In the 1950s, reviews of jazz and classical music filled the pages of student newspapers, and Honi Soit – the student publication of the University of Sydney – ran a well-received editorial that called for the mandatory wearing of academic robes when students attended class. University campuses were considered hallowed ground, students behaved much like their parents, and the student press reflected the overarching conservatism of Australian society.

By the mid-1960s, however, students had united in furious opposition to conscription, censorship and conservative attitudes, and university publications led the charge for civil rights, enthusiastically stoked political activism, and gleefully rejected traditional values. In Dissent, Dr Sally Percival Wood follows nine student publications from across the country and shows how major players in the student press defined a decade of social upheaval.

Tharunka, the student publication of the University of NSW, accrued 40 obscenity charges in quick succession during the 60s for publishing pornographic cartoons and poems, including one titled ‘C**t is a Christian Word’. Editor Wendy Bacon showed up to the court hearing dressed in a nun’s habit with a sign that read ‘I have been f****d by God’s steel prick’ in protest against the arbitrary and strict censorship laws. After serving eight days in prison, she went on to become head of journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney.

The student press also gave the mainstream media a run for its money by publishing photographs from the Vietnam War that major newspapers wouldn’t touch. Photos of headless civilians and other acts of wartime violence lit the fuse for an explosion of anti-war sentiment that would soon reverberate around the halls of parliament.

Dissent provides a fascinating and thoroughly entertaining snapshot of students during 1960s and it acts as an effective rallying cry for today’s young people, whose political force, Wood suggests, has become attenuated.

Reviewed by Angus Dalton