Last updated: 13/05/08
Reclaim the Uni

Students in Manchester made their voices heard last month when a protest over standards brought rush hour traffic to a stand-still.

On Tuesday April 22 over 200 students from newly-formed pressure group Reclaim the Uni marched around the University of Manchester campus, breaking through several lines of police before holding a sit-in in the university’s Arthur Lewis building.

Speaking to The National Student Daniel Lee from Reclaim the Uni explained why the students were protesting, “The protest was undertaken to highlight the many interlinked problems we have at the University of Manchester, due to the increasing commercialisation of education by the management of the University. People took part for many different reasons, but common amongst them were concerns over contact hour cuts, resource shortages, especially in IT and library services, staff cuts (famously lecturers Terry Eagleton and Sheila Rowbotham, but especially administrative and other non-academic staff), the increasing arms length approach to education (increasing online learning at the expense of one on one teaching) and the lack of accountability of the administration to students in it’s spending or decisions. This all ties into what is seen as a business approach to education, and the campaign also seeks to address the increasing push for higher top up fees, and wishes to see an end to tuition fees.”

The protest, the largest on the campus for years, is thought to be the culmination of students growing sense of frustration about standards at the university.

Suzanna Bret a second year Social Anthropology student said, “”I think the University’s preoccupation with research and raising money is at the expense of the quality of our education.The main issue I have personally is the cuts in contact hours, but lots of other people here today have many other varying reasons for protesting.”

“Hopefully with the turnout today the University will realise just how many people are bothered about these things,” she added.

During a three-hour occupation of the Arthur Lewis Building, seen by many students as a symbol of the university’s attitude towards its students, the protestors produced a list of demands entitled the ‘Arthur Lewis Declaration’ which were intended to be presented to university management the following day. When a small group of the campaigners went to hand the demands to the vice chancellor they were told he was ‘unavailable’.

Local police intervened to try and halt the protest and student protestors have criticised their handling of the event. Daniel Lee said, “The police complained that they weren’t properly informed of routes of the march, and they had to increase numbers for the ‘safety of the protest’, but the only dangers incurred were at the hands of the police. Quite a few people were knocked around (and a cyclist knocked off), and they tried to hem 300 or so people into a street with nowhere to go, it was ludicrous. Whilst inside the building, where they then had no right to be, they caused more disruption by seemingly consciously setting off the fire alarm on a fire door, causing much chaos. A much more level-headed approach would have been better, as they should be on side with us.”

A Facebook group for Reclaim the Uni now has over 700 members and carries the groups demands which include better communication between the vice chancellor and the student body.

In response to the protest vice chancellor Prof. Alan Gilbert, blamed government funding for a decrease in standards.
“As I have made clear over recent months, this downward trend in teaching hours has occurred over the past 20 years in almost all British universities.”

“Decades of diminishing per capita investment in undergraduate learning is having the slow, inevitable consequences for the quality of student learning that were bound to develop in a system that has gone on doing the best it can, by more or less traditional means, while class sizes burgeon and student/staff ratios deteriorate.”
Prof. Gilbert vowed to `re-personalise’ learning stating that “The university has recently undertaken a root-and-branch review of undergraduate education and is now proceeding to make quite radical changes.”

“We are determined to re-personalise the student learning experience, and provide all students with the kind of one-to-one learning that has become increasingly notable by its absence. We are committed to making optimal use of the potential of highly interactive on-line learning environments and to providing all students with world-class classrooms and laboratories,” he added.

Of the success of the protest Lee said, “This is just the first step in a long line of steps. This is, regrettably, a long term process, however the day achieved much. Firstly, it showed that there are common problems with students and staff across the university that need to be addressed. We also showed that we are a force that must be listened to. We’ve done this, and we can do it again, and do other things, until our demands are met.”

“The collectivity of many students from across the campus and different political persuasions coming together was hugely important. Whilst inside the occupied building a list of demands to the university were formulated democratically, and these are in the process of being presented to the university, specifically VC/President Alan Gilbert, with the demand of a quick response and commitments.”

Lee also encouraged other students with grievances to take this kind of direct action, “There will be other people like you who feel the same way. Find them, speak to them, plan something, and get noticed and get things sorted. Whether it’s effecting you directly or standing up for someone else, the more people that are involved in these kind of direct actions, the bigger the effect. This shows that there are many people who will join you in these things, and for ourselves, there were many that couldn’t make it, or even more that had yet to hear about it.”

by Sophie Mathers