Letter to vuce-chancellor of USC

11/5/17

Dear Deputy Vice-Chancellor,

On 2016 I received an email from Rod McColloch telling me that he would not allow me to apply to participate in the ACICIS Journalism Professional Practicum in Jakarta, January 2017.

 I'd sent an email to Renee Barnes the previous day enquiring about application dates and saying how important it was for me to go. The next morning at 8.48am Rod sent me the email all though I hadn't been in contact with him at all.

I'd been warned that there was a conspiracy afoot to prevent me from going to Jakarta but as I'd said at the time of being warned, "The only reason they could have for stopping me would be spite and I don't think that type of thing can happen at an Australian university." Looks like I was wrong.

Why Rod had done what he'd done was somewhat baffling. I'd met Rod in first year, at the beginning of second semester when I'd discovered while enrolling that I'd been given a mark of 34% for COR109, and because I'd been failed I would have to do the course again; otherwise I wouldn't be able to graduate.

I had mixed emotions. I'd never failed a course of any kind before but I thought a visit to "the Dean" would sort things out. I'd completed a degree at UNE quite a few years before and breezed through with consistently high marks so it seemed obvious that I was being punished for sending an email to Greg Nash objecting to him slandering all male students of USC by telling them in a COR109 lecture, of which you have a video, that all male students must accept responsibility for the culture of violence against women in Australia.

According to you they were not his exact words but you didn't see fit to quote his exact words or send me a link to the video so that I could see how my memory of his statement differs from the actual statement. To my mind Nash had behaved appallingly, and possibly illegally, by attributing criminal culpability to the entire male student body based on nothing more than their gender. He says himself that he was sucking up to the feminists who had, after much kow-towing from him, allowed him to become an ambassador for the White Ribbon campaign.

I was amazed that such a thing could happen in 2014. Shows how naive I was. When I'd been accepted into USC I was enthusiastic and excited. I'd enrolled for the bridging courses in Maths and Science because my previous years at university had been some of the best of my life and I wanted to keep learning. Meeting with Rod just about killed off my enthusiasm, and soon after I got the impression the amoral post-modern culture went all the way to the top.

The email to Nash, of which I sent a copy to the Vice-Chancellor, was ignored by both. The  email I'd sent to Rod had also disappeared without trace. I went to Rod's office and made an appointment personally. I was told there was no record of my email so I printed out a hard copy and left it at his office a few hours before the appointment.

When I did meet him in his office Rod was literally shaking with rage. It was hard to believe. Although tall, he is a  rather delicate, almost weedy kind of man, but to see him shaking like that made me feel sorry for him and wonder about why he was so angry. "How dare you suggest that a member of my staff would punish you etc"

I felt a bit embarrassed for him so I replied, "It is obvious to me that we aren't likely to agree on anything so I'll just let myself out. We can talk about it again when this is the only thing stopping me from graduating." and then I almost 'forced' him to shake hands before I left.

I'd been told several times that I couldn't graduate without repeating COR109 but it turned out later that I hadn't even needed to do COR109 in the first place because I'd already completed a degree, but nobody told me that.

I didn't want to redo COR109 because I'd written two good essays and done the 'best' presentation. Co-incidentally, the following year while handing out how to vote cards at a polling booth I met a charming lady named Rainey who just happened to work at USC, marking COR109 essays. We chatted amiably so I asked her if anybody ever fails COR109. She laughed and told me nobody ever fails COR109. She almost fell off her plastic chair when I told her I'd scored 34%.

Later when I saw her on campus her demeanor had changed completely so that she was reluctant to even speak to me despite being so friendly before, even giving me her email address, which is a big deal these days. I felt as though I'd been black-balled by the USC sisterhood.

Being failed for sticking up for my fellow students, as it appeared so obviously to me, was quite dispiriting but even more so was what happened when about a month later I saw Claire, the 'teacher' of COR109 tutorials. Claire was one of a whole bunch of what seemed mostly to be post-grad students doing paid work 'teaching' COR109.

