Following the completion of the investigation into me regarding my behaviour in the supposed “proxygate” scandal, I have been cleared of all charges against me.

While I was confident that there had been no fraud, I appreciate the concern many students had, and the reasons for holding an investigation in the first place (I just wish it had happened sooner). However, what happened is that something which may have looked dubious when taken out of context, was circulated en masse, sensationalised, and exaggerated with incredible speed by social media. As a result, I have had to put up with torrents of abuse from numerous students for my alleged involvement in fraud. I have been tormented by many – the prevailing attitude around here seems to be “guilty until proven innocent.”

I would like to thank those that have been supportive of me all along; you have really helped me get through what was quite a difficult time.

FYI, the reconvened General Meeting will be happening on 4th June. I hope everyone can make it. Third time lucky!

As the President said in the last Guild Council, I am under investigation for my conduct during the proxy saga, and I thought I should let you all know that I have my first investigation meeting tomorrow. This has already been made public without my permission, against regulations. However, I don’t think doing things behind closed doors is a particularly useful approach anyway. Thus, for the sake of transparency, and in accordance with Guild regulations, I am going to update students publicly on proceedings on this matter from now on

Hey all,

A few quite exciting developments to update you on:

Education for Sustainable Development – The long-awaited ESD workshop happened this Monday. The workshop was made up of academics and students from various disciplines, as well as University managers. Simon Kemp, ESD lead from the Higher Education Academy, gave a presentation outlining the case for embedding ESD into the University’s curriculum. This was then followed by a discussion among the attendees of the workshop about how they thought ESD could best be incorporated. The suggestions ranged from the creation of new modules open to all students, to more holistic approaches which meant addressing sustainability issues within existing subject areas alongside encouraging learning about sustainability and global citizenship by creating more related volunteering, experience, and career opportunities. Myself and the new VPDR are meeting with the new PVC of Education at the University to establish how we are going to go forward from this. With any luck, it looks like there is a real chance there could be some concrete plans in place before I leave office J

Women’s Self-defence – I have organised to have Women’s self-defence classes made available to students next term for free at the Guild. These classes are a crash course in street safety – which deal with both the physical and psychological elements of street harassment. They teach women how to deal with confrontation in a way that diffuses such situations, and will help prevent predatory attacks. Birmingham is a dangerous place, and particularly for women walking alone at night. These classes are particularly important at the moment, with the recent sexual attacks that have taken place in the Selly Oak and Harbourne area. There will be 20 places available on a first-come-first-serve basis: send me a message on facebook or an email if you want a place. For the long term, I am trying to get these classes put on cheaply by the Munrow – hopefully these will be in place by September this year.

UEB meeting – The Sabbatical Officer team, after a long wait, managed to have a meeting with the University Executive Board. This is the first time for several years the UEB agreed to meet with the Sabbatical Officers. Obviously we had a lot of issues to discuss! However, there is only so much you can achieve in an hour and half. But, I had submitted the first paper to the meeting, which was asking for at least 5 meetings between the Sabbs and UEB per year, and for us to start a dialogue with the appropriate PVCs about changing Guild representation within University structures to give us real negotiating influence in the future (rather than us just tokenistically consulted as some kind of “student experience” department, as we are now). With the kind help of the other Sabbs, I managed to get the UEB to agree to this. Hopefully this will be the basis for more direct Guild influence and productive dialogue in the future.

intro.

The £625million budget cuts being made by Birmingham City Council by 2017 are unprecedented, and are likely to have drastic and irreversible effects on the entire city.

Birmingham’s local council cuts are some of the most severe in the country, despite it being the most deprived city in the UK, with the highest rates of homelessness and unemployment. The cuts equate to £149 per head; double the national average of £74 per head. This is following on from huge and incredibly painful cuts already delivered – since 2010 there have been cuts of £275 million.

Students are not insulated from these cuts by any means. Here are just some of the ways these cuts are going to have a major impact upon students at this university:

Waste services

Street cleaning services are being cut by £540,000 this year. This will mean less litter clearing and dirtier streets. Moreover, the Council is cancelling its free black sacks to save £1million. This is all going to be detrimental to the hygiene and comfort of students. Moreover, “green waste” collection, once free of charge, will be an optional extra. This is going to make being environmentally responsible even more expensive and difficult than it already is.

