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Issue 8, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS Dear Pip, After lockdown ends, I have a couple of suggestions for you on how to improve life for students around 185 Pelham Street. Actually, I only have one. And it’s that Melbourne Law School should now be themed around Radiohead. Being Australia’s premier law school is cool and all, but I think MLS would be better suited as an “art rock tour de force”.  Image: Wikimedia Commons Issue 7, Volume 18 MICHAEL FRANZ The LSS was contacted for comment by De Minimis. Their response is included at the end of the article. Last Monday, 7th September, in a unanimous vote at the monthly committee meeting, the MULSS committee adopted a new and expanded version of the MULSS Social Media Policy - the regulations that govern acceptable use and engagement on the various LSS social media accounts including its various Facebook pages and groups. Historically, the social media policy has been a contentious subject. Following the adoption of its first iteration in 2015, De Minimis’ then Managing Editor (later EiC) Duncan Wallace wrote: “I recognise that this is a difficult area [sic] but I think it is appropriate to take a conservative approach to this issue. I would guard against introducing new and untried social media policies the effects of which are unclear. The burden of proof should be on those who argue that it is necessary to introduce censorship.”  Issue 7, Volume 18 MYSTIC MORGAAN I know you’ve heard about Mercury retrogrades, how if you’re a Gemini you’re really a two-faced bitch or how every Scorpio is obsessed with sex. But how does this all relate to clerkships? Is it really written in the stars? Now I know you’re all sick of hearing about astrology but what does it all mean? And can you really use astrology to work out whether you’ll get a clerkship? I’m here to tell you what the stars have in store for you. Also note that these predictions can apply to your sun sign as well as your ascendant/rising sign.  Issue 7, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS Dear student, RE: Your Future MultiNationale & Partners cordially invites you to the final stage of the Melbourne Intellectual Hunger Games Program 2020/2021. You have successfully compartmentalised your self-doubt and existential dread. You have even impressed your family. The prize? The looming certainty of a midlife crisis, with a one in 100 chance of an equity partnership. The final task? Discuss the following statement with reference to your corporate passion: “In the words of the late Mark Fisher it is ‘easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism’.” Feel free to use visual aids – at MultiNationale & Partners, we value lateral cognitive capacity. Finish within fifteen absent doomscrolls of your Instagram. Begin below.  Issue 6, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS I open this article, excited to see some cute pics of my puss – but wait! This isn’t a picture of Daisy, my tabby cat. This is clearly a picture of the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG, taken in the High Court of Australia.  Issue 5, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS The LSS was contacted for comment by De Minimis. Their response is included at the end of the article. As clerkship and graduate offer season is in full swing, JD students’ Facebook pages are in overdrive. It seems like nearly every couple of hours there is a post from the LSS or the GLSA just “letting us know” that a firm is open for applications. Or perhaps it’s an informative discussion with a firm employee and an LSS committee member, so that you can “get a feel” for what life is like at the firm. But if you’ve been following this stuff for a while, you might begin to notice that it’s only certain firms that get these posts. These firms are the ones that primarily fund the LSS, and in return the LSS spruiks them hard to us, the students. Which begs the question, just like Insta influencers in the US now must (#ad), should the LSS be disclosing when something is a sponsored post?  Issue 5, Volume 18 ROB For over 718 days, Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, of the University of Melbourne, has languished in Iran’s notorious ‘Elvin’ and ‘Qarchak’ prisons, where she has reportedly endured prolonged solitary confinement and beatings. [1] She was arrested by the Iranian regime’s security forces at Tehran Airport after having presented at an academic conference in Qoms in 2018. Her alleged crime was said to have been ‘espionage’ for which she received a sentence of ten years. However, no evidence was ever produced to suggest that these charges were true. Her trial was held in secret and her appeal dismissed, demonstrating the lack of any credible legal procedure the IRGC [2] dominated government of Iran purports to have. The Australian government has denied the allegations and her friends, colleagues and students find the trumped-up allegations absurd. [3]  Issue 5, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS The LSS was contacted for comment by De Minimis. Their response is included at the end of the article. First, I want to put a disclaimer that I am not well-versed in the exact jargon of the LGBTQIA+ community; so I want to apologise in advance if I misword some terms or explain some complex concepts incorrectly in this article. My purpose is to express, not to offend. And hopefully give some voice to other people in my situation.  Non-binary pride flag (Image: Wikimedia Commons) Issue 4, Volume 18 ANONYMOUS De Min has received this anonymous drawing of the editorial team - we're flattered (?) but we're also not sure what the ghost represents?  Anonymous is presumably a JD student - we'd love to know who submitted this to be honest!
