Student call to Give Us Our Marks

Glad to see that Nottingham students are supporting the pay claim of university staff. However, please be careful when using the term 'university administrators' as a perjorative term. It is a marker of the casualisation of much work in higher education that many people who teach students are technically employed on administrative contracts - librarians, IT staff as well as many others. Many of us are AUT members and many of us are participating in the current industrial dispute.

On Monday 5th June about 100 students gathered at the Portland Building to call for a speedy resolution to the management-lecturers dispute. We reclaimed the space of various university buildings, roads, and squares, with demands for a resolution, samba, and chanting, and attempted to hold a public forum on the issues outside the Vice-Chancellor’s office. Whilst for many this was an inspiring display of people power, I do not think I am alone in suggesting that both the message and the tactics of the protest were confused and counter-productive. The following is an attempt to identify the deficits of this mobilisation and to suggest ways of overcoming these.

The most important issue, for myself, was the poor choice of slogan under which to demonstrate. Give Us Our Marks seems to have been chosen to get as broad a spectrum of people as possible involved, but it is deeply problematic. It shows no understanding of the nature of the conflict or the best way in which to resolve it. The reason that lecturers are striking is that they are being ignored by university management. They had been promised pay increases that would have brought their pay up to a reasonable level for workers of their status in the public sector, but these promises were reneged upon. As a result lecturers have chosen to take collective action through their unions to avoid being bullied by their bosses. It is the refusal of university management to fulfil past promises that stands in the way of students graduating, not ‘irresponsible’ behaviour on the part of lecturers. Of course we want all affected students to get their marks, but by refusing to take the side of the
lecturers we effectively fuel the arguments of the bosses that what lecturers are asking for is unreasonable. This will only prolong the impasse.

There is also a problem of failing to contextualise the dispute. The issue is not, as many students appear to see it, a one-off break from the norm. Students and staff are being subjected to an ongoing infiltration of their universities by corporate styles of management, funding, and
control. These practices undermine the traditional autonomy of academic departments and student services, placing them under the yolks of corporate funding and performance-related pay. These are creating an environment in which students and staff increasingly feel distanced from those who run the university. It is this alienation in which individuals lose
control over the decisions that affect them, that makes disputes like the current dispute, or the greylisting dispute a few years ago, more likely to happen in future. We must identify the commodification of education as a central causative factor in the current dispute, which is merely the latest manifestation of a much deeper discontent.

However, it is not only the poverty of the demands and analysis of the current campaign that must be addressed. The methods chosen to act upon them must also be subject to change if we are to have any effect. Monday’s rally and march was marred by the conflict of interests of self-appointed leaders. It seemed that more time was spent courting the media, and university managers, than in showing genuine dissent. It seemed that more energy was put into getting as many people as possible into the same place, rather than thinking about what we could do once we were
there. Sitting down in the road on campus is a demonstration of what we could be capable of, but doesn’t put any pressure on the university’s management to speed up negotiations. We should be occupying their buildings not wandering off just when we’ve built up steam. I was also alarmed by the huge amount of naivety amongst certain participants about
protest tactics and the role of law enforcers. Suggestions to “inform the police” about our actions, and that the security were “on our side”, play into the hands of the people who will seek to control and diffuse our protests as soon as they become effective. We need only look as far as
the example of the George Fox 6, a group of students who were recently successfully prosecuted by Lancaster University for aggravated trespass, despite the fact that they were engaged in a protest on their own university’s grounds. Universities will jump at the chance to criminalise
our dissent.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, there was a willingness to put direct action on hold in favour of meaningless meetings with university bigwigs, which seemed designed merely to pacify and stall our chances of achieving anything. I do not think we should accept the mediation of
representatives at meetings designed to win concessions from us. Neither do I think we should put our protests on hold whilst waiting in vain for the management to change their minds out of sympathy for our cause. It is our pressure on them that has forced them to do anything at all – let’s continue with the pressure until all aggrieved parties (both
students and lecturers) are satisfied.

Indymedia supporting students and their wish to get their degrees to compete and earn cash and change nothing? Please - no wonder people think you are twats. If U R squatting in the local neighbourhood why are you sucking up to these arseholes who don't care about anything other than a wage packet and stealing other people's communities and ideas.
Or are you just like them and only give a shit about people like yourselves. Student life has destroyed places like nottingham in a more pernicious way than drugs. Anarchy for toffs seems to be the order of the day fuck off!!!