Academics: throw down the text-book and hear this call to arms

For most of the students at the University of York, war happens to other people. We encounter it in books, films, and on television. Our lives are not spent shielding from rocket attacks, fearful for the lives of our families and friends. Furthermore, we do not (yet) live in a police state, where every conversation with tutors or peers is recorded and our lives are put at risk by joining a political party.

We are privileged to be able to protest against our university and be answered with words rather than tear gas and rubber bullets, to have a say in how money in our institution is directed, and even to be here in the first place. We, the students of a freewheeling democracy, may not have much to do with war, but we were indirectly funding it.

This latest Government mistake may cost them dear

The news that York will be prevented from taking on new British students at more than current levels is disheartening after a few good months for the University’s profile. York was becoming more and more associated in my mind with success after the RAE results, rapturous reception to the opening of the Courtyard, and headway made in student-academic relations. Perhaps most disconcertingly after three years of criticising both the University and YUSU on an almost daily basis, a small but definitive sense of pride had begun to develop in some dark corner of my brain.

I had even started defending York when my friends from home reacted with shock on seeing it at the top ten universities every year. York, the hapless, underrated but eccentrically brilliant place we all attend, was… whisper it… going up in the world. This is why I am seething that a combination of bad timing, economic downturn, and financial mismanagement on both sides is preventing the full potential of the Heslington East development from being realised.

No child left behind: let’s ensure nursery care for all

As a twenty year-old undergraduate, I have few real responsibilities. Life is blissfully free of concerns beyond my degree and my attempts at holding back the tide of squalor that is always threatening to actually engulf my house. 

The concept of childcare is alien to my day-to-day plans, but for many academics, students, and staff, the scramble for a campus nursery place is one fought over many months, involving waiting lists of incredible length, and fortitude in the face of rejection. 

Certainly, when I see kids running down the pathways of campus on Sundays, especially the ones in flashy Fisher-Price cars, I can only give them credit for shrieking, laughing, chasing ducks, and appearing so overwhelmingly happy running about our much-maligned concrete wasteland. 

Few students are probably even aware that in order to secure a place for a sixth month old baby at the innocuous looking building behind the health centre, it is advisable to put down your child’s name before they are even born. The care and facilities at the campus nursery are purported to be excellent, hence an oversubscribed service that has led to three times as many applications to places available. For students and staff who are not able to plan in advance, the waiting list is not an option, so they are forced to seek nurseries farther afield.

The current options on the table to resolve this are not workable. If the nursery were to limit its services, as has been suggested, it would become more of a crèche. Technically, it could squeeze in more children, but health and safety guidelines mean that this loss in quality of care may not be allowed on the current site anyway.

Dr Judith Buchanan, a senior lecturer in the English department, placed both of her children in the care of the nursery from the age of six months until they were old enough for school. She told me that “It offered a happy and stimulating environment for them both as babies and pre-schoolers, and we are grateful for the warmth and fun and well-managed structure it gave them in those crucial years”. However, she had applied for places for her children very early on in both pregnancies. Dr Buchanan was able to apply early enough to secure a place, and her children were therefore able to enjoy the benefits of a dedicated learning environment close at hand. 

Others are not so lucky, and have to rely on care (though-part subsidised) at other nurseries which may be expensive and further from campus. There is some comfort for parents in knowing that their very young children are just a short walk away, and the value of this security should not be underestimated. Moreover, the campus nursery is a place to meet parents in a similar situation, creating an atmosphere of community.

The solution to the problem of the current demand for childcare is very simple. Half a billion pounds is being spent on Heslington East. We must ensure that the small amount already set aside from this gigantic sum into a nursery results in proper childcare facilities, especially if the student and academic populations rise in line with the number of new departments and courses opening, thereby exacerbating an already overstretched facility.

Some unassigned corner of the vast plot of land could host finger painting sessions and Fisher Price car races for all the smallest members of the community of the University of York. The larger nursery, or even a joint venture with Heslington pre-primary schools would be better equipped to deal with the needs of children without sacrificing the parental comfort of close proximity to them. An added financial bonus would be that the university would not need to hand out childcare subsidies to various other nurseries nearby. 

So let the children roam free in the idyll of Heslington East. We must allow them all the resources they need to start school with as much exuberance as they are rolling around on the concrete slabs of Heslington West.