More graduate unemployment and a harder time for the unemployed
These cuts will harm job prospects for students graduating from this university and wishing to live in Birmingham. Given the state of the economy, finding a job is increasingly difficult at the moment, and a large number of students are unemployed for a considerable period of time upon leaving university. These council cuts will exacerbate the situation. Local government is one of the largest graduate employers in the country. Graduates are taken on by the local council in all service areas and can complete professional training while working. Certain areas in particular, which rely heavily on local council funding, including youth work, social work, local NGO positions, graduate training in occupational areas, and even fast-track management schemes, will suffer especially badly. Since 2010, there has already been a 27% reduction in the number of staff hired by the council.

Council tax benefit for the unemployed reduced

Not only will finding a job in Birmingham become more difficult, but those who are unlucky enough to be left unemployed and relying on state financial support will now have to pay Council Tax out of their benefits in addition. From April 1st, social security claimants will have to pay 20% of the cost of their Council Tax. For those living in band B and C properties, this will be the equivalent of losing £5.17 a week – quite a significant blow to those already living off only £56/£71 a week (JSA for under/over 25s).

Cuts to the Youth Offending Service – Rises in Crime

The Youth Offending Service is set to be cut by £400,000 in the coming year alone. This service operates programmes which are directed towards: tackling offending behaviour before it becomes chronic; working with parents to prevent children re-offending; working with communities to aim to mitigate the conditions which encourage crime in the first place; and working with victims of crime to ensure that their needs are addressed. Moreover, intensive supervision for young people facing custody is being reduced. Selly Oak and other areas frequented by students in Birmingham are dangerous enough as it is. Cutting this service will mean more offenders, more re-offenders, and more crime on the streets!

Youth services – WP and crime
There are also cuts happening to the general Youth Service Budget, which will lead to the closing of 40 youth projects (more than 2/3). Such projects are crucial in providing opportunities for disadvantaged young people. They help young people gain knowledge, skills and experience, as well as providing activities rooted in a social education ethos. Birmingham is the youngest city in Europe, and with astoundingly high youth unemployment claimant rates (ranging from 20%, to 50% in some wards). Yet at the same time, these cuts are going to see youth workers laid off, youth centres closed, and more and more young people left without help, support, or social space. These funding cuts will on the one hand severely hinder the University’s Widening Participation agenda, as it will become more difficult for youngsters from deprived backgrounds to access university, particularly prestigious ones like the University of Birmingham. Stripping youth of their opportunities is also likely to have negative ramifications for crime levels (in addition to the cuts to the Youth Offending Service); the city over the coming years is likely to become a more dangerous place for University of Birmingham students to live in.

Students with children or younger siblings

Students with younger siblings or with children will see many of the services they rely upon dismantled or scaled back. Free school travel will be cut by £1 million. This will reduce the service to the statutory minimum, and will be a massive disadvantage particularly to poorer families which live in less accessible parts of Birmingham. In addition to this, £3 million is being cut from Children’s Centres. These offer a number of services, from nursery and day care, to advice and support for parents, to support for children with additional needs, to Ante-natal and post-natal support, to play sessions for children, to training and back-to-work activities and job clubs, and more. There are also £1 million planned cuts to Play and Youth Services over the next two years. Other children and youth related areas being cut include: Children’s Rights and Advocacy; the children’s hospital and social work team; staffing and training in the ‘Position of Trust’ child protection service; and the teenage pregnancy education and prevention service. Furthermore, children over the age of 12 may no longer be admitted to care.

Students with children or younger siblings with disabilities or mental health problems

But students with disabled children or young siblings will be particularly badly affected. The Early Years Support Service – a national programme to improve the way that services for young people (aged 0-4 years) with disabilities work together with families – will be cut by £1.3 million. Staffing levels and eligibility criteria in Children’s disability services are also being reduced. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service is being cut by £2.86 million (a one-third reduction) over the next two years, and many highly trained staff are being made redundant. Young people using this service have significant mental health difficulties and have often suffered trauma. There is also a £4.4 million cut (half of the current budget) planned for the coming year in Community and Voluntary Sector (VCS) organisations providing preventative children’s services. This will affect 5,500 children. The services which could be decommissioned include the Barnardos Amazon Project, which provides counselling and support services to young people who have been sexually abused, and the Barnardos and Stepping Stones Arch Projects, which provide important preventative and early intervention services to young people who are starting to experience mental health difficulties.

