Photo: John Servante

Protesters set up camp outside Senate House

Prospective students and parents visiting Warwick for the official Open Day today were met by protesters who had set up camp on the field in front of Senate House.

A group of students, who call themselves ‘Protect the Public University – Warwick’ (PPU) set up nine tents at about 7.30am this morning.

They handed out information to parents and prospective students and explained the objectives of their protest.

“It’s just as radical as it was twenty-five years ago,” said a 51-year-old mother and Warwick alumna, who works as an art teacher, gesturing at Senate House. She had travelled from London as her son was hoping to study Maths at Warwick.

“Education should be free for everyone,” she added.

Her daughter, 18, who studies Geography at Leeds University, said: “The power should be with the students. They shouldn’t have to pay £3 for a cup of coffee.”

Arham Syed, 18, visiting the Open Day from Reading and hoping to study Business at Warwick, said he agreed with the protesters demand that vice chancellor Nigel Thrift give up his pay increase of £42,000.

“It has to be equal for all the teachers,” he said.

The protesters at the camp held a series of talks in the afternoon, which were attended by around 80 people.

Professor Thomas Docherty, who serves on the Steering Committee for the Council for the Defence of British Universities, condemned privatisation as “fundamentally a logic of theft”.

“Everyone knows that the neoliberal principles we are being asked to subscribe to are lies,” he said. “The worrying thing is that debt is becoming normalised.”

“Stay strong,” he told the protesters. “You are on the right side of history. We will win.”

Christopher Maughan, a PhD English student, emphasised the importance of campus activism.

“I’ve learned so much more from attending things outside the lectures than I have in a classroom,” he said.

“Can we recuperate the human and find the university that is cynically advertised in the prospectuses but is actually happening here [at the camp]?” he asked the audience.

Darrall Cozens, chairman of the West Midlands branch of the retired members of the University and College Union, encouraged students to get their ideas out into the wider community. He also criticised the handling of the 2008 banking crisis.

“What started out as a private debt of the banks became a public debt of you and me,” he said.

An anonymous legal source told the Boar that the University has the remedy of using reasonable force to remove the protesters from the field, though this is unlikely to be used.

“It’s a balancing act between property rights and freedom of expression,” he said.

He said it may be considering a possession order to remove them, in which case they would have to leave within 24 hours of being given notice.

A spokesperson for Warwick, Peter Dunn, said the protesters at the camp would be treated in the same way as the occupiers in Senate House.

He justified security photographing and videoing the protesters by saying: “We have asked those involved in these actions to identify themselves. If they refuse to confirm their identities we will use the other options available to us.”

He dismissed rumours circulating that security staff are to lose their bonuses to pay for outside contracters.

“Security have been given additional budget to deal with the occupation and there is no impact at all on any aspect of our security staff pay,” he said.

“Overtime has been offered to a number of our security staff in the normal way and people have been perfectly free to decline it because of other commitments or family responsibilities.”

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