When the Empire Times put out its first edition in 1969, a robust if rambunctious vehicle for the views and interests of Flinders University’s student body was born.
ET will celebrate its 40th anniversary today, 23 August, with a gathering of past and present editors and contributors at the Flinders City Gallery.
Guests will see a display of archive covers and articles and hear from three-time 1970s editor Andrew McHugh about the newspaper and its lively history. Mr McHugh remained on campus as the Students’ Association printer for more than 30 years, providing technical and editorial advice to a long line of his ET successors.
Event organiser and Flinders University Student Association media officer Ms Stephanie Walker, said student newspapers have important functions in the life of a university.
“University publications are a vital connection point that give students access, engagement and a voice in their community, but it doesn’t stop there,” Ms Walker said.
“Student publications are like time capsules in reflecting the student culture of their times. They often also operate as a platform from which students jump into their passion and sometimes a whole career.”
Numerous ET editors and contributors have gone on to successful careers in the arts, journalism or politics, among them Federal Labor MP Kate Ellis.
Mr McHugh said that the paper took its initial inspiration from radical politics and the counter-culture movements of the US and Europe of the 1960s, and went on to run pieces on the big issues – wars, the environment, feminism, and gay rights.
Column space was also devoted to student-centred concerns such as opposition to university fees, calls to increase student living allowances, demands to overhaul assessment methods, and periodic campaigns denouncing the quality of refectory food.
“Nothing was too big, or too small, or too trivial or too obscure,” Mr McHugh said.
Culture, in the form of music, theatre, film and book reviews as well as original fiction and poetry, has been another staple for ET. Despite an uninhibited editorial policy, only one issue of the paper was ever withdrawn and pulped.
Although there was a lapse in publication of several years in the 2000s when the Voluntary Student Unionism legislation cut funding, ET ‘s revival this year was in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary with a special commemorative edition.
Andrew McHugh and two other former editors will also speak at a function on the Flinders campus on Friday, August 30. Radical Stories will be held in the Noel Stockdale Room of the Central Library at 3pm. Further details are available here.
