Queensland University of Technology Student Guild

The QUT Student Guild is the student union at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. It is controlled by students for students and operates the representation, advocacy and welfare services at QUT as well as many commercial services on campus.

tudent Representation

The Guild coordinates student representation, independent advocacy and welfare services for the students at QUT - supporting students to take positions on faculty and University committees, and the Academic Board.

Decisions within the Guild are made by and an elected Executive and a Council.

The Executive consists of a President, General Secretary, Academic Rights Director, Welfare Director, Women's Director, two Queer Directors (one of whom must identify as a woman), an Indigenous Director, an Entho-Cultural Director, Disability Director, Sport and Recreation Director and Environment Convenor.

The Council consists of the executive as well as two elected representatives from each faculty, a Part Time/External representative, a Clubs and Societies Convenor and a Mature Age Representative.

Commercial Services

The Guild operates its commercial services over the three main campuses of QUT. These include four childcare centres, three fitness centres, a secondhand bookshops, three bars, an aquatic and squash centre, a campus shop, a merchandise shop, a cafe, a newsagency and a teppanyaki outlet. The Guild also recently opened a Subway on campus to increase Guild revenue after Voluntary Student Unionism legislation was passed.

The Guild also operates all the sport and recreation activities for the university community including social sports fixtures, university games tours, clubs and societies and trips, tours and courses.

NUS Membership

The QUT Student Guild is a member of the National Union of Students of Australia. As with most other student organisations across Australia, the QUT Student Guild was involved in campaigning against the introduction of voluntary student unionism and continues to oppose this legislation.

Past Presidents

Queer Students' Portfolio

The QUT Queer Collective is a collective of LGBTIQ students at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. The primary aims of the collective are to combat homophobia and heterosexism, provide a positive sense of queer identity, eliminate discrimination, advocate for queer students within student guild and university administration, undertake critical analysis of queer oppression, and to provide social and support services for queer students. [http://www.guildonline.net/sgdsp/dispsite.php?groupsiteseq=1&pageseq=36]

The collective is a grassroots organisation with a focus on the self-determination and political activity of queer students, for the benefit of queer students. [http://www.guildonline.net/sgdsp/dispsite.php?groupsiteseq=1&pageseq=36] (See: Student activism, Autonomy) Preferred decision making processes are democratic and non-hierarchical, reflecting an ethos of empowerment, equity and personal and political liberation [http://www.guildonline.net/sgdsp/dispsite.php?groupsiteseq=1&pageseq=36] (see: Praxis).

History of the Department

Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education became the Kelvin Grove campus of Queensland University of Technology in 1989 [http://www.qut.edu.au/about/university/history.jsp] . A group described in Graham Willett's "Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia" [http://books.google.com/books?id=Z-4mzkd3trsC&pg=PA123&dq=greg+weir&sig=91071XoeTKCn2LNBk1pD_Drg8FY#PPA123,M1] , p.123, as a 'gay group' existed at the college for several years. In 1976 the college was a site of controversy as Greg Weir and the collective successfully campaigned to have the group formally recognised by the college council. The repressive right-wing government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen subsequently intervened and chose to victimise Weir by refusing to allow him to work as a teacher on the basis of his sexuality.

This gave rise to an extensive national campaign in support of Greg Weir that also involved civil liberties groups, trade unions and political parties. The Australian Union of Students in 1977 voted to support the Weir campaign and by the end of the year had published and distributed a pamphlet entitled "Profile : the Greg Weir case - a case involving the victimization of a homosexual trainee teacher" [http://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an6327719] and convened a national meeting of sixteen representatives from a number of state-based Greg Weir Campaign Committees. This was, according to Willett, one of the earliest ongoing campaigns of the queer movement in which the Australian Union of Students took a leading role. [http://books.google.com/books?id=Z-4mzkd3trsC&pg=PA123&dq=greg+weir&sig=91071XoeTKCn2LNBk1pD_Drg8FY#PPA123,M1]

The issue resonated with the GLBT community because it reflected the severely repressive attitude of the heterosexual mainstream at the time towards all people who were not strictly heterosexual identifying. In the mid-to-late 1970s the Australian 'Gay and Lesbian' movement, influenced by its US counterpart and other social movements was emphasising a more in-your-face attitude of visibility and pride. Queer activism moved towards taking on repressive social mores at the institutional level through a framework of radical/liberation politics, and the Weir campaign was evidence of this paradigm shift.

