RINDOS DEATH ENDS SORRY ERA FOR UWA
By Michael Day

(large, signed, colour picture of Rindos)

Controversial academic David Rindos died in his sleep on Monday. DAY, who won a national award for reports on the Rindos affair, looks at his campaign.

David Rindos will be remembered by many as the man who had the University of WA administration on the ropes but lacked a knockout justifiable case.

The former senior lecturer in archaeology, who died on Monday, became the mortal enemy of UWA,which initially underestimated him.

In persistence and persuasive power, Dr Rindos was supreme.

He would have considered it a brillian victory to have won a parliamentary committee summon the university to an inquiry this year.

By its action, the Legislative Council's government agencies committee set aside traditional concerns for university autonomy and rejected the views of national university leaders and State Education Minister Colin Barnett.

The tactics of Dr Rindos, buttressed by media coverage, had led the State Ombudsman and UWA Senate to inquire into his grievance.

Universities, with their democratic ethos, are fair game for aggrieved staff who use their scholarly qualities of dogged, single- minded persistence to wage campaigns. But Dr Rindos had something extra, something unusual in his armoury.

Employing a variety of techniques, perhaps unconsciously, he was able to divide groups he encountered and marshal almost religious support from those he won to his side.

He was one of the first experts in WA on the Internet - and he used his power to support his cause. He was an adept user of the Freedom of Information Act.

The university hired him in 1989 on the strength of his book - an acclaimed PhD theoretical examination of the origins of agriculture - and the recommendations of some who were more impressed by his extroverted and provocative personality than his meagre academic experience.

It was the era before the modernisation of university administration. Warnings by some involved in the hiring process were overridden and he was soon acting head of the archaeology department - despite having no previous experience in a senior academic or university administrative post. It was not fair on him or the university.

When his inabilities began to manifest themselves and the complaints started, Dr Rindos began his moves to protect his position. His detailed diaries of conversations and events began even earlier.

He made allegations against his colleagues but he committed a profound error when he alleged mismanagement by professor of archaeology Sandra Bowdler.

Acknowledged by here peers as oen of the finest minds in Australian archaeology, Professor Bowdler had another attribute which Dr Rindos had not reckoned with.

Honed by years of detailed research, she was a meticulous record- keeper and could rebut every allegation Dr Rindos threw at her by pointing to hard, written evidence.

Dr Rindos blamed his failure to win a permanent contract and his consequent unemployment on his activities exposing alleged wrongdoing on the campus.

Perhaps the most powerful image Dr Rindos was that of the whistleblower, the underdog fighting the uncaring, brutal administration. He was able to use it to win supporters at the university, in the media and in State Parliament.

Any reasonable examination of the evidence - even restricted to the long, rambling, and inconsistent documents that Dr Rindos wrote - does not support the whistleblower tag.

Some other supporters, including those at the university and in the mining arena, hitched their aggendas to that of Dr Rindos in his battle against the UWA administration.

His campaign was strengthened by the powerful forces of misogyny, the main victim of which was vice-chancellor Fay Gale.

Much publicity protrayed Dr Rindos as a victim. In a sense he was - of his own psychological makeup.

But this ignored the immense pain and turmoil endured by the five other staff of the archaeology department and their families. Three left the State, largely to escape the constant tension.

Professor Bowdler, who is still at UWA, endured public and palpably false accusations and saw her department lose its independent status. Post-graduate students, including those who supported Dr Rindos, had their studies upset.

WA in general and Aborigines in particular were hurt when UWA's highly regarded centre for prehistory, which examined proposed mines for sites of cultural significance, was closed after being caught in the crossfire.