Author: vicepresident

It was cold; the picket started early; but we didn’t mind because the infamous pink beanies have finally arrived. We think you’ll agree that we look very comradely and cute!!

After energetic pickets at Gibbet Hill, Lynchgate, Westwood, and Gate House (phew!), we were welcomed back to the bus loop by this creative, hilarious, and very dispiriting sign. Indeed.

The theme of today was “Resistance to Trump and Johnson – Defend Migrants and End the Hostile Environment” and we were lucky enough to have three teach-outs on the topic. First, Was Hannah Jones’ interactive picket line teach out on the Hostile Environment, how it works, and how we can resist it. You can check out her #DigitalPicketLine recap here.

We were also treated to a post-picket teach in led by Aditya Sarkar on the rise of the far right globally and a talk by Ademola Anjorin on the education system and other racist legacies of British colonialism. In addition to spelling out the connections between the marketisation of higher education and the hostile environment, all of these talks suggested concrete ways that students and staff can work together to resist these regimes and create decolonised universities and societies. Jonathan Skinner’s teach out on “print activism” discussed some of the ways that art can play role in this process.

Tomorrow is our last day of strike action this year so let’s make it loud! Bring your voices, instruments, and noise-makers.

What a beautiful day on the picket line! After three days of rain, we had a wonderful day of . . . well, cloud and a bit of drizzle, but it felt like May sunshine.

We had vibrant pickets at Westwood, Lynchgate, Gibbet Hill, and Gatehouse before returning back to the bus loop for some dancing, singing and chanting.

We were also lucky enough to have the National Educator’s Union (NEU) join us on the picket line and Emma Mort, the Warwickshire District Secretary gave a speech, highlighting the absurdity of universities putting money into capital projects instead of education. Warwick Occupy also came for a visit and gave a moving speech that drew links between our struggles and the anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles they are currently waging.

#Unistories is growing, physically expanding from the busloop to the Occulus and Library, and also growing online. Please come by and write your story, and if you can’t, consider tweeting your experience of the marketised university and why you are striking or supporting the strike.

Following the picket line, were two fabulous teach outs: a discussion on climate change and/as neocolonialism and a debate on Future of the Digital Economy.

Finally, we heard a rumour that the fabled UCU pink beanies might be making an appearance on the picket line tomorrow, but shhhh….don’t tell anyone.

Day Two kicked off early – with many of our members getting up at 5:30 to make it to the picketline for a 7:30 start! The weather was….erm…..better?! And our spirits were high.

We had lively pickets at Lynchgate, Westwood, Gibbet Hill, and the Gatehouse. Members report fabulous conversations at each entrance with supportive staff and students, all of whom were eager to learn more about why we’re on strike and what they can do to help.

The day ended with a rally focusing on casualisation, including a brilliant speech by Warwick Anti-Casualisation’s Katja Laug before staff and students broke out for a teach out, “Persuasive Conversations on the Picket Line,” lead by Zarah Sultana and an amazing initiative “Rave, Resist, Register” which saw local Warwick DJs pair up with staff and students to get the vote out!

Reminder that tomorrow we meet at the bus loop at 10AM. Details below:

Wednesday 27 November (USS / pensions)
Meet at the Bus Loop 10am-2pm
(Adopted by PAIS and French/Hispanic Studies)

12-1pm The Relevance of Kashmir for UK Politics

1-1:30pm General Strike of 1926 (Warwick Marxist Society)

What an inspiring start to 8 days of strike action. The weather was torrential but so were our spirits!

The opening day of the national UCU strike saw hundreds of staff, students and local supporters turn out in the rain to demand reforms to unsustainable practices in the university sector. The day started with a morning coffee session with 20+ members of our professional services staff (this isn’t just a lecturer’s strike after all!) who then marched together down to the main picket line.

Over the course of the day, over 300 people came through as did numerous  handsome #dogsonpicketlines

There was a rally with speakers from local UCU, Warwick Anticasualisation, the Student’s Union, local Parliamentary Candidates Zarah Sultana and Taiwo Owatemi, and Warwick Occupy. All speakers made connections between staff and student concerns in the sector, and some linked the degradation of Higher Education to the pervasive wider impacts of funding cuts and austerity policies across UK societies.

It was deeply encouraging to see so much support on this first day, with the action comparing favourably to the first day of the pickets in 2018. The pickets were followed by a full afternoon of teach-out events organised by staff and students, including workshops on the Ecology of the Campus and on Digital Labour.

We are thrilled to announce that at our All Member Meeting on Wednesday 16 October 2019, we passed our a motion endorsing our new Recommendations on Lecture Capture. This policy, which is the result of months of research and consultation with our members, lays out the problems in the University’s current lecture capture policy and the changes we think are necessary to create a fair, equitable, and working policy. Huge thanks to our research committee.

Elements of current lecture capture policy to keep:

• opt in policy

Elements to improve:

Acknowledgement of pros and cons of lecture capture

An objective presentation of lecture capture to students that outlines both the pros and the cons of lecture capture to students and staff. Currently the policy presentation on the website is biased to articulating positive aspects (see first paragraph here: …). The UCU has found out, however, that the decision of many academic staff to not opt in is based on reasonable concerns of surrounding matters of learning and inclusion. Furthermore, academic research exists to support both pros and cons thus the decision to solely present the pros of lecture capture is biased and it has direct implications for student experience and for the relationship between students and academic staff.

