SMH: 'Police to hunt for missing [MQ] uni funds' (2 Viewers)

[glitterfairy]

Damn.

Ok so new discussion topic...

if you were in charge of mq, what would you do to try and change mq's culture in regard to awareness of current uni-related issues?

 

[glitterfairy]

Re: What's going on here?

I also think SAM's worth it, and am SO glad for all the audits/investigations. It's shocking to hear about all the crap Victor Ma's been pulling off!!!!!

(now. Tell me more about the threats MA's people made... I want to hear about le scandal!!!)

 

[K.]

Its probably because i'm from the country side and I think someone an hours drive away is still within my neighbours range, but I've found one thing with uni people (sydney people actually..) that anywhere over 20 minutes away is pretty much another planet. I live in the city, right in the hype of all things Sydney! and I don't see Macquarie as being far away, but whenever people ask me where I live and I tell them they are like "wow poor you, you have to travel so far!", honestly, when the hell did 40mins-1hr travel become "so far away"?

There seems to be a lot of negativity about the community of the university from reading a few posts, and I don't really get it. I spend a fair amount of time on campus, and i'm pretty sure its not just that i'm lucky to find great groups of friends, I see lots of other people enjoying the atmosphere too. I go to the bar inbetween/after class for drinks with friends, meet up a few hours before class to bum around uni-chit/chat in the foodcourt, sit by the lake, other random things of catching up. Anyways, whenever i'm up at the car, theres genuinely a fair amount of people up there having a drink, having a good time...international students (asians and americans!!) and a fair amount of local students, sure the place is a little....dirty, but the atmosphere is great. Theres rarely a time where I turn up to uni just before class or leave straight after class, I have and know of lots of people that bum around for the sake of it. I don't know if its just these forums, but I havent actually met anyone at uni with a bad attitude about the uni atmosphere.

Community wise, what you say about our uni can you not say about other uni's? Every uni has students that only come for their classes and leave when they are done, we are considerably less populated than the other major uni's, so maybe its just that our uni seems emptier, it feels like there is no community? What exactly is a uni community anyways? You can't expect all the students to miraculously bond and come to uni, waltz over to the lawns, wave to everyone on the way and sit down with a group and starting singing along to the guy with the guitar strumming a phat beat?

Macquarie centre, why is this even an issue (is it an issue?, I just skimmed and read some rants on mac center), seriously, why is that even an issue? We're not coming to uni to shop, mac centre most of the main stream retail shops and a cinema. Thats enough, don't you think? Say we had a westfield as big as...Bondi, would this change the university community? If anything, if people don't go home straight after uni, the size of mac centre would cause students to just bum around at uni. Honestly, mac centre is a decent shopping centre, I find.
International students, Ok, they are part of the university community, if they don't please you with their.......umm, non participation, maybe you, as an individual should do something about it. Sitting down complaining about how they just huddle together, whilst you just generalise and bitch about what a nuisance they are, randomly go up and strike a conversation with the, most of them have some form/small grasp of english...heck use hand motions and funny faces. You can't complain about it if you're just being a spectator all the time.

anyways, I don't know what else i'm ranting on about.. BBL!

 

[K.]

Damn.

Ok so new discussion topic...

if you were in charge of mq, what would you do to try and change mq's culture in regard to awareness of current uni-related issues?

Have weekly (daily?) politics on the lawn.... something like open mic, people just crowd around and throw around random ideas/thoughts/advertisement for uni events.

I dunno, I think most people would like to see more day time activities. Daytime trivia? Bingo?

All these activities-sam bar nights, movies on the lawn, other non academic activities are done on the weekend, at night, after hours of usual class times. I think something should be done to take advantage of peak hour student time-during the day! Pretty obvious, huh? I mean just look at the quarry between 11-2 ITS PACKED, clearly people are hanging around after/inbetween/before class, theres just nothing to do!

 

[glitterfairy]

A K.: Haha!

You think we should be more humble and thankful for what we have. Which is a pretty fair call to make.

But we live in such a money-driven world, and we want to see every last cent spent wisely and returned to us two-fold

EDIT: Daytime activities sound awesome!

