In the spring of 2012, a massive student strike in opposition to a tuition hike, rocked the streets of the Montréal for over six months. Protests and militant street actions became part of the daily and nightly reality of this Canadian metropolis. Several times... #anarchists #blackbloc #ggi

Homelessness is a massive issue in our society today and I should preface this article by explaining that I only actually had to sleep on the streets twice during my period of homelessness. You’ll often meet homeless people around Leamington Spa and Coventry – it’s no small secret that there are scant resources available for the homeless in regards to shelters and other necessary provisions. Before I was homeless I always made sure to give the odd homeless person some money to get by as I knew it was difficult for them, but as a student at one of the best universities in the world I naively assumed that their struggle was not one I would ever have to face. So how did it happen to me?

Initially I’d been living with some friends and started going out with one of my housemates, who I shall refer to in this article as Ian (not his real name). My relationship with Ian could not have been called a healthy one; we were both struggling with substance abuse issues and mental health problems. He asked me out when we were both high on MDMA and had broken in to Jephson Gardens to look at the stars – a fool would have called that romantic, but I was a fool back then.

From the start, the relationship had issues. Ian was very ill, and would frequently make suicide threats. There were a few times where I was on the line to 999 emergency services because he had gone missing or become non responsive from drinking too much alcohol (if you ever can’t wake someone from a drunken stupor, call an ambulance – it’s a symptom of alcohol poisoning which can be fatal). I remember vividly struggling to finish an assessment in the library only to be confronted with the news that he’d gotten incredibly drunk and, in a bad way, gone missing. I called search choppers and sniffer dogs to campus that night. He turned out to be passed out in a classroom at 3am. Another time he’d wandered off after predrinks before a night out in Birmingham and I got a call to say he’d got in a fight, after which point he refused to pick up his phone. I returned home to find him in my bed covered in blood, having taken an overdose of antidepressants.

We broke up effectively because he never found me attractive and had only asked me out because he thought a relationship would “make him happy”. It was after we’d broken up that the issues really started. Following an evening where he’d left a suicide note and then locked himself in his room, we made a house decision to confiscate his key to stop him from doing this to us continually. We then got in a row at Assembly Rooms and he left early. When I returned, I discovered he’d locked me out of my bedroom, so I went upstairs to wake him. Next thing I knew, I was pinned to the bed by my neck and he was punching and punching me in the face. I kicked him off me but he kept coming back and attacking me more. I left that night and stayed at a friend’s house. I was pretty bruised; it hurt to smile. He apologised a couple of days later and explained that he was just really drunk and didn’t remember doing it. My big mistake here was to take that apology.

The second time he assaulted me came a while after. I returned to our house in Leamington from a house party with a couple of friends who lived on campus. I had only drunk a couple of beers and as he’d been home all night, he’d not drank anything. We gave up our beds for the girls and settled down to sleep on the sofas, but we got into an argument and then suddenly his hands were around my throat, strangling me. I briefly lost consciousness. I left, again, and stayed at one of the girls’ rooms for a few nights – it was the end of term and we were due to go home for Christmas. Another friend of mine made me go to the police, but as there were no witnesses to the incident (even though I was visibly bruised and unable to swallow properly for a week) I was advised not to press charges.

Over Christmas we met up and Ian apologised again. I told him I needed to see some action on his part to demonstrate that he was sorry, be it attending anger management or counselling or seeing his GP. Despite his promises, when Term 2 rolled around he revealed he wasn’t actually sorry for what he’d done – he’d merely been trying to smooth things over. Not long after this there was an incident and I became homeless. For other reasons I felt unable to return home, so I became homeless.

I don’t think I’ll ever be truly able to express my gratitude for the people who took me in. Friends, some I didn’t even know that well, opened their homes to me. I was lucky in that I know quite a lot of people – if I’d kept myself to myself I doubt I could have carried on for as long as I did. Quite rapidly things that I took for granted became bizarre luxuries that I rarely encountered. Clean clothes were the first stumbling block – when I first left my student house it was spontaneous and so I wore the same clothes for two weeks. I showered as frequently as I could – sometimes even twice a day – but the wear and tear of constantly wearing and sleeping in clothes was undisguisable. Moreover I wasn’t dressed in a weather appropriate way – I was frequently soaked through with rain or freezing cold. I don’t feel the cold so much anymore. True solitude was not easily attainable – I no longer had a room I could go to where I could shut out the world. I had no time alone to think – if I needed to cry or was having a panic attack I sought refuge in the library toilets. Having a carpeted floor to sleep on was a flood of relief and the times I was able to sleep in a bed seemed almost obscenely decadent by comparison.