Vulnerable students

Vulnerable students will lose many of their support services. For example many women’s crisis centres are being closed down, meaning that many female students who suffer domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and rape, among other things, may be left without the support they need. In addition, the Supporting People housing scheme, which aims to help vulnerable people improve their quality of life by offering them a stable environment and allowing them to live more independently (including emotional support, counselling and advice; community alarm services and wardens; teaching skills necessary for independent living; etc.) is being cut by £1.9 million. Many students are among this cohort of vulnerable people.

How to find out more

These are just some of the ways the local council cuts are going to affect students. To get involved in resisting these massively damaging measures, or just to learn more about the cuts and their effects locally:

‘Like’ the Slaney Street page on facebook http://www.facebook.com/SlaneyStreet?fref=ts

or ‘Save Birmingham’ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Birmingham/380075378757624

Or search #savebirmingham

Special Resolution 1: Inclusion of a requirement to hold general meeting once a year

Having one General Meeting annually means that once a year all students have the right to turn up and vote on policy, whoever they are, and whether they’ve had any involvement in the Guild before or not. And their decisions will be listened to, because a General Meeting under company law is the highest format for decision-making in the whole organisation – whatever is decided overrides whatever else is decided at other times in the organisation.

Our democratic structures can be quite exclusionary for many students. If you want to vote in Guild Council, you have to be a Guild Councillor; if you want to make major decisions or coordinate large campaigns, you should probably run to be a Guild Officer; if you do manage to influence Guild Council, your motions can be overturned by an un-transparent Trustee Board made up of people you never knew existed; if you want to influence policy via a Guild committee, you have to have a good understanding of the democratic structures already; etc. etc.. Now this is not to say that we should be dismantling our structures of representative democracy – they are crucial in maintaining effective decision-making, accountability, representation, and operation.  However, having an Annual General Meeting means we can inject some direct democracy into the organisation in addition to all this. It’s a no-brainer really.

Special Resolution 2: A change to the percentage of students required to call a general meeting

(To clarify, this is to call a General Meeting in addition to those called by the Trustee Board). At the moment the number of students needed to call a General Meeting is 5% of total membership – seeing as we have ~ 28,000 students at this University, this is an incredibly high number. I was a member of the Reclaim the Guild Campaign, which collected over 1500 signatures in order to hold this General Meeting, and that took a large team of people weeks to do. Having such a high level is incredibly onerous because it means that calling a General Meeting is an incredibly difficult task – and would put people off doing so due to the large amounts of effort involved, which would certainly hinder student participation and democracy. Moreover, the length of time required to obtain such a large amount of signatures means that Emergency General Meetings would not be able to serve their primary purpose. It prevents the student body at large being able to respond quickly and effectively to emergency situations in any kind of democratic manner. The proposal therefore is that the amount of students required to call a General Meeting is lowered to 2% of membership.

Special Resolution 3: Changes to the composition of the Board of Trustees

The Trustee Board is the highest decision-making authority in the Guild (excluding General Meetings), and has the power to block, overturn, or change any policy that is made lower down in the organisation (e.g. in the democratic forums like Guild Council), as well as to make policy of its own.

At the moment we are one of the few Students Unions in the Russell Group to not have a majority of elected students on our Trustee Board. The proposal seeks to add the three Sabbatical Officers who aren’t currently trustees (God know why on earth they aren’t already) to the Board, along with creating another student Trustee. This would give students a firm majority. This is very important because there have been times in the past when many have felt that the Trustee Board has acted in ways which are not in the best interests of students; and this could foreseeably happen again should the Board remain largely controlled by non-students. While the Trustee Board’s remit is technically legal, financial, and reputational, the boundaries of these terms are blurry, and there are occasions when the Trustee Board does not act in a purely technical way, and its decisions (rightly or wrongly) affect the democratic decisions made by students. As such, it is only right that there is a student majority on the Board to communicate and represent the interests of students to others who might be a little more out of touch.

