Meetings this week: Update

Engineering & Design Meeting Announced:
Chichester 1 Lecture Theatre at 1.00pm on Thursday 3rd December,
meeting with Prof Bernard Weiss, Head of School to discuss cuts to E&D.
An emergency meeting will be held before to organise a response to the cuts: Time and date yet to be confirmed but will update asap!

Join the Facebook Group to keep updated: Save Engineering & Design at Sussex University

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=178556095741&ref=nf#/group.php?gid=187521190949&ref=ts

Resisting management repression

The recent move by Sussex management to attempt to prevent the Stop the Cut’s campaign from having organisational meetings by booking out all large rooms on campus for ‘equipment checks’ may seem shockingly devious, but should not come as a surprise. Sussex management have a history of repression of dissent by means of underhanded techniques and dirty tactics. The manner in which they respond to protest on campus reveals their agenda as a corporate entity to protect their brand image and their business over and above any such concerns as academic integrity or the welfare of employees or students.

A recent complaint of some students who have felt themselves to be alienated from the student’s union is that they do not hear of USSU events such as campaigns, meetings, the AGM etc. ‘Why not advertise USSU business directly related to students by means of mass emails, or by covering campus in posters, or by posting them on Study Direct?’ were some very reasonable suggestions. The answer is that the university does all that it can to hinder USSU’s promotion of itself to its students: they prevent USSU from making use of these crucial channels of communication so that they can use them to propagandise at students for themselves. If you click on the USSU logo on Study Direct, it will take you to a ‘Latest Student News’ story in which the university claimed that “the Union has said it will now work with the University to address its own finances and come up with sustainable plans for a secure future” (the meeting in which USSU was to present a new budget incorporating the proposed cuts and at which Stop the Cuts held a protest outside) and that USSU had brought the financial catastrophe on itself (downplaying the proposed cuts) by having “so far not put its own house in order”. USSU published a counter statement to set the story straight, saying that the statement “appears to be designed to disarm any resistance on the part of students to cuts to the union’s funding.” But it does not have the benefits of the same means of cross-campus distribution, and thus most students will only have read the management’s version.

The targeting of individual students where possible is a favourite tactic. At the Camp Against Cuts last summer, the management sent security to check the student ID of those who happened to be there at the time, throwing a couple of non-students off campus who had come to show support. A few days later, those individuals received letters demanding that they dismantle the camp or personally face disciplinary measures (expulsion was explicitly mentioned), before the camp was finally physically evicted by external security. Social networking sites are closely monitored to provide the university with information on/ammunition against individual students and staff members. Stories have surfaced of facebook quotes being brought up in job interviews or in disciplinary hearings as evidence against students’ character. A very funny blog post recently published on the university-managed social networking site ‘Splash’ detailing a dream that the author had had about the VC after a short period of time. When questioned where it had gone, it turned out that the staff member had been forced to remove it with threats to his job.

We know that the Sussex management confers with that of other universities to share tactics of repression. The vice-chancellors hold meetings together. A leaked document (found on the desk of a VC’s occupied office) reveals that external companies were employed to give advice on how to deal with student occupations, including advice on “potentially criminal conduct involved in student protest”. A PR consultancy was recently hired (with our tuition fees!) to improve the university’s brand image in the face of all this protest. The university management has its own corporate agenda and is not going to be persuaded of the virtues of universities as places of academic and other freedoms – there are reasons why they were put there in the first place. Any concessions that they might make will have been considered strategic. Our campaign should run in the same way. Tactics used at other universities should be seen as instructive – we need to co-ordinate, and share information with one another – as should past repressionary tactics that we have seen employed. Co-ordination is key, as is active solidarity with all staff and students facing threats to their jobs, degrees, or their welfare. This blog is one means by which staff and students can participate in the campaign and resist the cuts being proposed without fear of reprisals from above – send any anonymous contributions to sussexstopthecuts@gmail.com.

All the Details So Far

Planned Cuts
· 115 planned staff redundancies total
· Losses in the schools of Life Sciences, Informatics, English, Engineering & Design, Informatics, the Centre for Continuing Education, and History
· Redundancies or reduced staffing levels in the Library, IT Services, lab technicians, portering and catering.
· Closure of Unisex, the sexual health and drug/alcohol awareness service
· Redundancy for 11 out of 16 of the university’s student advisers
· Closure of the subsidised childcare service
· Closure of InQbate, a pioneering high-tech learning space
· A 5% cut in Union funding
· Further cuts planned in early 2010

Management’s official stance is that the cuts are necessary for ‘sustainability.’ They talk of improving student experience while simultaneously slashing vital services that students need. They want to bring in more international students (who pay considerably more in tuition) but make no mention of providing them with adequate support. University management have not consulted with students or staff about these cuts, nor have they adequately researched alternatives to massive staff redundancies and student service cuts.