I was en-route from Indonesian language to an overlapping Indonesian history and culture class when I noticed Claire perched on a stool drinking coffee with another woman at the most cornerly point of Cafe A so I paused briefly to politely let her know that I was surprised by the very low mark that she'd given me and that I was intending to "do something about it, through the correct channels" before continuing on my way.

To my amazement I soon received a warning from the Vice-chancellor reprimanding me for my conduct, for supposedly interrupting a staff member while they were carrying out some important work or something. Not true at all, but it showed me that not only Rod wasn't going to help me but that the rot went all the way to the top; guilty by accusation.  I wrote a detailed rebuttal to the Vice-chancellor but I don't think I received a reply. Maybe I did.

Fortunately by second year I could see a way forward, toward a job, by refreshing my Indonesian language and learning about digital journalism. During the COR109 thing I'd been getting a hard time from my daughter's mother because although I'd always worked while she stayed at home she was then working while I went to uni and stayed at home with our 12 year old daughter. i was doing some shifts in a factory and driving a truck but it was quite patchy.

One reason I was so alarmed by the sexist message put out by Nash, in order to ingratiate himself to the feminists as a career move, was the fact that my daughter's mother was becoming more aggressive and unpleasant (perhaps as a symptom of menopause combined with night shifts). Her unpleasant behavior extended to actually physical abuse of my daughter and self which required a visit from the police. At first they automatically assumed I was the problem but on the second visit they spoke with my daughter and realized what was going on. Her mother was arrested, I applied for sole custody, and the problem was solved. I'd asked for advice about finding legal advice at the  student services but I was told "You won't find a silver bullet here" despite the fact when I finally found community legal service I saw that it said on the door "affiliated with USC". I couldn't get legal aid but the perpetrator could. Fortunately a more senior female lawyer at the practice overheard and assured me she would fix the problem by contacting Judy or Jill, which she did.

By that time I was awakened to the bigger picture. Nash was doing his bit to instill a sense of guilt into the male students to overall diminish their sense of worth and thereby reduce their confidence and make them more inclined to submit to the feminist indoctrination which underlay much of the 'teaching'. The Dworkian tenet that all men are rapists, all women are oppressed by the patriarchy etc, were part of a very determined programme to 'put male students in their place'. There were the words like 'equality' but the simple fact that 70% of staff and 70% of students being female showed what equality really meant to the people controlling the university. It seemed to me, without having any real knowledge, relying on my impressions, that there were two sets of motivations; the money and the power to control.

A design teacher referred to the class as "yous". When I submitted my first assignment, twenty-four  images I'd put a lot of effort into, I received an email saying that he could only give me zero marks because the images were placed 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc horizontally but they should have been placed vertically, although there weren't any instructions to do so and the squares weren't numbered.

I rearranged the images and re-submitted the assignment but for some reason he wanted Ian to mark them so I had to resend them to Ian but after three attempts when he for some reason was unable to open the file I told him to forget it and received a zero for the assignment. Such trivial, unimaginative thinking was quite alarming at a university; especially in a design course. I had the impression Mr. Yous had a cocaine habit or something judging by the way he looked early in the morning.

When I'd begun university I'd been elected to the Student Guild and repeatedly expressed interest in helping to enhance the quality of the student newspaper, SCOOP. For some reason I was shut out of the paper from the beginning and when I finally contributed by email the article I'd written about dugong preservation the 'editors' refused to print it, which brought up the questions of what was to be censored and who was to decide what was to be censored. It was an important question that didn't ever seem to get answered.

The feminist-type students had a seamless relationship with the feminist administrators so I had to be persistent even though nothing was resolved regarding censorship so the article appeared in the next edition. My next short piece was a response to Charlie Hebdo that also mentioned the free speech on campus. A lot of people liked it. I had a feature article on The NUS ready but that was the last edition of SCOOP to ever appear. No reason, no excuse. My enquiries were met with "That information is unavailable."