By presenting solely the positive aspects of lecture capture the policy nurtured feelings of dissatisfaction among students who are not informed about the reasons why many lecturers choose not to use lecture capture. We therefore recommend that the policy outlined the pros but also the cons of lecture capture in the “Key points about Lecture Capture” (https://warwick.ac.uk/services/its/servicessupport/av/lecture_capture/review/) in the “Lecture Capture Policy” (https://warwick.ac.uk/services/aro/dar/quality/categories/goodpractice/lecturecapturepolicy) and in the “https://warwick.ac.uk/services/aro/dar/quality/recordinglectures/”.

As an example, an important issue of lecture capture concerns inclusion: students may not participate to interactive activities knowing that they are being recorded, particularly students with anxiety (the detrimental effects of recording on individuals ability to debate challenging ideas and to participate has been document by several psychological studies).

At the moment the policy states that “If there is an interactive element to your lecture, individuals may not wish to be recorded and can therefore choose to refrain from participating” which essentially normalises the idea that some students will be deterred from participating. We do not find this acceptable and we believe that academic staff worries about student participation raise a reasonable concern that should be acknowledged in the way we communicate lecture capture to students on the university website.

Recommendation: To re-open a consultation between the university and the UCU representing academic staff to produce a ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list to be assimilated on the Lecture Capture presentation online.

Intellectual Property Issues

The current provisions in the Consent Form are:

“In order to enhance the student learning experience, the University of Warwick (the “University”) wishes to make available to its current students digital recordings of University lectures, presentations and seminars (“Recordings”) for learning and teaching purposes.

Recordings will not be used for any other purpose, and will be stored securely within the EU for a period of four years, after which time they will be deleted/destroyed.”

Recommendations:

1. Intellectual property provision should define ‘current students’ as the student cohort for that particular module that the lecturer chooses to use lecture capture recordings for in that particular moment in time.
2. The university policy should include clear guidelines as to what constitutes ‘fair educational use’ of lecture capture material.
3. Lecture capture recordings should be deleted/destroyed if a member of staff is no longer an employee of the university. The lecturer may have the choice of explicitly agreeing not to destroy the recordings after employment ends but in this case the Intellectual Property should be shared between the university and the lecturer, such that the lecturer has the right to rescind permission for the use of the material at any point.
4. If the lecturer continues to be an employee at the university but decides to no longer use lecture capture, the previous lecture capture materials should be deleted/destroyed as soon as the students from the taught cohort that were provided with lecture recordings graduate (the cohort graduation date applies). The lecturer may have the choice of explicitly agreeing not to destroy the recordings after the graduation of the taught cohort that benefited from his/her recordings but in this case the Intellectual Property should be shared between the university and the lecturer.
5. In the context of strike, lecture capture materials should be made unavailable to students.

Overall Recommendation: To re-open a consultation between the university and the UCU representing academic staff to expand the current lecture capture policy accordingly.

On Friday 20 September, following the lead of numerous organisations and local governments, the University declared a climate emergency. To meet this challenge, Warwick “aims to reach net zero carbon from our direct emissions and the energy we buy by 2030,” with the further goal of net zero emissions by 2050. The first goal refers to so-called scope 1-2 carbon neutrality, which encompasses direct emissions produced by Warwick, as well as indirect emissions generated by energy we purchase. The second goal (‘scope 3’ neutrality, or zero total emissions) only puts the University in line with the binding legal target of the whole of the UK.

While we welcome the University’s recognition of climate breakdown, it is clear that its proposed goals are simply not ambitious enough, given the scale of the crisis we face. Far larger organisations have committed to scope 1-2 carbon neutrality by 2025. And reducing emissions by 2050 is too late to avoid potentially catastrophic levels of global heating. Furthermore, the University’s own position –as both a regional hub and an international educational institution – requires it to take a much more robust role in leading the fight against climate injustice.

This spring our branch brought a motion to UCU Congress to commit all our institutions to achieving “‘scope 3’ carbon neutrality by 2030.” This means a commitment to eliminating all indirect emissions that occur in an institution’s value chain, including emissions associated with business travel, procurement, waste and water. Such emissions make up the greatest share of Warwick’s footprint. We must undertake a wholesale review of the University’s processes, plans and relationships in order to begin decarbonising at the scale and speed required by this emergency.

We have other concerns as well. The University’s commitment to net neutrality means that it doesn’t necessarily need to reduce its emissions in total, but can instead just offset them through various schemes. It’s worrying too that the University has hedged its bets by announcing that it will meet its commitments only if “national governments (and our partners in local and regional policy making) deliver on their commitments.” We want to see the University play a role in actively leading, not simply following, a just-transition campaign to a cleaner, fairer society.

What does this look like? To us, it requires a genuine transformation in the way the University runs and operates. Among other things, it requires an acknowledgement of Warwick’s complicity in the climate crisis – local as well as global – and its avoidance of real consultation with the people who make the University what it is: staff, students, and the local community. The recognition of an ‘emergency’ clearly demands a different approach from business as usual.

In addition to achieving scope 3 neutrality by 2030, we call for the creation of an ongoing shared governance platform with UCU, Unite, Unison, the SU, and other representative bodies on campus to create a genuine leadership role for the university on climate breakdown. This will involve more than just technical targets; it will require, as any campaign to renovate Warwick’s partnerships must, a commitment to ethical investment, workers’ rights and lasting collaborations with the surrounding community. A good place to start would see the University lobbying the Home Office to end its hostile environment policy and to open the doors to climate migrants. And there is much more to be done – locally, nationally and internationally.

For these reasons, we remain fully committed to Friday’s climate strike and urge our members to attend the protest, on Friday 27 September at noon outside of Senate House. We reiterate our demand that the University step up and show leadership in the fight for a just transition to a genuinely sustainable society.