The Writing is on the Wall

The Writing is on the Wall:

An Open Letter to the Students of the University of Birmingham

Fellow Students,

Unlike most of you I do not live in Birmingham. I live in London and commute three days a week for my lectures. Unfortunately that means that I often miss out on the crux of action that takes place and I can only comprehend the Zeitgeist from the fallout that has been left behind. I know a lot of people are angry, ashamed, and appalled, but this is misdirected and the student population is being manipulated. What has struck me most from Wednesday’s events is the smear campaign and downright Machiavellian tactics by the management of the University of Birmingham. They are trying to fragment, ostracise, and turn the student population against one another. And they are doing it successfully.

I have seen on Twitter that students have become angry about the defacing and damage incurred to Old Joe and the Aston Webb Building. What I have to say is do not confuse your education with the spectacle of red brick buildings. The vandalism is a bitter pill to swallow, for me too, but it stems from a movement that is defending your interests. See the forest for the trees and decipher what is written on the wall. Do not focus on the graffiti, focus on the words. They are ‘defend education’. An education that you have valued enough to decide to commit yourself to at university, an education which is being attacked more ruthlessly than a clock tower, an education which urges you to question authority. 

It is easier to decry the physical damage to a building rather than the abstract damage of education cuts. So materialise the cuts which can be so easily ignored. See it as the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity that was closed down, the lack of a living wage for all workers on campus (whilst Vice Chancellor David Eastwood earns an absurd annual wage of over £400,000), and the massive increase in tuition fees. These are cuts that effect the students and employees of the university - damaging lives, not stone. 

But the general feeling one gets when walking onto the Edgbaston campus isn't one of pride and solidarity with the protesters; it’s division, it’s scapegoating, it is blissful ignorance. It is a state which is nourished by the media circus being managed by the university to influence the moderate, undecided, apolitical student. They are criminalising your classmates who have stood up for your rights, and making themselves out to be victims. The circulated email from David Eastwood on Thursday was the antithesis of the graffiti, it was a well-crafted statesman address, borne of calculation rather than passion. Old Joe chimes no longer, but retweets as management play on the sympathies we have to a beloved icon, using its credibility rather than use their own. 

Already a dichotomy between students is being formed as the Protect Our Campus campaign on twitter dances slowly to the tune of management. A movement which has a striking resemblance to the broom campaign that followed the London Riots in 2011. I have no doubt that both were created from a mixture of pride and distress, but both forget the core issues and aim simply to sweep all nastiness under the rug. 

I write this not as a defence of the actions of the protesters, but as counterbalance to the heavy stream of partisan propaganda. I have not yet seen a response from management addressing the actual issues that were being protested, I have not seen condemnation from the Old Joe twitter account of the illegal tactics used by the police of forcing protesters to give their details before being allowed to leave makeshift detainment, I have yet seen any denunciation of the heavy handedness from security. 

I end this by saying ‘solidarity’ is not a hollow slogan shouted by ‘extreme’ protesters in the effort to play up to a romanticised image. Solidarity is a necessity, it is integral, and management know this. Do not fear those mysterious anarcho-punks, they are your classmates, your team-mates, your lecturers. Do not stand against those who defend you, your education, and your rights. Do not worry about the stone that stands on a hundred year old campus, worry about the foundations that they were built on. The writing is on the wall: defend education.