I was beginning to see what a huge well-functioning patronage system was in place. "Play the game" one female teacher I was friends with told me a couple of times but fortunately I had done some classes with good teachers and I'd realized that I could find my way back into the media business in Indonesia if I concentrated on journalism classes and Indonesian language, which I hadn't used for years. When I went to Kupang in 2014 I enjoyed being amongst Indonesian people so it affirmed my commitment to work in Indonesia.

Forty years ago I knew PNG and Indonesia would be very important for Australia so I spent 10 years exploring and learning about PNG and a couple of decades of exploring the vast Indonesian archipelago, mostly surfing but also studying, completing an Asian studies degree at UNE with my final six months at Sonata Dharma university in Java. I'd breezed through despite having left school at 16, was being Mr. Mum to my 12 year old daughter, and flat broke. Four subjects per semester for three years. Good marks. And now I can't pass my favourite subjects?

So it turned out I shouldn't have been doing COR109 because of my previous study credits but nobody told me that so I wasted my time and trapped myself in a conundrum. The statement by Greg Nash was wrong and I naively said so and expected an apology to the entire student body. The notion that all men are criminals is obviously bad for society in general, but things had changed since I'd been a student at UNE. They were some of the best years of my life. To get to uni at forty and make a lot of good friends amongst students and staff was exactly what I needed to do to get back into work. Being sponsored by Sanata Dharma University connected me to people who offered me jobs.

But a new ivory tower structure seemed to exist. It's a bit like Buckingham palace How dare a lowly student question what a lecturer claims, or chastise, or ask for a reference. In Internal Relations the teacher told us that Indonesia had killed 300,000 people in East Timor but no explanation of where the number came from. It used to be 200,000 but now it has been bumped up to 300,000. There must be some huge mass graves out there that no-one has discovered. Obey or fail. One of the clearest indications of that attitude was how difficult it was to get someone on the phone. Everything had to be email, on a special email address.

When it comes right down to it I have been the target of disgraceful bullying by powerful individuals working together to punish me for not treating them with the respect they seem to think I have an obligation to provide. I had plenty of respect when I began but things had changed.

In Australian politics a female student was talking about Clinton "sexually assaulting" Lewinsky so I pointed out the consensual nature of the sex but the teacher told me we had to consider "the power differential". I'm quite aware of the power differential at the moment.

That politics teacher couldn't even operate the lights in the lecture hall and her only claim to fame was her bitter hatred of Tony Abbott. She was going on about the "inhuman" conditions on Christmas island but I'd seen some video shot by a woman I knew who was working there, showing children going to school and refugees having a good time in green, open spaces so I asked her if she would be prepared to look at some actual video from the "inhuman" place but she said she wouldn't, that "videos can be 'doctored'. Her closed mind was stunning. It was obvious that regurgitating her prejudices was the way to get a good mark but I didn't want to waste my time so I continued researching WEL because I'd discovered some very interesting facts; WEL claimed credit for equal pay for equal work but it had actually become law a couple of years before WEL was formed etc etc.  I watched her make a political speech at the Woodford Folk Festival. She hadn't ha a new idea for at least 30years.

Quite predictably I was failed but even 51% would've better helped me toward my goal because I'd realised by then that I needed a certain amount of points to complete my degree so I elected to write an extra essay to get me over the line; being unaware that my essay had only been given 8/30.

The essay topic was very simple, Why the Westminister-style system doesn't really work in Australia.  I even spent 20 minutes in her office chatting about government in Australia to let her see for herself that I thoroughly UNDERSTOOD the subject. There was a list of four chapters to read. I read the four chapters, wrote the simple essay and delivered it to her office. But I still failed. When asked why she told me she hadn't even read the essay. I had clearly been identified as an irredeemable enemy of the feminists by that stage.

International relations was a similar problem. The first assignment was to comment on The Clash of Civilizations. I'd studied Islamic history 25 years before at UNE and lived five years amongst Muslims in Turkey and Indonesia so I'd accumulated some knowledge on the subject; the most pressing problem of our age. But John awarded me 8/40 for my work. It certainly didn't stoke my enthusiasm but a chance encounter with a woman born in Afghanistan but raised in Canada helped me to understand. She even told me that John was being paid by the Saudis to teach the 'Islam is a religion of peace' nonsense. Nonetheless I didn't waste the course. I used my chosen essay topics to delve deeply into the history of the three Abrahamic religions. Crazy stuff, but necessary knowledge.

