God Professors and Student Ratbags: power, politics and the ownership of knowledge in the 1960s and 1970s

Hannah Forsyth Chapter 2. Draft 2nd October 2008

Introduction: treating student like morons

Difficult as it is to imagine anyone maintaining moral outrage over increased fines on overdue library books, this was the issue at the University of Sydney in April 1967, the consequences of which were still felt more than a year later. Over this issue, students held mass meetings, more than a thousand signed a petition, and up to 250 people conducted several sit-ins of the University of Sydney’s Fisher library, undoubtedly having a fabulous time camping there overnight.[1] According to then University Librarian Harrison Bryan, some of the students participating in the sit-ins were confused about what the protest was about, a number of them believing they were seeking increased opening hours. One student apparently declared that Fisher library “even sans air-conditioning or light, was so much more comfortable than his lodgings that he would be back any time any old protest was on”.[2] Like every event explored in this chapter, the issues are confused by multiple perspectives (including, but never limited to, fun), of opposing views and different agendas. The issues are further complicated by relentless revisions to the facts, which occurred with each retelling, even moments after each event. As John Burnheim said in his 1968 article on student politics:

All revolutions are confused, and most carry within them the seeds of their own undoing. It is futile to appraise them as if they were calmly thought-out plans for reform. Their significance lies in the vital impulses behind them rather than their explicit proposals or demands.[3]

Burnheim’s advice is heeded in this chapter, which examines the lived debates of the 1960s and 1970s, which would determine the forces and character of change in the perceived purpose, possession and production of knowledge. It is possible that in this period student movements resulted in a hostile takeover of university-based knowledge, transferring its ownership from “God-professors” to “student ratbags”. A selection of events, used as case studies takes us from the library fines issue in 1967 through six years of tumult that help to identify the ways that student protest applied to the ownership of knowledge.
 

The Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit gave a number of reasons for students to support the 1967 protest against increased library fines, the most convincing of which was that wealthier students would get a better education than poorer ones, since they would be able to afford to keep books for longer. Students’ real anger seems to emerge with statements like this:

The chief librarian and his nebulous associates … have treated students as morons – not worthy of consultation or consideration in what is essentially their own problem. We as students will rebel against these insults.[4]

The University librarian felt angry too, he confessed, after students protested over his increased library fines – largely because he felt hurt that, in identifying this one failure to consult students, they did not acknowledge all his effort to provide high quality library services. He also confessed that his anger was “partly I suppose because my authority was disputed (which was perhaps a little ignoble of me)” – in so saying demonstrating a level of reflection and humility not always present (as we will see) amongst professors and senior university administrators in this tumultuous period.[5]
 

Most of the literature on this period of Australian student and university history focuses on the political consequences of student actions on various campuses, the emergence of the New Left, the sociological phenomenon of youth and (broadly) the philosophies of politics as everyday life and of knowledge as an instrument of power.[6] Educational literature of the student-centred variety arguably draws on the thinking of student movements in the period a great deal, though it rarely acknowledges it.[7]

 
The incidents attached to increased library fines at the University of Sydney did not in fact do much to knowledge or its ownership, except to suggest to students that they needed increased representation in university government. The University Librarian had named the student he believed to be the ringleader in the original protest (and he was very sorry he did later).[8] This student, Max Humphreys, was disciplined by the University Proctorial Board – which was at that time a body more designed to exercise paternal authority than democratic justice and led to an increase in public discussion amongst students and staff about the role and structure of universities – including the control of knowledge.[9] Many more students were mobilised in defence of Humphreys than had been active in opposition to library fines. This action against university discipline was especially vehement as there had been ill ease amongst students for some time about the right of University guards to carry guns (though they did say they wouldn’t waste bullets on students).[10] The escalation of student protest after some small violent scuffles and the swift exercise of discipline by the Proctorial board was what led Sydney’s Challis Professor of Philosophy, David Armstrong, to say that violence was an ineffective measure for universities to use. Violence played into students’ hands, he said – “for is not one of the things a student activist is looking for, a good concrete injustice, and the excitement of a good row?”[11]

[1] , Honi Soit 19 April 1968 40, no. 8 (1967). Harrison Bryan, "The Fisher "Sit-Ins" Of April 1967," Vestes XI, no. 2 (1968): 157.

[2] Bryan, "The Fisher "Sit-Ins" Of April 1967," 158.

[3] John Burnheim, "The Death of Student Politics?," Vestes XI, no. 2 (1968): 132.

[4] , Honi Soit 40, no. 6 (1967).

[5] Bryan, "The Fisher "Sit-Ins" Of April 1967," 159.

[6] John Docker, "'Those Halcyon Days': The Moment of the New Left," in Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, ed. Brian Head and James Walter (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988). Graham Hastings, It Can't Happen Here. A Political History of Australian Student Activism (Adelaide: Students Association of Flinders University, Empire Times Press, 2002). Mick Armstrong, 1,2,3 What Are We Fighting For? The Australian Student Movement from Its Origins to the 1970s (Melbourne: Socialist Alternative, 2001). Don (ed.) Beer, A Serious Attempt to Change Society: The Socialist Action Movement and Student Radicalism at the University of New England, 1969-75. Transcripts of Interviews. (Armidale: Kardoorair Press, 1998). Barry York, Student Revolt! La Trobe University 1967-1973 (Canberra: Nicholas Press, 1989). Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002). Various, "Special Edition on Student Activism," Vestes XI, no. 2 (1968). Terry Irving, David Munders, and GE Sherington, Youth in Australia: Policy Administration and Politics (Melbourne: Macmillan Education, 1995).

[7] One notable exception is David Boud, "Aren't We All Learner Centred Now? The Bittersweet Flavour of Success," in Changing Higher Education: The Development of Learning and Teaching, ed. P Ashwin (London: Routledge, 2006).

[8] Bryan, "The Fisher "Sit-Ins" Of April 1967," 158.

[9] Bob Connell, "Complex," Honi Soit 40, no. 9 (1967). , HoniSoit 40, no. 12 (June 8 1967).

[10] , Honi Soit 13 April 1967 40, no. 7 (1967).

[11] David Malet Armstrong, "Student Activism in a Free Society," Vestes XI, no. 2 (1968): 139.