Special Resolution 4: Removal of the position of University Trustee

A senior member of the University currently sits as a Trustee on our Board. This is, again, not the norm in the Russell Group – only two other Students Unions in the group have University Trustees. This is a problem because we are supposed to be an autonomous organisation. Among other things, we exist due to the understanding that what the University does, and the decisions it makes, may not always be in the best interests of students, and we are required at times to take an oppositional stance to the University in the interests of our members. As such, it is contradictory for a senior figure in the University to be a member of our highest decision-making body. While I am levelling no criticism at any individual in particular, it is not impossible to imagine the problems that could arise from the conflict of interest inherent in this scenario.  They are in a position to influence Guild policy massively, three possible ways being: through curbing frank discussion of other Board members;  through veiled threats about “what the University will do” if the Guild did X, Y, or Z; or through simply using their position of power to unduly sway the room in an argument.

The argument often used in response is that Guild Officers sit on a number of University committees, so it is only fair if they sit on ours. However, this is not fair for several reasons. Firstly, no members of the Guild sit on the University Executive Board – the highest decision-making body, but only on lower down committees. Secondly, such an argument completely ignores the fact that the University is the more powerful partner in this relationship. It is they who deliver the education, and their decisions which have a large effect on students’ lives. They are the parent institution which we are trying to influence and mould in students’ interests, not the other way around. If an Executive Board of a company suggested to a trade union that they should have representatives on the committees of the union, they would be laughed at.

Therefore I urge you to vote in favour of the motion to remove the position of University Trustee

Special Resolution 5: Change to the procedure for electing Student Trustees

At the moment the student trustees are appointed by an appointments panel, which is a bit like a job interview process.

Firstly, I won’t go into details but there have been real problems with the lack of transparency and fairness in the way this procedure has been conducted in the past, and although these issues have been resolved, it is the secretive and back-room nature of the process which allows these problems to arise in the first place. It is not impossible to imagine new problems arising in a similar vein were the process of selection to remain out of the public eye.

Moreover, any individual trustee is appointed based on the expertise they can bring to the Board, whether it be legal, technological, financial, or whatever. Students are unlikely to be experts in any of these things. Their role is to bring the student perspective to the Board – no one is going to be as in tune with students as students themselves. In order to ensure the students on the Board understand the interests, and are representative, of the student body at large, the only effective means of selecting student trustees must be via popular vote, rather than via their CVs.

Special Resolution 6: Administrative amendments to governing documents

These are administrative changes – nothing substantive is changing here.

Voting:

The meeting is at 6pm in the Avon Room on the 28th January – and anyone can turn up. If you don’t want to turn up to the meeting, you can nominate a proxy to vote for you, and specify the ways you want to vote. To do so, fill out this form (delete the name of the Chair as default proxy and replace with whoever you want who you know is attending the meeting – you can nominate a Sabbatical Officer if you are unsure of who else to nominate), and hand it in before the 26^th of January to Student Voice or the Guild reception:

http://www.guildofstudents.com/main-menu/representation/general-meeting-gm-2013/nominate-a-proxy-voter

Veolia:

The meetings about the use of Veolia as the campus waste disposal company have continued. To remind everyone briefly – the reason this company is so controversial is due to their complicity in human rights abuses in Palestine. They are a major stakeholder in the Jerusalem Light Railway, which links East Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements, as well as several bus services which do the same thing. Moreover these services exclude Palestinians from employment, and generally from even using the services for travel – despite the fact that they go through and between Palestinian areas. They also operate the Tovlan landfill site, which dumps Israeli waste on Palestinian land. All of these things breach UN Conventions. From an ethical standpoint there is thus a basis upon which to exclude Veolia from future contracts with the University. However, there are unfortunately also substantial problems with this. Veolia is such a large multinational corporation that it can use its dominant position in the market to accumulate capital to invest in innovation of services and products (which it then patents and holds the intellectual property rights over) at the expense of other companies) that other public and private bodies cannot afford to do. Thus they have been pretty successful at squashing competition. It also means that a lot of the other environmental services companies out there in fact use waste disposal sites owned by Veolia. The University claims that Veolia is unmatched therefore in terms of what it can offer – a carbon emissions tracker, an anaerobic digestion facility for organic waste which can be used to create gas for energy, a pay-by-weight waste removal service which allows for measurement of waste produced, among other things. Firstly, then, this is a warning about the dangers of allowing companies to become too big – as then they are placed in a hugely powerful position, which they can abuse. But secondly, it raises the question of what we should do here and now – must we choose between human rights and environmental sustainability? I hope not. There are a number of other institutions, including local councils and universities, which have stopped using Veolia recently. The first step should be to find out on what basis and why they did so. Were their decisions based on ethical considerations? Or were they based on competitive tenders? If the former – what importance should be placed on the long term versus the short term? (what impacts would our failure to reduce waste have on the human rights of others, compared with what impacts our continuing support for a company complicit in human rights abuses currently have?). If it is the latter, then how have other companies proved more competitive elsewhere? Is that competitiveness transferable to the context of this university, or are there peculiarities which prevent it from being so? Depending on the answer to these questions, I think the boycott Veolia campaign at the University of Birmingham should tailor its methods accordingly. On the one hand, maybe we should continue to try and get the University to Boycott the company entirely. On the other hand, perhaps we could try and get the University to condemn Veolia publicly for its irresponsible actions, but to keep its contracts with the company? Or to do somewhere in the middle, and offer Veolia an ultimatum based upon a certain timeline for getting rid of its involvement with illegal activities? Or maybe something else? I do not know the answer to these questions, and I don’t think anyone does until we have done more research. Just thought I would highlight some potential issues we may face.

