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Issue 13, Semester 1
By Brigette Mercaldi Ahhhh, SWOTVAC! No-one knows what it stands for, but we all know what it involves: spending countless hours in your study cave; limited hours of sunlight; and a whole lot of stress. During this time you will, of course, need a number of supplies to survive. This is a guide for your SWOTVAC survival. No doubt you’ll need to sustain your energy levels throughout this time, and I have some quick, cheap and easy solutions. The best thing about these study snacks is that they are easy to make, and you can study and eat them at the same time. #efficiency.
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Issue 12, Semester 1
As the end of Semester 1 draws near, the date for the legal profession’s equivalent of The Hunger Games approaches. In this article De Minimis interviews several veterans of the bruising and occasionally brilliant process to deliver an authentic, unsponsored account of the clerkship period. Issue 12, Semester 1
By Kevin Cui If you’ve been keeping track of discussions over content warnings on De Minimis and the Facebook JD page, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the matter has been settled, and the entire cohort is unreservedly on board with the LSS’s proposal to introduce content warning requirements for upsetting or distressing content. Perhaps the absence of vigorous debate or productive counter-arguments is understandable given the fear of being labelled a bigot if one were to express a dissenting opinion. What I don’t believe, though, is that nobody questions the implications of our current approach to handling distressing or objectionable dialogue, or no longer believes in the value of a healthy dose of skepticism. Issue 12, Semester 1
By Ayu Maylinda From personal experiences, I gather that the main contention against trigger warnings is that they potentially stifle freedom of speech in academia. The notion of trigger warnings seems to signal an unwelcome encroachment of freedom of speech, a prized ideal within Western democracies and the tradition of Western liberal thought. There is an unspoken understanding that the University, as the intellectual epicentre of a “free” society, must be a place where opinions can be expressed without censorship or restraint; trigger warnings are seen to prevent freedom of speech from taking place and thus stifling intellectual growth and stimulation. Issue 12, Semester 1
By Ian Khor I still remember the very first conversation I had with an Australian about Malaysia during an ice breaker activity asked during my first undergraduate tutorial. “Where you from, mate?” “Malaysia.” “Malaysia? Where’s that?” “The country above Singapore.” “You mean Thailand?” “No, below Thailand.” “You mean Bali?” Issue 12, Semester 1
By Bill Pilla I was so ready for a shitfight in the comments from last week’s edition of De Minimis. At this stage in semester, I need a bloodbath with a flute of schadenfreude on the side. Not only did we have Politically-Correct-Cultural-Hysteria around content warnings, but also an article about cultural appropriation. Where were you, concerned citizen, to advocate for the rights of the level-headed? The rational and objective thinkers who are entitled to their opinions because free speech or some shit? Issue 12, Semester 1
By Steph Pullen With exam season looming, preparation has begun. Free seats in the library are becoming rare. Social outings are few and far between. Caffeine intake has increased exponentially. The question ‘Why didn’t I just take my Arts degree and run?’ frequently crosses your mind. Issue 12, Semester 1
By Ted Worland 1. What marks your friends are getting. While there are a lot of things about studying law that can make you feel pitted against your classmates (the bell curve certainly doesn't help!), at the end of the day the only marks you can control are your own. Issue 11, Semester 1
By Tess McGuire Content warning: sexual assault, rape, intimate partner violence, prejudice against bisexuality, and incarceration of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It may be confronting for some readers. Nausea flowed over me like a wave that crashes on you when you least expect it. ‘She was raped behind a nightclub’, my Evidence and Proof professor explained on Tuesday afternoon as he launched into a description of R v Lazarus, the case acquitting Luke Lazarus of the rape of Saxon Mullins. Issue 11, Semester 1
Film Review: Jacob Kairouz I thought that erotic asphyxiation couldn’t get more exciting, but I was wrong. The new film-adaptation of Tim Winton’s Breath had me seeing stars, but not for the reasons you might think. Winton has (rightly) pointed out that men are ‘shackled by misogyny’, so I went in assuming that his text would critique the gender binary. However, when I thought about the way gender is portrayed in the narrative, I realised that perhaps Winton himself is struggling to break free of his shackles. Issue 11, Semester 1
By Ying Wong Should people get away with committing insensitive acts by simply pleading innocence? Should we all be asked to bear the weight of our decisions, no matter how ignorant we are of the consequences, particularly if those consequences have the potential to ‘offend’ others? Is the debate around cultural appropriation really just a power play between those seeking to get away with shitty things, and those who wish to fasten their tendrilous grip on their own apparently discrete “culture”? Is it even shitty to wear a qipao if you’re white? Issue 11, Semester 1
