Tag: Kambri

• The Definitive Guide to Crying on Campus

  October 16, 2022 7:24 pm Comments Off on The Definitive Guide to Crying on Campus

   
  Everyone needs a cry once in a while. And whether you’ve failed your supplementary exam, your ex has started dating someone else in your pod, you’re drunk and Kebaba is closed, or you’ve once again forgotten to check the prices at Harry Hartog’s before reaching the register, there’s plenty of reasons to cry on campus. So, we’ve teamed-up to provide you with our hard-won knowledge, rating places to cry on campus. While the first two criteria, ‘privacy’ and ‘cleanliness,’ are self-explanatory, the third – ‘vibe’ – is about the je ne sais quoi of a spot. An inexplicable warmth or cozy comfort; the feeling you could be watching yourself cry in a movie; that you’re somehow suddenly connected to a hidden beating heart of campus; or that you’ve become a character in a Donna Tartt novel about to experience an eerie, irrevocable epiphany…
   
  ANU Sport
   
  It’s been a bad week. Uber eats and energy drinks have done little to stave off crushing feelings of emptiness. Hot girl summer seems a million miles away. With great (and admirable) mental fortitude, you wrestle on a sports bra and source a pair of questionably clean leggings. You head to the gym in a monstrous mood, trying to sell yourself on that whole ‘happy workout endorphins’ thing. You shuffle a playlist and pray for the runner’s high to take the pain away. And then, because you couldn’t change the song in time, you find your eyes streaming, running at 13 speed to Death Cab For Cutie. On the upside, if you go hard enough, people will just think you’re like, really sweaty.
   
  Privacy: 1/5
  Cleanliness: 2.5/5
  Vibe: 3/5

  Marie Raey Gender Neutral Bathrooms 
   
  While (in)famous for their use for sexual activity, the Gender Neutral Bathrooms are incredibly flexible due to their privacy and equal accessibility. Indeed, you could say they are well-suited and flexible for excreting all kinds of bodily fluids.
   
  Privacy: 5/5
  Cleanliness: 2.5/5
  Vibe: 0.5/5
   
   

  An Undisclosed Abandoned Building at an Undisclosed Location on Campus
   
  It’s the third day I’ve slept less than three hours. The sun is starting to peak over the horizon. It’s been another all-nighter. Two science students are hunched over desks in a shabby, musty-smelling classroom of a building constructed in the 70s—an architectural dark age. You wouldn’t even notice it even if you walked straight past. The hideous building is a haven for a tiny group of poor students working at cursed hours of the morning with alarming regularity. The blue glare of a computer screen lights up my gaunt, mascara-smeared face. My thesis remains unwritten. It is due in three hours. Another tear rolls down a well-worn path on my cheek. 
   
  Privacy: 5/5
  Cleanliness: 3/5
  Vibe: 5/5
   
   

  Sullivan’s Creek Table
   
  Monday Week Eleven. A shit weekend with your not-boyfriend is followed by an even shitter day full of text message arguments and watery eyes. You agree to meet up, to talk things through. Between listening to him (“I don’t like when you tell me that I hurt your feelings”) and speaking yourself (“but this is how you made me feel”), walking becomes too great a challenge. You sit down at a table, one of those generic forest green ones found in all public parks.
   
  He finally says he’s sorry for trying to ditch you to go meet his mates at the pub immediately after you have sex. He’s sorry he made you cry after he’d been away for two weeks and he’s sorry that after meeting your father for the first time he sought to use your home and bed (and body) as a hotel room. Then he says he knows now why he did these things. He has no feelings for you: he never has and he never will.
   
  At the table with attached wooden chairs you tuck your knees up to your chest and stare at your feet. He tells you that it’s not your fault, that you’ve been perfect to him and you are perfect, but that he just doesn’t feel anything. You cry. Then, two hours later, you attend a study session for your exam tomorrow. Then, after that, you finish writing a paper. Then you go home and cry again.
   
  Privacy: 0.5/5
  Cleanliness: 4/5
  Vibe: 3.5/5

  Chifley Library 
   
  No matter the floor, Chifley Library should be avoided by crying aficionados. While at first glance promising, the bookable study rooms are too fishbowl-ey for proper privacy. And the bathrooms are too dirty for comfort. Their only positive feature is the motion-sensored lights which allow you to cry to your heart’s content, perched in a dark cubicle, warning you to muffle yourself with a wad of toilet paper when the lights flicker on as another patron enters. (But you haven’t known pain until you’ve left the bathroom and run into the cleaning staff who’ve patiently been waiting for you to finish your teary sesh.)
   
