Scrap the National Student Survey

We've been getting emails through from our colleges and faculties, trying to get us to fill out the National Student Survey (NSS). According to the emails, yesterday was the last chance to fill it out, so maybe this post is a bit late. The price of finals revision I suppose.

Our student union (CUSU) was one of the last to agree to promote the NSS, as recently as 2008-9. Until then it had rightly regarded the NSS as a pointless waste of everyone's time. Unfortunately, CUSU have thrown out this along with most other good policies they ever had. This year, the student union at Sussex (USSU) have asked members to boycott the survey in protest at management's plans to axe 115 jobs.

The NSS asks 22 “questions” about the student experience, in the form of statements which the respondent can “definitely agree” with, “definitely disagree” with, and so on. The more banal the statement, the more likely a student is to shrug their shoulders and agree with it. (3. Staff are enthusiastic about what they are teaching. I guess so.) It's easy to beef up the numbers of satisfied students when you don't ask any serious questions. It is worded in such a way as to produce pointless answers. Can you imagine an exam being set up in this way? Henry VIII was a bad man. Mostly agree. World War One was caused by mischievous ferrets. Definitely disagree.

We can only ever criticise the staff, never the management. In this paradigm, anything that's wrong with our degree must be a failure of teachers. We are not asked about the content of courses or, crucially, about the nature of the university itself. Here are some examples of questions that are not in the NSS:

Has your university announced any course cuts?
Has your university announced any job losses?
What is your university's attitude to political activity on campus?
Do you agree with your university's investments in the arms trade?

The NSS is primarily a PR exercise to attract potential applicants to particular universities. It has nothing to do with students “having their say.” If universities were really bothered about that, they would democratise and “give us a say” in the running of the place. In Cambridge, there are three student representatives on a University Council of twenty-four members. They are not elected as members of the student union, but rather in separate elections that the University fails to publicise, even fails to institute an online ballot, and turnout is ridiculously low. The student members of University Council are therefore not bound by union policy and represent no-one but themselves.

A self-selecting survey is no substitute for any form of democracy. It is yet another encroachment of managerialism into the education system. It assumes that everything is basically OK apart from some tweaks that could be made here and there, and therefore leaves no room for dissent or new ideas. The final “questions” are blatantly trying to find out how well prepared we are to be funnelled into the job market. 19. The course has helped me present myself with confidence. 20. My communication skills have improved. 21. As a result of the course, I feel confident in tackling unfamiliar problems. We might expect them next year to start crapping on about “transferable skills.”

The NSS is an unrepresentative tool used by universities to foster an unquestioning, “everything is fine” attitude among students. They only want to hear our opinion as long as it mostly overlaps with theirs. They want to teach us to be managers, or workers who are sympathetic with managerial views. Scrap the NSS, democratise the university.

Lords, Vice-Chancellors, and Democracy

Why are we so willing to put up with such a lack of democracy in so many areas of our life?

Our political system is a democracy, but our society is far from democratic. Most people have very little power over most aspects of our lives. Three incidents from recent days have got me thinking about this.

Beckham's Green and Gold scarf
Manchester United's comfortable thrashing of AC Milan in the Champions League was somewhat eclipsed by their former captain's donning of a Green and Gold protest scarf after the match. It was great to hear, on the radio, the anti-Glazer chants in Old Trafford for the whole of the last half hour of the match. Fans at Old Trafford seem to be waiting until United are comfortably in the lead, then turning the game into a demonstration.

However, they have no recourse, no democratic method of removing the Glazers from ownership. The fans' best option currently seems to be the so-called Red Knights, a group of (rich) investors who have expressed an interest in the club. Portsmouth fans and staff have seen their club kicked around between rich owners for months, and now have to pay for the incompetence of others with relegation and job losses. The choice of one rich owner over another doesn't solve the problem.

Corpus Christi Protest
This week, students at Corpus Christi College staged a protest picnic against the college authorities' mismanagement. Students are having to bear the burden of increased costs in a college that is rumoured to be one of the wealthiest in town. Emphasis on the word “rumoured”, of course no college finances are transparent enough for us to know how rich they are, or exactly what it is they do with our money. For all we know, they could be bathing in it at weekends.

Corpus spent one million pounds on a stupid clock that doesn't even tell the time properly, as a gimmick to attract tourists. Perhaps there should have been a democratic decision to spend this money on something that would actually be useful?

Colleges lie about tiny things because they assume they can get away with it. The political memory of students is so short that they can safely misrepresent what the Kitchen Fixed Charge or cost of laundry was five years ago, in order to justify raising it. Student union reps on committees get fobbed off, lied to, or ignored. After a year they are frustrated enough to start getting pissed off, but then they have to step down in favour of some new, bright-eyed reps, who know that of course the college is an academic community and only wants what's best for its members.

