Arts students confront Dean

With less than a week’s notice, more than one hundred students turned up to grill the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Susan Dodds, about massive changes to their Faculty, and they’re still not happy.

‘The university today confirmed that at no stage of it’s major restructure plans did it genuinely consult with students,’ said Georgia Allen, education campaigner and undergraduate Arts/Law student at the University of Tasmania.

“As soon as students found out about the major changes to their Faculty, they asked why they hadn’t at any stage been consulted. I organised a mass student forum, one week after we all found out about it,” said Ms Allen.

The Dean confirmed that students were kept deliberately in the dark about the restructure, and that no attempts were made to inform the broader student body until after the restructure plans had been approved.

“The forum revealed that the University does not have a genuine belief that students should be informed of and involved in key decisions made by senior management. The Vice Chancellor’s refusal to allow the forum to be recorded couldn’t evidence this more strongly,” Ms Allen said.

Many students were also concerned about the Curriculum Review project, which is distinct, yet intertwined with the arts restructure. The project will slash the number of units offered to students, with the Arts majors offering as many as 45 units forced to shrink down to fourteen.

“I believe that this is an arbitrary and misguided decision; the belief that focused, specialised units should be phased out in favour of broad, generalised areas of study is out of touch with what students want and to my mind, common sense”

Ms Allen believes “this forum did not result in any meaningful undertakings from University staff to engage with students with regards to changes to the faculty and this is seriously disappointing. That said, we welcome the University finally coming to the table; better late than never.”

“Students are demanding substantive, frequent and wide-¬ranging consultation on all future changes, and the Dean has intimated that she’s not opposed to such discussions,” said forum organiser, Georgia Allen.