I got an overdraft just to tide me over – I was able to blag one as I was still a student – and being unmedicated and manic I made some very poor decisions. I often wouldn’t eat for two days at a time  but whenever I went to a friend’s house to crash and they were going out, I’d join them. I couldn’t get out of my housing contract because I hadn’t pressed charges, so I just stopped paying rent. My phone quickly became useless to me as charging it proved to be quite difficult if I didn’t head to campus. All the things I had taken as assurances – a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, food in my stomach – melted away.

'But that excludes men,' spewed the socialist, deep in the throes of his soliloquy on female liberation. As a self-proclaimed 'feminist', a label he'd hijacked only a few months before, our stereotypical anti-capitalist expert felt suitably protected from causing offence, and confident in his knowledge of female issues, to continually dismiss the points of his female comrades. Continuing his diatribe, seemingly unaware of the growing resentment and awkwardness around him, our main protagonist begins to dismantle any of the 'liberation' premise to the meeting and voids his bowels all over any group solidarity or inclusivity.

Whether you're a direct-action orientated anarchist, a book wielding Trotskyite, a grizzled veteran of liberation movements or even a Labourite [ew] you have undoubtedly met our 'socialist' friend. He's at your book sharing meetings, general assemblies, demonstrations and, if like me you embody a huge plurality of privileges, possibly in you. This is a piece outlining a few ways to keep your inner motormouthed enthusiast in check. As someone who puts his foot in it so regularly that I'm starting to wear out my shoes, I've had to engage in a rather steep learning curve- so here's a five part guide in being a better ally.

1. LISTEN

It's important to recognise, particularly when discussing liberation movements, that people's experiences may be, indeed will very probably be, entirely different to yours. Additionally their experiences, if they fit into the ethnic/gender/class grouping under discussion, are more central to the argument than yours. Remember that time that someone spat at you in the street because of the colour of your skin? No? I don't either- but the person opposite you might do. Dominating a discussion, which as verbose lefties is often remarkably easy, silences those voices which may have a more relevant or important point to make.

2. CONSIDER YOUR PRECONCEPTIONS

You might not be a Fox News mouthpiece or a BNP enforcer, but you will still retain a lot of stereotypes and misinformation. It is often easy to come to a discussion from an angle shaped by the 'liberal' media, or broader cultural phenomena, and lacking a suitable depth on the topic, wax lyrical about the hijaab or Iran without a recognition of the factors which shape your ideas. Basing your knowledge about Iranian foreign policy on two episodes of Homeland and a Guardian article, a situation of which I am guilty, doesn't provide a particularly nuanced, or unbiased, interpretation. It's important to consider that your pre-conceptions, and general viewpoint, could be actively offensive.

3. EDUCATE YOURSELF

There are countless reading lists online. There are even a few directly aimed at allies- http://www.straightforequality.org/superallies-books. Additionally reading groups, which are quite prevalent if poorly advertised on campus, are a good way of expanding your knowledge. It is also essential that you recognise that it is not the role of other people, within liberation movements, to educate you because such a regular process is understandably draining and consumes the time which could be spent planning broader activities.

4. ACCEPT EXCLUSION

Perhaps my pet peeve is the seemingly pervasive belief that as a person of privilege, you are entitled to leadership positions, or even membership, of liberation movements. In part due to the constant missteps on the part of supposed allies, some groups actively orientate themselves exclusively around the oppressed minority group. This is perfectly acceptable. Indeed considering the relevancy of their experiences potentially preferable. Here is a member of London Black Revolutionaries, in response to a question by Vice about their 'exclusionary' nature, justifying their membership policies: 'We’re organising over particular questions, like institutional racism, which our white fellow working-class people don’t face in the same way. We value our political allies. I wouldn’t want to think we’re isolating other people. We start at the basis of the make up of our group. We can’t aim to speak for people outside of our race or social experience'.

5.  DON'T IGNORE, OR GET OVERTLY AGGRESSIVE AFTER, CRITICISM

Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state that recently carried out a massacre in Gaza under the Orwellian title of ‘Operation Protective Edge’. Palestinians are systematically oppressed, impoverished, killed and denied rights by Israel. Zionist propagandists seek to deny these facts by slandering Palestinian culture as backwards, the resistance as terrorists and opponents of their policies as anti-Semites. These are simply falsehoods and in many cases irrelevant distractions from the oppression and state-terrorism which Israel inflicts upon the Palestinians. I’m going to outline here some of the main aspects of Israeli oppression.

