Every year TNC likes to recognise a person or organisation that truly knows the meaning of community, the city we live in, and the services students need and no other group can best exemplify this than The Big Lemon Bus of Brighton & Hove. Unique in their service to students The Big Lemon Bus has become a huge part of the student experience in Brighton allowing for safe and sustainable travel in the city.

Winner BEST Overall Student Experience 2011

Winner BEST Local Student Service 2011

Winner BEST Community Conscience 2011

Winner BEST Customer Service 2011

The Big Lemon Bus is a winner in many ways for Brighton & Sussex students. The buses run on used cooking oil which is not only good for the environment but also great for the thousands of students who use public transport every day to get to and from Falmer campuses. The Big Lemon is also unique in this sense that  they are aware that more needs to be done to provide safe and clean transport in a city like Brighton.

But things are not looking good for The Big Lemon and they face a uphill battle to save their services for the students of Brighton and Sussex as well as environmentally conscious B&H citizens. Wednesday night there is an event to help save The Big Lemon Bus and TNC would like to show our support for such a valuable student service.

Information can be found below, show your support and HELP SAVE THE BIG LEMON BUS!

Innovation and competition. Today’s industry relies on these two qualities to drive it forward and maintain its edge. So it makes sense then that companies are keen to impress these qualities upon students, the generation to form tomorrow’s industry. The ‘Smarter Planet Comes to You’ tour is a joint IBM and Students for a Smarter Planet initiative that has been visiting various European universities over the last few weeks with a view of doing just that, and most recently, on 14th March 2011, it arrived in York.

One word to sum up the tour would be interaction. The whole day was filled with hands-on, entirely involving activities, from workshops to computer games. Needless to say this captured the imagination of all and sundry that came along to the Smarter Planet tour bus, regardless of their level of technological know-how. In my case for example, technological know-how was non-existent. But thanks to the friendly, approachable team members available to explain everything in terms accessible to all, this wasn’t a problem.

And that’s what made the Smarter Planet tour more than just a recruitment drive. The passion and excitement of all of the staff was clearly visible, even despite the fact that many had been on the tour for several weeks and had no doubt seen countless exasperatingly ignorant laymen such as myself. Their patience never wavered. Special thanks must go to Ben Hardill, an IBM Emerging Technologies Specialist, who willingly and cheerfully showed me his tools for a more energy-efficient desk not once, but twice.

York was just one stop of the tour’s UK branch, with Dublin, Exeter and Swansea ahead. Although the tour is entirely open to all, as indeed the global nature of business today requires input from disciplines across the academic board, the destinations were of course selected for the universities’ emphasis on technology.

York’s computer science department played host to the event, and provided some of its own esteemed speakers: Andrew Jackson and Mark Rodbert spoke engagingly on the importance of openness in innovation. IBM executives also hosted a Q&A panel session, and a thought-provoking talk on ‘smarter healthcare’ by Angus Cambell was very well received.

Olivia Waring, a first year literature student, was surprised at how much she was able to take away from the event:

“The speakers really addressed what’s relevant to young people considering a career in innovation, and broadened it out successfully to include those of us not solely interested in computing. I really enjoyed my visit and loved the smarter supply chain game!”

It’s good to see big corporations taking an interest in the development of students which isn’t solely focussed on recruitment. The IBM ‘Smarter Planet Comes to You’ tour delivered an engaging and accessible event that piqued a lot of interest here at York, and successfully banished that general last-week-of-term stupor; quite the feat by anyone’s standards.

By Lucy Whitehouse, Images by Olivia Waring

We have reports that a student, Ewan Brown has been arrested and due to the Data Protection Act we are not able to get a confirmation from the police of his condition. The NCL Occupation released this press release:

David Cameron visited Newcastle secretly today, not the actions of a popular Prime Minister. It was felt by many people that this was an opportunity to bring attention to the crippling ideological attack on public services which will disproportionately effect the North East.

One protestor commented “Upon hearing David Cameron was in town, we decided to stage an impromptu rally. We then went around repeatedly requesting for Cameron to come and address the people of North East”.

The peaceful protestors assembled outside the Newcastle Centre for Life, an educational charity which plays a vital role in the local community for engaging with schools and colleges to promote education and scientific research.