 

[xeuyrawp]

Its probably because i'm from the country side and I think someone an hours drive away is still within my neighbours range, but I've found one thing with uni people (sydney people actually..) that anywhere over 20 minutes away is pretty much another planet. I live in the city, right in the hype of all things Sydney! and I don't see Macquarie as being far away, but whenever people ask me where I live and I tell them they are like "wow poor you, you have to travel so far!", honestly, when the hell did 40mins-1hr travel become "so far away"?

There seems to be a lot of negativity about the community of the university from reading a few posts, and I don't really get it. I spend a fair amount of time on campus, and i'm pretty sure its not just that i'm lucky to find great groups of friends, I see lots of other people enjoying the atmosphere too. I go to the bar inbetween/after class for drinks with friends, meet up a few hours before class to bum around uni-chit/chat in the foodcourt, sit by the lake, other random things of catching up. Anyways, whenever i'm up at the car, theres genuinely a fair amount of people up there having a drink, having a good time...international students (asians and americans!!) and a fair amount of local students, sure the place is a little....dirty, but the atmosphere is great. Theres rarely a time where I turn up to uni just before class or leave straight after class, I have and know of lots of people that bum around for the sake of it. I don't know if its just these forums, but I havent actually met anyone at uni with a bad attitude about the uni atmosphere.

Community wise, what you say about our uni can you not say about other uni's? Every uni has students that only come for their classes and leave when they are done, we are considerably less populated than the other major uni's, so maybe its just that our uni seems emptier, it feels like there is no community? What exactly is a uni community anyways? You can't expect all the students to miraculously bond and come to uni, waltz over to the lawns, wave to everyone on the way and sit down with a group and starting singing along to the guy with the guitar strumming a phat beat?

Macquarie centre, why is this even an issue (is it an issue?, I just skimmed and read some rants on mac center), seriously, why is that even an issue? We're not coming to uni to shop, mac centre most of the main stream retail shops and a cinema. Thats enough, don't you think? Say we had a westfield as big as...Bondi, would this change the university community? If anything, if people don't go home straight after uni, the size of mac centre would cause students to just bum around at uni. Honestly, mac centre is a decent shopping centre, I find.
International students, Ok, they are part of the university community, if they don't please you with their.......umm, non participation, maybe you, as an individual should do something about it. Sitting down complaining about how they just huddle together, whilst you just generalise and bitch about what a nuisance they are, randomly go up and strike a conversation with the, most of them have some form/small grasp of english...heck use hand motions and funny faces. You can't complain about it if you're just being a spectator all the time.

anyways, I don't know what else i'm ranting on about.. BBL!

Um? The whole point to this thread is discussing how messed up how student politics at MQ is. Student politics directly affects and directly reflects student life.

I'd like you to explain how student life at Macquarie can be alive and well when we have one candidate for Academic Senate, and two candidates for MUSC - one of whom has now been removed from SAM presidency, looks to be taken to court, and most likely charged with several criminal offenses.

Clearly Macquarie students don't give a shit about politics. Victor was screwing over the students so hard that a normal audit had to reveal it. It's absolutely hilarious.

 

[sorestudent]

This is dodgy all the way to the bank. Who does everyone think the whistlerblowers were? I guess they're no longer on victor's christmas card list.

 

[K.]

Hmmm yeah I did come out sounding all.....humble-y. But my main point was, if uni is meant to be the best/worst (however way you want to look at it) years of your life, you shouldnt dwell on all the bad stuff. We can all agree that however long you've been at Macquarie, surely, you can remember taking away a lot of great things from it, at the end of a semester..end of O week, end of year, end of degree, whatever, all this negativity seems to impeed a lot of things we don't notice taking from our uni.


but yeh, daytime activities!

 

[xeuyrawp]

This is dodgy all the way to the bank. Who does everyone think the whistlerblowers were? I guess they're no longer on victor's christmas card list.

That's a good question. From some of the media reports, it looks like normal accounting staff discovered it. Ie, people going about normal accounting/finance business.

Although I could be wrong.