After USSU President Tom Wills sent a mass email to Sussex students opposing the cuts, the university responded by booking up every single lecture hall until Christmas for ‘equipment checks.’ The Students’ Union released a statement about the ‘equipment checks,’ encouraging students to contact the Registrar & Secretary.

There are Facebook groups for the departments facing closure, and the Stop the Cuts campaign encourages students to mobilise on a departmental and school level in addition to joining the national opposition to proposed cuts at universities all over the UK. It is not just Sussex that is in danger, but the entire higher education system. The government, having spent millions bailing out failing businesses, is pressuring university administrations to adhere to its plan to slash arts and humanities and to follow a more business-centred model, which will have disastrous effects on education in the UK.

Further information:
UCU (University and College Union) Sussex
Sussex Stop the Cuts Facebook Group
Email or subscribe to the announcements list at
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sussex-stopthecuts
Follow us on Twitter
Times Higher Education – Sussex’s future: fewer staff, more students

Meetings this week

English students join together! If we respond to this departmentally, we can have a much greater impact! Quick meeting, Monday 1PM, Library square to organise how we want to respond to the recently announced cuts. See you there?

Informatics Stop Informatics Cuts are meeting in Chichester 1 foyer outside the labs from 11am onwards on Monday to discuss what we can do prior to the meeting at 1pm with the head of school in Richmond AS03.

Modern Languages meeting Tuesday at 11.30 in Arundel 401 with Tom Healy, to discuss what’s happening/what could happen with modern languages.

UCU emergency general meeting on Tuesday 1st December at 1pm, PEVENSEY 1A7

Demonstration Thursday(emergency senate meeting), 9:30am – 10:30am, assemble library square. Organisational meeting afterwards.

The Save Modern Languages campaign will be having its first meeting at 1pm this Friday in Falmer Common Room.

General public meeting with speakers for all those affected by the proposed cuts and redundancies on Friday, 6pm (assemble in Library Square at 6pm and move to the nearest available space).

Please post any additional meeting times/dates in the comments below

Management threaten crucial childcare service

University bosses are cutting subsidy to campus childcare services. This will mean either the closure of the on-campus crèche, or privatisation which will make childcare prohibitively expensive for many staff student parents who currently use the facilities. A campaign group have been formed to oppose the move, and they released the following provisional statement:

Save Sussex University Crèche and Nursery

Sussex University Crèche and Nursery offer an outstanding service to parents on campus, be they students or staff. University management is currently threatening these facilities with closure – either in their present form (by being privately outsourced) or outright (by being shut down altogether). At present, childcare provision is subsidised by the University, but management have said that they are no longer prepared to continue the current level of subsidy.

Yet, decent childcare on campus enables student parents to pursue their degrees and allows staff to return to work relatively early, thereby saving the University from having to find maternity replacements. The provision of good childcare is a major consideration for prospective or current parents, when choosing to accept a job or a place at a University, and plays a major role in the retention of staff. Without it, the University’s stated commitments both to gender equality and to attracting the best faculty and students risk being undermined.

Parents are committed to working with staff to find effective cost-cutting measures to keep the Crèche and Nursery open and to demonstrate to the University management the value of these childcare facilities to the University’s future success. We are now collecting the evidence to demonstrate why and how the Crèche and Nursery should have a future.

We will shortly be launching an online survey and will invite current and prospective users and other interested individuals to fill it in. In the meantime, please send an email with any of your comments to savesussexnursery@yahoo.co.uk.

There is going to be a public meeting for all those affected by the proposed cuts and redundancies on Friday, 6pm. The location is yet to be announced, university has announced ‘equipment checks’ for all large rooms on campus.

One International Perspective

When I was researching Sussex as a possibility for my postgraduate work, what I read about was its active, left-leaning student body and that it had been voted ‘best place to be.’ When I got here, what I found was a university incapable of administrating competently, a university badly disorganised, one which had failed to communicate with me on some very basic levels. I was vaguely aware that the uni had undergone some restructuring. What I didn’t know was that the administration planned to slash jobs and services two months after I arrived.

When I then read that the university wants to bring in more international students, I was outraged. I already feel like nothing more than a number at Sussex, someone who only matters until they pay their tuition. Sussex wants more international students because we pay £9975 yearly, as opposed to £4300 for UK/EU students. And at a time when there is already a shortage of places for UK students, it’s crass and unfair to try to lure in more students from overseas. The greed and malice of this administration is appalling. They want to take advantage of the ignorance of students from overseas, provide us with a rosy picture of the ‘best place to be,’ take our money, and then treat us like we don’t matter.

International postgraduates have it even worse. Sussex treats its postgraduates like we don’t exist. They send us information designed for freshers, which half the time doesn’t arrive anyway. The email that Michael Farthing sent out to ‘all students’ didn’t reach any of the postgraduates I know, including me. I also didn’t get the departmental email that went around to inform students that there was a school meeting to discuss the cuts.

