The University is determined to go ahead with 5 new policies that have drawn a negative response from many in the University community.
The University has offered a second round of consultation to Usyd student orgs – SUPRA, the SRC and USU. We strongly believe that for meaningful consultation, the University should have extended the first round of consultation for all students, staff and University community members. Because of this, we strongly encourage students to review the revised policies and our concerns.
We believe that all students have a right to safety. However, we don’t believe these proposed policies will make campus safer. Instead, our concerns are that students will find it much harder to organise, express their views, and engage meaningfully with the world around them – all vital parts of accessing higher education.
These policies are still massively overreaching in their scope. They are regressive, reactionary and go against the spirit of academic freedom.
Our major concerns:
- The policies don’t define key terms, which could allow the Uni to penalise students for engaging in activism and advocacy. For example, the terms ‘terrorism’, ‘special interest material’ and ‘criminal activity’ are used in all 5 policies, and could easily include promotion of, or involvement in, protest or civil disobedience such as a union picket, a transit fare strike, or a road blockade.
- The 5 policies restrict student and staff freedom of speech and academic expression – with harsh penalties for making pre-lecture announcements (sometimes called ‘lecture bashing’), and tight restrictions on use of Uni IT resources, including the Usyd wi-fi network.
- The policies impose extreme limitations on how elected student representatives may communicate with their constituents. For example, sending the information you are reading now through our regular Grad Post newsletter would breach the policy.
- These policies are being pushed through in the wake of the student encampment for Gaza, and it seems reasonable to suspect that certain forms of student activism – such as activism for Palestine – will be particularly targeted by the University using these policies.
Below we have also listed some of our specific concerns with each policy.
Tell us what you think!
The University has given us a deadline of Thursday 27 March 2025 to respond to revised policies. We want to hear from you about what you think. Please use our anonymous comment boxes below. Your responses will help us provide feedback to the University.
Tell us what you think about each policy:
1. Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy
Download the updated policy proposal: Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy [PDF 360KB].
Our concerns include:
- In this proposed policy, ‘prohibited material’ includes ‘content that promotes terrorism or encourages terrorist acts’. But ‘terrorism’ isn’t defined and is subject to the interpretation of whoever is enforcing the policy. We can look to the United States where President Trump recently declared that protests at Tesla locations are domestic terrorism, for a clear example of the problem with the use of this term.
- As a student representative association, SUPRA has in the past and may in the future wish to promote activities that support civil disobedience. Concerningly, ‘materially assisting, encouraging or promoting’ such activities may be prohibited under this policy. We believe this would be against students’ interests.
- Students who are members of clubs, societies or student representative organisations that use University ICT resources to communicate with other students, are concerned that they will have to take extreme care to censor their online communication to comply with this policy – imposing significantly on their freedom of speech.
- Students sometimes access, store or transmit materials that capture the horrors of war or violence as part of personal or group activities. SUPRA supports this as legitimate use of ICT resources. Students who do this will risk a breach of this policy as ‘materials that are overly violent’ are part of the ‘prohibited materials’ list.
Give your anonymous feedback about this policy below.
This form has now closed. Thanks for everyone who provided feedback.
2. Email and Electronic Messaging Policy
Download the updated policy proposal: Email and Electronic Messaging Policy [PDF 314KB].
Our concerns include:
- Much of the content in SUPRA’s regular Grad Post newsletter would be in breach of this policy, as we would be restricted to only include topics that students explicitly consent to receiving communications on. The policy even prohibits emailing about social events unless students have specifically asked for it! Students and student organisations should be allowed to use bulk emails to communicate with students, whether or not they have expressed interest in receiving communications on each specific topic.
- When students and student organisations are sending bulk emails, the policy restricts the types of external links that can be embedded – only linking to the Uni website or ‘reputable and recognisable locations (e.g. state and federal governments)’ is allowed. Being able to present a topic without being free to present competing views is overly restrictive. We reject the idea that University, government or official views are the only ones able to be shared.
- We believe this policy infringes on students’ rights to form new relationships through searching for common interest.
- In this policy, distribution lists ‘must not include external email addresses’ unless approved by the Vice-Chancellor. This is a massive overstep in Uni control of student affairs. Students should be free to use their personal email addresses in distribution lists that they choose to join.
