Four Fires (38 page)

staff cadet templeton: Who said it was me made her pregnant?

(More laughter)

staff cadet templeton: No, I take that back, sir.

reporter: You know it was you or you take back that Miss Maloney was sleeping around?

staff cadet templeton: The former, sir, Sarah wasn't sleeping with anyone else. We only did it once, anyway. It was just bad luck.

reporter: You did make her pregnant and it was just bad luck? You don't feel any remorse?'

staff cadet templeton (thinks): Yeah, I suppose, don't know really.

(A player offers him a soft drink.)

staff cadet templeton (acknowledging): Thanks, mate.

reporter: You don't think you should have married her?

(More laughter)

staff cadet templeton: No way! Then I couldn't have come to Duntroon (More laughter)

reporter: That I was more important to you?

staff cadet templeton: My parents thought so.

reporter: And you?

staff cadet templeton: Look, sir, I don't have to answer your questions and I'm not going to say any more!

chorus from the other cadets: Yeah! Yeah! Piss off!

This interview printed verbatim without anything added causes another public stir. The next day Duntroon is besieged by reporters from all over the nation and the Commander in Charge, Major General I. R. Campbell, CBE, DSO, refuses to allow Staff Cadet Murray Templeton to comment any further.

All this begins to add up to the fact that people are beginning to believe the elite in society are protecting themselves. Melbourne University, especially, is seen for what it is, a bastion of privilege, a power unto itself and under the control of men who are arrogant and up themselves, all of whom come from an upper-middle-class background. With few exceptions, those of the Medical Faculty have had a private education, mostly at the most exclusive schools. They appear to be men who have no interest or regard for, as the Student Labor Club puts it, the proletariat, the common people, such as Sarah Maloney who comes from a working-class background.

This is probably an unfair assessment, I mean, about them all coming from an upper-middle-class background and private schools, but it is nevertheless the public perception,
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so that the working-class element is very much on Sarah's side, especially those people who see themselves as blue-collar workers.

Then something extraordinary happens that throws everything into turmoil. Under construction at the university is the new Beaurepaire Sports Centre to be opened late that year. It will serve as a training centre for the Olympics and will be the most modern sporting facility of any university in the nation.

The Builders Labourers Union working on the site decide to strike, demanding that Sarah have a second hearing, this time from the Professorial Board itself with the vice-chancellor, as the chairman. The construction workers carrying out alterations to the Anatomy building also strike and this is followed by the Student Union, which decides to call a simultaneous strike demanding the same outcome. Now Melbourne University comes to an abrupt stop.

In the meantime the phone calls, telegrams and letters continue unabated and are streaming in from the other states as well. This is not a student uprising or a trade-union dispute, but an issue which is proving to have repercussions in the wider community and one which the vice-chancellor cannot continue to ignore.

Melbourne University puts on a brave face and someone purported to be from them breaks the silence by sending out an Unsigned press release on university notepaper hinting that it is all a clever Communist Party plot to disrupt the university. Blaming the communists is always a pretty good way to get off the hook and Bob Menzies, the prime minister, has used it more than once in politics.

The evidence their spokesman gives for this is the activity of the Labor Club, a student political organisation which during Orientation Week had set up a table in the foyer of the university union building and sold 'progressive literature', political tracts and publications by Karl Marx, Lenin and Joseph Stalin extolling the virtues of socialism. They also handed out leaflets demanding that Sarah Maloney be allowed to enrol in Medicine. The leaflet also points out that Denis Lovegrove, the Member for Carlton in the State Parliament, an ex-Communist Party member, has raised the issue of Sarah's admission to the university in parliament. It points out that Lovegrove is also president of the Fibrous Plaster and Plaster Workers Union, the first union to walk off the job at the Beaurepaire Sports Centre.

Even to the most ardent communist-under-the-bed conspiracy theorist, the university press release, if it is genuine, is over-the-top nonsense, and only serves to prove how cynical and naive academics are, thinking they can bamboozle the media and public with such a ridiculous assertion.

Melbourne University is simply not accustomed to defending itself and is making a hopeless mess of things all round. The ABC has done a special program on Sarah's case and mention is made of the communist conspiracy. Someone from the Communist Party of Australia who is on the program takes a great deal of pleasure debunking the theory. The only one who seems willing to go along with it is Mr Santamaria from the DLP and even he isn't all that sure.

The communist theory simply won't wash. The Sarah affair, everyone knows, isn't about politics or trade unions. Even the ALP Club, the sworn enemies of the Labor Club and representatives of the right-wing side of university socialism, come out in support of Sarah. Barry Jones, a leading member, points out that the issue is one or polemics not politics and is essentially about human rights and justice for female students and is a broad and long overdue issue that needs to be brought out into the open. What he means is that it's high time women's rights are looked at in the community not as politics but as plain justice.

The vice-chancellor, Professor Paton, then makes an announcement on morning radio, saying the university has been unable to find the person purported to be on their staff who suggested the communist-plot theory and that the university does not hold this viewpoint. He claims it is a hoax and that it would be a simple matter to get hold of the appropriate letterhead. When asked
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what then is the viewpoint of Melbourne University, he says, 'We will be making a statement later in

the week.'

In the meantime the strident and demanding voice of Mrs Barrington-Stone can be heard daily on the wireless and read in the newspapers. As the reporter on the ABC program said, 'The president of the Country Women's Association, a bastion of conservatism, can hardly be accused of being infiltrated by the communists or being in sympathy with the trade unions.'

Furthermore, the program goes on to make the point that a small-town policeman who simply believes in fair play and justice cannot be accused of political manipulation.