As David Cameron left the Centre of Life, some of the protestors attempted to stop the motorcade in protest of his unwillingness to listen to the concerns of more than just a hand picked section of society. Danny Youkee, 25, a student at Newcastle University said that

“The shutters opened and we slowed David Cameron’s car, several
protesters surround it and were apprehended by plain clothes police.
Several of the protesters were then pushed to the other side of the
road”.

It was after this that Ewan Brown was “pushed against a fence by a plain cloths police officer” and then more than30 protesters surrounded the police that were holding Ewan to show support. “We asked why he was being taken and got no answer” said a protester.

There will be a demonstration today at 6pm outside Etal Lane Police Station, Westerhope, Newcastle where Ewan is being held.

TNC is shocked by this change in attitude that Northumbria Police have had to the most respectful and peaceful student protest movement to come out of this sub-movement. UPDATE: We have been told that Ewan’s dad is at the police station, more to follow.

How has the occupation been going, has there been, has moral been good? How many people have occupied?

Things have been going very well and spirits have been high. It’s been well-attended, positive and constructive, and we’ve heard from some great speakers. There’s a very real feeling of people pulling together and creating something a bit different to the standard university experience. Students are meeting each other and discussing the issues, listening to lecturers they’d never have come across otherwise, and most importantly, doing things for themselves in terms of food, communication, organising the programme and all the other jobs that need doing. As for numbers, we started off with 150 when we occupied yesterday, people came and went throughout the day and we had 50 or so overnight. We now have about 100, listening to a lecture by a supportive geographer: the excellent Ian Cook.

With the minority of students who have caused clashes with the police do you think that has harmed your message?

There may be some range of opinion on this but many of us dispute the premise of the question that students caused clashes. The policing of demonstrations has been pretty brutal: there are numerous videos a few clicks away that show unprovoked assaults by individual police officers on students and of course the institutional practice of kettling, which has involved keeping young teenagers in the cold with no access to toilets. Incidentally, people who’ve been on a few demonstrations or been involved in something like Climate Camp know that violence and provocation is standard practice in public order policing.

It is no wonder students are angry. We are told to direct our grievances through the normal political channels, voting every four or five years and lobbying MPs in between, with no means of recourse if they ignore us. We can hardly pretend we have a properly functioning democracy when Lib Dem MPs make what seem like unambiguous pledges to vote against fee rises before the election and then do the direct opposite afterwards. This is hardly representation, it’s politics by fraud. It’s no wonder that direct action is the result.

What advice had you sought before your occupation, and what advice would you give other student bodies hoping to follow your lead?

There wasn’t much advice sought, as we simply followed the inspiring example of other occupations around the country. UCL’s action was mentioned quite a few times so we’re grateful for their work. It’s also important to say that while our occupation is in an Exeter University building it is students at Exeter College who led the way round here while University students have been more apathetic. There has been scattered talk of an occupation for a while but it was only in the last day or two that things came together. Working together is the most important thing.

Our advice to students wishing their university could do something similar is simply to find some like-minded people, have a chat, then do something! There is no set model for an occupation, just use good sense and learn as you go along. No one is going to get killed but there is a lot to gain by stepping outside the narrow bounds of ‘acceptable’ political action and seeing what people can do when they engage in radical democratic practices like creating a student-run space. So just go ahead! Be constructive and positive, and remember that in spite of the apathy and nay-saying around you there are plenty of people on your side.

NUS is supporting you do you think they could have done more before their initial march in London? Are you going to vote for NO Confidence in NUS President Aaron Porter?

The problem with the student union establishment, if there is such a thing, is that their leadership, who do work hard in the interests of students, rely on good working relationships with university bosses and so feel uneasy about confrontation. This has been our experience in Exeter and probably the same goes for the NUS. Perhaps this means there’s room for a range of approaches, some ‘inside’ and some ‘outside’, but Aaron Porter was too quick to condemn direct action when a few windows got smashed, as if this somehow made the demonstrators thugs. This is the line taken by political, media and business elites: keep your politics to narrow channels that have been defined for you by people in power. So letter-writing is fine because it can be ignored, but trashing Tory HQ isn’t because it can’t be ignored.