1.    Israel was founded on a programme of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. Zionism is based on the foundational lie of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’ – the same lie that grounded all colonialism, from Australia, to Africa to the Americas, of ‘virgin’, ‘empty’, ‘frontier’ territory which could be settled without any moral concern for the indigenous population. At Israel’s founding in 1948, most of the Palestinian population was displaced in what Illan Pappe considers a premeditated process of ethnic cleansing – around 720,000 were forced from their homes.

2.    Israel denies Palestinian right of return. Multiple UN resolutions have upheld the inalienable right of displaced Palestinians and their descendants to return to their homes and to gain compensation for destruction to their property. Israel refuses this right, knowing that allowing nearly 6 million refugees to return would destroy their exclusionary project of a specifically Jewish state. This means that millions of Palestinians must live in permanent exile, subject to poverty and war.

3.    Palestinian-Israelis, Bedouins and immigrants within Israel also face discrimination and ethnic cleansing. According to a report by human rights group Adalah, Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated against by 50 different laws. Earlier this year the Prawer Plan sought to displace tens of thousands of Bedouins from their traditional lands in what is now Israel, though it was dropped after international outcry, evictions and demolitions of Bedouin homes continues apace. Human rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers in Israel have been ongoing for some time, with increasingly virulent racism expressed at anti-immigration demonstrations, especially those targeting African migrants. Ethiopian women have been coerced or deceived into having long term contraceptive treatment – in other words, Israeli authorities have sought to sterilise black populations. These are markers of a society so wedded to its ethnic identity that it structurally discriminates against non-Jews, and even against non-white Jews.

4.    Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and has effective control over a besieged Gaza Strip. Israel steals land, water and money from the Palestinian population of the West Bank. The everyday reality of occupied Palestine is one of settlers given free reign (and protection even by the occupying forces) while Palestinians have no due process – facing administrative detention, torture and the risk of being shot dead when they resist the occupation of their homeland. A network of settlements, settler roads, checkpoints and an apartheid wall taller than the Berlin Wall divide the West Bank into manageable chunks that keep Palestinians from their ancestral lands, friends, family and workplaces.

5.    Israel defends itself through disingenuous and irrelevant propaganda. You will find, if you spend any time campaigning against Israeli apartheid that a series of disingenuous defences are put forward. Specifically, Israel’s supposed liberal nature, and indeed in more racist incarnations superior ‘civilisation’ when compared to Arab nations is utilised to suggest that Israel could not be oppressive, or does not deserve the scorn heaped upon it. This manifests especially in ‘pinkwashing’, i.e. the use by the Israeli government of their ‘tolerance’ towards LGBT people (especially when compared to Islam) to justify their virtue. Palestinian queer activists, however, do not feel liberated by the occupation and dispossession of their people and the claims of the pinkwashers ring especially hollow when Israeli intelligence regularly utilise Palestinians’ sexuality as a means to coerce them into becoming informants against their own people. Israel’s profession of liberalism and their self-appointed status as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ do not in fact excuse the occupation, slaughter and dispossession of another people any more than the US’ ‘democratic’, ‘liberal’ justified the genocide of the Native Americans.

6.    Israel just carried out a massacre in Gaza. Following the lead of prior onslaughts, Israel sought to crush Palestinian resistance through a strategy which included bombing UN schools, hospitals, children playing on a beach, as well as a ground invasion. This assault left 2,188 Palestinians dead. According to OCHA 520,000 Palestinians were displaced and the UN estimates it will take 20 years to rebuild Gaza.

intro

The increasingly profit driven management of our universities distorts student curricula and curtails scientific inquiry. Universities today face a unrelenting assault by the forces of neoliberalism which is transforming them from institutes of scholarship into businesses. Factories for entrepreneurs and outsourced R&D producing profits for private capital and a parasitic management class.

Today our best scientists spend more time applying for grants than doing research. They find themselves interrogated every step of the way, demanded to explain how RNA silencing insures the “uk remains internationally competitive” or how Supersymetry would benefit the economy. Universities administrations evaluate researchers based on their grant income and the innumerate 'statistics' of  Human Resources, the scientific value of their work is increasingly irrelevant. The result is  a degrading work environment, shallow uninspired science, precarious conditions and rising corruption.

