STUDENT PRESS

Surviving in backyard sheds and archive boxes are the traces of an era of radical transformation. For historians and activists alike, the yellowing pages of the student press are a window from which to hear the dissenting voices and values of youth during what has become known as the ‘long 1960s’.

University publications have long been a part of campus life, but it was during the 1960s that student newspapers began to articulate a growing impatience with the conservative status quo. New printing technology enabled students to respond rapidly to new issues unfolding outside the university. Apartheid, gay and women’s oppression and, of course, the escalating war in Vietnam loomed large. “The step from the refectories to the streets is a big one,” On Dit opined in 1968, “but students are realising that something must be done”. By the early 1970s, On Dit had abandoned its monochrome tabloid form in favour of the psychedelic colour of the counterculture. The weekly thud of bundled papers on tables across campus heralded a newfound weapon for political and cultural agitation, for polemic and playfulness. At universities across the country, a new generation of young people were articulating rebellion in the columns of the student press.

In 1969, when the Flinders University SRC refused to allocate money for a student publication, two students got their hands on a printing press which soon found a home in their Parkside share-house. “Suddenly the household was an editorial office, a printing factory, and a distribution centre,” editor Martin Fabinyi recalled. Empire Times was born. The first edition of this new paper featured a rousing editorial, blasting a censorship threat and asserting the independence of student publications: “The SRC are licking the arses of the Union Board bureaucrats who want to censor Empire Times. We don’t intend to let these bastards wear us down”. Empire Times was Australia’s only campus paper published by students themselves, free from the censorship imposed by commercial printers. Never afraid to take sides, it quickly established a reputation as provocative, argumentative and politically radical. Urging students not to fight in Vietnam and featuring interviews with the Black Panthers, Empire Times tackled controversial issues ahead of public opinion. This enraged Adelaide’s conservative establishment. To the delight of its early editors, horrified parliamentarians denounced the paper as an “evil in our society”. “This magazine reeks from front to back with pure pornography,” conservative politician John McLeay thundered at a meeting of the Air Force Association.

Much to the ire of reactionaries like McLeay, student newspapers like Empire Times saw themselves as part of a growing political unrest. The press did more than just report on issues of the day: it was a protagonist in fostering radical consciousness. As undergraduates debated opinion pieces in On Dit on the Barr Smith Lawns, they defined their own worldviews. Like any publication, a student newspaper’s style and temper reflected the political persuasions of its editorial team. The editors, often revolutionary socialists, used their position to test the boundaries of acceptable debate and sometimes even found themselves arrested at demonstrations or prosecuted for challenging Australia’s draconian censorship laws. “The student paper must necessarily take strong stands on important issues whether or not the majority of students agree with the stand,” Fabinyi declared in 1969. “It must also encourage and incite discussion, action and perhaps even confrontation arising from these issues”.

Activists were acutely aware of the political importance of print culture for gaining influence and communicating their ideas. “Political power,” quipped one

Monash University activist, “grew out of the barrel of a gestetner.” When student radicals from Flinders occupied the university’s administration building in 1974 and discovered that their Vice Chancellor had conducted research for the American military, they instinctively copied his confidential files. Defying a Supreme Court injunction, activists circulated thousands of incriminatory documents across Adelaide. Because of hostile coverage of their cause in the capitalist press, On Dit and Empire Times rebutted the lies of the mainstream media. “Fighting for issues of social justice,” Empire Times editorialised, “is not simply a struggle against government. It is a battle against the powerful capitalist machinery which manipulates the media to propagate distortions and myths”.

Student publications maintained managed to maintain their political radicalism well after the long 1960s subsided by championing new issues such as environmentalism and anti-racist activism. In 1987, the Hawke Labor government reintroduced university fees. In response, the student press once again threw itself into agitation and helped launch a vibrant period of renewed activism. The first cover of Technique in 1987, newspaper of the SA Institute of Technology (now UniSA), depicted an angry punk wielding a baseball bat and the text, “Fees – the students are revolting!”. The editors urged students to “become actively involved” in the battle to defend free education. Empire Times advocated fee boycotts, encouraged attendance at demonstrations and championed direct actions such as the dramatic occupation of the Adelaide Stock Exchange in 1988. In an era when business was still conducted on blackboards, students successfully erased the chalk and forced an end to the day’s trading. It was perhaps one of Adelaide’s most effectively disruptive protests since the early 1970s.

Today’s student newspapers exist in a very different world to their print-and-paper forebears. The advent of screen-based news and the atomisation of campus culture have impacted student organisations and publications. Moreover, the neoliberal transformation of tertiary education has been paralleled by attempts to stifle the unions which fund the student papers. The Howard government’s introduction of voluntary student unionism starved On Dit of cash and, in 2006, the lights went off in the once-bustling Empire Times office as the press ceased publication.

Although the student press no longer bristles with political ferment, contemporary problems make it more important than ever for students to use our media outlets to combat injustice on and off campus. Indeed, many of the debates that raged in the pages of student newspapers remain unresolved. In addition to the dilemmas of imperialism and fee hikes we must add on new challenges such as climate change. Activists would do well to emulate the radical history of South Australia’s student papers. The printing press has long been the perfect place to foster debate and dissent, support political activism, celebrate iconoclasm and be a thorn in the side of those in power.