Cuts at Sussex University

I'm a student at Sussex University, I take pride in this fact.  Over the last few months, however, my feeling of pride has waned as a mercenary element has made itself incredibly apparent in the form of the University's vice-chancellor Michael Farthing.

This is a man who earns over £120000 pounds a year yet claims that there isn't enough money to continue the University at it's current level.  A man who is cutting my departments funding gave away one of my labs (oh yeah it's personal now) and seems to feel that he's the messiah.

I'm not going to go into a major amount of detail over this, for more information, just go here, but protests having been ongoing for a long time.  What I am posting about the statement below, about what is quickly becoming a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the protests, just read on:

This is a statement from the group who have occupied the conference room in Bramber House:

We have occupied the top floor of Bramber House, University of Sussex, Brighton. There are 106 of us.

The decision to occupy has been taken after weeks of concerted campaigning during which the university management have repeatedly failed to take away the threat of compulsory redundancies and course cuts.

We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us.

The room we have occupied is not a lecture theatre but a conference centre. As such, we are not disrupting the education of our fellow students; rather, we are disrupting a key part of management’s strategy to run the university as a  profitable business.

They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere – and not only in the universities. We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone else fighting the pay cuts, cuts in services and jobs which will multiply everywhere as bosses and states try and pull out of the crisis.

As the entrance for people to come in has been blockaded, people will be meeting in solidarity with the occupation at 5.30 today outside Bramber House so come along and show your support!

If you know any members of the press, copy the following statement into an email  and send it to them!

Contact: Solomon Schonfield
Telephone: 07906 565 925
Email: sussexstopthecuts100@googlemail.com

STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX OCCUPY CONFERENCE CENTRE

Over 100 Students occupy in protest against proposed cuts in Higher Education

After a demonstration attended by over 300 staff and students, with speeches from Simon Burgess Labour candidate for Brighton and Kemp Town, Tom Hickey of the UCU National Executive, Paul Cecil President of the UCU Sussex branch, Jon Mason of Unison and Pat Hawkes of Brighton and Hove City Council, students at Sussex University have occupied the main conference centre of Falmer Campus in protest against the proposed cuts of over 100 jobs and dozens of courses. Students have taken this action in solidarity with those staff and students who will undoubtedly be effected by these cuts. Over £250 pounds have been raised to support the strike that UCU will be balloting on in a week's time. The police have been called to eject the peaceful protesters, the second time this has happened in the last month. Students outside of the conference centre who have tried to join the occupation have so far been refused entry by the police.
Photos will follow.

The occupation continues.

ENDS

If you would like more information about this topic please contact Solomon Schonfield at the details given above.

Damn I wish I hadn't had a lecture at the time they had headed in.