The Student population find their dreamt of future corrupted and themselves immersed in an environment moulding them into the image of the universities paymasters. It is a process that begins even before joining the university. At every open day graduate employment rates and salary take centre stage, unavoidably so when students face the burdens of rising debt. The whole university experience is becoming just another exercise in 'enhancing your CV' where course content is tailored and chosen based on its employability. Learning has been superseded by training.

The principle ideal of the university historically was to facilitate the pursuit of knowledge and understanding both of individual students and as a society. This has fundamentally depended on the fierce independence of the academic community and an openness within itself. If we sacrifice these things in for the sake of short term gains in corporate profits we risk loosing our ability to deal with fundamental social and technical crisis like climate change.

history/neoliberal context

The second world war ended in a spectacular and horrifying manner when the United States dropped the first nuclear warheads. At the turn of the century the very existence of atoms was still uncertain and very much an abstract theoretical issue, now they drove the most powerful weapon in the world. It is no surprise then that throughout the cold war era that support for basic research was deeply embedded in both western and eastern university systems.

The so called post war settlement held up science and education as public goods to be supported by plentiful public funds and academic freedom. Of course in this period public good really meant national good, much of the funding came from military sources. Scientific competition often found itself serving as a proxy for military conflict and academic freedom was not just a source of effective research practice but a powerful ideological tool.

The end of the cold war and the collapse of social democracy made way for globalisation and neoliberalism, in this brave new world the pacts that held together the public university began to unravel.

imaginary numbers/effect on academics

Research funding from public sources in the UK is primarily controlled by the research council system. The total available funds is determined by the government but how this is distributed is nominally an autonomous decision by academics. This split, known as the Haldane Principle, developed from the foundations of the council system in 1918 and has been eroded steadily since the beginning of the new labour era.

The role of the research councils has been to isolate the practice of science from the vagaries of markets and governments. The greatest scientific developments have rarely been the result of pursuing 'wealth creation' or 'end user impact' and there is every reason to believe they cannot be.

When J J Thompson discovered the electron he could never have conceived of the results. Of television, radiotherapy, the subsequent discovery of quantum mechanics and the whole edifice of modern technology. That nobody has yet put the Higgs to work in industry is no argument against the value of the LHC.

The words of Dirac are as true now as ever that “the measure of the greatness of a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research”. On the other hand the loosening  of scientific criteria in favour of the crass commercialism has closed lines of research and lead to narrow short-termist thinking.

The restructuring of science has occurred on two fronts, one ideological the other financial.

The so called 'impact agenda' is nothing more than the particular realisation of the much broader neoliberal project, wherein public good and economic growth become interchangeable. University management has been transformed, colonised by private sector bureaucrats brought in on the dictates of government priorities and think tank reports. Historical structures of participatory decision making have been disassembled, centralised executives supplanting councils and senates.

Warwick has lead the charge, having collapsed 30 departments into four faculties. The 2003 Lambert Report singles it out, “Warwick... remains committed to a centralised management structure.”  and is shockingly  open in its aims, lamenting “Older universities, with a longer tradition of participatory government, tend to take longer... to rationalise its committee structures.”.

The new management has sought tighter ties to the private sector, seeking to 'streamline' research into commercially viable products and “to ensure that the system of funding undergraduate teaching is sufficiently responsive to produce graduates with skills that the economy needs.”.

Convinced of their own infallibility by an ideology an idolises the entrepreneur or leader, this new management apparatus seeks to reduce the operations of the university to precisely controlled mechanical operation, a production line.

Ignorant of both scholarship and of statistics management demands precise tunable statistics, regardless of the actual applicability of such techniques, every variable must be quantified and controlled. Experts might protests they fall on death ears and eventually they concede, producing something that, however arbitrary, becomes the gospel of the university.

It is under this guise of scientific management, of faux statistics, that mass redundancies are justified. Professor David Colquhoun recalls “your meetings with senior colleagues consist of harassment about what journals you publish in, and how many grants you have, not a discussion of your scientific aims.”.

The particular measures differ but the irrationality remains the same. The measures used by Imperial College Medical school for staff targets and by Queen Mary's to justify redundancies in 2012 would both have fired Nobel Prize winners and, because they were based on the number of papers written, encouraged shallow science or even fraud. When one academic dared to criticise the policy they were accused of gross misconduct and subject to disciplinary investigation.

