After university security playing some pretty obvious tricks on them ("you're in contravention of health and safety", "there's a wedding scheduled to take place in the room"), Nottingham students seem to have caved in and ended their occupation of the Great Hall. Leaving the building wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But agreeing to a cosy chat with the Vice Chancellor is a total cop out.

According to their blog, "Nottingham Students Evacuate Great Hall after Successful Negotiations with University". This is a total lie. The only negotiations they've had have been with the university's security and have been successful for the security, not them. The "success" they are touting is that they have "secured a meeting with the Vice Chancellor and senior staff" on Monday at 3.30pm. This is fundamentally flawed. By agreeing to this meeting they are basically agreeing to play on the opposition's territory, in meetings where they will be forced to be spoken for by a handful of "representatives", with the self-proclaimed important people of the university who will almost certainly completely ignore all of their demands. Without an ongoing occupation they have nothing to bargain with and the university will have total power of proceedings. They will keep a careful note of all individual representatives as the ringleaders and act accordingly via the Stasi ex-Special Branch copper Gary Steven's Security department.

According to another post, "Student occupation begins unprecedented dialogue with University" which is also untrue. The students occupying a lecture theatre over the Gaza invasion were also offered dialogue with university offiicals. This was a way to defuse their anger over the eviction of the occupation by security and to make it look like the university was doing something, even though it didn't agree to anything significant. It's sad that the students seem to have fallen for this trick again.

I hope that I'm wrong and that the students have some good tricks up their sleeve, but it really looks like some leaders have sold out their fellows for the offer of a role in representational politics.