  Privacy: 1/5
  Cleanliness: 0.5/5
  Vibe: 0/5
   
   

  Australian Centre on China in the World Gardens
   
  The courtyard of this building is so lovely. So peaceful. So tranquil. It’s the perfect place to sob while listening to Sufjan Stevens. It’s far enough from Daley Rd that if your friends see you on snapmaps they’ll be concerned, but not concerned enough where they feel the need to start checking up on you. At night there is just the right amount of lighting, enough that you feel safe but still dim to hide how tragic you look when you inevitably cave and post a crying selfie on your private story. Refreshments are provided by the sprinklers that are running 24/7. The mindfully designed feng shui puts your mind at ease. On the walk home you’ll be so distracted by passels of possums that by the time you get to your res hall, you’ll have forgotten about why you were crying in the first place.
   
  Privacy: 4.5/5 (sometimes couples come here to make out)
  Cleanliness 5/5
  Vibe: 4/5

  Uni Ave 
   
  Nothing beats a full blown tanty in the middle of Kambri. Lose the inhibitions and let the people know you’re crying. Dress the part by letting your mascara run down your face! You’re in the middle of all the hustle and bustle and you get to enjoy Telstra Tower and the mountains in the background—what could be more fun!? Anyway, no one will notice anyway because they’re busy running to their next class or paying for a $6 coffee.
   
  Privacy: 0/5 or 5/5 depending on your showmanship
  Cleanliness: 5/5
  Vibe: 4/5

  Various Authors

• Where I Stand: A Kambri Exhibition Review

  August 2, 2020 10:38 pm Comments Off on Where I Stand: A Kambri Exhibition Review

  The initial feeling I experienced walking down University Avenue witnessing Where I Stand was one of intrigue. Six gigantic cubes stand in a single row. Twenty-four frames of stunning photographs each one as striking as the one before it. Like many around me, I succumbed to curiosity and took a closer look. What followed was a profoundly emotional, enigmatic and exciting adventure as I engaged with each of the images.

  Where I Stand is an exhibition presented by aMBUSH gallery together with Moshe Rosenzveig, director of Head On Photo Festival. Since the initial planning of Kambri, aMBUSH Gallery and Wiltshire + Dimas envisioned a walk of art for students, staff and the public to enjoy art outside the setting of a gallery. Exhibition Avenue is the fruition of this vision, an initiative to showcase year-round exhibitions in Kambri. The current show is photographically based, although future efforts could use more diverse art forms such as live street art.
  For those who have not had the pleasure of viewing the exhibition, Where I Stand incorporates the work of six iconic Australian artists; Michael Cook, Dr. Judith Nangala Crispin, Sarah Ducker, Murray Fredericks, Barbara McGrady and Michael Jalaru Torres. Together, the artists present 24 deeply personal works that delve into themes of identity, history, nature, connection to the land, The Dreaming and the major theme of healing.
   

  The first cube that I encountered was that of QLD artist Michael Cook. Cook began making art photography in 2009 in response to his desire to explore issues of identity and how his own life was affected by adoption. Cook was born in the late 1960s to a sixteen-year-old mother who had become pregnant to an Indigenous Australian man. Keeping the child would have been severely frowned upon, and so Cook was put up for adoption. In his series of four photographs, Cook delves into themes surrounding mother and child. ‘Mother’, the collection that the exhibit images are chosen from, showcases Australian Indigenous women alone in a landscape. There is a feeling that a child is missing through symbols such as an empty pram or tricycle. I was disquieted by seeing the loneliness and loss of these women. The grey colouring of their desolate backgrounds intensified my empathy. Cook speaks to the incredible pain caused by the Stolen Generations, the innate human bond between mother and child and the pain caused by the breaking of such a pure connection.
   