Of course all of this achieves entirely the opposite of what the administration claims to desire. For those who declare the need for efficient use of tax payers money it seems utterly bizarre to focus on funding commercial projects. These developments are supposedly what the private sector should be suited to dealing with, these university projects are nothing more than back-door subsidisation. Pointless quantisation encourages exaggerated impacts, reduces willingness to repeat experiments and incentives fraud.

The financial

While the net income of universities has grown steadily since the turn of the millennium the sources of this have changed radically. Government funding comes from two main sources, research council funding and the HEFCE teaching grants, between 2012 and 2015 the HEFCE grant has halved. While some of this has been made up by shifting the burden to students via tuition fee rises, there is also a much greater dependence on industry sources.

Faced with a funding crisis the inevitable response of the new management regime has been to marketize the operations of the university even if this sacrifices its scholarly tasks. Academics are left with ever less time to pursue research or teaching, universities are increasingly operating as government subsidised consulting firms. Conferences, intended to be an open space for the sharing of knowledge, are being increasingly monetised pricing out smaller institutions and participation by up and coming researchers.

The course of research itself is being diverted for commercial gain on two basis. Firstly a massive internal pressure to focus research on those areas that offer marketable IP claims or produce spin off companies, income from IP has increased 93% since 2001. This leads to a bias towards making new observations rather than developing deeper understanding or pursuing close to market projects that do not require the unique capacities of the university.

Secondly, the approach to research council funds, which now demand economic impacts, citation statistics and publication history to distribute grants. Universities often take up to 60% of these grants as 'overhead' and increasingly employment depends on being able to capture enough grants to pay your own salary. Not only does this put immense demands on a academics time it also incentives bad science.

The intense competition for grants encourages following fads over independent thinking, adds enormous pressure to overstate results, disincentives repeat studies and publication of negative results – essential self corrective processes.

Phds and Grad students suffer resultantly, they are often the last priority for a researchers time but are also used as proxies and cheap labour. Either fulfilling teaching duty to free up a supervisors time or conducting research that they can put their name to with little regard to learning or scientific content.

Hope is not lost, there are those that resist and there always will be.

We occupy to reclaim that which is ours.  We occupy to liberate infrastructure, fashioned by the toil of workers, from corporate appropriation and private thraldom, from the despotism of bosses who mercilessly exploit their employees and profit obscenely at their expense.  We seize such spaces to defy this authority and transform their purpose.  We remodel them as safe, non-hierarchical and autonomous spaces unbreached by security, police and managers, where students and staff can associate together in critical enquiry and free debate on the current trajectory of the University and how it may be redressed.  In doing so we project an ideal of an emancipated, egalitarian and truly democratic University, constructing a microcosm of this alternative vision as a platform in its broader actualization and expansion: as a site of inspiration and community by which to not only envisage the flame, but rather also kindle the spark.

Occupation is, indeed, the embodiment of praxis, a space of education as much as a site of resistance, liberated from the reproduction of knowledge within the parameters of capital.  It is the opportunity to explore, to subvert, to create – to not only evaluate the contours of this neo-liberal blueprint, but to mould a culture of resistance wherein we can incinerate it and, together, articulate a new narrative.  It is to reify broader educational and social issues within the context of a militant opposition to privatisation, demonstrating to management that our campuses are not fragmented and static aggregations of monopolized institutions, with executive buildings closed off to students and the façade of democracy orchestrated within secluded business meetings.  We occupy to repudiate this atomization, this exclusivity, to enter where management dictate we cannot enter, to seize back control of our campuses and exert pressure on those who marketize them.  We occupy to refute the isolation of these spaces, to reconnect the institutions of our University and remould our campus as an open, inclusive and public landscape of learning and expression.  We occupy not only to disrupt the procession of capital through the University structures – by for example shutting down focal revenue-generating facilities such as conference rooms, thus assuming leverage by arresting their profitable functionality – but rather to carve a space wherein we can fundamentally redefine that operation.

