I have given this blog a mildly playful title even if its content is serious. As much means that to describe it properly I need to, first, dispel any notion that I might have set an endurance record for elected student representative years served by a single student, and then explain the actual reasons for my unusual blog title choice. In chronological time I spent two years as an elected student representative on the University of New England Academic Board. But the context of those two years made it unexpectedly seem much longer.

With a mountain of relevant experience behind me, having professionally briefed and supported Sydney University student leaders in analogous kinds of roles, upon being elected I had assumed mine would be a significant governance commitment but not enormous. It was advertised as involving only six meetings a year. I had started my Master of Arts studies a short time before the elected term commenced. I was grateful to the University of New England for having the right flexible postgraduate program for me and at the right time in my life and career.

I had looked elsewhere but for someone mid-career, with a partner and young child, and looking to make a genuine quality change in life direction, no other opportunity came close to what the institution had to offer. The University of New England has offered specialised flexible and distance education since independent breakaway from Sydney University, becoming Australia’s first regional university in 1954. The experience showed. If elected, I figured a term on its Academic Board was a modest and perfect way to give back to my new University and to my fellow students.

It turned out to be a much bigger commitment than I could ever have imagined. In substantial part that was driven by the specific two years in which I served, making it seem much longer. The prologue to my term was running for election in February 2020. At the time the COVID worldwide pandemic was already spreading and looked dangerous. But it was still before the potential impact on Australia had been properly conceived and before the global devastation and local challenges that would follow. I was successful in being elected to Academic Board and took up my role in March 2020.

I quickly found myself on the Academic Board Standing Committee, which had begun having weekly emergency meetings as part of the Board’s response to the pandemic. As an extension of that I would surely have had more than six meetings of different sorts in my first week or so of involvement let alone the first year. A marathon COVID response effort in those first weeks and months was followed by an avalanche of further commitments over and above business-as-usual normality, driven by exceptional local, national, and international circumstances.

Amongst it all there were flow on impacts from restructures, staffing cuts, academic freedom and freedom of speech issues, student fee hikes, renewed attacks against the humanities, and then the commitments required to be a conscientious and quality Board member in relation to all the other routine day to day issues. In terms of reading alone we are talking about thousands upon thousands of pages of material, to go along with scores of associated meetings of various kinds. My term finished in February 2022, concurrent with the invasion of Ukraine.

I didn’t run for re-election. I’d already indicated that I wanted to step back from representative involvement for a period and to refocus more fully on studies. However, I made an exception just after my term finished to be one of those who argued for a robust anti-war response from the University. I was proud that the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor, with input from the Chair of the Academic Board whom I initially approached about the matter, did indeed issue a quality and unambiguous early statement. I commend them for that step.

For me, the whole period from global pandemic commencement and just before my Board term started in March 2020, to just after my term had finished in February 2022 and the world began teetering on the precipice of global war, felt like fourteen years even though it was only a bit over two. I hasten to recognise my own good fortune in that I was able to conduct my role and am now able to write about these things from a position of relative comfort, safety, and freedom. I am enormously grateful for that privilege.

Yet that good fortune and opportunity makes it even more important to make public-spirited democratic contributions where one can. Looking back, I am enormously grateful to have had the privilege to be an elected student representative and to have had the chance to make a contribution during difficult times. I am also proud to have conducted my role well and at a consistently high level of quality. Still, I can assure you that I hope to never need to do anything remotely like it again. I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels like that.

My other hope is that by progressively building this blog as and when I have the time, it might prove to be a resource to and of interest for others. From my perspective and even despite a few self-felt cringeworthy moments, I might have learned as much in those two years about being a good student representative as I did in the previous twenty-odd of advising and fostering the growth of others at Sydney University. I’d like to share what I learned.

Whether you read this because you’re a student representative interested in refreshing knowledge on some of the issues that whizzed by at speed during important and eventful years, or an academic or professional staff member looking for a democratic student perspective on it all, or part of executive and perhaps trying to understand how genuinely independent quality student representation can contribute to a university’s social fabric, or else you’ve accessed this from outside university circles but are curious about how this whole world operates and contributes more broadly, I hope you will find something of interest.

I had my frustrations which will come through here. To a substantial degree they are already on the public record so to even try to hide them would be futile. I had moments of significant disagreement with University administration, and then much larger ones still concerning the then Federal Government’s so-called Job-Ready legislative package. Yet even through all of that I’ve remained unambiguously proud to be a postgraduate candidate doing important research at my new University and have remained positive about the potential of Australia’s students and its universities more broadly.

Relatedly, I am in equal parts proud of and grateful for the local student support package that was put together mid-pandemic at the University of New England. I inevitability called for more and wanted more. But to be fair the response was productive and good when, together with a substantial group of fellow student representatives whom I de-facto coordinated, I pressed firmly during early crisis. There were virtually nil organised and constituted student representative structures at the University at the time, on the back of rolling collapses of previously-existing bodies.

I effectively turned a group of Academic Board, Academic Board Sub Committee, and various Faculty representatives into an ad hoc democratic student council, if only for that particular moment in time. I drove them absurdly hard and told them that they should put aside their own individual interests for the moment, and focus on doing all they could to support the University’s 30,000 students. Particularly given none of them had equivalent previous experience I was very proud of them. They can be proud of all we managed to achieve in support of our fellow students.

For the above reasons amongst others, I’m proud of the University’s best achievements, missions, and possibilities. As much will come through clearly along with my critical voice. I am opening this Blog in July 2022 by including some issues papers and a longer historical manuscript. All were prepared during my Academic Board term. All show evidence of the severe time and resource constraints that applied. In each case I would have ideally liked more time so that they could have been further researched, developed, and polished. There simply wasn’t that luxury. Despite such obvious if important caveats, in each case they made important contributions in their own ways.

By a confluence of circumstances, the longer manuscript one finds here is a history of the evolution of a Sydney University student representative association, written under research employment with that organisation and unexpectedly prepared whilst intensively conducting student representation in this other context. That’s why it finds a place here and amongst other material. All material is either based on publicly available information or else is otherwise non-confidential.

Material to be added will be similarly public interest and non-confidential. Whatever your reasons for reading I hope you find something that’s of use. As for me, and channelling a mildly Brechtian moment of dark humour that I first used with the Chair of the Academic Board to describe these two years, I can assure you that my two-year term of service really did feel like Fourteen Years on Academic Board, with a Prologue in Pandemic and an Epilogue in War.

Despite some dark undertones that that correctly implies, the way I am presenting this material and the public democratic spirit in which it’s offered is anything but pessimistic. Indeed, I think you’ll spot the ongoing tones of levity, of hopefulness, and even of joy that keep on springing up. I’m realistic about the lived experiences within universities not always living up to their promise. Even so, just playing a part in trying to imagine better futures is something that fills me with enormous happiness.

For me, and for all of their many lived pains and difficulties, in their deepest essence research, scholarship, and education are inherently forward-looking and should always be embedded with equal measures of hope and joy. At their best I’ve always found that to actually be so.

JULY 2022