University’s ‘woke’ subject requirements include Acknowledgment of Country and ‘privilege walk’

A top Aussie university has been slammed for ‘woke’ course requirements forcing students to perform an Acknowledgment of Country and a ‘privilege walk’.

Sydney’s Macquarie University is facing new criticism over a course which requires students to perform a “heartfelt” Acknowledgment of Country and a “privilege walk” to pass the module.

In an attempt to encourage students to understand power and status, the Age and the Law course has included the delivery of an Acknowledgment of Country as part of the rubric for an assessment which is worth 30 per cent of the final course mark.

Students have to perform a “thoughtful”, “culturally respectful” and “exceptionally well written” Acknowledgment of Country at the beginning of their oral law exam to check off one of the five key marking criteria, The Australian reported.

Sydney’s Macquarie University has been slammed for ‘woke’ course requirements. Picture: Supplied.

Course convener Holly Doel-Mackaway has doubled down on the requirement in a post to the university’s internal learning platform, saying “it’s about acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land”.

Two students told the Australian said the course had become hijacked by a political ideology that was damaging to their education.

One student said they felt pressured to “express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in”.

Another former honours student who remained anonymous said the law school’s reputation was being damaged by these actions.

“It’s the fault of the university and no one is suffering the harm more than the students of its law school,” the student said.

“It reflects upon the students who are going out and applying for these jobs. And you’ve got these partners ... who would look at this stuff and think ‘That’s crazy. I don’t want to hire a kid who’s been taught by people like this’.”

Course convener Holly Doel-Mackaway has stood by the inclusion of a acknowledgment of country performance as part of an assessment task in the Age and the Law course. Picture: Supplied.

The Australian approached Macquarie University for comment and were told that the compulsory acknowledgment to traditional Aboriginal owners was dropped form the honours unit last year.

But because the practice was “one way of enabling students to better connect with the cultural context in which they might be working”, it was still “considered appropriate” for the Age and the Law elective.

A fifth-year student at the university shed light on other teaching methods used in the course, including a ‘privilege walk’ which involved students being assigned personalities ranging from “poor children with diseases to CEOs of large companies”.

The students assumed the personas and stepped forward if they believed a scenario, such as ‘I eat three meals a day’ applied to them.

By the end of the exercise, those in “privileged positions” would be at the front of the room while the “oppressed people stayed behind”.

The student told The Australian that “we were then made to feel bad for having these positions”.

Students accused the university of hijacking their courses with political ideology. Picture: Sourced.

“The convener told those of us with jobs or positions of power that we had achieved our positions by ‘stepping on the shoulders of others’,” the student said.

The student said other classes taught at the university were also following suit and becoming “very detached from real-world examples”, focusing “more just on this political ideology that we have to agree with or we don’t get good marks”.

The Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor and members of the Macquarie Council declined to comment on whether the compulsory and assessable Acknowledgment of Country should be disclosed to students before they chose the elective.

Originally published as University’s ‘woke’ subject requirements include Acknowledgment of Country and ‘privilege walk’