Staff Up For Redundancy Win Teaching Awards

Three english tutors up for redundancy have successfully won teaching
awards, as has a member of life sciences. This goes some way towards proving that the loss of these teachers would be detrimental for the academic environment at Sussex. These awards were submitted by students who deemed the teaching skills of these lecturers to be invaluable to their degree and experience at Sussex University.

Solidarity with KCL strike

Cross-posted from Education Activist Network website

Lecturers at King’s College London have voted to take strike action this Tuesday – in a ballot that broke the record set at Sussex two weeks ago, which in turn had broken the record set last month in Leeds.

There is a report from the KCL dispute on the Guardian website. It ends by asking readers “If jobs must go, how should it be done? Education.letters@guardian.co.uk“ – but recent battles at Leeds and Kent put us in a good position to respond: No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!

Now that King’s is in the eye of the storm, solidarity from across the sector is crucial. Nearly 1000 staff and students came together to march on London this Saturday against education cuts, and now we need to throw that same unity behind the KCL dispute. Use the attached collection sheet to get donations in your college or workplace, and send photos of yourself holding up the placard to educationactivist@googlemail.com

Click here to download placard

Click here to download collection sheet

Also – Biosciences redundancies stopped by united student-staff campaign in University of Kent

Brief report of Council Friday

Most of the members of University Council are external to the
university. They are chief executives, politicians, businesspeople.
Given this composition some people might not be especially surprised
that Council saw few problems with management’s proposals.

Council authorised 107 redundancies (down from the 115 originally
proposed). This means the redundancies are a step closer but it is
important to note that management were also instructed by Council to
continue negotiating with the trade unions with a view to avoiding as
many of these redundancies as possible. Of course, management have
been claiming to do this for the last three months and only a handful
of posts have been saved, so it will depend on the pressure staff and
students put on management through campaigning next term whether more jobs are actually saved.

The Redundancy Committee is due to meet in the week beginning June 7.

USSU letter to University Council

Dear Council Member,

We write to you to express USSU’s strong concerns regarding the direct impact these proposals will have on international and disabled students. USSU does not believe the equality impact assessments for these proposals are adequate, and as such, the University may be failing in its legal equality duties.

USSU has two main concerns regarding the assessments; there is a lack of data used to support the assessments and the consultation with members’ equality groups has been woefully inadequate.

1. There is a lack of data included to support the assessments:

- There has not been enough evidence considered and included in the assessments in order to make a judgement about the impact these proposals will have.
- These significant gaps in data have not been attempted to be filled.
- None of the assessments have included a detailed action plan of what will be done to ensure no groups are adversely affected; therefore it is unclear how to substantiate that there will be no impact.
- The assessments fail to include a plan to monitor the outcome of the proposals and how to potentially mitigate any negative impacts.

2. There has been a significant lack of consultation with members of equality target groups:

- No real consultation with student members of the equality target groups has taken place yet and the assessments indicate that there are no plans for this to change.
- The assessments will be subject to consultation with the University’s Equality and Diversity Forum. This consultation has not taken place prior to the formation of the proposals and will not take place until after their acceptance. Therefore the University has not satisfactorily consulted with students on this matter. The University’s E&D Forum has only one student member and who is male, white and able-bodied; therefore USSU cannot see how consulting with this one student after the acceptance of the proposals is acceptable consultation.
- The lack of proper consultation with members of target groups prior to the adoption of these proposals means that any equality issues that could have arisen from consultation have been unable to inform the assessments and as such could create significant problems in implementing these proposals.
- In the assessments the opportunities to promote equality considered all the target groups together rather than separately. This is against best practice in the sector and USSU believes that by considering all the target groups together the University has failed to use this opportunity to promote equality.

To use the example of Unisex to illustrate USSU’s concerns:
Unisex has not been asked to produce any information on the number of students they see each year prior to the proposal to cease the service was formulated. In the assessment for Unisex there is no data offered to illustrate the current service and therefore predict how the removal of this service will impact on students.

USSU believes the closure of Unisex would have a direct and detrimental impact on female, disabled and international students:
- Disability: HIV is covered by the DDA so the closure of UNISEX does have a negative impact on HIV positive students and staff who use the service or may use it in the future.
- Race: Black Africans are disproportionately affected by HIV so students from African countries who seek support because of their HIV status or who have HIV prevention needs will be negatively affected by the closure of UNISEX. While the University is aiming to increase international student numbers this is of particular concern.
- Gender: Female students will no longer have access to free pregnancy testing on campus unless they are registered with the health centre and this would require making an appointment, so female students fearing unintended pregnancy and the implications it presents will be negatively affected by the closure of UNISEX.

However none of these concerns have been addressed in the assessment.

A subgroup of the E&D Forum has undertaken training with a specialist provider on Equality Impact Assessments. Our Welfare Officer is a member of this subgroup which has viewed all the assessments. As such we have some extremely serious concerns that these assessments are not satisfactory and the acceptance of these proposals based on these assessments could directly impact on members of equality groups.

We would also highlight the overwhelming opposition from the student body to these proposals; last week saw one of the largest ever meetings of the Students’ Union, called with two days notice, which passed an almost unanimous motion of no confidence in VCEG. This term has also seen strike action by UCU which was strongly supported by students and some of the largest sustained protests in the history of Sussex.

