“Universities should be a place of fair debate and free expression, lecture announcements have been key to that. They are an integral part of campus life, for example in democratic student elections.
“There is no case I can point to where students or anyone else have given a lecture announcement without the consent of the lecturer first. Banning such an essential tool in student organising is an indictment on the university.”
The updated policies include new rules for email and electronic messaging, the flying and displaying of flags and a public comment and social media policy.
There are also new rules that state temporary posters may be displayed on designated noticeboards, and must include the name of the person who authorised them.
“We may charge the relevant individual, group, club, sponsor or approver of promotional or display materials for the reasonable cost of removing prohibited materials and repairing any consequent damage,” the new policy states.
Sydney University National Tertiary Education Union branch president Dr Peter Chen, who objected to the lecture-bashing ban, also said new rules about posters were unreasonable.
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“The risk of personal liability has a significant chilling effect on people who are simply fulfilling a role they’re elected to do by their constituents like the student union,” he said.
Sydney University adjunct associate professor Andy Smidt said the change to the lecture-bashing rule was a small step in the right direction.
“For students, they pay to go there to learn. In lectures, other people come into the room. Those people who come in do unpleasant things like saying, ‘I am taking a photo of people who support this for social media. If you don’t support it, put a piece of paper in front of your face.’ It is intimidating.”
Earlier this month, students held a meeting to discuss the university’s adoption of a definition of antisemitism, which ended with the audience turning their backs on a Jewish speaker while another student effectively called for Israel to cease to exist.
Additionally, it adopted the Universities Australia definition of antisemitism, along with more than 30 other institutions, which states criticism of Israel is not in itself antisemitic but said criticism could be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel.
Staff held a meeting last week objecting to the definition, which aims to protect Jewish and Israeli students on campus, saying it unreasonably constricts criticism of Israel.
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