Do as they say, not as they do

The University’s continued investment in the arms trade tells us more than we might think at first glance. We have the obvious lack of moral fibre in their financial dealings, certainly. We have the contempt for student protests and activism, for the constant attacks in our newspapers, and in leader columns just like this one. But even with this University’s record for hypocrisy, none of the aforementioned is particularly surprising, rather it is business as usual.

What is new, and acutely worse than what we have come to expect, is not the usual silent contempt for student opinion. What is happening now is that when it comes to giving money to companies whose business is making killing more efficient, the University has actually bettered (or further debased) itself. Investment in BAE Systems and Rolls Royce has actually increased by £350,000 over two years. We wonder if the academics in the new Centre for Applied Human Rights know that their pensions will be paid for in part by the oppression and conflict they attempt to curb every day of their working lives?

During this time period, universities like UCL, Durham, and SOAS have all ceased to keep shareholdings that their students consider to lack the humanitarian or environmental credentials needed to legitimise such a move. York, by contrast, is now 6th nationally for propping up the arms trade, even as our academics in the humanities strive to make us more ethically aware and more culturally sensitive. The long-fabled “ethical investment proposal” is still yet to appear in writing, let alone be considered by students.

Alternative companies could be profitable to the university without the need to forget social responsibility. There can be no excuse for financing the killing and maiming of our fellow men and women.

It’s time to put power politics aside

When Anne-Marie Canning took up the YUSU Presidency last year, she spoke emphatically about her desire to improve relations between the Students’ Union and the University.

She has since ensured that relations between the SU office and Heslington Hall have remained relatively amicable, and when Tom Scott took over, most assumed that this closeness would remain for the sakeof the student body.

Langwith Bar was designated as entirely student financed and run, and no one from the Vice-Chancellor’s office objected when Matt Burton, Services and Finance Officer, applied for a 24 hour license for late night events, or so he thought.

The subsequent explosion has shown exactly why students and University executives will never understand each other: because they never listen to what the other side is saying. Relations are now at an historic low between YUSU and the University. One can only imagine the look of fright on the poor clerk’s face as Pro-Vice-Chancelllor Jane Grenville ran into the York City Council building on Friday, just two minutes before the final deadline for licence applications. Eyes bulging, veins protruding from her neck, a seething Grenville slapped down her objection, cursing Burton, screaming wildly for justice.

The issue at hand is about two different agendas rubbing up very uncomfortably against each other. No one likes chafing. The University wants to keep costs down, and passing on Langwith bar’s overheads to YUSU must have seemed like an excellent idea at the time. They could forget about the running of Langwith JCR, and carry on planning conferences with a little less interruption. The acquisition of Langwith was a coup for YUSU too, allowing them to offer prospective students a temporary Student Union before Heslington East provided the real thing.

The current situation shows the Union has rather more power to wield than they always remember. There will undoubtedly be red faces and much wringing of academic hands this week, as the University work out how exactly Burton made them look like incompetent amateurs in front of the couple of thousand new students who may not have been aware of this unfortunate fact until just now.

The outcome to this debacle can be predicted with a fair amount of confidence. It is expected that YUSU will see the loss of a 24 hour licence as preferable to the loss of Langwith as a student bar altogether. I envisage that Burton and Scott will give in to her ultimatum, the insomniac alcoholics among us will remain thirsty, and tensions will cool slightly, from boil to simmer, in the metaphorical pot of University-student relations.

Do not be fooled by a period of calm, however. There are and will always be officers who take more initiative than expected, people in power who aren’t paying attention to their inboxes, and journalists hanging around to ask all the awkward questions.

But then again , the minutes of YUSU meetings never really say anything worth reading, do they?

Not just emotive rhetoric: a sign of progressive society

This week MPs voted on a series of alternative limits on abortion at 12,16, 20 and 22 weeks – all of which were rejected. These proposed amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill also sanctio­ned the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.

The topic of abortion is always described as “emotive”, but in this case it seems that the majority of MPs voted for scientific reasons and fact rather than with any subjective emotional or religious instincts. Similarly, our own student union is broadly pro-choice, and the stem cell research which currently goes on at the University would suggest that the academic arm of this institution is in agreement with the use of human cells for the progression of scientific understanding into disease.

