Sydney Uni – best in Australia?

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald is a little report, buried at the bottom of page 4, about the National Union of Students rating Sydney Uni as the best in Australia for “the quality of its student experience”. Wonder if there’s a massive ‘Doh!’ coming out of the NUS at the moment?

Also in the SMH is a letter from Peter McNeil, professor of design history at UTS, which says in part: “Australian colleges are protected bastions of male privilege. Women have to either find a way to laugh it off in a blokeish manner or try to fit in”. See? It’s not just the wimmens who can see this.

There’s also a letter from Karina Scott, a student at Women’s College, saying we shouldn’t blame St Paul’s because it’s a society-wide problem, and the “residential colleges at the University of Syndey have a long and proud history of producing well-rounded individuals, respected leaders and high-achieving intellectuals” and blah blah blah. Ok, fair point about rape culture, but to say it’s society’s problem is a cop out because here we have a group of privileged young men openly saying that rape is fun and something they like to do.

I would like to point out that the members of the “Define Statutory” Facebook group were current and former residents. So clearly, St Paul’s College is turning out young men who are – or would like to be – sex offenders.

They’re also ill-equipped to deal with modern life. The college prides itself on ensuring “that men have the greatest possible amenity and can spend as little of their life as possible dwelling on mundane, domestic arrangements… to become true renaissance men in a modern setting”. Young men who’ve never had to clean or cook are certainly not “true renaissance men in a modern setting”.

Finally, check out the fabulous rant by Fuck Politeness. It always amazes me how her anger and biting humour can make me feel better.

Re-writing the pro-rape Facebook story

I wasn’t going to blog about the “Define Statutory” Facebook page set up by some male students at St Paul’s college at Sydney University. It’s a disgusting story about some privileged misogynistic wankers who think it’s cool to be sex offenders.

But what I do want to write about is the way readers’ opinions are shaped by the way stories are written. It’s an SMH story, but News.com.au did a re-write. (AAP would have also done one.)

What News.com.au left out was that the group tagged the page as “anti-consent” and “pro-rape”. Look at the comments on the News.com.au story – it’s an ill-informed debate about statutory rape because the “anti-consent” description is missing, and readers are dismissing the “pro-rape” in the headline as a media beat-up. (I guess I don’t need to point out the higher quality of the comments on the story at smh.com.au.)

The problem is that News.com.au readers – and readers of any site with an inferior re-write – will have a completely different understanding of the story, and each time it happens, readers will dismiss rape stories as just media beat-ups.

Update: Jezebel has a great piece on how Facebook allows this “hilarious” pro-rape group in the “Sports and Recreation” category, but doesn’t allow women to post photos of themselves breastfeeding.