Wes Streeting giving higher education funding a ponder

I’m beginning to grow quite fond of the NUS president Wes Streeting. Generally, I can’t abide student politicians (I can’t abide normal politicians either), but Wes strikes me as a relatively sensible bloke, with a pragmatic approach to NUS policy. I saw him speak at a Future of Higher Education debate in Sheffield and he fought his corner well, giving a few jabs to Bill Rammell MP, while generally being quite eloquent.

His recent pronouncement on lectures being outdated was bang on. I sat through dozens of pointless lectures in first year, surrounded by around 200 people in a similarly catatonic state. Quite simply, lectures are not designed for 200 people at a time. Universities need to embrace technology – particularly podcasts – to make sure increased numbers don’t decrease quality.

However, it’s Wes’s sensible approach to ‘top-up fees’ that has really made me fall in love with him. Oh, yes.

Wes has made the NUS finally drop its dogmatic, pointless opposition to any student contributions to higher education. The fact is, completely free higher education is no longer possible. It’s not going to happen. More people now go to university and fees are the only way that Britain can keep her universities half-decent. The best that the NUS can do is thus try and slow any increase in costs and stop the introduction of a market in fees – exactly what it is now doing.

This is a step in the right direction and means the NUS can once again become a relevant lobbying force for students, now that it has achievable, realistic aims. Indeed, the NUS has formulated a quite compelling and fair way to increase the universities’ income: a type of graduate tax.

The plan involves a sliding scale of tax, from 0.3 to 2.5 per cent depending on your income, and you pay it for 20 years. In some ways, this is very similar to the funding situation now, where the debt takes so long to pay off, it almost takes the form of a tax. Where the NUS plan really differs is that the money would go directly into a ‘people’s trust for higher education’, allowing the money to be pumped back into universities, unlike now where the cash floats off to be spent on tanks or duck houses. Or something.

It’s not perfect. Critics say it’s simply a rejigged version of the current system, but it’s a start and a sensible, viable option that has to be taken seriously by the government. The NUS can no longer be simply pushed aside when it comes to the fees debate. And we’ve got Wes to thank for that.

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Yes, talking about politics with some students is like keeping a sleep-deprived sloth awake. And how this image tars the rest of us. Everything, from McCain chips (with their student newspaper advert: “Students Get Back To Doing Nothing Quickly“) to this blog, gives an ironic wink to the stereotype of the dosser student.

As the Independent columnist, Mark Steel, wrote a while ago: “The youth of today – they just don’t show no disrespect“. It’s the “quasi-proverbial, and not wholly undeserved, reputation students have cultivated over the years for extreme political apathy”, according to Hicham Yezza writing in The Guardian. Even the system is against us. Yezza continues: “Many universities have now grown to see their task as that of churning out generic, malleable clones for the consumption of ever more regimental recruiters…they view the very act of students engaging with the wider reality of their world as a subversive phenomenon to be nipped in the bud before it infects the rest of the student population”.

Talking about politics with some students is like keeping a sleep-deprived sloth awake. This image tars the rest of us.

No, we don’t have the freak banner of a modern day Hendrix, or the geeks and one-eyed midgets of Dylan. “Change” happened in America and the recent Greek student protests happened in…well, Greece. And there are some apathetic dossers out there: “Do we really care?”, one student commented on a York University newspaper website article that detailed the amount of money uni‘s invest in the arms trade. “Worst front page ever. So incredibly boring” another student put. One cheerful soul typed on a ‘Campaign Against the Arms Trade York Uni’ Facebook group: “The vast majority either don’t care or support it”. It seems being a student radical is so 1992.

But positives change happens regardless of negative perceptions. In recent months, over 20 universities were occupied by student activists, demanding action over Gaza and uni arms trade investments. The occupation of Queen Mary’s, University of London, caused the university to withdraw investments in the arms trade and review it’s ethical policy. The School of Oriental and African Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London and Bangor University have also withdrawn investment from arms companies after student pressure.

Sit-ins are one off demonstrations. Nevertheless, at York University at least, there is a healthy political student community. We have a model UN, Labour Society, Liberal Democrats Society, Conservative Society, Amnesty International Society, Oxfam Society and Friends of the Earth Society. Then there is all the independent groups like Gig For Gaza and The Campaign Against The Arms Trade. There are regular film showings on everything from The End of Suburbia to The Zionist Story .

Both the university newspapers have thriving politics sections, featuring interviews with Nick Clegg, Mozzam Begg, George Galloway and more. There are countless talks, always so popular that everyone from Hilary Benn to The Prince of Jordan enjoys a full house. Oh, and as for the “System”, York’s large Politics Department and the Centre for Applied Human Rights would have something to say about it’s production of “malleable clones”.