USSU therefore urges you to reconsider accepting these proposals in light of these serious concerns which could potentially result in University failing to meet its legal equality duties and the strong opposition from the campus community.

Yours sincerely

Ciaran Whitehead
Josh Jones
Tom Wills
Michael Holder
Anna Cornish
Scott Sheridan

University of Sussex Students’ Union

At the expense of US! VCEG lavish spending.

Following are two cross-posted articles detailing management expenses:

SCHCOOP! – NO CUTBACKS FOR SUSSEX FAT CATS
(reposted from Schnews)

As Sussex students take their resistance to funding cuts to the heart of their university’s governing elite (see SchNEWS 712), details of the lifestyles of those making the cuts are trickling out. The £100,000+ salaries of 14 Sussex managers isn’t enough with expense accounts regularly dipped into to make up the shortfall.

Claims seen by students include pro vice chancellor for education Joanne Wright spending £1,811.25 on a Times Higher Education award jolly at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane on 15th October 2008. Although dinner was included they still claimed £253.95 for refreshments. Colleague pro vice chancellor Robert Allison has matched her appetite for fine food, even wining and dining arms company bosses – in July 2008 he spent £147.50 at Drakes Hotel’s Gingerman restaurant with Rolls Royce representatives. Since the start of the current round of spending cuts last September the gourmet has submitted £1,265.41 just in claims for restaurant meals.

Demonstrate this Friday

Court and Council are unelected bodies that are the final decision making committees for all the VCEG’s plans for the future. Please write to members of these bodies (email list below) to make your voices heard and come to the demonstration on Friday.

We are meeting at 8:30am outside Bramber House.

Facebook event

Get lobbying!

Below are membership lists for court and council with some contact details (also available on Sussex Direct). Along with senate, it is these bodies that have structural control over the nature of our university as an institution. Please email members to let them know how you feel about the items under consideration.

Committee Members – Council (meeting 9:30am Friday, agenda here)
Committee Members – Court (meeting 2:30pm Friday, agenda not up yet).

Arts D and E to be demolished for “business and management investment”

Council will be asked to approve £29.845m of capital funding for a new academic building to house the School of Business, Management and Economics and the School of Law, Politics and Sociology on Friday. Of this figure, £8m is expected to come from HEFCE funding, and the rest taken out in loans. The project has been chaired by Deputy VC Paul Layzell, mastermind behind Sussex’s Strategic Plan for change, who on Friday announced his resignation from Sussex to take up a post elsewhere.

The report to Council authored by him states:

“Given the capital sums involved in the proposed project, it was clear that the desired estate outcome could only be achieved if the project was associated with major academic growth plans. For this reason, the project has been associated with the launch of two new Schools and the planned investment in business and management. The new schools are: the School of Business, Management and Economics and the School of Law, Politics and Sociology.”

The building will comprise four storeys and a 500-seat lecture theatre, which will also act as a conference venue. It will “provide specialist facilities to support Executive Education (for the School of Business, Management and Economics) and a Moot Room (for the School of Law, Politics and Sociology)” and is intended to “create expansion space” projected growth in these areas. Lectures and departments previously housed in Arts D and E will be removed to a specially constructed “temporary decant building on the science car park”, Essex House and the Mantell building. Demolition is intended to start this summer, and completion of the New Academic Building forecast for mid 2012.

Management expect the project to be self-financing, in line with their intention to focus growth and investment in the areas of business and management, and increase international student quota, evidently at direct cost to the Arts and Humanities areas previously housed in this space. The report to council states:

“The most significant risk is failure to develop income streams to support the required loan finance. However trends show growing, additional student numbers in the relevant courses. Failure to approve funding will jeopardise international student number growth and incur increasing long-term maintenance costs for two failing buildings.”

Agenda and documents for Council this Friday

The University Council (the governing body of the University) meets this Friday at 9:30am.

Among other things to be considered, it is intended that this meeting will:

- APPROVE recommendations from Nominations Committee for the appointment of the Chair of Council (Simon Fanshawe).

- DECIDE that it is desirable that there should be a reduction in the academic staff as defined in paragraph 3 of Statute XXI

- APPROVE the proposal to effect redundancies in the non-academic and non-academic related areas

- AUTHORISE VCEG to continue with trade union representatives and staff members to consider whether there are additional measures, beyond those already discussed in consultation, to reduce the number of redundancies and mitigate their impact. VCEG shall report to Council on any such measures which VCEG considers appropriate and desirable.

- APPOINT a Redundancy Committee to select and recommend the requisite members of academic staff.

- AUTHORISE the Deputy Vice-Chancellor to approve on behalf of Council any variations in the selection criteria which may result from ongoing consultation with relevant trade union representatives.

APPROVE a recommendation from the Childcare Review Board.

- APPROVE release of £29.845m of capital funding for the new academic building project – “This capital project approval requests confirmation of funding for the the erection of a temporary, decant building, demolition of Art D and E and the construction of a new academic building to house the School of Business, Management and Economics and the School of Law, Politics and Sociology. “

Here are some of the documents that Council will be considering (can be found on Sussex Direct here):

Nottingham Uni occupied Sussex House!

Our thanks to the students of Nottingham Uni who sent us this video.