The executive body of our university, the University Council, lacks even official Student Union, or staff union, representation. The university refuses to allow online voting, which would increase turnout. College JCRs are given the responsibility for running the ballot, which means that if they don't, there is no way for people to vote. There are three student representatives on a body of twenty-one, and no representation for non-academic staff. The heads of colleges and Professors could push through as many Golden Clocks as they like, and make everyone else pay for it.

Lord Adonis and the BA strikes
Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has strongly condemned British Airways cabin crews' decision to take strike action. Let's leave aside for a second the condescending language which treats people like children (decisions to strike are always “unacceptable” and “irresponsible). Let's ask the question, in whose name is Adonis speaking?

The cabin crew have voted by 80% on a 77% turnout to take this strike action. Lord Adonis has been elected by 0% of anyone, on a 0% turnout. He was made a Lord so that he could sit in the cabinet. He has no democratic mandate whatsoever. He once won a ward in a town council election. For the Liberal Democrats. Twenty years ago. But he can go on TV and, with the full authority of an elected government, condemn a group of people who have made the collective, democratic decision to defend their working conditions.

Putting a cross in a box every year is no democracy, as long as the Lords, Vice-Chancellors and union busting bosses retain all the power.

Student Churnalism

This week I had an article printed in the comment section of The Cambridge Student (TCS). I was writing about the importance of a left-wing challenge to the three main parties at the next election, and in so doing, mentioning Martin Booth’s Socialist candidacy in Cambridge.

Put frankly, my article was butchered by the editors. I can live with this. I’m used to articles being changed, cut down, or rejected outright. What I want to focus on is the political nature of the editors’ decision. What they did was take out not only my endorsement of a candidate, but even any mention of Martin’s candidacy and the existence of TUSC nationally. The reason they gave was that, as a neutral newspaper, they couldn’t print any article that endorsed a particular candidate. This is clearly rubbish. No readers will equate one article, by one writer, in one issue, with the endorsement of the whole paper.

In the student press, as in the grown-ups’ media, the main parties get free coverage all year. In fact, one of the first things TCS printed this academic year war a full page given to Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative representatives to explain what their parties would do for students this year. No other, much more active political groups on campus were given the same opportunity. Fine, that’s the editors’ prerogative of course. No-one would argue that it amounts to an “endorsement” of the main parties. But neither is it neutral or impartial.

Student newspapers can be playgrounds for aspiring journalists who write in the same style, about the same issues, and with the same tired arguments that we read in the comment and opinion sections of national newspapers. One blogger for the online version of Varsity, Cambridge’s independent student paper, has illustrated this point well in a couple of recent articles. Firstly, during the recent referendum on NUS affiliation, he likened the leaders of the “No” campaign, who were opposing the NUS from a fairly left-wing standpoint, to early-90s Tories Norman Tebbit and Roger Knapman. This is either deliberately misleading, or a desperately poor analogy, presumably designed to show off the author’s knowledge of big-boy politics. Either way, it’s bad journalism. Secondly, in an otherwise interesting article, he described James Purnell, who recently announced that he would be standing down from Parliament, as “one of the foremost thinkers of the centre-left.” The tired media cliché about Purnell’s supposedly towering intellect can be debunked by a quick glance at this confused and pointless article he wrote for the Guardian. As for “centre-left,” ask anyone who has been affected by his Thatcherite welfare reforms.

I don’t expect student journalists to be particularly good at writing, still less have time to produce earth-shattering investigative pieces. Everyone is learning, of course. But surely showing some imagination, and not producing pale reflections of something I can read in any issue of the Guardian, could stop us all unwittingly getting on the train to Hacksville.

TCS has a self-selecting editorship. In contrast, many other student union papers have their editors elected by the student body. This is a better system, but the idea that student papers must be neutral permeates here too. The Facebook group for one of the candidates running for editor of The London Student wants the paper to be “impartial at its core” but “support student campaigns.” A neutral paper which supports certain campaigns? First one to square that circle wins a prize.

Student papers could choose to be weapons in the fights students wage in their own interests, against their university managements and against the government. They could choose to seek out the less-known views and stories. They could choose to take student politics on its own terms rather than treating it like Westminster-lite. Activist journalism doesn’t mean distorting or ignoring facts. It just means using them for something more worthwhile than a nice liberal academic chat about the nature of representation or what John Stuart Mill said about something-or-other.

To be honest though, I’m not holding my breath.

Clare College and the Palestine Question

It's fair to say that the choir's planned tour of Israel was not exactly a hot topic of conversation in Clare College during last term. There was a meeting, which I am ashamed to say I missed, organised by members of Cambridge Gaza Solidarity, the group which came about as a result of January's occupation against the Gaza War. From what I've heard, the choir didn't take up invitations to attend. By now the story has achieved national notoriety.