Hmmm yeah I did come out sounding all.....humble-y. But my main point was, if uni is meant to be the best/worst (however way you want to look at it) years of your life, you shouldnt dwell on all the bad stuff. We can all agree that however long you've been at Macquarie, surely, you can remember taking away a lot of great things from it, at the end of a semester..end of O week, end of year, end of degree, whatever, all this negativity seems to impeed a lot of things we don't notice taking from our uni.


but yeh, daytime activities!

Yeah, it's true.

I hope Nick will, like I said above, focus on what he can do for the university, and not what he can complain about in the government.

And I'm a nighttime student. Getting all depressed and negative without vitamin D.

 

[sorestudent]

Club Mac isn't that bad. We dropped twenty places in the international rankings in a year but that's probably because of a different admin. Things'll turn around soon enough.

 

[sorestudent]

I saw this in the PR the uni released: "However, in recent times senior office-holders of the student council have come forward with information that led the University to launch a further investigation."

Which of Victor's mates did that to him? Let's buy them a beer!

 

[xeuyrawp]

How about a round of applause for all those accounting staff out there who helped expose this blatant abuse of student funds!?

I'm probably wrong about it, considering I can't find where I saw it...

Things'll turn around soon enough.

Well I hope so.

 

[AsyLum]

Um? The whole point to this thread is discussing how messed up how student politics at MQ is. Student politics directly affects and directly reflects student life.

I'd like you to explain how student life at Macquarie can be alive and well when we have one candidate for Academic Senate, and two candidates for MUSC - one of whom has now been removed from SAM presidency, looks to be taken to court, and most likely charged with several criminal offenses.

Clearly Macquarie students don't give a shit about politics. Victor was screwing over the students so hard that a normal audit had to reveal it. It's absolutely hilarious.

Not necessarily, student politics represents a minority of what happens at uni.

Not everyone wants to participate or head/run a council, nor do they want to change the world, or have some sort of idealistic/naive/ignorant view. Some people are quite happy to exist within a framework which is laid-back and still enables people to join various clubs, societies and other events which are not affected by politics to the nth degree.

Student life can range from merely being there for classes, to socialising with friends in clubs/societies, at the bar, at mq centre, on the lawns, or to demonstrating and running for offices. I don't think that every student should be expected to have some sort of uni pride or some misguided perception of it.

As for the political aspects, I wouldn't say its a problem as such, but more a case of a system which obviously doesn't work because as a student, we don't see the effects of decisions or know of the happenings. I think this is moreso a fact of the previous system of cloak and shadows rather than the fault of a student, its very difficult to get into something when there is nothing being publicised about it. With the latest emails being sent out by the Schwartz and all the publicity thats happening, I'm hearing more discussions amongst people i've just met or friends who had no idea of this shit going on, so the atmosphere is slowly changing.

As a final point, I think for all the complaining thats been going on in this thread, the relative lack of any action serves to underline the very facet of political activities at mq. If you understand there is a need to fix a problem, there are ample ways of doing it, and ample ways of notifying people outside of lecture announcements that half the people don't listen to, or flyers or publications. Don't mean to sound too harsh, but seriously if people acted on their complaints at half the amount they whinged, then there may actually have been something done about it.

 

[sorestudent]

It seems like the new admin knows what their doing. Then again, I could be talking a load of shit since I don't work at the uni but am only a student. I think Schwartz is no-nonsense and knows what to do.

 

[sorestudent]

People are a bit too pessimistic on this. Once Victor's gone, it will open up debate on campus, there will be fresh ideas and more people interested in getting involved.

 

[glitterfairy]

When I get around to writing something for The Word, I'll have a chat to them about the daytime activities idea. I don't know whether the folks there can do anything (I'd talk to Phil, but it sounds like they're all sacked and powerless right now) though.

 

[AsyLum]

With the construction happening for now, I doubt anythings going to be feasibly set up this year anyway.

 

[GoodToGo]

Re: What's going on here?

(now. Tell me more about the threats MA's people made... I want to hear about le scandal!!!)

Haha, I'm not one to assassinate his character (he's doing a good job of that himself). Just my theory...

