Campus Activism
Student Union fees meant nothing to me when I was at university. I guess they went into supporting a wide variety of enterprises – the student council, campus newspaper, Union Hall amenities, discounted movies and concerts, stuff like that. I guess other organisations benefited, too, although I don’t recall any organised political agitators. My impression of latter category is that such groups organised themselves and had little effect on campus life.

In the final years of the Howard government, a successful effort was mounted to eliminate student services fees, to no little hue & cry on either side of the debate. Many students fully supported the cut and many opposed it. Those is support were, by-and-large, commuting students, a not uncommon situation here. Those opposed fit, broadly, into two categories: the politically-inclined and the sportif.

Self-proclaimed maverick (don’t you hate that word?) Senator Barnaby Joyce is supporting the Rudd government’s efforts to reintroduce the fees, limiting their scope to sports alone. I can see his point that allowing mandatory fees to be collected and distributed would allow politically-motivated groups to claim and receive some portion of the funding if the fees come back with no restrictions, but I don’t think this is a bad thing, and didn’t when they dropped the fees. Students living off-campus who don’t participate or take advantage of the full array of activities and amenities offered via the support of these fees could, I suppose, pay a reduced rate, but realistically shouldn’t. Instead, let the fees be used to subsidize commutation on large scale, as well as fund sports teams, newspapers, the library, the grounds-keeping, building maintenance, and political groups. Make it means-tested, even, both for collection and distribution. Small groups get less, big groups get more.