Beer and Pizza on Mt Stromlo - a PR triumph

Earlier this week, I, along with three other PARSA reps, went on a bit of a field trip to the Mt Stromlo observatory just out west of Canberra. The Mt Stromlo observatory is well known internationally among astronomers and astro-physicists. Many Australians will remember that Mt Stromlo was burnt almost completely through back in the 2003 Canberra bush fires. These fires basically wiped out the entire outer western suburbs of Canberra.

Most unfortunate to the Mt Stromlo observatory, was the loss of the main telescope facility, worth many millions of dollars. You can only imagine how big an impact on research such a loss could have, particularly on the unfortunate PhD students who relied on such a facility for their research projects .. and if you're thinking "why doesn't the ANU go and build another one?", think again - there is no way the ANU has the money. Central to the problem is insurance, and currently the ANU is in court, trying to get the correct amount of money out of the insurance company. Unfortunately it looks as though the ANU may have stuffed the insurance up when the policy was first negotiated, causing a massive short fall in the value for which the facility was insured - but who really knows.

As for the postgraduate students on Mt Stromlo, they have been facing many difficulties. Their local PARSA representative, Anna, told the full representative council in a meeting last week, that morale was drastically low, and that the students felt very isolated from the rest of the campus. While we could not rectify all their problems, we could at least help with morale, and so it was decided that we would organise a pizza and beer run as a way of getting the 25 or so students on Mt Stromlo together, allowing us to hear what their concerns and issues are, as well as to show some solidarity among postgraduate students. Mt Stromlo is no where near the main ANU campus, so many of these students feel quite detached and isolated from the rest of the university.

I took on the task of organising the food, the representatives to attend and the transport. It was no big social event, and so the required organsiation effort was minimal. In all honesty, I was just excited to be on a PARSA field tip. I managed to get PARSA's president, Brett, the co-chair of our Education and Advocacy team, Steve, and a previous PRC exec member, Jim, to come along. Having so many exec level reps was a very big plus.

I must say, the Mt Stromlo folk were very welcoming - which isn't really surprising when you arrive with an esky full of beer and 8 pizzas - I think they thought the Red Cross had arrived.
We got a lot of feedback from them on various issues, and I managed to talk to them a bit about the kinds of social events that would suit them. As I mentioned before, being off the main campus, the atronomers and astro-physicists on Mt Stromlo are often unable to attend our BBQs and other on-campus actitiviities. Having said that, they did make it to our trivia night back in August, and won!

So as you can probably gather, it was a very rewarding trip, and well worth the time and money spent by PARSA. What I liked the most about this trip, is how we identified a specific need for a group of students, and sort to help in a very focused and personal way. I can see this sort of thing working not just for off campus students, but also for departments on campus, where difficulties, or simply low morale, is known to exist. It has to be said, from a PR perspective, arriving with pizza and an esky full beer is unlikely to be anything other than a triumph.