Defend our Degrees: Protest against the CASS cuts
Schedule
Fri, 07 Oct, 2022 at 11:00 am
Location
Kambri at ANU | Canberra, CT
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The CASS cuts are underway with 5 bachelors degrees on the chopping block for 2023, CASS Associate Deans claiming these ‘restructures’ won’t stop us from completing our degrees. We know that ‘completing’ a degree is a different thing to having choice, electives and the quality of education we expected when we came to ANU.
Just last fortnight at ANU Committee 'AQAQ', the Latin American Studies minor was disestablished. This disestablishment went through without much resistance, as there was no actual way that the minor could function anymore, the LAMS-coded courses having been pulverised to smithereens with the disestablishment of the Latin American Studies Degree in 2017 https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/2017/program/BLAMS.
The ending of that degree followed the same logic CASS is stating now, disestablishing the degree to only have a major. Progressively the Major was disestablished, the LAMS-coded courses becoming fewer and fewer as staff contracts weren’t renewed. Students were assured they’d be able to complete their degrees but many students weren’t able to, due to missing single compulsory courses. Degrees are made to disappear over time, it’s easier for Universities to remove them quietly, one small step at a time, to quell student/staff unrest/resistance to these cuts.
We see the pattern, we know the history to understand the cuts, and we won’t allow anymore specialisations in undergraduate be undermined by the corporate interests of the ANU, in their pursuit to force more students into postgraduate study in order to specialise. The US model of academia further entrenches class divide, making education even more so something that is accessible to only to the ultrawealthy.
Come out on October 7th to fight against the CASS cuts and the ANU’s ‘Teach Less Better’ plan. Meeting for half of the rally in Kambri, a march to the Chancellery, and the rest of the speeches outside the Chancellery, being loud and clear outside the ANU Council meeting that will be on at the same time. Let’s show the ANU council that their ratified decisions don’t represent us or the degrees we came here for.
This campaign takes place on the stolen lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, sovereignty was never ceded and this always was and always will be aboriginal land.
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Where is it happening?
Kambri at ANU, ,Canberra,ACT,AustraliaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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