Most Greek Australian students attending university in Australia may somehow been affected, involved or approached by NUGAS – National Union of Greek Australian Students. As an organisation, NUGAS doesn’t discriminate when it comes to what course you are studying, or in which state, so long as you are of Greek heritage.

Greek student organisations first began in the 1950s when migration to Australia was on the rise. In an era when attendance by Greek students was minimal, they needed to find a way to forge an identity for themselves while finding strength in numbers. It was a disjointed start with campuses having their own Greek clubs, but by the 1970s, communication between clubs was quite healthy and by 1976, the National Union of Greek Australian Students (NUGAS) was formed. Someone who remembers this time well is former national president of NUGAS Jim Bisas who, in his term, was responsible for setting up the foundations of NUGAS as it is today.

“It was a very exciting time,” says Bisas of his time as national president of NUGAS between 1979 and 1980. “There weren’t a lot of Greek university students so it was important to get together and maintain our Greek culture. “NUGAS was very much in its infancy back then so it was really important to put together an infrastructure that would stand the test of time.”

Keeping alive his Greekness was the main reason Bisas joined NUGAS, he says, and “to experience and get in touch with other people that had the same cultural background”. “It was at a time when there weren’t a lot of Greek kids on campus and it was a good feeling to belong to an organisation like that.” Twenty years later, for Desi Daoulas the reasons for joining NUGAS were similar – to connect with other Greeks.

But for Daoulas, it was a different time for Greek Australian students. They were proud of their heritage, they wanted to showcase and almost thrust their culture in the faces of all to see. A member of NUGAS from 1996 to 1999, this was a time when the issues for Greek Australians revolved around keeping the culture alive and socialising. “NUGAS was a big part of my university days – it made me feel like I was part of something. It was more about getting people from the Greek university community together,” she says.

In Daoulas’ generation, there was a substantial mix of second and third generation Greek Australian students whose identity struggle was to hang on to their parents’ or grandparents’ culture. This was a time when Greekness was only a national focus because of football and feta. There were a handful of Greek restaurants and Greek nights, and when they would happen they were a huge success and filled to the brim with Greek Australians expressing their culture – in a smoke-filled room – in the only venue they could. To express Hellenism anywhere else was just teetering on taboo. A far cry from today were every glendi held is as multicultural as Australia itself.

“It definitely lived up to my expectations,” says Daoulas of her time in NUGAS. “I remember the conventions that you went to interstate. One of the first ones I came to was in Melbourne and it was a whole week of activities and you met people from interstate. They were definitely a hightlight.” The conventions allowed Daoulas to make life-long friends, reconnect with people of Greek background from all over Australia and even find her future husband through the people she met.

However, in the early stages of NUGAS, Bisas tells Neos Kosmos the issues were completely different. “We were more concerned with issues around identity, language, culture our parents’ influence; whereas now, university tends to be very much a means to an end. We were more into exploring our identity… and the perimeters of what we could and couldn’t do.” Bisas says the main issues affecting students then were establishing their identity and finding a Greek university family they felt comfortable in.

It was a time when students in attendance came from a migrant household, had strict parents and had issues with identity and culture. Being Greek wasn’t the ‘norm’ in society and trying to find a way to fit in was top on the list of concerns. Bisas points out that the female members of NUGAS had a lot of issues with being able to interact at university and felt they didn’t’ have the freedom the males had.

Fast forward to 2011, the focus has shifted once again. For university students, Australia is experiencing a different era, and a different era of Greek Australian students. The members of NUGAS are now third generation and fourth generation. Migrant Greeks or children of migrant Greeks are the minority. Even though 40 years has passed, current NUGAS president Lex Georgiou insists that they still have the same ethos from when the original members set up the organisation. That is, to be a “Greek organisation and union for the youth run by the youth with three main focuses – the cultural and traditional aspects of being Greek, whether that be the language, our culture or other traditions; the union focus of representing the students and being the voice of the students; and the social aspect so you could connect with any number of young Greeks around the country.”

But even Georgiou is the first to admit that a strong connection to the past will enable NUGAS to move forward. Because of this, she established the alumni register so NUGAS could get in touch with past members. “There was no formal record of who our alumni were, who our past presidents and committee members were. We launched that at the end of last year and we’ve gotten in touch with 200 of our alumni and our list is growing every year. “We need to understand the actions that have been done in the past. For instance, we have about ten policies ranging from the Cyprus issue to Greek language in Australia and we need to understand previous actions and things that we’ve done and things that were achieved by previous committees so we can continue. “On a personal note, I am going to be an alumni very soon and I still want to be in touch with (NUGAS), and know what is going on as it’s something I have held to my heart for so long that I would hate to lose touch with the association.”

“I am so proud that the organisation is still strong so many years later,” says Bisas. “That to me is such a great achievement because when I think back to the work it took to set the foundations to think that now it’s as strong as ever is just fantastic.”