered on board. In this way, the prevalence of men in the flight review genre tends to replicate the pervasiveness of men in aeronautical engineering, and in STEM generally. This is a tangential observation, however. The fact that these vloggers are men is not what renders their conduct misogynistic. Some facets of this misogyny are rather tame and laughable. One particular vlogger always makes a point of demonstrating his disdain for the plethora of products supplied in firstclass amenity kits. “Got no idea what on earth this is, must be for girls,” he comments, regarding a complimentary Shiseido face mist, as if his entire pretence of masculinity will be shattered the second the face mist is spritzed and the effeminate molecules settle firmly

inside his pores. The rest of it is more sinister, however. One of the top ten YouTube flight review vloggers, who boasts around 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, places an unnecessary amount of focus on the attire, presentation, and physical appearances of the air-hostesses in his vlogs. At best he films their faces in detail, at worst he zooms in on commonly sexualised body parts, such as their breasts. In one video where he reviews a Singapore Airlines first-class suite, he asks an air-hostess how long it took her to prepare her hairstyle, then demands that she spins around to show it off. Looking to the camera, he says, “Only on Singapore Airlines do you see such an impeccable hairstyle. This is one of the perks of coming on Singapore Air, enjoying the hairstyles.” Apart from this being a textbook case of women being treated as objects of male consumption, the attitude of expecting not only ‘impeccable’ hair but also service from female air-hostesses has lead to tangibly traumatic experiences for some such employees. Earlier this year, an American male passenger forced East-Asian air-hostesses on Tawainese carrier EVA Air to “undress him in the lavatory and then clean him after he used the toilet,” according to CNN. Racially tinged, this incident gives credibility to the notion that men, particularly in the West, continue to view Asian women as docile and subservient.

Indeed, racism is also a prominent feature in these vlogs, and the internal prejudices of the reviewers extend to their descriptions of particular geographical locations. Among most of the top 10 flight vloggers, there is an inherent, ambiguous skepticism surrounding the safety of Central Asian and South Asian carriers, with no concrete justification. African carriers and airports are similarly disparaged, with one East Asian vlogger describing an airport lounge in Harare, Zimbabwe as “a bit run down, like everything else in the country.” A preference is no doubt shown for airports and carriers based in either Western locations, or hyperdeveloped East Asian nations such as Korea or Japan. At their very heart, these vlogs capture an experience of complete luxury – an unfortunately capitalist, heterosexual realisation of the widely idealised notion of fully-automatedluxury-gay-space-communism. It is wildly pleasurable to indulge in watching these videos, so is there really any point in arguing to diversify something as innocuous as plane vlogs? Probably not. But there does appear to be a suggestion that, under a capitalist patriarchy, the achievement of luxury necessitates (at least to some extent) the objectification and subjugation of women and people of colour.

Art by Ludmilla Nunnell 7

P E R S P E C T I V E

The privatisation of memory Nell O’Grady’s long lost relative found their family in the online archives. There’s an old photograph from the late ‘60s that sits atop my parents lounge room windowsill. It’s a snapshot of my mother, her two sisters and their cousin as children. In the snapshot they are sitting on a park bench, their hair is amess in the wind. They’re staggered in frozen movements, one laughs and the other smiles directly into the camera. Separated by only a few years, they’re already completely distinct despite having spent their whole lives together. This photograph in particular is almost iconic in my mum’s family. There seems to be a copy in all of the four subject’s houses. You could call it one of our family’s most popular primary historical sources. My mother’s family are eager conversationalists: the stories told and retold around Christmas fried potatoes and brandied pudding are connected in a multiplicity of repetitive and benign ways. As a group we are absurd in our normality — arguments are passionate and ridiculous, political views are disparate. A myriad of careers, passions and temperaments amass together in an intricate map — like all families. As a network, we all find comfort in hearing stories about our relatives: my mother and her siblings and cousins never seem more connected than when they’re discussing their shared histories. These conversations can last for hours despite the very obvious truth that the next generation have heard almost all of them before. A few months ago my mother received a phone call. Our cousin had been contacted by a woman from Melbourne who shared the same mother as the rest of the five siblings in our family. At birth, she’d been separated by force from her mother, my grandmother, and adopted out at the request of my great grandfather under the ‘50s societal expectation that wom*n were not to have and keep children out of wedlock. My grandmother was taken to a home for unwed pregnant wom*n. She would keep this confidential from her whole family even after the day she died. The news of a new relative spread very quickly amongst my tight knit network of relatives with confusion and a blurred combination of excitement and bewilderment. This woman, my aunt, had found us through the online genealogy website, Ancestry.com. Most members of our family, before then, had not crossed into the online world of hereditary curiosity. We seemed content, perhaps naively so, in our own circle of first hand stories. These, to us, were considered the whole truth. One of my mother’s cousins however, in her curiosity to submit an Ancestry DNA sample would leave a trail that allowed our long lost relative to identify and eventually approach us. *** Genealogical websites have become a kind of pastime for thousands of Australians. They are a blurred hybrid of social media and historical archive wrapped up in an image of transformation, verisimilitude and a leafy green logo. There are various reasons that people are moving in to these networks to map their own online family trees. Most join out of easy curiosity: no expectations and no considerations. For some, my aunt included, these websites are a small part of a long period of research and discovery. The genealogical websites available have harnessed a mass market of emotional, hereditary inquisitiveness, or what journalist John Seabrook calls the “comfort of connectivity,” to create a business that is internationally thriving. Like any business venture, the organisation works in correlation with a range of external stakeholders. Users are promised travel discounts to visit ancestral hometowns or meet distant relatives with Airbnb, they gain access to external archives through their subscription to these websites and are used to promote the work of academics. Recently, Spotify and Ancestry collaborated on a

8

project that offers users a playlist based on their own Ancestry.com research. It offers a “soundtrack of their heritage.” Currently, Spotify does not have individual access to users DNA and “customers can manually input regions, into the playlist generator,” Ancestry. com outlined in a statement to Quartz. Regardless, it’s hard to ignore the trivialisation of family bloodline and heritage in these sites. In particular, the most marketable element of this global program is its now major direct-to-consumer genetic DNA testing project. For $129, users can send in a sample cup of their urine to an Ancestry lab that will in theory, use genetic variations to identify percentages of cultural heritage. The website suggests these discoveries mean something particularly meaningful to each individual. They suggest that everyone will learn something individualistic and that these percentages are always accurate.

“Most members of our family, before then, had not crossed into the online world of hereditary curiosity.” One of the real flaws inherent in these programs is the way the organisation simplifies the intricacies inherent in cultural and racial difference. By sending in your sample, Ancestry.com offers the opportunity to discover your “ethnic mix.” Even though someone, as told by Ancestry, may have a 2% heritage connection to a culture other than Caucasian, this does not mean they have experienced the cultural disadvantages or limitations experienced by that cultural group. Ancestry has, as of yet, not made any steps to rectify this element of the program and educate those users investing in the genetic testing available. In fact, at present it continues to encourage them. In April of this year, Ancestry.com removed a video advertisement after it reached viral infamy as a culturally insensitive and whitewashed depiction of African-American slavery. The video, set in the antebellum South in 1857, told a revisionist “love story” of a African American slave “running away” with her white oppressor. The Ancestry title read “uncover the lost chapters of your family history.” Being a genealogical website, this organisation failed to account for the fact that wom*n of colour in these contexts were subject to rape and violence from white men, not love, and that escaping to the North would have made no difference to the way this woman was treated in the late 1800s. It also suggested that the only way African American wom*n could escape slavery was with the help of a white male saviour and ultimately ignores any understanding of intergenerational trauma. This ad is also particularly misleading because at least for the Australian Ancestry.com website, the archives and materials available to users remain mostly white-centric, distinctly connected to the histories of white convicts and their families. For people of colour, there remains far less archival information available to them for discovery. Just as the organisation simplifies its depiction of identity and culture, it also somewhat subversively advertises itself in a way that projects aspects of discovery, transformation and learning that ignores the emotional and trying issues that often come with finding lost family members and understanding familial trauma. For many users, an enjoyable learning experience is all Ancestry.com will turn out to be. A game as such, an opportunity to figure out which family member owned an extravagant townhouse in the English highlands or why and how their great, great, great grandfather divorced his wife. But predominantly, the structure of these networks fails to warn or limit the behaviour of its users. Privacy in this context is a real issue. Of course everyone has a

right to know their background, but the open forum nature of these networks propels families into a world in which nothing remains secret. A friend of mine began looking into her and her partner’s ancestry a few months ago through an online genealogical website. When she enthusiastically explained this to her partner’s grandmother, she was met with an anxious reaction and a request to discontinue her research. There are stories and networks in families that are still yet to be explained. Ancestry.com, as a global enterprise, can reveal these stories before families are ready to hear or speak of it. This becomes particularly damaging when DNA genetic testing can reveal the distressing health issues of families before that network have had a chance to discuss it. There are limitations to this website that transfer across class, race and age. If these materials are online, they should be available to everyone, not trapped behind a particularly expensive paywall that limits discoveries to a select wealthy and computer literate few. The network itself, a digital interface of thousands of archives and DNA materials is still an online platform, and as such, still at risk of hacking. There is a strange tension in these networks that conceals information from those who deserve to see it and leaves that information at risk of being accessed by those who should not have it. Clearly there is a certain way that this platform should be used. Despite the way Ancestry.com mass produces results, and the fact that the accuracy of these sites remain unproven, they still helped my aunt in her attempt to connect with us because she used the limited tools available to her to confirm information she already knew. She may have discovered us through the genealogical networks of my cousin’s DNA submission, but when it comes to the important archival materials: family photos, histories and stories, it will be up to us, her family, to describe their significance.

