‘Welcome to country or fail course’ convener doubles down

Macquarie University law students who face the threat of failing a key exam over a lacklustre acknowledgment of country have been made to adopt different personas and perform a ‘privilege walk’.

Macquarie University Age and the Law course convenor Holly Doel-Mackaway.

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Macquarie University law students who face the threat of failing a component of a key exam if they perform an underwhelming acknowledgment of country have been made to adopt different personas and perform a “privilege walk” in order to better understand power and status.

Age and the Law course convenor Holly Doel-Mackaway on Wednesday doubled down on revelations published in The Australian that students were marked on their delivery of an acknowledgment of country, saying they would “not meet the metric or ­rubric” if they did not perform an appropriate proclamation.

It comes as two students told The Australian the university’s law course has become hijacked by a political ideology that was damaging to their education, with one saying they felt ­pressured to “express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in”.

Dr Doel-Mackaway was the course convener of part of a unit for honours students that required them to deliver an acknowledgment of country and to be assessed on their delivery.

One former honours student told The Australian that a core component of the oral presentation of their thesis topic was the delivery of “an ‘exceptionally thoughtful and respectful Acknowledgement of Country or Welcome to Country’ connected to our chosen topic, which was to consume roughly 30 seconds of each student’s three-minute presentation”.

Holly Doel-Mackaway told students on Macquarie’s internal online learning platform that the function of this component was in “acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land”.

The student, who would speak to The Australian only on the condition of anonymity, said the Acknowledgement of Country had no connection with their honours thesis subject.

The student said Dr Doel-Mackaway had posted to Macquarie’s internal online learning platform that the function of this component was in “acknowledging your positionality as a student of law on this unceded land”.

“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 on Wednesday, saying the practice was damaging to the law school’s reputation.

“It doesn’t affect the tutors or supervisors or the conveners to the extent that, at the end of the day, they’re just going to walk through the door the following day and continue doing what they’re doing. But it reflects upon the students who are going out and applying for these jobs. And you’ve got these partners at places like Mallesons, Freehills and Allens 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.’ ”

Following questions from The Australian, Macquarie University said a compulsory acknowledgment to traditional Abor­iginal owners was removed from an honours unit at the end of last year. However, it said it was still “considered appropriate” for the elective Age and the Law as it was “one way of enabling students to better connect with the cultural context in which they might be working”, including working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

A fifth-year Macquarie law student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, detailed other unconven­tional teaching methods used in Age and the Law, including a “privilege walk” where the course convener provided students with personalities “from poor children with diseases to CEOs of large companies”.

They were required to assume those personalities and take a step forward if they believed a scenario applied to them, for example: “I eat three meals a day.”

Those with “privileged positions” progressed to the other end of the room while the “oppressed people stayed behind”.

“We were then made to feel bad for having these positions. 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.

In the same class, they were also taught that the concept of childhood was a social construct, and that “children should not be viewed as mini humans with mini human rights, rather they should be equal to adults.”

The student said “unfortunately, Age and the Law is not the only subject at Macquarie that has been completely hijacked by this mentality … a lot of the classes are the same … They just seem very detached from real-world examples and more just on this political ideology that we have to agree with or we don’t get good marks.”

“Studying a law degree should involve respecting those laws that recognise our right to disagree with others,” they said. “Unfortunately, at Macquarie, I feel pressured to express an opinion that I don’t truly believe in because I am afraid of the consequences of saying otherwise.”

The student said in the family law subject, students were taught “that you could have a relationship with a tree, a wall, and all this stuff about genderless families”.

“It has felt like going to university is simply ‘ticking’ a very expensive box to be allowed to one day practice”, they said, which included feeling they couldn’t “question or challenge the point of view” of course conveners without being marked down or berated.

A Macquarie University spokesperson said Age and the Law was “not required to complete a law degree at Macquarie University” and “providing an Acknowledgement of Country is not part of the assessment for any other law subject at Macquarie University, including honours year assessments”.

When The Australian asked the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor and members of the Macquarie Council whether the compulsory and assessable Acknowledgment of Country should be disclosed to students before they chose the elective, the university declined to answer. It also declined to say whether other subjects and courses imposed a mandatory assessment requiring students to deliver an ­Acknowledgment of Country.

“Macquarie University wants its students to be prepared to practise law in real-world situations, including working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and organisations which may request an Acknowledgement as part of their meeting protocols,” a spokesperson said.

The Australian asked Dr Doel-Mackaway about her comments in the lecture on Wednesday. She did not respond before deadline.