When you are stretching it for time and franticly rushing to a tutorial that you are already twenty minutes late for, they are there to hold you up. When you are sitting having a quiet coffee or grabbing something to eat with some friends, they come out of nowhere to interrupt. When you are simply minding your own business and doing some quiet reading, their booming tirades on random injustices in some remote part of Melanesia breaks the silence you were otherwise quite enjoying. Lets face it, we have all seen and been harassed by people of one political inclination or another during our time on campus. Whether it be the anti-war protestors completely clad in orange Guantanamo Bay jumpsuits, or the Vegan’s protesting about the mistreatment of animals, they all seem to have a message that, to their mind, is unequivocally, the greatest message one could possibly impart onto another human being, and by getting in our face and letting us know about it they seem to believe they are doing us the highest of favours. Well you are not.
According to the posters and chalk writings I see around campus, there seems to be a myriad of political problems inherent within our society, with each individual issue being propagated as being of far greater importance than the other. From an outsider looking in, there always seems to be some sought of protest or showing of strength at university either debunking “political myths” in the case of left winged groups such as the Socialist Alternative, or indeed promoting them in the case of right winged organisations such as the Young Liberals. But do these demonstrations actually achieve any of their proposed goals and do anything to change the situation they are disagreeing with, or are they simply a way to gather a group of people with similar ideas, and have some fun immaturely arguing with opposing groups.
Most of us know that the anti-war moratoriums held during the Vietnam War were some of the most passionate and ground breaking ever to be held by students around the world, and in Australia, Sydney University was the hub of such protests. But that was back in a time where this type of thing was seen as “cool”, and hippie culture was thriving under the ideas of the injustice of conscription and Australia fighting in a war we had nothing to do with. Fast forward to 2007 and our world and country has vastly changed, but many of the university protestors still look back to the relative political success of that period for inspiration and, as a result, Vietnam has now become the benchmark for the way in which they should vocalise their qualms of today, something that ensures the average university student is indeed hassled the way we are on a regular basis.
One of the more advertised and large scale demonstrations that was held recently, was the “Demand a Better Future” rally, initiated by the National Union of Students. It can be accurately said that the May 2nd gathering was far from the success that the NUS had hoped, and while all who both organised and took part in the protest would never admit that it was a failure, I believe that the support they received would have been a far cry from what they would have expected considering the ridiculous amount of manufactured fanfare organisers attempted to create.
Considering the copious amounts of posters, speakers before lectures, chalk writings, t-shirts and people on loudspeakers out the front of Fisher, it would have been difficult for any student, who studies at the Camperdown/Darlington campuses, to have not known something about the rally planned for May 2. It seems to me that this over promotion was one of the reasons why the rally was so poorly supported by the students as a whole, as this “in-your-face” approach is not welcomed by people who don’t already have strong and vocal political persuasions. As a consequence, not only do students ignore what such political advocates have to say, many start to detest and genuinely revile the “uni protestors” even though personally they are probably quite pleasant human beings.
In my mind, people are well-entitled to believe in whatever they please, but these protestors are not only shooting themselves in the foot with this confrontational style of advertising their political ideas and notions, but they are also a major pain in the arse for the nonplussed uni students who simply want to get their degree and have some fun along the way.