Stretches of construction hoardings were covered with wallpaper for students to write about their views on the privatisation of education. A stall was manned throughout the day, distributing info on the privatisation process. Swathes of campus were covered with chalked messages for free education. Students roamed the walkways with megaphones, urging students to think less, and fostering a cult of personality of the managerial class. Special mention was set aside for the student union’s “democracy cow.” This bizarre life-size fibre glass cow used up the union’s democracy budget for the year (£800), and is the perhaps the most apt metaphor for the student union’s understanding of democracy. Finally, pictures of the ConLabDem leader’s faces were taped to the floor so people could wipe their shoes on them.


 https://www.facebook.com/lusucow?sk=wall

In addition to this, members of #occupy Lancaster also showed up in solidarity, bringing with them a cash machine giving out money from “the bank of occupy” backed by the promise of reclaiming bankers bonuses.

This was not the mass walkout that the NUS called for. Frankly, the political sentiment for such an action does not presently exist at Lancaster. So instead a series of radical actions that drew attention to the privatisation of education and re-imagined the use of campus were chosen. Personally I believe that this has been far more effective than the typical “activist clique” angrily chanting, megaphone wielding lefties dragging a sound system round campus.
However, with the lights going off in schools across Europe to cut costs, and no let-up in the neo-liberal onslaught on British universities, I get the feeling that sooner or later the mass student mobilisations will return