Sparked by their mutual recognition of a need for school-specific support for Humanities and Languages students, Linguistics students Dimitrije Karadarevic and Spencer Toohey banded together as Co-Presidents to form HALSOC. 

The newly Arc-affiliated club aims to promote the student voice within the School of Humanities & Languages and intends to take an interdisciplinary approach between faculties and clubs to provide its members with a variety of resources and skills that will be invaluable in the workplace. 

Dimitrije, a 3rd year Advanced Science/Arts student cites the desire to provide representation for fellow students, as well as school-specific events alongside broader faculty activities for the small cohort of under fifty students as the motivation behind the club. However, the club also intends to encourage students of all degrees to take an interest in learning a new language. 

“We found that there was a gap for students wanting to learn different languages and we want to form a community around this. Language learning isn’t a bounded resource and it should be available to the wider UNSW community.”  

This sentiment is undoubtedly reflected within the School which offers a totality of nine language majors/minors, with the formation of the club being met with enthusiasm by both students and staff who are eager to have their views and degrees represented. HALSOC’s executive team have already begun to liaise with the School to plan valuable activities for students and to identify areas of improvement.  

On HALSOC’s agenda for the rest of the year is to bring awareness to the endangerment of Aboriginal languages and Australian Sign Language by partnering with Disability Services to provide courses to students. Their first event is a collaboration with UNSW Queer Collective about the evolution of gender-neutral pronouns in the English language, and its interplay with politics and social justice - this will be held during Queer Week (WK3, event details here).   

Find out more about HALSOC here.