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Students, staff and trade unions are calling for a day of action to save the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) on Monday, 13th December. Colleges and sixth-forms nationally will be holding lunchtime protests against government plans to cut EMA.

We stand in solidarity with all those protesting EMA cuts tomorrow, and we’d like to reiterate our demand that our Vice-Chancellor, Eric Thomas, write and send an open letter to the Government condemning cuts in the education budget and appealing to them not to implement these policies, and to publicly call for Vice-Chancellors across the country to unite against these cuts, any rise in tuition fees and the removal of Educational Maintenance Allowance and Aimhigher.

Its true! We’ve said it before but just to make it abundantly clear: this is a BIG SHOUT OUT to all those who’ve donated us food and other supplies :-] Your generous mutual aid and solidarity is keeping our bodies and faith in humanity alive and kicking. THANKYOU!

If you live in Bath (or don’t mind making the trip from Bristol), Bath Spa Occupation could do with some love and food too! They have a facebook page too. Think they have open access so go visit them!

Event Poster

The Senate House Occupation presents two panel discussions on The Future of Higher Education on Monday, 13th December 2010.  

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Dear Vice Chancellor Eric Thomas, Mr Pretty and relevant staff,

We would like to be among the first to respond to today’s parliamentary decisions, which, as you are by now aware, we hold to be a detrimental decision for higher education in the UK. Nevertheless, we also believe that in this changed terrain, the demands we have made stand with more relevance and urgency than ever. We write this afternoon to urge you afresh to reconsider our call for open dialogue and a democratisation of this university’s decision-making process, and to recognise the
validity of this request by agreeing to meet with those currently occupying the Senate Room.  

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If you haven’t received it yet, we sent the following email out at lunch-time today:

Dear All,

You will have received a letter from the University Registrar today concerning protest activities in and around campus and also specifically about the ongoing occupation of Senate Room of Senate House. We, the occupiers, would like to put forward a response to this, to clarify the current situation.  

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Up until this point we have been sending representatives from our group to talk with Senior Management on our behalf. Following yesterday’s talks around the access issue, we have decided to cease using the representatives method and instead invite them to come to speak with all of us.

We took this decision for a number of reasons: we felt sending representatives from the occupation to speak on our behalf was not particularly productive; our ‘negotiators’ have a very limited mandate from the group as a whole, and as such, cannot really make significant decisions on its behalf and finally we felt that using representatives tends to create hierarchies within the group and denies the group as a whole of the possibility to partake in valuable discussion.  

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Despite mass demonstrations, a landslide victory at the student union’s EGM, with a turnout that almost double quorum, and persistent email campaign plus messages of support from staff and students, the university management continue to claimed we have very little support within the wider university.

While individual messages are probably more effective, in addition to these, and in order to further demonstrate the broad support for our aims and demands, please sign this petition as soon as possible to mount pressure on the university to let you in!

For our full demands see: bristoluniresistance.org.uk/2010/12/statement-of-bristol-university-occupation/

Hi folks, our demands for open access continue…

Meanwhile, the University administration has closed ALL ACCESS to the building. We want to make clear that it is not our intention to prevent students from accessing crucial services such as the finance office or funding office. This is deliberate tactic to alienate support.

We are calling on all our supporters to meet outside Senate House today at 1.30pm to call for access to the space. It’s short notice but bring banners and placards if you can! – See you on the streets!