Artwork by Shrawani Bhattarai

Art by Olivia Allanson

M U LT I L I N G UA L

Carrie Wen（温滢滢） 探寻孤独感导致的过度依 赖下留学生亲密关系和心 健康问题

仔

细算算，在这个城市也已经快呆了有五年 了。透过玻璃门，瞥了一眼刚刚和男友吵架 因情绪失控而砸碎的玻璃杯，感叹道这五年我的情 绪控制好像没有得到任何提升，摇了摇头。继续在 阳台上等待我一天中最喜欢的时刻- 夕照霞隐褪后的 夜色的时候，深蓝夜色夹带夕阳未散尽的酡红的时 候，这是老天对奔波了一天疲倦的人们的恩赐，这 种温柔浪漫的程度，犹如在满是灰尘的老房子里缓 缓播放的爵士乐，回荡在破烂酒吧里的流畅琴声。 我一直是个怀旧的人，最近更是如此。我脑海里 最深刻的画面是我第一次来悉尼因未满18住的寄宿 家庭的房子。寄宿家庭在East Lakes，房子很新，红 色米白色墙砖堆砌在一起，和绿色的植被相应，在 粉色霞光下有像是听lo-fi音乐才有的画面。 我那时候感到稀奇，每天最喜欢做的事情就是放 学回家后涂一片草莓酱吐司，拖着室友坐房子门前 等夕阳，等日色渐晚，等到完全天黑，月亮出来了 才肯罢休。回到房间看喜剧片，似乎是倔强的跟刚 来新城市的落寞感和想家的无助感相抗衡，好像笑 的越大声才能显得我们并不那么孤独。我们就像在 被黑夜吞噬前，依旧倔强显现的那团酡红。 *****

曾

经跟我一起看夕阳的室友去世了，一周前的事 情。我听到这个消息脑子一片空白。 预科毕业后她去了墨尔本，我们大概几年没联 系。只能在网络上看她更新的动态，预测她的生活 状况: 染头发了，学会化妆了，变瘦了，交男朋友 了，生活遇到困难了，大学毕业了等等。 直到几天前我看到墨尔本微信公众平台，发现她 的照片配上标题- 墨尔本大学女学生自杀身亡，文中 推测是她与男朋友发生了争吵，并可能导致她从28 楼公寓上一跃而下。 那一天的傍晚，没有晚霞。 *****

虽

未被证实这是她死亡的原因，但是文中出现了 她嫂子和她闺蜜透露的消息，指出了她与男友 不健康的恋爱关系-即男友有强烈的控制欲并存在家 暴行为。在未得到证实到情况下，我并不想过多评 价这件事情。但是留学生在澳洲遇到的不健康的恋 爱关系导致的心理健康问题是不可小觑的。 大多数学生在17，18岁的年纪独自海外留学，刚 来到陌生的城市不认识任何人，没有亲人的陪伴， 语言不流利，没办法融入一个新的本地学生团体， 以及各种文化隔阂使得本来就扑面而来到孤独感更 加达到极致。此时如果再加上学业上，经济上和家

庭上的压力，心理健康问题就更容易产生。而正因 为种种问题同时压到一个个尚未完全成熟的肩膀 上，沉重的不适感使得很多留学生期待找一个能相 互陪伴的对象，并且很容易把自己所有的一切都寄 托在这根“救命稻草”上，企图分担自己的不安和不 能被人理解的孤独。 在海外，朋友之交普遍较淡，朋友圈子换得也 很快，再很难找到长久陪伴的朋友的情况下，找到 对象好像成了很多留学生的诉求。孤独带来的另一 个副作用就是过度依赖，我身边很多朋友交往不过 两周便决定搬到一起同居，在本不成熟的青春年少 试图扮演婚后的家庭角色。因为年纪尚小而缺乏成 熟的处事观和包容心，两个人同居后的关系大都出 现问题。很多恋爱最终走向极端并由互相伤害而结 束。 Emily，一名来自中国的悉尼大学大三的留学 生，告诉Honi她上一段悲惨的恋爱经历: “我前男友 经常打我，他会踢我的肚子，扇我耳光。” 当我问 她是否有想过报告此事给警察，她说，”我没想过， 我觉得非常麻木，我害怕会对我签证造成影响也不 了解这边的法律，也不知道警察会不会管。” Emily告诉Honi她前男友把他锁在屋里，断绝她 与外面任何来往的那段时间，她试图吞药自杀，幸 运的是被室友发现送医院洗胃。在这看似不可理喻 的一次一次原谅也许是出于对于陌生环境的恐惧和 不安全感。 “如果我在中国，在他第一次动手我就会离开他 或者报警了。因为我父母朋友在身边，我不会那么 恐惧。可是我在悉尼，父母在几千里外，也没有真 正能够倾听帮助我的朋友。而且我很孤独，身边朋 友都谈恋爱了，我也觉得我需要继续谈恋爱。” 我不禁觉得细思恐极，如果Emily的室友没发现 她吞药昏迷并及时送往医院救治，那么另一件惨痛 的事情又会再次发生。 另一名来自中国的悉大留学生，Jennifer，也同 样向Honi讲述了类似的恋爱经历，不同的是前男友 以一种冷暴力的形式对待她。他们在认识一个星期 便很快开始同居生活。而当热恋期很快过去后，迎 之而来的却是各种争吵甚至升级为打架。然而没有 人愿意承认自己是主动家暴的一方，往往出于自己 的名声和利益考虑，把自己伪装成了受害者，而令 这段关系中真正处于弱势的一方受到指责。 “没有人知道真相，也没有人可以完全感同身 受。 即使我对他倾尽所有地付出和挽留，得到的是 变本加厉的冷漠对待和人身攻击。” Jennifer说由于 在这边缺乏亲近的朋友和远离家人，自己不断地陷 入自责并且想要修复关系，而不是第一时间结束这 段不健康的恋爱关系。 “在被迫的分手的一个月后，我几乎无时无刻不

在哭泣，不管是在人多的街道，或者独自在家。一 段不健康的恋爱关系给人带来的伤害不仅存在于恋 爱中，也在于分手之后，造成了不相信爱情也不知 道自己是否再有能力去爱的创伤心理。” Chen Xi在她的荣誉学士毕业论文 - 留学生亲 密关系：中国留学生在悉尼谈判约会 (“Sojourner intimacies: Chinese international students negotiating dating in Sydney”) 中，她通过采访不同的中国留学 生，总结到国际学生在恋爱关系中处于弱势地位是 由于一些社会结构和文化影响的劣势。结构上的缺 点，包括远离父母和以前的同伴的支持，语言以及 文化障碍等等。再次，她强调了缺乏同国家同伴的 支持也是另一个重要原因。 陈告诉Honi，“同国家同伴支持团体，即其他中 国留学生，往往会造成恶毒的人际关系， 并且容易 导致欺凌和疏远。” 更深层次的问题是，在她的研 究结果中，同国家的同龄人群体往往会重现家庭中 的霸权文化，包括对同性恋的消极态度，荡妇羞辱 (slut-shaming)，和有害的男子气概 (toxic masculinity) ，加剧了个人隔离，使留学生远离寻求帮助。” 这一点在中国留学生使用的网络媒体上得到了认 证。澳洲吐槽君，是很多留学生常用的平台用于吐 槽和叙述发生在自己身上的事情。可怕的是，几乎 大多数吐槽被伴侣伤害，出轨或者骗钱的帖子下都 会有人评论 “活该，没脑子”等恶意言论，以及还有 数不尽戏谑的言论。而真正给出建议和安慰的评论 极少。 在一条帖子中当事人声称她邀请男性朋友在家喝 酒然后被强奸的帖子下，很多人恶意的谴责被强奸 者，赞的人数最多的前十条留言中接近一半指责被 强奸者带人回家喝酒就代表着默许发生性关系，并 且称受害者行为为“钓鱼”；另一半则是无关紧要的 讽刺言论。真正的告诉受害者新南威威士周详细的 强奸法律条例以及希望她报警的言论被压在茫茫留 言的最底下。 *****

两

性关系本就复杂，在远离他乡的孤独感和不安 全感下，催生出了对另一半的过度依赖性使此 问题在留学生中更加复杂矛盾。在遇到问题后，因 同伴的欺凌和疏远，以及对于法律援助和心理咨询 的不了解，也没有那么多可倾诉的对象才导致了很 多悲剧的产生。 傍晚时分，我依旧倚在栏杆旁。好几对情侣牵 手走过。他们的笑容在晚霞的映射下，显得格外明 朗。我不禁揣测他们背后的故事。或许就像表面上 的浪漫美好，又或许不尽如人意 矛盾重重。没有答 案。或许我只能赶在黑夜吞噬之前，发出粉红色。