   

  The next cube I met was donned with photographs by Canberra based artist Dr. Judith Nangala Crispin. Crispin is a talented poet, visual artist, academic, writer and photographer. Her work explores themes of displacement, loss of identity (including her Indigenous Australian ancestry) and connection with Country. Crispin has spent time in the Tanami desert living with the Warlpiri people who she says she owes the development of her unique photographic technique of lumachrome glass printing. The method involves the use of natural materials such as blood, wax, ochres, honey, mud, seeds and roadkill animals arranged on Perspex over light-sensitive paper. In this way, lumachrome glass prints arose from her attempt to delve into a deeper connection with the Australian landscape. Crispin drives out to find roadkill and waits with the animals for up to 50 hours while the artwork is developing. The attention to detail is evident when I saw her work, with even the smallest hairs of a joey delicately captured. Crispin’s artworks, at first glance, felt warm and comforting. Seeing the four lifeless animals wrapped in the embrace of the landscape reminded me of Indigenous Australia’s deeply nuanced connection to Country. However, there is also a sense upon viewing of aloneness — a disconnect with each animal surrounded by darkness. The photographs also highlight the pain that has been caused and continues to be caused by the Stolen Generations.
   

  I then followed on to the third cube by Indigenous fine art photographer Michael Jalaru Torres, who is originally from Broome. Torres’ art draws on his personal history as well as exploring contemporary social and political issues facing Indigenous Australians. I was struck by how simple Torres’ images were. Each photograph seemed to focus on a subject with contrasting colours creating a sense of lightness and darkness. I felt a sense of joy as well as pain when viewing his images. Torres highlights the dark history of Australia as well as illuminating thriving Indigenous peoples all around the country. His artworks upon viewing are subtle, but poignant. Torres wants his photographs to inspire people to learn more about Indigenous Australian culture.
   

  The next cube was by Sydney based artist Sarah Ducker. Ducker was inspired by her trip to Broken Hill in creating this exhibition. Ducker visited the landscape after the 2019-2020 NSW bushfires that were unprecedented in its destruction. However, Ducker was transfixed by the resilience of the bush standing bare yet magnificent in its ashes. This beauty found in the wreckage is evident when viewing these photographs. The naked trees stand tall and strong despite their blackened exterior. The carnage of the bush is a symbol of rejuvenation and transformation. Just as the bush regrows from its ashes, Ducker portrays humanity’s own need for rebirth. The artworks demonstrate our need to radically change our behaviour to fight climate change and its devastating consequences.
   

  The next cube was by artist Aunty Barbara McGrady, a Gamilaroi/Gomeroi Murri yinah (woman). Her works portray her passion for telling stories about the lives of Indigenous Australians today. McGrady is a sociologist, athlete and sports lover who photographs many famous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sportspeople at the NRL, AFL and other matches. Her work aims to show empowering images of Indigenous Australians, particularly through their positive contributions to society such as through sports, activism and culture. I was struck by how powerful the subjects of her photographs stood out. Each Indigenous Australian was showcasing their strong cultural ties proudly against the colonial backdrop. Additionally, McGrady states that the art form of ‘black box’ is a work of decolonising the traditional colonial archive spaces such as museums and art galleries.
   

  The final cube on my walk down University Avenue was by NSW artist Murray Fredericks. Fredericks is a well-known artist with his works showcased internationally and around Australia, sitting in significant institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery and Commonwealth Bank as well as owned by Elton John and Valentino. In this exhibition, Fredericks chose four images from the Salt Project (2003-2019) produced at Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre), in South Australia. Upon viewing this cube, I was struck by feelings of the sublime. Faced with vignettes that trailed onto the horizon, I was afflicted with the thought of the omnipotence of nature. I felt small but in a profoundly comforting way, as though there was something greater in the universe. It was Fredericks’ own meditations of infinity in the landscape that inspired him to replicate the experience in images. Fredericks’ use of colours and light demonstrates this feeling perfectly. The fading sunsets and barren infinite desert reminded me of the immense beauty of our earth.
  After I had finished walking down University Avenue, I was overcome by the poignant messages and stories of each artist. Personal histories, political and social issues all interwoven into a beautiful exhibition centered around themes of healing, identity, culture and loss. This exhibition succeeded in creating a challenging, yet rewarding experience that forces viewers to think deeply about each image. If you are walking down University Avenue, I highly recommend that you take the time to experience this provoking exhibition.
   
  Where I Stand will run from 27 July until 31 October 2020. It is part of Kambri’s ‘Exhibition Avenue’ series, curated by aMBUSH Gallery, a free year-round program of art and performance. You can find more information about this exhibition here.
   
