The art of censorship

Students have a message for Australia: shoplifting, squatting, or getting off in public are some of the best routes to subversion. But behind the carefree spirit, Australia’s student press is seeing red.

"Shoplifting is an art," four students once wrote, "that deserves the widest possible dissemination." This was intended as the prologue to an edgy, satirical triumph over capitalism. Most students saw it as an example of the popular culture-jamming literature that keeps student papers politically and intellectually afloat, but others, such as the Retail Traders Association, knocked on courtroom doors to stir up legal action.

At a time when student protests had been dormant for nearly two decades, the revelations were startling. The step-by-step guide to shoplifting, published in a 1995 edition of Rabelais, the student paper of La Trobe University, was banned by the Office of Film & Literature Classification board as material that "promotes, incites and instructs in matters of crime". The four editors were each threatened with $24,000 in fines and up to two years' jail. All charges were eventually dropped, but not before the case reached the Federal Court.

A decade later and a wave of post-trauma is still washing over student papers.

“Since the Rabelais case, every editorial team has been conscious that people outside universities read these papers and that there is quite a strong possibility that these publications can be taken to court,” says Hon Boey, editor of Vertigo, the student paper at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

Running instructional guides to boost political activism has become something of a thrilling trend. Practical advice on "How to f--- up the Olympics", "How to get off in public", "How to damage ticketing machines", "How to grow dope to supplement your Austudy" and "How to drive drunk and get away with it" have kept the tradition of controversy alive.

Censorship, editors maintain, is best combated by more speech and not a word less.

This year, an entire edition of Vertigo, titled "Do It Yourself", was dedicated to such tactics. The publication courts controversy. Vertigo caused a stir a few months ago when it sought to help offset student poverty by educating readers about squatting tactics. The UTS Legal Centre took a look at the material and advised editors to scratch it because it advocated crime.

“The main argument for censoring the article went that if Vertigo does get taken to court, are we willing to spend the time and money fighting for the rights of this article?” says Boey, who with the other editors unanimously fought for zero censorship.

A guide to rolling a joint was included in a 2004 issue of the University of NSW's student publication Blitz. But hours after the story circulated around campus, the issue was pulled off the stands by UNSW's Student Union.

"Considering what happened with Rabelais ten years ago, the rationale that was given was that we were promoting or assisting drug use," says Janet Duncan, who was editor of Blitz at the time. Duncan says her editorial in the next issue, explaining why the previous edition was pulled, was heavily censored. "Although my editor's note was published, it wasn't the note I initially wrote," she says. "I was told to pull that note and write something much vaguer. I was not allowed to give the whys."

In 1999, the then Commonwealth Education Minister David Kemp intervened when UTS students intended to publish and circulate a guide to using university toilets to shoot up heroin, which they claimed was intended to facilitate safe drug use.

But censorship on campus is not just imposed by an external hand: some student publications are at the mercy of their own student government. According to National Union of Students president Felix Eldridge, student newspapers "are not set up to represent the views of student organisations, but to represent the views of students". Student newspapers, he says, are often partly - if not entirely - reliant on funding from student bodies, which sometimes misuse their power by putting political pressure on editors.

Earlier this year, the Liberal-dominated University of New England Students Association froze all funds to the student magazine Neucleus. Its editor, Seren Trump, had refused to hand over editorial control to UNESA's president to harden the association's pro-voluntary student unionism position.

"A lot of students on campus are anti-VSU and there's been a lot of material coming into Neucleus that is critical of VSU," says former UNE director of student media Brian Hail. “If the president or executive have the power to vet Neucleus, they could also vet criticisms of VSU."

For students at the private Notre Dame University, the university’s Catholic hierarchy managed a good showing of its religious glorification by tabooing topics from “abortion, contraception and gay unions,” says Quasimodo editor Chris Bailey. “Censorship has been extended to include most sexual references, profane language and even criticism of the university.”

The university elected a review committee, comprised of members of the university and the students’ association, to check each edition and curb any outbreaks of religious protest. Evaluation procedures are enshrined in the Constitution of the Students Association, though not specifying what material may be excluded. “The Quasimodo now is very much G-rated,” says Bailey, leading him to dub the group of interventionists the “Censorship Committee”.

Editors considered it a distasteful lesson when the vice-chancellor ordered an immediate ban on the magazine after an article on the morning-after pill became the subject of discussion. No further actions were taken, but Bailey and his team were “unofficially told by university staff that students involved in defying the university may be kicked out of uni”.

John Bransgrove is an outspoken critic of student rights at Macquarie University and believes a “student government works like any government”. By this he means that “if Macquarie were a f---ing country, a revolution would take place”.

The conservative Macquarie University Students Council (MUSC) pulled the plug on Macquarie’s student paper, Muscateer, to further the political ambitions of President, Victor Ma. Since elections were unconstitutionally suspended last year, Ma allegedly planted one or two of his confidants into the editorial team. During his reign of two years, only a single edition of Muscateer appeared on shelves.

I think it’s disappointing that the university is deprived of a student newspaper out of the control of internal parties,” says Matt Christensen, a former Muscateer editor. He and four associate editors settled on producing a second issue, but the verdict of other two remaining editors, along with the blessing of Ma, was odd enough reason to ditch the magazine. Ma declined to comment on the matter.

Some student publications may push the boundaries too far on occasion, but these incidents nevertheless raise questions about the right to dissent. “If I was a liberal democrat, I would of course believe that the law should apply to anyone. But I’m not!” says Boey. “I don’t think the legal system should play any role in censoring people’s views, especially students”.

Duncan, this year's editor of the UNSW paper Tharunka, says the Rabelais episode still resonates. "The Rabelais scandal is dusted off and paraded around as justification for student press censorship every time controversial content is being negotiated," she says.

The VSU issue has drawn fire from student newspapers across the country and is perhaps the greatest threat to freedom of speech and thought among students. Many young editors now fear that censorship will lead to silence as funds dry up by July next year.