9

LO N G

R E A D

Cha nào, con nấy like father, like child Emma Cao fishes

Nước Đục Murky Waters In April I began writing poems to sound out my Vietnamese-Australian existence, and naturally they became about my father, my bố. The unsaid words I’d swallowed like fishbones found their way into the crooked lines. I have always felt a desire to understand why I feel so displaced in intimate spaces like my home, and disoriented amongst people dear to me like my family. And so, I went about writing and writing in an effort to find the answers within myself. My tutor called the collection of poems stoical, emitting a low level of sorrow. I have come to realise that my unspoken trauma seems to be inherited from my parents; their suffering so intricately tethered to mine. There is a Vietnamese proverb that reads đời cha ăn mặn, đời con khát nước. When the father eats salt, the child thirsts for water. But it is hard to detail its depths when all I have are fragmented memories, and the aftermath of their personal experiences. And so, my resentment has given way to a desire to discover what has been purposefully cast away. To take what is as much mine as it is theirs. My most lucid childhood memory is our trip to the Family Court. I remember entering the courtroom with my mother, my mẹ, and holding her fragile, pale hand — before two tall, well-dressed men insisted I remain outside. I was escorted to the playpen to sit on fraying grey carpet with the other children around a set of fading building blocks. I am not sure if I had truly known what divorce was at the time. I’d still find my father having Saturday afternoon naps on my brother’s single bed, and sleeping on our couch early on Sunday mornings. As a child, my memories of my father were categorised into three types: him sleeping, him drunk, and him arguing with my mother. The first was often the aftermath of the latter two. There is a fair amount of footage of him dozing in our home videos. It seemed like it was all he ever did. At the sight of him sleeping, my older brother and I used the family’s bulky film camera to capture his disgruntled expressions and drew on his face with whiteboard markers. Mẹ would scold us for our actions. “Máy đứa này! His soul won’t recognise him and it’ll become lost!” It upsets me that these are the memories I’ve held onto for a lifetime. Bố was hardly home, and when he wasn’t arguing with mẹ, it seemed like he was barely even physically present. And when I think about it now, I pity the younger me whose father’s absence in her childhood is reflected by his sleeping self. The role which I understood fathers to play in their child’s life was instead fulfilled by my single mother, whose days and nights were dedicated to working twice as hard and loving us twice as much. As I watched her shoulder this burden on her own, the beginnings of resentment began bubbling inside me. I decided that I would love her twice as much, and what feelings I had left for my father would be bitten off, chewed on, and spat out. After I started high school, I only saw bố on the weekends. “He’s still your father,” mẹ would insist in response to my disdain and dismissal, “you still need to

10

for herself in her father’s tarnished memories.

Art by Annie Zhang see him.” After all those years, she was still packing her cooking into plastic containers for him. He and I would sit across from one another and eat lunch, leaving our words unspoken and gorging ourselves on steak and dissatisfaction instead. Until my mother got extremely sick. I was 17 and my brother was 23, then. I sat still against the hard, plastic chair, my short legs barely grazing the ground. I remember counting the tiles that made up the hospital’s white floors, and then counting my father’s frantic footsteps. His hard heels slapped the ground as he entered the hospital, and simultaneously re-entered my life as a permanent fixture. The first year without mẹ at home was cold. It was my last year of high school — my thighs chafed and yellow stains bloomed at the armpits of my white blouses. I only caught glimpses of my father in nonplaces — the car, the hallway, the apartment elevator. With my door shut, we knew only of each other’s muffled existences. His feet padded down the corridors and the constant dialogue resounding from the TV was my reminder that he was there, being. I am not sure when I grew accustomed to his presence. But as time passed and I began to brood more and more about my own loneliness, I became curious about his too. Làm con là gì? What does it mean to be a child? Làm (verb): To do, to undertake As May arrives, I schedule a meeting with Dr Lien Pham, a sociology lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, whose interests are in the language and identity of diaspora. I am swept up by the Autumn breeze as I hurry to meet with Dr Lien at a UTS café. We choose a high table and sit on chairs that leave my feet far from the ground. I tell her honestly that I’m not sure what I want from this talk, although I prepared frantically for our meeting, having read about how trauma lies in the memories we choose to share and those we don’t. I ask her to define this disconnect and detachment — the intergenerational trauma that I do not have the words to communicate. “I’ll give you an example through my experience then,” Lien begins. She draws a horizontal line with her index finger across the table as she explains that for her, intergenerational trauma is found in the way

her family has carried through a brokenness that can only be blamed on the disruption and separation brought about by the war. She tells me that becoming a refugee, staying in the camp for a prolonged amount of time and adjusting to a different lifestyle and culture had shattered her family dynamic. “The family broke,” she states firmly. “We lost the focus.” In their pursuit of freedom and of life, they had sacrificed the family unit. “All of us went our separate ways in terms of who we are,” she says. “We became individualist.” I feel a familiar emptiness rock me as we mull over how memories can remain shamefully foreign, even between people bonded by both blood and proximity. It pushes me to ask her what aspects of the trauma have carried through to her children. “I see they are very much individualistic,” she says quite easily. “We don’t go to family get-togethers every week so they don’t see that collectiveness. They don’t have that very collective big overall family to rely on, and I [can] see them become very individualistic.” Individualism is a concept that is particular to the Western world. I too am aware that the conventional Vietnamese family experience is a more collective one, although I am not a part of one myself. A wave of empathy rushes over me as Lien recalls the rising and falling of her family life. What her family could have been has been brought to a standstill by the trauma, and what’s left seems to be hidden within dull waters. What also intrigues me is her position as someone who shares both the experiences of the generation before and after her. It is a conflict that is distinctly

LO N G shared by first-generation immigrants constantly negotiating between their past and present selves as they aspire to be the best children for their parents, and the best parents for their children. Although she expresses her unhappiness about her children’s lack of collectivist experiences, since Lien arrived in Australia when she was only eight, she also shares to some degree their experience of individualist Western culture. “I’m caught in the middle,” she says. “My mum strongly believes in the collective but in a very oldfashioned and very traditional Vietnamese way… yet I have children who I can’t demand that from because they don’t see those values.” I realise how easy it is to feel estranged from ourselves and the collective. As we bid each other farewell, I feel in her eyes a desperate encouragement to ask questions about my own family experiences. It seems that the most significant thing in understanding intergenerational trauma is recognising how personal it is. I sense a common understanding between us that the only way is to prod. Perhaps I can, I think to myself. After having bumped into these feelings again and again in my studies of transcultural conversations and postcolonialism, it feels only right for me to tread through these waters. Về thương, về bị thương About love, about wounds Thương (Verb): To love Thương (Noun): To be injured, to be wounded It is a Sunday and we are having Yum Cha at the Golden Palace Seafood Restaurant in Cabramatta, when a question about his refugee experience falls from my lips. Dad had enthusiastically agreed to the interview a week before, following my interview with Lien. It feels like the right moment; my eyes dart from the table’s red and pink décor to the rattling food carts as I await his response. My father’s eyes shine like crystal currents, intrigued. Yet he still says, “Not right now. It’s too loud in here.” His voice is earnest. I accept it and place a prawn dumpling in my mouth, its skin scorching my palate. But suddenly, he starts speaking — almost subconsciously

R E A D

— about his journey. Unlike my mother who came here by airplane after marrying my father, Bố was a refugee who came to Australia during the depths of the war, living in the jungles of Cambodia for nine months before sailing away from the motherland at 16. My eyes mirror his. “What do you want to know?” he asks. When I prod about his first memories in Australia, he describes leaving the migration centre dressed in Red Cross donations with a belly full of begrudgingly eaten “Australian” food. My uncles had arrived a year earlier, as my grandmother had wanted to separate her sons to ensure that she would have at least one boy left with her at the end of it all. When I ask him if he knows of his brothers’ experiences, he tells me they have never spoken about it. I have felt the slick oozing tension between my father and his siblings. He is the youngest, and they bully and undermine him — I have heard it in the tone of their phone calls, felt it seep through the doors of my grandmother’s house. Although his words drip with anguish, they hold no blame. It is a strange unconditional love borne of obligation and tied by collective loss that is deeply familiar. “Bố don’t have the kind of [close] relationship — with both of my brothers. Just because we never had a chance to grow up together.” And yet, he constantly reminds me that they love me in ways I do not know. At the tail-end of my grandmother’s life, she suffered from dementia and my dad’s eldest sister sacrificed her life and career to care for their mother. She has no family of her own. Whenever I visited my bà nội, my aunt handed me slippers at the door to wear inside, and pushed me into the vintage floral chair beside my grandmother’s bed. Once seated, she forced a red envelope containing a $50 dollar note into my hand. “Keep it,” she shouted, and I thanked her in Vietnamese. But my aunt would often go long periods of time avoiding my father, without telling him what he did wrong. And when that happened, it meant my bố wouldn’t visit. “I didn’t spend a lot of time with my parents, like her,” he mutters, slick with regret. “But she sacrificed everything, so we have to appreciate that — we have to.” As much as my father became absent from my family’s life after the divorce, it seems he was also

absent from his own. He concedes he was irresponsible. But perhaps I can empathise with being a VietnameseAustralian, and having to be twice more Vietnamese and twice more Australian than the ordinary Vietnamese or Australian. To always have to “need to be” — rather than merely “be” — is a suffocating burden for the immigrant. Nước trong (Có còn hơn không) Clear waters (Something is better than nothing) We sit in silence in the car after we finish lunch. When we pull into our driveway, he drifts into his memories of his first day out of the migration centre. After my uncles came to get him, they brought him back to their two-bedroom unit, where he slept on the couch. “Bố was with your uncles for five to seven years,” he says. “Bố was living like that.” I recall all the times I watched his still form dozing on the couch throughout my childhood. It seems to have become his place of solace. Before we get out of the car, I ask him if he has any last words. “Surviving is surviving, but you need to have quality time with your family.” I wonder whether he is reminding me or himself. In an eager bid to understand my own conflicts about family ties and the pain associated with familial responsibilities, I have unknowingly delved into his. It remains true that I have inherited the tensions of the Vietnamese-Australian diaspora like heirlooms, daintily woven with pain and sorrow and tied meticulously by obligation. The fog draped river has left me resentful of my father’s ongoing emotional absence from my life and the expectations he projects onto me as his daughter, a granddaughter and a niece of a broken family. But I am unlearning my default instinct to remain silent in an act of obedience, and am realising that the obligation to my family that I have always shouldered, is one that is far beyond me and my capabilities. And as I walk underneath my father’s shadow that stretches long across me, I no longer assume the shapes it makes, but use the fragmented images my father has begun to show me to weave it accurately. As of today, my father and I no longer creep around each other. In the way he packs my lunch and ends his text messages with ‘love u’, I can tell he is compensating for the experiences that he once missed. And so, I allow myself to embrace the warmth that I feel in my chest towards him. At times, I still bear a stoic resignation towards him and his ideals, but I now know that he was robbed of understanding his identity as a father, a son, a brother and as his own individual person. Being a Vietnamese-Australian, he is caught between the spirit of collectiveness and individuality in spaces so intimate to his identity. And perhaps in plummeting into his murky waters, I have become tender to his traumas and tender to my own.

