A cross-campus anti-protest group has recently issued a statement regarding its involvement in the recent anti-protest rally held to coincide with a DSU protest march against residence fee increases. The rally, which officially started at the same time the DSU march left Dunelm, but due to timing difficulties really started ten minutes later, attracted similar numbers to the DSU march, to support the statement Direct action doesn't work
, and call for non-confrontational and constructive negotiations with the University over residence charges.
The group claimed to be vindicated in its approach when the DSU protest march had no noticeable effect on the residence charge situation, although many senior DSU officers criticised the organisers of the rally (including, it is reported, one high-profile senior rep) for unnecessarily splitting student opinion, and not learning from the past history of University consultation.
The anti-protest group denied these claims, saying that they felt the University would be open to reasonable discussion and consultation, and that the Senior Management would view direct action as petty and unreasonable, leading to a hardening of their stance. In their press statement, they say:
Our group is of the opinion that direct action is unconstructive and takes far too much effort on our parts to organise. We believe that the University will only listen to constructive consultations where we agree with them, and that this is the only way that we can gain an acceptable level of residence charge.
Many within the students union remain unconvinced, with one pointing out that a negotiation-only strategy had been tried, unsuccessfully, before, and only direct action had got the University to shift its stance even slightly. Before direct action was used, he went on to point out, the University would not even accept that some of its figures that were highly peripheral to the argument were wrong and incomplete.
The anti-protest group is said to be unlikely to change its views, pointing out that the most recent DSU protest did not achieve anything, and since as many students attended its rally, there must be widespread support for this view. One student who attended the march, but heard about the events of the rally later, said that they had thought about which to go to, and eventually, in retrospect, had made the wrong decision.
I decided to go to the march in the end, because I hoped it might make a difference, but some friends of mine were at the rally, and we talked afterwards, and they managed to convince me that direct action would never change anything. Apparently it was the massive numbers of people turning out at the rally that convinced them of this, so I guess it was changing things for them.
The student, a philosophy undergraduate in their second year, then complained of a headache brought on by paradox, and left for the bar.
The Vice-Chancellor has been reported to have been in talks with the anti-protest group recently, with a spokesperson for the group saying that the dialogue had been constructive, with the Vice-Chancellor setting out a well-reasoned case for a 35% residence charge increase next year. The spokesperson proudly showed us the figures involved, saying that the group had been the first to know. Closer examination of the figures revealed a line labelled Indeterminate amount to get the intended result: £5 million
, however the spokesperson suddenly became unavailable for comment when asked about this.