Page 3 - Luce 2016

FRO M THE P RINCIPAL

At the lectern Alyssa Moohin Rowing Regatta

From the Principal

Janet Clarke Hall is a place which fosters ideas. Towards the While there is much that we do that is very good, we have
end of 2016 one of our first year students, Alyssa Moohin, recommitted to learning, including through interaction with
contacted the Vice-Principal and myself to let us know that the Australian Human Rights Commission and others, new
her first piece had been published in the literary journal ways to ensure that we do everything we possibly can to
The Lifted Brow.* It is quite a brilliant piece of writing, and encourage respectful relationships within and beyond our
Alyssa’s excitement in her achievement is well deserved. College. While I am hardly well versed in the area, my
thought is that to address gender inequality, education must be
These sort of interactions are among the best parts of my job. matched by example, and that here the powerful example of
In taking on another five-year term as Principal, I have been female leaders in the College – from our Fellows to the Chair
particularly heartened by Council’s support of my own vision of Council, from our Vice-Principal and our Director of Studies
of the College as a ‘student facing’ institution that will keep to our 2016 Student Club President – is at least as important as
its focus on the joyful but complex tasks of helping young any words we might speak on equality and leadership.
women and men make the transition into university, and later
professional life. No one looking for ideas could have been At our 2016 Leadership Dinner, Australian of the Year David
disappointed with the speakers – among them General David Morrison defined culture roughly as the stories we tell
Morrison AO and the Honourable Peter Costello AC, who ourselves about who we are. I have said in JCH and elsewhere
spoke to students in the course of the year about the big issues that my own thoughts on culture have moved away from
affecting Australia and the wider world. ‘stories’ (often self congratulatory and selective) to ‘shared
practice’: it is in the shared practices of our daily, communal
As well as fostering ideas, Janet Clarke Hall is a place which life – from the physical act of dining in Hall together, to the
fosters values. Throughout the course of 2016, the College way we play our sport – that we make our culture.
saw that we had a part to play in acknowledging the damage
done to lives and whole communities from sexual violence on The first year student I spoke of earlier showed her own
campus. Under the leadership of Mr Ian Darling, we engaged wonderful leadership abilities as she took the lead, as
with ‘The Hunting Ground Project Australia’ in a difficult someone who had previously spent time in a school rowing
but vital discussion spurred by the brilliant and harrowing crew, in helping less experienced young women get onto
documentary The Hunting Ground which has opened up a the water. Practical leadership comes out in the daily life of
national conversation in the United States around ‘college’ students and staff and we are richer as a community for the
culture. Australian and American universities are not the varied talents that people bring into our communal life – a
same, but in all of our engagements with colleagues in the life with challenges, but perhaps without parallel for those
Melbourne colleges, and the wider University, it was obvious students outside the college system. I hope that you enjoy
that we have much to learn about ‘best practice’ in terms of reading about some of the events that shaped 2016 at Janet
prevention and support of survivors of the heinous and often Clarke Hall.
hidden abuse of sexual assault.
Here I can only give full credit to our students for their Dr Damian Powell
willingness to open up difficult conversations about power Principal
and trust with candour and care, as we thought hard together
about the stated and unstated power relations that can inhibit
– or ignore – the least powerful in communities such as our
own. It is foolish to believe that the College during my time, or
indeed throughout its history, has not let some students down
at times when they most acutely felt the need for help.
* http://bit.ly/2pSbXNj

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