Mrs Barrington-Stone and Big Jack Donovan stick to their guns, saying repeatedly that what the university is doing is unjust and unfair and that their attitude turns women students into second-class citizens. They demand that female students enjoy equal rights with males and that they be judged on their scholastic ability and not on whatever biological factors or on such moral judgements the male-dominated review committee care to make.

Though Mrs Barrington-Stone is the more vocal of the two of them and more attractive to the media as a protesting voice, Big Jack Donovan takes the issue away from just being females whingeing for a better deal. He is a well-remembered South Melbourne footy hero, and is known by those in a position to judge him as a damn good cop, while others who know him personally say he is fair dinkum and an all-round good bloke. The consensus in the pubs around Melbourne is if Big Jack Donovan is going in to bat for the little Maloney lass, then this is something that must claim the attention of fair-minded men everywhere.

Then the university makes its statement and it's their second big mistake. The spokesman is not from the Medical Faculty but is the registrar, a Mr Newington. He points out at the press conference that

Sarah's pregnancy was not the reason for her rejection, that the 1956 intake of medical students, due to an error in administration, was the largest ever and exceeded the quota that allowed for careful and considered tutorials and lectures and was more than the existing facilities could accommodate. To make his point he examples the intake of 1955, which was 218 first-year students, and 1954, which had 180. This year the intake has a limit of 248 places whereas, due to a clerical error, 255 students were granted a preliminary entry, subject to their final interview. In other words, the university very much regrets that seven students had to be rejected. He then goes on to say that Miss Sarah Maloney and six male students have been told they were not eligible for the 1956 intake.

Asked on what basis the rejections had been made, Mr Newington said that it had been a simple matter of taking their matriculation results in Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. The seven students with the lowest aggregate in these subjects had been eliminated from the list.

Though this proves to be the case with the six male students, Mr Newington hasn't bothered to check Sarah's matriculation results, simply assuming that a girl from the bush with her working-class background would barely have scraped up sufficient marks to get her accepted at the bottom end of the admission list.

Well, let me tell you, the proverbial bowel fodder hits the rotating blades in a huge way! It is a simple matter to look up the matriculation results of every student accepted into Medicine for the 1956 intake and that's exactly what the newspapers do, showing that Sarah topped the results for the marks required for acceptance, coming second in the entire state. The bloke who came first got a scholarship to Oxford to study Law and so isn't even at Melbourne University.

Sarah's results, first-class honours in every subject, are published in all the newspapers and are read out on the wireless. So now the ordinary people in the street think even more highly of her and even less of the university. She's become a working-class heroine who is showing the world
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that a little country girl from a state school, with difficult family circumstances and a working-class background, can still cut the mustard.

If Melbourne University now denies that Sarah's pregnancy was the cause for her rejection and if her marks are the highest among the first-year students, then they can only be discriminating against her for being a woman and, in addition, from a working-class background. If anything, the fact that the university is making a distinction of class, as well as gender, gets them even deeper in the poo. So they are forced to 20 onto the wireless and say that Mr Newington was wrong about

Sarah and that in the eyes of the doctors on the review committee a young woman in her advanced stage of pregnancy would be disadvantaged in her first year at the university and that they had advised her that she should apply again for the 1957 intake. At last the university has admitted in so many words that they have discriminated against Sarah for being a woman.

Perhaps we'll never know who finally brought the issue to a head. The media suggests it was the premier, Mr Bolte, who is potentially facing enormous embarrassment if the issue were brought up for all the world to see just before the Olympic Games. Then, of course, there is the question of the women's vote in the next election. Anyway, the chancellor of the university, the Hon. Mr Justice Dean, announces that the vice-chancellor has agreed to review the case immediately with a committee composed of the deans of every faculty, with the exception of the Dean of Medicine.

Morrie says that this is fair, but also a big mistake, the medical men will not be happy not being represented.

But Big Jack Donovan disagrees. Til bet you London to a brick that Professor Block eliminated himself. Just think about it. If he voted "Yes", then people were going to say why hadn't he done so in the first place. But if he voted "No", everyone would see him for a woman-hater. Best keep his nose clean, eh?'

Morrie then says Big Jack's right, politics as usual.

The review committee is to be convened in the Professorial Board meeting room near the Law School at 11 a.m. on the fifth of April, but by nine o'clock there is an enormous crowd in the quadrangle nearby, with people streaming through the Grattan Street entrance.

The crowd of several thousand is made up from every element in society, though there are a great many more women than men and

many carry homemade placards which say things like 'Fair go!', 'Justice for Sarah!', 'Brains don't get pregnant!' One wag even carries a placard which asks, 'If the baby is a boy, then is it all right?'A lot of the placards say, 'Women's rights NOW!' and seem to be a co-ordinated campaign by female university students.

The crowd is good-humoured but it is also clear they've come to see that justice is done and that very few among them are on the side of the university. There are a few yobbos who try to disrupt things but some of the blokes from the striking Beaurepaire Sports Centre building site soon calm them down.

After less than two hours' debate, a secret ballot is taken by the new review committee and the vast majority, though not all of the faculty deans, vote that pregnancy alone is not a reason for denying a student enrolment in any academic course conducted by Melbourne University.

Pandemonium breaks loose when the vice-chancellor makes an official announcement. Professor Paton announces that as it is already two weeks over the time Sarah would normally have been accepted as a student, the university is granting her special permission to enrol in Medicine for 1956. There is renewed cheering at this and people begin to chant, 'Sarah! Sarah! Sarah! We want Sarah!'

Morrie had already decided that Sarah mustn't be present outside as the excitement might bring
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on her baby. Sarah says she doesn't think she could stand to be there anyway, so Mrs Barrington-Stone arranges with Mrs Billings for her to be in the registrar's office next door. This way she can hear the crowd and get the decision moments after it is made but not be seen by anyone.