The Wire

As students return to the University of New England today, they may be wondering why the latest issue of their student magazine, Neucleus, has not been printed. The students association has been accused of censorship after it pulled the plug on the magazine’s printing and also froze all funds to the publication. The move relates to a refusal by the editor of Nucleus to allow the student association’s president, Samantha Aber, the right to vet all pages of the newspaper. Now, the student body has passed a number of resolutions that effectively hand total editorial control of the newspaper to the president. The Liberal-dominated UNE Students Association council is no stranger to controversy. Since being elected they have pushed a strong pro-voluntary student union platform, and ordered that an Australian flag and portrait of the Queen be placed in student union buildings. They’ve also shut down funding for spaces that were allocated to gay. Lesbian and transgender students and appointed “male officers” and “heterosexual officers” to sit on the council as a sign that the council will be returning to “mainstream issues”. The move at the scandal-plagued council has raised questions about just how free the presses of our university students are, and how much control students have over their own media. Bryan Hale is UNESA’s director of student media for 2005. He spoke earlier with Erica Vowles about the motions that hand over control of Neucleus to the student association.