 

[GoodToGo]

So you think that ANU (which has a great student atmosphere) is so isolated that students have to socialise, USyd is the reverse so students still want to socialise, but MQ is in the middle?

Hmm, I'm not sure about that. I don't see why students, regardless of location, still can't hang out... Maybe you're right, because as Nick said above, students will only come for class and not other reasons (as they would in the city).

I would definitely say that Mac centre's general shitness doesn't help it at all.

Of course students can hang out no matter what university they attend.

When I say "isolated", I refer to universities that are so isolated from major capital cities and therefore have a substantial population living close to campus. From all reports Southern Cross Uni in Coffs has a good social scene for a uni its size.

Perhaps we should be grateful that we don't attend one of the UWS campuses...

 

[xeuyrawp]

Not necessarily, student politics represents a minority of what happens at uni.

And that's a good thing?

Not everyone wants to participate or head/run a council, nor do they want to change the world, or have some sort of idealistic/naive/ignorant view. Some people are quite happy to exist within a framework which is laid-back and still enables people to join various clubs, societies and other events which are not affected by politics to the nth degree.

I really don't think I've got an idealistic/naive/ignorant view, mate... And I think that if people are happy to exist within a framework of laid-backness and let themselves go unrepresented, it's pretty indicative of their views.

Student life can range from merely being there for classes, to socialising with friends in clubs/societies, at the bar, at mq centre, on the lawns, or to demonstrating and running for offices. I don't think that every student should be expected to have some sort of uni pride or some misguided perception of it.

I'm not saying that every student should be expected to have pride? I'm saying it would be nice if the students cared. Which, clearly, they don't, really:

Some people are quite happy to exist within a framework which is laid-back

As for the political aspects, I wouldn't say its a problem as such, but more a case of a system which obviously doesn't work because as a student, we don't see the effects of decisions or know of the happenings. I think this is moreso a fact of the previous system of cloak and shadows rather than the fault of a student, its very difficult to get into something when there is nothing being publicised about it. With the latest emails being sent out by the Schwartz and all the publicity thats happening, I'm hearing more discussions amongst people i've just met or friends who had no idea of this shit going on, so the atmosphere is slowly changing.

Oh you totally did not just pull the 'ignorance because of the system card'. Nazism much?

And I hope that you're right about people starting to care. Yes, the the university was not helpful in letting students know the shit, but I think that if local students demanded answers, a lot would be different.

[As a final point, I think for all the complaining thats been going on in this thread,

I think I'm the only one complaining?

the relative lack of any action serves to underline the very facet of political activities at mq.

Well you seem to be changing your tune... Are we allowed to be inactive or not?

And I partially agree with you. I think that talking about stuff and informing people (which I try to do) is some form of action.

With regards to the old Greek notion of participating directly in democracy: The only position that I could really bring anything to would be Academic Senate. I personally have no skills which would help MUSC, SAM, or University Council.

If you understand there is a need to fix a problem, there are ample ways of doing it, and ample ways of notifying people outside of lecture announcements that half the people don't listen to, or flyers or publications. Don't mean to sound too harsh, but seriously if people acted on their complaints at half the amount they whinged, then there may actually have been something done about it.

I highly doubt notifying people outside of lectures would change anything which I dislike... Example in case 180 stuff with the '05 elections. If you had any ideas about how one can actually participate beyond offices, being generally informed and talking with people, and occasionally sticking stuff in The Word..., I'd love to know. And stop giving me the 'stop whinging or participate' argument.

[/whinge]

Perhaps we should be grateful that we don't attend one of the UWS campuses...

Well the worst part about that would be the constant fear that a UWS med student would want to operate on you.

With the construction happening for now, I doubt anythings going to be feasibly set up this year anyway.

Ack. I suppose there's going to be no macfest?

When I get around to writing something for The Word, I'll have a chat to them about the daytime activities idea. I don't know whether the folks there can do anything (I'd talk to Phil, but it sounds like they're all sacked and powerless right now) though.

Seriously, you could spend 30 seconds writing something and get published in The Word...