   
   

  Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
   

  Tara Finlay

• NUTS’ Picnic At Hanging Rock: Review

  May 10, 2019 4:00 pm Comments Off on NUTS’ Picnic At Hanging Rock: Review

  A gothic mystery like no other, ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock’, has hit the ANU Theatre scene. This is the National University Theatre Society’s second production under this year’s theme, “This is Our Youth”, and this Australian classic featuring adolescent characters fits the bill. As directed by Matilda Hatcher, the mystery of the story is enhanced by the movement of the characters against the backdrop of an eversame Australian bush.
  The classic Australian story set in the outskirts of Melbourne at the beginning of the 1900s is about a group of schoolgirls that go missing, and the subsequent questions and self-torture that those who are left behind go through. Not only a mystery, the story also has themes of femininity, belonging, and touches into the colonial experience. In my opinion, it is never not timely to question the validity of colonialism, especially looking into our own history as Australians, so this play is always going to draw me in. What left me in awe was the solid production put into action by Hatcher and her cast and crew.
  The all-female cast did an incredible job at embodying a vast array of characters, at times spontaneously swapping between them while providing both narrative and dialogue. This took a little getting used to, but after a few minutes the hypnotic effect had me hooked. The physical weaving and chant-like delivery of lines, doubled with the fluent changes between characters, was intoxicating – you felt as drawn to the omnipotent Hanging Rock as much as the girls did. This effect is no doubt owing to the direction Hatcher, who also makes her debut in the role.
  The set was artfully decorated, with some impressively sized trees in the background, and, in typical student theatre fashion, an up-cycled three-legged cabinet with a prosthetic leg tacked on. There was perhaps an over-use of blackout between scene transitions. I did overhear some audible sighs where I was seated, although that could have also been due to the fact that the woman behind me was providing fervent commentary in a whisper fit for the stage. The judicious use of sound effects – the whistling of the Australian bush, the ticking of a clock – must be commended for providing the atmosphere of mystery (despite the faint thump of the bass from the Meg Mac concert in the next room). Some surprising comedic moments balanced the slow, inevitable descent into total desperation that was epitomised by Anna Burnard’s portrayal of schoolmistress Appleyard. I almost felt guilty, spying on her as she unravelled, but I was stuck on every word.
  As someone who is well-acquainted with the original Joan Lindsay novel, I felt the centrality of Miranda – as an ethereal, cult-leader-like figure whose hold on the people around her is non-transient – could have been lost on those who were unfamiliar with the story. However, the fact that any of the women on stage could have been Miranda at some point added to the atmosphere of mystery rather than detract from it. Through the movement sequences, I found myself constantly looking for Miranda – in a way reminiscent to how the character Michael Fitzhubert (whose exasperation was superbly captured by Marni Mount) obsessively searches for her.
  A wonderful student theatre production that highlights the Australian voice, as well as those of women (hurrah!), make sure you don’t miss out on seeing it.
   
  ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ is at the Kambri Drama Theatre for two more nights (10th & 11th May). See the Facebook event for more details and to buy tickets.

  ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock’, has hit the ANU Theatre scene as part of NUTS’ 2019 annual theme, “This is Our Youth.”

  Lily Iervasi

• Kambri Booking Fees: A Profound Misstep

  April 22, 2019 12:21 pm Comments Off on Kambri Booking Fees: A Profound Misstep

  ANU has made a gross error in judgement that we as students must call to attention at all levels of the university and beyond. We must equally hold ANU and the decision-makers behind this error to account, and demonstrate to them that the situation with Kambri is unacceptable. To affect positive change and avoid a poor outcome for ANU and its students, we need to understand the situation, and be willing to take action.
   
