From Beards to Badges – a student activist tradition
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 2, No. 3
3 - 17 March 2008 ] By Maryrose Cuskelly
University students have been at the front of innumerable historic campaigns, agitating for change and protesting against injustice and disadvantage.
From Beards to Badges, a new exhibition at the University of Melbourne Student Union’s George Paton Gallery, aims to inspire today’s students to take up the mantle of past activists and become engaged with contemporary issues.
The exhibition, which celebrates student activism and engagement, was conceived and co-ordinated by current student activists.
Material featured includes items from the University of Melbourne and UMSU archives and the Rowden White Library.
Bringing the exhibition together has been a collaborative process involving many students, according to UMSU president Libby Buckingham.
She says one goal of the exhibition is to reconnect with past students and to encourage them to participate in a ‘future visions’ statement by recording their visions for the future on an exhibition wall set aside for the purpose.
Ms Buckingham says contributions to the wall will feed into the future visions statement, which will be developed by UMSU office bearers.
Artefacts to be seen in From Beards to Badges include posters from past campaigns, forums, screenings and tours, newspaper clippings, images of demonstrations and events and articles from Farrago dating from the 1920s.
Campaigns featured in the exhibition include the anti-Vietnam war movement, the demand for childcare, the fight against the introduction of fees and the struggle against apartheid.
An events program in the gallery space will include film screenings, forums and collective meetings, and a tour called the Corridors of Conspiracy.
Leavening the tour will be a dose of theatrics, giving life to some of the more dramatic events in the Union’s history including communists being marched out to the duck pond and East Timorese asylum-seekers being supported by Union office bearers.
Alumnus Peter Singer, internationally recognised bioethicist and Laureate Professor in the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, spoke at the opening of the exhibition last week.
The exhibition runs until Friday 14 March. it is open 11am-5pm Monday to Friday. The George Paton Gallery is on the second floor, Union House.
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