Rabelais Student Media

Rabelais Student Media is the current student newspaper at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, named after French Renaissance writer François Rabelais.

From its founding in 1967, Rabelais Student Media has been run as a department of the La Trobe University Student Representative Council (subsequently by the former La Trobe Student Union). The paper was funded by a combination of advertising revenue and a student levy. Editors are elected annually and serve for a single year.

Rabelais has a notorious history in the Australian legal world. The July 1995 edition of the magazine published an article which allegedly incited readers to shoplift as a means of surviving student poverty.[1] This edition was subsequently banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, and the editors of the magazine were charged with publishing, distributing, and depositing an objectionable publication. In this instance, an objectionable publication was defined as one that allegedly incited criminal activity.[2] The editors lodged an appeal, which led to a protracted four-year court case. The appeal was eventually defeated by the full bench of the Federal Court, who refused the editors application to appeal to the High Court of Australia. The criminal charges were dropped in March 1999.[3] On campus, the paper was known for casting a critical eye over the actions of the Union and the University at large.

After many different formats and regime changes over the years, Rabelais was published monthly during the school year (March to November) and has a circulation of approx 9,000. In 2011, the publication has adopted a more informal magazine style, while still keeping the format of a newspaper. There is more content about music, movies, books, student life and fashion. During 2021 and 2022 Rabelais discontinued publishing physical magazine copies due to funding cuts to the La Trobe Student Union.[4] However, starting in 2023 physical copies have started being published along with online articles being written and published on the Rabelais website.

  1. ^ "Michael Brown & Ors v Members of the Classification Review Board of the Office of Film and Literature". FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA. 9 April 1998. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2021.
  2. ^ Nadya Haddad, ‘Rabble-rousing and Rabelais: fear of lawless shoplifting students’ (1998) 8(2) Polemic 32 at 33.
  3. ^ Federal Court of Australia, Annual report 1997 – 1998, Chapter 2, The Work of the Court, 2.2 Decisions of Interest
  4. ^ "LTSU – La Trobe Student Union 2021". latrobesu.org.au.