An occupation serves as a galvanizing locus of action, empowering the wider student community to realize that we can contest this encroaching marketization; that we can fight and triumph in seizing back that which management have monopolized; that we can challenge and combat this iniquitous social order; and that we need not capitulate to a life of debt and alienation and corporate servitude. It augments the visibility of our struggle, damaging the broader reputation of our ‘prestigious’ Universities by the active illumination of their exploitative mechanisms, and provides an alternate space for discourse and the actualization of potential solutions – it embodies a base of dissent, wherein we may conduct workshops, speeches, social activities, decentralized consensus organization and debate, realizing mutual aid and communal modes of living.  Occupations inspire us to know that a different world is possible – they are the crystallisation, if bound only in fragments, of that world.  They promise the restoration of control – not only of our campuses, but rather of our autonomy as students, as individuals and as a community.  

We occupy not only to contest the absence of democracy, but rather to collectively reimagine its very nature, and to reforge the architecture of our university.  We occupy to create freedom within an enchained world.  We occupy to flourish, and to unite, and to liberate.  For it is not simply to seize a building, but rather to refashion its very morphology – to construct a space where a different university, a different world, a different reality, can, and does, exist.  We are artists, engineers, architects, scientists: we shape the terrain of our universities, and the nature of the harvest therein.  That which we sow, here, will disperse and bloom throughout the landscape of our society.  We, the dispossessed, the alienated, the indentured, in reclaiming our universities, are seizing back the Commons that were appropriated from us, and are repurposing their produce for our collective nourishment, as we adapt new methods of cultivation.  We struggle against intellectual property rights, and patents, and the Capitalist order which commodifies, fertilizes and encloses this land that only specified crops may grow, and that only a privileged few may access and reap their harvest, though it was our toil that tilled this earth and nurtured their growth.  Here, now, we cultivate the revolution.

They may attempt to circumscribe and compartmentalize the liberty of our discourse, but it flourishes beyond these fabricated bounds, these profit margins: it thrives, only tempered by these grievous conditions.  They seek to privatise our creativity, our imagination, our passion, to desiccate and manipulate our agency, our humanity, to serve the whims of capital.  When we occupy our universities, we are not simply repurposing a building, but rather repurposing it as a site of knowledge.  We are reclaiming knowledge as a commons, we are seizing back our capacity to express our discontentment, and we are transforming the constitution of knowledge itself as an entity not of prescribed reproduction, but liberated and liberating creation. We are expanding knowledge beyond its current delineated limits, and re-examining how knowledge should be harnessed to service public and social good, not to be patented for profit and to socialize us into submitting to the corruption of the status quo.  We emphasise the voices of the oppressed, those that are systematically silenced and marginalised, to interrogate this status quo and thus create knowledge, to foster a radically different narrative, and to mutually support and care for one another through the rigour of that suffering, such that we may heal together; that we may embrace and openly express our identities in a world where we are disparaged, persecuted and negated.  To occupy is a rare and unique praxis because it is acting to hypothesize and reformulate theory – to act not merely informed by radical ideas, but to act in order to create theory, to reconceptualise our lives within an intimate and expansive dialogue, and indeed to re-envision our interactions with each other in doing so; to extend that theory beyond the realms of the purely academic and educational, connecting with the community roots and scattering those seeds into broader social struggles.

On campus stuff:

Warwick Uni Food Coop

Set up in 2013 by students, the Coop trades every Tuesday between 12pm and 5pm in the SU atrium. It sells a wide range of products including rice, lentils, chickpeas, oats, as well as tinned goods, tea, coffee, and peanut butter. The coop is run by volunteers and sell all their products at cost price - it's honestly the cheapest organic food you'll find anywhere. The Coop also offers a veg box scheme in collaboration with Down to Earth Organic (see below). The aim of the Coop is to make food produced in socially and environmentally sustainable ways affordable to all.

Warwick Campus Allotment

Founded in 2011, Warwick Allotment Society took over the running of a growing space on campus established in 2009. Since then the society has steadily expanded. Helped in summer 2012 with a grant from NUS Student Eats the society now have twenty raised beds, a 10 x 4.5m polytunnel, and 2 cold frames. They meet regularly to cultivate the land (Wednesdays from 2pm) but also to socialise; last year they went on two road trips to visit community growing projects, all funded using society money. The Society also schedule the occasional workshop and speaker event. Since May last year 'Allot Soc' has also sold produce through the Warwick Uni Food Coop. The society is always looking for new recruits to the project which they recommend to anyone interested in anything from agricultural politics and plant science to regular and invigorating study breaks. Not to mention wheelbarrow loads of low carbon, organic produce!

Off campus stuff:

Down to Earth Organic (96 Earlsdon St, Coventry) - downtoearthorganic.co.uk Organic, Independently-run, health food shop based in Earlsdon. They offer a wide range of organic produce as well as a weekly veg-box scheme comprised of local, organic produce.