Israel/Palestine protests:

On a related note… Some Guild Officers, including myself, attended various Palestinian solidarity demonstrations recently, in response to the brutal military attacks by Israel on the impoverished and captive people of the Gaza strip. Our presence on those demonstrations – born out of a belief in universal human rights and an opposition to violence waged on innocent people – has since resulted in us being accused of a whole host of things. Apparently we have no right to express a political opinion, we are incapable of representing students, we don’t deserve our roles as Officers, we are totally corrupt, and we are anti-Semites! I think it is a sad state of affairs when people have to resort to making such ludicrous claims to try and discredit people they disagree with. Disagreement should be aired in a fair and democratic way – if someone has issue with an opinion of someone else, then they should challenge that opinion through logical and rational arguments based upon available evidence. They should not resort to slander in order to try to delegitimise the other side of a debate. Guild Officers are political roles, and have the democratic right, ability and freedom to express political opinions. It is impossible for a person to agree with everyone, when there are people that have diametrically opposed views. But this does not bear any relation on our ability to represent and act on the behalf of students. Disagreeing with someone on an issue does not mean that I hate that person, or that I think that person’s race or identity is any less valid and special than another person’s. There is a huge difference between condemning the policies of a Government of a nation, and condemning the people who live in and make up that nation. The conflation of the two is very dangerous, and historically has been a tool used by authoritarian regimes to delegitimise and crush opposition and to construct a culture of unquestioning loyalty to the reigning power. This is something any democratic-minded person should condemn.

Relevant updates:

I have been working on developing the Officer Disciplinary policy so that it includes the many new changes that have taken place through Guild Council. We now have (pending Trustee Board approval on Monday) a working ODP which respects the autonomy of Liberation groups, which details in full the functions of the Complaints and Disputes Committee, which allows for a distinction to be made between political and personal misconduct of Officers and which outlines an appropriate process for each, and which allows Guild Council to apply two different types of standard sanction on Officers – Reprimands and Censures – according to the severity of their misbehaviour.

The Democracy and Engagement Committee has finally been approved by University Council, along with all our other Bye-Laws. As such, in the last Guild Council, students were elected to the committee, and the committee can now function properly and officially. And it only took a measly 6 months after Guild Council passing it. Wahay! (sarcasm intended).

The Vice Chancellor’s Review of School of Social Policy took place recently, on which I was the token Guild member. I was, as is usual practice at this University, excluded from all discussions of anything related to staffing or research (yet staffing affects teaching provision of students, and we also represent research students).

This is a bit of a random blog post, but I was inspired to write it after stumbling across my notes from some University legal training I attended recently.

 Universities are strange legal entities. On the one hand they are charities, whose objects are the advancement of education. On the other hand, they are also private companies (the University of Birmingham is a company created by Royal Charter). As they exercise some public functions they are also quasi public bodies.

 Different Universities have different proportions of public and private funding. Oxford and Cambridge for instance are almost entirely privately funded, while the majority of Russell Group Universities are around 50% publicly and 50% privately funded institutions.

 The problems with universities in this country stem from the fact that they are not fully public institutions.

 Their public side means they have some checks on them – e.g. they are regulated and partially funded by HEFCE; they are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, meaning that they have to divulge certain information if it is requested by members of the public, etc.

 While they are funded somewhat by the Government, their status as companies means that they are expected to make their own money.