11

F E AT U R E

When the far right believes in climate change Words by Lara Sonnenschein Art by Lauren Moore

A

fixture almost as notable as low taxes, climate change denial or doubt has long formed a constitutive ideological role within the political right in Western liberal democracies. Yet, with the last five years being the hottest on record, there inevitably comes a point at which one starts to sweat — the contradiction between conservative’s claims and a changing climate becomes too great. Accordingly, with the increasing incongruence between their words and the weather, some sections of the far right are embracing the traditionally liberal realm of climate science, and are in turn using it as a framework to push their own reactionary, racist agendas. In September 2017, American Renaissance, a white nationalist magazine, presented a question to their readership: “What does it mean for whites if climate change is real?” In the ensuing several hundred words, the publication deviated from decades of right wing doctrine in order to propose an ethno-nationalist perspective on global warming. They correctly analysed that changing weather patterns have and would continue to impact poor people of colour in the Global South disproportionately, which would by extension lead to higher rates of migration to the Global North. Indeed, the magazine wrote that “the population explosion in the global south combined with climate change and liberal attitudes towards migration are the single greatest threat to Western civilisation,” adding that “[this is] more serious than Islamic terrorism or Hispanic illegal migration.” Defending this position, American Renaissance’s editor-inchief and prominent white nationalist Jared Taylor stated, “I make no apology for… urging white nations to muster the will to guard their borders and maintain white majorities.” Similarly, on the eve of the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally which saw anti-fascist counter-protester Heather Heyer murdered in Charlottesville, Richard Spencer (perhaps America’s most famous white nationalist) wrote that, “we have the potential to become nature’s steward or it’s destroyer.” He continued, “putting aside contentious matters

12

like global warming and resource depletion, European countries should invest in national parks, wilderness preserves, and wildlife refuges, as well as productive and sustainable farms and ranches. The natural world — and our experience of it — is an end in itself.” Alt-right Reddit threads concerned with the ethnonationalist position on climate change generally indicate a simultaneous belief in climate science, and a desire to attempt to mitigate global warming’s effects through violent means, with commenters arguing, “if you believe in global warming the obvious implications are that global migration must be shut down and that all the quickly growing populations must be quarantined or “encouraged” to stop having children.” Others suggest that only those on the political right truly care about the environment, with comments such as “to be fair, the Third Reich was one of the earliest governments to make conservationism a major focus”, and another user writing, “what really pisses me off

is how everyone associated deep ecology with communism and far left ideologies which are deeply rooted in industrialisation. It was Nazi Germany that was environmentally aware not Soviet Russia, with the rabid industrialisation.”

Fascistic ideals have long been premised on a nostalgic natural world. The eco-fascist movement has certainly grown in influence within far right circles as a result of both growing fears of the climate catastrophe and traditional white nationalist arguments about ‘demographic replacement’ or ‘white genocide’. Yet, fascistic ideals have long been premised on a nostalgic natural world, with far right ‘environmentalism’ stretching back to Nazi Germany. In their important book on eco-fascism, Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier note that Nazi ecology was “linked with traditional agrarian romanticism and hostility to urban civilisation”, and that environmental ideas were an “essential element of racial rejuvenation.” The infamous Nazi slogan blut und boden (“blood and soil”) coined by the Nazi’s principle ‘ecological’ thinker, Richard Walter Darré, and chanted at Charlottesville in 2017, was designed to encapsulate a supposed intrinsic connection between a racially constituted group of people (blood) and the land upon which they live (soil). Nature has also featured prominently in other nationalist movements, perhaps most notably with the white cliffs of Dover in English nationalism. Yet, eco-fascism is not relegated to 20th century history and 21st century Reddit and 8chan threads. Nine minutes prior to the Christchurch shooter entering the Al Noor Mosque and massacring 50 people, he emailed a 74 page manifesto to more than thirty different recipients including to the New Zealand Prime

F E AT U R E

Minister Jacinda Arden’s office. His manifesto outlined his motivations for the attack that was about to unfold, where he referenced “white genocide” in keeping with the white nationalist position of ‘the great replacement’ theory. He referred to the Muslim victims of the attack as “a large group of invaders” and referenced British fascist Oswald Mosley as the figure who most influenced him. Yet perhaps most interestingly, or unusually, the shooter described himself as an eco-fascist, writing “there is no nationalism without environmentalism”. Five months later, in a copycat massacre in El Paso, Texas, which saw 22 people murdered in the city at the US-Mexico border, the gunman’s manifesto was eerily similar to that of the Christchurch killer. He also espoused an eco-fascist ideological view and chillingly titled his four page manifesto An Inconvenient Truth, in an ode to Al Gore’s seminal 2006 climate change documentary. An entire paragraph of the manifesto is dedicated to ecological degradation and a Malthusian philosophy, as he writes that “the decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations”. “The next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using our resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.” There are also indications that far right political parties are beginning to take the climate crisis seriously and are going ‘green’. France’s far right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen has promised to make Europe the world’s “first ecological civilisation” and has harkened back to Nazi language railing against “nomadic” (see: rootless cosmopolitan) people who “do not care about the environment” as “they have no homeland.” Further, National Rally party spokesperson and recently elected member of the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, proclaimed “borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet.” Bardella has also espoused the ‘great replacement’ theory. In a further sign that far right political parties are shifting on the issue of climate change, the youth wing of Alternative for Germany (AfD) have urged their party leaders to renounce the “difficult to understand statement that mankind does not influence the climate” as it is an issue which motivates “more people than we thought”. Whilst the AFD’s vote share grew marginally in this year’s European elections where they received 10.8 per cent of the vote, its increase paled in comparison

to the Green Party’s surge to second place where they garnered more than 20 per cent of the vote in a country where climate change was many voters’ top concern. As the 2020 US election is beginning to heat up, there are even rumours that Donald Trump is attempting to go green, with the majority of Americans in favour of stronger environmental protections. David Banks, who previously advised Trump on environmental matters, told Bloomberg, “for the President to win these battleground states, he’s going to have to have some record of environmental achievement to showcase.” The far right’s changing stance on climate change presents a clear challenge for progressives and leftists.

It seems increasingly likely that more sections of the right will begin using climate change as an effective political tool to advocate for even more punitive immigration measures. Of course it is principally and politically imperative to explicitly reject the most heinous eco-fascist “blood and soil” sentiments, however, it is just as crucial to not let their arguments seep into genuine environmentalist movements, which have already formed in some sections of the so-called left, with arguments around population control and the supposed threat of mass migration often used. More importantly however, it is incumbent on us to acknowledge that the liberal left has already been ceding ground to the right. For the past two decades, the climate debate has hinged upon climate denialism versus climate science, and the liberal left strategy has been simply to debate the right on their own terms (is anthropogenic climate change real?) and to convince the public of the science. Whilst this is certainly important, particularly given the power that right wing media organisations wield — especially in Murdoch’s Australia — it should never have been the sole or even primary strategy. Ultimately, this singular focus on attacking denialism has meant the liberal left has remained on the back-foot, ill-equipped to go toe-to-toe with the political right if and when it proposes harmful policy prescriptions concerning climate change. The majority

of progressives and leftists alike have been defined by what they’re against (climate denialism, Adani, the Liberal Party), rather than what they’re for, failing to articulate a broader, cohesive political vision. Denialism seems to be slowly on the way out, and it’s pertinent to ask whether the alt or far right will be able to influence the narrative. However, a cursory glance at Trump’s America should already give us the answer. Right wing populists such as Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon who teeter at the ethno-nationalist fringes of society have already been successful at importing their ideas into the White House. Moreover, as right wing populism and anti-immigration sentiment continues to grow in Europe, it isn’t difficult to imagine far right positions on climate change infiltrating climate policy. Where climate change and immigration were once viewed as discrete issues in the political sphere, taken up by the left and right respectively, it seems increasingly likely that more sections of the right will begin using climate change as an effective political tool to advocate for even more punitive immigration measures. Currently, the liberal left is unprepared to deal with such a challenge, and the strategic choice for progressives to focus on climate denial has functionally depoliticised climate change and turned it into an intellectual contest of ideas, rather than a political fight over competing visions of our collective future. Those on the left now have the opportunity to abandon denialism and scepticism as focal points, and instead analyse what the climate realists on the far right are doing. Pertinently, there is a desperate need to advocate a bold, just and transformative agenda. There are certainly interesting developments around what a Green New Deal would look like. Importantly, in grappling with Labor losing the unloseable election and decimating its vote in Queensland, sections of the Australian environment movement have recognised that green jobs must be a central demand in winning over workers and broadening the environmental movement beyond the #StopAdani #Resistance. Ultimately, political leaders in the Global North can denounce El Paso and Christchurch and offer thoughts and prayers. But failing to both dramatically curb global warming and open borders to refugees in the face of migration spurred by climate change will in the end have far deadlier consequences than any 8chan ecofascist with an assault rifle.

13

C R E AT I V E

the rabbit Annie Zhang It rains, until it doesn’t. The nurse asks questions and I have no answers. I sketch a rabbit with bloodied teeth. What did it eat to stain its mouth so? Later, I draw the crest of one cloud shoaling into the trough of another. A cold sun, light running like open wounds down my arms. I stay. The ward smells of my sweat and someone else’s urine. It doesn’t rain, until it does. I see the rabbit in the window before it sees me, and I sketch it again. A scared thing, crouching inside that other skin. I sketch its hands, first. Fingers coiled, shaking, as claws. Tracing the shell of one ear, there. Its eye, here. And look, it still has blood on its teeth.