Students are traditionally seen as diehard liberals, but the presence of activists from both sides of the debate on campus, prove that a core of committed individuals will always keep the issues around abortion or embryo research in discussion. Our student population, however, voted overwhelmingly for the Right to Choose Fund to remain when its existence was threatened by a motion proposed last summer.

Anne-Marie Canning, YUSU President, said that the retention of the limit was “great”. She added that “people aren’t pro-abortion, they’re pro-choice, and for those students who get to 24 weeks and need an abortion there’s a reason for that.” The Women’s Officers, Sophie Harrison and Eilidh McIntosh, declared themselves to be “pleased” with the result of the bill.
Here on campus, motions to improve access to abortion, and the Right to Choose Fund are examples of the environment of tolerance and progress that characterises the student population, as well as UK politics.

The advantages of this are twofold. Firstly, we are at the forefront of technology, and the benefits our generation can hope to gain from this research are happening right here. Research at the YCR Cancer Research Unit is into human prostate carcinoma, which currently ranks second amongst male tumours in incidence and mortality. Research into Parkinson’s disease and spinal muscular atrophy are expected to be the main beneficiaries of the use of human-animal embryos, and should the researchers succeed, we will be the ones who will have the option of the right treatment to combat these diseases.

The £10,000 budget of the Right to Choose Fund is split into £1,000 for the procurement of an abortion should a woman decide that she needs an abortion as soon as possible, with the rest devoted to childcare for student parents. Canning says that “a couple of cases a year” arise in which the woman involved needs an abortion, and says that the childcare portion of the Fund is “very well used”.

These examples are characterized by their practical usage in improving the everyday lives of students and the general public alike. Despite what the right wing press and some religious traditionalists purport to be the truth, abortions are not taken lightly, and the tiny number (1.9%) that occur between 20-24 weeks are often, according to the charity Marie Stopes International, the women in the most desperate circumstances. These women include those on methadone as part of drug rehabilitation programmes, (methadone stops periods) whose lives are in danger if the foetus continues to develop, or victims of rape and abuse whose emotional state prevents them from seeking help earlier in the pregnancy.

The bill served as a reminder of the genuinely progressive country in which we live. We will benefit from its practical implications, and for that we should be glad.

Video made the political star

Jennifer O’Mahony looks at the students who have harnessed the potential of YouTube as a means of campaigning

We all know YouTube as the site where you can find videos of pandas sneezing, or of idiotic teenagers filming themselves falling off skateboard ramps.

However, a new generation of students and activists are harnessing the potential of YouTube not as mindless entertainment but as an immediate and effective medium for campaigning and raising awareness on student issues and societies.

Derwent College Chair Oliver Lester posted a 7 minute video on YouTube that showed the appalling lack of safety, hygiene and living space available in the kitchens of E and F blocks of his college.

It highlighted the impossibility for 16 students to cook on a Baby Belling microwave/hob together with the danger of overcrowded kitchens. The video featured appliances balanced precariously on shelves and underlined the expense the students involved incurred in constantly eating out, given that cooking was a practical nightmare. After posting the video and promoting it on Facebook, it became the 3rd highest rated link for people searching for “Derwent College” on Google.

Lester decided to take action after living in Derwent himself and seeing none of the facilities change, despite promises to the contrary, when he became a second year. He says he was attracted to YouTube after traditional methods failed to make a difference “writing letters just takes too long to achieve anything, whereas making a film means that it will be viewed by far more people.

“I made half an hour of film in the block, edited it and it was on YouTube by midnight. Within 3 or 4 days the persistent mould had been deep cleaned and there will be a complete renovation of cooking facilities over the summer.”

York students have not used YouTube solely to campaign on specific issues, but have also promoted their societies or personal candidacies in elections on the site.

James Townsend, President of the New Generation Society (NGS), uses YouTube as a way of putting across what his society stands for. He says: “YouTube puts politics into the mainstream. Young people might not choose to watch an hour long news bulletin, but they might stumble across something on YouTube which really inspires them. The mix between people falling over and musings on the future of the health service makes it all more accessible.” The NGS posts videos of speaker events to maximise exposure. When guests like Sir Crispin Tickell, the famous climatologist, come to speak to the society they are filmed with YouTube and Facebook in mind.