 Universities make money through a number of means, some of the primary ways being winning research funding, patenting inventions and reaping royalties from intellectual property rights, and through engaging in profitable contracts with the private sector (whether this be through advertising, joint research projects/tailoring research to the needs of the big players within the market) establishing alumni fundraising networks.

 The more money a university makes, the more they can (hypothetically) put towards education. But this means that money becomes prioritised above most or all other considerations, leading to several problems:

 Universities have incentives (and the ability) to try and avoid as many laws as possible which apply to public institutions – as regulations which stipulate minimum standards of fairness tend to mean extra expense (expense which is obviously totally justified), e.g. European procurement law.

 This brings me on to the issue of procurement. This is an interesting case where money saving incentives can lead to backwards practices. If Universities buy goods from sustainable sources, where the workers producing the goods are treated fairly and paid well all along the supply chain, then those goods are inevitably more expensive than those produced under sweat shop conditions using materials extracted as cheaply as possible using unsustainable means. Universities have an incentive in order to remain “competitive” to always ignore external social costs and go for the latter option. (However there has been a massive victory in this regard recently at the University of Birmingham. After three years of campaigning by People and Planet (particularly Matthew Franklin), and some hard work by Alice Swift (EEO), the University have, just a couple of weeks ago, signed up to the Workers’ Rights Consortium http://officerblogs.com/eeo/university-of-birmingham-takes-action-against-sweatshops/).

 Money can become a goal in and of itself, at the expense of education. This appears to have happened with a significant number of institutions, even some of those in the Russell group (cough, cough – naming no names). Typical symptoms include cutting funding to courses which are not as profitable as others. This ignores the value of education as a social good, and treats it as solely an instrument for wealth generation. It will generally create an trend towards teaching as many students (now treated as customers) with as few tutors and lecturers as possible. Staff-ratios will get a lot worse now that a greater proportion of the money comes from fees. Arts and Humanities subjects, due to all the money for these coming from fees, will likely see the worst ratios. Profitable research will also be prioritised above socially useful research – the two may coincide, but they often don’t.

 There is currently a debate in Governmental circles going on as to whether the money coming in from tuition fees counts as private or public money (because in the long term it is private individuals paying for it, but in the short term that money is being loaned out from the Government purse). This decision could have massive implications for where your tuition fees go.

 Anyway, on a related note, make sure you come to the NUS demo (21st November) to fight for a free, fair and publicly funded education system and oppose the marketization of Universities. Tickets are only £5 and come with a free t-shirt – you can buy them here: http://www.guildtickets.co.uk/NUSDemo

Hey everyone. Apologies for the late post. The officer blogs site has been screwed up for several weeks now.

Here is what was supposed to be my last blog post in mid-October, with some little additions.

A few successes:

• A grand start to the new year of alternative events: the Ceilidh (‘kaylee’) – English and Gaelic folk music mixed with energetic traditional dancing. This was a roaring success. It was a great opportunity to meet new people, try something a little different, and work up a sweat. We also sold out and many people came up to me afterwards asking when the next one was, and so I have decided to make it a regular bi-termly event (happening near the beginning and end of every term). The next one is on November 23rd in the Underground at the Guild. Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/150309688443898/#!/events/132609606887689/?fref=ts.
• The Subway on campus is going through a trial period of selling Halal sandwhiches. A little contribution towards a more diverse range of food for a diverse campus.
• The “Greening the Curriculum” project has come a long way. It has now morphed into embedding ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) into the curriculum – which has a wider definition, including the promotion of environmental protection, cultural diversity, social and economic justice, and respect for human rights. I have also managed to obtain endorsement for the idea from two powerful University committees – the Sustainability Task Group and the Learning and Teaching Committee for the College of Social Sciences – which will hopefully help with the general enthusiasm for the drive towards ESD at the central University level. I have also been granted the opportunity to deliver a workshop/seminar to the Curriculum Review Steering Group about ESD, which will hopefully be the place where a formal commitment to ESD is taken on.
• The first cross-union meeting took place, and it seems to have broken down some barriers of mistrust between the different parties. It looks hopeful that the Guild, Unison and UCU on campus will be able to work together in productive ways in future.