14

C R E AT I V E

Art by Amelia Mertha

15

C U LT U R E

Leave Robbie Alone! For Vivienne Guo, sometimes our childhood villains become our heroes in adulthood. When fondly looking back on the TV shows that made my childhood, I often find myself thinking about Robbie Rotten, the antagonist of Nickelodeon show LazyTown. Reapproaching children’s shows years later with an analytical lens is always a disorientating and slightly uncomfortable task, but the case of Robbie Rotten is one that I take on gladly. We grow up watching villain-hero dichotomies on-screen, offhandedly sticky noting certain habits, behaviours and appearances as “good” or “bad.” This is how we come to understand our world, in black and white; the plurality of the grey areas come as we grow older. Having now grown up, I can see that Robbie Rotten was wrongfully villainised on the small screen. Firstly, I’d like to address Rotten’s caricaturised physical stature, conflating villainy with a non-standard body. LazyTown is a show premised on encouraging sports and healthier lifestyles — set in a town of lazy people, who are saved from the grasps of the ‘evil’ Rotten by the ever-athletic Sportacus. Next to Sportacus’ sublime figure, Rotten’s pronounced slouch and protruding belly make him look like a chicken Twistie, and a disappointment to movements of body positivity. If it is not already abundantly clear, I have to expose an obvious fact; shockingly,

most of us aren’t in Peak Physical Form, as Sportacus would have us believe. Now while I understand the intentions of the show, must we do so by creating a scapegoat in Rotten? While we mock Rotten for his horrible posture (which, while we’re on the topic, is something that most of us suffer from) and his generous body fat percentage, let me pose this question; are we actively contributing to cultures of shame that body positivity movements were specifically founded to combat and destroy? Discuss. When so much of our mockery of Rotten lies in his physical stature, we actually overlook a very important detail of his representation: his outfits! Let’s quickly establish an OOTD (outfit of the day): Rotten exudes mystery when rocking pinstripes and a dark colour scheme of royal purple, maroon and navy with gold accents, or disguises himself with glittery purple cat-eye sunglasses. Forgive me for my boldness, but Rotten has the energy of someone who could single-handedly bring suspenders back into popular fashion. Objectively, Rotten with his snazzy pinstripes, and flare pants, is a fashion god (e-people community rise up!). And personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that Sportacus has ever worn… Take your goggles and whisker-stache away from here, sir!

In an age where our social media feeds are flooding with ‘quirky’ statements that preach homebody habits (Netflix and Chill? x) over #fitspo, it is antithetical and antiquated for us to mock Rotten for his love of the comforts of home. Everyone needs a day off sometimes, and perhaps the representation of Rotten was not the best in this respect. The villainisation of Rotten for his over-exaggerated homebody habits likely left young audiences with the impression that self-care and taking a day to yourself is unacceptable and selfish. But now, a serious note, all jokes aside. Memes of Robbie Rotten and his iconic pinstripes have unwittingly become a haven for youth to identify with homebody behaviours. And though it seems untenable, even ridiculous, to look at a children’s show and criticise the undertones of body shaming, I am of the opinion that looking back on the past, and being able to draw out the problematic rhetoric that lies behind it, is a marker of

personal growth. In the months before his tragic death on 21 August 2019, the actor Stefan Karl received floods of praise and gratitude for the lightheartedness and joy that he brought (and continues to bring) to kids. Sometimes our childhood villains become, in their own right, heroes in our adulthood.

Art by Browntown

HBO’s Chernobyl: A discussion of history and the present Iris (Lei) Yao examines the historical and political controversy surrounding HBO’s hit new mini-series. This article was originally published in chinese. Translation by baopu he. On the 26th of April 1986, the most serious nuclear disaster in history happened. Such was its magnitude that it was rated a seven - the highest severity - by the International Nuclear Event Scale. The resounding boom of the explosion would forever change the fate of Ukraine and the Soviet Union, but on the night that it happened, people were still stuck in a hazy reverie of ignorance. A great mansion on the verge of collapse, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Honour of Vladimir Lenin served as a symbol of the Soviet Union at the height of its status as a superpower. At the same time, it came to mark the beginning of its downfall. The good and bad of human nature, its strengths and weaknesses, its simplicity and complexity – all interweaved together in this worker and proletariat lead country. The nuclear radiation emitted by the disaster not only caused a massive economic loss of almost three hundred billion dollars, but more tragically, the deaths of around four thousand people in the former Soviet countries, and sixteen thousand in the rest of Europe. Fast forward to now: we are removed from the disaster by many

16

years, Chernobyl has been made into an American miniseries by HBO, resonating with viewers from countries all over the world whose destinies are shared in the face of nuclear disaster. But at the same time, the validity of the series has been called into question. After glossing over and changing some historical details, some believe the series has become a cultural export which extolls the superiority of capitalism, all the while demeaning those who lived under socialism. According to a BBC interview with an operator at the power plant who survived the disaster, the series contains several unreasonable exaggerations and embellishments. One scene in particular that comes to mind is the one showing a group of miners digging up a tunnel underneath the reactor to protect the residents who live around the power station. They need to clean a space for the heat switch to prevent liquid from seeping out of the melted core of the reactor into the surface water. If the surface water becomes contaminated by nuclear pollution, then the disaster would endanger the lives and health of millions more. In this scene, the workers strip their clothes until they are fully naked due to

the extreme heat of their underground surroundings. But in reality, the workers, while taking off some of their clothes, were not stark naked. This has been perceived by some as showing the miners being deliberately humiliated, and consequently, evidence of the show disparaging the imperfect state of human rights under Socialism. Indeed, this one scene was superfluous, and ultimately not necessary. But looking at it from another perspective, the show is a reflection of the director’s own awareness of the issue, and many other details, such as the problem of the nuclear reactor and the symptoms of radiation sickness, were all depicted to a highly accurate degree. Unsurprisingly, in Russia, parts of this series have been cut out or outright prohibited. But if we are to talk about the degree to which the series depicts historical details, the scene with the naked miners can be interpreted in many different ways. In the scene, the reason why the miners took off their clothes was because of the blistering heat around them, and symbolises how in such an extreme environment, they do not have the luxury to bother with small trifles. Consequently, saying this scene is an example of the series,

a product of Capitalism, attacking Socialism would be taking an overtly sensitive stance. In the aftermath of Chernobyl, there was the problem of government officials avoiding responsibility for the mistakes which caused the disaster. However, this cannot be said to be limited to the Soviet Union. While the corruption that plagued the Soviet bureaucracy should be criticised, these problems have arisen in any country that has experienced a nuclear disaster, such as Fukushima in Japan and Pennsylvania in America. In many ways, the disaster could be argued to be an inevitable outcome of a complex bureaucratic system. After watching Chernobyl, what we must reflect on is not only the conflict of ideology behind the scenes, but also how we deal with crises in our current system, and how we balance our own fate with that of our country. There is no doubt that political systems need to be constantly transformed and improved, and not be left to stagnate. When a single cog in a nation’s machinery becomes the scapegoat to conceal the failings of the system as a whole, then that national machinery is doomed to fall apart as other cogs fall apart one by one.

Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney

2019 SRC Elections

Postal Voting Application Form POSTAL VOTING

Get FREE help with your tax return from a Tax Help volunteer on campus! Available to USyd undergraduate students through the Students’ Representative Council (SRC) until the end of semester 2 To book an appointment call: 9660 5222

If you wish to vote in the 2019 SRC elections but are unable to vote EITHER on polling days Wednesday 25th or Thursday 26th September at any of the advertised locations, OR on pre-polling day (on main campus) Tuesday 24th September, then you may apply for a postal vote. Fill in this form and send it to: Electoral Officer Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney PO Box 794, Broadway NSW 2007. PLEASE NOTE: postal vote application MUST BE RECEIVED AND IN OUR PO BOX by Wednesday 11th of September at 4.30pm or it will not be considered. No exceptions. You may use a photocopy of this form. Name of applicant: Student card number: Faculty/year: Phone number: (

)

Email:

Have you lost some property at Uni? You might be in luck! Please visit Campus Security in the CIS Building to see if you can identify your belongings.

Mobile #: I hereby apply for a postal vote for the 2019 SRC elections. I declare that I am unable to attend a polling booth on any of the polling days, OR on the pre-polling day, for the following reason: (Please be specific. Vague or facetious reasons will not be accepted. The Electoral Officer must under section 20(a) of the Election Regulations consider whether the stated reason justifies the issuing of a postal vote.)

Signature: Please send voting papers to the following address:

State:

Postcode:

For more information, contact: Casper Lu, Electoral Officer 2019 p: 02 9660 5222 | e: elections@src.usyd.edu.au

Authorised by C. Lu, Electoral Officer 2019, Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney p: 02 9660 5222 | w: srcusyd.net.au

S R C

President

R E P O R T S

Note: These pages belong to the Office Bearers of the SRC. They are not altered, edited or changed in any way by the editors of Honi Soit

Jacky He did not submit their report this week.

Vice Presidents Dane Luo and Caitlyn Chu Statement on the Attack towards a Chinese Student CW: violence. The Vice Presidents strongly condemn the attack on a Chinese student on 8 August 2019 towards a Chinese international postgraduate student. The attacker was seen to be spitting and yelling at people of Asian appearance meaning this was a racially motivated violent attack. We call on the University to take all steps to ensure the safety of students on their own campus. We demand zero tolerance

towards racism, intimidation or abuse on this campus. We will work with the University and other student organisations including SUPRA to improve campus safety.