The NUS ought to be right behind students occupying their universities and reclaiming their own spaces for free education, critical thinking and democracy in action. Many student leaders have entered parliamentary politics in the past and perhaps much of the NUS leadership have their eyes on Labour selection meetings in the next few years.

Has your university been very supportive of your occupation, has this been a surprise any reaction you have had?

We know that our vice-chancellor Steve Smith is a leading voice in favour of £9000 tuition fees, because he leads Universities UK and speaks in the media on behalf of university management. So we suspect he’s not too pleased, but we haven’t heard any threats or hostility and no hired goons have been sent in to sort us all out. Actually we’ve had a very constructive relationship with university security from the start, and this was something of a surprise. They have allowed free access in and out, brought us bottled water and left the heating on overnight. I suppose they had various ways to play this and decided to avoid confrontation. We’re quite happy with that because we are mainly about reimagining the university and creating a space for protest and free education, while drawing attention to the fact that our vice-chancellor, Steve Smith, does not represent Exeter’s students and staff.

We have not set out to disrupt the university’s operations and hinder people’s learning. In fact, when we all poured into the lecture theatre yesterday we all sat down, there were a few minutes of chaos, and then the lecture that was going on resumed, to everyone’s amusement. We sat quietly until the end and the lecturer got a huge round of applause for taking it so well. This was an excellent constructive start and it’s really set the tone.

For all none students out there tell us just what these cuts could do to higher education?

There are all kinds of harmful effects. We will have the highest tuition fees in western Europe, a market in higher education such that students from poorer backgrounds will be incentivised to go for a cheaper course despite being academically suited to a more expensive one. A decline in social mobility, which is already at a 50-year low, is inevitable if we go back to the 1950s when poor kids couldn’t afford to go to university. The principle that admissions can be based on the arbitrary qualification of personal wealth (effectively parental wealth) rather than academic merit and other relevant personal qualities is a deeply unappealing one. It’s part of a general marketisation of society in which we are all consumers and education is just another investment or economic asset.

It goes beyond this though. Budget cuts will fall heaviest on subjects not perceived as economically useful, especially the social sciences and the arts. We’ll see research shift even further towards that which is profitable for universities and away from that which is valuable to society, especially by looking critically at the way it’s run, or just intellectually fascinating. Proportionally speaking we’ll see more technology research, provided it can generate patentable output, more research that can generate business tie-ins and a spin-off companies, more military-funded research, and less of anything else if it doesn’t turn a profit.

How has the press coverage been, have you been getting support from your students?

It does appear that Exeter students are more apathetic than in some other places, but it would totally unfair to characterise the whole student body as apathetic, because we’ve had some brilliant support. As for press coverage, one of the first things we did yesterday was sit down and draft a press release, put it to all 150 of us to get consensus on it, and then fire it off to as many mainstream media outlets as we could think of. Independent media like the fantastic Indymedia website we could do ourselves, and of course here we are communicating with the New Current. We haven’t seen any negative press. It was clear when a camera crew were in earlier that they were interested in finding a certain angle, specifically our use of the internet and social networking to put the word out, but we’ve no real complaints. The BBC did a good web piece following our press release, and mentioned Exeter in the same breath as Manchester and Leeds on the 6 O’Clock News, which was a nice surprise.

What would you like to say to your VC and to people looking in on these occupations?

That despite what they might think about students being passive consumers of education or interested in our studies purely as a way of gaining advantage in the job market, very many of us care passionately about education and want to defend universities from the attacks they’re coming under, often from inside as in the case of our vice-chancellor and management. We’ve been hosting free lectures where all are welcome and debating issues and deciding on things democratically and collectively. It’s another model for how we could live and I hope people see it as setting a positive example. Very often when politicians or the media talk about issues as if there is no alternative to a particular undesirable course of action they are actually making all kinds of assumptions and thinking within narrow bounds. We’re trying to widen possibilities a bit.

Do you think peaceful protest like NCL and Edinburgh are the way forward?

A range of tactics is always a good idea. There is nothing inherently wrong with lobbying MPs and many of us do that on many issues all the time. On the other hand, it’s not the only thing we can do and voting and letter-writing is just a small part of democracy. We don’t know enough about those two actions to judge them, but peaceful, creative direct action is a very productive and empowering thing to be involved in.