By Dinu Kamurasinghe In 2017 I spent a lot of time watching men glue eyebrows, contour cheeks, pad hips and tuck until camel toe becomes a compliment. In between brushstrokes and blending, I found some of the most poignant television I’ve ever watched. I would watch these (mostly) men with their hair pulled back in what, to my uninitiated eyes, looked like a stocking and packing tape, overdrawing their lips and slapping their faces with blenders and sometimes I’d find my heart in my stomach. Now in its tenth season (not including All-Stars and Untucked), I’ve fallen deep in painful, joyous love with RuPaul’s Drag Race. Issue 11, Semester 1
By Sverre Gunnersen When are all these Principles of Public Law are going to “come together” like you’ve been assured they will? Be warned: for me they didn’t until it was too late, after the exam. You see, unlike Obligations, the PPL exam is not simply a matter of running through a checklist of laws to find the right answer, and there is often no right answer. The marks are found in the grapple, not the conclusion. You may recall that in Dietrich, there was no specific rule about a right to legal counsel – the court had to grapple with principles of the administration of justice and the rule of law to determine what the right ‘should’ be. Issue 10, Semester 1
By Erin Kanygin As everyone has noticed, life outside and around 185 Pelham Street has been busy, as of late. “What exactly is going on?” you may have asked yourself. “Is this just a bunch of random construction linked to the new train station?” Well actually, Melbourne Law School is currently experiencing a double whammy of projects. There is the train line and station being implemented, but on top of that there is the “University Square Master Plan”, which is the culmination of several years of community consultation run by the City of Melbourne. Issue 10, Semester 1
By Rosie Francis About a month ago, my former employer and I *finally* resolved what ended up being quite a dragged out and frustrating dispute, which mainly concerned wage underpayments. The outcome of the dispute resulted from determination, perseverance and standing my ground against a woman who thought she could get away with it. Let’s get started. Issue 10, Semester 1
By Nick Parry-Jones As talk of Facebook and its dominance of consumer eyeballs and advertiser budgets swirls, it’s important to remember that Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is only one of the tech giants in the ecosystem. The other is Alphabet, whose most familiar product is the search engine Google. Week 10, Semester 1
By Michael Franz 1. You stand in front of the law building, excited for another day of learning! How do you begin? Head straight to class – go to 16. I need a coffee first – go to 13. Screw it, I’m taking the day off and going back home – go to 9. Issue 10, Semester 1
By DeMinimis Team Members of the the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)’s University of Melbourne branch have voted to undertake a four hour work stoppage from 9 am to 1 pm on Wednesday 9 May. Staff are striking over a number of changes the University wants to make to staff working conditions, including:
De Minimis believes that these changes would directly affect the quality of education that MLS offers and therefore supports the industrial action and all staff who are participating. Semester 1, Issue 9
By Dinu Kumarasinghe The beaches in the Torres Strait are idyllic, but they are not for idle swimming. These waters are for catching whole schools of fish in drag nets, for setting rock traps in changing tides, and for speeding through in dinghies. These waters are for steering clear of when you catch a sucker fish, because you know that means the tiger shark is near. Semester 1 Issue 9
By Anisha Thomas Here’s Looking At You Do you remember MX? That fantastic free newspaper you could pick up on public transport? We all read it for Here’s Looking At Yous, like Tinder for your morning train, hoping that perhaps we were the cutie in a blue scarf and quirky manic pixie fringe that someone noticed the other morning and hey let’s get coffee and make twenty beautiful chubby-cheeked babies together. Semester 1 Issue 9
By Sonya Santa Maria A closed mouth does not necessarily mean an empty soul. Silence does not necessarily mean stupidity. Indeed, stupidity is often inferred; but a quiet man may very well be a less burdened one. There have been occasions where my silence has been misjudged as stupidity in the classroom, or mistaken by my friends and family as incompetence in communication; and whilst the underlying reason for my selective mutism is a fear many might dismiss as absurd and irrational, I fear that I am not alone in my silent predicament. Issue 8, Semester 1
By Cam Doig Melbourne Law School has two class problems. One: class is invisible to most children of privilege here. Two: some MLS students are doing so well, they’ve decided their classmates don’t need lecture recordings. Issue 8, Semester 1
By Timothy Sarder “Eat fat and prosper!”, its advocates shout down from their covens to the uninitiated – the Ketogenic diet (keto) has arrived. In truth, keto has been around a while – first introduced in the 1920s as a treatment for epilepsy. And the diet’s defence of fat as being better for us than we might think is not without merit. Issue 8, Semester 1
By Valerie Ng On April 9th, Indigenous leaders and constitutional law experts convened a panel at Melbourne Law School on the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a sincere proclamation of unceded Indigenous sovereignty. They pieced together the issues and motivations surrounding Indigenous sovereignty in Australia, and in particular, the effects of the Uluru statement. Two of the panellists, Indigenous advocates Thomas Mayor and Jill Gallagher, were part of the process surrounding the statement, and spoke powerfully as to its importance. |
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