Campaigns / Convergences

From the late 1990s - early 2000s during the upsurge in the global Anti-capitalism movement, QUT collective members as well as activists from other campuses were involved in groups such as Queers Against Corporate Exploitation (Q.U.A.C.E.). The post 9/11 downturn in anti-capitalist activism generally potentially led to an increasing focus on identity politics

2000 - S11
2001 - Stop CHOGM, Lesbian access to In-Vitro Fertilisation
2002 - Visibility on campus, Queer Week, Campaign for Queer Space on Gardens Point, Queer Bloc at the WTO meeting (love without borders), national education campaign against HECS increases and full-up front fee paying places at uni
2003 - Queer Refugees and the Baxter Protests, Anti-War, campaign against HECS / DUFF, Queer Space National Queer Policy Conference
2004 - Familias Diversitas - queerying (hetero)normative notions of family, organising for Queer Collaborations ('Yes its fucking political'), Anti-Howard campaign (vote Howard out)
2005 - Anti-VSU Campaign, ALLY Network

Links to other networks

QUT Queer collective has been an active member of the Queer Action Network (Qld) and the national Queer network facilitated by the National Union of Students. Collective members have been active in supporting queer activists across a range of campuses, including during Griffith University Queer Collective's campaigns against the homophobic actions of Student Unity controlled Griffith University Student Representative Council in 2002 and 2004-5. Collective members have also participated in campaigns beyond the scope of normative, centrist identity politics. Members have been actively involved in the broader education movement, feminist activism, anticapitalist activism, social justice campaigns and most recently campaigns against course cuts at Queensland University of Technology.

Department Structure

QUT Queer Department has been a formal department of the Queensland University of Technology since 2001. Prior to 2001 LGBTIQ students had the option of joining a club called the freedom avengers that applied for funding for annual events and conferences through the Guild. However, these students had no formal representation or voice within the guild structure.

Since 2001 there has been an autonomous queer department within the guild structure. It has an annual budget and representation on QUTSG Council, in recognition of the fact that queer students are entitled to have a formal voice within the guild and that heterosexist structures in society may prevent them from doing so normally. The two queer director positions were originally set aside for one male and one female identifying person each. In 2006, after much agitation this was changed to 'two queer directors, one of whom must be a woman'. The queer collective argued that the need to address sexism through representation for women within the department was of paramount importance, however it was hypocritical to suggest that men also needed representation. The strict definitions of gender were also unrepresentative and exclusionary to the diverse gender identities of the collective/department, particularly with many members rejecting the construct of gender and gender roles altogether.

From 2001-2006 the Guild had two unpaid Queer representatives from each campus: Gardens Point, Kelvin Grove and Carseldine. Once again one had to be a woman and one had to be a man. These six members combined counted as one total vote at council. This bureaucratic measure was intended to prevent queer students forming a voting bloc on council. However, other departments such as women's had paid co-ordinators on each campus who had one full vote each. This discriminatory measure ultimately lead to one of the founding members of the newly constituted queer department leaving the National Organisation of Labor Students. Steven Gillet stated in council that it was against the wishes of collective to have the Queer representatives from each campus constituting for just one combined vote. He subsequently broke the NOLS party line by voting against the Guild structure that the National Organisation of Labor Students had proposed and subsequently left/ was purged from NOLS. Arguably this is when much animosity between the collective and the National Organisation of Labor Students began.

Office bearers are elected by queer-identifying students who are members of the Student Guild. Collective endorses candidates for the positions each year, however non-endorsed paper candidates are often nominated in the general student elections held each year. To be eligible to vote, students must be queer identifying and apply to be added to the electoral roll through the Queer department or the Returning Officer.

In 2006 the campus representatives were removed from the Guild structure in a constitutional move that again was not endorsed by the Queer Collective.

From 2002 - 2005 the Queer Department also employed a part time Queer Resource Officer to provide professional support and assistance to queer students and to assist in running campaigns, research and events organising. This was one of only three such positions in Student Associations in Australia. This position has since been abolished as part of the economic rationalisation carried out on all Guild Services.