Issue 4, Volume 18 AMTESH WARIACH “Pooja, what is this behavior?” probed a livid Shonali. “I’m sorry.” replied a composed Pooja “I kicked it by mistake.” “You can’t kick it by mistake.” Rebuked Shonali. Perhaps Pooja did, in fact, kick the bin on purpose. Maybe she didn’t. There is no way of knowing.  Issue 4, Volume 18 GRACE PARK I had a long thought about how to express my culture and my thoughts in a cohesive and interesting way. At first I was going to do a movie review of ‘Train to Busan’ and its recent sequel ‘Peninsula’, but I got a little too sentimental listening to some music. So, here are some Korean song recommendations along with some of my thoughts, specifically about us as young people living through COVID-19 and the new economic recession.  Issue 4, Volume 18 YING WONG With Stage 4 lockdown in Victorian well underway and case numbers continuing much the same, many of us cynics are contemplating the bleak possibility of many more, possibly indefinite, weeks of holing up at home. Most of us have probably spent disgusting amounts of time in front of a screen recently, making the most of every cent of our monthly streaming subscriptions. So, in keeping with this time-honoured isolation tradition, here are even more movies to watch whilst locked away from the rest of this plague-begotten world.  Kiki's Delivery Service Issue 3, Volume 18 De Minimis would like to thank Rory Dempsey, Lizz Kuiper and our mysterious anonymous contributor for sending in competition poems, and we are pleased to congratulate Lizz Kuiper on winning our first competition of the semester! Please see below for a full catalogue of entries!  Image: Wikimedia Commons Issue 3, Volume 18 MAX STELLA One Saturday afternoon during Uni break I had lunch with a person who informed me he had "recently been enlightened”. He told me he was on a conversational basis with a number of aliens and that these aliens were helping him explore past lives through extended, LSD-fuelled bouts of meditation. "Apparently, I used to be an African-American woman living in the Bronx," he said, brushing a strand of Irish blond hair from his blue eyes. "And before that?" I asked. "Oh many things,” he replied and began listing them like a kid boasting of all the presents he received that Christmas. "Let's see, I was an orphan, an Aztec emperor's slave, a Chinese rice farmer’s baby, an Amazonian green frog…".  Too much LSD? (Image: Wikimedia commons) Issue 3, Volume 18 AMTESH WARIACH The short answer to where I come from is New Delhi, India. Delhi and Melbourne have striking similarities. If the topic is ever brought up, I never fail to point out this relationship and always remark how not only is Melbourne's facade reminiscent of home, but also its culture, people and lifestyle. But in order to be able to make such observations, much like me, you need to have privilege. I would certainly not be drawing such an audacious parallel if I was not this fortunate, so please, I request you to exercise caution when and if you read this article. Any statements I make here, apply only to the top 1% of the society and represent the points of view of that group best.  Amtesh living it up back home (Image supplied) Issue 3, Volume 18 GENCO CEYLAN Feeling stressed? Feel like every reading you’re doing is getting longer and longer? Europeans finding the vaccine and not sharing it got you worried? Fear not. Here’s a convenient list of tunes to whack on when you want to unwind and maybe have a private chuckle to yourself about how funny this whole setup we’re currently living in really is.  Classical mick taking (Image: Wikimedia commons) Issue 2, Volume 18 LIZZIE JOHN I can recall exactly where I was when I discovered that Stephanie Meyer was finally releasing her long-awaited novel, Midnight Sun. On the couch in my family’s sunny sitting room on the outskirts of Brisbane, I laughed with chagrin and self-deprecation as I remembered the two or so years in which the Twilight Saga had ousted Jane Austen and C.S. Lewis from my personal literary hall of fame, and had consumed my every waking moment. I had devoured the 12 chapters of Midnight Sun that had been leaked in 2008 when I was 12 years old, full of second-hand angst and living in Bath, England. It was, and still is, a beautiful town that is full of obscenely wealthy ex-London bankers and their families, and that is littered with Roman artefacts and buildings that attract scores of tourists year upon year.  