barryqwalsh
Gold Member
- Sep 30, 2014
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- BRENDAN OāNEILL
- THE AUSTRALIAN
- MARCH 26, 2016 12:00AM
When you hear the phrase student radical, what image comes to mind? A freewheeling warrior against The Man? A fighter for the right to party? A dandily dressed agitator for the powers-that-be to get off youngstersā backs?
If so, you need to update your mindās image bank. For the days of student leaders ripping up rule books and flirting with libertinism are long gone. Todayās student leaders tend to be stiff, illiberal and vulnerable to an attack of hives at the mere mention of words like fun, freedom or sex.
In the US, student rads have screamed controversial speakers off campus and set up āsafe spacesā where students wounded by words can take refuge. Some of these spaces play soothing music and have colouring books, to make students feel warm and childlike. Seriously.
In Britain, student leaders have banned everything from Israeli representatives to ladsā mags to the wearing of sombreros (apparently thatās offensive to Latinos). More than 30 student unions have banned Robin Thickeās song Blurred Lines on the basis it makes female students feel undervalued. Remember when it was Christian ladies with blue rinses, not students with purple dye-jobs, who banned raunchy pop to protect dainty women?
Now student leaders at the University of Sydney have threatened to deregister a student society called the Evangelical Union on the basis that its requirement members believe in Jesus is discriminatory.
Yep, thatās right: the world of student politics has become so instinctively illiberal that even the idea of a Christian society being made up only of Christians freaks out these bossy bureaucrats. So unversed are todayās student radicals in the history of freedom that they think a group of like-minded people getting together to share their beliefs is a foul form of separatism when actually itās a little thing we like to call freedom of association.
The EUās constitution says members must sign a statement declaring faith in āthe Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviourā. And according to the University of Sydney Union, limiting the membership or leadership of societies to āthose who ascribe to a particular faithā is exclusionary. It goes against the unionās ethos of āaccessibility and inclusionā.
Basically the union is saying: āYou are not being inclusive, so we are going to stop including you.ā
If there were a prize for the most Orwellian action of the year (there really should be), the USU would surely win.
The student union has given the EU until March 31 to overhaul its constitution. But the EU is fighting back: this week its members voted by a whopping 71 to 1 against changing its membership rules to suit the tastes of the interfering union.
The student union is right that the EU is excluding certain people, people who donāt believe in Jesus. But that is a key part of freedom of association. We rightly oppose discrimination in the public realm of work and public services. But in the private realm discrimination is not only acceptable, itās essential.
Catholic groups must be free to say only Catholics may join them. Left-wing parties must be free to exclude right-wingers. Gay menās saunas must be free to tell straight women to go somewhere else. If such groups are not allowed to say what is required of members, and to reject those who fail to live up to those requirements, then the whole ideal of freedom of association falls apart.
If ruling bodies, whether the state or a student union that wields power on campus, can use pressure or threats to make private associations rewrite their constitutions, which is the soul of all institutions, then we enter into very dark territory indeed. We arrive at a situation where the authorities can dictate whom we may link up with and what we may believe.
Enlightenment thinkers knew the importance of free association. John Locke, in his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration, wrote about āspontaneous societiesā, groups based on beliefs. He said, āThe right of making its laws can belong to none other but the society itself.ā If an official tried to tell a āspontaneous societyā what it should believe or whom it should embrace, then the whole notion of freedom fell apart, Locke said.
This is happening today. And not only at Sydney Uni. From the Tasmanian anti-discrimination officerās investigation of the Catholic Church for publishing a booklet upholding traditional marriage to controversies over Victoriaās Equality Opportunity Act and its potential impact on the freedom of religious groups to employ people of their religion, the use of inclusion to bash freedom of association is widespread.
The Sydney Uni controversy suggests students arenāt reading classic Enlightenment texts, for if they were theyād know modern democratic societies are built precisely on the idea that we should respect the freedom of all people to think, speak and organise as they see fit, whether or not we agree with their ideas.
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