Why must the student activist always be on the defence against the stereotypes of the student radical and the student apathetic? We don’t want either Project Mayhem OR two-for-one drink deals. So what does your average politically active student sound like?

“Do we really care? Clubbing tomorrow night instead. And, yeah I’ll be going to the talk on Gaza tomorrow, no need to cook, just re-heat some leftover pizza. Send me the link of the Amnesty group over Facebook, I’ll see if I can make the meeting. My essay isn’t due in ‘til next week, so should be fine. Don’t wear a keffiyeh tomorrow, you’ll look like a twat. Pub?”

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He maintained his buccaneer character – ‘’ahoy’s’ and all – throughout his campaign. The Cap’n secured the position – and it’s £10,000+ salary – to a great uproar of anti-Cap’n petitions and talk of no-confidence votes. So this year YUSU elections will be reported in a purely straight-faced, factual manner in an attempt to instil a sense of proper decorum amongst the candidates. The student newspaper is as dour faced as ever, with a special supplement packed with all those serious student politics facts. This is student politics damn it, not a sketch show. Serious stuff.

So what can be learned about the serious candidates from their extensive (read a poster on nearly every window on campus) serious marketing campaigning? With fliers, leaflets, posters, t-shirts, Facebook pages, billboard, sandwich boards and…plain boards, what do the serious candidates’ serious campaigns have to say?

The political paradigm that one sinks by levity and rises by gravity has been turned on its head

Paradigm seems to be all the rage this year. Rhianna Kinchin has used the Kellogg’s Special K font and trademark K to suggest a candidate that is handy with Photoshop and/or is obsessed with low fat breakfasts cereal. Whether Rhianna is edible is undisclosed. Rory Shanksis another potentially edible candidate, opting for plagiarising the packaging for Kellogg’s pop tarts. Are we to believe Rory has a warm, gooey centre of strawberry paste or that he will be popped into a giant toaster prior to every YUSU meeting? Again, this is undisclosed.

However the nutritional pie chart on his flyers tells voters he is high in policies, low in salt. Rory’s arithmetic seems as lacking as his salt content; his flyer outlines 5 policy plans but advertises “8 SOUND POLICIES”. Could the unexplained three policies be cereal/breakfast bar/Kellogg’s/strawberry based? Is a Kellogg’s collation to be formed between Rory and Rhianna? Even more worrying is the flyers declaration that Rory’s net weight is 400g – how can a man the size of a Borrower work a toaster? It is even possible for him to hold one of his own flyers? Time will tell.

George Papadofragakis (so glad this isn’t a podcast) has chosen to create a Wikipedia page to print off as his poster. Campaigning with a website know for its factual inaccuracies and heavy handed opinions (I was once told Chaos is “Your Mum!!!”) is a daring move, especially when the poster declares “The neutrality of this article is disputed” and says “citation needed” after certain facts. George’s Wikipedia page has been now deleted, so any changes made to the article will have to be made with marker pen.

Ed Durkin has decided nothing says perfect candidate for the Democracy and Services position like…erm, Monopoly. Ed’s flyer and poster campaign sees Ed’s face representing the whole of Islington, with the tactical choice of leaving the Jail tile off the board – which begs the question as to whether Mr Durkin has something to hide. Worryingly, one of his policies takes up a “Chance Card” tile; will Ed be relying on a dice and card set up to make executive decisions? Again, time will tell.

Other plagiarisms include Dave Sharp’s ingenious “Fix Up, Vote Sharp!” tagline (Dizzie will turn in his grave when he dies) and Mandi and James ‘I heart NY/MJ’ logo. These raise just as many questions as the other candidates campaigns, but one thing is obvious from the campaigns; the best candidates have learnt from the Mad Cap’n’s madcap success.

The political paradigm that one sinks by levity and rises by gravity has been turned on its head; student politics doesn’t have to be dryer than a digestive biscuit holidaying in the Sahara. Politics is too important to let politico’s bore people into disinterest. Take advantage of student’s love of pop tarts. Monopoly themed flyers is barely pushing the boat out. It’s OK to break the suit-and-tie dress code. Cry a-vast once in while. Student politics may be serious, but students sure as hell aren’t.

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1. Popped collars, a surplus of second names, and a scary Canadian: it’s Bristol University’s Union Elections!
2. The pathetic apathetics: are students getting political again?

However, turnout this year at the Union elections was reasonably good. There are probably many reasons for this – being bombarded with emails from the Union is one, and the complete overhaul of the sabbatical structure another. For the first time, students were able to vote on posts as bizarre and non-descript as ‘Vice-President: Welfare’ and ‘Vice-President: Community’.

The Presidency was won by the favourite, Owen Peachey, having spent a year as head of societies at the university. With a slogan as predictable as ‘Isn’t life Peachey’ and few if any policies, the man seems to have all the relevant mediocre character traits to make a Union President.