Image: Summit Entertainment Issue 2, Volume 18 RILEY JACKSON When I think about the place that I grew up it is hard for me to not wax-lyrical about my desert town. I have been waiting a long time to write about where I grew up. Albuquerque. It’s a place that asks for resilience from its residents, I mean, even learning how to spell Albuquerque is a task. For people who have never been there, it conjures images of High School Musical or Breaking Bad. For the people who have lived here, it is the smell of chile roasting in the autumn, hikes to the hot springs hidden in the Jemez during the summer, and the mountains at sunset turning so pink that they’re called the Sandias (watermelon in Spanish).  Luminarias in Albuquerque (Image supplied) Issue 2, Volume 18 MAX STELLA Imagine a person is invited to speak on campus whose opinions you find detestable. So detestable in fact that you organise a protest one afternoon on South Lawn, excoriating the university for allowing this reprobate character to come speak. A cross-section of students and staff from various faculties attend. To your delight, the protest is a hit: the university disinvites the figure. He will not be allowed to speak on campus. Can barring this person from speaking on campus be described as “silencing”? In other words, have you and your friends, in stopping a particular voice from being heard on campus, performed an act of “silencing” against that person? If not, why not?  Image: Unsplash Issue 2, Volume 18 BREE BOOTH As the radical events of 2020 push people to the poles of the political spectrum (to use a somewhat inadequate analogy) political discourse is becoming less and less about producing just outcomes and more about one-upmanship. Relax, this is not really a political argument. No, this article attempts to bring to the reader’s attention some of the moral and hermeneutical challenges of engaging in debate in a world where information is too easy to come by, but where its validity has never been more suspect. Scrolling through social media one day, I came across a screencap of this tweet.  Tweet from @proustmalone (https://twitter.com/proustmalone/status/1291942617576542209) Issue 1, Volume 18 MICHAEL FRANZ Well bloody hell. You know friends, I have to say – and I hope that our more sensitive readers will forgive the harsh language here – but this whole global pandemic business is really getting me a bit miffed. For all the obvious reasons yes, but also because seven weeks ago I had hoped that we would have something a bit more uplifting to write for the ‘welcome to semester two’ editorial. As it turns out, it’s difficult to keep mining new and compelling insights out of the collective sentiment of “oh god, this is still going on.”  Imagine reading a physical DM outside MLS on a bench - those were the days (Image: pexels) Issue 1, Volume 18 Out of respect for the wishes of her family, De Minimis has refrained from publicising the plight of jailed UniMelb academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert. However, in light of her recent transfer to the notorious Qarchak Prison, and after consultation with prominent journalists, we can no longer justify our silence. Students and former students of Political Science, History, or Islamic Studies: Did you take part in a course lectured or tutored by Dr Kylie Gilbert-Moore? For those who haven’t heard, our beloved University of Melbourne lecturer is currently imprisoned overseas. Students of Kylie and of the relevant schools are supporting one another and trying to advocate on her behalf, so that she may not languish in prison forgotten. If you took a class led by Kylie or would like to talk to the fellow University of Melbourne student cohort working on behalf of Dr. Kylie Gilbert-Moore, please contact Sarah McGovern at sarahmcgovern321@gmail.com, or Max Ferguson at maxferguson97@gmail.com. The group Melbourne University Students for Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert is comprised of Dr. Moore-Gilbert’s former students.  Issue 1, Volume 18 The article below is the first in a weekly series created by De Minimis and Jake Huang, the MULSS International Students' Representative. During these trying times, international students are living through their unique version of challenges. With a focus on their narratives, cultures and perspectives, this series aims to remind us of the diversity of the MLS cohort, a quality that makes the MLS a truly special place. JAKE HUANG It is my pleasure to kick off this new series called International Perspectives. The Year of Rat, as my people call 2020, has been nothing but eventful. Waves of pandemic, geopolitical tensions, injustices around the world and the pressure from law school are all trying to rock us overboard. With my normal life and sense of security long lost, my goal is to at least salvage my sanity.  Chinese bacon being cured in the yard (Image supplied) |
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