Key 98: The University Assembly 1974-1989

 

The growing desire for all members of the University community below the rank of professor for a bigger role in policy formation and decision making, underscored by increasingly confrontational student protests prompted the Council to establish a working group of staff and student representatives to conduct a review of University government in 1972.

One outcome was the University Assembly, a permanent consultative body of 114 members elected from among the academic and general staff and students set up in 1974 under the chairmanship of Dr Davis McCaughey with Richard Tanter as Secretary.

Davis McCaughey was later Deputy Chancellor, 1983
Davis McCaughey was later Deputy Chancellor, 1983
[Source: University of Melbourne Archives Image Catalogue, UMA-I-1652]
Richard Tanter in another forum
Richard Tanter in another forum
[Source: University of Melbourne Archives Image Catalogue, UMA-I-599]

The growing desire for all members of the University community below the rank of professor for a bigger role in policy formation and decision making, underscored by increasingly confrontational student protests prompted the Council to establish a working group of staff and student representatives to conduct a review of University government in 1972.

One outcome was the University Assembly, a permanent consultative body of 114 members elected from among the academic and general staff and students set up in 1974 under the chairmanship of Dr Davis McCaughey with Richard Tanter as Secretary.

Its monthly meetings provided a forum for discussion of a range of issues the most significant of which were handed over to working groups for investigation and report. Some of these, such as the report of the Women’s Working Group proved to be major catalysts for change, but as an experiment in a new form of academic governance, the Assembly failed to live up to expectations and, starved of resources in the 1980s, it was finally abolished in 1989.

Assembly meeting, 1975
Assembly meeting, 1975
[Source: University of Melbourne Archives Media Photograph Collection, Photograph No 20750]