What I hadn't realized was that the failed courses were going to be used as an excuse to block me later. I've been asked why I didn't appeal the lousy marks but I'd learned early on when I'd appealed to Rod that staff had all the power; they could do whatever they wanted and trying to change that was a complete waste of time; and they were expert at wasting your time.

I did a second trip to Kupang and again scored a distinction for my work as well as plenty of practice in using the language. I'd enrolled for Feature Writing so I took the opportunity to continue on to Jayapura where I interviewed an OPM leader who'd recently been released after 11 years in prison. Almost 1000 people have read the feature article published on my blog.

Trouble was, the first piece of journalism we had to study in feature writing class was an "award winning' article about domestic violence. It was a terrible piece of anti-male propaganda which contradicted all of the journalistic guidelines related to balance, and contained numerous factual errors. One more example of the way the curriculum is used to instill guilt in the male students and the network pushing the anti-man meme extends into the friendly media, award awarders, and government departments.

Being the only male in the class I tried to stay quiet but an interesting example of the way reality can easily be shifted occurred when I asked why the women "returning many times to an abusive relationship" didn't stop going back. One student explained to me how "the puppy which is disciplined the most becomes the most loyal".

I was surprised to hear that she was comparing women to puppies. The teacher told me that she wasn't.  I'd just heard her say so less than a minute before. When one of the other women, a lovely lady about 40, started going on about "marriage equality" because she was a lesbian I definitely decided to stay silent but at the end of the conversation when I was asked directly what I thought of it all I simply mentioned the lack of respect shown to people who considered holy matrimony a sacred rite according to their religious beliefs (not me). I was shouted down by most of the students, including Jane, the teacher. Disgraceful situation. Jane is in my opinion a serious teacher but a prisoner of the dominant feminist 'religion' of the university. A young female student denouncing her mother for voting for Pauline Hanson was just standard stuff.

By then I was simply focused on completing the semester and then going to Jakarta to be embedded in a media organization for 6 weeks to secure myself a paid position and work permit in Indonesia.

I noticed some USC staff had been looking at my LinkedIn account, one of the was Anne Robertson if I remember correctly. She was from the same office as Greg Nash etc so I went there to meet her to see if her interest  had something to do with my attempts to get involved with the Overseas Development Group. I'd made it known that I was interested in helping out with their programme because of my good rapport with Melanesian people. My first wife was from PNG.

I spoke to Bill the ODG boss at the Indonesian Independence Day celebration and he asked me to send him an email, which I did the following day. After six months without a reply I rang the office. Send a CV I was told. So I did. Another six months went by without hearing anything so I called again. My number was taken and I was assured they'd be in contact. That happened several times  but no-one ever called. I had to wait until I was in West Papua to go to the University Cendana to meet the people involved at that end of the programme to learn what it was all about. A person with my interest, experience and ability to speak Melanesian pidgin and bahasa Indonesia was apparently of no use to USC for some reason. When I'd gone looking for Ann Robertson or whatever her name was a female staff member asked me why I was looking to meet her so I told her about my interest in OPG. I was told that 'Ann" had just taken over from someone else and I was just the kind of person she was looking for and she'd be delighted to meet me etc, but though I left my contact details nothing was heard from her and when I saw that friendly lady having lunch near the library she no longer seemed to want to have anything to do with me, as if I'd become persona non grata. That's partly how it worked on campus. Whispering poison created who you were.

In one class a member of staff's name was mentioned by the teacher. He was a teacher who had been involved in the Kupang course. One of the young ladies stated, "Him? he's  a real sleaze."

The teacher was obviously surprised and try to divert the conversation, but the young lady insisted on telling us that the teacher had told her she was beautiful or something just as inappropriate.

