What La Trobe Student Union is asking for:
- The LTSU and students to be consulted on all initiatives affecting students at Bundoora.
- LTSU student elected Officers are members of every planning group in the university.
- For student’s Queer, Women’s and Mature Lounges to be fully funded, accessible, safe, and not pushed back in the closet in some forgotten corner of the campus.
- For La Trobe University to address La Trobe’s unique issues affecting students in the Melbourne Northern suburbs
- For the university to introduce proactive initiatives that attract, support and empower students from lower socio-economic status, and to see this community active in La Trobe’s brand
- For the university to introduce proactive initiatives for:
- Urban, regional and remote communities
- Parenting
- Pregnancy political opinion
- Spent convictions
- Trade union activity or membership
- Having or not having dependents
- Work patterns
- Faith or beliefs
- Workplace hierarchy
- Power structures between university staff and students
Students have not been at the heart of inclusion programs at the university. This includes First Nations, disability inclusion, safety initiatives, La Trobe’s City of the Future and plans for the Agora.
Major programs affecting students must not be done without us.
What the university has done so far is academic in its language and initiatives, jargonistic and elitist, with focus mainly on staff. Programs such as the current disability consultation are limited in its scope, devoid of meaningful engagement and views of students and show little uniformity in measurement and accountability. From a consultative group of 25, there were no undergraduate students. The LTSU had to fight for our Disability Officer to get on the group. Students must be at the planning, delivery, and analysis of including and diversity programs including planning groups and consultations.