You will then need to attend an interview with a professional, confidential caseworker. For more information, please visit www.srcusyd.net.au/ textbooksubsidy.

Textbook Subsidy Program

Welfare Week

The Textbook Subsidy Program is still going and it’s not too late to apply for a $100 subsidy towards textbooks and learning materials this semester! You can apply by filling out an online form at www.surveymonkey. com/r/srctextbooksubsidy.

Welfare Week took place last week between Tuesday 13 to Thursday 15 August 2019 alongside USU Market Day. We had so many organisations, student support services, NGOs and unions out on Eastern Avenue and it was a fantastic

opportunity for students to hear and see what they do. We hope that students who came by learnt something about the services and organisations out there to support them. We hope that this event will continue in the future. Know Your Student Rights – Health Care Card If you are on Youth Allowance, Austudy or Newstart, you are eligible to get a Health Care Card. Otherwise, you may be eligible if your average income

(over an 8 week period) is less than $561 per week for a single person without children, or $969 per week for a single person with a dependent child, or a couple. A Health Care Card gives you access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme drugs for $6.50, free ambulance cover, free dental care, free prescription lenses and frames, and discounts to some GPs. For more information, contact our professional caseworkers at help@src.usyd.edu.au.

General Secretaries

Yuxuan Yang and Niamh Callinan did not submit their report this week.

Welfare Officers Madeleine Powell, Ellie Stephenson, Liam Thomas and Mingxiao Tu did not submit their report this week.

Environment Officers Alev Saracoglu, Alex Vaughan, Georgia de Mestre and Jayesh Joshi did not submit their report this week.

Intercampus Officers Manchen Wen, Paul Touma and Shuhan Zhang did not submit their report this week.

Your Council at Work

3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th Ordinary Meeting of Council

Read the reports online at: srcusyd.net.au/council/council-meetings-minutes/ 5th and 6th Ordinary Meeting The 5th and 6th ordinary meeting of the 91st SRC were scheduled for Wednesday 5 June and Wednesday 3 July 2019, respectively. As apologies were received from 17 out of 33 Representatives at both meetings, the meetings were canceled as a quorum was not attainable. 3rd Special Meeting On Wednesday 17 July 2019, the 3rd special meeting of Council was held to appoint the Electoral Officer (EO) and Electoral Legal Arbiter (ELA) to conduct the 2019 Annual Elections. After a delay waiting to make quorum the meeting opened at 6:57pm. An EO is presented to council for confirmation each year. The EO is chosen by the Selection Committee after the position is publicly advertised and interview process followed. The

18

Selection committee is used to appoint all members of SRC staff and includes 2 members of staff, and 2 members of the Executive, one of whom is usually the President. There was discussion around how the proposed EO was selected, his experience, qualifications and association with past elections. The Council proceeded to confirm the recommendation of the Selection Committee and Casper Lu was appointed the EO. Following the appointment of the EO was the appointment of the ELA. The ELA hears complaints, disputes and appeals from any act, decision or nonfeasance of the EO. Their decisions and directives are final and conclusive and binding on the EO and Council. The ELA is presented to Council on the recommendation of the President and must be a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales

of at least 3 years' standing. The Council confirmed the recommendation of the President and Simone Whetton, the ELA for the 2018 Annual Elections, was reappointed by the Council. There being no other business the meeting closed at 7:38pm. 7th Ordinary Meeting On Wednesday 7 August 2019, the 7th ordinary meeting of Council was held. After a printing delay, all documentation arrived and the meeting officially opened at 6:54pm. The President nominated Vice President Dane Luo to be Deputy Chairperson. There were several nominations from other attendees for Deputy Chairperson which were taken as foreshowing motions. A procedural motion to move straight to a vote of the Chair’s motion, which was carried by a secret ballot on request. The motion passed but there was a call for a recount.

At 7:35pm, the Secretary to Council Julia Robins declared the meeting unsafe due to the conduct of some attendees and the meeting was immediately closed. Next Council The 8th regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 4th September 2019 at 6:00pm in New Law Lecture Theatre 104. This is a reminder that the meeting is open to all members of the undergraduate student body at the University of Sydney so if you are interested in learning more about the Council, feel welcome to come along. If have a motion you would like to put forward for the Council’s consideration, email the Secretary to Council Julia Robins at secretary.council@src.usyd. edu.au to have it included on the agenda, or if you have any questions about how to put together a motion.

S R C

C A S E WO R K

H E L P

Tenancy: Keeping Track of Rent and Bond

Ask Abe SRC caseworker help Q&A Fake Medical Certificates Dear Abe, I’m really sick but unable to get to the doctor. I need to apply for special consideration and am thinking of just changing an old medical certificate and using that with the new dates. It’s my real doctor and I’m sure he would vouch for me. Is this okay? Sincerely, Stuck in bed

Dear Stuck in Bed, I strongly advise against using false or altered medical certificates ever. This is considered fraud, and this isn’t just against University rules - it’s also against the law, federal law, and potentially carries the risk of a prison sentence of twelve months, if prosecuted by the police. The University treats this as Academic Misconduct and conducts an investigation. Faculties routinely check

the authenticity of medical documents with medical practices, so what may seem like a harmless way to gain special consideration may find you suspended for a semester or two, or even at risk of being kicked out of Uni. If you are stressed or struggling to the point you consider obtaining or creating a false medical certificate, your best option is to talk to someone about what’s going on. You could speak to an adviser in your Faculty, a Counsellor at the University’s Counselling and Psychological Services, or an SRC Caseworker. You can help explore other ways you may be able to manage your study load without risking far more serious consequences in the long term. If you are too sick to move you can get an after hours doctor to visit your home. Check for details on the Internet. Another option if your regular doctor is not available is to look for a medical centre nearby or attend the casualty unit at your local hospital. Abe

Textbook Help! The SRC is helping students with the cost of buying textbooks. Apply online: srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy

There are so many bits of paper involved in renting a house. Some of these can end up being worth thousands of dollars to you, so it’s definitely worthwhile knowing about what to keep and what to throw. If you might lose these pieces of paper, you could scan and email them to yourself. Contracts and Leases You should get a lease or contract outlining the conditions of the home you want to rent. This lease/contract should be written in English and signed by the landlord. It is also important that you know your landlord or agent’s full name, and where you (or the Sheriff) can contact them. Please read your lease / contract BEFORE you sign it. Regardless of whether you do not understand or agree to a clause in the lease/contract, if you have signed it, you are bound by its conditions. You should definitely keep a copy of your contract/lease. Receipts You should get a receipt for any cash or bank cheques that you give to the landlord. Your receipt should have the amount that you paid, why you paid it (eg, bond, rent for February etc), and what the address of the home is. The landlord should also sign it. Again, it must be in English. If you have paid by a bank transfer you should still ask for a receipt. There are some situations where the landlord is not required to give you a receipt, but there is no harm in asking. You should definitely keep all of your receipts. It is not necessary to keep the bills themselves, after you have paid them and received a receipt. Condition Report The Condition Report is what you agree, with the landlord, as being the condition of the property at the time that you moved in. If there is damage to the property, beyond reasonable wear and tear, you will be liable to pay for its

Apply for Textbook Help online: http://srcusyd.net.au/textbooksubsidy Level 1, Wentworth Building (G01), University of Sydney (02) 9660 5222 | help @ src.usyd.edu.au facebook.com / src help | Instagram: @SRC_USyd

repair, unless it is noted in the Condition Report. In addition to the Condition Report it is a good idea to take photos of the property (eg, each wall, the floors, the oven, the windows, etc), showing any broken or dirty items, and email them to your landlord. This will “timestamp” those photos and will allow you to refer to them at a later date to show that whatever damage you are being blamed for, was already there when you moved in. You should definitely keep a copy of the Condition Report and the photos. General Communication It is a good idea to email your communications to the landlord. This will give you a record of the time and date that you spoke, plus what was said. If you have a telephone conversation with the landlord it is a good idea to send a follow up email that might reiterate the outcome of your phone conversation. It’s a good idea to keep these on your email account. Bond The first thing is to find the receipt that you received when you paid your bond. If you did not get a receipt, it will be difficult to prove that you did pay the money. After all, why would you hand a large sum of money to someone you do not know or trust, without getting a receipt. If you transferred the money or paid by cheque or money order there might be a paper trail. If you paid by cash in front of someone else, you might be able to ask them to be a witness for you. All of these options are not as good as a receipt. The SRC has caseworkers trained in many different aspects of accommodation laws. You can email your questions to help@src.usyd.edu.au, or if you prefer a face-to-face appointment call 9660 5222 to book a suitable time.

The SRC can help with tenancy and accommodation issues. See our online guide or call us. srcusyd.net.au/src-help/accommodation-issues/ accommodation-guide/ 19

2019 HONI SOIT WRITING COMPETITION

At home with algae Mark Bosch // Second place fiction

Yasmeen can hear Moss rustling inside the wall. She gets on all fours and peers through the fissure her cousin was supposed to have patched up last week. She cups her hands to her temples to drown out the dying light and spots the curious little explorer sniffing impetuously at a belly-up beetle. Yasmeen reaches blindly for the veggie bag next to her. It only takes a spinach leaf to coax Moss away from this memento mori and back out into the dusk-lit room, but he is incorrigible. The rabbit snatches the spinach leaf from her hand and disappears back into the wall before Yasmeen can even think to grab him. If that’s where he wants to be, so be it, she thinks. Yasmeen retires outside and watches the last vestiges of a blue Bana’murrai’yung day disappear. Down by the riverbank, some of the other adults are languorously preparing the last meal of the day. The teens are setting up swags nearby, and the dogs are lounging. The few children of the group, usually a source of joy around this time, are dawdling quietly, half-together and half-alone, in between the ironbarks just downstream. Watching them, Yasmeen breathes a weird sigh of relief. For so long out here in the mess of the world, some folks—most of all the young ones—still respond in ways that make sense. She feels a fuzzy presence brush across her ankle. It’s Moss, who’s had a change of heart. He bounds down the steps and zig-zags stop-start around the stilts. Disappearing then into the bed of dry leaves, laid down in an attempt to stimulate the evanescent bug life, Moss rustles and rustles then resplendently pops out the other side with a clump of casuarina needles stuck between his ears. Yasmeen laughs. We speak the same language. After inspecting the stilts, Yasmeen takes Moss in her arms and they make their way down to the water, towards where Ruby is sitting between the cooks and swags and the meandering children. Ruby is sitting alone on a milk crate. Yasmeen hands them the rabbit and waves to the cooks upstream before she settles herself down on the dampish ground.

