Being a student at the University of Birmingham is being more comedic than usual. Although most universities can argue that they too have their own OMCO, their own Drinks to Go man, their own version of Fab 'N' Fresh based depravity, their own 'Overhead on Campus' but few have their own, long running sideshow like our venerable Guild of Students and its ongoing 'he said, no he said' war throughout this academic year.
I know I should take it seriously. It is serious. Whilst it was announced today that graduates are just as likely to be unemployed as GCSE school leavers, Cameron and his merry band of millionaires continue on with their dastardly plot to rob the poor student to feed the rich bankers' bonuses aided and abetted by the Big Bad Wolf of Higher Education; Birmingham's very own Vice-Chancellor Professor David Eastwood (though I may be mixing up my folk tale metaphors there). Students and young people more generally are victims over a resurgence in the 'blame da yoof' bandwagon because they assume we won't fight back unless our mummies and daddies help us. How dare we want fair access to education! How dare we want to be paid for the work we do! We're such ingrates. Its good that there are people ready to fight and be imprisoned for our rights and I feel the requisite solidarity and anger for those still facing the university's ire over their actions but I really wish they would go about it in a way that wasn't so rife for a piss take.
Take the 'Protest the Protest Ban' on campus last week that went hopelessly awry(ish). As a girl in my seminar said 'So its a protest...about not being able to protest?' There has to be some sort of philosophical name for the Dr Strangelovian 'You can't fight in here, this is a war room' logic of it all.
It started out sensibly enough with one impassioned (and remarkably brave) first year girl's well-delivered speech about being screwed and silenced like Imogen Thomas (too much? I'm paraphrasing- her summary was far more eloquent and a lot less crass than mine)was not what students signed up (and paid £3000/£9000 a year) for. Then the more seasoned members of the movement got on the mic and so the rhetoric flowed. During one speech I was waiting for it to end in a roar of 'Students of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains'. And from that point onwards, given that the sabbatical officers were already running around like headless chickens and shouting at each other, I knew it was going to descend into some form of 'Anarchy by the Clocktower'.
There was an admirable plan of a march from Mermaid Square in the Guild of Students to the Clocktower (by Aston Webb and the home of Eastwood's office)- a distance of approximately 100 feet. Of course this didn't happen (I have no idea why the Guild expected it would) and I soon found myself watching about twenty people hammering on an office window (whether or not it was Eastwood's is undetermined) shouting 'Are you worth a grand a day'. This tiny dose of hilarity was completed by a comment from a passer-by who pointed out that as Eastwood has recently taken a 10% pay rise on his existing £392,000 a year salary, he is earning considerably more than a grand a day.
Afterward it descended even further into madness as we made the next stop on our pilgrimage; outside student services where Simon Furse, 2nd year student and scapegoat for the university's frustrations with the Occupation in November, was supposed to be 'disciplined' before his hearing was postponed. Whilst listening to the banging on the windows and the shouts of 'We are Simon Furse' I couldn't help but wonder if I were to start with 'I'm Spartacus' how many would join in.*
Now the Guild is at war with itself over 'health and safety' and the battle lines are being drawn for more pointless bickering. People criticise students as lazy, apathetic and drunk but can you really blame us?
We tried to protest, we signed the petitions, we voted Liberal Democrat and we stormed the Milibank Centre to stand up for ourselves but no-one listened. So can you really blame us for giving up? The government don't give a crap about us and we may discuss them as a 'general' mass but most members of the general public don't give a crap about anyone but themselves and their children; in the eyes of the middle class keeping the riff raff out of higher education is probably seen as a good thing. So we go to FAB, we make memes complaining about Virgin Media or mocking Mark Harrop because what else are we supposed to do? The government is about to screw us before we get to university, the universities will screw us while we're there and they will get private companies to screw us for no money when we leave. Why both shouting if no-one is listening?
In Chile, Camilla Vallejo managed to bring the entire country to its knees in 2011 to get freer access to education. In Britain, Charlie Gilmour swung off a war memorial and got sent to prison. We want something to believe in and a leader to rally around but we've yet to see anything get behind. That's why we're burying our heads in memes.
On the outside we may be laughing but trust us, on the inside we're banging our heads on the table.
*An alternative title would be 'We're All Spartacus Now'
