‘Kick elite out of Sydney University colleges’ to beat student housing crisis
A Sydney University student group has won Greens support to shut down uni colleges that cost up to $30,000 a year and replace them with low-cost housing.
The body representing Sydney University students is pushing to shut down the campus’s “unsafe and elite” $500-a-week residential colleges and replace them with $110 a week accommodation to deal with a “really dire” student housing crisis.
The Student Representative Council – made up of 41 members – is supporting a campaign to “Abolish the Colleges”, which can cost up to $30,000 a year, and replace them with “co-operative housing”.
The current “STUCCO” housing model for Sydney University students located in nearby Newtown costs just over $100 a week.
“The Usyd Residential Colleges exclude those who come from lower-income backgrounds, gatekeeping access to the advantages and opportunities provided in the elite echelons of the colleges (and) recreating generations of networks for conservatives and the rich,” the SRC wrote in a motion that passed in August.
SRC president Lia Perkins said the current structure of colleges and the institutions was “unsafe” as a result of sexual violence and “elitist and should be abolished”.
“We would like student-owned and publicly run housing for students on campus, in the sites the colleges are on, but not run by the same institutions they are now owned and run by,” she said.
“Students are living in small pods and youth hostels … because they can’t afford anywhere else to stay. All of the uni-owned accommodation is full. Private accommodation is full. It’s a really high time of crisis for students. (That’s) why this has particular pertinence at the moment.”
Ms Perkins said a transformation into co-op housing would be “pretty straight forward” but since many of the colleges were established under an act of state parliament, they could only be abolished that way.
The Greens have backed the students’ calls, saying “so much sexual violence on campus stems from (colleges)” and they could instead “create genuinely affordable and safe housing for students”.
St Andrew’s College principal Rob Leach, previously deputy principal at the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College, said it was “not true” that colleges were elite or unsafe.
He pointed to the fact that one-quarter of the 380 students at St Andrew’s were on means-tested support, including several on full scholarships. For those then receiving extra pastoral and educational support from the college, it was “cheaper” and “much more than some students would be getting” in a share house.
“The university and government need to come to this and increase student housing, improve the quality of it, and try to provide more pastoral care and educational support … It’s a government issue,” he said.
He also rebuffed suggestions colleges were dangerous places for women: “(Compared to) ABS figures for sexual assault in Australia for 18-24 year-olds, it’s about twice as safe.”
The 2017 Broderick review found 6 per cent of women across the university’s colleges were sexually assaulted.
“We’re absolutely committed to prevention and creating a culture where everyone is safe, but it’s not true we’re dangerous and it’s not true we do nothing,” Mr Leach said. “But any numbers of sexual assaults is 100 per cent too many,” he added.
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