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.
As you probably already know, we have occupied the Senate Room of Senate House. We have done this to protest against, and to open a space of dialogue and critical thinking around, the government-proposed education cuts and changes to the University fee structure. We have occupied this space in a spirit of solidarity with other student occupations and in recognition of the burning need for a new form of participatory democracy within our University and universities in general.
Such student occupations have been happening across the country in the past few weeks and they have produced results through engaging with university and political leaders, e.g. Vice-Chancellors at UCL, UWE and Edinburgh, to name but a few, have been in productive dialogue with the occupiers. Here, however, despite unequivocal support by our Students’ Union and despite the majority of our demands being levelled at the Vice-Chancellor, we have yet to hear from him. Instead, a selected few of us have been given the chance to meet with the University Registrar twice and, after two such meetings, we feel that this mode of engagement has failed. Our understandings of dialogue differ; we have staged an occupation not to simply hold an open forum, but to demand a rethink of current University policy on the matters of education cuts and tuition fees. The negotiations have broken down because University management see the open forum as an end, whereas we see it as an important beginning to the process of rethinking the University. We invited University Management to meet with our entire group today, but they have refused to deal with us in a format other than their own (of sending three ‘representatives’ of the group to each meeting). This format, in addition to their blocking access to our occupation, goes against the principles of participatory democracy as it excludes many of the student voices we feel need to be heard on this matter.
We apologise to staff for University Management’s decision to unnecessarily restrict access to Senate House and we look forward to welcoming you to this space for discussion and for a cup of tea. We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to a series of lectures and workshops we are planning for this Friday in Senate Room; please feel free to suggest presentation topics (email contact: [email protected]).
We would also like to thank all those members of staff and students from across the Faculties who have contacted University Management expressing support for us and brought food. If you and/or your Department would like to send a similar message to the Vice Chancellor to demand open access, you can phone the Vice Chancellor’s office: (0117) 928 7499 or email him via his [email protected] to demand open access. Please cc our registrar Derek Pretty, [email protected] and ourselves,[email protected]. Also please consider signing the petition.
Best wishes,
The Senate House Occupiers