In recent YUSU and college chair elections, students have posted videos of themselves explaining their policies on camera as a way of interacting quickly and directly with a large group of potential voters. When Laura Payne campaigned for YUSU President, she posted a video on YouTube to highlight the issues she wanted to raise, and to encourage undecided students to pick her for the top post with a personal message.

Similarly, Joe Clarke, who went on to become Goodricke College Chair, posted a video of himself touring the college and proclaiming that if won the position then events would no longer take place in the “school disco” venue of Goodricke Hall.

What is clear is that this kind of campaign can be extremely effective in getting traditionally reluctant figures to listen to the concerns of students. Lester says: “I got emails from the University management at the top level, and they were angrier that they weren’t aware of the problems, other than with my video.”

The democratic nature of YouTube means that anyone with a camera and an internet connection can use it to campaign or promote, and it is this grassroots emphasis that makes the video-sharing site such an asset to activism. In contrast to most direct forms of action it actually yields results.

Jeff Jarvis, the MediaGuardian columnist, summarises the power of YouTube with the typical language of an activist and firebrand: “We are watching the seeds of a revolution sprout right before our very eyes”.

Jennifer O’Mahony interviews Sir Crispin Tickell

Sir Crispin Tickell (STC) interviewed by Jennifer O’Mahony (JO)

JO: Why do you think that the British government and governments around the world are so bad at realising the scale of climate change and doing something about it?

STC: In the last few years a great transition has taken place, and once you start to get these transitions they can become very quick, we’ve seen in the last 18 months, or maybe 2 years, that a great transition has taken place on the climate change issue. Now, other issues don’t come across but perhaps they will in the future. Once the scientific community begins to take a certain position, gradually it will permeate debate and then finally it ends up on the desks of politicians, and they have to make some very difficult decisions. So you see it’s not just miserable politicians who can’t do what they need to, the fact is they are all genuine points of difficulty. The problem is with current thinking, and when I deliver the lecture this evening I hope to address the background thinking involved.

JO: So you don’t think people like George Bush are actively impeding efforts to make a difference when it comes to climate change?

STC: I don’t think he understands what’s going on. You have to allow him honourable motives, however half-witted he may appear.

JO: In your speech summary you claim that we need to ‘abandon consumerism’. This is quite a big claim to make in a society that is now run by that ideology.

STC: Well it rather depends on what you mean by ‘consumerism’. When you place human consumption and human production ahead of everything such as is happening with the ‘credit crunch’ where you assume that society will crash if you stop consuming, then you need to think that we need a different kind of society. For that reason there is the issue of economists talking about the importance of growth continuing, but what they mean is putting production before welfare, whereas the first thing I would do is say that you’re going to have it the other way round, and have human welfare before just producing things. At the moment our society is geared towards just producing things rather than human welfare, and that is one of the problems that has arisen. It is also the reason why there is such a widening gap between rich and poor in our society.

JO: Do you think that’s the fault of globalisation?

STC: It’s not the fault, globalisation is one of the symptoms of what’s going on at the moment, plus globalisation is a product of technology, of being able to communicate in a way which wasn’t possible for a previous generation. It also means that when something happens in one part of the world it can affect other parts rather more quickly than would otherwise be the case, and people feel very uneasy about that, but it isn’t linked directly to consumerism.

JO: Thinking more about solutions, what about concepts like Biosynthesis, where bacteria can be trained to “mop up” carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere. Is this the kind of solution we should be looking at?

STC: Well, that’s one of the many solutions we are looking at, and are being canvassed at the moment, mopping up carbon dioxide, that’s one of the things, also dropping iron filings in the ocean, one of a whole lot of options for drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. I think nearly all of them are very untested and at the very beginning. Indeed, I am one of the judges of the Richard Branson Prize, did you know he has created a prize of $25 million for someone who can find a commercially viable way of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? They’d had almost 4000 entries around a year ago, there is an enormous amount of possibility there. Of course the easiest way of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to put less into it, as you know it does eventually dissolve, even if it does take a long time to do so. But you need something to control and reduce the amount in the atmosphere.

