Wave of repression against (UK) students

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Sussex
University management have singled out five students for their involvement in the anti-privatisation campaign, and a recent occupation in support of striking staff. The students have been suspended from their courses and excluded from campus. The reason given includes an alleged "threat to the safety and well-being of students". Sussex managers have repeatedly called in riot police to attack student protests on the campus

University of London
Meanwhile in London, an occupation of Senate House, University of London, was broken up by the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group after only a few hours. No injunction or eviction order was granted and no warning was given. Witnesses say police simply stormed into the building, alongside university security, attacking occupiers and bystanders alike.

Never really seen anything like it; no nightsticks, no warnings, just swoop from nowhere then punching and chasing gathered crowd #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

Confused bystanders and spectators ran for the gates, coppers chased them, pushed them to the ground #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

All happened so fast hard to tell if the violence was planned or cops out of control, but scale of op was stunning #occupysh— Huw Lemmey (@spitzenprodukte) December 4, 2013

Major police violence reported in Senate House foyer: kicking and beating students at random— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 4, 2013

Wow that was just incredibly violent— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 4, 2013

http://libcom.org/news/wave-repression-against-students-05122013

University of strife: John Harris on the latest wave of student protests
snip~

But as events this week have proved, some young people remain incensed – and not just about fees, but a tangle of issues that runs from the privatisation of university jobs and facilities, through the low-end pay and conditions of workers on campus, to what many students see as the toxic effects of higher education being pushed towards the logic of the free market. Particularly in London, there is also increasing anger about the recurrent presence of police on campus.

Over the last week or so, there have also been occupations and protests at universities in Birmingham, Brighton, Exeter, Warwick, Derry, and Liverpool – barely reported in the mainstream press, but chronicled and sustained via social media. Outwardly, their main trigger was Tuesday's strike by academics and other university employees over real-terms pay cuts and the "miserly" offer of a 1% rise. But the people involved say the student protests have now acquired a momentum of their own.

snip~

The police, he reckons, are implementing lessons learned over the last few years: "They saw what happened in 2010 and they didn't know what the hell was going on. But what they did in 2011 – massive kettling, mass arrests – put a lot of people off. They want to basically bludgeon student activism on campus. That's what we're seeing, certainly from the Met."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/06/university-of-strife-john-harris

[Ghost Dog]

1. Ah. Central London warming up...

... It's a cold and impossibly wet Thursday afternoon in Bloomsbury, central London, and not for the first time, it's all kicking off. A pack of police minibuses has just sped into Russell Square, and scores of Met personnel are now spilling on to the streets. Behind the gates of the University of London's administrative offices, other officers wield metal batons, sporadically lashing out at a crowd of student protesters who have marched here from nearby Malet Street. Within minutes, the line along which the students and police face off has been established, and a succession of chants fills the air: "Cops out! Students in! … Whose streets? Our streets! … You killed Mark Duggan!"

Such is the spectacle that has erupted around a Cops Off Campus demonstration, organised anonymously via tumblr. After a torrential downpour and an ad hoc occupation of the westbound side of Marylebone Road at the peak of rush hour, the centre of events soon shifts to Gower Street, and the entrance to Euston Square tube station. Close by, 20 or so protesters have apparently been kettled. A police helicopter thrums overhead. Every few minutes, there is a flash of renewed confrontation. "We just want to say we don't want cops on our campus," one student tells me. "But the police want a fight."...

... On Thursday, my day begins at the back of Holborn police station, in the company of around 20 student activists. Most are from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, here because they know two Soas students are being held inside – and because of their own role in this week's convulsive events on campus. The previous day, at around 2.30pm, around 60 students occupied the first floor of Senate House, the art deco leviathan that contains the administrative base of the University of London and the offices of its senior management. Their action was based on a 10-point agenda, covering everything from the pay and conditions of outsourced cleaners, through the structures of the University of London Union, to a demand that "the pay ratio between the lowest paid and the highest paid staff in the university should be reduced to a maximum of 10:1"...

... "What we have to remind people of is that we're going to be the generation who are going to get fucked over: completely and utterly, in a way no generation has in the past," says Hashmi. "Until we realise that we actually have nothing to lose, we're not going to put enough energy into this. But that's what people here have done. Because we literally have nothing to lose."...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/06/university-of-strife-john-harris