Macquarie University Campus Experience
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Campus Experience is the
student organisation A student society, student association, university society, student club, university club, or student organization is a society or an organization, operated by students at a university, college, or other educational institution, whose membership ty ...
at
Macquarie University Macquarie University ( ) is a Public university, public research university in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the Sydney metropolitan area. ...
and is a wholly owned subsidiary company of the University. The organisation manages Macquarie University's non-academic services of food and retail, entertainment, sport and recreation, student groups, child care and student publications. The organisation also houses an elected student representative council. Campus Experience was officially launched in January 2008 under the name of U@MQ, and is the result of the merging of the three previous student organisations, which were the Union (which for several years operated under the name 'Students at Macquarie' or S@M), the Students' Council (generally known as MUSC) and the sport and recreation (known generally as MUSR).


Macquarie University Students' Council (MUSC)

The Macquarie University Students' Council (MUSC) was the organised student body of Macquarie University, trading under Macquarie University Union Ltd (MUUL). It comprised many parts with the representative council elected by undergraduate students as its main body. Later students of the private Sydney Institute of Business and Technology (SIBT) were also included. During its history it was also representative of post-graduate students until the creation of Macquarie University Post-graduate Representative Association. As well as the council there were clubs, societies, collectives, departments and publications that made up the whole MUSC. These clubs, societies, departments and collectives all had various degrees of autonomy from the actual council. The council itself was the governing body of the MUSC and was answerable to the student population. In its early days its engagement reached out to a large percentage of students. The council had a number of activist collectives open to all students around its key areas of operation. The number of focus of the collectives changed over time. The council also provided consumer type services to its members, including legal aid and academic advocacy. MUSC was created to provide a voice to students at the main campus. When under the control of the far left, MUSC built alliances with non-student organisations and movements. During 1973 the MUSC worked with the Builders Labourers Federation - BLF (a union whose members now make up part of the
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) is Australia's largest Trade union, union in the construction, forestry, wikt:maritime, maritime, Textile manufacturing, textile, Clothing industry, clothing and Shoemaking, footw ...
(CFMEU)) to organise one of the first 'Pink Bans'. In 1979, an ALP-dominated MUSC successfully organised a student referendum which saw MUSC disaffiliate from the
Australian Union of Students The Australian Union of Students (AUS), formerly National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS), was a representative body and lobby group for Australian university and college of advanced education students. It collapsed in 1984 and ...
. This was part of a national campaign against the Australian Union of Students which involved a wide range of political groupings ranging from Liberal students to the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). In its later years, MUSC established a Women's Department. The Women's Department was an autonomous Department of the MUSC. A women's collective operated through the department and was open to all women students. It operated to effect change in the lives of women on campus and in their everyday lives. The Women's Department was elected separately to the MUSC Council by women students only.


End of MUSC and Merger

During 2007, Macquarie University faced a restructuring of its student organisation after an audit raised questions about management of hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds by student organisations At the centre of the investigation was Victor Ma, president of the Macquarie University Students' Council (MUSC). Vice Chancellor Schwartz cited the need for the urgent need to reform Macquarie's main student bodies. The Federal Court ordered on 23 May 2007 that Macquarie University Union Ltd (MUUL), would be wound up. Following the dissolution of Macquarie University Union Ltd, the outgoing student organisations were taken over by the University. In January 2008 the merged student organisation adopted the U@MQ brand. The role of Student Representation was ultimately taken on by MUSRA (Macquarie University Student Representative Association) in 2009 with the first elections being held that year. By late 2009 the U@MQ brand was dropped in favour of the current name.


Publications of MUSC

Arena was the newspaper of MUSC from 1968 to 1999. The editor was originally appointed by the council. However, from the mid-1970s, the editor (or editorial team) was directly elected by the student body. It was not unusual for the editorial team that was elected to be of a different political persuasion to the majority of council. Hogben Toad was the weekly publication of MUSC that alerted students to the activities of the week and near future. This publication was later superseded by a publication of the Macquarie University Union. Alternative Calendars were produced from 1976 to 1997, and once more in 2002. They were the result of surveys of students about the subjects they had taken. Orientation Handbooks were also produced annually. MUSCateer was the new publication name for Arena given to the paper by a council in the early 2000s. This council was aligned to the Student Unity faction at Macquarie University. Editorial control was taken by the same faction around the same time. After the change of name very few editions were produced. In 2005 MUSCateer ceased being published. There were allegations that this decision was made to "further the political ambitions of President, Victor Ma"The art of censorship - On Line Opinion - 28 December 2005
/ref> The current student publication i
'Grapeshot'


MUSC Collectives

The Education Collective was formed to allow all students to participate in the council around issues affecting tertiary education. The education collective not only took up issues affecting students at the Macquarie University campus, but also issues that affected access to tertiary education generally. The Environment Collective focused on local and global issues about the environment. It often used direct action as a tool to bring about change. Locally this included many members of the collective climbing the trees in the middle of where the M2 Motorway was to be built. The Sexuality Collective took up
lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
,
gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...
,
bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...
,
transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...
,
intersex Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binar ...
and
queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...
issues. The collective was also instrumental in establishing a permanent Queer Space on campus is 2001. The International Solidarity Collective engaged with issues of international importance. The collective focused it works on fighting imperialist actions, such as anti US bases campaigns through to the recognition of the democratic elections in
Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
.


See also

* Australian student politics *
National Union of Students of Australia The National Union of Students (NUS) is the peak representative body for Australian higher education students. A student union is eligible for membership by its classification as a legitimate student representative body at any Australian post-se ...
*
Voluntary student unionism Voluntary student unionism (VSU), as it is known in Australia, or voluntary student membership (VSM), as it is known in New Zealand, is a policy under which membership of – and payment of membership fees to – university student organisations ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macquarie University Campus Experience Macquarie University Companies based in Sydney Education companies established in 2008 Students' unions in Australia