PROFILE
campusreview.com.au
Making the
finish line
Two graduates talk about their
differing life experiences.
he University of Newcastle recently
graduated its class of 2017. Among
them were Sapphire Dawson and
Declan Clausen.
Dawson, 24, is an Indigenous mother
of two, graduating with combined law
and business degrees. Clausen, 25, is an
environmental engineering graduate – and
Newcastle’s youngest deputy mayor. They
both work full-time now: Dawson as a lawyer
at the Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet, Clausen as executive officer to the
managing director of Hunter Water.
Campus Review asked them to reflect on
the experiences that led them to their recent
graduation. His day job, however, is less political. He’s
been employed by Hunter Water since he
began undergraduate studies, after being
awarded a scholarship. This surprised no-
one. As a child, Clausen gravitated towards
tinkering, and to the environment. His
father, a mechanical engineer, probably
encouraged this. But the interest was further
cultivated by one of his school teachers,
Caroline Hayden. She urged him to enter
the University of NSW’s sustainable living
challenge. He designed a parabolic heating
device, which proved to him that engineering
was his calling.
Though politics and management are
currently occupying him, he still finds his
environmental engineering degree useful.
“[At council] things like stormwater
upgrades, drainage and the like, or waste
disposal, are extremely relevant to my
degree,” he says. “I’m the only person on the
council with an engineering background.”
THE DECLAN DEBRIEF SAPPHIRE’S STORY
Newcastle native
Declan Clausen has
always been a leader. In
primary school, he was
a student parliament
member. In high school,
he was school captain.
“Leadership has always been something
I’ve been interested in,” he says. This passion
is manifest in his role as Newcastle’s deputy
mayor, where he is responsible for everything
from coordinating calls about missed
garbage pickups to consulting with residents
about the city’s construction of a solar farm.
As the youngest person ever to hold this
position (and the only council member
under 40), Clausen says he’s experienced
some ageism, but nothing compared to the
“sexist and misogynistic comments” the lord
mayor, Nuatali Nelmes, has fielded. Many people initially
thought Dawson, a
member of the Yuin
tribe, wouldn’t make it
to university. In primary
and high school in
Cessnock, she was
constantly bullied because of her heritage.
“I was called every name that they could
possibly come up with,” she says.
The jibes didn’t cease once she began
university, though they changed form.
Instead of juvenile taunts, she was told
Indigenous students were freeloaders
because they got so many benefits.
Exasperated, sometimes she would shut
the bullies down.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m not getting
everything’. I’d constantly have to either
leave a conversation or sit there and be
By Loren Smith
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like, ‘Well, I don’t get this, this, this and this.
Everything you’ve just said is a lie. You’re
painting all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people with the same brush, and
you’re saying we get free cars, free houses
and free uni’.
“I’m like, ‘My HECS debt can attest that
I don’t have that. I am very poor. I’ve had
several cars, because they break and I can’t
afford to fix them. And I definitely don’t
have a house, because I’m renting’.”
Other times, she would simply escape to
her “home away from home”, Wollotuka –
the university’s Indigenous institute – for a
coffee or a soothing chat.
Her dad, however, was always her biggest
supporter. “He’s like, ‘You can do whatever
you want. You can go to high school, you
can go and work ... you can go to uni’.”
Despite facing hardships and two
pregnancies, Dawson made it. She is the
first in her family to complete university, and
has inspired her cousins to follow suit.
Her achievement wasn’t guaranteed,
however. She didn’t get the marks to get
into law, but, being persistent, she entered
a specialist Indigenous pathway program,
Yapug. And after more than five years of
working through her combined degrees,
she graduated with second class honours.
Family law was Dawson’s favourite
university subject, and she hopes to
practise it in the future and use her skills to
help Indigenous communities. But for now,
she’s enjoying public service in Canberra,
and the flexibility it allows her as a mother
of two: one aged six, the other not even a
year old. She deliberately chose to work at
the Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet because of its Indigenous Affairs
division – turning down two other public
sector offers in the process.
In retrospect, she’s glad she didn’t “bail”
on her degrees, and that her father, among
others, continually believed in her.
“In some other communities, going to
uni can be looked down upon, because
some people think that because you’ve
gone to uni, you think you’re better [than
them],” she says.
Her experience couldn’t be more
different. Indeed, she is now a mentor for
her community’s next generation.
“I hope [all] my cousins go to university,”
Dawson says. “All I want is for them to
believe in themselves, because no-one
has ever really told them that they can get
to these great heights, and they can do all
these great things.” ■