  Holding ANU to account: The Strategic Plan
  Recently revealed intentions to enact prohibitively expensive fees for student use of Kambri directly contradict ANU’s stated goals in their Strategic Plan.
  The Strategic Plan has been developed and promoted at the highest levels, including by our own Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt. It aims to create “excellence in student experience”, states that ANU is committed “to better outcomes for our community” and “to equity and diversity as fundamental values.” Equity is a recurring theme: elsewhere the plan states clearly that “ANU stands for equity in all that we do”.
  With regards to the campus experience, the Strategic Plan aims to build a “campus amenity that befits its status as the national university” and states that the “facilities, infrastructure and environment of ANU will exemplify the excellence we seek to achieve across the University.”
  Specifically referencing Kambri, the Plan declares that ANU “will regenerate Union Court as the heart of University life. It will be home to outstanding student and staff services”.
  I cannot see how, with the proposed booking fees, ANU can achieve these admirable goals. For example, charging students $800 to use the lawns on Kambri is the antithesis of “equity”. This is the antithesis of “outstanding student… services”. Booking fees such as these price student organisations out of the area, impose financial barriers to accessibility and undermine our desire and ability as students to create the thriving campus life that signifies “excellence in student experience”.
  As argued in a previous article submitted to Woroni – one written before these booking fees were leaked – our campus has been gentrified. That is even more apparent now, since these plans have been revealed.
  This is not befitting of the national university. This does not exemplify excellence. Decision-makers at the highest level, like Vice Chancellor Schmidt who plays a key role in charting the course for our university, must be made aware of the profound disconnect here between our strategic goals stated on paper and decisions being made on the ground.
   
  Holding our student representatives to account: Questions about consultation, representation, and transparency
  From Woroni’s previous news article: “The draft [booking fees] document does, however, recognise “anchor users” – certain groups that “have been considered in the design of the spaces. These users are limited to the ANU Film Group and the National University Theatre Society (NUTS). While these two groups are granted special allowances in regard to fees, similar clubs and societies – like the ANU Musical Theatre Company – do not enjoy such allowances.”
  So, what about the rest of us – other clubs and groups that haven’t been considered? Where is the broader student-led advocacy? And why, if it is present, has it resulted in a policy that is not in student’s interests? In short, how did we end up here?
  According to reports delivered at the most recent SRC, at the undergraduate level, the responsibility for advocacy on this issue falls to the ANUSA President, the Vice President, and the Social Officer – the three students chosen to represent the rest of the student community and its groups on this matter. Both ANUSA and PARSA have a duty to advocate on these matters. At the undergraduate level, however, our three representatives have been advocating for us in meetings that are closed and confidential. Meetings that have no transparency. Because these meetings are confidential, they’ve apparently concluded that we as students cannot therefore be consulted, at least not until this draft becomes public. This isn’t necessarily the case because consultation can still happen, so long as confidential information is not shared. The obvious problem with this course of action – a complete lack of consultation – is that once the policy is finalised and locked in, it will be much more difficult to change.
  It is important for us to question what these confidentiality terms were, why these terms were accepted, and why other approaches to consultation were not considered afterward. These terms not only make it more difficult for those representatives to consult the student community, but have also delayed that consultation until the process is complete.
  It may have been possible, for example, for our three undergraduate representatives to have banded together and rejected any terms of confidentiality, arguing instead that as representatives, to do their job most effectively they needed to do it openly and involve students earlier in the process. If those demands for transparency were rejected, they could have taken a principled stance on this matter and refused to participate in this process. Kambri would then be left to make and present decisions without being able to say they consulted students – a far weaker position for them to maintain.
  Instead, we now have Kambri making decisions that are clearly not in student’s best interests, and yet that process is bolstered by being able to claim that those decisions were done in consultation with students. This is only true in the most minimal sense; consulting three students out of tens of thousands on a matter with serious and far-reaching consequences is lacklustre, to put it mildly. There is nothing to indicate that our representatives fought for broader consultation, increased transparency, nor meaningful representation.
  Let’s also keep one thing in mind here: Were it not for Woroni getting a hold of that draft policy, we wouldn’t know anything about this right now. We’d be hearing about it first at this upcoming public forum the ANU is hosting in a few weeks’ time when they will present the final policy. For all we know, that policy is being rushed through, now that these details have been leaked, to limit the opportunity we as students have to affect any substantive changes. If not for the Woroni article – if the first we heard about this was when a final policy was presented – affecting change would have been even harder. We are honestly lucky that someone involved in this process had the awareness to recognise the low level of consultation was problematic. That gives us a fighting chance to affect change and make our voice heard before it is too late.
  There may be good reasons for all this, but the questions remain important, and should be asked even if doing so is uncomfortable. I do not like conflict. I have to work with the people I’m holding to account here. This isn’t easy, but I think it should be done. I simply want to question the approach chosen and understand why it was done this way. Even more importantly, I want to ensure that the final policy is equitable, that it represents the excellence ANU strives for, and that it places students in the centre of life at Kambri – the way it should be.
  We should all support the idea that our representatives are held accountable, and that, as students affected by this, we have both a right to ask questions and a duty to advocate for ourselves and future generations of students who would be burdened by these fees. I genuinely believe our representatives are trying to do what is best, but even still, questions must be asked.
   