It seemed very unfair for the teacher to be slandered like that so I said so. Of course I ended up looking like the bad man picking on the poor girl but a phone call to the anti-discrimination number later assured me that I'd done the right thing. While in Kupang she had caused one driver to get sacked because she complained he was taking photographs.

Even though I had done the right thing the incident still made me vulnerable to insinuations that I was disruptive or somehow a bad student. I always avoided 'argument' because I knew that there was no way to really get the point across except to state it clearly once. The dominant 'progressive' attitude was almost unanimous.

I passed all exams I sat for, submitted all assignments and did all presentations so it shouldn't be insinuated that I wasn't a good student or wouldn't make a god ambassador for USC. My two trips to Kupang were both pleasant exercises in cross-cultural pollination. I prefer the more refined Indonesian culture so it makes it very easy.

 The first time I heard about ACICIS and the Journalism Practicum was a week before the application deadline in 2015, from Richard Curtis, Indonesian language teacher. Why no-one had mentioned it earlier considering I was doing Indonesian language and Journalism I'll never know. I was told to contact Beatrice? someone who didn't answer her phone so I emailed as well and received the message next day that Beatrice was away or something. It was more than a year until I finally met Beatrice even though she was the ACICIS on campus contact I think. When I did finally catch her in her office it was ike there was a little prty going on so I offered to come back later. She told me 12.30 but it was already after one.

I was instructed to contact Renee Barnes who didn't answer her phone either. Maybe I'd already sent an email, anyway, when the email message came back it said that I didn't have a high enough PGA.

First semester I'd failed 3D Animation and COR109. 3D animation had been something I was enthusiastic about learning the latest capabilities. Astounding, but I was in a class of 20 year old gamers speaking a different language and I was doing shifts in the Gourmet gardens factory so I didn't ever feel confident about passing; although I did produce some satisfying animation.

My first response to the message about the PGA was to phone the university in Perth which was selecting from the applicants. I spoke with a person in charge of the programme and he told me that industry experience was a major consideration so I tried calling Renee Barnes to get her opinion on taking into account that I had worked for a daily newspaper in Jakarta ten years before.

At that time I was moving to a unit at Buderim so when Renee did answer her phone I was inside where I discovered later there is extremely bad reception. I asked her about consideration for the previous industry experience but she was adamant that it could be GPA only. Trouble was, the phone was cutting in and out and finally cut off all together. I thought she'd hung up on me so I called her back and like a dope asked her if she'd hung up on me. Anyway, it was a waste of time which created some misunderstandings. I'd had no idea the reception could be so bad on the top of Buderim hill so that didn't help, but I know that another member of staff was in Renee's office at the time and heard the conversation so it can't be misrepresented.

 That was the only time I have spoken with Renee Barnes and I've never met her but she seems to have taken a personal interest in killing my chances of ever working again. Why she would want to do that I can only guess. Maybe I didn't address her as Doctor or Professor or whatever she wants to be called. This isn't a church although some people seem to think so. I remember saying that I was tired of feminist gate-keepers blocking my path forward, and I was. During the years raising my daughter as a single-parent, from 10 months to graduation as a doctor, I'd had countless situations where the feminists, for one reason or another, had used their 'network' to make life more difficult.

When I heard for the second time that there was movement afoot to stop me from going to Jakarta I sent an email to Renee Barnes reminding her that I had made enquiries about ACICIS the previous year and definitely wished to apply this year.

She replied that the first round was already over but I could apply for the second round before October.

Next morning, sent at 8.48 by Rod, is the email telling me I cannot even apply. That may be a co-incidence but I doubt it.

When I first read the email, I felt crushed, literally. All I wanted to do was stay at home and lie on the bed. Part of the problem, on a psychological level, were the flashback-type feelings of when I was raped at fourteen by a guy about as old as Rod. The raw contempt for another person. the perversity of it. I felt stifled and distorted by something I hadn't considered happening. And going through the frustrating complaints process multiplies the affect. Repeats the feelings. Sometimes I felt the fingernails in the back of my neck.

