A Student’s Protest to the Ongoing Protests
by Seth Wilkinson
This email from my department head sums up the situation more succinctly than I ever could:
“Dear EC1102,
School of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London.
The point of a strike is to create disruption. If I were to tell you in advance whether or not I will be here on Tuesday would defeat the purpose…, so I will expect you to have rational expectations about what is going to happen tomorrow and revise accordingly for the mid-term.
Best,
Arnaud”
I shan’t spend too much time frolicking over the ins and outs of the University and College Union strikes, instead, I aim to offer my personal insights into the ongoing turmoil, from the completely disregarded perspective of a student.
One of the reasons why I feel so compelled to write this article is because of the farcical expectation that I, as a student, will simply choose to ignore the increasing student tuition fees and my mounting debt, a result of the growing costs associated to being a full-time student of further education, and willingly support, nay encourage! – my university lecturers, professors, and academic staff, and their peers nationwide in bringing my expensive education to a grinding halt. All in an effort to maintain their economically unsustainable pensions, something that this generation of students will inevitably be bearing the financial burden of anyway, as the state retirement age claws its crippled corpse closer and closer to our deathbeds.
All of this draws my mind back to one of the opening lectures in the first week of this BSc Economics degree which, delivered by Prof. Franks, explained that those of the ‘baby boomer’ generation had everything afforded to them, and how it was our generation’s burden to pay for their privileges. (Assigned reading, The Pinch; David Willetts) It was a doom and gloom lecture to kick-start this degree, but also just a sorrowful insight into my impending university experiences of lectures void of lecturers, and oppressive picket lines established to discourage me from entering the educational institutions whilst they, the picketers, without any sense or notion of the irony that they are benefiting from (if not dependent on), student’s tuition contributing to the budgets that support them.
More so, what inflames me the most is that, despite their posters, banners and pamphlets forced into my face whilst I fight my way through the picket lines to access library’s and laboratories, in an effort to now independently educate myself; and as I run from their chants and calls for students to join their protests, and the disapproving glares that are cast my way as I politely decline their requests, is the lack of concern or responsibility being shown by these teachers-turned-agitators, that seem to have very little regard for their own students, and indeed, actually seem to extol the disruption caused to us who are approaching midterm exams- whose academic and professional futures are being put at risk by those that utilize this chaos they are intentionally creating at such a sensitive time, as an unwilling tool to leverage their demands of the government. Shouldn’t they be protesting outside Parliament or on Downing Street, on weekends or after cessation of classes, on their own time and terms, not mine? But, rather they are intentionally obstructing and impeding my chances of passing my exams for their own interests, and thousands like me. Good Lord, it is utterly discouraging. If this really is important enough to bring the education of millions of students nationwide to an absolute halt, is it possible for you to have at least some sense of responsibility to the very students whose tuition supports your income in the first place?
And to those who have lost their lives around the world fighting for the right to receive an education, and to those who even more recently have lost their lives whilst in classes receiving an education-, their courage in the face of their challenges are ignored by our own educators we have entrusted and who are presently shirking on their teaching responsibilities. Ironically, they seem to be free from the contractual agreement that I and my student peers all made with our universities that so happily accepted tuition payments upwards of £9,250 per student per year, which comes with the right to terminate our enrolment should our attendance become unreliable.
– Seth Wilkinson #aProtesttotheProtest #RefundPlz? #STOP