What are they making? Ruby asks. I think lentil soup and steamed veggies. Yum. Are the kids ok? I was going to ask you. They don’t ask such questions often. Everyone tries to keep tabs on how everyone is, and Yasmeen usually knows who to look out for, even when she can’t recall their suffering. At the same time, she knows it is healthy—for want of a better word— to sit with suffering, to take it day by day like the weather, sometimes better, sometimes worse—but necessary—and almost always erratic. Not to choke your truer atmospheres. With last night’s ponderous rain, Yasmeen weirdly feels she can breathe again, and also that her backside has gotten damp. She briefly picks burrs off Ruby’s socks, then stands up and surveys for the children. Ruby watches as Yasmeen walks off, down towards the ironbarks. Lillo spots her first. The young girl is behind one of the trees, pressed against its trunk, peering beyond it like a half-hearted sentry. Yasmeen smiles at her. None of the kids ever smile back, but out of instinct, Yasmeen takes her stony gaze as a cue to approach more circuitously. She walks up into a thicker crop of dead or dying casuarinas, passes through and arcs back. Lillo faces her openly now, and one of the other three, Jimmy, watches from another trunk, while the other two stand apart, facing the riverbank, the four of them forming a sweet, sad constellation. How ya doing? Not expecting a spoken response, Yasmeen gestures for Lillo to come for a cuddle. She obliges not unlike Moss did the spinach leaf. They share the briefest contact, desperate and wanting, and Lillo walks off past Yasmeen as if she hadn’t been there at all. Sticks crunch beneath her boots.

Hi lovely.

Don’t you want some dinner?

Hey.

Lillo slows down but doesn’t look back. Yasmeen turns to Jimmy, then to the other two.

Ruby slumps forward on their crate and Yasmeen leans on her elbows alongside. They watch the breathless black water churn and the algae heave, thick with guile. Silently they share a longing for when the water used to forget. Now, in an irrevocable reversal, the world drips with oily rememberings while Yasmeen’s own memory is more porous than a rabbit’s. She can’t recall the names or origins of probably over half the folks in the group, but she keeps faith with them as best she can. Relies on them, even, to fill in the details of how she and they got to the here and now; but even then, the details always change. Lacking an authoritative history, they have only a surfeit of stories, weaving in and out of one another, or drifting, veering into one another in the indifferent air. The stories are not often happy; often, they are jumbled and confusing. Yasmeen regrets the collapse of naïve causality, when the crises within the world’s stories still could seem of a workable scale and complexity. But she knows this way of accounting for the world, of mirroring its utter collapse in collapsed utterances, is far more accurate. Let alone far more alive; past, present, and future pieced together in the smoky air every morning at breakfast, and falling apart every night over dinner.

20

Dinner? Waiting a minute or two for the air to attenuate, Yasmeen starts for the others, and the children eventually follow, each at their own, meandering pace. It’s bluish-dark and the shadows are emerging in their benign and malevolent way. An effluvial gust of wind blows gently from the algae- coated river. There’s an oppressive urgency to the slowness of everything; a harrowing, insidious creeping. Yasmeen remembers to breathe and feel her feet on the ground. She keeps her eyes locked on the neutral human light of the solar lamp beneath which the cooks are ladling out dinner. Express anti-survivalists, they give a healthy portion of produce to the dogs, and Ruby, who’s rejoined the group, treats Moss to a few more spinach leaves before starting their soup. It is important to imagine abundance; here in this briefly bountiful space together, folks murmur warmly to one another, quietly content, eating slowly and well, treasuring these traces of non-precarious life. Yasmeen can’t help but smile as she arrives. She says some hellos and gratefully goes to grab a bowl before she sees

Ruby gesturing to her. Beside them, a bowl of soup is waiting. Thanks lovely. Ruby scrunches up their face in a cute smile. Yasmeen sits and starts eating. Together they sit on the inner of two loose circles, the four of the children coming to sit behind, one by one. Jimmy, the last in, approaches from the serving table chewing dolefully on a stem of broccoli. The dinner descends into calm and circumspect silence; no stories tonight. Yasmeen sighs quietly. How am I supposed to feel? She dips into her own head for a while until one of the dogs paces by and sphinxes at Lillo’s feet. Yasmeen turns and smiles bittersweetly to the children, but in the very same moment, Jimmy’s head is in his hands. Two or three of the other adults notice him starting to cry. With Yasmeen and Ruby they assemble around him, kneeling and cooing. Everyone has noticed now. To appease their attention, Jimmy makes the smallest gesture to his bowl, then withdraws completely into himself, sobbing, overwhelmed. Yasmeen sees. A moth’s joyous, helical frenzy has ended on the cooling surface of Jimmy’s soup. Another universe of sensations, unceremoniously extinguished. Lillo and the other two barely react. It was only four days ago, Yasmeen recalls, that the children had wondered at a dragonfly surveilling their breakfast. # Yasmeen sighs deep from her diaphragm. It’s late. She puts on her headlamp and quietly leaves Ruby to sleep. Moss notices but is unfazed. Yasmeen walks down the outside steps and turns to stare back at the modest little structure the two of them built. Our little cabana is not so bad, even if the walls are crumbling apart. She feels a groundswell of warmth and love within herself. She walks slowly down to the river and sits. Time slows down. Soon she’s not sure if she’s been there for mere minutes or for hours. All the while, all around her, contaminated, compromised life carries on, but it does so less and less conspicuously every day. The algae, bereft of speech, seems almost respectfully mournful for its observance of silence in this increasingly soundless world, even as it chokes the river with its cryptic conative thirst. Yasmeen thinks she can hear a gentle sloshing, but it’s just her brain filling in the gaps. There’s not much left to think. She returns, her legs and her head heavy, to the ironbarks downstream where the children had been. She stands by the same tree Lillo had, running her hands over the congealed kino, like blood frozen from the wound. Yasmeen wishes Lillo were awake and with her here again. She would grip the child in her embrace and not let her go. Eventually, the darkness dissipates into day,but Yasmeen knows it’s foolish to think this is meaningful. In the shadows as in the bare, blinding daylight, worlds are cruel, hopeful, full of hurt, love, and awe. But they are going. No-one feels their going more than the children.

Mother!

Anh Nguyen // Third place fiction When she awoke from unconsciousness, she found that she had given birth to a maggot. On the haystained tiles, the horizontal cracks between them filled with moss and grime, laid a fat, coiling creature. Translucent. Its body compiled of strangely the most even distribution of curves. Rounded, and full. The thinnest of string-like rings carved into a uniform around the gummed base. The maggot’s breathing created an air lump from the inside that propelled it forward. It slid slowly, in a strange rhythm. Leaving a trail of bloody discharge on the apartment floor. The thing was as large the flickering table lamp that was illuminating it, grappling with coming death.

exposure to particulate matter.

It did not really come as a surprise, given the circumstances of its consummation, that the child would’ve been born something so hideous. The mother, in illuminous pain, had now sat forward. In full view of her newborn child, her face melted into an alignment of both fondness and disgust. She has yet to notice the blood that was spouting from the cord that hung from her still-swollen belly. The maggot has bitten it off as swiftly as it’d left.

They walked through the mounting polystyrene doors as the whistle sounded. Stood waiting like tired statues, were duplicates of herself in different positions around a spanning machine. The cool room’s intercom alarmed the workers of the machines’ process that would begin in 10 minutes. The mother got into her daily position. Hair tied in a translucent net, she wriggled both hands into tight rubber gloves. White. Ready. It suddenly came to her attention that her partner, usually on the other side of her machine, was not there. Pa seemed to have noticed this, as she writhed her way down to where the mother was. The team manager apologised for the inconvenience in that she’d have to do a double of her load for the time being. When asked about what has happened to her work partner, Pa said,

By this time, the ugly thing had made its way onto the dining table. The red dot at its tail flickered excitedly, as it’d discovered a half-eaten banana that lay rotten in a fruit bowl. Struck with hunger, it slithered forward with resolute purpose. Clumsily. Bypassing the aggregation of fruit flies that looked on at it with vilifying judgment. When it had made its way near to the soft flesh-like centre, a tiny hole on its noseless face began to widen. Inside the hole, tiny pincers arose from sticky white gums. Mouth widened, it took a great leap forward. But before it reached the brown, yellowish flesh, it found that a sudden force had dragged its body upwards. The mother had turned it unto herself. And now stationed sideways, against what seems like a rocking bed, it could now smell a sweet, plush something that was near to the opening of its mouth. It searched for it, and in the most natural of ways — found. As she fed it. Weakly. Her body became a dripping plank filled with nothing but a painful tenderness. Outside, heavy traffic roused. The city had tuned awake, and the morning sky wallowed in new factory fumes. From the window escaped a beam of light that exposed the rotating flickers of dust. Amidst the rows of cement that sat atop of each other, all a home to the gentle cockroaches and office workers, were a melody of grunts as the annoying morning trucks hustled by. The city cars screamed to be noticed, while inner-suburbs children waked in unkempt laughter. As if awoken by a whistle, the mother hurried to put on a colourless uniform stained with grease. She laid the maggot down onto a makeshift crib out of milk crates and blankets. Comfortable, its body curled and hardened as she kissed it goodbye. She checked herself at the mirror, face dimmed in great exhaustion and fatigue. And yet still, she hastened outwards. Like the rest of the horde that poured out onto the streets at the ring of each morning’s alarm. It was work day in the workingmen’s suburb. It was time for a mother to go. When she reached the factory, the tiny television in the breakroom was broadcasting the morning news. There has been an outbreak of birth defects found in newborn babies. Factory workers have been discovered to make up for the majority of these cases. Some experts have attributed this to their daily

Others have dismissed these claims, criticising them as pushing for an agenda with no empirical evidence. The true cause is still yet— The television suddenly shut off. Holding the remote was Pa, the team manager. A large woman in her mid-50’s with slapdash hair that unfurled like light streaks of the sun. “No time for shit. Let’s get to work yeah?”

