Are you a member of Warwick’s own “Dumbledore’s Army”?

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]arry Potter and Occupy, not exactly two things you’d expect to see in the same sentence hence why I was shocked when, during our Christmas tradition of the boxset marathon I found myself reminded of events that happened on campus last term. I’d always thought of Harry Potter as kid’s films and yet there I was reading Dumbledore’s army as a metaphor for the occupy movement and, specifically, the Cops off Campus and Free Education protests and occupation that ended term one.

I’ll admit this was probably the surfacing of subconscious guilt about not writing the essay I should have been doing causing me to read into everything far too much. Yet I could not see how those standing up against Ministry intervention at Hogwarts, their space of free education, could not be likened to those at Warwick last term who stood up against police intervention at Warwick, supposedly our space of free speech and thought.

While I’m sure there are some who would like to extend this metaphor to accusing Nigel Thrift of being the Umbridge of Warwick, or compare Nigel Farage to He Who Must Not Be Named, it’s impossible to compare real life to the world of Harry Potter.

The reality is that the world is not as clear cut into good and bad people and causes, it’s easy to sit and watch a film and say you’d be in Dumbledore’s army and yet, if I’m honest, I’m probably more like an unnamed Hufflepuff extra.

Furthermore there isn’t just good versus evil. There is no singular ‘good’ movement to conquer all the world’s ‘bad’ especially when ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are far more subjective than whether you support Harry or Voldemort.

Nonetheless we are fortunate that Warwick University is a place where many different political and social voices are brought together, raised and heard.

Last term’s campaign opened my eyes not just to a new reading of Harry Potter but also to how little I was taking advantage of such a politically engaged campus.

Often the political and social justice societies of our university get overshadowed by the purple-fuelled-pop allure of sports societies or the familiarity of societies which directly relate to the extra-curricular activities we did at school. Yet, to a certain extent, the issues being discussed and the causes being campaigned for by such societies are going to affect our lives much more than anything else we do at university.

If I could suggest one thing to do this year it’d be to take advantage of these societies and of our campus as the space of free speech it currently is. I think we can shy away from these kinds of societies because we don’t know enough about what they stand for to supposedly dedicate ourselves to a cause. Yet these societies aren’t cults of no escape, they’re places of discussion where we should feel free to share opinions or even just listen and learn.

If you have no clue about what happened last term try finding out more at a Free Education meeting, join the solidarity march for Ferguson at the end of the month, or simply take a look at the pages of societies like Warwick Amnesty, Non-Aligned Leftist Forum, Warwick Conservatives or other political groups. Even if you don’t agree with them it’s all part of the process of finding your own voice on campus, who knows perhaps you’ll start the next Dumbledore’s Army.