JO: For our readership on a more practical level, people hear phrases like ‘carbon footprint’ but they don’t always know what they mean, what simple solutions can the average student integrate into their daily life?

STC: A mixture of top down solutions and bottom down solutions. Top down solutions are governments using what I call “the fiscal instruments” to tax some things and reward others, and they set an example. Bottom up solutions mean that you don’t waste, that your house is properly insulated etcetera etcetera, but the most important one is what I was talking about a moment ago, where you start thinking in different terms. You don’t regard production and consumption as the top priorities in human society, you realise that human welfare and employment and longer term balance in any society. The Chinese have a word for it. It is no something that we have in our society, which is based on rather crude notions of growth, of economic growth.

JO: Talking about China, the issue of overpopulation is particularly contentious because people don’t want to be told how many children to have, but do you feel that the Chinese policy of one child per family is something that we will need to start pushing in our own society or is that going too far?

STC: Every society has its own way of managing its social problems, the Chinese had a huge social problem in the multiplication of their numbers, in the time of Mao Tse-Tung there were around 300-400 million people, there are now 1.3 billion and rising, so they realised there was going to be a tremendous problem in relation to resources, and then as you know they have hideous problems with pollution, so they implemented the one child one family policy which is appropriate for Chinese society but is not the kind of thing that could happen here because our society works rather differently. But if you say “should we reduce our numbers?” I would say well, yes we should, and one of the things I will say in the lecture is that we should aim for a much smaller population.

When measuring fertility, I think the base figure is 2, so if you are 2.1 you are keeping the levels of the population where they now are, so if you take some parts of Africa where they are at 5.7, you can see they are going very hard in the wrong direction, and there is a high infant mortality rate and so on. In this country we are at 1.7, but our population is increasing as a result of immigration, so in our case I think people have got the message. If you go to some parts of the world in Africa where population is still increasing drastically, it has to be explained, and I think it is being explained, population levels are coming down. When I went to Mexico the first time I think it was about 5, now it’s down to about 2.3.

Different parts of the world it has come down quite drastically. Of course it goes hand in hand with the emancipation of women. Where women have control over their own bodies, they want to be people rather than baby making machines, and then everything changes. You’ve got four factors effectively, one is the role of women, where women have the same status as men population rates nearly always fall, and secondly you’ve got care in old age, if you’ve got no one surviving into old age then this isn’t necessary, and then you’ve got the preference for boys, which changes things although that will correct itself, in China soon women are going to be so highly prized because there is less of them. So there are a whole lot of factors of this sort which affect population increase.

When I go to speak this evening I shall say that it is extremely hard to see straight lines going in any direction. If you jump forward a hundred years and look back, there will probably be a much higher rate of fertility, whereas in the interim we have to cope with running a society where relatively older people survive for much longer. Having multiplied at an incredible rate since the industrial revolution we are now facing the consequences, and I think population issues are extremely important, but that hasn’t made its way back to the top of the political agenda.

People are worried about it. The Pope, the Pope doesn’t like it, he wants people to have babies all the time. Catholic priests are more moderate in their enthusiasm. Population was a big issue about 30 years ago, now it’s not, but I suspect it will come back because it has to be discussed as one of the big environmental problems of our time, it’s one animal species out of control, and the awful thing is that if we don’t control it then Mother Nature will do it for us.

Oblivious of our rights and sleepwalking into property contracts

The latest housing controversy to hit York is not, for once, about the future of Vanbrugh. Since the building of the gruesome log cabins of Donald Barron Court & Barbara Scott Court, all is cosy and perfect in the fiefdom of Matt Oliver, just in time for the upcoming conference season.

Instead, the news this week is the controversy between a landlady, and the six students who were living in her property on half rent while building work was completed. Needless to say, when the rent returned to its normal rate the project was not completed, the students felt they were being ripped off, and the landlady felt her generosity had been exploited.

I don’t want to explore the minutiae of the ongoing court proceedings, but this example is typical of the lack of awareness and communication that ensure we get a raw deal wherever we choose to lay our silly little heads. In the case outlined above, the University actually took the side of the landlady, leaving the students to defend themselves without any extra financial or legal aid. There is some confusion as to why this is the case, but the proceedings, it seems, could have been avoided entirely. If we just paid a little more attention to what we are signing up for, and had some basic understanding of our legal rights as private tenants we could avoid the messy aftermath of our own stupidity.

