Not all legends wear capes, but all legends get suspended from the University of Sydney for telling former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to fuck off back to Wentworth.
Two students and members of the University of Sydney student representative council, Maddie Clarke and Deaglan Godwin, were suspended for a semester after protesting Turnbull’s appearance at a USYD Law Society event — according to The Guardian.
The students used a megaphone to call Turnbull “ruling class scum,” and in a video of the incident you can hear Godwin telling the former PM to fuck off back to Wentworth. Police eventually escorted Turnbull out of the venue and shut down the speaking engagement, which then shifted to an online event. Around 20 people were removed from the event by security.
Turnbull responded to the incident by calling the protesters “fascists” and saying that the protest was “at odds with every value Sydney University holds.”
After the incident, a spokesperson from USYD told the Sydney Morning Herald it has apologised to the former prime minister and plans to investigate the issue further. They also said that any attempts to shut down invited speakers “breaches the core values of our university”.
Now, the students at the centre of the protest are speaking out after being the subject of a months long investigation that prevented them from talking to the media.
“We were prohibited from going public about the allegations or that we were under investigation,” Godwin told The Guardian.
After two meetings in October with an external investigator, Clarke and Godwin finally got an outcome this week — they would be suspended for a semester. For Clarke, it’s a double suspension (totalling a year) due to a previous anti-abortion protest.
In a statement the University of Sydney said: “We consider attempts to shut down speakers who have been invited to our campuses to participate in an exchange of views and ideas as contrary to our Charter of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom which defines the core values of our University in these matters.”
Both Clarke and Godwin plan to appeal against their suspensions.
“It’s a blatant attempt at intimidation of student activists,” Godwin said.
