Campus Time

It was really too hot for alfresco.








I spent some time on the local university campus today.

It's been a long time (1977) since I've spent any serious time inside such an institution, except for attending conferences and the occasional speaking engagement (usually in front of Education undergrads) when I was working full time.

The occasion was an Orientation day for one of my daughters.

Shade was good.








It was interesting, and the contrast between the campus of the seventies and today is marked. During two years full time study and ten years part time which began on my RTA and extended into the early eighties, I got to know U of Q pretty well.

The first thing I noticed today was the lack of political activity of any kind. Nobody was trying to sign my daughter to Young Labor or Young Liberal. There wasn't a cause to be seen. No Ferals - no Rah-rahs. Times have changed. The Red Frogs were there. My daughter dismissed them - "I didn't need them because I didn't go to Schoolies - I don't need them now".

They looked very earnest.

In this respect, (lack of political activity) the modern campus is a very boring place. Either because they are too busy earning the necessary cash to survive, or because they are too self-absorbed to care for ideas of any kind, the current generation (the millenials) are simply detached from ideology.

Flags everywhere, but no breeze to fly them.







Maybe they are turned off by the lack of conviction shown by today's political leaders who are blinkered to everything with the exception off focus groups and their spin doctors.

Two other things are different.

Everything (from parking to printing) has a price attached - a dollar value. Here, as everywhere else, the accountants are running the show.

And you can get good brewed coffee. That was simply unheard of thirty years ago.

Why do baristas wear black...in this heat?










Click on the pics to embiggen them.