Gaia Wholefood Co-op (7 Regent Place, Leamington) http://www.gaia.coop/ Organic, Independently-run, health food shop based in Leamington. They offer a wide range of organic produce as well as a weekly veg-box scheme comprised of local, organic produce.

Canalside Community Food (Radford Semele, near Leamington) www.canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk A community supported agriculture scheme based just outside Leamington. The project offers not only a veg box scheme but also many opportunities to get involved and learn about organic food production, either directly by working on the land and workshops or via film screenings and other social events.

This fact is invisible to many. But only a cursory glance at our food system will demonstrate that flows of food commodities map directly onto the flows of power, as the wealthy and powerful anxiously seek to vindicate their investments. What this means is that, contrary to popular belief, stories of the food system are not stories whose trajectory is set by congenital greed or overpopulation, but by eminently fixable problems of distribution. As such, these stories begin with us questioning what we eat and end with us taking back control of our food system.

In the first instance, considerations of power help explain so many of the problems and absurdities which cluster around food production and consumption:

·         why food ends up rotting in dumpsters while so many go without

·         why our crops are increasingly being set aside for fuel and not food

·         why we butcher animals by the tens of billions each year (subjecting them to unspeakable suffering and indignities in the process) while we know the effect they are having on our bodies and our planet

·         why some communities starve while others fester in over-abundance

·         why we file by the millions everyday into the sterile machinery of supermarkets when we know they bleed local economies dry and impoverish small-scale producers

·         why so many have never known the beauty and empowerment to be found in growing food for ourselves and other

·         why all this happens when it is neither necessary nor inevitable

While at this university, food’s role in global power plays can continue to elude you - as it does for so many. Food can remain what it is to most: a tasty distraction or mere fuel for living.

But there are other ways to use it. Scrutinised as an object of power, food can tear through the thick veil of the everyday and provide a way into understanding so many of the world’s problems, our role within them, as well as the options for realising our collective power.

Greater distribution of the control of our food production goes hand-in-hand with greater distribution of power. What is more, there are groups in and around campus acting to make this a reality, not only by buying differently and thinking differently, but by building vibrant and autonomous systems of production and which in turn generate resilient communities, healthy minds and healthy bodies.

Though these groups stand strong and proud, they remain in their infancy, in great need of extra support and the organisational vigour to establish and strengthen ties with the vast array of groups fighting with the same vision.

The university experience at Warwick and beyond has become marketed as being a time where students should be partying, socialising and ‘networking’, whilst also succeeding academically, getting involved with societies and securing internships. Unsurprisingly, this bombardment of multiple expectations and the pressure to quickly adapt can become overwhelming, particularly for those with pre-existing mental health issues; it has been reported that around one in three students will experience poor mental health. Therefore, whilst Warwick’s campus life is full of opportunities for our personal, social and intellectual development, during this time of ‘happiness’, and ‘excitement’ even students with no history of mental health problems can find themselves feeling low, alienated or anxious away from their familiar support systems at home.

Worryingly, it is possible that Warwick students who find themselves suffering from mental health problems are met by a generalised stigmatisation of such issues, deterring individuals from using support services such as the Chaplaincy or Counselling. To those already suffering from symptoms such as paranoia or a sense of worthlessness, dismissive and sometimes antagonistic attitudes towards mental health add an extra strain to suffering. The ‘Stigma Shout survey’ carried out by mental health awareness campaign Time to Change showed that 87% of people with mental health problems reported ‘the negative impact of stigma and discrimination on their lives’. For these reasons, it is important for incoming and returning students both to be able to recognise the signs of mental health problems in themselves and their friends, and in turn transform the existing lack of dialogue surrounding the issue.

For students who suffer from mental health problems, the constantly social environment of the campus university can become daunting and too intense. Furthermore, incoming students come to be at risk from the negative side of the excessive drink culture which can be detrimental to student’s mental as well as physical health. The overconsumption of alcohol can increase depression and anxiety levels significantly because it decreases the production of serotonin in the brain; alcohol awareness group Drink Aware suggest that ‘people who experience anxiety or depression are twice as likely to be heavy or problem drinkers’. Similarly, the abuse of illicit drugs such as MDMA has been linked to a lack of serotonin and increase of anxiety levels, with users often complaining of symptoms similar to depression in the days following. Whilst most students are able to deal with the effects of heavy drinking and substance use, for those with mental health problems constant heavy nights out can end up worsening problems, particularly when the sociability or sense of belonging felt whilst under the influence is not the same when sober.

