THE ANU’s vice-chancellor, Prof Ian Young, has asked staff at the ANU School of Music to attend a meeting today at 5pm for one hour.

Also present will be the university’s deputy vice-chancellor (academic) Prof Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Prof Toni Makkai, Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Adrian Walter, outgoing Head of the School of Music.

Some staff have objected to the timing of this meeting because it is outside office hours and believed the consultation period ended today; so the university has offered them an alternative meeting time at 8.30am on Tuesday, May 29.

“Who knows why?” said one staff member who preferred to remain unnamed. “I suspect that since the consultation process closes [today], this will be their way of being able to say they have consulted with staff,” the staff member.

“Why call it at 5 o’clock?” said another, who believed the consultation concluded at close of business today, so the meeting may be seen to lie outside that period of consultation.

In recent days, “CityNews” has learnt, staff, Friends of the ANU School of Music and members of the public have been busy submitting their arguments to the process.

The university’s formal response to submissions has been to refer them, in reassurance, to Prof Young’s formal statement of May 18 in which he wrote of a fund-raising consortium and to a letter publish on the vice-chancellor’s blog from staffer and folk music researcher Ruth Lee Martin supporting the proposed changes.

Staff remain anything but reassured.

An adjunct fellow from the ANU, sums up the feeling: “He really can’t win now…Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a good outcome for music.”

Consultation period for staff will close on Tuesday May 29.