Elsewhere, James Ashton-Bell was elected as VP: Community.

Check the popped collar and smirk at the end – no wonder he was popular with the electorate. Just weeks earlier, Ashton-Bell came in for deserved criticism in the Epigram, the university newspaper, in his position as Chair of the AGM. Ashton-Bell repeatedly chose ‘unsuitable’ speakers to present the opposition to motions he wanted passed. Amongst the most ludicrous examples was his decision to choose well-known ‘character’ Aaron Hugh Ellis to speak on an ‘against’ platform, only for Ellis to promptly vote for the ‘pro’ platform. (Numerous students walked out in protest, and the end result was that the quorum was not reached and the whole day was rendered pointless.)

Ellis is most noted for his short-lived ‘Union Policy Forum’ pressure group, his ‘New Establishment’ newspaper which never saw the light of day, his insistence on challenging Epigram Comment writers to ‘public debates’ over issues he disagrees on, and finally, for claiming on his Facebook page that ‘every time I look into the mirror, I find it hard to believe I’m not Foreign Secretary’. The unfortunate consequence of Bristol students’ apathy is the fact that the likes of James Ashton-Bell and Aaron Hugh Ellis (three names are not yet mandatory for union ‘figures’, but I’m sure they’ll find some way to pass the motion) are able to form alliances and gain ‘power’ through 2% of the electorate voting for them.

Elsewhere, the election had everything you expect from a student election:

A slightly scary Canadian girl:

Two girls running for the LGBT position with a manifesto consisting solely of acronyms:

And a small Welsh boy who didn’t seem to have much of a clue what was going on:

There was also the usual high proportion of young Labour Party activists amongst those elected, all promising to ‘put pressure’ upon the people they aspire to be working for in a year.

The outcome? Little will change. No-one will use the union, the university will continue to delay plans to change the location of the union (first proposed in 1991) and basic services such as a bus to Stoke Bishop halls – two and a half miles from the uni – won’t be provided. What are we paying them for, again?

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Exhibit A: Edinburgh University

Through an occupation and a rather snazzy blog, Edinburgh’s occupiers managed to do the unthinkable. They made a change that will affect you, me, Palestinians and Israelis. Yes, people, they did it: they managed to get Eden Spring mineral water banned.

Students will no longer sup from the cup of ideological perversity, and can instead refresh themselves in the well of ethical purity. This breakthrough, however, was slightly undermined by the fact that the University was banning bottled water anyway. Oops.

Here’s the quote:

“With specific regard to the use of bottled Eden Springs water, the University acknowledges that there are strongly held concerns about Eden Springs, and that were it not for the fact that it is preparing to cease using bottled water, it would have been necessary to review the purchase of water from Eden Springs.”

I suppose if you campaign to ban things that are already getting banned, you’re going to be successful. So well done there. The Occupation also won the right to, err, exercise a right they already had, and go through official channels to argue for a more ethical investment policy. Radical!

The only discernible achievement of the Edinburgh Occupation is the possible establishment of 5 scholarships for Gazan students. This is a genuinely good thing, but before Occupation advocates get carried away, they have to ask themselves: could this have been achieved without an occupation? The answer, I think, is yes. Edinburgh had done similar schemes with other humanitarian crises. Thus, was the occupation necessary? No.

Exhibit B: Cardiff University

On the face of it, it was Cardiff’s occupation that most successful. They persuaded the University to divest from BAE and General Electric (partly). That’s good. But their aim was a bit different:

“Cardiff University to divest all shares, direct or indirect, from arms manufacturers and aerospace companies.”

They may have divested shares, but the University still has a large stake in the arms industry. £150,000 worth of contracts with QinetiQ in the engineering department. It’s not okay to invest in bombs, but it’s obviously okay to make them.

The entire list offered by Sheffield Uni Occupiers is full of rather dubious successes, and plenty of vague promises from various universities, who will ‘consider’ or ‘review’ the aims of the Occupiers.

I would love it if the Occupation succeeded in some of their aims (the scholarships, for example) but I’m willing to bet that the University of Sheffield will not cave to the main demands of the occupiers. Any takers for a cheeky fiver?

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Sprinting after a bandwagon that is now quite far in the distance, they are protesting Israeli actions in Gaza and the University’s inadequate response to them. Quite what Gaza has to do with Sheffield is beyond me. I, for one, would rather go to a university that didn’t make cheap, ideological soundbites at all.

But I digress.

While I support many of the occupation’s aims, I’m not too keen on their methods. There’s something wonderfully futile about occupations. They can end only in one of two ways: 1) It fails and people get bored and leave. 2) It fails and people get chucked out by that ubiquitous fellow ‘the man’.