It is indicative of a serious problem to hear of so many instances of isolated students at this university who have struggled through periods of mental health issues without feeling as though they were able to confide in flatmates or friends. The ‘flatmate who never leaves their room’, or the ‘train-wreck’ friend have become common university stereotypes, but often these are the individuals who should be receiving serious professional help and support from peers. Sadly however, as symptoms of depression and other mental health problems include feeling isolated and lonely, students who may not have already formed strong friendships often will remain literally isolated. On the other hand, students who are perceived to be ‘fine’, or even extremely successful academically and socially also experience symptoms of poor mental health, such as anxiety, poor eating habits and depression: but are ashamed, or often unaware that their symptoms could be taken seriously. A better awareness of mental illness is needed so that those suffering need not feel the additional burden of meeting a sour reaction from those around them, in turn helping to promote the idea of mental health issues existing on a spectrum of severity so that the average student can feel comfortable discussing their issues and symptoms from the outset.

Students may also find it difficult to approach their departments about poor mental health concerns as the 2012 report from the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) confirms, it declared that only 1 in 150 students had told their higher education institution about their mental illness in 2010-11. At Warwick, however, this seems to be changing, with the university improving the services available, which include Counselling, the Chaplaincy, and Wellbeing officer who is available for drop in sessions. For students who are unsure of where to seek advice, the Student Union and various student societies have visibly increased awareness and understanding of mental health on campus and online. In January 2014, the Student Union president Cat Turnham published a useful, comprehensive guide of support systems on campus and indicators of poor mental health in a blog post on the SU website.  Along with a number of societies and support groups there is Mind Aware, which has been described by exec members as a society that ‘aims to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of mental health issues whilst promoting positive mental wellbeing…by running a series of campaigns throughout the year’.

Neoliberalism = a economic doctrine which emerged with Thatcher and Regan in the 1970s. It can be summarised as an unrelenting belief in the power of the market leading to mass privatisation, the loss of communal resources and a huge growth in wealth inequality.

The University = according to neoliberalism, a place where consumers invest in an educational product and institutions are efficient, profit producing businesses. According to us – the location of our fight against bullshit fees, exploitative labour conditions, and the general shit which has accompanied neoliberalism.

So ‘neoliberalism and the university’ is two things. Firstly, it is a process of redefinition. Neoliberalism wants to change the way the university works, and has been doing so since 1997 at the latest. It wants to turn students into consumers, it wants to

Secondly, and more hopefully, it is a protest of contest. The university is against neoliberalism. We, the students, are incompatible with a system of profit. If we want the university to be a source of critical thinking rather than an indoctrination machine we need to fight and resist.

Neoliberalism has manifested itself in a few key ways:

Fees and students as a source of profit

·         A home student pays £27,000 for a three year degree. International students pay even more. The burden of funding the university is shifted from the state to the students, who quickly undergoes a transition to consumer.

·         The continual growth in ways of extorting money from students on campus e.g huge increases in Warwick sport fees, Warwick retail (costcutter, library café etc) food costs, the shifting of accommodation towards the more expensive via the demolition of cheap accommodation and the building of luxury accom.

Labour conditions

·         Support staff have been consistently outsourced and distanced from central uni administration so that it becomes very hard to fight for living wage etc.

·         Academic staff have seen a 15% real terms pay cut over 5 years, leading them to take action through their union (UCU).

·         Precarious hourly paid workers doing more teaching, post graduate teaching assistants an easily exploited preacerious workforce who can be underpaid, over worked, and chucked onto the scrapheap when the department no longer needs them.

Managerial control

·         The line management of departments and resulting loss of academic autonomy – the extension of central management control into each classroom, the authoritarian control of individual academics by management structures.

·         VC salaries have risen to unprecedented highs – Warwick’s VC, Nigel Thrift, earns £332,000 a year. This pay is meant to be ‘competitive’ – competitive with the pay of international business CEOs.

·         An academic called Thomas Docherty was recently suspended for his vocal political opposition to neoliberalism… this is just the culmination of neoliberal shittyness.

Loss of academic originality

·         Academics forced into certain cycles of short term research in order to satisfy the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ (REF). A defining metric which serves to discipline academics as industrial producers of a commodity called ‘research’.