It is an oft-forgotten fact that because students never ask for anything in writing, they can never prove anything they have agreed with the proprietors. Furthermore, they will happily sleepwalk into contracts with the larger letting agencies, such as Sinclair Properties (not the company used in the current controversy). Sinclair students find themselves agreeing to the kind of stop-and-search which the police require a warrant for, but that the aforementioned letting agency euphemistically term an “inspection”. The University’s legal team, which offer to check over every student’s contract, has been known to unofficially warn against Sinclair. Nevertheless few students take advantage of this service, let alone are aware of Sinclair’s reputation.

Many people are so clueless that they end up paying for things they couldn’t possibly avoid causing. Witness the friend who was left with a severely defunct old vacuum cleaner. The agent acting on behalf of the landlord promptly charged all the students living in the house £50 apiece for, surprise, surprise, a thick layer of dust all over the carpets and skirting boards.

Though in addition to the exploitative nature of some owners of student property, we don’t help ourselves by being some of the most filthy creatures ever to crawl the earth. How can we expect landlords to treat us like decent human beings when we act like half-evolved primates?

Of course, the situation is certainly not alleviated by the fact that Sinclair advertise pops up on the YUSU website, despite their dubious record on student welfare. But regardless of this, we need to be far more aware of our legal rights. Perhaps the students from the latest legal case should have gone to their Academic and Welfare Officer? Hold that thought.

Cuts in funding leave York tutors very well fed

The students at York are left starving for some financial support whilst university staff feast off our tuition fees.

If you were to read the University’s Annual Financial report, an exercise that is quite an enlightening experience, as mind-numbing as it sounds, you would discover something rather amazing. If the figures alone were anything to go by, any York student would think they were attending an institution so awash with cash as to put the vulgar little nouveaux riches colleges of Oxbridge to shame.

Snippets read “there has been a 12% rise in the University’s total income over the past 12 months” and “operating cashflow was the highest it has ever been” or even “the increased consolidated income of £187 million is almost £20 million more than the previous year”. These would suggest that we walk along pathways of gold, sipping Dom Perignon from champagne fountains in Vanbrugh as we chat to each other on complimentary BlackBerries about the difficulty of employing good staff these days.

Instead, it is nigh on impossible to walk around campus at the moment, with bridge closures and swamp-like conditions on the routes which are open, and if you avoid the physical pitfalls there is always the constant money grabbing by the University for, books, gym membership, course packs and fees. Reports that YUSU officers have begun assaulting students to steal their phones and wallets remain unconfirmed.

So where is all this money going? Not to the Library, which has faced massive funding cuts, or to Your:Books, which is shutting down after. And certainly not to Nouse and Vision, whose courageous reportage is currently in jeopardy because of increased print costs which the union, and by implication the university, cannot cover. So although the campus and our education is supposedly “a priority”, according to the University, it seems that money is actually disappearing down two metaphorical black holes.

The first is Heslington East. The development, estimated to cost around £500 million, will double the size of the student population, give us a swimming pool, student union venue, and basically our dignity back. We will finally have the features of a campus which most other students across Britain take for granted. However, the second reason is altogether more mundane and predictable, and all the more depressing for it.

The restaurant where I work in York, which shall remain nameless, is one of the upmarket eateries on Fossgate. The average bill for two people usually comes to around £80. And who do I see traipsing in, week after week, and whipping out credit cards with ‘University of York’ embossed on them for meals of £500+ for parties, or the odd couple of hundred pounds here or there in groups of three or four? Thus far, I have served and chatted to members of the English, Philosophy, Law, Politics, Psychology, Physics and TV, Film & Theatre departments, some of them a handful of times each. The need for expense accounts to attract clients is understandable, but I only work two shifts a week, which means that I probably meet a fraction of the actual number of university staff who are spending our fees drinking yet another £25 bottle of wine to go with their venison in truffle juices.

Bloated expense accounts are why, to return to the financial report, “plans to manage resources more efficiently failed to reduce expenditure overall”. Perhaps a quick glance at their receipts would remind the departments who casually consume our money that the implications for students, and for York’s financial future, are far-reaching and a shameful mark on the record of this university.