December 2025

Happy holidays and happy new year to all! This is Grace – your SRC President for 2026. I’m very honoured to be in this role following our big election in September 2025, and am very excited for the year ahead. 

The SRC doesn’t normally do reports outside of the university semesters but it’s something I wanted to pursue since I have now been the President for almost a month and so much happens during the holiday period that can otherwise be missed or unaccounted for – as you will see below! The SRC is the undergraduate student union at USyd and also has a larger role to play in our larger society and communities, so you should know what we’re getting up to.

The first month of my term really ended up only being three (big) weeks before the break and mostly taken up by our successful SRC Induction Week and the National Union of Students (NUS) National Conference in regional Victoria, but here are some of the things I can update you on for now. 

The most important and pressing thing, of course, has been responding to the mass shooting of a Jewish holiday event in Bondi on Sunday 14 December. I worked with other SRC Office-Bearers to develop a statement to offer our condolences to the victims and to firmly condemn this act of antisemitic hatred and violence. We shared information and resources about planned vigils and support services, including for affected students who were still yet to sit exams and submit final assignments. 

Unfortunately, what should have been a time for mourning and caring for our communities has been used as an excuse to push through anti-protest laws in NSW and to implement more recommendations from Jillian Segal’s report. This already has had severe consequences for free speech and academic freedom, the right to protest, and the human responsibility to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Universities like ours will suffer under the implementation of recommendations such as the adoption of the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, issuing "report cards,” and the threatened reduction of funding found to be in breach of the new standards. 

Even more cynically, the Albanese government and governor general Sam Mostyn think that inviting the genocidal Israeli President Isaac Herzog is appropriate and something that will promote ‘social cohesion’. As put succinctly by APAN, “President Herzog is not a symbolic or ceremonial figure. As Israel’s head of state throughout its genocidal assault on Gaza, he has made public statements widely condemned as genocidal intent, including asserting that an ‘entire nation’ bears responsibility and that ‘there are no innocent civilians in Gaza’”.

The road ahead looks long, but it has brought together many people and groups to fight for their rights. We need more people to get involved, to show up to important events like the Invasion Day protest on January 26, and to keep an eye out for information around the planned visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

On the academic and wellbeing side of things, I attended my first committee meetings of my term – the Education & Studies Committee and Academic Board – where I spoke to:

• The importance of fixing the Special Consideration and other systems before even entertaining the idea of reducing 5-day simple extensions;

• Crucial points from our caseworkers about a necessary review of the Appeals Panel and how long it’s taking to process complaints while leaving students in limbo, and about collaboration to increase awareness of our SRC services and to work to combat the prevalence of third-party companies helping students with appeals;

• The idea of adding ‘low attendance’ as a risk-indicator in the Support for Students Policy, due to an increasing number of students facing Absent Fails despite completing all of the coursework due to a lack of awareness or reminders about course attendance requirements.

In the SRC, we had a great week of induction events and training sessions put together by our staff. There was near-perfect attendance of Office Bearers and Honi Soit to the general induction day that got us largely set up for the year in terms of Welcome Week plans, schedules for autonomous editions of Honi Soit, and rough timelines for collective weeks. 

In preparation for Welcome Week and other welcome events, most things are already underway and we hope you’re getting excited. I have been focused on a few key items, events, and connections such as:

• A fresh new batch of our famous custom gel pens, with our contact details and new logo;

• Commissioning a new design for our 2026 SRC tote bags by one of our USyd students;

• Confirming attendance for the scholarship and international student welcomes in early February;

• Confirming the SRC + Honi Soit hub and seven stalls for our SRC collectives for the USU Welcome Fest from February 18 - 20 February;

• Booking in an SRC, Honi Soit, and SRC Casework & Legal stalls with SUPRA for the ‘Welcome Fair’ on Tuesday 3 March in the Great Hall;

• Promoting the pitch forms for our annual SRC publications created for and by students;

• Talking with the Department of Education’s Gender-Based Violence regulator and the National Student Ombudsman about attending the aforementioned event;

• Communication with the Gadigal Centre about the SRC attending and supporting some of their welcome events. 

There are a number of other projects going on in the background to support students, such as:

• The Canteen Working Group and its plans for a new canteen with cheap meals on campus, in addition to spreading meal options more around campus(es), as they are currently confined to the South end of the Camperdown campus; 

• Speaking to Australian Vaccination Services about our vaccination scheme for 2026, given the preliminary green-light of my application for the SRC to offer $35,000 worth of influenza vaccinations to undergraduate students;

• The NUS National Conference was a tiring week but fruitful in terms of important motions regarding Palestine, the USyd Residential Colleges, and other campaigns that the 2026 NUS will seek to collaborate with us on.

There’s more to report on but I will spare you the details for now while most projects are still underway or yet to be fully approved, but hopefully that means I’ll be back with a full report for January – see you then!

In solidarity,

Grace