That is the main reason I am taking so long to reply to some of the inanity. Every time I see an example of a powerful person, be it Rod, Joanne or you, abusing your power it makes me feel sick. Like I'm back there being fucked-over again. Seeing the photographs of child-molesters shown as part of the recent royal commission into the catholic church I felt almost envious of their victims because they had a name and a face to direct their tangled emotions towards. For me I didn't have that kind of closure so the fear that these people are going to get away with what they've done to me is intense.

It was a blow on several levels but most importantly the prospects for employment. My younger daughter is now 14 and top of her class so I want to take her back to her birth country to become fluent with the way her relatives live there, whether in Jakarta or the village. It is a very rich culture with a long history.

If Rod and Renee are so sure of my low PGA preventing me from being selected then why stop me from applying?  (they don't take into account the two distinctions I scored in Kupang). Surely if they are right then I'd be weeded out in the selection process. That is not their job.

I'm not eligible for any expenses or fees by the university because I am older than 28 so it isn't a matter of financial burden. There are external funds for airfares and some expenses. A key consideration for my plan to go to Jakarta for six weeks or more was the money I needed to pay my rent while I was away in Indonesia. My daughter would still be going to school so I needed the minimum to survive.

Without the signature from the university I couldn't continue to receive Austudy while out of the country. Austudy would stop the minute I got on the plane. Probably sounds pathetic to a well-paid person, but essential to us.

That is one of the central questions I need answered, and preferably from the horses mouth. Why prevent me from applying? Renee and Rod took it upon themselves to completely destroy my plans for the future. A month in Indonesia would create all the friendships required to work in the media. My Indonesian language is pretty good these days, especially over there. I'd like to live in Indonesia because here there are no jobs for journalists but over there they always need a native speaker editing copy. I enjoy working with Indonesians. The country still has a sense of humor.

Another question is why did Rod say that my ambassadorial skills would be insufficient for the role of overseas student embedded in an Indonesian media organization? And then he changed to PGA (using 3 different numbers). But, an academic person who rang Rod on my behalf told me that Rod had said that he'd stopped me from going because of the small sign I'd put on my laptop bag one day below the library, not long after the truck massacre in Nice.

It was an eight word opinion piece on an important issue. Within a few minutes security were there to tell me to remove it, which I did. It wasn't until later that I realized I had a perfect right to express a political opinion on a campus where I am a student so they shouldn't have ordered me to take it down.

Shortly after I had removed the statement from my laptop bag and resumed writing the essay I'd been working on a student named Cameron arrived and asked me if I'd seen Facebook. I asked what he meant and he told me there was a photograph of me and my 'sign' on the USC Stalker Facebook page.

Later that evening I found the Facebook site he had mentioned and I was surprised to see that there were numerous comments below Alise's post of me sitting beneath the library typing on my laptop. The 'caption' was something like "‘You should probably take your unwarranted hate and fear mongering elsewhere, man."

My perspective was compassion for the innocent victims of the murdering truck-driving religious monster. I obviously  think suggesting that all self-proclaimed members of the "commonwealth of believers" should accept some responsibility for the atrocities being committed in the name of their god is quite reasonable. Rather than bigotry it seemed obvious to me that my suggestion made complete sense especially in the wake of the recent Nice truck massacre when 80 innocent people were slaughtered by a fellow Muslim.

The security guys had told me there had been numerous complaints about the 'sign' which surprised me because it had only been there for about 5 minutes, and it turned out there'd only been one complaint, by the captain of the quidditch team. I followed their instructions immediately so it wasn't until later that I discovered, by reading quotes of Alise's own words, on USC Maverick, that she claimed that, "[He] set it up and started telling everyone around it about his warped views on the world",  although I hadn't spoken to anyone.

Reading through the dozens of comments by students I was amazed by how aggressive and nasty so many of them were. One said, "I know that hatchet faced old cunt", followed by suggestions that I should be knocked over and my laptop smashed. There were calls for me to be kicked out of the university and photographs of me posted as though I was wildlife simply because I'd expressed a completely valid point of view on a most important political subject. I laughed it off but it was quite creepy to see that being an old white guy meant open season for insults and threats. I didn't hear anything about it from the university even though some of the posts definitely broke the law.