Give your anonymous feedback about this policy below.
This form has now closed. Thanks for everyone who provided feedback.
3. Flag Policy
Download the updated policy proposal: Flag Policy [PDF 228KB].
Our concerns include:
- This policy restricts students from displaying flags that ‘might reasonably be seen as implying University support for the flag’s subject matter’ and gives the Uni authority to remove any flag it wants – potentially restricting the display of flags entirely.
- This policy gives the Uni broad discretion to determine what flags are ‘dangerous, inappropriate or offensive’, and remove them.
- Any student who hangs or displays a flag, assists someone in hanging or displaying a flag, or even promotes it on social media, is at risk of breaching this policy.
- This policy allows the University considerable control over the display of any flag. We question the need for a Flag Policy and suggest this policy could be implemented as guidelines.
Give your anonymous feedback about this policy below.
This form has now closed. Thanks for everyone who provided feedback.
4. Promotional and Display Materials
Download the updated policy proposal: Promotional and Display Materials Policy [PDF 248KB].
Our concerns include:
- Students, student organisations, groups and societies will be forbidden to use promotional and display materials to promote activities or events.
- Students will be required to seek prior approval for displaying promotional or display materials to promote any activities for students on campus. This places an administrative burden on both students and Uni authorities.
- If promotional materials are posted anywhere other than University-approved notice boards, student organisations may be charged for removal costs. But University noticeboards have been greatly reduced, so in effect this policy will limit freedom of expression for student organisations communicating with students. This will also limit student organisations in trying to reach out to traditionally under-represented groups.
- The policy gives the Uni the power to take down any notices that are determined to constitute a ‘psychosocial safety hazard’. But ‘psychosocial hazard’ is not defined, leaving this open to broad interpretation. It is also not clear what training or qualification workers will have to assess what constitutes a ‘psychosocial hazard’.
- We are not convinced that this policy protects the safety of University community members. It is insulting to students and student organisations to be forced to restrict display materials to designated spaces. Throughout decades of student political protest and activism, the staff and students at this University have complied with existing policies in peaceful protest, and we want this to continue.
- Imposing rules on graffiti in the Graffiti Tunnel and chalking on footpaths will be ineffective as the nature of these activities is usually anonymous. SUPRA is concerned the University may be considering installing CCTV cameras to monitor our campuses and buildings.
- Insisting that no one on campus is permitted to remove any promotional or display materials is also very concerning. An especially relevant example is that the University has been plastered with neo-Nazi stickers many times over the years. That students, staff or visitors might face disciplinary action for removing these examples of extreme hatred is unconscionable.
Give your anonymous feedback about this policy below.
This form has now closed. Thanks for everyone who provided feedback.
5. Social Media and Public Comment Policy
Download the updated policy proposal: Social Media and Public Comment Policy [PDF 320KB].
Our concerns include:
- This policy is overly restrictive for student organisations and student representatives. For example, we are concerned the emphasis on ‘psychosocial hazards’ – a broad term and undefined term – could limit content that we publish on our website, emails, webinars and other events.
- The policy applies to anyone using ICT resources, which is too broad – any student, staff or visitor who is connected to the University wifi (even inadvertently) can be in violation of this policy if they make a personal comment from a personal device on a private account. We consider this to be a massive overreach.
- Any student who posts on social media and ‘implies a connection to the University’ could be vulnerable to a complaint or even disciplinary action. We argue that most students would have something in their social media profiles or posts (especially on platforms like LinkedIn) identifying them as being at the University of Sydney, and therefore affected by this policy. This limits students’ freedoms of speech, which is also a massive overreach.
- We believe University community members should continue to have the right to make public announcements at any class, subject to the ordinary exercise of classroom teaching management by the class teacher. The content of announcements is already guided by existing policies for the protection of others (including the Staff and Affiliates Code of Conduct, the Student Charter, the Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Prevention Policy, and the University of Sydney (Student Discipline) Rule. Such announcements are usually brief in nature and students already have the option to lodge complaints about specific announcements, through the Student Complaints Procedures.
Give your anonymous feedback about this policy below.
This form has now closed. Thanks for everyone who provided feedback.
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