Staff at University of London colleges have issued the following open letter against the criminalisation of student protest
Wednesday night’s eviction of a student occupation of the University of London’s Senate House building crossed another threshold in the criminalization of protest on our campuses. Rather than responding to a set of eminently reasonable and practicable demands, which try to defend the right to education and to just working conditions in our university, senior management at the University of London have yet again decided that when faced with the option between dialogue and repression, they will turn to the latter. Chris Cobb, Chief Operating Officer and University Secretary of UoL, declared that: “This was a disgraceful and aggressive act, which placed the safety of our staff at risk. The University will always support peaceful and legitimate protest’. The mendacity of this statement is breathtaking.
‘Disgraceful and aggressive’ describes very well the behaviour of management willing to ban all protest in Senate House*, regardless of how peaceful, collude in the arrest of students, and call violent police and security guards to evict protesters before entering into any serious dialogue whatsoever.
Students and staff are being bombarded with marketing talk about ‘the student experience’ but as soon as they act as anything other than compliant consumers, their spaces are taken away and their right to political expression and assembly quashed. It seems that the people who run our universities will move heaven and earth to improve satisfaction statistics for the National Student Survey, but are perfectly at ease with police officers punching their students in the face. This situation is intolerable. We demand that the University of London Vice-Chancellor and the University of London Collegiate Council act immediately to rescind the closure of University of London Union and the prohibition of protest at Senate House, and stop calling police onto our campuses at the least sign of serious dissent. Universities should be run for students and staff, not against them. If senior management refuses to understand this, those who work and learn in our universities will have to draw the consequences and act to show that we have no confidence in those who run our institutions.
* This ban appears to have been extended to the whole of the Bloomsbury campus. A ‘cops off campus’ day of action has been called for 2pm, Wednesday December 11.
Signed by 190 workers at University of London colleges.
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Birkbeck
Maria Aristodemou
Andrew Asibong
Naomi Bain
Julia Bell
Bill Bowring
Eddie Bruce-Jones
Yasmeen Conraad
Simon Deville
Alex Dymock
Nadine El-Enany
Basak Ertur
Michelle Everson
Jennifer Fraser
Alice Gambell
Adam Gearey
Sophie Hope
La Young Jackson
Louise Lambe
Sarah Lamble
Laura Lammasniemi
Susan Lea-Gerrard
Elena Loizidou
Lee Lundstrom Rothwell
Ed Lyon
Fiona Macmillan
Tara Mulqueen
Victoria Ridler
William Rowe
Zadkiel Santospirito
Iraj Sheni-Mansouri
Anthony Shepherd
Claire Sherwood
Silke Arnold-de Simine
Hilde C. Stephansen
Clare Thomas
Luis Trinidade
Michael Wheare
James Wright
Goldsmiths
Toby Abse
Dennis Atkinson
Edwina Attlee
Les Back
Vikki Bell
Michaela Benson
Bernadette Buckley
Kirsten Campbell
Paolo Cardullo
Ele Carpenter
Justin Davin-Smith
Sophie Day
Adam Dinham
Windy Dryden
Des Freedman
Sara Farris
Joanna Figiel
Andrew Fisher
Matthew Fuller
Lisa Goldman
Michael Guggenheim
Georgia Harrison
Judy Harris
Tom Henri
Ian Hunt
Ken Jones
Anja Kanngieser
Susan Kelly
Christy Kulz
Sarah Lambert
Vik Loveday
Prunella Lunberg
David Mabb
David Margolies
Georg Menz
Liz Moor
Johnna Montgomerie
Mariam Motamedi-Fraser
Tom Mudd
Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay
Saul Newman
David Oswell
Helen Palmer
Spyros Papaioannou
Claire Reddleman
Alex Rhys-Taylor
Adrian Rifkin
Marsha Rosengarten
Evelyn Ruppert
Edgar Schmitz
Benedict Seymour
Bev Skeggs
Alberto Toscano
Sebastian Truskolaski
John Wadsworth
Gavin Weston
Josefine Wikström
Nicole Wolf
Jamie Woodcock
Su-Anne Yeo
Simon Yuill
School of Oriental and African Studies
Gilbert Achcar
Richard Alexander
Fareda Banda
Lauren Banko
Samia Bano
Hannah Bargawi
Brenna Bhandar
Chris Boyle
Maryann Bylander
Fatih Cagatay Cengiz
Martin Caiger-Smith
Dae-Oup Chang
Johnny Darlington
Zoe Davis
Yorgos Dedes
Catriona Drew
Graham Dyer
James Eastwood
Sai Englert
Sami Everett
Peter Flügel
Tobias Franz
Chris Gutkind
Eleanor Halsall
Hassan Hakimian
Vanja Hamzic
Adam Hanieh
Eleanor T. Higgs
Mike Humphrey
Salwa Ismail
Andrew David Jackson
Gunvor Jonsson
Kalliopi Karakasidou
Sarah Keenan
Laleh Khalili
Debbie King
Mark Laffey
Lars Peter Laamann
Jens Lerche
Anna Lindley
Trevor Marchand
Thomas Marois
Lutz Marten
Alessandra Mezzadri
Owen Miller
Lorenza Monaco
Najia Mukhtar
Matthew Murphy
Pablo Novak
Paul O’Connell
Yoriko Otomo
Manjeet Ramgotra
Nate Reidy
Colin Rennie
Costas Retsikas
John Robinson
Alfredo Saad-Filho
Meera Sabaratnam
Mandy Sadan
Pasquale Scaramozzino
Amrita Shodan
Subir Sinha
Nimar Sultany
Nydia A. Swaby
Owen Taylor
Joe Trapido
Anicée van Engeland
Elisa Van Waeyenberge
Yair Wallach
Lynn Welchman
Alexej Ulbricht
Other colleges of UoL (UCL, Courtauld, LSE, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
Rebecca Arnold
Leslie Bash
Julia Blanks
Liam Campling
Rowland Curtis
Sam Dolbear
Jagdish Gundara
Feyzi Ismail
Robert Knox
Katarina Lichvarova
Caroline Lloyd
Matteo Mandarini
Julie McCandless
Sheila McTighe
Oliver Mitchell
Julian Stallabrass
Joanna Vickery
Jeffery Webber
Andrew Witt
Clare Woodford
