By Michael Noble
A distressing incident occurred at a national queer student's conference, Queer Collaborations (QC) held recently in Newcastle, which highlights a disturbing trend occurring within queer spaces on Australian tertiary campuses. QC is a conference held annually to enable queer tertiary students the opportunity to meet in order to discuss issues directly relevant to queer students on campus, such as advocacy, support and information services, health issues, social networking, academic research, politics and current affairs.
However, what could only be described as being cult-like extremist political factions planned, what they called, an `intervention' of the Conference. The aim of these extremist factions was to dominate the Conference in order to ensure that only the issues they wished discussed were discussed, and the issues, scheduled by the Newcastle Organising Committee, would be disrupted or silenced.
In a nutshell, these extremist factions believe that the only means to queer liberation is to smash capitalism: their current cause is anti-CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting). Their almost exclusive preoccupation with CHOGM, and planning street demonstrations, meant that topics, which have a direct impact on young queers, were deemed almost irrelevant by the extremists simply because such campus, community and personal concerns were a distraction in the fight to overthrow capitalism.
On the day prior to the commencement of the Conference, these extremist factions held a collective caucus to plan strategies for their domination or `intervention' of the Conference. With the direct assistance of one of the National Union of Students Queer Officers, the extremist factions, having stacked the lecture theatre with their members, did succeeded in taking control of the Conference: thus effectively destroying over 12 months planning by the Newcastle Organising Committee. However, not being satisfied with their successful domination, members of these factions proceeded to verbally, and on at least two occasions physically, abuse any other conference delegate who either did not agree with their extremist ideologies, or who simply wished to discuss issues immediately relevant to queer students on campus. Furthermore, any delegate who attempted to inject some reasoned debate or challenged the rhetoric of the extremist factions were shouted down and accused of being `right wing scum'.
Even though the Conference Organisers provided a generous amount of time for the discussion of political issues such as CHOGM, the extremist factions were not satisfied - rather, they sought to dominate all discussion, plenaries and workshops with their anti-CHOGM rhetoric. During the entire conference, the extremist factions held Caucuses to discuss strategies for their continued domination and intimidation of the conference and the queer delegates. One of the plenaries was held at the same time the extremists were holding one of their many caucuses. However, instead of waiting for the speaker to finish, members of these extremist factions stormed the lecture theatre in the most disruptive, intimidating and confronting manner possible. On other occasions, factional members attended workshops with the specific goal of dominating the discussions with anti-CHOGM rhetoric, again employing intimidating and other threatening tactics - thus preventing, or disrupting the scheduled discussions.
At the end of the first day of the conference, and on subsequent days, many delegates left because they felt so traumatised and feared for their safety due to the threatening and intimidating conduct of members of the extremist factions. One could see other delegates, in various states of distress, wandering the campus or seeking refuge in a Chill-out Room provided by the Conference Organisers as a `safety zone' for delegates who were feeling overwhelmed. Many of these distressed delegates took the opportunity to record their thoughts and feelings about what they were witnessing and experiencing. These harrowing and disturbing accounts clearly indicate that many of these vulnerable young people where highly distressed and felt violated by the intimidating and domineering conduct of the extremist factions and their intervention of the Conference.
These young vulnerable people, many of whom had only just entered university and were still coming out to themselves and society, had expected to attend a conference of like-minded people conducted in a safe and supportive environment. Instead they found themselves on the receiving end of extreme and prolonged abuse: not because of their sexuality, but simply because their politics or non-politics differed from the extremist ideologies of these political factions. Later reports indicate that factional members sought to indoctrinate what appeared to be extra-vulnerable delegates by employing what can only be described as being cult-like recruiting methodologies.
Sadly, and most disturbingly, the events at the Newcastle QC Conference is only the tip of the ice-berg in regards to the cult-like recruiting methodologies currently being employed by these extremist political factions on Australian Campuses - and especially within what should be safe queer spaces. Naturally, political activism has always been a part of Australian university life and many political parties and factions are represented on all campuses. However what is less common are campus queer collectives and/or queer services which should provide assistance, information and support to young queers either newly entering university, or providing on-going support and advocacy to existing students.
It is becoming apparent that extremist political factions are infiltrating these queer collectives, seeking to recruit and dominate these services and social support networks - simply in their drive to expand the ranks of their factions. The cost of these infiltrations and recruitment drives however, is that these queer collectives can no longer effectively provide safe and supportive social environments. Rather the impressionable students are taught to believe that they must forget their personal issues and instead take up the fight to smash capitalism.
While many queer students do become politically active, many do not. Instead many queer students wish to either support their own queer collectives and thus address issues on a campus level, or simply seek social networks where they can feel a sense of belonging, acceptance and safety. Yet instead of politically active queer students joining existing political factions, many are seeking to transform existing queer collectives into political factions. Furthermore, this trend to dominate campus queer collectives is being actively supported by the Queer Officers of the National Union of Students, thus indicating that these people are more concerned with promoting their personal political agenda's at the detriment of the needs and concerns of queer students.
Recently the NUS created and promoted a poster, which linked youth suicide with capitalism and implied that if queers did not become involved in the fight against capitalism, that they were then not welcome within the queer student community. Consequently, instead of creating and nurturing a sense of community, these extremist factions threaten to alienate queer students who do not support their causes. Due to tactics such as these, there is a real threat that campus queer collectives and social networks will disintegrate: thus there will no longer be any services or networks devoted simply to the social support of young queer tertiary students.
The wider Australian queer community needs to be aware that their young queer members are being increasingly dominated by, and recruited into, extremist political factions, which are primarily unconcerned with the immediate concerns and needs of young queer people. If this trend of transforming queer collectives into merely extremist political factions is not addressed, then possibly such support services will be a thing of the past. I doubt that the campus Labor or Liberal clubs would tolerate queers taking over their factions and promoting queer issues over political ideology. So why do queer people have to put up with their clubs and support services becoming dominated by extremist political factions that have little interest in domestic and campus queer issues?