• The rally 17th October to save the University’s IAA department from closing went really well, with about 200 students attending.  It is important to protect student choice, particularly when people are now paying such vast sums in tuition fees. Course cuts are unnecessary when the University is making such a massive £27million surplus every year.
• The EEO, myself, and a member of People and Planet Society (Matt Franklin) had a meeting with the University’s head of procurement, and managed to gain his agreement to recommend to the Sustainability Task Group that the University sign up to the Workers’ Rights Consortium – a monitoring body that ensures that workers in developing countries producing garments for use in Western universities aren’t exploited. This is after almost two years of unsuccessful attempts by students to get the University to do so. It is not a definite yes yet, but we will know the conclusion about the University’s decision for sure after my meeting with the Sustainability Task Group on November 1st.
• The Guild put on a coach down to the TUC demo on 20th October – “A Future that Works”. It was a great way for interested students to gain a better understanding of the issues, to get to know each other, and was powerful statement to the Government that they should make put the interests of workers and students as their top priority.

What’s coming up?

On 21^st November, the NUS demo is coming up. It’s vital that as many people go down to this as possible, to stop the Government pushing through lots of detrimental measures through the back door. Education should not be privatised or made more exclusive – Universities should be about widening access to education for all. Education is a right and not a privilege. But I’m sure you’ll here more about this demo in the near future.

Hey everyone,

Fresher’s week and all that – so welcome newbies. Hope you enjoy your first weeks without throwing up too much.

Just a few things to be aware of this term:

The NUS demonstration November 21^st:

This demo is protesting a number of things. After the Browne review which raised fees to £9000 a year and meant huge funding cuts to universities, people think the fight is over – but it isn’t. Not only is this demo showing the Government that we don’t accept these changes, and is asking for their reversal, but it is highlighting a number of other things. It aims to resist the introduction of the market and private providers into HE (which, without sufficient quality assurance, cut corners left, right and centre), the funding cuts to Universities, the charging of high interest rates on tuition fee loans, the charging of fees to mature students wanting to study in FE, the lifting of caps on masters’ fees, the draconian attacks on international students (explained below), etc..

It aims fundamentally to defend the ethos of education as a public good, rather than something which should be run like a business for private benefit. Education is a right, and should not be a privilege!

The TUC demonstration October 20^th:

The TUC demonstration is a protest by trade unions against some of the radical privatisation and austerity measures being put in place by the current Government. The Guild is supporting this demo in order to raise student concerns within the broader anti-austerity movement, so that education is defended from the dismantlement that the sector is going through right now (find out more on the VPE’s blog post: http://officerblogs.com/vpea/five-reasons-to-get-involved-in-an-active-student-movement-this-year/.) In my personal opinion as well, it is crucial that we don’t view the student movement as separate from the wider movement resisting the radical undemocratic and free-market-fanatic plans of the current Government. If we are ever going to succeed in maintaining and improving a fair, accessible, and high-quality Higher Education system, we need to join with others resisting the Government’s single-minded onslaught on the public sector.

International students in this country are being royally shafted:

The Government’s pledge to get immigration numbers down “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” has had many negative ramifications. The number of total migrants coming into this country per year is approximately 150,000. However, included in this figure are international students, who stay for a few years and then leave again – yet these students make up somewhere between 120,000 to 130,000 of the total figure. That means that in order to get immigration down to their desired number, the Government will have to crack down on international students. They have already started introducing draconian monitoring measures, e.g. if international students miss ten “sessions” (lectures or seminars) then their position in University will be reviewed and they will potentially be deported. And I’m sure we’ve all heard about the latest shocking, and borderline racist, move about the UKBAs decision with regard to London Met students. Here is a petition by the University’s International Students Association:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?pli=1&formkey=dG03LXdlekF1dU5odGNGeGI4eUVzWEE6MQ#gid=0

“University of Birmingham, support international students!

The International Students Association are running a campaign for the fair treatment of international students. We believe that international students are valuable members of student, local and national communities, and should be treated as such.

We call upon the University of Birmingham Vice Chancellor David Eastwood for the following:

-Less intrusive census points. The UKBA requires universities to keep track of international students, this should not mean that the University treats international students badly or makes them feel unwelcome. It should be clear that the University is on our side against these disproportionate measures and should launch a consultation, with the guild and international students, on how to best mitigate their effects.

-To speak out publicly against the decision of the UKBA on London Metropolitan University and the inclusion of international students in migration figures.

- A recognition of the huge extra stress of studying in the UK as an international student and a commitment to investing in extra student support to alleviate this.”

Anyway,

Sorry for this rushed post. Got lots of fresher’s week floating to do.

Ciao