A number of emerging occupations cropped up at university campuses last week, with student activists railing against funding cuts, supporting teachers in the face of public sector pension cuts, calling for an end to neoliberal economic policies and backing the global occupy movement. The protests have emerged in light of the government’s higher education White Paper, which would permit private providers to offer degrees.
In Bloomsbury, students from various University of London institutions began occupying a property owned by the School of Oriental and African Studies. The previously disused property at 53 Gordon Square was subsequently renamed the Bloomsbury Social Centre by occupiers and a statement was issued outlining plans for the site to be used as a community resource and a material instrument in the build-up to the N30 strike against public sector cuts. Despite the threat of arrests and reports of intimidation from security officers, occupiers have since used the space to launch the world’s first ‘Museum of Neoliberalism’ – a satirical space featuring creative ‘artefacts’ of the era, with the launch event featuring as its backing track D:Reem’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ playing on a loop. The Social Centre has also scheduled a series of events and workshops in the run-up to Wednesday’s strike.
In New Cross, the Goldsmiths University financial offices and an adjoining lecture theatre were targeted and locked down by students and staff. A subsequent statement was released pledging solidarity with the N30 strike and the global occupy movement. Goldsmiths’ activists raised concerns with privatisation in the education sector and the neoliberal economic model. A request was also made for lectures scheduled to be held in the occupied Ian Gulland lecture theatre to open with a short statement from occupiers. This request was declined by one English lecturer, who refused to teach his class at the site.
Student occupations have also sprung up outside of the capital. In Cambridge, an occupation got underway at the university’s Lady Mitchell Hall. The movement followed a protest against the government’s higher education policies during a talk on the ‘Idea of University’ by government minister David Willetts. Around 20 Cambridge protesters disrupted the minister’s speech, forcing him to abandon it. Further afield, in Birmingham, students moved in to occupy an abandoned gatehouse on the city’s university campus and made calls for guarantees that the university will remain a public and not-for-profit body.