  Holding ourselves to account: Student satisfaction as a key performance indicator
  In ANU’s Strategic Plan, one key performance indicator is “improvement in the overall satisfaction of ANU students”. In other words, student satisfaction is something that ANU will pay attention to as a critical measure of success. As students of this university, we are also responsible for responding to this situation, now that we have an opportunity to do something, however small that window may be. Clearly, we need to show our dissatisfaction. Thanks to this information being revealed ahead of time, we have an opportunity to do so.
  We need to know what students think about paying for spaces. It seems reasonable to assume that some amount of money to use the space may be necessary for certain exceptional events, and in certain circumstances. What this pricing looks like, and what is affordable to student clubs and individuals is another question. I implore you to make your voice heard – as it should have been all this time.
  Nick Blood is the ANUSA Environment Officer. The opinions in this piece are his alone and are not representative of the ANU Environment Collective or of Woroni.

  Nick Blood

• Our Campus Has Been Gentrified

  March 26, 2019 1:18 am Comments Off on Our Campus Has Been Gentrified

  University campuses are more than just bricks and mortar. Campus is often our first home away from home, where we are introduced to new ideas and new challenges. It’s important, then, that they’re spaces we can feel a part of: spaces we have full access to, that we can feel safe in, feel connection to and know we can participate in without financial limitation. This is especially true when thinking about the type of students we want on campus. Do we want to bring in those who have been pushed out of the academy – young Indigenous people, working class kids, people with disabilities, carers – and acknowledge that yes, this campus is a home for you too?
  These are questions I’ve asked myself since the beginning of my degree in 2016. I’ve thought extensively about my place at ANU and my connection to this place, about what has made me feel at home and what hasn’t. Home here has been the smells and smiles of a cheap lunch from the Campus Bakery; it’s been scraping enough together for Thursday evening jugs at the old ANU Bar, late nights at Tjabal finishing that final essay or lazing in the sun on Chifley Meadows, Boost Juice in hand and friends by my side. These are all places and services that have made me feel connected to ANU campus because they’ve catered to my needs as a poor student. I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel that same connection to places in Kambri, where I can’t afford to eat or drink.
  Instead, I just feel closer to answering my initial question: no, this is not intended to be a home for us, this campus does not belong to us.
  Ever since the Union Court revitalisation project began construction in 2017, our university campus has been shaped and moulded to fit the tastes and inclinations of a growing number of middle-class public servants descended on Canberra, looking for a new ‘hub’ both trendy and close to Civic. Our access as students to affordable food, facilities and services has taken a back-seat to ANU’s obsession with drawing in a new community with money – money that ANU so desperately wants.
  In a sense, our campus has undergone a process of gentrification. In its simplest form, gentrification is the process of renovating or ‘improving’ a neighbourhood – or in this case, campus – so that it conforms to middle-class tastes. Gentrification pushes out poor working class people, people of colour and other oppressed groups out of their neighbourhoods and fragments communities. As developers start investing in and redeveloping neighbourhoods, the rent and property value of homes begin to increase. This new market starts to draw in wealthier, often white middle-class individuals, able to afford a rising cost of living that poor communities can’t. Slowly, as the demographic of the neighbourhood changes, so does its character. It’s a process in which local culture is destroyed and replaced with a new, more affluent, social character. Of course the redevelopment of ANU campus is not comparable to the gentrification I see here in Austin, where I’m onexchange, or in historically Aboriginal suburbs like Redfern back home. But nonetheless, the redevelopment we’ve watched unfold has been a process of gentrification, and students have been the losers.
  The marketing of Kambri, bombarding us for months with aerial hype videos, has relied on the idea that our campus will become a ‘new cultural centre’ not just for ANU, but the city. Bird’s eyes shots and virtual reality simulations show a thriving space, filled with people enjoying live music and the arts. Our campus has been home to a lot of great Canberra culture before, with the old ANU Bar hosting bands from Nirvana, to Lou Reed, to the Cure – it would be exciting to see that type of culture fostered here again!
  But this, evidently, is not the type of culture our administration has envisioned for Kambri. If we look closer at the way Kambri was marketed towards us, we can see the people in suits dotted between students. We see the take-over of restaurants too expensive for your average student, organic cafes that promote “a health conscious coffee culture” and a bar that, like Molo in the pop-up village, is no longer owned by us. As the pop-up village foreshadowed, the culture being ‘created’ for our campus is one that ‘forgets’ cheap places to eat, drink and build a community around, and is instead a culture that’s been designed to attract the tastes and money of the professional class.