“She gave birth to one of those defects last night. Couldn’t take it, tried to kill the baby and herself. Slit her fuckin’ wrist or something—I don’t know. Didn’t even know she was pregnant.” # When the sun set in red rays, the factory ejected its people like burned-out ashes. Again, she walked through the narrow streets, gleaming with happiness and a great hunger as the night befell. She came home into the small apartment. Messy and sheltered by the thick cement. A faint cry could be heard coming from the milk crate next to the bedroom door. She bolted towards it. It was then that she realised the maggot has crystallised itself. Its body now lay stiffly in the crate, completely enfolded in a hardened, net-like cocoon. Poking at it was to no avail. At some point, she even thought it to be dead. And yet, she could still hear a faint crying; a flapping squeak. The mother picked up the cocoon carefully, and raised it towards her ear. The clear sound slowly distinguished itself; light wing flutters and a whisper that seemed to scream “Mother!”. Over the next few days, her routines came back into their habitual rhythm. She would wake up at four, go to work, and return by evening to check on the cocoon. In some sense, it was a lucky thing for the child of a factory worker to remain completely idle in a crystallised state. There was no need to feed, or pay much attention to the child. Though, the mother still found herself constantly around, awaiting the time for it to emerge. For a week now she’d been reading to it. Every night before bed. In the hopes that it would rise being able to speak, or at least possess some form of intelligence. She did not want the child to be vulnerable, she wanted it to be better than just a sorry creature from the defects of birth. A better vermin, a good man. She took books thrown to the sidewalks of streets, from the houses of previous intellectuals. Books she did not understand herself and yet read lovingly to the ever-still creature during each night. It was when she was trying to give it a

name that she questioned whether she’d grown to love it. Renat, she called. A name that she’d taken from a book. She liked how it sounded, pronounced quietly under the faint gleam of the moon. The name became a part of her returning routine. When the door opened at each evening, “Renat!” she’d call, greeting her little creature. On a frozen evening, a certain phenomenon took course. Deafening vibrations of thousands of wings overtook the city, devouring any structure obtusing their path. In a rapid, they flew. A monstrous swarm that painted the night sky black, merging at every corner with a new group of giant flying moths. Some say their eyes were red as blood. A little man on the television announced it as an attack on humanity, on all of progress of our civilisation that had taken centuries to build. They attacked churches and terrorised homes, overtaking the streets as tanks and helicopters shot at them to an unending beat. Many of them were fallen, and yet they stuck together in a strict unity of will, tearing off the heads of their enemies as they glided by with sharp pincers. They would not cease to move, to continue their flight. Nobody knew where they were heading, or what it is that they wanted. Only, that they’d now declared a war, a dirty revolt against their state. It didn’t take long before the government ordered for open-fires against the giant moth swarm. The city became shuttered dark as citizens hurried home to guard their doors against the horror. Suburban children no longer laughed, while all eyes were fronted to the house TV, awaiting for the next move. As the revolution grew louder, a single woman could be seen scampering out onto the streets. “Renat!” she cried, as she stumbled against great winds caused by the insects’ gargantuan flaps. She called for her child, voice drowned by the necessities of gunshots and the shrieks of dying creatures. When she returned from work, the mother had found that her child’s cocoon was now empty and ripped open in a hideous state. At Renat’s disappearance, she had cried and cried as she looked for her desperately, an aching pain piercing in her chest. The child was nowhere to be found inside the home. It was then that she’d run blindly out into the midst of havoc, in a despairing bid to find her love. As the woman continued to scream, the street turned scarlet from an amalgamation of blood and insects’ discharge. From the black sky, dead moths fell like an outpour of rain onto mucky pavements. It was then that a loud flap could be heard around the woman’s back. As she turned, the creature had fallen decrepitly onto the ground, on its tail a single red dot. It had received a blow to the chest, and staggered as it came towards her. The mother sheltered the moth. Now with full wings, it had grown to become beautiful vermin. Its eyes gleamed with hope, it was capable of all things that she wanted it to be. She held its rounded body, as the gunshots continued to blast tiredly in their repetitive beat. Caressing the creature, she stayed, attentively to wait until it had taken its last breath. “The struggle is over now. The fire has ceased.”

21

P U Z Z L E S

american

crossword

36. Baby powder 37. Macpherson, Fanning, or King (!) 39. The degree to which something may be lit 40. Heavily walk 44. Window shelf 45. Makes an emotional appeal 46. Small small island 47. Engage with Eftpos or Tinder 48. Bedsheet material 50. Gets up 52. Union in Europe 54. Price 55. Yoga enthusiast, or bear 56. Prayer finisher 57. Iranian bread (!) 59. Norway’s only notable band 61. Straight 64. Alternative conjunction

credits All puzzles by Cloudrunner

target ACROSS 1. Weaves wool using needles 6. Food for some, drinking instrument for others 10. Mesh of fibres 13. Zip, pep, gusto, bounce, etc 14. Agonising cry (that sounds like a whale) 15. Cab 16. First in a series, and my favourite chip flavour 18. Democratic candidate for prez 20. Family 21. Small Greek letters 23. Prickly plants 24. Diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia 25. Er 27. Bird’s home 28. Castrate 31. Fancy pool 32. Saxophone variety 33. Eat 5 Gum to do this to your senses 38. Panama! 41. Instrument played with the nostrils 42. Bell sound 43. Meditation mantras 44. USyd’s top dog 46. Small island 49. Profile picture 50. Untamed 51. Flu that was gonna kill everyone in 2009 53. Libra meaning 55. Asian ox 58. Tongue 60. US state that is OK

____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________

62. Fencing sword 63. Garden tube 65. Manchester United goalkeeper 66. Half a score 67. Lumpy skin growths 68. Smell

Minimum of 4 letters per word

DOWN 1. Mad or eccentric person (!) 2. Japanese edible seaweed 3. Response to ‘Are you in?’ 4. Internet provider 5. Muslim but not Sunni 6. Hits (a fly) 7. Samoan unit of currency 8. Island US state 9. White Christian garment 10. Effeminate man 11. Routes marked by green signs in buildings 12. What you do to a knot (!) 15. Modificato da una lingua all’altra 17. Dark film genre 19. Internet domain of Ecuador 22. Prone 24. English circle of rocks 26. Mother 28. Indian bread (!) 29. Saint and Sesame Street character 30. Australia’s southernmost university 31. Bits of data (!) 33. Downturns 34. College that comes in LA and Berkeley versions 35. Unnamed, in a forum, or soon, in days of old

10 words: Dumb mud 15 words: Too hot to hoot 20 words: Deified 25 words: Top spot!

sudoku t.w.a.t. Answers across and down are the same

1 Indian bread (4) 2 Angry (4) 3 Afternoon (4) 4 Not afternoon (4)

SINCE 2019 FREE FROM INTEGRITY | PROUDLY DEPENDENT ON CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP

THE INDEPENDENT LIFESTYLE: Law Library offers free yoga classes to help students reach power outlets under desk

THE DEPENDENT BRINGS YOU NEWS EACH WEEK COURTESY OF OUR SPONSORS. THIS WEEK, THEY ARE: Post It, Coco, Ancestry.com

POLITICS: “All cops are bastards” - Right-wing politician radicalised by Hong Kong protests

The bubble tea discourse needs to include people like me: white yuppies Joey Audrey-Smith vents his rage I moved into Surry Hills to escape the asians, immerse myself in the fine culture of the suburb. Wonderful bistros and a brand new espresso bar each week! And yet the hot new trend of this summer is apparently this wild thing called “bubble tea”. It’s so fun and silly — step aside T2! There’s numerous totally random flavours to play around with: mango crush, tarrow milk tea and hazelnut. It seems like everyone has hopped on this wild new trend for the upcoming season. For most of you readers the closest bubble tea will be in Broadway Shopping Centre (totally crowded but totally worth it!). However, if you’re feeling really adventurous you can make your way down the T9 Northern line and get off at this cute little suburb called “east-

woods” to get the real authentic flavour. With all this to look forward to and more, you can imagine my dismay when I realised that there’s absolutely no soy or almond mylk options. I mean seriously what’s the point. When you come to this country leave your lactose at the door — okay? thanks. When I finally found a place that could get me a soy bubble tea, they put this weird plastic thing on the cup that I couldn’t even peel off. Am I meant to just rip apart the cup? When I finally got this plastic off all these Asians started giggling at me. I mean the disrespect...is...just...beyond. All in all, I’d say that bubble tea promises a lot but delivers very little. While the flavours are exciting, it’s hard to see why everyone’s getting around such an exclusionary trend.

23