The fact that University management have tried to block meetings about these cuts is outrageous. They’re putting pressure on staff to toe the company line (and to Michael Farthing, Sussex is a company, not an educational institution). People are losing their jobs, and students are being deprived of valuable services, but our top managers make 6-figure salaries. It’s unconscionable. This administration is just asking for occupation. PR firms and departmental spin aren’t going to help them if students and staff bring this university to a standstill.

I will not be your source of revenue. I will not be a walking pound-sign. I will not be ignored, and I certainly will not be silenced.

Students’ union meeting banned by university management

University of Sussex Students’ Union has published the following statement on their website:

Yesterday the students’ union booked a university lecture theatre for a meeting, which was to be an open meeting for students and staff to discuss university management’s proposals for over a hundred staff redundancies. The students’ union has today received an email from the University informing us that the booking has been moved to a seminar room due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The students’ union was expecting a turnout of many hundreds of students, so it will not be possible for the meeting to take place in a seminar room.

The University’s online lecture theatre timetable shows that all remaining evening slots in the main lecture theatres from now until the end of term have been booked out for ‘equipment checks’.

The Students’ Union finds the timing of these ‘equipment checks’ very unfortunate, given that many students and staff are anxious to have meetings to discuss university management’s redundancy proposals, which were announced two days ago.

Up until now it was possible for any member of University staff or officer of the Students’ Union to go online and book a lecture theatre where there is a gap in the teaching timetable.

Given that university management have said that they will be “seeking views on the plans from across the University community,” the Students’ Union calls on the University to urgently reconsider the timing of its ‘equipment checks’ so that these discussions may take place.

Please ask the University to reconsider the timing of the ‘equipment checks’ by sending a polite message to John Duffy, the Registrar & Secretary, at registrar@sussex.ac.uk, and CC your emails to president@ussu.sussex.ac.uk.

The Stop the Cuts campaign understands that the University’s room booking department made these spurious room bookings on the direct instructions of University management.

This is an outrageous and brazen move to prevent students and staff from meeting and organising opposition to university management’s recently announced proposals to make 115 redundancies. It is a cowardly attempt to use bureaucratic means to stifle political dissent.

We call on university management to immediately remove the bookings for the fictitious ‘equipment checks’ from the timetable and publish an apology affirming the University’s commitment to academic freedom and freedom of assembly.

The Stop the Cuts campaign will be holding an open meeting for all students and staff to discuss the cuts on Friday 4th December at 6pm, the time of the originally scheduled Students’ Union meeting. We will assemble in Library Square at 6pm and move to the nearest available space.

Statement from USSU

University management are proposing to make 115 staff redundancies, in addition to other cuts across the university, summarised as follows:

· Redundancies in the schools of Life Sciences, Informatics, English, Engineering & Design, Informatics, the Centre for Continuing Education, and History.
· Redundancies or reduced staffing levels in the Library, IT Services, lab technicians, portering and catering.
· Cuts to the students’ union annual funding.
· Closure of Unisex, the sexual health and drug/alcohol awareness service.
· Redundancy for 11 out of 16 of the university’s student advisers.
· Closure of the subsidised childcare service.
· Closure of Inqbate, a pioneering high-tech learning space.

These short-sighted proposals will hit students hard, taking away services students rely on in times of need, closing many important courses and undermining the quality of those that remain. Access to money, welfare and academic advice will be severely restricted, and students and staff will no longer have subsidised access to childcare. It is hard to imagine cuts that would have a more devastating impact on students’ welfare and on standards of teaching and research at Sussex.

In addition the Students’ Union is threatened by a 5% cut to our annual funding from the University. Without proper financial support we will be unable to provide the level of services that students need.

University management have indicated that this is only the first round of cuts, with another major proposal to be announced in the first three months of 2010.

Informatics Meeting

Management have called a meeting for Informatics students in Richmond AS03
at 1.00pm on Monday 30 November 2009.

“The purpose of the meeting is to explain to you the plans that are
being proposed for the development of research and teaching in the
School.”

Similar meetings have taken place in Global Studies and other schools, and have proved to be a sham – nothing like real consultation. Informatics students need to ask their head of school some difficult questions, and demand real answers.

Statement from UCU Sussex

Reposted from www.sussex-ucu.org.uk

“UCU Sussex condemns the announcement of 115 redundancies across the University of Sussex. All members are invited to an Emergency General Meeting at 1pm on Tuesday 1st December in Pevensey 1A7 to discuss our response to this unprecedented attack on the hearty of our institution. We will be publishing more detailed information shortly and will be launching a campaign website in conjunction with UNITE, UNISON, and USSU.”