  Even aesthetically, Kambri’s intended audience is clear. Offering spaces with “Scandi-inspired wood columns,” a feature that gives “a warm, welcoming and non-intimidating atmosphere”, our new classrooms have been built around a very particular social character. I am not arguing that there is anything inherently wrong or dangerous about Scandi-inspired architecture: rather, that it signals the arrival of gentrification on campus, mimicking the aesthetic reconstructions of apartment developments in Baltimore to working class neighbourhoods in London. As Kate Wagner has argued, “[t]he architectural profiles of these new buildings may not cause gentrification, in and of themselves, but in many ways they become aesthetic symbols of … the waves of gentrification”.
  Of course, many of us expected this from Kambri, and its Scandi-inspired wood columns are the least of our worries. We held out, manoeuvring through construction maze after construction maze, thinking that at least if this reconstruction was not for us, we would benefit from some of the more basic services and facilities promised – facilities like the pool. ANU’s promise of a pool was one that captured our imaginations. A pool is something we could all use!
  The pool represented some of the few positives of the redevelopment until we discovered that the pool did not belong to us. Instead it belonged to Club Lime, who had been given a private lease and would run one of only two of its ‘Platinum gyms’ on our campus. This facility had been misrepresented and marketed to us as something we could all share in: ANU had dangled a carrot in front of our noses, promising us a treat for putting up with change we had little to gain from.
  We were made to believe that some of students’ most basic needs like on-campus parking –needs that had been drastically disrupted during the construction – would be addressed if we justendured through it. The hours spent driving up and down Baldessin, cursing the closure of level 5 for swathes of tradies who hardly used the car parks, were abated only by the idea that the construction would be over soon and the redevelopment would offer us something better. Instead, the opening of Kambri’s carpark boasted costs so exorbitant, they made parking at the Canberra Centre look cheap.
  The pricing of the pool and parking at Kambri have hit particular sore spots in the student psyche because they’ve exposed the reality of this reconstruction. It has not been for us, and every facility, every service and every change we thought was for us has been misrepresented. There has been a fundamental breaching of students’ trust. Would we have been as silent as we were if ANU had been honest about what we were to expect?
  Even congruent changes like the reopening of Fenner Hall as postgraduate accommodation – dependent on the relocation and fragmentation of one of the only affordable housing options for undergraduate students – was sprung on us with next to no warning or explanation. We were told Fenner was old and needed to be knocked down. But somewhere along the way, after we’d accepted this fate, ANU discovered the hall needed only minor renovations and could instead be used to house a whole new population.
  So many of us are outraged and left feeling betrayed by our university because the good faith and transparency we expected in the redevelopment of our campus and homes were never truly there. Many of us agreed our campus needed upgrading. We needed better services, our homes needed maintenance and we were excited by the prospect of a chance to rebuild ANU student culture and community.
  We wanted the promise that this development, which had been paid for by selling off our rents as part of a 30-year concession agreement with investment management firm H.R.L Morrison and Co, was for us; that the redevelopment was not an expression of the wider logic of corporatised universities, intent on chasing profits. We wanted the chance to define the social character of ANU, to have a stake in the shops, in the services and the prices we’d be living with. We wanted assurance that we got to shape ANU for us, not public servants looking for the next Kingston or Manuka.
  I worry a lot about what ANU will become in the years ahead. I worry who’s going to get to come here and who isn’t. ‘Kambri’ means meeting place, and was gifted to our university by Ngunnawal and Ngambri elders like Aunty Matilda House and Uncle Wally Bell. I worry about who will get to meet here: after all, meeting is a two-way exchange. Names are important, and Kambri is a name that belongs to this place. It pays respect to the ancestors and holds a vision of what the future of this university could be. Our university could belong to us. It could be a place some of the most marginalised communities in our country meet, gather and develop ideas and actions possible of transforming some of the most grievous injustices in our society. As it stands, Kambri represents only the gentrified shell of this possibility, pricing too many of us out. How do we take it back?

  Vanamali Hermans