Along the way, sit-ins tend to piss off the bystanders affected and make them associate the protester’s aims with their personal inconvenience, which is not a good link. They are not effective, they are merely annoying. Occupations don’t work. Israel needs to realise this, and so does this group.

Perhaps an example is required.

In Paris ’68, students staged sit-ins throughout the Sorbonne’s campus and triggered similar protests in universities across Europe. But things were a little different back then.

It was not a case of a couple of hundred students, sitting down until the police told them to get lost. Rather, it was a few thousand rushing into the street, hurling paving slabs at the police and setting fire to cars.

Not only this, but vast swathes of the French workforce also went on strike to show solidarity with the student body (but mainly because they were French, the weather was nice, and they fancied a day or so off).

It was bedlam. Society was in a state of flux. Revolution really was in the air. And what changed? Nothing. Zip. Nada. The right-wing Charles De Gaulle (certainly not one of history’s progressives) was re-elected the same year with a considerable majority.

France went back to work (until the next strike) and the ‘revolutionary’ students went on to become a mixture of doctors, lawyers and, in the case of their leader, a Green MEP.

The protests did achieve very minor gains for students. University administrations make some concessions, but these were basic at best. Prior to the protests, for example, male and female students were just about banned from visiting each other’s dormitories. This rule was subsequently abolished

Basically, after 1968 universities in France became a bit less authoritarian and stuffy.

So, what was the result of weeks of strikes, riots and sit-ins? The students had earned the right to stay the night at their partners’, and gowns were no longer worn at graduations.

Thus, will this occupation make a difference? No, it will not. The reason this upsets me is that I want them to succeed in their overall aims. I want a free Palestine and would love my university to have links with – and be engaged in charity work in – the region. But this is not the way to do it.

Protest by all means. Be loud, seek attention and get your cause heard – just don’t do it by actively pissing people off.

Oh, and also, PR Rule No. 1: if you’re going be an admin in a Facebook group about an issue where the debate is often clouded by accusations of terrorism, don’t have your profile pic as a bloke in a balaclava, holding a machine gun. Just sayin’, like…

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Had it not been for Israel’s attack on Gaza in December the talk probably would not have been so popular. In the fevered atmosphere, Norman Finkelstein – a polemicist and ardent critic of Israel – was a major draw. Finkelstein did not disappoint. His contempt for Israel manifested itself in a calmly spoken, but passionately felt condemnation of Israeli actions in the West Bank.

He called Israel a ‘Satanic State’ and asked the audience to remember the ‘incinerated’ children of Gaza, ‘since Israel has made their whole business out of provoking passions from the Nazi holocaust’. The people clapped. He was even given a standing ovation.

But it dawned on me as I was walking out, surrounded by people nodding in righteous anger: what had changed? Hundreds of people had come together and merely had their prejudices confirmed. Those who disagreed with Israeli policy still disagreed, while the few supporters of Israel present shrugged their shoulders at another anti-Israel evangelical. Put simply, the polemical nature of Finkelstein’s arguments rendered it useless.

Finkelstein had not helped his cause because his argument did not allow moderates with unformed opinions to be taken in. The overly emotive rhetoric left little room for any thoughtful analysis of the situation. Calling Israel a ‘Satanic State’ will cause some to nod in approval and others to anger, but it leaves the rest cold. Finkelstein simply preached to the choir, convincing no one other than the already convinced.

With an issue already as heated as the Israel-Palestine conflict, polemics are simply unnecessary. A rant will never convince, it will merely reinforce. A lesson that George Monbiot – an upcoming speaker during U of A’s international week – would do well to learn.

Monbiot, an outspoken environmentalist, does little to help his cause simply due to his penchant for ridiculous, over the top statements that can be dismissed out of hand. In 1999, Monbiot wrote that ‘flying across the Atlantic is as unacceptable, in terms of its impact on human well-being, as child abuse’. Rather than engaging frequent flyers in a debate over the impact of their actions, he compares them to paedophiles.

Statements such as these do nothing to win over sceptics. Even more damagingly they cause those who may agree with Monbiot’s sentiments – that tran-Atlantic flight is unjustifiably damaging to the environment – to actively disengage with the environmentalist movement as a whole, simply because loudmouths such as Monbiot are its most vocal exponents.

The same goes for Finkelstein. Israel is not a ‘Satanic State’, and saying so was simply a Reagenesque platitude designed to pander to an anti-Israeli audience. Israel needs to be criticised for many of its actions in the recent conflict, but criticism must be thoughtful, rather than emotive.

Men like George Monbiot and Norman Finkelstein should be a credit to their respective movements, but instead they are a liability. They drag the debate to the fringes of the extreme and in doing so leave behind the majority of public opinion. Whereas they could use their intelligence and charisma to engage, they use it to exclude and alienate those less radical than themselves. Some might say that, without men like these, their respective causes might not be heard. These men might be heard, but they are not listened to.

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