Boycotts
Generally I oppose the sort of blanket 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions' (BDS) campaign such as that now in place at University of Sussex Students' Union. There are political problems with these campaigns. A boycott can have the effect of hitting the working class of the target country more than the rulers, or of making it easier for workers to be rallied round their government by a nationalist sentiment.

Positive solidarity could be something like the Greek dockers' refusal to load ammunitions on to a ship bound for Israel. Of course, by the time the invasion of Gaza was already launched, there was a sense of too-little-too-late about this action. So in the meantime, the temptation to call for an all out boycott is strong. It can, if taken as the be-all and end-all, be a substitute for more positive solidarity action.

I don't know much about apartheid South Africa, but I've always found the opinion expressed by many supporters of BDS that the regime was brought down by boycotts to be a bit suspect. I'm sure the mass movement within South African society, with the ANC and others employing a multitude of tactics and strategies, had something to do with it. This is not to deny that boycotts have an economic effect, if enough people rally to the call.

A boycott of Israeli goods would have to be primarily international. Palestinians themselves cannot afford to boycott Israeli industry, because their economy is dependent on it. Acceptance of this by many Palestinians has spurred recent attempts by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to push the boycott more strongly in their own territories. But surely the PA know the economic reality and are just sharpening their rhetoric.

Groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) are all for extending the boycott out from just Israeli goods, to encompass cultural institutions. The latter, which is itself a group made up of intellectuals, argue that the university system is ideologically tied to the state in Israel, and is therefore complicit in Israel's oppression of the Palestinians.

Liberal Bullshit
The liberal argument against any sort of boycott is, essentially, that it is unfair. Why single out Israel when loads of governments behave in similar ways? Why tar all Israeli academics and workers with a Zionist brush? How would you like it if people assumed that you agreed with everything your government did just because you were British, American, Iranian, etc?

This article in The Cambridge Student is a fairly standard interpretation of this liberal line. Aside from its ridiculously simplistic portrayal of Israel as a model democracy, it misrepresents the arguments of those opposed to the choir tour. Anyone who voices concern about such a political foolhardy action is branded as an illiberal idiot, their views not only 'tragic' but 'shocking.' Perhaps, though, they are merely trying to find effective ways of fighting something much more 'tragic and shocking' – a forty year old land-grab in the West Bank and a vicious form of collective punishment that has Gaza dying on its feet.

Those of us who occupied university rooms in January faced the same arguments. Why not occupy over Sri Lanka, for example? Behind this lies the spurious logic that, because the world contains so many injustices, attempting to do something about one of them is somehow unfair on those suffering from the others. Of course, those of us with a socialist outlook do not just campaign on Palestine. We point out that wars are an inevitable and recurring product of an imperialist system and a rampant and unchecked arms trade.

People 'single out' Israel because of the amount of media attention the conflict gets, the length of time it has been going on for, the one-sidedness of it all, and the historical role in the Middle East of Britain and the United States. Right or wrong, it's as simple as that.

Let's be clear. Singing a few songs on either side of the Security Wall, while ignoring the existence of the Wall itself, is not a commendable act of inter-faith peacemaking. Pretending that this was ever anything more than a free holiday for members of the choir is disingenuous. If it was the case that the choir ever had any intention of coming out publicly against the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, or even of publicly acknowledging the realities of the situation, it might be a different matter. They were only ever going there to sing.

The choir and democracy
Where does this devil-may-care attitude to political reality come from? This has largely to do with the nature of Cambridge academia. Cambridge colleges have not yet been completely dragged out of the Middle Ages, and so, for some reason, a Christian choir is universally regarded as an ambassador for Clare College and no-one bats an eyelid. I have been inside the chapel once, for the matriculation service. It was quite nice. Berate my lack of college spirit if you like, but the prestige of the choir was not one of the factors I considered when looking at universities. Choral scholarships? Organ scholarships? What century are we in?

Unfortunately, the college's refusal to open its books at all means that I'll never know just how much of my tuition fee money is being spent jetting the choir around the world. So to my next point. This medieval prestige means that a choir tour is political. A choir tour to Israel is doubly political. A choir tour to Israel on the exact one year anniversary of the invasion of Gaza is crass and insensitive at best.

The prevailing ivory tower mentality in the University means that decisions like this can be taken with scant regard for the consequences. In the end I suppose I oppose the choir tour on the – probably unconvincing – grounds that It's Just Fucking Stupid, and because no-one had an opportunity to discuss or vote on it before it was arranged. The absence of campus democracy strikes again.

I haven't by any means been won over to a BDS position, but talking to Palestinians, I can well understand why they don't want something like this going ahead, and in particular why it appears to legitimise the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. A privileged choir from a privileged university wading into a political shitstorm that it appears to know or care little about has strong imperialist undertones.

Unless decision-making processes are changed, maybe we can look forward to Clare Choir: Live from Tiananmen Square, 2010.