Student Occupation at Goldsmiths University [Please Disseminate Widely]
From dr_ghost's post here where you'll find on-site photos and videos.
Yesterday afternoon over fifty Goldsmiths students occupied the senior management offices in Deptford Town Hall, New Cross.
The action was spurred by the Senior Management’s refusal to publicly take a stand against the government’s ideologically driven fee rises and regressive education cuts. [Read the Student Union Press Release.]
For those of you abroad who might not know about the situation in the UK, this article from the BBC gives an overview of the proposed cuts being made to the public sector, cuts which the Office for Budgetary Responsibility warns will put half a million people out of work. That comes combined with a wholesale slashing of university teaching budgets, particularly in the arts and humanities, and a simultaneous tripling of fees for home/EU students.
As Peter Selby said in a lecture at King's College the other day, along with their degrees, students in the UK are getting an education which they didn't bargain for: they are learning how to be debtors.
These proposed tuition hikes assure that the debts they incur will be, for the vast majority, debts that they must carry for life.
Selby said something else as well, which I find even more disturbing: interviews and surveys done of university students at the beginning and end of their degrees show a striking difference in attitudes towards debt. For those in their first year, debt was something they were overwhelmingly committed to avoiding. By their third year, they had become resigned to the notion that dept was simply an inescapable part of life.
The (endlessly depressing, I think) conclusion Selby drew: if you want to change someone's opinion (at least about how they understand their relationship to money and debt), force them first to change their behavior, and they will then alter their own opinions to align with what they have been forced to accept in their actions.
He may be right that the tactic works, but it is no less totalitarian for that. And it demonstrates exactly the reason why we must fight now, why we must refuse to be forced to behave in ways that go against our ideals and our beliefs.
This is the time to resist and refuse! This is the moment to stand up and fight against the new hegemony which the Tory-led government wants to impose! And for all those in the UK, whether you are students or not, this is why you should come to the national Fund Our Future demo on November 10:
Please send emails and messages of solidarity to the Goldsmiths' student activists at
co901af [AT] gold [DOT] ac [DOT] uk
ETA:
Yesterday afternoon over fifty Goldsmiths students occupied the senior management offices in Deptford Town Hall, New Cross.
The action was spurred by the Senior Management’s refusal to publicly take a stand against the government’s ideologically driven fee rises and regressive education cuts. [Read the Student Union Press Release.]
For those of you abroad who might not know about the situation in the UK, this article from the BBC gives an overview of the proposed cuts being made to the public sector, cuts which the Office for Budgetary Responsibility warns will put half a million people out of work. That comes combined with a wholesale slashing of university teaching budgets, particularly in the arts and humanities, and a simultaneous tripling of fees for home/EU students.
As Peter Selby said in a lecture at King's College the other day, along with their degrees, students in the UK are getting an education which they didn't bargain for: they are learning how to be debtors.
These proposed tuition hikes assure that the debts they incur will be, for the vast majority, debts that they must carry for life.
Selby said something else as well, which I find even more disturbing: interviews and surveys done of university students at the beginning and end of their degrees show a striking difference in attitudes towards debt. For those in their first year, debt was something they were overwhelmingly committed to avoiding. By their third year, they had become resigned to the notion that dept was simply an inescapable part of life.
The (endlessly depressing, I think) conclusion Selby drew: if you want to change someone's opinion (at least about how they understand their relationship to money and debt), force them first to change their behavior, and they will then alter their own opinions to align with what they have been forced to accept in their actions.
He may be right that the tactic works, but it is no less totalitarian for that. And it demonstrates exactly the reason why we must fight now, why we must refuse to be forced to behave in ways that go against our ideals and our beliefs.
This is the time to resist and refuse! This is the moment to stand up and fight against the new hegemony which the Tory-led government wants to impose! And for all those in the UK, whether you are students or not, this is why you should come to the national Fund Our Future demo on November 10:
Please send emails and messages of solidarity to the Goldsmiths' student activists at
co901af [AT] gold [DOT] ac [DOT] uk
ETA:
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