I replied to some of the posts, partly to explain the main intention of the sign. Of course anyone intentionally belonging to an organisation is partly responsible for the actions of the membership. Prison guards in their 90's are still being prosecuted for belonging to the Nazi party seventy years ago.

So, the message was a good one but the reaction to the suggestion of collective guilt was what I was interested in. "All Muslims" were the words that supposedly caused offence yet when Greg Nash said "All male students" to an entire lecture hall half full of male students nobody objected. It is a sharp contrast. Directly opposite reactions to the same kind of idea even though male students don't consciously join a male club and reaffirm their commitment to that association every day.

Later Cameron told me that he had been summoned to the office of Rod McCullough in regard to an enquiry he had made by email to Greg Nash about the statement  about "All male students guilty of DV". He was pretty vague about what was said except to say that Rod told him the matter had been "resolved". But it hasn't been resolved and won't be until Nash apologises to the students.

If I'd known how big a problem complaining about Nash's statement would become for me I wouldn't have done it. I thought I was doing the right thing. I'd forgotten about it but every time I'd turned on the TV there were two competing memes, It is wrong to blame all muslims for the actions of a few, while simultaneously All men are guilty because some men are bad. That's why I experimented with the little sign, but then I was prevented from going to Jakarta because of it, according to what Rod said to Richard Curtis, so it definitely wasn't worth it.

The insinuation that I am somehow a bad student and a bad person. Express surprise that over 50 fields of study have women only Qld govt scholarships and it puts a target on you for every feminist on campus who has an ideological obligation to ostracise and dehumanise.

What exactly could the system there be called other than a patronage system. A sharing out according partly to loyalty and non-deviationist dedication.

The ACICIS programme is a unique and ideal way to learn about the new media in Indonesia by meeting the participants, on the job. Exactly as it should be. Indonesian employers don't want a sit down interview, rather a gradual familiarisation. An advantage for me because my Indonesian language is quite good enough for business or social occasions.

The ACICIS representative in Perth told me over the phone that I was the type of person ACICIS was aimed at. My experience displayed my commitment to improving understanding between our  nations. It is important but becoming rapidly more important. My recent trip to East Timor and Jayapura in Papua shows that I can get access and accurately record the information acrude. The features editor of The Australian praised the story but wouldn't commit to printing it in the Australian.

But what I am saying that I was doing all the right things toward putting my university studies to the best purpose; getting a media job in Indonesia.

The only thing that could stop me from acheiving my goal of attending the Jakarta Journalism Practicum it turned out was Rod. I can almost see his mustache wiggle as he sends the email at 8.48am. Must have been a priority? Had he spent the night with Renee and made a promise? The possibilities are endless; but he did it even though, as the ombudsperson said, it wasn't his jurisdiction. There weren't any university funds involved and I needed the credits to finish my degree was how does he justify preventing me from even applying to the selection process. especially, very strangely, he said that I'd get credit for the course if I succeeded by applying "outside the university", something like that.

The entire fantasy of applying to a course put together by universities without the blessing of the university where I am studying is seriously mentioned. Not supporting, or allowing, an application by a current student is a severe insult to the student.

They think they are a law unto themselves and to a large degree they are right. Politicians don't want to go within a mile of universities except to get honarary degrees.

But something so simple and basic as a recorded lecture where Greg Nash makes a statement to the students for which I think he should apologise. We have all seen it. I made the mistake of complaining about it.  I continually and finally paid for my impertinence but it can be sorted out.

The university should either stand by Greg Nash's statement or deny its appropriateness so that I feel justified in making the complaint when I did. The cascade of events which occurred as a consequence of the university not facing up to its responsibility to follow its own guidelines on discriminatory language have culminated in me not being allowed to apply for the ACICIS programme. That needs to be fixed so that I can apply properly this year.

thanks,

james Morris