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Farrago censored?

Dean McVeigh is the provisional liquidator of the Melboune University Student Union. Here is a link to his vanity site.

Jake Anson, one of the Farrago editors, has previously mentioned here that Mr McVeigh had asked them "not to comment on the internal changes to MUSUi." As a consequence, the editorial team have been "wary about writing anything that could compromise ongoing legal investigations or further complicate the union's relationship with the university or community."

Today Jake has clarified the situation, making it plain that the liquidator actively censors the student newspaper. According to Jake, the mysteriously blank pages (25 & 50) in issue 2, and the fact that the issue was almost a month late, were a direct result of Mr McVeigh's censorship. You can read Jake's explanation here.

Whatever your political persuasion, and whatever your views on the Union, you still have (literally) a vested interest in information about what is happening to it, and furthermore an essential right to that information. The liquidator's interests must not be excessively prioritised against this basic right. What is it we are not allowed to see? Why are we not allowed to see it? Why is the liquidator terminally forestalling the publication of the student newspaper?

Update! Stop the frickin' press!

Another Farrago editor has written to tell me "there are some huge inaccuracies in your post about musu liquidator and censorship." Hopefully we'll get a fuller account of these inaccuracies tomorrow. Meantime, I guess the thousands of students who were busily writing emails to Deano may want to, um, just save the draft?

Further update

Okay, here's Jessica Pitt's clarification:

[Removed. Read this.]

Anyway, Dean McVeigh has since informed me that he is not censoring anything, and that the only directive he had issued to the editors was that they must comply with established procedures for editing Farrago.

Jake's original post on the Farrago forum is apparently being restored, but meantime and for those of you loathe to log-in, it is also here: censored.png

Joseph | | Comments(4)

Comments

http://www.alertbutnotalarmed.com

Dean McVeigh’s website has to be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.

fourthesate

Is there any truth to rumour that Dean McVeigh will soon star (as himself) in the Channel Nine telemovie ‘The Liquidator’?

BG

I’m interested to know what made up the content that the Communications Department declared unprintable? Perhaps the editors could post it on the web? (Given the Communications Department KO-ing of it, you presumably can’t post it anywhere on their servers or under the Farrago name, but I’m sure there are many people who would be willing to host it as ‘educational material’.)

To do this would surely be better than resorting to the old ‘political correctness’ tag and leaving it at that. The ‘PC’ boxing bag of conservative types is about as nuanced as the automatic labelling of anyone who expresses anti-Israeli views as an anti-Semite, and works on the same logic of closing down debate: “I don’t need to argue about X, as you’re just being politically correct/anti-semitic. ” It never addresses the topic at hand, engages a conspiracy-theorist logic and gets everyone nowhere. In the case of ‘PC’ now, it also says exactly nothing because it is used to unsubtly lump together marginalised voices: let’s not talk about Indigenous issues, that’d just be PC; gay marriage is PC; teaching kids about the horrors of colonialisation, that’s PC too.

If the rumours hold (and I’ve now heard the same story from several people, none of whom seem connected) that the pulled content contained some jokes about rape, I can only agree with the Communications Department’s decision. Having a best friend who was raped a few years ago sure does take the sting from a good old giggle about “no really meaning ‘yes’”.

But this is mere innuendo and gossip until one of the editors can tell us anything substantial about the removed articles. And why shouldn’t they? They were going to print the things, after all.

[I was originally going to post this to the Farrago forum, but given their Orwellian shift to making everyone require the web-equivalent of an ID card to even view the thing, I thought anonymity and freedom-to-view/post was a better option…]

Andy C

Nice one BG. Anyone who saw Chris Addison lampoon Telegraph readers in his recent Comedy Festival show would already be familiar with the apparently shared hangups of the British aristocracy and Liberal Club-hacks-without-a-future - especially the need to end every Aryan diatribe with the heavily air-quoted “…but I suppose THAT wouldn’t be POLITICALLY CORRECT”. [read aloud in pompous Highgate/Armadale drawl for a more pleasing overall effect…]