St Paul’s College headless … College relents and signs-up for Sydney Uni “cultural review” … Dozy council and warden drop the ball in the face of another brat-frat outrage
The warden, Ivan Head, has had his head chopped off and so too solicitor Angelo Hatsatouris, who was chairman of the council.
This is the latest upshot from the turmoil surrounding the college’s failure to handle its students’ brazen denigration of, and contempt for, women.
Panic struck when the NSW minister for education, Rob Stokes, flagged a change to the St Paul’s College Act, which provides for the institution’s independence from the University of Sydney.
St Paul’s is the oldest of the university’s colleges with many notable alumni, from Billy McMahon to Gough Whitlam.
The council is an amalgam of old boys and “clergymen in priests’ orders of the United Church of England and Ireland”. The Anglican hierarchy, which has enough problems on its plate, was on the phone to the council insisting that heads must roll.
Waddy has been a fellow the council for 46 years, being first elected in 1971. For 36 years he had been the host of the annual college music hall sing-along, Victoriana.
Hatsatouris has been a fellow for 23 years and took over as chairman from Channel Seven big-wig Bruce McWilliam. J.R.G. Bell BA LLB has been a fellow for 21 years.
Maybe a bit of generational change at the top is overdue, along with a new system of electing the fellows.
The college decided it would not be part of the university sponsored review of college cultures being conducted by the former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
This was all too much for the codgers who wanted “cultural” issues handled internally and old boy Alistair Kitchen came-up with a programme to promote “positive masculinity”.
In the meantime, there was an outburst of positive masculinity on the college Facebook page, with a young creep posting that he offered a service to remove women who stay too long in students’ rooms “after a root”.
The post attracted 100 likes. In 2009 St Paul’s students also created a pro-rape Facebook page.
Unbelievably, the brat responsible for this post was merely cautioned and suspended. He’s now back at college.
Alistair Kitchen’s “Good Lad” initiative doesn’t seem to have resonated too deeply with the now departed Head. Another “cultural review” has been commissioned to be undertaken by Christie Breakspear who does discrimination, diversity and harassment consulting for corporates.
The Guardian also published an article about the gruesome experience of one young fellow who stayed with a friend at St Paul’s overnight.
The consequence of all this is that St Paul’s, with its tail between its legs, is to join the other colleges in the university’s Broderick review. Better late than never.